The contemporary art world is once again in thrall to political radicalism, with artists abandoning the former vogue of aesthetic experimentation in favor of making political statements along the lines of the “Socialist Realist” school of totalitarian propaganda. Artist Megan Gafford wonders what the attraction is.
In her Quillette article The Totalitarian Artist: Politics vs Beauty, she explores the phenomenon with the help of the working-class philosopher Eric Hoffer.
She first describes the affinity of artists for radical politics, whether of the left or the right. She notes that Hitler began as a frustrated artist. During that time, the cutting edge style was “Futurism,” with the Futurist artists in Italy becoming zealous adherents of Fascism, while the Futurist artists in Russia became zealous adherents of Communism. In the 1930s, a number prominent modernist artists took a pause from their abstract expressionism and painted works of Socialist Realism in solidarity with the dictates of the Soviet Union. Once the Communist vogue passed, they went back to their personal styles.
Hoffer’s most famous book, published in 1951, was The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. In it, he analyzes the mindset behind political fanaticism and the mass movements, such as Nazism and Communism, that had ravaged the first half of the 20th century. What he had to say is still startlingly relevant today.
As Gafford shows, he explicitly addresses the appeal that radical and revolutionary movements have for artists and other creative people (which may also apply to today’s intellectuals, professors, and university students).
[Hoffer] saw the totalitarian impulse as a temptation for failed artists of every political persuasion. In his 1951 book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, he writes:
The man who wants to write a great book, paint a great picture, create an architectural masterpiece, become a great scientist, and knows that never in all eternity will he be able to realize this, his innermost desire, can find no peace in a stable social order—old or new. He sees his life as irrevocably spoiled and the world as perpetually out of joint.
Such a man often becomes, writes Hoffer, a “true believer,” a fanatic who is likely to embrace a revolutionary movement, since his personal frustration leads him to yearn for radical societal change. “All mass movements,” Hoffer argues, “draw their adherents from the same types of humanity and appeal to the same types of mind”. . . .
Hoffer was particularly wary of “those with an unfulfilled craving for creative work” because they are “the most incurably frustrated”:
Both those who try to write, paint, compose, etcetera, and fail decisively, and those who after tasting the elation of creativeness feel a drying up of the creative flow within and know that never again will they produce aught worth-while, are alike in the grip of a desperate passion. Neither fame nor power nor riches nor even monumental achievements in other fields can still their hunger. Even the wholehearted dedication to a holy cause does not always cure them. Their unappeased hunger persists, and they are likely to become the most violent extremists in the service of their holy cause.
Gafford discusses some contemporary examples of artists devoting their work to identity politics and cancelling other artists who commit “cultural appropriation” or otherwise fall short of the woke ideal. She writes, quoting Hoffer,
This deference to identity politics is an example of Hoffer’s observation that the true believer “subordinates creative work to the advancement of the movement”:
The true-believing artist does not create to express himself, or to save his soul, or to discover the true and the beautiful. His task, as he sees it, is to warn, to advise, to urge, to glorify and to denounce.
If this is true for frustrated individual artists, what about the entire cultural landscape, which has hit the wall of nihilism and despair? Even creative people who are successful, as far as that goes today, have to feel frustrated with a world that, in their worldview, has no meaning or purpose. No wonder to at least create a purpose for themselves they feel impelled to try to tear down this world and to build something new in its place. And all they can do in their creative expressions is “to warn, to advise, to urge, to glorify and to denounce.”
Conversely, in totalitarian societies where the radicals have their sway, the best artists are, invariably, dissidents who do believe in the true and the beautiful, who reject totalitarianism and its assumptions, and who are often conservatives and even Christians.
Photo: Eric Hoffer by White House of the President of the United States; uploaded to YouTube by TheLBJLibrary – MP889 outs1 at 03:29, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71840471
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