A Few Thoughts On Fascists Not Liking Art
You’ve almost certainly heard how Hitler went to art school and then failed to launch a successful art career. People make pithy remarks along the lines of “If Hitler had been a better artist, there wouldn’t have been a Holocaust!” Yes, it’s true that Hitler went to art school and painted a number of rather boring paintings, which of course no one cared very much about. I suppose people inclined to fascism, or authoritarianism, or to a certain extent, the current iteration of American conservatism, just can’t figure art out. So-called modern art is too ugly. Why does everything need a political statement? Where is my boring art that’s the same as all the other boring art?
One of the most famous political paintings, which I hope to see in person one day, is Picasso’s Guernica. Guernica is a 11’ by 26’ painting, done in 1937, as a protest to the fascist bombing of the Republican (e.g. anti-Franco) center of northern Spain, the town of Guernica. The entire history of the painting is fascinating, but I’m not going to discuss it here. Suffice it to say that 1940s France deemed Picasso too communist to grant him citizenship* and you’d be hard pressed to find a modern conservative who enjoys Picasso. Here’s the introduction to a rather demented... critique? comparison? of Picasso and Dante:
“Yesterday I was talking about Picasso to an old friend who trained as an art historian. She adores him; I don’t like his work at all, or at least his work after his earlier, more realistic periods. That is, I don’t care for his surrealistic, cubist work. I told my friend I find it ugly and meaningless.”
-Rod Dreher, The American Conservative
Simple enough: realistic Picasso = good and surrealistic Picasso = bad. And intriguing that Guernica apparently lack meaning. I cannot condone this action because the right-wing internet is a cesspool, but this theme repeats itself everywhere I looked. Additionally, realism is almost always equated with beauty. I definitely think that art should be beautiful. I do tend to find myself wincing at some of the horrifically ugly modern art that lots of people enjoy. Firstly, to each their own and secondly, I don’t think the only beautiful things are realistic. Honestly, constraining yourself to realistic art is an affront to the boundlessness of human imagination and skill**. But I digress. A thread on the AskConservative subreddit asking for examples of good conservative art generated this very short list of painters or paintings: Renaissance or Baroque art inspired by Christianity***, Norman Rockwell, Arthur Kwon Lee, and American Gothic by Grant Wood. Apparently no one makes conservative physical media. Oh, the irony! The only non-realistic artist in this list so short you can barely do statistics on it is Lee. I didn’t know who he was so I had to look him up. His art supposedly represents the disintegration of the family unit, so that’s conservative enough for them to overlook the fact that you know, political art is a mockery. Most of the discussion devolved into gibberish about whether or not Lord of the Rings is conservative and, in the greatest irony of all, praising Starship Troopers as right-wing. Conservatives really have slim pickings in terms of nice stuff to put on their walls.
Conservatism, and of course, fascists of all sorts almost always turn towards removing art from society. A current bill in New Hampshire seeks to remove art eduction from schools, among other things. For decades it’s been a right-wing dream to get rid of public funding for arts, such as the National Endowment for the Arts. The descent of Facebook into a writhing sea of propaganda came with floods of rather shitty AI-generated “art”****. Consider the irony the from this conservative artist on the internet:
“There is simply not much good work for the principled, conservative artist.”
-Kay Clarity, The Imaginative Conservative
I assure you, no one is stopping you, in the greatest traditions of conservative art, to paint a little baby Jesus and a photorealistic, soulless tree or whatever. But maybe it’s just that most of us want that little bit of something extra from our art.
So: want to piss off a fascist? Make some fucking art. And make it weird. Weird and beautiful and creative and vibrant and full of love and hope and all the things they hate. Let them steep in their unimaginative hatred.
* Picasso honestly wasn’t a great communist but he was, without a doubt, anti-fascist
**When I went to the Uffizi, I lamented constantly that it’s a real fucking shame the wealthy of the European Renaissance only liked Jesus. Now we have hundreds of very well-executed paintings of ugly baby Jesuses and nothing else.
** *Why not medieval? Classical? You cannot tell me 14th century Spain wasn’t Christian or conservative enough!! Get it together, guys.
****Nothing AI creates is art. AI “art” is theft of peoples’ creative labor.