Self-Censorship and The Purpose of the Arts

 Back in early December 2021, the New York Times had an article entitled "Writers Tackle the Challenge of Self-Censorship" based on a discussion of the topic sponsored by PEN America, an organization founded in 1922 in support of freedom of expression.

Long considered a basic right in the U.S. as enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution, free expression is under threat from both the right and the left at present with writers of all description in the firing line.

This came to mind the other day when I read in the NYT a review of a book called "Authority and Freedom, A defense of the Arts," by Jed Perl. In it, Perl argues art should be freed from the notion that to be valid, it has to address prevailing sociopolitical concerns. 

The reviewer, American composer John Adams, who has had rare success with contemporary opera -- "Nixon in China" and "Doctor Atomic" -- faulted Perl for not giving any examples of art that sacrifices aesthetic authenticity for social relevance. 

"On wonders whether the real reason for his silence here is the now-familiar threat of being cancelled," Adams said. 

I, personally, wouldn't be all that surprised since I have been pondering, in the prevailing cancel-culture, cultural-misappropriation climate, whether I need to change the race of a character in my operetta "Patricia," a work in progress (and one that in all likelihood always will be).

While I personally tend to fall into the "art-for-the-sake-of-art camp," Adams clearly doesn't.

"It's unlikely that 'Authority and Freedom' will change many artists' minds about how they view their work. They will do what they want, and many, if not most, today are ablaze with an intensity not seen since the 1930s to make their art speak truth to power, to heal what they deem the rent in our social fabric," he said.

Perhaps Adams, on his part, can provide some examples of contemporary art that has successfully healed (my emphasis) as opposed to -- say -- addressed "the rent in our social fabric."  

"If you ask them," Adams continued, "they will tell you that art that doesn't address this sense of urgency is not just out of touch with the times, it is irrelevant."

My own sense is that if an artist creates something of exceptional aesthetic value, it will far outlast creations that are first and foremost in touch with the sociopolitical currents of their times although, to be fair, there are examples over the course of history that have successfully hit both targets.

The World of Art Has Abandoned Beauty and Aesthetics

 Once upon a time, beauty was a noble virtue and a philosophic ideal as opposed to a trip-wire of political correctness. Aesthetic considerations, often refined, formal and generally acknowledged if always subject to challenge, then determined what was beautiful, what was not. And the art world was the main venue where debates over relative beauty took place.

Not so much, if at all, anymore.

"Art today is less about the formal or aesthetic properties of an object than a way of talking about the intricately entangled, increasingly unstable world in which we live."  So said Ben Eastham, a London-based art critic in an essay entitled "The Case for Embracing Uncertainty in Art."

And, indeed, that quote is the only place in the entire, lengthy essay where the word "aesthetic" or "aesthetics" occurs. How about "beauty?"  That word doesn't occur at all.

Perhaps it all started in 1917 when Marcel Duchamp contributed a porcelain urinal signed "R. Mutt" and entitled "Fountain" to a New York art exhibition. Whatever the genesis, matters have come a long way since then, to the point where aesthetic considerations are about the last thing an art museum is likely to consider when mounting an exhibition of contemporary works. What the works, or what the artist (since the works themselves are often incomprehensible), says about society (rarely if ever anything positive), and whether the artist can be viewed as a disadvantaged minority of one sort or another, seem to be what matters most.

In other words, the world of art is today just another extension of the world of politics and social criticism. Why does it survive as such? Well, there is still a certain mystique about the whole business and a fascination over the celebrity it can bring. In addition, there is apparently still sufficient cache in acquiring works of a known-name artist as a trophy of one's wealth and power, and perhaps even as a store of value -- if a lot more questionable than, say, owning a Monet painting.

Some will, of course, be quick to point out that social commentary or overt criticism has long figured in at least some prominent works of art (Picasso's "Guernica" for example), but almost always in the past presented in a context of aesthetic principles. That, according to Eastham, has pretty much disappeared.  If that leaves viewers puzzled as to what they are seeing, or why they are seeing it, so be it, he maintains.

"Where movements have historically been defined by shared forms and subjects linked to their sponsors (church, state, merchants), the art of today can only loosely be identified by some common characteristics: it foregrounds ideas over forms and materials; borrows liberally and not always responsibly from disciplines as varied as philosophy, ecology and sociology; is preoccupied by forming connections between disparate ideas and cultures; is sceptical of received wisdoms; takes place in a globalized world; is, to quote Marshall McLuhan, “whatever you can get away with” or, to paraphrase Robert Rauschenberg, “whatever I say it is.”

So where does that leave aesthetics and beauty? Out in the cold, or as we continually see, in the enveloping arms of commerce where the nobility of beauty is devalued on a daily basis.