{"id":2215,"date":"2017-05-20T07:52:58","date_gmt":"2017-05-20T14:52:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/?p=2215"},"modified":"2017-05-20T07:52:58","modified_gmt":"2017-05-20T14:52:58","slug":"can-art-corrupt-our-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2017\/05\/can-art-corrupt-our-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Can art corrupt our politics?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"what<\/a>At Time<\/em> magazine, Alex Melamid<\/a> suggests it can, that the infantilism found in (some) works of modern art has led us, in the end, to an infantile president of the United States:<\/p>\n

Whatever the intelligentsia nurtures and celebrates in our galleries and academic journals is bound to flow eventually into the nation\u2019s cinemas, through its ballot boxes and toward the swamp of Washington, D.C. The last few months have proven that Trump is not out to drain that swamp. He is its progeny, and we on the left \u2014 the artists, the people of culture \u2014 have done our part in creating the conditions for him to thrive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ben Davis<\/a>, at ArtNet<\/em>, is not having it:<\/p>\n

The political situation is dire. Nothing really feels important right now unless it somehow connects to that situation, which leads to all kind of flailing around in cultural commentary. In this case, turning the problem inside out, Melamid ends up echoing\u00a0the most thoughtless caricature about modern art\u2014\u201dmy kid could do that!\u201d\u2014just to construct a credible way to plug art\u00a0into the Conversation about Trump, who acts like a kid.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m going to side with Davis here. First, we should be careful about defining this era as ‘the age of Trump’: we just finished an eight-year presidency of Barack Obama, and in 2016 Hillary Clinton decisively won the popular vote. Trump has at no point enjoyed high approval ratings, though his likely vote totals remain higher than his approval, simply because he is Republican and there are a fair number of nose-holding Republican voters out there. There has not been any president like him, with a lot of years since 1968 (which Melamid sees as a watershed year), and my eternal optimism leads me to think we will not see another. Second, because it is such a stretch to believe that contemporary art has much salience in this world. How many voters do you believe have any idea who Jeff Koons is? Or even identify that a work is by Andy Warhol? True, Melamid does say that popular<\/em> culture has also been infantilized – and any visit to your local multiplex cinema will confirm this – and this is probably where the bigger influence, if any, is to be found. Of far greater influence, not mentioned by Melamid, in Trump’s electoral success would be Fox News, which I suppose we could see as infantilized news coverage, stories for children. But the serious art world? No.<\/p>\n

But here’s a thought:<\/p>\n

I’m going to suggest that in the circles that follow the art world there is an assumption held by the majority that art cannot<\/em> corrupt. That scolds who worry about the terrible behavior of anti-heroes on screen and in literature, or violent lyrics in music, and their influence on our society, don’t appreciate our ability to enjoy the art without it changing our personalities – we are not going to begin to think that gang members are to be admired, that revenge killing is morally right. We maintain an ironic distance, whether viewing a Koons exhibition or watching The Sopranos<\/em>. It’s at the heart of any argument that art ought to be unfettered by the state, that Plato was wrong. And that childish art will not change us such that we are willing to accept a childish president.<\/p>\n

But shouldn’t it then also give us pause when we read stories – and the artsjournal.com<\/a> site that hosts this blog is full of them – about how the arts improve<\/em> us, expanding our moral capacities and our empathy with the other, providing political and social enlightenment?<\/p>\n

Empirically, we know very little about how art affects our individual morals, and, in turn, our society (even though there is a large literature of small-sample, university psychology lab studies of assessing our immediate reactions to literature, how we change over a lifetime of art remains unknown). Even philosophers who argue that incorporating ethics into our aesthetic criticism (say, Noel Carroll<\/a>, for example), agree. And if we don’t have the empirics, and rely on logical argument, it is hard to see how we could ever make the case that the arts can improve our morals, but never harm them. We want to believe the art and literature we love makes us better, but, as Joshua Landy<\/a> put it:<\/p>\n

We should all just come out and admit it: ‘”morally improving” is merely a compliment we pay to works whose values agree with ours.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Did Dada lead to Trump? I don’t believe it did. Is any<\/em> art movement capable of corrupting our moral lives? I think we would like to think not – we recognize immorality when we see it, a viewing of Birth of a Nation<\/em> will not induce us to admire the KKK.<\/p>\n

But where does that leave our arguments that the arts are morally improving?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Time magazine, Alex Melamid suggests it can, that the infantilism found in (some) works of modern art has led us, in the end, to an infantile president of the United States: Whatever the intelligentsia nurtures and celebrates in our galleries and academic journals is bound to flow eventually into the nation\u2019s cinemas, through its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2215","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-issues","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Koons.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3dIW5-zJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1236,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/04\/capital-inequality-and-investments-in-art\/","url_meta":{"origin":2215,"position":0},"title":"Capital, inequality, and investments in art","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"April 20, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"What are the effects of an increased concentration of wealth on the art market? Writing in the New York Times, Scott Reyburn looks for a link between the theories in most newsworthy economics book of the year, Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and what we are seeing at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"so have you really read this through?","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/piketty-199x300.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4628,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2025\/12\/john-careys-what-good-are-the-arts\/","url_meta":{"origin":2215,"position":1},"title":"John Carey’s “What Good are the Arts?”","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"December 18, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Literary critic and academic John Carey\u00a0died last week at the age of ninety-one. I always enjoyed reading his reviews. If you hadn\u2019t already guessed how the Bloomsbury set and their literary contemporaries viewed common folk, his book\u00a0The Intellectuals and the Masses\u00a0gives you chapter and verse. I enjoyed\u00a0Henry Oliver\u2019s appreciation of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image.png?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3653,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2024\/12\/art-politics-trump\/","url_meta":{"origin":2215,"position":2},"title":"Art, Politics, Trump","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"December 5, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"A favourite old book of mine from my childhood is Kenneth Clark\u2019s\u00a0Civilisation, which goes along with his television series. It is old-school history of western civilisation, observant and wise. In his first chapter he travels to those monasteries around Ireland and Great Britain - Skellig Michael, Iona, Lindisfarne (pictured above)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/image-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/image-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/image-1.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/image-1.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/image-1.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/image-1.png?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1295,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/05\/art-and-money\/","url_meta":{"origin":2215,"position":3},"title":"Art and money","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"May 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"A.O. Scott, in his Times article \"The Paradox of Art as Work,\" begins: There are few modern relationships as fraught as the one between art and money. Are they mortal enemies, secret lovers or perfect soul mates? Is the bond between them a source of pride or shame, a marriage\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"buy and sell","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/art-fair.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1577,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/10\/art-and-the-estate-tax\/","url_meta":{"origin":2215,"position":4},"title":"Art and the estate tax (updated, again)","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"October 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The New York Times reports on the Elkins case, involving a victory for a wealthy family in a legal fight with the IRS on estate tax owing on a valuable art collection. This is the quote that caught my attention: \u201cMy genuine view is this is a great result for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"'cause I'm the taxman...","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/IRS.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/IRS.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/IRS.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3086,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2024\/09\/on-the-display-of-shocking-art-get-a-room\/","url_meta":{"origin":2215,"position":5},"title":"On the display of shocking art: get a room","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"September 23, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The Guardian\u00a0reports that a gallery in the small Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye was investigated (though not prosecuted) by police\u00a0after complaints of a painting placed in the gallery\u2019s front window. At\u00a0artsjournal.com, where I first found this story, the very knowing headline is \u201cSome Welsh folks called the police on a gallery\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image-1.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image-1.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2215"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2220,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215\/revisions\/2220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}