{"id":3653,"date":"2024-12-05T08:27:51","date_gmt":"2024-12-05T16:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/?p=3653"},"modified":"2024-12-05T08:27:53","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T16:27:53","slug":"art-politics-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2024\/12\/art-politics-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Art, Politics, Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A favourite old book of mine from my childhood is Kenneth Clark\u2019s Civilisation<\/em>, 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) – where in the sixth and seventh centuries monks were able to preserve and to create great works of writing and art, saving them from the Viking invaders. The Vikings possessed great energy and courage, and technical skill – their ships are marvels of engineering – but Clark does not see them as representing a civilisation as such, lacking the \u201csense of permanence\u201d a civilisation requires. The monks did not have the Vikings\u2019 fighting power, but they had something else, that survives to this day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Washington Post<\/em> this week cultural critic Philip Kennicott (gift link<\/a>) also begins his essay with memories of Lindisfarne, though in his case he wants to draw a link to the future of art in America in the second Trump administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are two ways to approach this. One is to look at artists who, in the first go around, chose to make art that directly addressed the White House: Jennifer Rubell\u2019s performance piece \u201cIvanka Vacuuming\u201d; Dana Schutz\u2019s painting \u201cTrump Descending an Escalator\u201d; the gold-plated toilet by Maurizio Cattelan, offered to Trump by the Guggenheim Museum in an effort at humour. In terms of newsworthiness at the time, I might have added the Central Park production of \u201cJulius Caesar\u201d that presented a Trump-like figure in the title role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of these succeed: Ivanka Trump is a minor figure in the grand picture of the impact of her father, already forgotten; Schutz\u2019s painting<\/a> expresses nothing of interest; that the Guggenheim possessed the gold-plated toilet in the first place tells us much more about that institution than about Trump; and, as if this needs saying, Trump is no Julius Caesar. None of these pieces rank as interesting art or<\/em> interesting political commentary. And I don\u2019t think it is possible to create a work of art that can capture something insightful about the dreadful state of American politics. Maybe<\/em> there is a work of fiction that will emerge, though my prediction is that the dust would first need to settle, maybe in 2044 or so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other way to approach this, which Kennicott hints at, is to preserve what is valuable in art and artistic creation even in the presence of such noise and distraction, from the barbarians and from the reactions to them. I see this as the only way forward, though even here Kennicott presents the issue in terms of \u201cstruggle\u201d and \u201cresistance\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cI\u2019m most worried that this country is not what I thought it was, but someplace much more cruel and nasty and selfish,\u201d wrote Ruth Marcus<\/a>, one of The Post opinion section\u2019s lead political commentators, after Trump\u2019s reelection. She echoed a sentiment expressed by other pundits, and many ordinary Americans. Most art critics probably feel the same way, but with an even sharper edge. You don\u2019t struggle to make a career writing about the arts without believing absolutely in the power of art to make the world a better place, to make people better, to do all those morally redemptive things on the long list cited above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an earlier age, art served power, and many arts institutions today are too closely allied with power. But most of the larger art world, including many of the performing arts, literature and the fine arts, have been in the \u201cresistance\u201d since long before the term took on its current meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They resist meaninglessness and absurdity, naked power and raw destruction. They make and do things to keep darkness at bay, to create spaces where the \u201clion griefs\u201d nuzzle rather than consume us (to paraphrase W.H. Auden\u2019s extraordinary image<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think art makes people better, or that it is morally redemptive. But the artist does give something of irreplaceable value. In 1939, an even more fraught time than this, in\u00a0Scrutiny<\/em>, Michael Oakeshott, when asked about the claims of politics on art (I once wrote an article<\/a> about this)\u00a0answered:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

To ask the poet and the artist to provide a programme for political or other social action, or an incentive or an inspiration for such action, is to require them to be false to their own genius and to deprive society of a necessary service. What they provide is action itself, but in another and deeper sphere of consciousness. It is not their business to suggest a political remedy for political defects, but to provide an actual remedy for more fundamental defects by making society conscious of its own character. The emotional and intellectual integrity and insight for which they stand is something foreign to the political world, foreign not merely in fact, but in essence. This integrity and insight cannot be introduced into that world without changing their character; and to attempt to introduce them makes a chaos of what is otherwise a restricted but nevertheless ordered view. It is not their business to come out of a retreat, bringing with them some superior wisdom, and enter the world of political activity, but to stay where they are, remain true to their genius, which is to mitigate a little their society\u2019s ignorance of itself.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In other words, it\u2019s not just that attempts to address Trump through art are almost universally unsuccessful, but that there is, as we economists say, an opportunity cost – we lose something of art actually can<\/em> do, \u201cmaking us conscious of our own character\u201d, so to speak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are not grateful to the monasteries of the dark ages for their anti-Viking art; its the Book of Kells we line up to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

cross-posted at Substack: https:\/\/michaelrushton.substack.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A favourite old book of mine from my childhood is Kenneth Clark\u2019s Civilisation, 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) – where in the sixth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3654,"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_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3653","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\/2024\/12\/image-1.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3dIW5-WV","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":3653,"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":3653,"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":2215,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2017\/05\/can-art-corrupt-our-politics\/","url_meta":{"origin":3653,"position":2},"title":"Can art corrupt our politics?","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"May 20, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"what will this lead to?","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Koons-231x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1295,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/05\/art-and-money\/","url_meta":{"origin":3653,"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":3653,"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":3653,"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\/3653","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=3653"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3659,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653\/revisions\/3659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}