American Document/Artistic Decline
Lipman, Samuel
historical reasons, or literary ones, or whatever. Even the Nation is aware of such things. They know that." On the way out I spot a woman holding her fur coat and waiting for her limo. "Did you...
...Not for most people...
...but I mean I'm not involved .. . why are you asking...
...Fortunately, we have come a long way from that kind of equality...
...Perhaps it is time to ask some questions...
...what-ever our creators of culture cannot sup-port they feel they must openly oppose...
...Culture is—despite everything we fear—free to go its own way, often prospering in the marketplace and always immune to gross government sanction.fluence of that context on the content of their art—are left unexamined...
...Do you like the Nation...
...Capitalism has not wiped out poverty, in-justice, or unemployment...
...So we should not be surprised thateverywhere in the West, many artists under freedom hanker after just that organic connection with politics that artists under dictatorship—and those who support them from afar—deny and resist...
...As a bonus, we will also send you a free subscription to our monthly journal Imprimis...
...Hillsdale College Hillsdale Michigan 49242 For a series of 36 of these award-winning essays, send $10.00 to Alternatives, Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan 49242...
...The morass in which public art finds itself in our time is proof enough of the real separation so many artists feel from the social order, as it is of the dissatisfaction the social order feels with the artists...
...and the special political and bureaucratic interests that dominate the fiscal process...
...I asked her...
...Candor demands too that we recognize the enormity of what happened to culture under the Cultural Revolution in Mao's China...
...AMERICAN DOCUMENT There is a popular and attractive formulation of the desirable relationship between culture and politics...
...There is another loss for us all in the present situation: the triviality of so much that now passes for "the cutting edge" in art...
...34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1986...
...1, San Francisco, CA 94108 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1986 33 though politically opposite, kind of behavior at the National Endowments by the Reagan Administration...
...Underlying this first reaction, often to the point of massive depression, is a second: it stems from the conviction that nobody beside those directly involved cares what these artists do...
...Those who moved into the stinking slums of English cities from the lovely English countryside moved out of stinking barns and hovels and ditches...
...And the leftist Nation complains that the National Endowment for the Humanities has followed a political agenda in refusing to support "humanistic" media programs on racism...
...I had a very nice time," she said...
...The first reaction is that culture here too, despite all appearances to the contrary, is con-trolled...
...Capitalism replaced not (Utopia), but indescribable poverty, illiteracy, and economic doom...
...On the part of these artists, there seem to be two reactions, rather than one...
...The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery...
...530 pages...
...It goes by the style of the autonomy of culture and its independence from the depredations of politics...
...In evaluating this position, it is difficult to avoid the impression that the artist is demanding, as by right, access to a public on the largest scale, and of the most exalted constitution...
...Look, I was delighted just to get dressed up, wash my hands, come out and have a nice time...
...The cry is for artistic freedom, for the right of the creator to work, untrammeled by any externally imposed conditions, especially those imposed by the state and by society...
...I mean, I could have put together a better party if they'd asked me...
...This article, in somewhat different form, was a contribution to a panel discussion on "Culture and Politics The New Criterion," held at the 92nd Street YM-YWHA in New York on January 20, 1986...
...both are in some sense hostile to the status quo...
...Many, and perhaps most, artists are content to use their public freedom for private artistic purposes, and to leave wider questions of the relationship between culture and politics to those who find the subject interesting...
...Do you think Jesse Jackson is anti-Semitic...
...I love the Nation...
...I should read it...
...Thus in the New Republic, the critic and director Robert Brustein is mightily concerned that White House appointees, acting for ideological reasons, are going to block federal funding for his own particular vision of avant-garde theater...
...The same is true of the millions of immigrants who flocked to American sweatshops from the hunger and hopelessness of Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe...
...I always vote for . . . you know actually the most interesting candidate...
...I've been hearing about this party for so long, I just thought: party, you know...
...The New Republic's better...
...Should we continue along the path of hostility and ignorance that to a large extent now separates culture and politics, and accept this situation as a necessary safeguard of the blessings of democratic life...
...Like you know, I'm from Berkeley...
...I do, but I was tempted to vote for him because he was at least different, and...
...Do you hate the Nation...
...This triviality, when combined with the exhaustion of the vitality of tradition evident in so many fields, causes the most educated and sensitive among us to think in terms of the end of culture...
...Today, with Nazi Germany vanquished, a more vegetarian regime ruling Russia, and a proto-capitalist policy Samuel Lipman is publisher of the New Criterion and music critic of Commentary...
...Or should we attempt, by free discussion and by basic education, to bridge the gap between state and society on the one hand, and the artist and the thinker on the other...
...For many artists, and these not the least intelligent, matters have gone beyond separation from society...
...It has to be said that this hankering, as we see it displayed in art magazines and at writers' conferences of unblessed memory, takes curious forms...
...It is easy to see why this formulation is so attractive No less than anyone else, the creator of culture feels he has a right to demand this autonomy, not merely for his art and thought, but for his very life...
...From the standpoint of government, the answer is pretty clear, though rarely spoken out loud: Everywhere in free countries, those in charge of politics seem quite happy to bask in the reflected glory of the great accomplishments of the past, to take credit for an attitude of generalized benignity toward new culture as a whole, and to allow those troublesome creatures we call artists and thinkers a pat on the back and free rein to achieve their goals as best they see fit...
...For these artists, their art's the thing, and wider questions of state and polity—the place of their art and thought in a wider political and social context, and the inGGTaxation and the Deficit Economy is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in reforming our economic policies.» -JAMES C. MILLER III, Director Office of Management and Budget PACIFIC INSTITUTE TAXATION AND THE DEFICIT ECONOMY Fiscal Policy and Capital Formation in the United States Edited by DWIGHT R. LEE Foreword by MICHAEL) BOSKIN Twenty-two distinguished economists examine the harmful effects of taxation on personal and corporate income...
...Just whom does this situation in the democracies satisfy...
...Here the political process is open, benign to a historically unprecedented degree, and almost al-ways slow to anger and retribution...
...Y•" ? "You read news you can't read anywhere else...
...In a world where the very idea of the legitimacy of even the most benevolent states is under attack, the future of a civilized democratic polity may depend on our answers to these questions...
...despite their admiration for various nationalisms abroad today, they see patriotism at home as opportunism at best, treason at worst...
...And in our rush to perfect the human condition, we would do well to re-member the words of Winston Churchill: "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings...
...political power boomed into a force such as had not existed within any political system before...
...It was under 'heartless capitalism', believe it or not, that the earnings of the masses soared...
...They went to the machines to get a precious job, to live better and aspire higher...
...Not for our artists, widely hostile to the present organization of democratic societies, is the unbuttoned nationalism composers of the nineteenth century found so fructifying...
...I think someone talked me into it at the last minute...
...what totalitarian states kill by violence, our governments attempt to direct by genteel manipulation and open co-optation...
...I think I ended up voting for Hart who I hated...
...I really support them...
...Paradoxically, it is thus by opposition today that artists show most deeply their desire for connection tomorrow with a future political and social order...
...the deleterious impact of welfare programs, Social Security, and military spending on capital formation...
...Proposals for reform include stringent constraints on the fiscal process, economic deregulation, tax reduction and simplification, and reductions in both transfer payments and military spending...
...The Good Old Days Weren't One thing about "the good old days"—they weren't...
...In our present situation the gains are basic and clear: life and liberty...
...paper, $14.95...
...I've never seen it," she said...
...Is this the best we can do in a democracy...
...And we find even more: a true and horrifying story of bloody repression stretching all the way from Germany to Siberia...
...Since the Republican victory in 1980, there has been fear, supported by remarkably few facts (or so it seems to me), of a similar, Only one question remains to be asked...
...What do you think of the Sandinistas...
...It is fair to say that artists are of several minds about these matters...
...I don't read it cover to cover every week, I mean...
...But there are other artists—whether they are better or worse artists is both a difficult and an important question—who cannot rest content with the easy pluralism it is the glory of democratic societies to allow...
...But here, in the wonderful countries of the West, we do not live under political tyrannies...
...who did I vote for...
...Really...
...We say that culture, and high culture in particular, ought to be pure and holy...
...But neither has socialism...
...Sometimes, there is indeed evidence of the beginnings of such intervention: government support of art during the Carter Administration, for example, was marked by conscious attempts to use art to further political and social goals...
...Everywhere in this difficult relation-ship of culture and politics there are gains and losses...
...The fact is, prior to the industrial revolution, all but a very few lived in excruciating poverty, misery, and hopelessness...
...in China, we still hear from all over the world the cry of the artist crushed unto death by despotic governments...
...In our century, one need only look at Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to find The Baton and the Jackboot, as Berta Geissmar called her account of working with Wilhelm Furtwangler under the Nazis, and the Taming of the Arts, as Juri Jelagin called his 1951 chronicle of being a musician in Stalin's Russia...
...Did you enjoy it...
...But there are losses too, those which involve the loss to society of the participation of the artist in the continuing self-definition of society, and the loss to the artist of the support and inspiration of society...
...yeah...
...cloth, $34.95 FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH Available at bookstores 177 Post Street, Dept...
...I'm probably an easy conquest...
...And as men became less poor, their (voices) grew louder and their...
...As Professor Leo Rosten reminds us: "It was the factory system that saved the poor, gave them jobs and tools, produced better food and clothing and shelter, and offered unprecedented opportunities to millions...
...When that anarchic spirit Paul Good-man felt impelled to remark that at least in the Soviet Union writers were taken seriously, his implicit accusation was that here they are not taken seriously...
Vol. 19 • June 1986 • No. 6
