The Minutia of Millions of Individual Situations (or why we are not allowed nice things any more)
There’s a reward at the end of this rant. Some of you will not like it.
It’s a curtain. The curtain represents a curatorial decision to express a political statement relevant to our times. It shields a work of art created before this decision, and our current climate. The curator has behaved á la artiste. The audience has gone fucking berzerk.
The logic behind why this is such an abhorrent decision I will express initially through some comments on the Instagram post showed left; there will be a few:
“You are forcing your agenda on the artists and obliterating their intentions. This is absurd virtue-signaling. Your job is to show artwork- do your job! Curators gone mad” — trale.tevis
“Wonder if Chagall and others would enjoy their paintings used in political statements by confused curators at “well meaning” cultural institutions ?” — plastichippy
“Imagine visiting from out of ny and missing out o seeing paintings bc of government officials you dont even agree with “— aerozeppelin73
And my favourite, because it includes me:
“@nathantdean don’t patronize me. Don’t patronize anyone. When had patronizing anyone ever helped a situation? I realize this is the Internet but come on. This “exhibit” addresses a complicated issue — and one that like any issue boils down to opinions, morals, and the minutia of millions of individual situations. Without diving too deeply into the actual subject of the issue, and without getting into my personal beliefs on the subject — I don’t think you can simply label your political beliefs as right, and all others as “the oppressor”. To some, your beliefs may be seen as oppressive. Imagine if the Met was located in a part of the country that didn’t align with your beliefs. How is it fair for an art curator to say “hey here is a Jewish artist’s work who fled the Nazis. His situation is the same as someone fleeing Venezuela, Syria, etc today. We are going to use his work to promote our political beliefs on the current refugee debates.”? If it were to simply bring awareness to refugees in general it would be more okay, but in my eyes this is an obvious politically charged move. An art museum is not the place to make a stand one way or another — that is the work of the artists themselves. Curators aren’t qualified to speak for artists, especially dead ones.” — johnny.jay
I had merely pointed out to the poster above that to act in an apolitical manner places you on the side of the oppressor; evidently, I am wrong, because in the eyes of Johnny Jay, there are no oppressors, just perspectives.
Now, this will require a great deal of unpacking, so before I go into one of my rare, but fun, rants, here is Hop Along during their Tiny Desk Concert, because you gentle-hearted lovely huggy creatures I call readers will need a breather before I deliver this bout of pseudo-philosophical word vomit.
Here we go bois!
So art institutions around the world are currently in a state of political shift by banning artworks created by people with far-right views, or by curating shows — as the MET/The IRC did in the Instagram post at the start — with a creative angle that highlights the struggles of disenfranchised groups, such as refugees. I.e. art institutions are, for the most part (not all, but some), taking a stance that could be regarded as left-wing, and directly in opposition of political ideologies regarded as fascistic or inhuman. Now, let’s go back to my favourite person of the week, Johnny Jay: “An art museum is not the place to make a stand one way or another — that is the work of the artists themselves.”
What he means by this, from what I can gather, and apologies if I have gathered up the wrong end of his pile of sticks, is that art institutions should remain neutral territory; they should only represent the artwork and not use the curatorial process to deliver a set message, especially a political one. The curator should therefore remain entirely objective and impartial, and merely act as the facilitator of bringing artwork to the audiences eyes and ears in the most conducive manner, so the work can speak for itself. There is much debate as to whether the curator should or should not have creative input in the direction they take to exhibit works, but for the purposes of this, I’d like to say something that many now call an “unpopular opinion” or as I like to call it “a dangerous idea if not properly watered.”
I agree with Johnny here. I know, right.
Museums should, for the most part, remain neutral spaces where artists can deliver ideas and concepts of any kind, so that we may critique and analyse such works to better comprehend the human experience; similarly, banning artworks from institutions erases swathes of history not just from a humanitarian perspective, but prevents us from seeing how art has evolved over time, preventing us from being able to develop our own craft. Imagine if we had the Library of Alexandria now, and how better off we would be intellectually. If we ban Picasso for being a misogynistic arsewipe then we’d lose his creative developments in cubism, which lead into a great many number of achievements artistically for decades to come. As Johnathan Jones (do all people with apolitical wankery have two J’s in their name) puts it in his article with absolutely no intellectual value (link above): “The case for artistic freedom is as clear cut now as it ever was. It needs to be stated unequivocally: censor art and you shrink the shared heritage and future of humanity. Who attacks art? ISIS in Palmyra, that’s who.”
As he so eloquently stated (where is my sarcasm grammatical point?) leftists banning artworks are completely comparable to terrorist organisations. Anyone who prevents someone from seeing art because it delivers a sensibility, ideology, or concept that is harmful to society is abhorrent and should be memed. I mean, shot. I mean, have a thinkpiece in the fucking Guardian written about them.
Where I will deliver my first rebuttal is on this point; yes, it seems naïve & potentially fascistic to ban artworks simply because they contain ideas that are of a horrific nature. Surely, merely having a warning sign explaining the nature of the artwork should be enough? If a piece explores paedophilia, or abuse, or genocide, or fascism, surely we should be capable of reading a handy little sign of trigger warnings (although I am sure Jonathan has something to say about that; oh look, he does) that both compliments & supports the artwork for the purposes of critical thinking and the development of our brilliant (white) amazing (cis) genius (male) minds.
The sad fact of the matter is two-fold. Firstly, and let me make this as plain as I can make it, THERE ARE ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS AGAIN [John Mulaney voice]. Before, we could happily understand that human beings were smart enough — seeing as we had a fucking war about it, and I’m going to link you to the Wikipedia because apparently you need a goddamn reminder — to hold in their precious little skulls two opposing ideas, and therefore we could look upon fascist propaganda, or watch a film where an abuser is the good guy, or whatever weird mixed-up morality you wanted, and entertain the concept, learn from it, and move on, without actually becoming a Nazi or abuser of women. However, apparently all it takes is Alex Jones yelling about blood & semen, and suddenly all this hard work has fallen from our skulls like mojitos from a glass held by a girl at her 21st birthday party. To put it simply, we can’t have nice things any more JJ & JJ & the rest of you, because people are so incapable of holding two opposing views in their head simultaneously that even an art show is a potential mind-field of self-propelling ludicrousness accidentally supporting the bizarre inhumane morality of The Right (capitalised to fearmonger). In this era of post-truth & the post-modern nightmare, we’ve lost our ability to critically evaluate anything, let alone artwork. Its existence is a threat simply because people are so fucking stupid; they’ll believe anything, without substantiation; if you create a place where Nazi memorabilia (or insert whatever cause) is displayed, it perpetuates the ideologies associated with it, gives them credence, and in an era where people have forgotten actual World Wars, you have to be absolutely certain your art show isn’t going to fuel the war machine of fascism. And even if that isn’t enough for you, why continue to give a platform to ideas that have shaped the world for the worst?
Which leads me neatly into my next point, raised when I mentioned the ever-so-terrible, Milo Yianna-poo-lis (hahaha, I’m hilarious lefty scum) scaring Trigger Warnings. If a piece of artwork delivers more harm than it does artistic credit, simply because society has evolved to a point that doesn’t fit ‘your’ world view, then you have to decide what is more important. The art. Or humanity.
Let me give you a real-world example, that’s all down to earth. It’s set in a pub, so Farage will like this one.
The other day I was sat in the pub with, essentially, a group of strangers. I struck up a conversation with a man older than myself about gender — no idea how it came about, I was there, so that’s reason enough — as he believed there were only two genders, male & female, determined by their wanking rod or their fun button. I explained how gender can be socially constructed — blah blah blah — and he politely listened and accepted the new information, saying he hadn’t seen it that way before. It was very pleasant. He then assumed I wouldn’t approve of some old jokes he knew, to which I surprised him by knowing the punchline (Q: why are wedding dresses white? A: So your wife matches the rest of the kitchen appliances); he said I was just as corrupt as the rest of them. As much as he was well on the mark there (I fucking love bad, appalling jokes, sorry/not sorry, pick one) what he doesn’t know about me is context. Context is fucking everything, darling sweetie lovelies. If I had told that joke and someone had gone “hey up, can you not” I stop telling that joke. I wait until there is a place or a time that is right to tell that joke. Because at the end of the day good and evil don’t exist, but making people as comfortable as they can be does. I’m not going to continually tell dumb blonde jokes at the National Convention of Blonde Haired Women (made-up), or tell rape jokes at the National Sexual Assault Conference (real). Some jokes shall always just be in poor taste, but if your humour — and now let’s get back to the point at hand, or art, or creativity, or museum — causes harm to those around you, even the slightest hiccup in the general enjoyment of life, then you stop doing it. You just stop. And if that means that we need to remove paedophilic artworks in the era of Weinstein, Nazi Propaganda in the era of ACTUAL NAZIS AGAIN, or whatever else that is currently in the collective consciousness, then so be it. Society is about making sure we don’t suffer, surely? It’s not like we won’t ever see those paintings again, just not at a time that causes the most distress, distress being directly relational to halting cultural evolution. Sorry we need to take a breather for a second, and make a point that our societies are crumbling into violence once again; the Caravaggio, the Picasso, and the Ezra Pounds can wait.
We shall end on one last point. There will be a reward at the end for those of you who have waded through my sources, ranting, and general disillusionment with how ridiculously thick everyone has seemingly become. We return to our first JJ, Johnny Jay: “This “exhibit” addresses a complicated issue — and one that like any issue boils down to opinions, morals, and the minutia of millions of individual situations. Without diving too deeply into the actual subject of the issue, and without getting into my personal beliefs on the subject — I don’t think you can simply label your political beliefs as right, and all others as “the oppressor”.”
Before I rant on, I have to get it out of my system that I am very very very very very surprised he doesn’t want to tell people his “personal beliefs on the subject.”
Luckily, you get mine instead.
It is again correct that these kinds of things come from a culmination of a multitude of perceptions, and as Jay quite eloquently put it (without sarcasm for once) from “the minutia of millions of individual situations.” These situations battle against one another, and create the great moral grey area that we navigate daily. Naturally, in that grey area, you conclude the simplest of responses: neutral spaces, where all is freely said, without consequence. It is very easy to believe in good and evil whilst simultaneously possessing a lack of responsibility; it is easy to assume that your good intentions are enough in the battle to make the world a lovely, nice, unicorn-farty place. I imagine the same argument can be used with the alternative: all you did was ban artworks, a very simple, violent decision to make things a lovely, nice, unicorn-farty place. The problem boils down to what I’ve been banging on about in parks, pubs, and living rooms since I learnt the word philosophy: good vs evil is a dumb fucking idea.
The point of doing anything is to reduce harm to others. Do unto others and all that jazz. If you are in a position where you can remove suffering from those around you, you try your damndest to do so. We live currently in a world where everyone is perpetually screaming how they are “the good guys” and how they are “the oppressed”; we live in an era where all that matters to individuals is if they can wank into the societal sock, their spunk congealing into the cuneiforms of “I am a good person.” People love being good people; the warm fuzzy feeling of being good is so powerful, people have murdered entire groups of people just to prove they are on the side of good. The problem is good and evil are made up. They are as farts in the wind. And whenever I say this, I seem to confuse a few people. So let me explain. And then let me cycle back around to the point I wanted to make. And then you get your reward.
Good and evil are constructed. When I say they do not exist, I mean this in an ontological sense (for those yawning, this will be about art galleries again, promise). If I cut open an atom, I do not find a good quark and a bad quark. Before I am born, I am not good. The ideas I have as a toddler are not evil. It is only when placed into a social context, that the ideas I have begin to develop a morality. When God died we had no Father and Weird Uncle Devil determining an inherent good and evil in the universe; we had to come up with that ourselves. From Hobbes mentioned earlier to Nietzsche, to you reading this (you poor lamb), we’ve come from hitting each other with rocks to eat fruit to a complex and ever-evolving society, which Douglas Adams thought “a very bad move.” Because of this, a feminist writer creating safe spaces for abuse victims sees themselves as good; but the Nazi who murders Jews for a living equally sees themselves as good as well. It is the perspective of the individual — and the society they have grown up in — that determines what things they do which are good, and which things are evil. People have challenged me in saying that this logic that good and evil are perspectivist acts as fascist apologism. If good comes from the individual — and the collective of individuals that individual was taught within — then everything is given the go-ahead, because why the fuck not. This, sweetie, is not my point. My point is once again two-fold: 1) that Nazis are evil for murdering lots of people, but only from my perspective because I know killing people is wrong and 2) that good vs evil is a boring, silly little idea that doesn’t account for point 1, and thus justifies fascist apologism, as you rightly challenged me on.
Instead, let us consider as I have before: comfortable vs uncomfortable. All human beings, for the most part, want one thing: to be happy. To be cared for. To have lovely things in their lovely souls so they feel merry and giggly all the time. Sometimes these needs counteract each other: one persons good thing is not another persons, and we all know utilitarian ethics doesn’t work so, what then — … What we do is we create a society that is as comfortable for as many people as we can. We try and make decisions that cause the least harm. Sometimes this means usurping your individual need or wish; but you should feel proud of the chance you created a world better for others. And if you don’t want to make a world better for others, no one can really stop you from doing that per se, but you should heavily consider why your one need is more important than the collective. Why don’t you want people to be happy? Or rather, as happiness is a fleeting immature feeling, why don’t you want people to be comfortable?
So we return. Finally. Why is it OK for curators in art galleries to ban artworks, cancel art shows that depict dangerous ideas, and control the political conversation? Because some political ideas cause harm: lots of it. And people currently will eat their left shoe if Ben Shapiro told them too. If you cover a gallery with art — or any space, with anything — that causes a percentage greater harm, than it does making people safe, you set it on fucking fire. Not literally. You put a blanket over it, to highlight refugees dying in oceans. You put them in cold storage, so people can’t hear what the Nazi’s had to say. And you wait, for the time to be right, when people can critically evaluate the journey our idiotic beautiful little species has taken to now. This isn’t an argument as to whether it is good or evil to ban artworks, because its both. It’s an argument on whether you want people to be OK. Not happy. Not brilliant. Just OK. Because life is fucking suffering. And you should do anything to alleviate that. And if that means not showing Axel Krause for a bit, so be it.
I want to get to a point where we can do whatever the hell we want. But we can’t yet. We, as a species, myself included, are not mature enough yet to handle the responsibility of a world without limits. So for now, let’s just pull back on the reins, and let the next generation learn from our mistakes, and the “the minutia of millions of individual situations.”
Here’s your reward.
