Modern Art and the Ugly Soul of Leftism

Modern Art, whether in the form of gallery installations, public sculpture, or modern architecture, is utterly pervasive in Western society. You might think “so what?, It’s just the current fashion, people must like it”, “what does it even matter anyway?”. Well, the following article attempts to explain why it matters, and why it is a problem that people on the right need to become more engaged with.

So, first things first; what is art? At it’s deepest level, true art is the representation of beauty by the human hand, performing a craft so well that it transcends its basic material nature and elevates the spirit and intellect of those who look on it. There are of course many theories on how precisely define it. The Aristotelian view was that art was an attempt to imitate things and express as accurately as possible their ideal essential form, that it was about searching for truth. Schopenhauer saw artists as individuals who saw and manifested the underlying objective nature of the universe, especially in musical forms, and that art was a release from self-centredness and wilfulness, and an embrace of objective truth.

What is modern art and what is wrong with it? Modern art is not art at all, it is leftist politics disguised as art, it is the anti-art, like leftist critical theory, its only aim to to subvert, and destroy, it serves only chaos, and it hates order. It either contains an anti-traditional message aimed at undermining our traditions and heritage, like the notorious “Piss Christ” by American artist  Andres Serrano, or it promotes various kinds of repulsive moral degeneracy, like Tracy Emin’s “unmade bed”, depicting a floor strewn with the viscera of the life of a repulsive individuals, used condoms and all, or it is contemporary ressentiment political activism that is either anti-western, anti-white or anti-male. Other modern art focuses on juvenile irreverence and mockery, essentially exposing the nihilistic core of the left’s worldview, the nothingness left after they’ve destroyed everything good in the world. Another way of seeing modern art is as fundamentally anti-art in the purest sense, this is common in modern architecture, where it’s harder to push degeneracy and leftist politics, instead modern architects often focus on building intentionally ugly, anti-human monstrosities that utterly reject objective beauty and revel in their own obnoxiousness, forcing normal people to live under their shadow in their daily lives.

Exactly who is pushing modern art? We know in this case that it is not the free market, every single survey of the public when it comes to civic sculpture and architecture, shows that most people do not like modern art and architecture, and yet the people who make the decisions (mostly with taxpayer funds) unerringly choose modernist design over traditionalism. When it is left up to the free market, for example in the art purchased by normal people for their homes, or the style of house people want to live in, more parochial and traditional design is overwhelmingly favoured. For example when polling company YouGov asked the public, they overwhelmingly rejected applying the label of “art” to totally abstract and conceptual art, vastly preferring representational, figurative art grounded in the real world.

So, now that we know who is pushing it, the next question is why? Why is modern art pushed so hard by the powers that be? Well, in a word, they are leftists, so modern art accords with their temperaments naturally, and on a practical level, it furthers their cause. Art’s power to effect individuals, in aggregate can be used to affect society as a whole, the ugliness of modern art is used in all the ways listed above, to energize leftists in the population in their mission of destruction, and to demoralize traditionalists and right-wingers, spitting on their love of the local, on their love of the traditional, of heritage and connection to the past, on their love of the natural, their love of the beautiful, on their morals, on their love of beauty itself, all the things that they love but the left hates. Classical sculptor Alexander Stoddart, one of the tiny number of artists seeking to preserve traditional art has gone as far as to compare the mentality of modern architects of being the equivalent of ISIS attempting to wantonly destroy history and heritage

So, we’re finally cognizant of what modern art is and what it’s trying to do, how do we stop it? How do we fight back? Well firstly we need to choke off the public money that the filth of modern art relies on. The elite might finance a few art galleries (especially in the United States, less so in Europe) out of their own pockets, but most public monuments, public buildings, regional arts and media is massively subsidised by the taxpayer to overcome the fact that it simply lacks popular support and popular demand. (for example the aforementioned Piss Christ was sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts)

We need to stop letting the bureaucrats who control the distribution of public funds, whether to arts project, or the commission of great public buildings get away unaccountable, we need to remind the public that their money is being spent on things that they don’t like and don’t want, and we need to make the public demand accountability. We need to engage with and support traditional artists, those who are mocked and derided by the modern art establishment, and make sure that public funds are redirected towards them. We need to say no to the ugliness that is modern art and architecture, and we need to say yes to real art.

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