The other day I posted a blog about Roger Kimball’s “What the Right Gets Wrong About Art. For some reason, I was having a difficult time finishing the post. Every time I worked on this post I found myself trying to cover too much ground and I was having trouble connecting all that I wanted to say. At the time, I decided to post what I had (see here) and return to the part I was having trouble with.

Kimball’s larger point was that because the Right abandoned culture, the Left took over and this was why Art is all crap now. You know the sad old song — things used to be better in the good old days. Within this criticism, he referred to a troubling quote about race from the Australian Philosopher David Stove. David Stove writes:

Western Europe found that its anti-academy had become its academy ‘even in the twinkling of an eye.’ The galleries were suddenly full of the art of African societies formerly the most despised. Victorian architecture was all at once the object of a universal detestation, or rather horror. Black music began its long and excruciating revenge on the white man. The Jazz Age, in short, had arrived.

Kimball is being provocative without context. What does this mean in Kimball’s larger argumen? He fails to incorporates what Stove is saying into his argument. So it lies there like a big old sore that everybody can see but everyone is too polite to talk about. There is clearly a racist wack here at African Art and Black Music.

Maybe Kimball thought his readers should be able to connect the dots without his help but I fear then that I am being dragged into an argument of my making and not Kimball’s. Ignoring it however is allowing such a comment to go unchallenged. It’s like letting old people get away with using the N Word. They are too old to change and you want to keep the old fellow calm in case you cause a heart attack. This maybe true but then Grandpa gets the idea that he can spew his racist’s thinking with impunity.

The question, I have, is does he agree with Stove? If African art was previously despised why was it despised and what is his opinion on it. Even if he is talking about primitive art, which isn’t clear at all, what does this art have to do with the Left or Right wing. If the art predates the present political divisions, how can the Right abandoning culture have anything to do with the Art these people produced. Also, if the primitive nature of the art is setting him off, how does he feel about the art of early homo sapiens drawn in the caves. It is hardly beautiful by present standards, but it is definitely art. Why is Jazz (or as Stove puts it black music) the revenge of the black man on the white man? These are volatile statements that require more explanation. Kimball just drops it in and never mentions it again. I can only, then, assume that he agrees with Stove’s racist sentiments.

The real problem here is the limits of Kimball’s definition of art — it has to have a universal agreement about beauty. Everyone, everywhere has to agree that it is beautiful. Which is an impossible standard. Why not just good (art I like) and bad (art I don’t like). Kimball admits that most art is bad art. If he would have left it at that, I could have gotten on board with him. A lot of modern is crap but then there are very few pieces of great. Which makes sense. This is the whole reason critics point out what they think is good. They are trying to differentiate it from the every day piece of art.

I am not sure why he abandons the bad art/good art distinction for art has to be beautiful. He has a political agenda here that is blinding him to this much easier standard. But he hates the art he sees as Left Wing statements that he will not even dignify it with the art designation. Then he adds barely formed racial animus to his equation that leaves me wondering — what is really upset about.

Kimball seems to harken back to the days when art was the Sistine Chapel and Shakespeare. An Art that had very limited reach until the 20th century. Confined to the elites of Europe and North America, Art was strictly defined by this class because they were the only ones who really knew anything about art. But regular people all over the globe had very little contact. The technological advances of the 20th century brought art to an enormous number of people. Unfortunately for Kimball and company, their reaction to this was different than these elites had hoped. Instead of wanting to perpetuate these old ideas of art, they used them as a stepping stone for something completely new.

It is perfectly fine not to like it but to say it doesn’t even pass the muster of art is ridiculous. Who gave you the deciding vote? The better approach would be for the Right to start creating Art that the world might want to see. No one is stopping them. Why isn’t it happening instead of whining about what gets passed off as art these days.