Ever since the modern era, art has been on a trajectory of increasing politicization at the expense of the aesthetic. Having worked in several galleries of the chic sort, I was told to use the curator's note as a guideline in response to any questions casual browsers might ask. When it was quiet, which it usually was, I would test the disjuncture between my own analysis and that of the artist or curator's.

What I usually found was that the art could never really be art, because it was always heavily laden with commentary, a verbal message. I was always under the impression art should communicate itself viscerally. There was always a negative correlation between the beauty of an object and how much it was seized upon philosophically or politically.

Gawkers were too afraid to communicate the ugliness of a thing, probably stemming from the fear of being shunned by proximal art snobs. Proximal art snobs were adept at understanding it conceptually, but I'm wary of how much the pieces communicated to them personally.

There are no more Klimts and Chagalls. Too much utility has been injected into the aesthetic. Beauty, as Plato and I would both have it, is a form to be inherently valued, and a society that does cannot recognize that principle is more far-removed from its natural impulses that previously imagined.

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A lot of people like to say that art isn't/shouldn't be/can't be "just a product". Although I tend to think of art in very cynical, functional terms, I actually agree with them to some degree. If you buy into Denis Dutton's ideas about the purpose of the arts being to provide people with glimpses into the souls of other people, art is an unusual and slightly fuzzy product. In addition to the physical medium (or reproduction), the product that is art also contains a little glimpse into the mind and personality of its maker. It's not "selling your soul" in the way Faust did, but it is renting out access to some part of it. In this way art works the same way prostitution does. (I wouldn't suggest they're morally equivalent, though. Most prostitutes are much nicer and more useful people than most artists nowadays!)

This is why protesting that "I'm only in it for the money", "I'm only doing what the people buy", "it's not my band, I just work here", "I don't have a soul" and so on will never really work. Even if you believe it, the public never will. They will always assume that you are giving them a window into yourself. Conversely, that doesn't mean that talking about revealing the depths of your soul makes you any better than anybody else - all art does that anyway. Explicit soul-baring doesn't make you any more artistically valid and if you overdo it you just end up being annoying.

How much do I hate government subsidies for art? Perhaps surprisingly the answer is "not much". On the long list of stupid crap governments do, this is near the bottom. Compared to most of the business of government arts funding is relatively cheap and annoys few people - even shitty art installations in public places aren't all that annoying. Also, I do occasionally get my hands on a little of this money.

It does sometimes deliver something of value, though, such as when Beatboxer Schlomo says he "could easily save the world". I have no idea what this guy does, if he beatboxes or if that's just a name, but whatever... save the world? Easily?

Ha ha.

An anonymous commenter presents us a view common among unattractive nerds who like boring music and hate fun:

shouldn't the quality of music being performed be what's worth paying special attention? isn't that what people are paying for?

Of course people care about what musicians and all kinds of artists look like, act like and are like as people. (Even if they didn't it'd be a good idea to dress well in any situation where large numbers of people will be looking at you anyway.) We all know they do, but why? Those fun-hating nerds would say "because they're shallow and stupid and I'm better than them". But is that the real answer?

As Denis Dutton wrote in The Art Instinct, "intense interest in art as emotional expression derives from wanting to see through art into another human personality: it springs from a desire for knowledge of another person" and "Creative arts inexhaustibly give us ways of looking into human souls and thus expand our own outlook and understanding". Now, I personally find the idea that someone wants to look into my soul because I'm plucking some strings pretty weird, but it's true.

People are more interested in the souls of interesting people. No one really wants to peer into the soul of someone who's boring, low-status and ugly. Now, if you sound really, really good that will get you enough status that some people might start to be interested in you, no matter how uninteresting a person you actually are, at least in theory. In practice I've never known anyone who achieved much in any kind of music without at least one charismatic person, except for church organists and playing background piano music in restaurants. Even symphony orchestras and military bands need conductors and/or soloists with serious presence.

No matter who you are and who your audience is, though, there's no sense in intentionally looking boring because "it should be all about the music". Audiences will always prefer to seek this spiritual communion with people they think are better than them. If the audience thinks you're better than them, they will be more interested, the communion will be deeper and they will actually get more pleasure and more understanding out of the performance. Don't deny them that by intentionally looking and acting boring.

And just for the hell of it, one of my personal bass heroes...

Philip Ball reviews a David Stubbs book which tries to answer the question why contemporary avant-garde music is less accepted by the public than contemporary avant-garde art. He hits what I think is a very important factor:

Many musicologists accept a definition of music as “organised sound.” Yet sound is structured into music not on paper, nor even in the mind of the composer, but in the mind of the listener. Music is sound in which the organisation must be audibly perceptible to a listener, not just theoretically present. . .

The composer’s job is to manipulate the expectations that these principles produce—enough to avoid predictability and create a lively musical surface, but not so much as to lose coherence. Out of the interplay between expectation and reality comes much of music’s capacity to excite and move us. But what happens if these rules are undermined?

I agree that this is probably the most important factor but I think that bad music is more obnoxious than bad visual art also for another reason. It requires the production of energy to create soundwaves in the air (even if the music is unamplified and the energy comes from human muscles), so music is a more "active" art than painting or sculpture which only passively reflect light. In that sense music is more like a video or a light installation, except that the soundwaves will fill the entire air - unlike the lightwaves from a video screen which one can quickly and easily look away from. Add to that the duration of musical works, and you've got something which hurls physical energy at you, comes at you from all angles, and you can only escape it by leaving the concert hall or staying until the end. If you wanted to design an effective method of irritating people, that would be pretty good. No wonder the US government uses music to annoy suspected terrorists but as far as I know hasn't tried using really bad paintings.

A painting that really sucks is only moderately annoying; a video that sucks a little more so. For visual art to reach the obnoxiousness levels of really lousy music is possible - a room with shifting lights blaring from all its surfaces, for example - but fortunately rare. I don't think contemporary composers are really any worse than contemporary painters, but the nature of their work makes it less likely people will put up with their crappy products.

HT: Arts and Letters Daily

A list of the prominent Swedish composers that I like the most. Nothing more, nothing less.

Franz Berwald

Berwald is most famous for his three movement symphonies, not really recognized until after his death. Maybe like no other Swedish composer, Berwald had complete control over the symphonic format. His compositions follow a very logical structure and are rooted in a German classicist tradition. Indeed, one could call Berwald the Romantic Beethoven of Sweden. His blend of Classicism and early Romanticism continues to impress listeners outside of Scandinavia.

Favorite works: Sinfonie capricieuse, Sinfonie singuliére

Hugo Alfvén

Heavy Romanticist that came to play a key role in the Swedish nationalist consciousness. Listening to Alfvén's works one understands why: motifs packed with Swedish folklore, nature and singing. Alfvén wrote dramatic, wild and ecstatic music, and mastered the instrumentality of symphonic creation brilliantly. Certainly of strong personality, yet so very national in character that most Swedes find his music capturing the Swedish mentality, Alfvén is not to be missed.

Favorite works: Symphony 1 & 4, Midsommarvaka

Johan Helmich Roman

The father of Swedish music who brought Händel and baroque music closer to Sweden. The key work is the music of Drottningholm, written for royal entertainment, but thanks to its musical qualities now belonging in every Swede's music collection. The music ranges from joyful celebration to more melancholic scenes. History was written with these notes; undeniable beauty.

Favorite works: Drottningholmsmusiken

Joseph Martin Kraus

Like Berwald, Kraus was of German ancestry, which is reflected in his music. Often (incorrectly) referred to as "Sweden's Mozart," Kraus forged a new path by embracing the Sturm & Drang era at the time. As a result, his music varies between the Classicism of the Enlightenment and the Romanticism of the early Romantic period. The tension between often solemn, light passages and abrupt, emotive motifs create a rich listening experience that deserves a whole lot more attention.

Favorite works: Sinfonia C sharp minor, Symphonie funèbre

Lars-Erik Larsson

Neo-classicist composer who wrote a lot of pastoral works containing ancient Greek motifs. There's a clear Romantic dimension to Larsson's works, which nevertheless always maintain a clear, rational structure, making it perfect for choir. Not much to say, except that he is one if the better-known composers in Sweden, and his pastoral suit is not to be missed.

Favorite works: God in disguise, pastoral suit

Oskar Lindberg

Lindberg composed on the organ, which was common at the time, and was an in-and-out Christian Romantic with strong pantheistic leanings. Pompous, heavily emotive and religious music expressing Biblical themes and evoking the landscape of Swedish nature. Vastly overlooked.

Favorite works: Organ sonata g minor, Sorrow music, Old carol from Dalarna

Wilhelm Peterson-Berger

Very much debated and disliked to this day, Peterson-Berger was a music critic - and a very mean-spirited one, attacking just about every contemporary Swedish composer. Some still argue whether he ever really mastered the symphonic craft, especially counterpoint. What people do agree upon is that his collected piano works, Frösö flowers, is a wonderful piece of music. Peterson-Berger was a Nietzschean Romanticist, heavily nationalistic, and has remained a musical symbol for the beautiful northern parts of Sweden. No wonder.

Favorite works: Frösöblomster

Wilhelm Stenhammar

Very often played today around Europe, Stenhammar belonged to the line of Scandinavian composers who were baffled by Bruckner and Wagner, but realized that in order to not sound like Wagner, they had to invent a new musical language. Still, Stenhammar's moderately Romantic works reek of Wagner's pompous atmosphere and Bruckner's dense motifs. The unique personality of Stenhammar is his tuned-down (or "aristocratic" as it's been described) dramatic language, never really certain of itself and thus always touching the melancholic. His later works are therefore his most mature expression.

Favorite works: Symphony no 2, Piano concerto no 2

My favorite leftist writes about the uselessness of Unesco in this week's Tuesday Morning Quarterback:

Last week, Bulgaria's Irina Bokova bested Egypt's Farouk Hosni to become the new head of Unesco, the United Nations cultural agency. The vote was politically charged because Hosni was accused of anti-Israel bias, of which there is already way too much at the United Nations. Then again, to the Arab world this looks like a determination that it's fine to denounce Muslim governments but criticism of the Israeli government makes you persona non grata. There is a simple alternative to avoid future clashes of this nature: abolish Unesco. Why does the United Nations even have a cultural agency? Culture is and ought to be a free realm where individual artists and national or regional groups create and safeguard their own ideas. It's ridiculous that the United Nations claims a role in deciding what aspects of culture are worthy and what aren't. When Unesco was founded in November 1945, global communication was close to nil -- maybe back then there was a valid international purpose in attempting to spread cultural information. Today, in an era of Wikipedia and instant global MP3 downloads of all forms of expression from seungmu dancing to Iranian techno-pop, Unesco is a wasteful tax-subsidized anachronism that does little but provide a luxurious lifestyle to a self-absorbed U.N. aristocracy. People don't need their culture supervised for them -- the whole point of culture is that people create it for themselves. Let's get the United Nations out of an arena where it has no business.

This is an excellent point, and applies just as well to all governments, not just the UN. Sure, some forms of art are still expensive to produce and not economically viable without either government support or private donors - symphony orchestras come to mind - but so much of culture has gotten far cheaper to produce over the past decade or two that it really doesn't need to be supported. It doesn't even matter whether it's useful or not. We can laugh at Sweden's rulers for financing "feminist porn", but really the need to subsidize just about any kind of filmmaking is gone. It's gotten so cheap that one of my bands is getting a simple promo video made for nothing more than copies of a few of my other bands' releases and a shirt.

Any member of the upper middle class in a developed country can afford to produce a full-length film these days. Plenty of them are pretentious enough to do it, too. They no longer need to be encouraged with your money anyway.

Stockholm, Sweden - Dalahest, smorgasbord, meatballs, blonde women and IKEA. These are some of the positive things epitomizing what is typically Swedish. But when IKEA recently decided to change the layout of its latest product catalog, it sparked an international outrage among artists, political analysts and liberal lobby groups.

When IKEA made the controversial decision of switching its traditional font Futura with the more modern font Verdana, Sweden's popularity among liberals dropped by over 20 %. Political analysts describe the situation as Sweden abandoning its true progressive roots. Jens Andersen, Danish typographer and liberal, comments:

"IKEA used to represent the concept of equality in Swedish welfare society: everyone has got the indisputable right to buy the same kind of products and live the same kind of lifestyle their neighbors do. Liberals loved Sweden. Now IKEA has traded its ideals for cheap modernist leanings--it's trying to appear tolerant, but it's really full of suspect pretense."

The Swedish government quickly responded to the international criticism by sponsoring what it calls "feminist porn." This caused Sweden's popularity among progressives to decline even further, prompting feminist lobbyists to accuse Sweden of using innocent women in degrading movie projects to hurt the feminist cause of gender equality.

The situation was desperate when Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt today admitted he has begun housing ten illegal immigrants from the third world in his own private home. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who took the international criticism hardest, was last seen in Amsterdam, working on improving Sweden's accountability by dressing out as a transsexual investment banker.

Martin's post about The Moral Authority of Artists reminded me of some works I've seen in the glorious city that I am so grateful to inhabit, London. The Top Five below encapsulate and demonstrate some of the issues regarding modern art, namely that anything is justified from pure ridiculousness to morally questionable work.

At Position Number Five: My Bed by Tracey Emin

Make your room really dirty. Do not clean up your rubbish, especially discarded underwear and condoms. Move it to a gallery, call it art, showcase the literal waste that represents your life.

Anointing Number Four: 20:50 by Richard Wilson.

It's a room full of oil. It reflects quite perfectly. You have to enter one at a time for safety reasons. I'm not sure what to say more than this.
It's a room.
Full of.
Oil.

Wearing the Crown of Number Three: Self by Mark Quinn

A man so infected with narcissism that rivalled Ms Emin, he drained blood from himself for a year to gather enough to compose a sculpture of his own head.

At Tank Number Two: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living by Damien Hirst

A shark was killed.
So that it could be preserved.
Frozen, appearing as if it was in fact alive and fighting for it.
A very cruel piece of work, this.
As if one wasn't enough, the first was not preserved properly and they had to kill another one. Gruesome.

At the Edifice of Number One: Shibboleth by Doris Salcedo

The Tate Modern is a historic establishment, including its Turbine Hall. So, let's put a giant crack in the floor and call it art. The reactions of people to it is what makes it remotely interesting.

What it is meant to symbolise:

In particular, Salcedo is addressing a long legacy of racism and colonialism that underlies the modern world. A ‘shibboleth’ is a custom, phrase or use of language that acts as a test of belonging to a particular social group or class. By definition, it is used to exclude those deemed unsuitable to join this group.

Oh, really? What with such a noble message, Doris' crack has become completely justified.

Including the few minor injuries it has resulted in.

P.S. If you for some God forsaken reason actually enjoyed these then, hey, looks like you can do works similar to these at home. Although I am seriously questioning the safety of the blood-taking kit, which I myself have to do some training in order to carry out safely.

I'm not all that interested in Hitler or the latest theories about Hitler's mindset, but the idea that Hitler would have done a whole lot less evil had he not loved art and considered himself an artistic genius is an interesting one. Not because of what it says about Hitler but because of what it says about artists.

In my opinion, people have underestimated the notion that Hitler considered himself an artist, in fact, an artistic genius, and that much can be deduced from this self-image, this overheated artist's ego. However, this has hardly played a role in the research to date. That's the starting point, from my perspective, because it can help us gain a better understanding of Hitler as a person, as well as his system of power. Hitler's deluded view of himself as a genius is based on the confused system of thought emerging in the late 19th century, which centered on the idea that a genius -- a strong personality who outshone everything else -- could do anything and could do anything he pleased.

Many artists certainly do feel themselves to be higher beings compared to the dull and ignorant mass of humanity. It's basically the same unchecked egomania as behind Plato's analogy of the cave, only even more groundless. Rainer Maria Rilke described the feeling quite eloquently in "Vorgefühl", here in English translation by Jessie Lemont:

PRESAGING

I am like a flag unfurled in space,
I scent the oncoming winds and must bend with them,
While the things beneath are not yet stirring,
While the doors close gently and there is silence in the chimneys
And the windows do not yet tremble and the dust is still heavy---

Then I feel the storm and am vibrant like the sea
And expand and withdraw into myself
And thrust myself forth and am alone in the great storm.

Once you see yourself that way, the leap to considering yourself above the rules of morality which bind non-artists is not a big one. Chesterton also wrote about this eloquently, though from the perspective of an outsider who sees that it is a bunch of nonsense.

There were some who seemed to hold that any artistic experiment, however anarchical or abnormal, or manifestly and even medically insane, had a mysterious right of its own to override any social custom or convenience, any common-sense or ordinary civic dignity. The artistic experiment had this right because it was an artistic experiment; not even because the art was artistic; still less because the experiment was successful. Even the worst play must take precedence of the best law. If the artists had wanted to have real blood in their murders, as some other artists used real mud on their landscapes, one can only suppose that these critics would have agreed to sacrifice a few human lives to the thrill of realism. If the actor-manager were working on the old lavish scale, he might be encouraged to turn the theatre into an amphitheatre. He might make a feature of real lions, which would be expensive; and real Christians, who would be rare.

Anyhow, the theory of the thing seemed to be that supreme spiritual authority in this world belongs to art, or rather, to anybody who chooses to say that he is attempting something new in art. I was never able to accept this highly modern and credulous conception; because I am unable to imagine any human being accepting any authority that he has not originally reached by reason. And I cannot conceive what reason there could possibly be for accepting the authority of artists; not to mention bad artists.

I don't think we can ever return to the pre-Romantic days when artists were not treated like priests or demigods, but if we could it surely would make the world a better place. People who consider themselves geniuses and therefore above all human law are not something we need more of, even if very very few of them reach Hitlerian levels of power.

While wondering what a talented representational painter could be painting today, Donald Pittenger points out that such artists are very limited by the market:

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression is that commissions for representational easel or mural paintings of historical, religious or mythological events are rare. Elite thinking in the USA holds war to be evil (unless someone on their side wants to fight one), so that rules out battle scenes. Nationalism is also a no-no, so depictions of other historical scenes of the sort common before the 20th century are also likely to be scarce. That same elitist group isn't especially keen on religion (unless perhaps one worships Gaia), so cathedral and church building isn't the growth industry it was in, say, the 14th century and the production of religious paintings follows suit. This suggests that any return to the subjects common from the Renaissance to the Great War will have to be gradual and, at first, stealthy.

The problem is, of course, that paintings are expensive and thus the only market for them are society's elites. For all their flaws our elites might have better taste in art than the rest of us (and I'll admit they're more intelligent and harder-working, too), but that doesn't matter. An art form that is made for only one segment of society is more constrained than one with broader appeal.

That's a nice thing about music - because it is cheap and practical to amplify and duplicate it exists in a great variety of forms which appeal to all segments of society. Paintings can be reproduced, of course, but for reasons I don't want to get into here, we do not treat amplified or recorded music as "less authentic". As Denis Dutton wrote in The Art Instinct, "Authenticity, which in the arts means at the most profound communion with another human soul, is something we are destined by evolution to want from literature, music, painting, and the other arts" - and reproductions of paintings just don't give it to us.

Because music is less constrained, we've got music for elites, plenty of music for young people who don't yet have much responsibility in life, and we've even got music for people with real jobs. With painting, or to an even greater degree sculpture, that would just not be viable. Though most of the bands I'm currently in attract mostly people with university degrees and university students, it's good to also sometimes play music for people I have a lot more in common with. Painters don't really have that option outside of the fields of illustration and advertising which come with a whole another set of limitations.

To close, here is one of my favorite songs which anyone can enjoy (except for those too morally righteous to tolerate songs about gambling, sports, theft, illegal immigration etc.), but which is a lot more meaningful to people with real responsibilities.

We know what integrity means in the arts, but what exactly is this thing we call "selling out"? Donald Pittenger points to an interesting post by David Apatoff. Donald especially likes the passage about Monet's pathological refusal to compromise, but what struck me was these paragraphs:

Many people are quick to accuse commercial artists of selling out. True artists, we are told, never compromise their artistic integrity for mere money. Personally, I've never been very impressed by such claims. For one thing, charges of "selling out" are rarely leveled by people who have made meaningful contributions to the arts. Instead, it more often comes from gawkers and spectators with little understanding of survival in the market.

For another thing, "selling out" comes in all shapes and sizes but very few of them are irreversible. I've never yet seen Mephistopheles assume the form of a client or art director and offer to buy a young artist's immortal soul. Illustrator Bob Heindel had a far wiser and more practical view of how young artists can still redeem themselves after making bad trade offs:

We all got screwed around at the beginning. That’s how you learn. But you learn to protect yourself, and mostly, if you care about it you learn to protect your work. [An artist has to be] protective of his ability.... he [should] always want... the opportunities to do his very best.

Selling out, like many things in art, isn't what outsiders tend to think it is - a maximization of income from art. It is, instead, the maximization of short-term income at the expense of harm to your reputation and status (which, in turn, often reduces the artist's long-term earnings). Sometimes it really is the best available choice, but more often than not it's a mistake that you should learn from. It's just one of life's many decisions, but definitely far from conversion to Satanism, no matter if some people treat it that way.

Behavioral genetics is a science which seems to undermine the roots of many core leftist beliefs - so should conservatives pour their money and energy into supporting behavioral genetics research instead of politics? As Bryan Caplan summarizes:

So why are behavioral geneticists so eager to downplay the practical relevance of their field? The most plausible explanation is that these scientists already have enough trouble with political correctness. They don't want to amplify their public relations problem by pointing out that their science undermines a bunch of popular, feel-good policies.

Critics of behavioral genetics are prone to hyperbole, but they do have good reason to fear this science. It really does undermine a lot of their sacred cows. Example: If differences in talent - not differences in opportunities - explain the inter-generational income correlation, people with normal values will conclude that a lot of redistribution is unjustified. "Giving everyone a chance to realize his potential," isn't the only rationale for redistribution, but it is an important one. If people admitted that family environment has little effect on economic success in our society, there is every reason to expect a decline in support for redistributive policies.

Admittedly, the critics of behavioral genetics could reply, "We want our current level of redistribution (or more!) no matter what the science says." But they don't want to say that, because it makes them sound like dogmatic ideologues. The upshot: Behavioral genetics makes its politically-correct critics angry because the scientists are putting the politically correct in an awkward position: Deny the science, abandon some of their favorite policies, or sound like dogmatic ideologues. It's no wonder that they're angry - and no wonder that they deny the science. They're not just making the best of a bad situation; they're also getting a little revenge on the researchers responsible for their unpleasant predicament.

I don't think many open-minded progressives will change their mind about their goals just because their policies are completely incompatible with human nature. I do hope that they'll become a little more realistic in their justifications for it, though. In other words, "we want to redistribute income because it's the nice thing to do", not "we want to redistribute income because it's the fair thing to do". It might lead to less waste to even openly decide that we want to discriminate against white people by quotas or a race tax instead of constructing byzantine policies which attempt to effectively distriminate against white people in non-discriminatory ways while doing non-whites no good. That would be a small improvement.

This isn't just about politics, though. While I have little hope for the death of progressivism, I do hope that discoveries in behavioral genetics will gravely wound or even kill the stupider offshoots of modern art. What does one have to do with the other? In this passage from G.K. Chesterton's The Flying Inn the politician Lord Philip Ivywood explains his enjoyment of post-futurist painting to his poet cousin Dorian Wimpole.

And Philip Ivywood was interested also; his cold eyes even shone; for though his pleasure was almost purely intellectual, it was utterly sincere.

"And I do trust the untried; I do follow the inexperienced," he was saying quietly, with his fine inflections of voice. "You say this is changing the very nature of Art. I want to change the very nature of Art. Everything lives by turning into something else. Exaggeration is growth."

"But exaggeration of what?" demanded Dorian. "I cannot see a trace of exaggeration in these pictures; because I cannot find a hint of what it is they want to exaggerate. You can't exaggerate the feathers of a cow or the legs of a whale. You can draw a cow with feathers or a whale with legs for a joke--though I hardly think such jokes are in your line. But don't you see, my good Philip, that even then the joke depends on its looking like a cow and not only like a thing with feathers. Even then the joke depends on the whale as well as the legs. You can combine up to a certain point; you can distort up to a certain point; after that you lose the identity; and with that you lose everything. A Centaur is so much of a man with so much of a horse. The Centaur must not be hastily identified with the Horsy Man. And the Mermaid must be maidenly; even if there is something fishy about her social conduct."

"No," said Lord Ivywood, in the same quiet way, "I understand what you mean, and I don't agree. I should like the Centaur to turn into something else, that is neither man nor horse."

"But not something that has nothing of either?" asked the poet.

"Yes," answered Ivywood, with the same queer, quiet gleam in his colourless eyes, "something that has nothing of either."

"But what's the good?" argued Dorian. "A thing that has changed entirely has not changed at all. It has no bridge of crisis. It can remember no change. If you wake up tomorrow and you simply _are_ Mrs. Dope, an old woman who lets lodgings at Broadstairs --well, I don't doubt Mrs. Dope is a saner and happier person than you are. But in what way have _you_ progressed? What part of _you_ is better? Don't you see this prime fact of identity is the limit set on all living things?"

"No," said Philip, with suppressed but sudden violence, "I deny that any limit is set upon living things."

Modern art and progressive politics are different aspects of the exact same mentality, which also hasn't changed a damn bit since Chesterton wrote those words almost a century ago. Modern art, though, lacks the deep-seated emotional appeal of progressive politics which at least allow one to pretend to be a good person. Even those people who will violently deny reality in an attempt to remake the world according to their ideas aren't quite as willing to get violent for the sake of "truly serious music".

I recently caught up with our visual artist Nina Myhre to ask her about her recent art exhibit. I found her ideas and work highly fascinating, and chose to publish them here for our readers.

When did you first start to become involved in artistic photography, and why photography?

I began photography artistically in high school. I mostly enjoy the sense of physicality and realism that appears in photographs – the sense of actually “being there” (whereas a drawing could be entirely imaginary and etc.). I am forced to get close to my subjects and dissect them personally, there’s a sense of intimacy in photos that interests me.

The series of photos displayed at your local exhibit display a broken piano from different angles, sometimes covered in blood. These are dark, gloomy, subtle works. What was your intention behind these images?

My main purpose was to portray a spiritual decay of beauty/art/values etc. Rather than having the piano simply be photographed as aged and broken, I chose to personify it with blood – assigning a human emotion to it. None of my shots feature the piano in its entirety, they are each a fragmentary portion of it – which is meant to be symbolic. Nor do any of the shots feature someone sitting at the piano. We naturally visualize humans with
their instruments, and when that human presence is taken away – emptiness is apparent, and the piano adopts a suffering of its own.

What reactions have you received so far?

I have received mixed reactions. Some people have commented on the pure aesthetic qualities, referring to them as “beautiful” – whereas others have found them disturbing. A pianist made an effort to discuss my work; the sight of her passion being mutilated especially saddened her. Another experienced pianist felt the images were disturbing and riveting simultaneously - he seemed to connect with the concept deeply.

In what way do you believe art and artistic work constitute important parts of human existence?

Art is a constant struggle. Regardless of what medium you practice, the process is always difficult. Whether there are physical, technical issues or the issue of deciphering how to transform a concept into something that is tangible and capable of human comprehension. Becoming an “artist” has no guaranteed benefits – your ideals may never be understood. (Or even noticed, for that matter.) Curiosity must surpass the pain you bring upon yourself with consistent, minute failures. It is obsession, in a way, and I believe that aspect is a necessary component of human existence –dedication to something uncertain for a chance at something transcendent.

Do you plan to become an independent artist by creed, or do you try to manage the arts side by side with work or studying?

Currently, I manage art with studying. Studying (or any random thing) can inspire me to a degree, so it’s not terrible. I do hope to be an independent artist in the future, but if that does not work out I do not mind doing the occasional less-than-artistic photo shoot. (Wedding photography is the one thing I will always refuse to do…) My lifestyle would not require a huge salary (with the absence of excessive amounts of entertainment and etc.), so it is not something I worry too much about.

Many people enjoy working with photography, painting and music at home, but don't know how to develop it any further. What are your recommendations to people who wish to be artistically creative and maybe promote their work in their community?

Read, look for online tutorials, experiment. I feel I’ve learned more about photography from experimentation than anything I’ve learned in a class...being comfortable with your own capabilities is necessary. Promote
yourself online, ask local art supply stores for contests or exhibits, check bulletin boards, meet people at other art exhibits/museums. (Disclaimer- you will probably have to wade through a lot of fashionable, gauged-earring “artistic” people – but there are some who do actually enjoy art for art and not a style/identity.)

You recently joined Corrupt as visual artist. What purpose do you see Corrupt have in society, and what are your plans of contribution to its goals?

Corrupt obviously points out contradictions in modern society that some overlook entirely, but also allows a site for like-minded people to form a collective effort. I believe Corrupt can be a practical approach to changing
society rather than an overly idealistic one. Although I have a strong passion for my own art, I have noticed artists have a tendency to get too caught up in their own romanticism, and run the risk of constantly wallowing in self-pity. I think a balance of the two is necessary. I hope to add a visual experience to corrupt rather than throwing in random images for the sake of looking interesting – a combination of satirical, exploiting images
as well as serious, inspiring ones.

Nina's art series: #01 | #02 | #03 | #04 | #05 | #06 | #07 |

Contact Nina here for more information about her exhibit.

I suspect that the arts are dying in a very literal sense - natural selection is slowly driving the population of artists to extinction. The cause is not greed, capitalism, cultural degeneration, progressive democracy, or the Internet. It is something a lot more down-to-earth: advances in birth control technology. The condom, the pill, abortion etc. are literally killing the arts.

Assuming that the willingness and ability to produce art are in part genetic, it is possible for natural selection to increase or reduce their frequency in the population. This depends on the reproductive fitness of artists and how it compares to others.Historically in agricultural or industrial societies artists were never particularly rich compared to the rest of the population, but they did have plenty of access to sex. In other words, they couldn't afford to raise many legitimate children (aside from exceptions such as J.S. Bach), but male artists had above-average opportunities to impregnate quite a few women and leave them to raise the children alone or, better yet, with their cuckolded husbands. Of course such a strategy wouldn't work well if everyone was trying to do it, but frequency-dependent selection would allow artists (and other sneaky fuckers) to exist as a minority of the population.

These days, however, things are different. Artists still appear to have above-average access to sex, and below-average ability to support and raise children, but one thing has changed. Birth control technology now means more access to casual sex has lost its connection to the ability to produce more children. Artists have more sex but fewer children, and therefore are being driven to extinction by natural selection.

Well, that seems to make sense, but is there any data to back it up? Looking at the art form I'm most familiar with - music - we can find data in the General Social Survey and see if it's good or bad for your ability to get sex and to have children. The GSS includes a question about whether the respondent has played a musical instrument in the past 12 months. That includes everyone from amateurs who've played piano once or twice with full-time professionals.

So, are musicians having more sex than non-musicians? Here is a graph showing the proportion of musicians in groups categorized by how often they have had sex during the past year:

Clearly, the proportion of musicians is higher among people who have sex more often and lower among those who have sex less often or can't get any at all, so musicians do have more sex. Now let's look at the number of sex partners during the past year:

Again, there are more musicians among those who have sex with larger numbers of partners. So far my hunches are being proven correct. But are musicians having fewer children?

Yes, definitely. So, being a musician is bad for your reproductive fitness and it is definitely possible that natural selection is, at least at this time, acting to reduce the number of musicians in future generations. This dovetails with my empirical experience - few women see musicians as good prospects for long-term relationships or fatherhood. There are exceptions to that (gospel music, for example), but from the most part playing music is bad for your reproductive fitness, and any genes responsible for musicality appear to be selected against.

I haven't found data about producing other forms of art in the GSS, but I have no reason to think they would be very different from music. Though the arts could once again become adaptive if they were much less frequent, it's possible that in 500 or 1000 years we will have much less art or no art at all. Effective birth control could prove to be a turning point in human evolution as important as agriculture, and the arts could fall by the wayside.

A journalist with integrity should publish information which benefits the public even if this would damage his career or access to sources. Likewise, if a politician with integrity existed that politician would push policies which are good for the entire nation even if they are bad for that politican's personal finances, popularity, power etc. An artist with integrity is, likewise, unconcerned with financial benefits, stardom or sex and is instead guided by... by what, exactly? Certainly not by bringing the greatest possible benefit to the broadest possible section of the public. True artists are not supposed to be interested in the public. The artist is supposed to satisfy only himself. But he is only allowed to satisfy himself in ways which don't produce art which the wrong kind of people would enjoy. Satisfying himself by producing art which is liked by the right people (elite critics and other members of big-city arts-and-culture social circles) is fine, though.

Let's look at the consequences of openly violating the rules of integrity in these fields. A politician who is demonstrated to have no integrity will have enormous difficulty finding employment as a politician; similarly with a journalist such as Jasyon Blair. Even Barry Bonds found himself unemployable as a baseball player because he is suspected of violating the integrity of baseball - in other words, of boosting his own career and statistics in a way which reduced the value of baseball to the public. Yet an artist who has no integrity will still be able to get the best-paying jobs. Many of the people who might hire you prefer to work with "sellouts" and "hacks" because they are more reliable and easier to work with than "true artists." You just can't get the low-paying high-status positions in the highbrow arts.

Why is the definition of integrity so different in the arts? Why is it so damn weird? Whom does it benefit? Let's take a look at the effect of this definition. It divides people who produce art into two kinds: the despised commercial hacks and the "true artists." The only people who have the incentive to become "true artists" in this system are either the independently wealthy who are too lazy to get a real job or failures who simply cannot succeed in the "real" (non-arts) world. This means the highbrow segment of all the arts is dominated by losers who are obsessed with social climbing. At worst an entire art form becomes a federal jobs program for these useless people. The cost of maintaining integrity also keeps those from more humble backgrounds who have practical concerns such as the need to feed themselves or their families out of the highbrow arts. Seen in this light, artistic integrity is nothing more than one more component of elite social signaling.

Is that what we want? Does that make for better art? I see how it might make for worse art by pushing many hard-working, skilled and talented into commercial arts or into non-arts fields, but I fail to see how it might make for better art. I suppose if you're a religious Pagan who believes in literal Muses who will only bestow inspiration upon those whose heart is in the right place, you could make a religious argument. But I'm not buying it. Cole Porter who wrote arguably the best music of the XX century admitted that "my sole inspiration is a telephone call from a producer." If any Muses exist they apparently didn't have a problem with that approach.

What is to be done? Can artistic integrity ever be turned into a useful concept again? How can we create healthy incentives to create good art? I admit that I don't have the solution and I don't think MTV does, either. But the first step is admitting that we have a problem.