Why Art Matters

The controversy addressed so eloquently below is an old one.
Two of the great protagonsts of art in the past were Oscar Wilde and John Ruskin -- both of whom I read with great pleasure in my early years.

I am somewhat conflicted about the issue myself.  On the one hand, there are some art-forms I enjoy greatly --  poetry, classical music and architecture -- but on the other I don't see that any art rises above the level of entertainment.
Bach and Chaucer entertain me but I don't see that my  pleasures from those sources give those sources any especial virtue.

Some people get great enjoyment out of football games.  Is there anyting in that enjoyment that is inferior to my enjoyment of one of the great Bach chorales?  I can't see it.

The argument below that preservation and promotion of art should be particularly conservative is a cogent one but real life seems to fly in the face of it.  "Arty" people are mostly firmly Leftist, aggressively so in many instances.  Conservatives tend in fact to be unwelcome in such circles.  The great conservative protagonist of art in modern times was Roger Scruton and the treatment he got was merciless.

One could argue that most arty people are poseurs dedicated only to self-promotion and I see much truth in that. But how are we to distinguish genuine art lovers from those who are mere social butterflies?  It would take a considerable flight of ego to do so, I think.

I tend to suspect that the really dedicated lovers of art for art's sake are rather rare.  I am much moved to that conclusion by the well-known phenomenon of what happens whan a famous and highly valued painting is found to be a forgery --a persuasive example of the work of a great master but not produced by him.  The value of the painting immediately drops to about 1% of what it was. Yet the painting itself is unalterted.  It is just the same as it was when it was worth millions.

Clearly the value in the painting did not derive from the painting itself.  The value was solely its snob value. Its value lay in the prestige of possessing something produced by an acclaimed person.

So I am all in favour of any kind of art from which people gain enjoyment.  But if somebody gets great enjoyment out of Old Master paintings while somebody else gets great enjoyment out of Phantom comics or Japanese Manga, it seems to me that neither has any claim to virtue for their own preferences.  If there is any such claim to virtue I would think it goes to the fan of Phantom comics. The Phantom is at least highly moral.


What do conservatives want to conserve? Clearly, conservatives everywhere desire the preservation and maintenance of the good things belonging to their various cultures that have been passed down from previous generations to their present time. That desire also implies conservatives wish to continue their cultural inheritance by passing these benefits on to their children and future generations. That is why teaching culture at universities and schools is important to conservatives.

People who claim to be conservatives, but do not participate in the perpetuation of these good things are deluding themselves. Partisan and pedantic, they corrode the conservative image to the point of appearing philistine. That false presentation of conservatism harms its reputation.

The danger of having a benevolent preoccupation with preserving traditions for their own sake is that it may lead to a pretentious aping of their formal, ceremonial aspects. Preservation then lacks an appreciation for what lies at the heart of the thing being preserved. This kind of imitation is not the conservative’s goal. In fact, the true preservation of the good things of the past is always a reinvention, not a duplication.

The task of the conservative is to use the good things of the past in the new context of the present, to apply them to this new time. When they are truly good, these things are resilient to the abrasive superficialities of fashion and provide the strong core of culture.

Efforts to duplicate the past inevitably fail because the past very quickly becomes an alien place, held at first in the memories of the living, and then only in the recorded history of the dead. That disappearance presents a difficult problem for people keen to conserve the good things of the past. Since we are incapable even of coming to a common understanding of the present and are willing to engage in intense disputes about the interpretation of current affairs, how can we claim to comprehend the past? All histories are nuanced by the positions of their writers.

The answer is that this subjectivity does not mean that the good things of culture are actually bad. It simply means that it is difficult to get culture right. Nor does it mean that conservatives should abandon their desire to maintain them in the studios and classrooms where they are taught.

Culture is never frozen; it is an emergent form that arises from the shared experiences and desires of the living and the dead. The flexible and uncertain past is nevertheless the foundation upon which culture is built. The past cannot be duplicated, but if a culture is to maintain its identity, a healthy respect for its traditions is essential.

Every culture is like a rope stretched through time, made up of long strands, our long ideas, twisted together to give it strength. As we pass through time, different strands take their turn at the top of the rope and achieve more cultural relevance. It is precisely the changing importance of these long truths as time passes that create culture, with its attendant changes in emphasis and importance.

Consequently, it is disturbing to witness the reckless abandonment of the arts apparent in contemporary conservative America.

Cultural outlets that viewers might expect to be reliably conservative do little to suggest that they are the champions of the good things of the past—or that they have any idea of how these good things might address the present or the future. An online survey of news stories about the arts on the Fox News website, for example, reveals a desperate shortfall in coverage, which should cause embarrassment to all Americans claiming to champion the conservative cause. Thankfully, some evidence shows that the situation is improving. After a decade of neglect, National Review has done the right thing and now publishes regular stories about some of the excellent American art of the past. However, it has yet to begin considering living artists who carry the Western artistic tradition.

Fox News celebrates painters like Steve Penley who makes pictures of our presidents burning the Constitution or running for a touchdown, or Jon McNaughton, who adopts the bright colors of Andy Warhol to make portraits of Republican star politicians. They are sectarian propagandists. Endorsing artists who are political partisans is not the same thing as maintaining the good things of American culture.

As didacts, they serve a purpose in stimulating political argument and stirring the passions of voters. But the long ideas of Western culture are richer and more complex than mere campaign marketing.

The sensible and compassionate thinker Roger Scruton, whose recent death has left a dark hole in intellectual conservative culture, said there were two kinds of conservatism. One is a metaphysical respect for the sacred ideas and things we treasure and the will to defend them, and another is the pragmatic conservatism which recognizes that the good things of Western civilization are worth protecting. Scruton said that these things are: individual freedom, the protection of common law, the protection of our environment from exploitation, intellectual freedom, and liberal democracy. In his book A Brief Introduction to Beauty, Scruton shared his ideas about art as a bridge between the metaphysical and the material aspects of culture, as the practical expression of the ideas that bind together the people of the past, present, and future.

Conservatives bear an increased responsibility for the maintenance of the long ideas of culture in both the personal realm and in the realm of education.
To American conservatives, government is only necessary because humans are incapable of living a virtuous life which does not harm others in their individual pursuit of happiness. A limited government punishes those people who fail to understand their role in the society of individuals and organizes the state to defend its citizens. Protecting their culture is a priority of great nations. At the extreme, lives are willingly sacrificed in the defense of ideas—declarations of war are the moments in which a culture insists on the value of its long ideas even at the price of the deaths of its members.

To American conservatives, government should have no involvement in other aspects of life, including the arts. That distaste for governmental interference, does not, however, mean that American conservatives are somehow detached from the arts. In fact, it means that they bear an increased responsibility for the maintenance of the long ideas of culture in both the personal realm and in the realm of education.

John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington were all culturally engaged. Washington was an active collector of the cutting-edge landscape paintings of his day and was an enthusiastic fan of history paintings, campaigning for the purchase of canvases depicting the revolution by American master painter John Trumbull.

Washington emphasized the painter’s popularity, the greatness of the design of his compositions, the “masterly execution of the work,” and how the paintings would “equally interest the man of a capacious mind and the approving eye of the connoisseur.” Washington particularly approved of the efforts Trumbull had made to get excellent likenesses of the key players of the revolution in France and the United States and believed that this attention to detail would “form no small part of the value of his pieces.”

Adams insisted that painters should seek something more substantial than merely copying reality. He said, “the pleasure which arises from imitation we have in looking at a picture of a landscape, a port, a street, a temple, or a portrait” was great, but “there must be action, passion, sentiment, and moral, to engage my attention very much.” He had little time for still life or landscapes as visual records alone, demanding more substance to the work. “A million pictures of flowers, game, cities, landscapes, with whatever industry and skill executed, would be seen with much indifference. The sky, the earth, hills, and valleys, rivers and oceans, forests and groves and cities, may be seen at any time,” he said.

James Wilson and Thomas Paine shared Adams’ cultural interests. Wilson thought,

The chief pleasures of history, and poetry, and eloquence, and musick, and sculpture, and painting are derived from the same source. Beside the pleasures they afford by imitation, they receive a stronger charm from something moral insinuated into the performances.

Those are the words of American conservatives, interested and engaged in the living arts: arts that are based on the cultural traditions of the past, but which respond to the present.

Traditional but evolving skill-based technique; connoisseurship; attention to detail; narrative; sentiment; a moral message. Those characteristics are found in the paintings and sculptures of the flourishing 21st-century representational art movement.

What is the place of art and culture in higher education, then? Should American professors be involved in partisan politics? No. Leave that choice to the students as their democratic obligation.

In our universities and schools, we should provide our citizens with the technical training they need to continue this great American cultural tradition, but also with the imaginative training they need so that they can find ways for these good things, these long ideas, to address the present.

SOURCE 

Comment from a reader:

When I moved to Shreveport La in 1996, I rented from an artist who had a flat in his house. At the time, the city was sponsoring “homes for starving artists”.

George and his wife were both artists, and lived a spartan lifestyle. He was really good, commanding thousands for portraits. George scoffed at local artists who depended on the small Shreveport market; they filled up their van and drove to the coasts to sell their art.

George didn’t believe in the “art subsidy”, because for every one like himself, there were hundreds of artists who were willing to do it “on their own” - with day jobs, etc.

So george (as I do) believed that there was absolutely no “need” for subsidies, because anyone with a quality product could at least make a living selling it.

Sorry, people - if your art is really good, someone will buy it; if it is no good, the city will buy it out of taxpayers’ money.





Civility descends on the House of Commons

Never can there have been a PMQs quite like today’s. A week earlier, it had all been so different: even the diagnosis of a Government minister with coronavirus wasn’t enough to deter more than 600 MPs from squeezing into the Commons to hear the Chancellor’s Budget statement. Today, though, MPs finally started to accept that the Government’s advice to the public should apply to them too.

Normally for PMQs the chamber is packed. This time it was almost empty. The only MPs permitted entry were those with a question to ask. Between them, great stretches of green leather spread lonely and wide. “I want to thank MPs for the very responsible approach they’ve taken,” began Jeremy Corbyn, “by sitting a suitable distance apart.”

A fine sentiment – although it might be observed that, despite the extensive space available on the Labour front bench, Mr Corbyn himself was sitting side by side with his colleague Dawn Butler. It might also be observed that, as Mr Corbyn is 70 years of age, he ideally shouldn’t have been there at all.

At any rate, PMQs certainly looked different – and it sounded different, too. There was none of the usual heckling or barracking. As the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition spoke, everyone else sat silent, but for the odd solemn murmur of “hear, hear”. Quite right, in the circumstances, although the absence of the familiar jeering din did make the occasional cough sound ominously loud.

There were no putdowns, and no point-scoring. Everyone was almost eerily well-behaved. All questions were constructive rather than partisan, and Boris Johnson greeted them in the same spirit: praising the questioner, welcoming suggestions – and, for surely the first time on public record, being polite to Ian Blackford.

The SNP man urged the Prime Minister to introduce a universal basic income. In any previous week, Mr Johnson would have screwed up his nose and shooed Mr Blackford away like a wasp at a picnic. Yet this time he earnestly thanked him, said he was “quite right” about the need to support workers, and added that a universal basic income was “one of many” different ideas he’d received.

Perhaps this way simply a diplomatic way of saying no – like a job rejection letter that begins, “Thank you for your application. Unfortunately on this occasion you have not been successful, but we will keep your CV on record.” Still, he didn’t strictly rule the proposal out. And when Kevin Brennan (Lab, Cardiff W) repeated Mr Blackford’s plea, Mr Johnson said it was “one of the ideas that will certainly be considered”. Which was remarkable enough in itself. 

Not as remarkable, though, as the declaration moments later that now was “not the time to be squeamish about public sector debt”. Those, for the record, were the words of a Tory MP: Felicity Buchan, the member for Kensington, no less. Yes, times really are changing – and fast.

Just think. A mere two months ago, when the virus was claiming a second life in China, and starting to snake its way into Thailand and Japan, the most contentious issue in Westminster was “bunging a bob for a Big Ben bong”.

The war over Brexit was bitter and vicious. And yet so innocent. And already so long ago.

SOURCE 






We Got Housing Built after the 1906 Quake. We Can Do It Again. Here’s How

Despite much hand-wringing by California politicians over the housing crisis, residential building permits statewide were lower in 2019 than in 2018, according to the most recent figures from the California Department of Finance. To reverse this beyond-discouraging trend, California should look to 1906 San Francisco.

The Great Earthquake and resulting fires destroyed about 28,000 buildings. More than half the city’s 400,000 residents were homeless. But San Francisco quickly rebounded because residents overwhelmingly supported a right to build—the morally correct position—and opposed microplanning by government officials.

Residents rejected an ambitious redesign of San Francisco by famed urban planner Daniel Burnham, which included the world’s largest urban park, sweeping avenues, grand boulevards and radiating thoroughfares in the style of Paris. Instead of this slow, costly plan, according to which the city would have bought large swaths of privately owned land, people rallied around fast and affordable construction rooted in private property rights and the freedom to build what people wanted. It worked.

The earthquake struck on a Wednesday, and by Sunday 300 plumbers were repairing sewers and water pipes. Streetcars were operating on Market Street within weeks. But most impressive, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, by 1909, “The city was practically brand new—it had 20,000 buildings erected in three years.” At the current snail’s pace, it would take about eight years to build 20,000 housing units in San Francisco.

California needs to enshrine in its state constitution the spirit of 1906 San Francisco by establishing an individual right to build residential housing. It would be the quickest way to escape the statewide regulatory quagmire that impedes housing development, inflates home and rental prices, and eliminates the bottom rungs of the housing ladder.

Today, abusive environmental lawsuits block housing construction in already developed areas, so-called “infill” areas. Zoning rules discriminate against multifamily structures. Outrageously high and inconsistent “local impact fees” and rigid building codes eradicate low-cost housing for low-income people, worsening homelessness. Notoriously slow permitting causes housing entrepreneurs to flee California and build elsewhere.

Housing development in California involves a bewildering array of stakeholders and layers of government, each effectively with veto power, that has destroyed any notion of private property rights. Landowners who want to develop new housing options are prevented from using their property to quickly and efficiently provide housing in the face of increasing consumer demand. Politicians shamelessly pander to established homeowners and other self-interested groups by restricting the freedom to supply housing for people in need.

The McKinsey Global Institute concluded that California must build housing at least five-times faster than the current rate of 80,000 units each year to eliminate the housing deficit by 2025. This is Gov. Gavin Newsom’s goal. But this objective, more pressing in the wake of the horrific wildfires, is unattainable given the dominant NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) culture reflected in the Gordian knot of regulatory impediments.

The goal is attainable, however, through a constitutional amendment to establish an individual right to build housing, which would still preserve the ability of local neighbors to negotiate directly with a builder for project modifications or limitations. Although well intentioned, incremental legislative tweaks, such as the endlessly re-worked SB 50, died in the state Senate and could’ve never achieved the desired housing goals. Californians need a bolder alternative rooted in a right to build.

California voters have clarified water rights through the amendment process. It is past time to do the same for property rights related to housing development. A bold constitutional amendment, in the spirit of 1906 San Francisco, would reestablish private property rights in housing development and true local decision-making.

It is immoral to maintain bureaucratic barriers to housing development. Providing a home is never a bad thing, and a constitutional amendment is the way to go.

Entrepreneurs would provide affordable housing quickly if they were allowed to enter California markets and build in the locations and at the price points that consumers want. It worked in 1906 San Francisco, and it can work again across California.

SOURCE 





Bernie Sanders Should Take a Closer Look at Cuba’s Lack of Accomplishments

Perhaps nothing has been more responsible for the cratering presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-described “democratic socialist,” than his clumsy attempt last month to defend Cuba’s socialist regime.

Mr. Sanders maintained that he admires the regime’s accomplishments but opposes its authoritarian nature. Yet, the very things he admires are direct outcomes of this authoritarianism.

Defending his remarks, Mr. Sanders told CBS’ “60 Minutes,” “We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know, when Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing?”

Most indicators of well-being tend to improve as a country’s economy grows. As incomes rise, so do literacy, life expectancy and a host of other measures. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in economics to understand why: As people become wealthier they’re able to afford more of everything, including health care and education.

Cuba is one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, but it has some of the highest literacy rates and longest life expectancies. Democratic socialists such as Mr. Sanders like to praise these outcomes as accomplishments of the socialist economic system, while distancing themselves from the authoritarian nature of the Cuban government. Yet, the two are inseparable.

Cuba was a relatively wealthy Latin American country prior to the 1959 revolution. The socialist economic system that Castro imposed after the revolution stagnated the economy; as a result, Cuba’s per capita income has fallen farther and farther behind most other Latin American countries ever since. (For a notable exception, see socialist Venezuela.) At the same time, however, literacy and life expectancies have improved relative to the rest of Latin America.

The reason Cuba’s statistics are an anomaly is precisely because it has a socialist economic system. Socialism requires authoritarianism: Abolishing private property and replacing it with state ownership and control. It substitutes government economic planning for competitive markets and individual decision-making. Once state planners have control of the major resources in a country, they can direct those resources to any ends government officials choose with little regard for the desires of the citizens.

The former Soviet Union, for example, had an impressive space program and a world-threatening military. At the same time, the average Soviet citizen faced shortages of consumer goods, from food to toilet tissue —mostly all of poor quality—because socialist planners prioritized “guns” over “butter,” a classic economic trade off.

Similarly, Cuban socialist planners have chosen to funnel resources to education and health care—while buildings crumble, food choices are limited, and there are so few cars (many of them 1950s U.S. classics) that horseback travel is common.

When people are free to choose for themselves they don’t spend all of their money on just one or two things. That’s why economic growth and prosperity typically leads to progress in many aspects of life.

When Mr. Sanders promises “free” education and health care in the United States, he ignores the fact that the costs must be borne by someone. Similarly, when he applauds Cuban health care and literacy he ignores the fact that to pay for this the Cuban people have been denied other goods and services.

Socialist economic systems necessarily concentrate power in the hands of government authorities, who not only dictate what one can buy, and at what price, but can punish dissent through their economic edicts. Cuba has literacy, but no accompanying freedom of speech, freedom of the press, Baskin & Robbins, Walmart or Ford dealerships.

It’s no accident that every socialist country has been ruled by an authoritarian regime. Political freedom cannot survive without a large degree of economic freedom.

Bernie Sanders naively was trying to claim the so-called successes of the Cuban regime as achievements while distancing himself from the authoritarian aspect of it. Unfortunately for him, socialism is inseparable from authoritarianism. Democratic voters apparently understand that.

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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