Tout Court

Surprisingly enough (to me), Roger Kimball and I seem to agree at least on one subject:

The issue, it is worth stressing, is not the orientation of the politics–Left vs. Right–it is rather the politicization of intellectual life tout court. That is, the task is not to replace or balance the left-wing orientation of academic life with a right-wing ideology but rather to de-politicize academic, i.e., to champion intellectual, not political, standards.

If I thought Kimball truly believed this, I'd say that the "conservative" critique of the humanities as they are now taught in American universities would be worth taking seriously. Unfortunately I just can't accept that he does, largely for reasons that are implicit in some of Kimball's additional comments in this interview:

I believe that the arts provide a good barometer of cultural health. They reflect the fears, obsessions, aspirations, and ambitions of a culture. It tells us a great deal, I think, that terms like "transgressive" and "challenging" have emerged as among the highest words of praise in the critical lexicon. It tells us, among other things, that much art today is less affirmative than corrosive, that it places itself in an adversarial attitude toward the traditional moral, aesthetic, and cultural ambitions of our culture.

I would agree that the arts are a good indicator of "cultural health," if by this we meant that a healthy culture manifests a great deal of artistic activity--that it produces a significant number of people who value art enough to want to create it. But of course this is not what Kimball means. He means that art is directly reflective of a culture's "health" in moral and spiritual terms. He means that art is valuable primarily if not exclusively to the exent it works to foster such health, ideally to "affirm" traditional assumptions and practices.

A culture doesn't have "fears, obsessions, aspirations, and ambitions." Only people have these things, individual people. Ultimately a critic like Roger Kimball doesn't have much use for individual artists, individual readers or viewers or listeners. Art is not about heightened experience or even simple pleasure; it's about "culture," about the social norms that art can help to reinforce, the ideological "ambitions" it exists to define. Even when Kimball speaks of the "silence" great art can provoke, he's really talking about the silence enforced by the cultural authority which can be conferred upon art (by people like Kimball), which demands recovery of "a sense of the unfailing pertinence of our cultural inheritance." It's the "inheritance" that matters, not the particularity of works of art, nor the distinctive kind of experience (which can indeed involve "silence") that they afford.

Kimball's insistence on the cultural relevance of art is finally not that different from the similar insistence by current academic criticism that art is most useful as an object of "cultural study." Both look past the aesthetic properties of art in order to examine its purported efficacy as a cultural force or its illustrative value as a cultural "symptom." The biggest difference between conservative critics such as Kimball and most academic critics is that for Kimball art should be "affirmative," while for the academic critics--and Kimball is correct about this--it is precisely the transgressive and corrosive qualities of art that are most highly prized. I believe that art at its best is indeed "subversive," but not in the narrow political sense of the term presently conveyed by academic criticism. As I put it in a previous post, "Through art we become aware that the world can always be remade. Art is the enemy of all certainties and settled doctrines. This is not likely to be acceptable to political critics of either the left or the right. . ." Which is why Roger Kimball probably will never really advocate for the "de-politicization" of art or of academic study. His view of what art is good for is always already intensely political.

Comments

[R. A. Rubin]

Hmmm, I love The Great Gatsby, but you could interpret Fitzgerald’s thrust as a critique of the 1920’s loony thirst for wealth. That would put Fitzgerald in the Leftist camp. The ostentatious collection of cultural artifacts, symbols of success, catalyze Gatsby’s downfall though one suspects that Fitzgerald complains too much.

This is the Left in Academia. They insist that an environmentally friendly, globally peaceful, Socialist, er Progressive government of enlightened West and East Coast Elitists like say Rob Reiner could create a paradise on Earth. This is the thrust of propaganda from the lectern. Oh, how subtle it is. And who is the enemy? According to the author of “What’s the Matter with Kansas,” it’s the Christian boobs of Middle-America. The Babbit’s of Sinclair Lewis now inhabit the American grasslands. Gasp, they shop at Wal-Mart to get the children back-to-school clothes ignoring the local haberdashery, an expensive mom and pop emporium. Why would they do that? Haven’t they read Nickel and Dimed? Like Mr. T of A-Team fame: “Da Fool!”

[joe miller]

Interesting post. Lately, my sense of the humanities is shaped by Edward Said's later writings aboout humanism, which underscore what you're saying about art's need to be subversive. Said argument is that the canon should be continually challenged and revitalized by diverse voices and points of view, and I tend to agree.

[Kevin Holtsberry]

I think Kimball can have both a conservative view of art and culture and still have "use for individual artists, individual readers or viewers or listeners." One is the forest and one is the trees.

I agree that many on the right simply want to politicize art from the right, but that doesn't mean all conservatives do. We can argue about the meaning of Art and also about the value of individual works of art.

I tend to think the healthy culture validates and supports what is best about humanity and civilization. Granted, a certain amount of "subversiveness" is needed to keep things from stagnating but if undermining authority and one's inheritance becomes an end in itself you get chaos and anarchy not art. I think Kimble's view of the cultural ramifications of art grows out of his aesthetic while some on the left and right see only the political and never the aesthetic.

[carter]

You state: "Ultimately a critic like Roger Kimball doesn't have much use for individual artists, individual readers or viewers or listeners."

That doesn't square with the Kimball I know. For example, after asking ""Why do we teach and study art history?", and providing a list of worthy but practical reasons, Kimball writes:

"All this might be described as the dough, the ambient body of culture. The yeast is supplied by direct acquaintance with the subject of study: the poem or play, the mental itinerary a Galileo or Newton traveled, the actual work of art on the wall. In the case of art history, the raison d’être—the ultimate motive—is supplied by a direct visual encounter with great works of art. Everything else is prolegomenon or afterthought, scaffolding to support the main event, which is not so much learning about art as it is experiencing art first hand."

(from Rape of the Masters)

[Dan Green]

But art is still the yeast that simply helps the "ambient body of culture" rise.

[carter]

I don't think Kimball's words or body of work imply the 'simply' you've interjected. Kimball's saying "the main event, which is not so much learning about art as it is experiencing art first hand" would seem to directly contradict your statement that Kimball believes that "It's the "inheritance" that matters, not the particularity of works of art, nor the distinctive kind of experience (which can indeed involve "silence") that they afford".

[Dan Green]

In my opinion, the passage you cite is merely part of Kimball's fight against academic critics--in this case, the art historians--and their tendency to politicize art from the left--as opposed to his tendency to politicize it from the right. "Experiencing art first hand" is just a convenient rhetorical weapon to use against the pc brigades.

[carter]

On what basis do you think Kimball really does not believe what he is saying in that passage?

This is an excerpt from an interview with Kimball:

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article4138.html

"BC: I just finished your latest, Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art. One of the many things that impressed me was the respect you showed for the artist Mark Rothko. That is something that I did not expect. You mention that his “paintings have always been enormously popular because they offer unadulterated aesthetic pleasure. A sensitive arrangement of simple colored forms can be beautiful.” Would you extend this analysis to works by other abstract artists?i Which abstract artists in particular are the most valuable? Are people too quick to dismiss their work?

RK: Well, there are some people who believe that the phrase “abstract art” is a contradiction in terms. I am not one of them. There is good art that is abstract or non-representational just as there is plenty of bad art that is abstract or non-representational. We certainly do live at a moment when Andy Warhol’s (or was it Marshall McLuhan’s?) quip that “art is what you can get away with” describes the reality of the art world. So much of what passes for art today is either meretricious, repellent, and perverted, or else simply vacuous. Some of it is abstract, some representational. But to decide a priori that all art that is abstract is bad art or non-art strikes me as just silly. Apart from anything else, it is to deny oneself the visual pleasure -- the purely aesthetic visual pleasure -- that good abstract art has in store for the attentive viewer. "

I think that Kimball really means that, and his other statements as well. I have no reason not to, and I will continue to do so unless some contrary evidence can be provided.