From the Wisdom of Crowds: The novelist Phil Klay came on Wisdom of Crowds back in June to talk about morality and war. This month, he’s taken on art and politics. In an essay titled, “Artists and Activists Both Have a Role. But Not the Same One,” he argues that artists must tell the truth, even when that truth is at odds with one’s politics. More importantly, he claims that good art is usually at odds with political ideology.
Ideology v. Art
- What is Ideology? “Art of any worth explores what happens before political ideologies take hold,” Klay writes. “Ideology is a butcher of reality, severing the muscle from bone, discarding the unsightly and inedible and delivering neatly wrapped, digestible steaks to its consumers.”
- What is Art? “The fiction writer is a child playing in the alley behind the butcher’s shop, rummaging through the trash, pulling out bits of teeth, offal, hair and hide, holding them up to the light and beaming, so pleased to display a piece of the once-breathing animal.”
- Some Propaganda is also Art. So argues journalist Sharon Adarlo, responding to Klay: “Even the decision to not be ‘ideological’ is an ideological choice. Some of the finest art in the world is propaganda.”
- Writers Against the War on Gaza, an activist group, wrote: “Klay lazily rehashes an absolute distinction between politics and art.”
Make Art, Not War
Klay’s essay comes as part of a revival of the old argument over whether art must always serve a partisan political cause.
- Essay Pulled. Last March, Guernica magazine published an essay about the Gaza conflict only to retract it after most of its editors resigned in protest. The editors were angry that the essay — written by an Israeli — portrayed both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict, implying (they argue) moral equivalence.
- “From the Edges of a Broken World,” the retracted essay, written by Joanna Chen, can be read here.
- Reacting to Guernica’s retraction, Klay wrote: “If your journal can’t publish work that deals with such messy realities, then your editors might as well resign, because you’ve turned your back on literature.”
- Doing Something. Last May, the Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood was criticized for playing a concert in Tel Aviv with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa, ignoring the ongoing BDS cultural boycott. “No art is as ‘important’ as stopping all the death and suffering around us,” Greenwood responded. “But doing nothing seems a worse option.”
More here.
