History is littered with petty tyrants who have exploited art and culture for their own ends. Nonetheless, wars and crises tend to reveal the true, unrivaled power of art, which is often the last redoubt of freedom in the face of the suffering that such politicians cause.
Nina L. Khrushcheva at Project Syndicate: Early in this century, I was told, the United Kingdom compiled a list of the ten most important actions to take in the event of an emergency. One was to save the renowned Titian paintings housed at the National Gallery. Just imagine if masterpieces like Noli me tangere (1514) and An Allegory of Prudence (c.1550-65) were to suffer the same fate (looting by thieves) as the treasures of the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad after the US invasion in 2003.
The UK government’s concern for the safety of Titian’s paintings refutes the claim that high art is dead. Classic paintings might seem meaningless in a world that is drowning in triviality and “content,” because in peacetime, we can afford to be distracted. But war changes the equation. When a country or nation cherishes its cultural individuality as much as its territory, natural resources, or financial institutions, art can become a battleground.
Consider Ukraine’s “anti-Pushkin law,” named after the nineteenth-century Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. Adopted last year, it allows for the removal or destruction of cultural monuments related to Russian and Soviet history. Numerous works of art – including paintings, sculptures, and books by Russian artists – have been banned or destroyed as symbols of an imperial, totalitarian ideology. But, to borrow Talleyrand’s quip about Napoleon executing the Duc d’Enghien, summarily “canceling” another nation or ethnic group’s cultural artifacts is worse than a crime; it is a mistake.
What Art Can Do
Of course, with Russian armies ravaging Ukraine, no Russian should dare tell Ukrainians how to address their past or construct their future. My heart is filled with sorrow for the deaths and suffering that soldiers from my homeland have inflicted on Ukraine. I would love to be able to apologize to the Ukrainian people on behalf of the Russian nation. At the same time, I am not alone in questioning the wisdom of cultural cancellation.
In 1955, at the height of the Cold War, George F. Kennan, one of America’s greatest diplomats, gave an address at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “[I]n the creation of beauty and in the great monumental works of the intellect, and there alone,” he observed, “human beings have been able to find an unfailing bridge between nations, even in the darkest moments of political bitterness and chauvinism and exclusiveness.” Crises reveal the true, unrivaled power of art.
But why is this so? Unlike politics, authentic culture never lies. Before politicians can even articulate their agenda or true intentions, art often will have already revealed all. In 2006, the Russian author Vladimir Sorokin published a short novel, Day of the Oprichnik, in which czardom has returned and government henchmen are in charge. At the time, we dismissed it as pure fiction – an absurd dystopia. Today, it is Russia’s reality. Vladimir Putin held his fifth presidential inauguration this past May, and independent thought is now violently punished.
Similarly, George Orwell’s dystopian fiction is regarded in Russia today as a survival manual. Visiting a St. Petersburg bookstore last year, I was struck by a prominent window display of 1984. “We have to remember which world we are living in,” the shopkeeper remarked.
In 1947, Kennan wrote a now-famous commentary for Foreign Affairs about what he called “the sources of Soviet conduct.” Adopting the same approach, we can trace Russian conduct today back to Fyodor Dostoyevsky. In an 1873 letter to the future Emperor Alexander III, the Russian novelist wrote, “Great nations who have manifested … their great powers – those that have brought … if only a single ray of light into the world – succeeded because they have remained … presumptuously independent.” Putin sees what he wants to see in such rhetoric: as a “sovereign civilization,” Russia acts as it must.
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