Art and Anarchy

The Case against Government Sponsored Art

This is a from my new E book “Stump the Anarchist” Available on Amazon. The book explores and debunks various justifications governments use to legitimize themselves. As the title implies its written from an anarchist perspective and intends to persuade the reader.

While not the most used example of why we need a state I wanted to repost this chapter as it delves into a fascinating connection between the CIA and Modern art.

Enjoy!

Why We need Government # 19

“Cultural Preservation: Governments promote and preserve cultural heritage, support arts, and cultural institutions, and protect historical sites”

My decision to ask AI why we need a government was rooted in a desire to learn government justifications I would not otherwise think about. Of course, there would still be the need to debunk the cliche idea that we the state to pave the roads and provide defense. But I wanted this book to be more than just an intellectual journey down those well-traveled streets. I wanted to explore the back alleys of libertarian thought. And this AI-generated answer most epitomizes that for me. 

This is a reason I never heard as to why we need a government. And for that I'm grateful. If we are truly to “eradicate not just the state but the idea that the state is necessary, legitimate, or natural, we must grapple with all the nitty gritty aspects of life that the state has its bloody hand in. So let's get into this and see how we better preserve cultural and artistic heritages without government force. 

To begin with, let's separate the idea of preserving our culture, heritage, and historic sites from supporting artist institutions. Preservation is concerned with the past while supporting artists and art institutions concerns itself with the present and future. 

Like the environment, cultural and artistic preservation is only going to be of concern if people themselves care about such things. If no one sees value in maintaining historic buildings, for instance, then the state will not lift a finger to save them from being torn down. 

Right now people who find the aesthetics, or history of such buildings pleasing will generally use the political process to try to save them. But there is no reason why a stateless system would not have the same appreciation of craftsmanship of days long past. Around the world people voluntarily visit historic areas to take in the architectural beauty of different historical time periods. Often these people will want to stop for lunch at a local bistro, buy some trinkets at a local shop, and maybe even take a street tour. This all means there is money to be made from preserving such areas. Not to mention that these places are often desirable to live in. It's not uncommon that a run-down old building fetches more rental money than a fancy new but homogonous apartment.

Like we do with environmentalism we have to weigh the pros and cons of preservation. What makes these historic areas so captivating is that they are rare. Most of these quaint old houses that are revered for their character were nothing special in their time. They were built with mostly utility in mind not unlike what buildings are today. In the future people may marvel at the most institutional-looking apartment building of today.

As special as some of these places are, we must accept that over time more and more of them will either fail to meet current needs or become victims of disrepair and neglect. Entropy affects culture no differently than it affects the physical world. It's precisely this unraveling of artifacts of past cultures that make the ones that survive so special. The longer they withstand the sands of time the more special and desirable they become. 

That said if the governments of the world self-eradicated tomorrow, does anyone think the Roman Colosseum, the Egyptian Pyramids, or Gobekli Tepe would be torn down to set up a Walmart? Passing legislation to protect these sites is as necessary as making it illegal for toddlers to attack MMA cage fighters. 

So now we get to the second argument of whether we need the government to support art and cultural institutions. It's not enough that we have an artist's expression handed to us from the past. We must create art of our time that expresses all the fears, frustrations, hopes, technical abilities, and limitations that we live under. But art existed long before the government and to this day is often independent of it. People have always been doing what they could to adorn their bodies, with jewelry, face paints, tattoos, and ornate clothes, while creating music and dancing. As soon as people figured out how to sculpt clay vases they made them with more beauty than necessity would dictate. We continue to this day of embuing whatever we create with artistic intent. 

When we look at Government-sanctioned art we often get things that elicit feelings of disgust or at best indifference. I used to pass by a giant sculpture of rustic beams used for buildings all welded together in a labyrinth of right angles that had all the aesthetics of the oppressive of industrialization with none of the utility. I can only imagine how much was spent on the tons of metal that went into it. Luckily it was paid for by non-consenting taxpayers.  

Ugly art is not an accident. In the 1950s and 60s under Operation "Longleash," the CIA propped up many abstract expressionist artists. People still revered in the art world such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willen De Kooning would likely never have fame if it weren't for an unknown man by the name of Tom Bradden who ran the CIA at the time. 

Most people when shown this style of art correctly deem it of little value. Of course, art is subjective. But we all instinctively know the difference between music and noise. We understand the difference between a painting that was made with intention whether we like it or not and someone spilling paint on a canvas. 

The question is why would the CIA sponsor art from people who were mostly seen as degenerates from their contemporaries Americans? The accepted theory is that this was a counter-propaganda campaign against Soviet 

art that was utilitarian in nature. One only had to look at what Americans deemed art to see how liberated we were, so the story goes. 

I think there is truth in that but I also think it goes deeper. It makes sense that this radical free-form style of art would be appealing to anyone in the Soviet Union who was rebellious. It was diametrically opposed to the propaganda that surrounded them. 

But this style of art also taught generations of people that talent and time spent honing your craft was not necessary. Just get drunk and splatter paint around and you will be hailed a genius. Art schools that are propped up by federal loans still teach otherwise talented people that they should just drip paint on a canvas till it's indistinguishable from an old drop cloth used by a house painter. This creates a lack of genuine art that expresses the moment we are in.

We also get art that is highly offensive to certain populations, which of course the artist has the right to make. But the state then makes the offended population pay for the art. Then by sleight-of-hand, they turn the debate about whether such should be financially supported into one where people argue against their freedom of speech. 

Government is not needed to create art and is often a force that if not trying to outright stifle it, is trying to control and convert it into something meaningless. Humans innately recognize the need to create and consume art. We don’t need the state to tell us to listen to pleasurable music, watch a well-crafted movie, admire an awe-inspiring painting, or read a poem that elicits emotions we didn’t know we had. Few of us will ever master such a craft to the point where we can make a living exclusively on it. But some will and they will be able to devote themselves to feeding their creative flame, reaching ever higher degrees of creativity. More importantly, we all can devote some of ourselves to creating what we can no matter how amateurish, not even to create the art but to create ourselves. 

That doesn’t mean we will though. In a free society, people will be free to ignore this aspect of their humanity and some surely will. But to follow the current line of logic presented in this book, living without the coercion of government will allow people to live the best lives as they see fit. If for some reason someone doesn't see the value in art they are free to go through life without it. I just don't see many free people making that choice.