Art, Death and Politics
When Art Is Anti-Revolutionary
When J.D. Vance said that he wished to be buried in a place he loved, in his homeland, he struck a nerve with the leftist. Yet the nerve he struck runs far deeper than a mere hatred of the American land and people. It is a metaphysical and theological statement that they recognized in his statement. It is the reason leftists hate the classical arts. Classical art, like right political thought, is a dedication to death. The rule of the dead and the unborn.
All of this is a commentary on the artistic thought of the Scottish sculptor Alexander Stoddart. I have been a remote pupil of his for a few years, devouring anything of the small amount of media he puts out. I augmented his Schopenhauer approach to be a more classical and Christian one for my taste, and yet I find the things he says to be true when it comes to the classical arts and true in a political sense.
Stoddart’s basic claim is that humans hate classical art because it reminds people of their death. It is an open attack on the Will to Live. It is the threat of the cessation of being. While he would say it is a threat of nirvana, losing selfhood, I believe it is a threat of judgment.
What does this have to do with politics? As it turns out, everything. Revolutionary thought is about life. As Stoddart would describe them, they are life cults trying to make sure things are animated, breathing, undergoing change and flux.
One can see why a Christian would be drawn to this. God is, after all, the creator and sustainer of life. Christians may relate the term pro-life with such ideas. Such adherence is what has led us to create art that rejects or challenges the past. This relates of course to the discipline of theology as well.
Traditional politically right thought is concerned with death and space. Just as a dead corpse can only take up space, it is about the bodies’ presence.
“The most fundamental common denominator of Art and Nature is the role they play in the mysteries of living and dying. Just as ivy, so gloriously alive, is in fact the bringer of death, so too painting, by capturing Life on canvas, fixes it in a single moment of eternal death. If a thing cannot change, it is dead.” (Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings, Taschen)
That is a reason why painting, in its classical approaches, is considered immoral. It is immoral to kill and so painting, producing death, is itself immoral. This is also why all attempts at improving painting are in the direction of movement and expression. It is why academic painting is as respected as mummification. Because it is mummification. It’s not that there is no talent, but it is a rather unpleasant and rude topic.
Abstract art may receive disdain from more conservative minded folk, but the reason is almost always because it is ugly, confusing, insulting to a person’s intellect or distasteful. It may get physically attacked at times, but when did a piece of abstract art get a noose around its neck that echoed the sights of the hanging of a criminal or an innocent man?
The attacking of classical art is usually attributed to the symbolism of the oppression of Western cultures, and this is true in a way. The oppression to which they refer in their subconscious is not their existence but their sins which they love so dearly. Classical art is an art in communion with the dead. With the saints, who oppressed their sin and sedated their will in order to be united with The Father most high.
A statue takes up space which could be filled with life and vibrant colors. So a motionless statue reminds people of their coming endless sleep. And here is where I differ from Stoddart, it reminds them of their death for which they are not prepared, for death means the cessation of the Will to Live and a return to the land of heroes. A land which many fear will lead to their judgment, as they felt no need to live as a saint while on earth.
Classical art, in all its forms, is the encounter of the Will to Live with the inevitability of death. The Will to Live loves all the things of this world, all the changes and fast-paced movements that make it what it is. The movies are the favorite art genre of the Will to Live.
In many ways, the Will to Live is revolutionary and iconoclastic. It hates the communion of the saints in heaven and seeks rather to establish utopia on earth. It is the driving force of life cults and iconoclasts, who wish nothing more than to not be reminded of their lack of heroism compared to those in glory. Politically it manifests as revolutions that seek to keep things in flux and in progress and attempt to feign care for the poor so as to get off the hook of submission to righteousness. It therefore spiritually manifests as the simple refusal to submit its will to the eternal will of the Timeless One or to the wills of the society, the cross, religion and the fathers that came before.
Society is a relation of wills and so the sedation of certain parts of the human, including parts of their will, is necessary to establish a good society. In this case it is the sedation of the will to always change things, to do whatever one desires, the will to hedonism and the desire to be left alone by those who came before you. You shall have no need to honor your father and mother. The very reason to build towards a post-human world is to cease needing to be grateful or responsible to the past. Likewise, the hatred of classical, representational, ideal art is the hatred of that which we are supposed to be. By the reminder of death, the images of eternal sleep remind us of how we are to be in the world.
In its own way, they are life affirming. Only the life lived in hedonism and sin is scared when faced with the cessation of that life. To live for the eternal now, by suppression of sin and the magnification of the good we can be saints, worthy of the halls of our ancestors and in whose presence we shall not be ashamed.
So when Vance says he wants to do something about his death, he is talking in a classical way. He does not want a nomadic life where he could die anywhere and be lost into the soil. He wishes to enter that sleep in the land of his fathers and his children. This is unacceptable to the left who wish for nothing but the destruction of all things and avoidance of judgment through perpetual change.
Image Credit: Bocklin, Arnold. Self Portrait With Death Playing the Fiddle. Public Domain.