Ruthless Honesty

I think I care too much about the writing on my blogs. So much so, I contrive to write useless

crap no one cares about. It is one of the reasons why I do not update my blogs regularly. The other, more greater, reasons being laziness and being busy doing other things, like writing more books that no one wants to read.

I decided to write a simple post about art – the decision coming a few minutes ago whilst reading someone else's blog. The blog I was reading is Mark Doran's Classical Musicblog. I assume Mark Doran is someone particularly notable in whatever his field is; he does after all have a professional-ish looking headshot of (I assume) himself on his blog – which points towards someone who is notable even if the existence of a headshot in reality means nothing at all, except self-referentially proving the existence of the photo itself.

It's not even a headshot; merely a photo on a man beside a handsome looking wall.

Whilst reading one if his highly readable renditions, which talks not of classical music per se but of the many failings of corporate media, I was intrigued by the following assertion about art (full article here):

“... the artist focusing (non-conceptually, non-propositionally) on the inner world without altogether denying the outer; the journalist concentrating (conceptually, propositionally) upon the outer world without entirely ignoring the inner — with the consequence that both are engaged upon what are essentially moral tasks: in each case they fail their addressees if ever they act with anything other than ruthless honesty.”

What interests me is that I do not think anyone is truly capable of ruthless honesty, our thoughts and minds relentlessly influenced and self-censored by our inescapable need for acceptance, but it reminded me of my own writings andtheories about contemporary art and contemporary artists; and my belief that in order to be successful as an artist one has few options but to validate corporate and royal wealth and rule.

Our top art courses are all (nearly all?) royally approved; our top awards are all (nearly all?) connected to corporate wealth; art at its most expensive end is purchased only by the wealthy elite who can afford it. I know of no world famous artist who refuses to sell their work for huge sums of money. High art and the corporate go hand in hand. (I admit the time and labour needed to create art means its value must be high in order to support an artist, but please do not pretend the value of art is not artificially increased as it undergoes the processes of fame, notoriety, rarity and fabricated rarity).

Thus, established artists are either complicit in the wealth/power paradigm we live in, or they have to self-censor, putting their career in front of their principals. I would say the average successful contemporary artist is a lot like the journalists who work for corporate media described by Chomsky. Very likely they do not self-censor, believing their own sincerity entirely. It is just that, if they didn't think that way, they wouldn't be successful or employed.

I often consider this notion when looking at mighty contemporary artists who appear to have an overtly political stance; and I think it is always worth considering.