Politics and Art

A repost from my Writing to See stack

[Note: I posted the following over on my Writing to See stack, but since it’s art-related, I thought I would post it here, as well.]

A portion of Diego Rivera’s mural, “Man, Controller of the Universe.” This is a recreation, painted by Rivera, of the original mural, “Man at the Crossroads.” That’s Lenin on the left, Trotsky on the right. The original mural in Rockefeller Center was completed in 1933, but after Rivera refused to remove the portrtait of Lenin at Nelson Rockefeller’s request, Rockefeller had the mural plastered over, destroying it. This surviving recreation is in Mexico City at the Palacio de Belles Artes.

I confess: Politics fascinates me, but I never talk politics.

I'm a committed reader of several blogs with a political focus, and I subscribe to a number of periodicals with a particular political bent. As I probably mentioned elsewhere, my reading habits include a homeopathic dose of non-fiction before I get out of bed in the morning, over coffee. If I were to make a pie chart (I love charts and graphs), my morning breakdown would look like this:

Interestingly, I am equally fascinated by economics, especially macroeconomics. Both politics and economics present problems needing solutions, and I enjoy puzzling them out as a pleasant pastime. (As an aside, I often listen to Kyla Scanlon, who presents a blend of both topics in her podcasts.) I take an outsider's stance on these; the problems are best solved if you pretend you have no stake in the outcome.

I'll gladly talk economics. For me, the topic becomes a sort of parlor game among friends and family. But I won't talk politics.

"Talking" politics seems to inevitably end up "arguing" politics. And these days, it seems everyone is particularly thin-skinned. The best I'm willing to do, for example, is talk about different types of government and the theories behind them, and to do it in an academic, detached way, usually drawing my knowledge from some history book I recently read. (I enjoyed Ron Chernow's Washington: A Life, which tells the story of two opposing proposals for the nascent US government—one for a strong central government, as advocated by Alexander Hamilton, and another for a weak one that focuses power in the states, as advocated by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison—and how it all played out.) I look at this as another area of study that one might call macro-politics.

But to get down to the nitty-gritty of today's political scene? No, I avoid it; I eschew arguments.

I know many artists in history pinned a political badge to their breast, often defiantly, sometimes provocatively. It's a tradition. You can go back to find examples of artists who famously expressed their views:

• Pablo Picasso, who painted his "Guernica" in response to the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War;

• Joan Miró, who painted "The Reaper" as a symbol of resistance and Catalan identity;

• Diego Rivera, who painted "Many Crossroads" to represent the struggle of the working class;

• Francisco Goya, who painted "The Disasters of War" series as a testament to the Peninsular War's atrocities; and more recently,

• Ai Weiwei, who created "Sunflower Seeds" as a rebuke of the Chinese government

For these artists, expressing political views didn't seem to hurt them. They made a living through art despite it, and what's more, their legacy seems to be rooted in their views.

I have artist friends today who also feel free—no, obligated—to say what they think. (Curiously, their views don't show up in their art, unlike the views of the artists in the above list. One particularly outspoken friend paints mostly non-controversial subjects, such as barns and other detritus from farming's glory days.) But my question to my contemporaries: Does expressing your views hurt you financially as an artist?

For me, holding my tongue is a survival mechanism. Besides practicing conflict-avoidance, I also want to avoid turning away buyers of my art and future workshop students. So, I keep my views to myself. Perhaps I'm just weak and cowardly. Maybe after I'm dead I'll become more outspoken.