One of the refrains I see when fas­cism ris­es (high­er than it already is) and begins to sweep across the country—well, let’s be hon­est here—the Repub­li­can Party…(which hap­pens to be in con­trol of every­thing right now) is that “at least the art will be great.” Like every­thing else is going to suck for mil­lions, and we might end up at war, and prob­a­bly a lot of mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple are going to die, but at least we’ll get some good albums and nov­els out of it.

But will we?

Will we real­ly?

Tur­bu­lent times of cul­tur­al ten­sion can cre­ate great artis­tic expres­sion. But if you’re grab­bing pop­corn and hop­ing for a lit art scene, you might want to check your his­to­ry books. Because you know what doesn’t cre­ate artis­tic expres­sion? Artists going hun­gry and keep­ing their heads down because they might get killed.

Artists have to get paid. I don’t know when the idea showed up that artists shouldn’t get paid for their work.

Actu­al­ly, I do.

It was in mid-nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry France (and late eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry Ger­many) when “art for art’s sake” became so absurd­ly en vogue. There were numer­ous sources of this thought—even in the West­ern Euro­pean art world (as a rejec­tion of util­i­tar­i­an­ism), but the point is that it’s a rel­a­tive­ly recent devel­op­ment and almost exclu­sive­ly one of the white male gen­try of colo­nial­ist pow­ers. Art con­sid­ered “prop­er” then became almost exclu­sive­ly some­thing done by “starv­ing artists” (or maybe by upper-class, white, gen­tle­men-of-leisure types who put their wives to work rais­ing the kids) and the idea that mon­ey “sul­lied” art showed up—ironically by a lot of peo­ple who weren’t ter­ri­bly wor­ried about mon­ey. It wasn’t that oth­er peo­ple weren’t MAKING art (and good art)… to pay the bills, it’s just that there was a self-ref­er­en­tial effect of what “count­ed” as good art that mir­rors most of the social hier­ar­chy of judge­ment around every­thing else. France and Ger­many were two tiny Euro­pean nations join­ing Eng­land in telling the rest of the world how “prop­er” peo­ple lived right around this time.

[*And I love me some Oscar Wilde, and he got him­self into debt ear­ly and often and died in pover­ty after his tri­al, but as the son of very afflu­ent, aris­to­crat­ic par­ents, he was doing okay before he start­ed writ­ing.]

Like­ly that’s one of the rea­sons that around that time, we have way too many books by land­ed gen­try white dudes with too much time on their hands. You know, the stuff of Harold Bloom. 

And like most things the pow­er elite and monied class­es do, the bour­geoisie adopt­ed it lock, stock, and cliché, so they could play at feel­ing like they were sophis­ti­cates and had some mod­icum of pow­er by enforc­ing sta­tus quos (instead of the real­i­ty of quite a few of them being pro­le­tar­i­ans about two pay­cheques away from des­ti­tute) and pro­ceed­ed to use it to cre­ate an arti­fi­cial class bar­ri­er to feel supe­ri­or to those ruf­fi­ans who expect­ed to be com­pen­sat­ed for their exper­tise and time.

This idea of art for art’s sake and starv­ing genius artists endured even after art explod­ed in its con­sump­tion, artists became celebri­ties, and most began to be exploit­ed by cap­i­tal­ism. Plen­ty of peo­ple DO make mon­ey off of art, enter­tain­ment, and con­tent. Artists just don’t see much of it.

First of all, fuck that. 

If you didn’t pay atten­tion in ANY human­i­ties class­es, let me give you the straight dope on this: some of the best, most endear­ing, most provoca­tive art came either back in the way back when an artist had a patron mak­ing sure they were WELL tak­en care of so they didn’t have to work some menial job that took them away from cre­ativ­i­ty (Michelan­ge­lo, Leonar­do, Shake­speare) or it came from when they absolute­ly were doing their art as a job (Bach, Dick­ens, Bolaño). Not starv­ing. Not above it all. Just like every­one else mak­ing a liv­ing.

I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but France and Ger­many at the height of Euro­pean colo­nial­ism don’t get to decide what makes for good art. They sure thought they did (par­tic­u­lar­ly at the time), but they didn’t. Even at the zenith of this myth about what was con­sid­ered “high” art for its own sake, you can still find bet­ter art that isn’t.

But also… an artist can’t be cre­at­ing some­thing you find sub­ver­sive if sub­ver­sion will get them hurt. And I’m not try­ing to be alarmist, but that’s one place where author­i­tar­i­an move­ments that cre­ate scape­goats in mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties always reli­ably wind up going—artists. Artists who don’t toe the line land in prison or get dead. These times are the LULLS in a nation’s artis­tic expres­sion. (Unless they’re crank­ing out a lot of pro­pa­gan­da.) So, this “sub­ver­sive art” thing is actu­al­ly the oppo­site of what is true.

You might find most artists to be pret­ty resilient against social con­se­quence. They don’t seem to care if they upset the sta­tus quo, and if you threat­en them with a one-way tick­et out of polite soci­ety, they’re liable to ask you if they can take the express train. But when you’re jail­ing them, dis­ap­pear­ing them for a while —or worse— for hav­ing the temer­i­ty to hold a black light to the sheets of soci­ety, you’re not going to get a lot of rous­ing artis­tic dis­course.

It turns out that social con­se­quence or even oppres­sion in the form of mar­gin­al­iza­tion might embold­en most artists, but actu­al­ly impris­on­ing them or worse (the sorts of behav­ior the cur­rent fas­cist regime is rock­et­ing towards like a bul­let train) has kind of a chill­ing effect on their cre­ativ­i­ty. Vio­lence puts humans in a sur­vival and cri­sis mode that isn’t where cre­ativ­i­ty hap­pens.

If you real­ly want your art to be off the hook, pay the shit out of artists (stop jerk­ing around with gen­er­a­tive AI slop) and make sure that they are safe enough to feel like they’re just los­ing social stand­ing and their comp’ed tick­ets to BRESH instead of their homes, their liveli­hood, their free­dom, and pos­si­bly their lives.

And on that note, here’s my patre­on if you’re look­ing for an artist to sup­port.