WHO OWNS THE ARTISTS?
Many and various are the art-forms which the sons and grandsons of Ogi
have invented; but of all these forms, the one which bores us most
quickly is the parable--a little story made up for the purpose of
illustrating a special lesson. Therefore, I hasten to drop Ogi and his
sons and grandsons, and to say in plain English that this book is a
study of the artist in his relation to the propertied classes. Its
thesis is that from the dawn of human history, the path to honor and
success in the arts has been through the service and glorification of
the ruling classes; entertaining them, making them pleasant to
themselves, and teaching their subjects and slaves to stand in awe of
them.
Throughout this book the word artist is used, not in the narrow sense
popular in America, as a man who paints pictures and illustrates
magazines; but in its broad sense, as one who represents life
imaginatively by any device, whether picture or statue or poem or song
or symphony or opera or drama or novel. It is my intention to study
these artists from a point of view so far as I know entirely new; to ask
how they get their living, and what they do for it; to turn their
pockets inside out, and see what is in them and where it came from; to
put to them the question already put to priests and preachers, editors
and journalists, college presidents and professors, school
superintendents and teachers: WHO OWNS YOU, AND WHY?
The book will present an interpretation of the arts from the point of
view of the class struggle. It will study art works as instruments of
propaganda and repression, employed by the ruling classes of the
community; or as weapons of attack, employed by new classes rising into
power. It will study the artists who are recognized and honored by
critical authority, and ask to what extent they have been servants of
ruling class prestige and instruments of ruling class safety. It will
consider also the rebel artists, who have failed to serve their masters,
and ask what penalties they have paid for their rebellion.
The book purposes to investigate the whole process of art creation, and
to place the art function in relation to the sanity, health and progress
of mankind. It will attempt to set up new canons in the arts,
overturning many of the standards now accepted. A large part of the
world’s art treasures will be taken out to the scrap-heap, and a still
larger part transferred from the literature shelves to the history
shelves of the world’s library.
Since childhood the writer has lived most of his life in the world’s
art. For thirty years he has been studying it consciously, and for
twenty-five years he has been shaping in his mind the opinions here
recorded; testing and revising them by the art-works which he has
produced, and by the stream of other men’s work which has flowed through
his mind. His decisions are those of a working artist, one who has been
willing to experiment and blunder for himself, but who has also made it
his business to know and judge the world’s best achievements.
The conclusion to which he has come is that mankind is today under the
spell of utterly false conceptions of what art is and should be; of
utterly vicious and perverted standards of beauty and dignity. We list
six great art lies now prevailing in the world, which this book will
discuss:
Lie Number One: the Art for Art’s Sake lie; the notion that the end of
art is in the art work, and that the artist’s sole task is perfection of
form. It will be demonstrated that this lie is a defensive mechanism of
artists run to seed, and that its prevalence means degeneracy, not
merely in art, but in the society where such art appears.
Lie Number Two: the lie of Art Snobbery; the notion that art is
something esoteric, for the few, outside the grasp of the masses. It
will be demonstrated that with few exceptions of a special nature, great
art has always been popular art, and great artists have swayed the
people.
Lie Number Three: the lie of Art Tradition; the notion that new artists
must follow old models, and learn from the classics how to work. It will
be demonstrated that vital artists make their own technique; and that
present-day technique is far and away superior to the technique of any
art period preceding.
Lie Number Four: the lie of Art Dilettantism; the notion that the
purpose of art is entertainment and diversion, an escape from reality.
It will be demonstrated that this lie is a product of mental
inferiority, and that the true purpose of art is to alter reality.
Lie Number Five: the lie of the Art Pervert; the notion that art has
nothing to do with moral questions. It will be demonstrated that all art
deals with moral questions; since there are no other questions.
Lie Number Six: the lie of Vested Interest; the notion that art excludes
propaganda and has nothing to do with freedom and justice. Meeting that
issue without equivocation, we assert:
_All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda;
sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda._
As commentary on the above, we add, that when artists or art critics
make the assertion that art excludes propaganda, what they are saying is
that their kind of propaganda is art, and other kinds of propaganda are
not art. Orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is the other fellow’s
doxy.
As further commentary we explain that the word morality is not used in
its popular sense, as a set of rules forbidding you to steal your
neighbor’s purse or his wife. Morality is the science of conduct; and
since all life is conduct it follows that all art--whether it knows it
or not--deals with the question of how to be happy, and how to unfold
the possibilities of the human spirit. Some artists preach
self-restraint, and some preach self-indulgence; and both are preachers.
Some artists says that the purpose of art is beauty, and they produce
beautiful art works to demonstrate the truth of this doctrine; when such
art works are completed, they are beautiful demonstrations of the fact
that the purpose of art is to embody the artist’s ideas of truth and
desirable behavior.
What is art? We shall give a definition, and take the rest of the book
to prove it. We hope to prove it both psychologically, by watching the
art process at work, and historically, by analyzing the art works of the
ages. We assert:
_Art is a representation of life, modified by the personality of the
artist, for the purpose of modifying other personalities, inciting them
to changes of feeling, belief and action._
We put the further question: What is great art? We answer:
_Great art is produced when propaganda of vitality and importance is put
across with technical competence in terms of the art selected._
As commentary we add that whether a certain propaganda is really vital
and important is a question to be decided by the practical experience of
mankind. The artist may be overwhelmingly convinced that his particular
propaganda is of supreme importance, whereas the experience of the race
may prove that it is of slight importance; therefore, what was supposed
to be, and was for centuries taken to be a sublime work of art, turns
out to be a piece of trumpery and rubbish. But let the artist in the
labor of his spirit and by the stern discipline of hard thinking, find a
real path of progress for the race; let him reveal new impulses for men
to thrill to, new perils for them to overcome, new sacrifices for them
to make, new joys for them to experience; let him make himself master of
the technique of any one of the arts, and put that propaganda
adequately and vitally before his fellows--and so, and so alone, he may
produce real and enduring works of art.
POSTSCRIPT
Manifestly, all this depends upon the meaning given to the term
propaganda. The writer thought that he could trust his critics to look
it up in the dictionary; but during the serial publication of the book
he discovered that the critics share that false idea of the word which
was brought into fashion during the World War--this idea being itself a
piece of propaganda. Our own martial fervor was of course not
propaganda, it was truth and justice; but there crept in an evil enemy
thing, known as “German propaganda”; and so the word bears a stigma, and
when this book applies it to some honorable variety of teaching, the
critics say that we are “stretching its meaning,” and being absurd.
But all we are doing is to use the word correctly. The Standard
Dictionary defines propaganda as: “Effort directed systematically toward
the gaining of support for an opinion or course of action.” This, you
note, contains no suggestion of reprobation. Propaganda may be either
good or bad, according to the nature of the teaching and the motives of
the teacher. The Jesuits have been carrying on a propaganda of their
faith for three hundred years, and one does not have to share this faith
in order to admit their right to advocate it. The present writer has for
twenty-one years been carrying on a propaganda for Socialism, and has a
sturdy conviction that his time has not been wasted.
We take certain opinions and courses of action for granted; they come to
us easily, and when in a poem or other work of art we encounter the
advocacy of such things, it does not seem to us propaganda. Take, for
example, that favorite theme of poets, the following of our natural
impulses; it is pleasant to do this, and the poet who gives such advice
awakens no opposition. But it is different in the case of ideas which
require concentration of the attention and effort of will; such ideas
trouble and repel us, we resent them, and the term “propaganda” is our
expression of resentment. For example, the old poet Herrick advises:
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying,
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
Here is an attitude of relaxation toward life; the poet gives his advice
under a beautiful simile and with alluring melody, and therefore it is
poetry. If we should call it propaganda, all critics would agree that we
were “stretching the word,” and being absurd. But now, take four lines
by Matthew Arnold:
Charge once more, then, and be dumb!
Let the victors, when they come,
When the forts of folly fall,
Find your body by the wall.
Here is an utterance of exactly the opposite kind, an utterance of moral
conviction and resolution; the poet is bidding us fight for truth and
justice. Like Herrick, he has chosen an effective simile, and has put
music and fervor into his message; as poetry his lines are exactly as
good as Herrick’s; and yet, if we called them propaganda, how many
critics would object?
This book will endeavor to demonstrate that exactly the same thing
applies to the phenomena of the class struggle, as they appear either in
real life or in works of art. It comes easy to human beings to accept
society as it is, and to admire the great and strong and wealthy. On the
other hand, it gives us a painful wrench to be told that there are moral
excellences and heroic splendors in the souls of unwashed and
unbeautiful workingmen. We resent such ideas, and likewise the persons
who persist in forcing them into our minds; which explains why all
orthodox critics agree that Jesus and Tolstoi are propagandists, while
Shakespeare and Goethe are pure and unsullied creative artists. Such
distinction between “art” and “propaganda” is purely a class distinction
and a class weapon; itself a piece of ruling-class propaganda, a means
of duping the minds of men, and keeping them enslaved to false standards
both of art and of life.