ART AND TOTALITARIANISM: Is there any act so absolutely heinous that the works of a great artist who commits it should be permanently banned from circulation?
That’s the question that Terry Teachout asked back in 2006 in a lengthy post that he linked to this past week. It seems especially timely given Camille Paglia’s article in the Wall Street Journal, and upcoming book on the history of art. If I’m understanding her comments in her podcast interview at Ricochet (which isn’t easy at times given their machine gun rate of delivery) much of her diagnosis for an artistic revival is based around the notion of replacing morality with aesthetics. While we definitely need a better class of artist, art doesn’t always lead to great civilizations, as Teachout notes. (See also: post-Wagnerian Germany, D.W. Griffith and Woodrow Wilson, pioneering Soviet filmmakers, etc.)
RELATED: Ronald Radosh on “The Case of Eric Hobsbawm: Can a Stalinist be a Good Historian?”
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Totalitarians as failed artists — a blast from the InstaPundit past. “Art kills.”