Op-Ed: Art for Art's Sake at NEA and EIF

In all of the Obama administration's, NEA's and EIF's propagandistic efforts in the cause of "service" and promoting policies like healthcare and cap-and-trade, something very important is getting lost: The Arts. Time to get back to basics.

It is a common misconception that the arts are primarily a liberal domain and that conservatives are troglodytic on the subject, only coming out of our caves long enough to shout down Piss Christ, Elephant Dung Mary (both NEA-sanctioned projects, by the way) and to call for de-funding of the National Endowment for the Arts in blind caveman rage. In short, that we're all a bunch of far right Bible-thumping rednecks who couldn't tell a Lautrec from a latrine. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. I am as hardcore a conservative Libertarian-leaning Reagan Republican as they get (make that Independent now, actually), yet I am totally devoted to the arts and artistic advancement in all its forms. We are all human at our most basic levels, and that is where art really hits you: in the most visceral of places. Who cannot be struck profoundly by the imagery of Pablo Picasso's Guernica, the Cubist master's representation of the Nazi Stuka bombing raids on that doomed city during the Spanish Civil War? Or have the boundaries of their minds expanded by Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory? Or rendered speechless by the pure scale and range of Hieronymous Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights? Or taken in by the brilliant simplicity of Andy Warhol, or the complex Rorschach-like psychedelia of Peter Max?

Jay David Murphy

The 35th Annual National Suicide Prevention Week. Lady Liberty by Peter Max.

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Who cannot be uplifted by the overture to Mozart's Marriage of Figaro? Or stirred by Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries? Or Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which served such dark purpose for director Stanley Kubrick in A Clockwork Orange? These works permeate our culture from sea to shining sea. Always have. The finest classical music layers the soundtracks of our most treasured films, magnifying their emotional depths and climactic peaks, making those beloved films much more than the sums of their many parts. John Williams, one of the finest orchestral conductors America has ever produced (and whom I have seen conduct the 1812 Overture countless times at Boston's Hatch Shell to kick off the Fourth of July fireworks shows), cut his teeth with some of the finest musical scores ever written for television, one of his first being the emotive background music for the original Lost in Space TV series when he was just 29. That music still holds up today. Ten years later, Williams' Star Wars score became the highest-selling classical film soundtrack of all time and earned him his third Oscar. Like the best music, it brings vivid imagery to mind.

Capcom

Darth Vader

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My central point of discussing all of these incredible artistic achievements throughout history is merely to show how the arts bind us all together in the canvas of humanity, be we black, white, left, right, center, Jew, Gentile, Christian, Muslim or atheist. The larger point here being is that as a staunch admirer of the arts, I see three real problems and dangers with the Obama administration's focus on art for policy's sake. The first is that it takes us down the very slippery path to outright propaganda. The second is that is does so at taxpayer expense. The third, and perhaps the most tragic, is that it takes the National Endowment for the Arts further away from its original mission: bringing traditional and modern arts to young and old alike. I want to see the National Endowment for the Arts funding the next Vincent van Gogh, not the next Shepard Fairey. The next Steven Spielberg, not the next Leni Riefenstahl. I want to see young girls in elementary and middle schools learning to sing Sull'aria from Le Nozze de Figaro or even High School Musical, not "Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Barack Hussein Obama." I want to see Art for Art's Sake, not for politics' sake. I want to see films and TV shows that tell great stories, not propagandize "service" in their scripts as the EIF is "organically" interweaving into TV productions now and will be for some time. That is not the purpose of art, culture or even entertainment. That is the purpose of public service announcements, commercials and ads on bus kiosks. It is also a total loser money-wise. People watch those TV shows mostly to unwind from the real world after eight to twelve hours in it full bore, not be dragged back into it every other scene. You'd a-thunk Tinseltown pros would have learned by now that politics is box office poison. Ironically, much of the most profound art is revolutionary, counter-cultural and anti-government. Like the aforementioned Guernica. Or Pietro da Cortona's The Rape of the Sabine Women. Even Aristophanes' Lysistrata was a revolutionary statement in an ancient age and culture where war was the rule and not the exception. The revolutionary counterculture music of the 1960s personified by Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix defied and spit in the face of every societal convention there was. How ironic that the revolutionaries of that age seek to turn the situation on its head now that they are the government, and it is up to righty rebels like me to point out they have now become that which they once despised most: The Establishment. And are just as capable of fomenting division, injustice and tyranny as any other. Food for artistic thought.

White House Photo Office

Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States. In office: January 20, 1969 – August 9, 1974

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Last word. Though my father was a Christian, I am not religious. Therefore I have no stake in religion, being a devout agnostic hedging my bets. Yet I can clearly see that works like Piss Christ and Elephant Dung Mary are designed at their most basic level to offend, not to uplift, inspire or even disturb like Guernica. If such "artists" wish to make a career of creating such so-called "art" merely to offend, they are more than welcome to do so. Just not on my dime. Art may be in the eye of the beholder, but gross offense is a widely understood universal theme known intimately by both the offenders and the offended. Every person knows exactly what it means to step in a pile of dog crap. Or to smear an image sacred by many with it. That's not art. That's crap. And I ain't payin' for it if I have any say in the matter. As a taxpayer, shouldn't I? That is not to say I won't support phenomenal photography like Robert Mapplethorpe's, which I do. Just not his porn. A photo of a man getting a bullwhip up his colon belongs in a gay S&M club, not the NEA. In summation, I have absolutely no problem with the Obama administration and the National Endowment for the Arts spending my tax dollars in promoting real arts as I have described here: both classic and modern plays, sculpture, paintings, music, theater and film to bring the same excitement, wonder and awe to the millions of youths in this country that we experienced in our younger days, and to inspire future generations to create as yet unimagined and unimaginable works of art. The best, most uplifting art makes us all young at heart. Conversely, the use of art to propagandize and offend on my dime makes me old before my time. Should the NEA continue such detrimental activities as it has, as much as I really don't care in the least for far right wingers like Jerry Falwell, I will begin to start sounding a lot like him in calling for the NEA to be de-funded once and for all, and to leave the arts to those patrons who wish to support them out of their own pockets. In other words, thrust art fully into the realm of commerce and let individual works stand or sink on their own, as they have from the dawn of time up until 1965. That would be a tragedy. But no less of a tragedy than seeing taxpayer-funded arts warped in the name of politics. Do it for van Gogh. Not Van Jones.

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh - Self-portrait (1887).

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Besides being a hardcore Libertarian-leaning Reagan conservative, the author is also an award-winning short story writer, an optioned and award-nominated screenwriter, a valued contributor to Breitbart's Big Hollywood website, has worked in high tech for thirty years on radar, sonar, medical X-ray, ultrasound, meteorologic, oceanographic and satellite communications systems, holds co-inventor status on two electronic device patents, and played a Fender Stratocaster very loudly for four years in a heavy metal garage rock band. Oh, and I was born and raised in Cambridge. Misjudge conservatives at your own peril.