A brief history of the evil of art

Social conservatives, right-wingers, and opponents of government spending are fond of attacking the arts. Modern visual art is considered immoral, sometimes blasphemous, a waste of time and public money.  But at the same time, from the left there's been a far quieter Marxist critique of the arts, suggesting that art fulfuls a disreputable role, necessary for the maintenance of an unequal and unfair capitalist society.

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu is the first important figure.  He wondered how class and social divisions persist in an allegedly mobile society, and he realised that what matters in society isn't just your bank balance, it's who you know and what you know.  He introduced the idea of social capital - the network of connections you have - and cultural capital - how much you know about the arts and other topics that are shared by the ruling classes.  Social capital quantifies how in many industries today, particularly the media, it's a question of who you know, with the children of existing well-paid staff getting the placements and internships; if 500 people apply for a job, it takes something more than talent to get your CV to the top of the pile, to even get an interview.  Cultural capital connects with older ideas like the "two cultures" and connoisseurship in the arts: that the upper classes are supposed to know about certain things, discuss certain topics, and attend certain cultural events (formerly Glyndebourne, now maybe Glastonbury), and not to know about other things (with the British upper classes, science, manufacturing, maybe even business).

Roger L Taylor, author of Art, an Enemy of the People, has described how art exists to promote a feeling of superiority in those in the know, and a corresponding condescension towards people not in the know.  He focused on how jazz went from popular music in New Orleans brothels to the province of chin-stroking obsessives (generally white and highly educated).  It's just as true among hipster music fans.  The teaching of art history may fulfil the same function as fee-paying schools or elite universities: it makes the children of the wealthy feel superior to the tastes of the masses and thus better able to govern, control, hire and fire them.

Taylor followed on from the work of John Berger and others in the early 1970s, who began to study art as part of a wider pattern of visual culture.  They showed the resemblance between art and advertising images, both historically (oil painting became popular because it was so good at painting people's lustrous possessions) and recently, where commercial art constantly refers to high art to gain prestige and to sell us stuff. More recently, advertisers have moved away from the traditional high arts to use alternative music, punk, and other subcultural media which is used less for its popularity than for the aura of sophistication and exclusivity it presents (hence despite the popularity of One Direction you're more likely to hear some winsome alt-folk in an advert than to get mainstream pop).

Larry Shiner's The Invention of Art is a more recent contribution, focusing particularly on the question of how some arts became high-status (classical music, which until the late 18th century was used by the rich as background noise) and others low-status (tapestry, weaving, things women did). The fact is inescapable that the development of the modern concept of art coincided with the development of modern capitalism and the end of a social system based on privilege of birth.  A new system of privilege was required.  This is well-attested in studies of art connoisseurship from the 18th century, the first time that paintings were sold openly by art-dealers to wealthy collectors rather than being primarily commissioned for religious and political institutions; to promote their products, dealers encouraged people to differentiate good and bad art and promoted the idea of taste, the judgement you need to buy paintings, which is so central to 18th century art-buying.

However, most critics and historians have failed to understand the full radicalism of this position. Feminist art historians have noted that the entire system of art history exists to support patriarchy and class-based power.  Yet, most refuse to accept that art is simply a creation of capitalism: they believe that somehow you can destroy the entire evil system of our thinking about art, and then be left with the pure essence of art which can be directly appreciated.  It's been common in the past 40 years for artists and art historians to challenge the artworld, the system of teaching and studying and selling art, and the history of the twentieth century avant-garde is largely a series of calls for all the old art to be destroyed and replaced with new art.  Yet far fewer artists or art historians are willing to accept that art may be a force for evil rather than good.