Trump Wants to Make Art Into a Tool of the State

Nobody knows exactly what Donald Trump’s order about the “internal review … exhibitions and materials” in the Smithson museums. All we know is that the result will be ugly. His complaining that the institution “came out of control”, too much focused on “how bad slavery was, makes it clear that she wants to whitewash the story.

A letter on 12 August to Smithsonan demanded that its exhibits “reflect the unity, progress and strong values ​​that determine American history.” This demand for “unity”, in particular, exposes Trump’s totalitarian nature: disagreement, disputes and heteroradoxal views will not be fascinated.

Conducting discussions and criticism, which was so important to the founders of the country that they secured their value in the first correction of the Constitution, is an anathema of the current regime in Washington. The founders acknowledged that we, the people, will always have complaints – the last word amendments – and because our unity (with each other, with each other) could only be the goal, not the intended fact and metaphysical postulate of history.

However, the White House wants to rewrite “American history” to create a new identity for this country. He wants to remake our culture because it follows Editan Andrew Breitbart This culture is located in the highest part of politics, but those who are in power realized that the flow circular and that political actions could be above culture. He wants to use his strength to remake our culture, or rather, to activate the tension in a resting state.

This is the tension I learned, in part, thanks to the Smithson, in particular, to the very first exhibition I remember, I saw in the American Smithson Art Museum in 1985. This show, called “American Art”, was a reconstruction from the exhibition of the same name, which took place in 1946. Some of the most famous artists of the day are included: Milton Ever, Romor Berden, Stewart Davis, Jasu Cuniosia, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O’KIF and Ben Shan. But the show was immediately enveloped in the dispute. The conservative press hated art, whose modernism mostly seems quite careful, and even President Harry S. Truman decided that he was competent as an artistic critic, but mostly manifested himself a racist, declaring: “If it’s art I’m hot“

But the objections to the 1946 exhibition were not exclusively aesthetic. Among the leaders who opposed him was the republican congressman from Michigan George A. Dander, Who thundered“Contemporary art is communist, because it is distorted and ugly, because it does not glorify our beautiful country and smiling people and our material progress. Art that does not glorify our country, simple, simple, breeds, dissatisfaction. Thus, confront our government and those who create it.”

Dunder won this battle. The State Department reduced the exhibition tour short and sold the works of art that it acquired. But he lost the war against the support of the US government contemporary art. As the Cold War stretched, it became apparent that it was far from being transformed by communism, contemporary art, which was rejected by the Soviet Union and its allies, as bourgeois two – can be used to promote American abroad. It is because of its critical position to cultural conventions, its official unwavering, determination to push away from the borders, and if possible, the modernism in the art, it seemed to be American values ​​of freedom and self-improvement, unlike the gray silence of the world over the iron curtain. It helped that the State Department, including the CIA, necessarily promoted modernist arts at every turn, using both a patent (support for the US Pavilion in the Venice Biennale, sponsoring jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Elington, and Dizzy Gillespie) Financing logs as such as such as logs, as such as financing magazines as such as financing logs Encounter and Parisian review). Republican successor to the Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, expressed What still prevails: “As long as our artists can create sincerity and conviction, there will be healthy disputes and progress in art.” He added: “How different it is in tyranny. When artists make slaves and instruments; when artists become the main advocates, progress is arrested, and the creation and genius are destroyed.”

You do not need to be a supporter of the CIA or even Eisenhower (whose warning about the Military-Industrial Complex will soon find confirmation in Vietnam) or the State Department to see that their welcome attitude towards “healthy disputes” in the art-gerbert Marcuz. And this was, as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. But the win was not much. A decade later, on September 11, a wound was inflicted on the American psyche, which was never healed. The 2008 mortgage crisis and the Covid-19 2020 pandemic increased the feeling that the world is out of joint; Meanwhile, the neoliberal attack on the workers has passed into the supercondu, bringing inequality to the level of invisible for almost a century. These days the word “progress” is little currency.

Once again, this defensively fake Dandnder’s dream about a beautiful country with smiling people who run in Washington. Our “internally considered” institutions will no longer be placed for serious artists – “sincerity and belief” who praised Eisenhower. Instead, they will be home to Kitsha, which were staged by the Cylvester Stalling and Kissing – Honorary in the Kennedy Center, and allegedly their artistic and literary equivalents. But today’s artists will not disappear. Even in the Soviet Union, the art of disagreement can never be completely abolished. What will become with a long cultural heritage in America is a more disturbing question. Of course, I do not expect that soon the exhibitions opened by the eyes, as in 1985. The show reminded that art is inherently controversial and that its inevitable inclusion in politics contains unresolved tensions.

Considering the show then for ArtforumJohn Yau (my companion to this visit to Washington 40 years ago) warned that the cancellation of the original show of 1946 should be considered closed, but rather a “careful fairy tale”. This is a story that reiterates at the present time.