James Preston Allen writes, “Art in Democracy is essential.”
Yet he complains that the only art or culture that matters is
what makes money, as though that should not be the case.
He should remember what the great English poet Alexander Pope
(a Catholic who faced persecution in Protestant England, by the way) wrote
about the English language’s greatest writer, William Shakespeare:
"Shakespear, (whom you and ev'ry Play-house bill
Style the divine, the matchless, what you will)
For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight,
And grew Immortal in his own despight."
Shakespeare wrote “To be or not to be” for gain, not glory,
not goodwill, not to get a better king christened over the British Isles. He may
not have changed the politics of his country, but Shakespeare’s work still stuns,
moves, inspires, and influences our world.
Art has to sell. What can be more democratic than allowing
the people to choose, pay for what they want to see, hear, and ponder? Art doesn’t
sell, doesn’t impress, if the artist insists on shoving a message in our face,
advocating a position or a policy at the expense of revealing eternal values
and verities.
That matters of value, truth, worth: such concepts have
little interest for the Left. All they care about is power, and that’s why left-wing
activism under the guise of artistic expression fails to impress every time. Making
Art political has caused many artists to fail and has ruined the art scene for
the last thirty years.
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