WHY TRUE ARTISTS ARE OFTEN HYPOCRITES
(An application of Nietzsche’s theory of Aesthetics to Rock N Roll and other forms of Contemporary Art.)
WHY TRUE ARTISTS ARE OFTEN HYPOCRITES
(An application of Nietzsche’s theory of Aesthetics to Rock N Roll and other forms of Contemporary Art.)
By
David Gottfried
Not too long ago, I heard many people argue that an artist’s work should be rejected if it was at odds with his personal life. If one was not “true” to one’s art, one’s art was a sham. For example, this doctrine held that we should reject John Lennon’s tender love songs because Lennon, allegedly, was often a hot-blooded, tempestuous son of a bitch who said derogatory things about women, gay people and various minorities. In other words, because Lennon was a bruiser, his art was a lie and must be denounced. These people, these dreary and dull academics, know nothing of the wellsprings of art.
My defense of Lennon – and much of my analysis of contemporary art – is derived from the analysis of aesthetics put forth by Friedrich Nietzsche in the “Birth of Tragedy.” Nietzsche said the artist creates in his art that which eludes him in real life.
(I can already hear a bunch of hecklers say that that’s not what Nietzsche said and that Nietzsche concentrated on the chorus of Dionysus. Although Nietzsche devoted most of his attention to the chorus of Dionysus, it was not the only subject he addressed in the “Birth of Tragedy.”)
In art we give ourselves that which we are deprived of in real life. Since art allows us to experience that which does not exist in our actual lives, we should not be surprised that an artist’s life, and his art, are at odds.
Artists create in their art that which they can’t seem to possess or know or savor in real life. Therefore, the theory, often promulgated by feminists, that one’s art must be in sync with one’s personality, was rubbish. In any event, since Lennon was, at times, a bruiser in real life, he became a tender and loving man in his art.
This phenomenon is also apparent among musicians at the other end of the psychosexual spectrum. Our greatest gay rock ‘n rollers seem to exhibit a combustible, violent straightness in their optimal hits. David Bowie, who in his early work seemed to be queerness amplified by speed and warped by acid, probably reaches the apogee of rock ‘n roll excellence in “Suffragette City,” a stick of dynamite which closes with the memorable line, “Wham Bam, Thank you Ma’am.” Elton John, who is refreshingly forthright about his homosexuality, hit a home run with “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” a twister of a song which takes the most quotidian of things – beer, girls and fights – and whips them into a sonic frenzy.
Nietzsche’s theory –that art is propelled by the desire to create something at stark variance with the world we live in –also demonstrates why so much contemporary art glories in destructiveness and, pardon my alleged priggishness, filth.
In the past, life was, as one thinker put it, “Nasty, Brutish and Short.”
Children died, all the time, of Pertussis, Diphtheria, Scarlet Fever and many other maladies. Murder was, I suspect, much more prevalent (Alcohol consumption in the United States was, by most accounts, immeasurably greater in the first half of the 19th century than it is today; the police had fewer tools to identify culprits, e.g., there was no finger-printing). Poverty was much deeper and profound. Do read Arnold Bennet’s accounts of the poor houses of England set up after the poor Laws of 1830, read your Dickens. Children were routinely whipped. Domestic violence was as frequent as urination. And the Streets of urban centers were awash in raw sewage.
Because the world was so mean and harsh, the artist’s work product glistened like gold. Desirous of transcending the confines of a brutal, cold world, artists gave us exuberant beauty. The lines of Byron are lovely, limpid and sterling. All the computers of the world could never improve upon the Sistine Chapel – and if they could, I’d say nuke Silicon Valley.
Many people complain about the travails of modern living. I think they complain because, at times, it is much more fashionable to assume an ironic, sarcastic stance and to assail the world one lives in. If one were to praise the world like June Cleaver on “Leave it to Beaver,” one would be deemed a moronic, lobotomized fool of the Fifties.
Certainly, our world is awash in many problems. But until Covid and Donald Trump came along, white youth, in American suburbia, often had it better than most people in most of human history. Young people were rarely stricken with fearsome diseases. The entire world was at their fingertips by means of the internet. Sometimes, they would spend their junior year in college abroad and earn credit while, essentially, partying hearty. If they were gay, they were, for the past couple of decades, free of discrimination and AIDS as a fatal affliction. And unlike their Fathers and Grandfathers, they had no idea what the draft was. Going to war was something somebody else did.
The tranquility and acceptance and the somnolescent therapists with their relaxation tapes created a yen for a more vibrant, brilliant and scarier world. Just as the scarcity and harshness of the early Nineteenth Century gave us the Edenic splendor of the Romantic Poets, the affluence and comforts of contemporary America have fueled an art that glories in destruction. So television gave us Beavis and Butthead, and then South Park, and one artist saw fit to put horse dung on a picture of the virgin Mary. My cousin, Gilbert Gottfried, is a comedian who goes before national audiences to tell vulgar jokes about masturbation. (I really shouldn’t call them vulgar; I haven’t heard his act.)
America has raised millions of sheltered, spoiled, soft children, and the infantilism and effeminacy which is the hallmark of their lives have engendered a desire to become the artist as Marlboro Man. Hence the cowboy artists of alphabet city and other post industrial environs.