Some will be aware of the art of the contemporary far-right which has grown up out of a reaction against the aesthetic culture of our times. The so-called 'fashwave' movement or 'art right', features those images which are often found on YouTube thumbnails of alt-right vloggers, usually consisting of a combination of traditional images, either Greco-Roman or neoclassical sculpture, combined with surrealist vaporwave landscapes and cityscapes, wistfully presenting a kind of postmodern dream of a futuristic golden age with its roots firmly in ordered tradition. Some of these works have appeal, and some are blatant attempts to provoke reaction from the left, and indeed, react is exactly what the left has done. Red Ice TV undertook a good review of the phenomenon and the reactions to it themselves, but wanting to offer a slightly nuanced perspective, Reflections could not afford to overlook this new wave of 'youth art'.
Something ought to be made clear. Fashwave artists are not going to be the next da Vincis, but that is not their intention. When modern youth is fed such an endless diet of emptiness and pseudo-expression every single day through the medium of popular culture and modernist, 'conceptual art', it has been about time for a proper response by those who are disgusted by it, not least those at the forefront of this mass aesthetic re-education. In order to properly understand where fashwave has come from and what it seeks to achieve, it is only right to first consider what art itself is, whether it has a purpose beyond individualistic expression, and perhaps most importantly, whether or not fashwave itself could be classed as art.
Art is a form of self-expression. This is true, because if we look at artists throughout history, from the earliest cave paintings even to the present vacuous knick-knacks of modern art, there is some form of self-expression involved. But self-expression is not something which is solely limited to 'I, myself'; self-expression moves beyond the personal desires of the individual. For a wonderful defence of the true meaning of art, see the work of the philosopher Roger Scruton, who defines art in terms of that long-forgotten term, 'beauty'. Beauty itself is a complex word, and looking at the work of, say Francis Bacon demonstrates that respectable art does not always conform to conventional beauty; Bacon's beauty is not, for instance, on the same level of beauty as Botticelli's Birth of Venus. So what then is it which makes Bacon's Study after Velasquez beautiful when compared with Lawrence Weiner's Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole? Or Tracey Emin's My Bed?
Looking at Bacon's work speaks to us without words. We see a Pope, a figure of authority and holiness, as if chained to his seat, bound by the straight lines which vertically strike through the canvas, like bars of a cage. The face is one of torment, obscured by the bars, contorted into an expression of immense pain and suffering. Looking at Bacon's Study exhorts us almost to reach out and set free this poor soul from its torment. We are reminded, amongst the regal-coloured garments of purple, that even those in the highest of authority are humans, still subject to the same indecision, pain and troubles of life that all the rest of us face. There is something beautiful about it, however terrifying the image, to look into the eyes of the screaming Pope and contemplate what it tells us about ourselves. Through creating the art, Bacon has expressed himself by showing us that he considers the suffering of the human race to be important, but he has gone beyond himself, tapping into raw emotion which all of us can feel, and dragging such an important figure down to the level that all of us at some point in our lives will reach.
Consider now Weiner's offering. All we are faced with is a wall, upon which is printed a statement. We are neither disgusted nor awed by it, and merely read what it says. It is not even a thoughtful statement, and it encourages in the reader no discussion. There is no argument to Weiner's work, there are just words put together. Weiner and his supportive critics would no doubt argue that this is precisely the point - "to challenge what we consider to be an argument", or some such vacuous abstraction. Such sophisms are merely covers to the fact that creating them work took no skill, no self-expression beyond the artist's plucking of words out of his mind. Emin's My Bed is no better. We are presented with a mundane article, strewn with used condoms and dirty clothes. The bed itself tells us nothing other than that Emin has herself slept in it, that she is obviously an unkempt individual, and seems to allow for the collection of filth in her own home. She herself admitted that it is only art "because I say that it is." Here embodied is that individualistic and utilitarian fallacy which has corrupted the art world. Connecting with higher existence, with universal emotion, with humanity, has been thrown out of the window. There is no sense of the divine or the timeless or even reality. There is only me, myself and I; my pleasures, my life, my personal neuroses, and everyone else can go to Hell if they don't like it. It is the art of the selfish, the art of the self-rejecting, uncaring and narcissistic human.
What does this have to do with fashwave? Modern art has no merit, and much fashwave art is simply a reworking or hashed edit of older, classical art with some kind of retro-futurist filter. Perhaps that is what lies in the mindset of the art rightists. Perhaps, being children of the modern age, they yearn for what is past. Some, such as those at Red Ice, have attempted to justify some of the stranger pieces featuring images of Hitler and Swastikas against post-industrial backgrounds by saying that they were merely made "to piss off the left." This is not necessarily convincing. There are obviously going to be genuine neo-Nazis in amongst these artists, just as there are obviously going to be those who merely adopt the fashwave label to legitimately troll the left. Either way, the telos of their art is the same: to bring tradition back to the forefront of the artistic mind. Fashwave art is not in itself very impressive, it is culturally important, however, because it is a child of a time when art did have meaning.
Greco-Roman art, and its child, neoclassicism, valued the human form. Perfection, beauty, strength and achievement - values not just for the individual to aspire to, but for all. In that sense these things which supposed 'fascists' value is in fact the truest form of art: self-expression and a communal human connexion. It was a way of showing humans that, as creations of God, they too could achieve the highest of things if they could overcome or at least suppress their fallen nature. At the very least, it is no worse than the modern art which leftists croon over. Fashwave may not be especially original, but at least it is ramming the true purpose of old art into the face of those who have destroyed that same purpose.
Something ought to be made clear. Fashwave artists are not going to be the next da Vincis, but that is not their intention. When modern youth is fed such an endless diet of emptiness and pseudo-expression every single day through the medium of popular culture and modernist, 'conceptual art', it has been about time for a proper response by those who are disgusted by it, not least those at the forefront of this mass aesthetic re-education. In order to properly understand where fashwave has come from and what it seeks to achieve, it is only right to first consider what art itself is, whether it has a purpose beyond individualistic expression, and perhaps most importantly, whether or not fashwave itself could be classed as art.
Art is a form of self-expression. This is true, because if we look at artists throughout history, from the earliest cave paintings even to the present vacuous knick-knacks of modern art, there is some form of self-expression involved. But self-expression is not something which is solely limited to 'I, myself'; self-expression moves beyond the personal desires of the individual. For a wonderful defence of the true meaning of art, see the work of the philosopher Roger Scruton, who defines art in terms of that long-forgotten term, 'beauty'. Beauty itself is a complex word, and looking at the work of, say Francis Bacon demonstrates that respectable art does not always conform to conventional beauty; Bacon's beauty is not, for instance, on the same level of beauty as Botticelli's Birth of Venus. So what then is it which makes Bacon's Study after Velasquez beautiful when compared with Lawrence Weiner's Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole? Or Tracey Emin's My Bed?
Looking at Bacon's work speaks to us without words. We see a Pope, a figure of authority and holiness, as if chained to his seat, bound by the straight lines which vertically strike through the canvas, like bars of a cage. The face is one of torment, obscured by the bars, contorted into an expression of immense pain and suffering. Looking at Bacon's Study exhorts us almost to reach out and set free this poor soul from its torment. We are reminded, amongst the regal-coloured garments of purple, that even those in the highest of authority are humans, still subject to the same indecision, pain and troubles of life that all the rest of us face. There is something beautiful about it, however terrifying the image, to look into the eyes of the screaming Pope and contemplate what it tells us about ourselves. Through creating the art, Bacon has expressed himself by showing us that he considers the suffering of the human race to be important, but he has gone beyond himself, tapping into raw emotion which all of us can feel, and dragging such an important figure down to the level that all of us at some point in our lives will reach.
Consider now Weiner's offering. All we are faced with is a wall, upon which is printed a statement. We are neither disgusted nor awed by it, and merely read what it says. It is not even a thoughtful statement, and it encourages in the reader no discussion. There is no argument to Weiner's work, there are just words put together. Weiner and his supportive critics would no doubt argue that this is precisely the point - "to challenge what we consider to be an argument", or some such vacuous abstraction. Such sophisms are merely covers to the fact that creating them work took no skill, no self-expression beyond the artist's plucking of words out of his mind. Emin's My Bed is no better. We are presented with a mundane article, strewn with used condoms and dirty clothes. The bed itself tells us nothing other than that Emin has herself slept in it, that she is obviously an unkempt individual, and seems to allow for the collection of filth in her own home. She herself admitted that it is only art "because I say that it is." Here embodied is that individualistic and utilitarian fallacy which has corrupted the art world. Connecting with higher existence, with universal emotion, with humanity, has been thrown out of the window. There is no sense of the divine or the timeless or even reality. There is only me, myself and I; my pleasures, my life, my personal neuroses, and everyone else can go to Hell if they don't like it. It is the art of the selfish, the art of the self-rejecting, uncaring and narcissistic human.
What does this have to do with fashwave? Modern art has no merit, and much fashwave art is simply a reworking or hashed edit of older, classical art with some kind of retro-futurist filter. Perhaps that is what lies in the mindset of the art rightists. Perhaps, being children of the modern age, they yearn for what is past. Some, such as those at Red Ice, have attempted to justify some of the stranger pieces featuring images of Hitler and Swastikas against post-industrial backgrounds by saying that they were merely made "to piss off the left." This is not necessarily convincing. There are obviously going to be genuine neo-Nazis in amongst these artists, just as there are obviously going to be those who merely adopt the fashwave label to legitimately troll the left. Either way, the telos of their art is the same: to bring tradition back to the forefront of the artistic mind. Fashwave art is not in itself very impressive, it is culturally important, however, because it is a child of a time when art did have meaning.
Greco-Roman art, and its child, neoclassicism, valued the human form. Perfection, beauty, strength and achievement - values not just for the individual to aspire to, but for all. In that sense these things which supposed 'fascists' value is in fact the truest form of art: self-expression and a communal human connexion. It was a way of showing humans that, as creations of God, they too could achieve the highest of things if they could overcome or at least suppress their fallen nature. At the very least, it is no worse than the modern art which leftists croon over. Fashwave may not be especially original, but at least it is ramming the true purpose of old art into the face of those who have destroyed that same purpose.
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| Amen! |
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