Posted by
Josh Kon on Thursday, January 22, 2009 9:51:36 PM
It is a confusing phenomenon that liberals like art. In one breath they have pompous contempt for all that came before them, while in another they respect with religious zealotry the beauties of the past.
In today's day and age, it seems that in order to enter the elite liberal ranks, one must have an arrogant disdain for all tradition. The only thing tradition teaches us, the liberals argue, is that things like slavery are good and freedom is bad. If you're a feminist liberal, for instance, tradition only teaches us patriarchal tyranny; if you're a social liberal, tradition can only offer us restrictions on our cherished and now radical individualism; and if you're just a plain old liberal, tradition fails to compel, because it is just not as evolved as us progressives.
Yet these same people cannot get enough of their art. Whether it is a blank white canvas or a 15th Century oil, liberals cannot help but salivate for a profound painting. And it is not that they dislike traditional art and only like its more modern and deranged offspring. It is almost universally true that the older the art is the more a liberal will pay to see it. Hypocrisy does not even begin to describe this inconsistency -- it just makes no sense. Or does it?
Liberals love art because it allows them to have their cake and eat it too. Art gives liberals access to the transcendent, access to an identity, access to their past, but with no moral responsibility. Our traditions, on the other hand, ask of us many things that we may not want to do.
The Mona Lisa demands of us nothing but to look at her.