Politics, Art, Hypocrisy

One of the great hypocrisies of art criticism is the sneer at art for being "political."

After all, in treating any subject--or refusing to treat that subject--one makes choices in which there is a politics, even if only at any implicit or unconscious level.

The result is that the condemnation is not of political art but of art the critic does not like--with, given the tendency toward Establishment politics of any critic likely to have a major platform, what they do not like dissent.

Of course, they are free to not like something for taking a view different from their own. Everybody likes having their view of the world validated, and dislikes having it challenged, and one or the other may be part of their experience of an art work. The problem is that rather than forthrightly owning to their prejudices they promulgate that double standard--because they are lacking in sufficient self-awareness to recognize it (as they will not if they are people of conventional outlook, as most people are), because they are too cowardly to admit to what they do recognize in the work and in themselves (specifically that they are not broad-minded enough to stand the disagreement), or simply because the admission would make more difficult the hatchet job they so delight in doing on a work that displeases them (or which, their feelings apart, may simply be required of them by peers, editors or anyone else).

As all this indicates, looking at a work with which one disagrees, appraising its good qualities and bad, and then discussing that openly and freely, is much, much more difficult than most realize--and frankly beyond many of those who strut about calling themselves professional critics.