The Unfakening

On free markets and free expression.

When I was in art school way back when, a light box was a pricey acquisition or a carpentry project. People would build tables, load them with banks of fluorescent bulbs, wire them up, and top it all off with frosted Plexiglas. It was common to see such beasts at the end of art department hallways. You no more wanted to move a light box than a heavy desk. They required a wall outlet and the bulbs were an environmental mercury hazard.

Over time they got smaller, cheaper, less power-consumptive, and more ecological. I just picked up a new one to bring to Nepal. The area is that of an A4 sheet, it runs off of USB, and it’s five millimeters thick. Moreover, it was the same price as the box of 500 drafting dots I bought at the same time, just shy of $17.

This happened thanks to capitalism. Free markets drive innovation through competition and incentives. When entrepreneurs operate within a framework of property rights, voluntary exchange, and price signals, they are motivated to develop new products that better satisfy consumer desires. Profits reward those who successfully innovate, while competition continuously pushes everyone to improve or be outperformed by rivals. This environment encourages risk-taking, experimentation, and the allocation of resources toward promising ventures. Since ecological considerations count among consumer desires, products often innovate in that direction.

Planned economies struggle to innovate due to bad incentives and knowledge problems. When economic decisions are made through central planning rather than decentralized markets, the rewards for innovation are diminished as profits are socialized. Central planners face insurmountable challenges in gathering and comprehending the vast, detailed information needed to effectively direct resources toward innovative activities. Without prices to convey information about scarcity and consumer preferences, the economic system loses the feedback that guides technological advancement.

It has become clear that a goodly portion of American arts has been attached to the planned part of the economy. For instance, the Biden-era FEMA gave a half-million dollars to the Public Theater in New York City. I’m willing to give the theater the benefit of the doubt that it was intoning land acknowledgments, producing programming it described as “anti-racism and cultural transformation,” and putting on shows characterized as “queer” in one way or another coincidentally with receiving money from the Biden executive regime, not because of it. From a certain standpoint, it was the least FEMA could do after the state forced public venues to close for Covid. But you have to admit that the arrangement might look a trifle suspicious to the typical federal taxpayer who didn’t make it to the theater’s March 2023 solo transwoman rock musical.

Then there’s this recent business with the Art Museum of the Americas. As Artnet reported,

The Art Museum of the Americas, which is run the [sic] Organization of American States, has canceled two upcoming shows following cuts to its funding. One, titled ‘Before the Americas,’ featured work by Black artists across the Americas and the other highlighted queer artists from Canada.

The former show is said to have included Wilfredo Lam, Elizabeth Catlett, and Martin Puryear. Artnet strangely described nothing whatsoever about the latter. Here’s how the WaPo characterized it:

The exhibit, “Nature’s Wild With Andil Gosine” — which he describes as a “solo show with many artists” — was based on the artist’s 2021 book about queer theory and colonial law in the Caribbean. It had been scheduled to open March 21 and featured works by a dozen artists, many of them queer people of color and most of them Canadian.

Now we know why Artnet was mum. A show with Lam, Catlett, and Puryear sounds too legitimate to suffer cancellation as Trump drives a stake through the heart of federal DEI. “Nature’s Wild With Andil Gosine” sounds like the intended target. And while the curator of “Before the Americas,” Cheryl D. Edwards, is crying censorship, I’m looking at this paragraph at Artnet and scratching my head:

It’s unclear if the two shows could have progressed without funding. The OAS, which derives its authority from an intergovernmental body of around 30 member states, oversees the Art Museum of the Americas, though the U.S. has no direct control over its operations other than how much funding it provides to it. However, the U.S. government remains the OAS’s largest funder (contributing 50 to 60 percent of its budget), and as such wields significant influence, often using the organization for diplomatic leverage.

We have a museum operating on United States soil that is programmed by an “intergovernmental body.” “The structure of the OAS resembles that of the United Nations,” explains the WaPo, “with a general assembly and multiple international agencies.” American taxpayers are footing half or more of the bill for the thing. Again, I hesitate to blame anyone for this, but the WaPo notes that the museum “was officially opened in 1976 to celebrate the U.S. bicentennial,” and fifty years later it was gearing up to show Canadian queers of color in an exhibition based on a book about queer theory and colonial law in the Caribbean. In light of that history, Trump’s reorientation of the National Endowment for the Arts toward the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence seems like it falls within the range of reasonable things for the government to be doing. Brittany Allen of Literary Hub warns us, “Gird your loins. We’re about to get a lot of really bad, state-sponsored art.” To which I reply, what do you mean, about to?

I guess I’m unlike a lot of people in that art celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration and art delving into queer theory and colonial law in the Caribbean sound, to me, equally didactic and unpromising. I’ll say this, though: I have reasons to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration.

I don’t approve of all that Trump is doing regarding the economy. I was against tariffs back when Bernie Sanders was advocating for them. But the promise to cut $2 trillion of federal spending looks promising. Yes, in the near term it may bring on a recession. But government interference in markets since 2020 has produced trillions of dollars of misallocation and there’s no other way to clear it.

In the meantime, it will be interesting to watch as more and more of the arts are cut off from the fake economy and turned over to the real economy. I’m not convinced that it’s censorship when the OAS doesn’t give money to Cheryl D. Edwards any more than it’s censorship when they don’t give it to me. Besides which, some of that money was mine. If the FBI kicks down her door for mounting “Before the Americas” somewhere else, I’ll worry about it then. Her show sounds interesting; my objection is that it was so obviously sponsored by central planners. I hope she finds another venue for her exhibition. I hope they become unemployed.

The distinction between art emerging from the real economy versus the fake economy isn’t about content, but honesty of purpose. Art that needs bureaucratic life support to exist should prompt skepticism about whom it serves. Perhaps the coming correction—call it the Unfakening—will reveal which art connects with audiences and which was a kind of indirect propaganda. Who is tuning into their muses, and who is just milking the regnant order? I will aspire to be among the former as I slide my lightbox into a portfolio and pack for Nepal.

Content at DMJ is free but paid subscribers keep it coming. They also have access to Dissident Muse Salons, discounts in the print shop, and Friend on the Road consultations. Please consider becoming one yourself and thank you for reading.

Our current title in the Asynchronous Studio Book Club is Art in America 1945-1970: Writings from the Age of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Minimalism by Jed Perl. For more information, see the ASBC homepage.

The current exhibition in the Dissident Museum is David Curcio: The Point of the Needle.