There is something to be said for art that challenges. Good art challenges us. Chopin's Heroic Polanaise, Thomas Lawrence's painting "Arthur Atterly as an Etonian," E. M. Forster's novel A PASSAGE TO INDIA and Aeschylus' play The Persians all challenge us.
These works challenge our view of the world. They make us pause and compel us to listen or look or think more closely than we normally would. They drive our feelings and thoughts down unfamiliar channels but in ways that seem so natural.
To take Aeschylus first, The Persians is sympathetic toward the Persian defeat. This was written by an Athenian and produced only eight years after the Persian defeat at Salamis, the play must have represented an immense challenge to Greek sensibilities. After all, the Persians were intent on nothing less than the total subjugation of Greece and they almost achieved it. They had a record of success in conquest and an empire stretching from the Nile River in the West to the Oxus River in the East -- the largest empire of its time. The threat to Greece continued well after the Battle of Salamis -- only ending decades later when Alexander of Macedon conquered the Persian Empire in toto. Yet Aeschylus is able to work this into us feeling pity for the Persians, pity for their lost battles and utter defeat. Imagine a similar play being written, say, by a Frenchman 8 years after the First World War that portrayed the Germans in the same light.
This applies beyond literature. Lawrence's aforementioned painting likewise challenges us. In it we see an adolescent Arthur Atterly in the foreground in a pose of carefree defiance. The backgroud is a stormy sky and a gloomy landscape. Lawrence could have chosen a precise grove or a small room as a background. He could have put Atterly into a formal pose, perhaps seated with his hands folded in front of him. Instead Atterly, standing slightly turned, has one hand on his hip and another is holding a hat. Like the storm, he must hurry along. The juxtaposition of youthful and meterological storminess cries out that both are part of nature and will soon pass only to be created anew. Such is the nature of mankind and the weather. But what of modern art?
The challenge of modern art is on an entirely different level. It represents more a challenge to the category of art as such. It attacks its own foundations, just as do the stolen concepts Rand attacks in philosophy. It has the effect not as The Persians might have had for Ancient Athenians (of expanding their moral sensibilities, of seeing that even enemies suffer loss in a human way) but instead of confusion for confusion's sake. Even when it is merely playful, as in an Escher print -- which is truly a borderline case -- it is more an intellectual game than a serious challenge.
Unlike some, I don't think that modern art or even irrational art is as damaging to a culture as the lack of its opposite. To use a standard case, the problem with Weimar culture was not its irrational elements but that it had no balancing rational ones. Of course, irrational elements should not be extolled or ignored, but if a culture is generally rational, bad elements will be entirely marginal. This is akin to a healthy person being better able to survive illness than a person who is already in poor health.
Look at, for instance, American culture, especially after the 1960s and 1970s. There was a general artistic tilt in the direction of unreason. Yet, because the America is so tacitly rational and life-affirming, even this was not enough to destroy the culture or even its art. Unlike Germany, America has yet to fall to Naziism or some other totalitarian ideology. (See Leonard Peikoff's THE OMINOUS PARALLELS for more on this.)
The problem recast this way is not so much to attack the irrational as to seek out and praise the rational. It is better to search for positive elements in New Zealand's culture -- e.g., good art, rational people (who are not already in your camp), and such. The good must exist else the culture would have collapsed long ago. You can spend more than a lifetime cataloguing the bad side, but it would be more profitable in the long run to find and encourage the opposite. This is the more important task of justice: not to be a condemnor of evil but more a seeker and praiser of good. Recall too, as Rand noted, evil and irrationality are ultimately impotent.
This is put forth as well as digging into past artistic triumphs, becuase to do only the latter is not only typical but may lead to alienation. Objectivists and their intellectual cousins might come to think everything that ever was good was done in the past. That view can lead only to nostalgia not a truly creative culture. The psychological damage of such a view should be obvious. Ask yourself, if you'd rather live in Ancient Egypt after the pyramids were built and nothing was left to do but wait for the Hyksos and Persians to invade, or in Ancient Athens during the reign of Pericles when it seemed that the possibilities were limitless? It's like fondly recalling memories of childhood while forgetting that the present must be attended to. It is in the present that you live.
Add to this that by ignoring good art and artists that are working here and now you are overlooking allies and friends. All too often I see this happen. While Rand's novels are populated by nearly totally self-sufficient heroes, such as Howard Roark and John Galt, we should note that the good life is not lived alone, that not all heroes are so lacking in fragility. They need our friendship and assistance as much as the culture at large needs their work. Even the lion cub is vulnerable at birth. By recognizing this, we might build from scattered foundations a culture that affirms life's beauty and reason's goodness.
This article originally appeared in The Free Radical