Table of Contents:
- QUESTION 3. WHAT SHOULD ART SOCIETIES BE DOING?
- POSTFACE
A Dialogue between Frank Ormond and Matthew Pungitore
Introduction by Frank Ormond
Postface by Matthew Pungitore
QUESTION 3.
WHAT SHOULD ART SOCIETIES BE DOING?
FRANK ORMOND’S RESPONSE—
Hello Matt,
This question is a good one, and I feel is motivated from a place of noble intent. The art world, both conventional and the world of the author, is plagued by several issues that we must confront if we intend to better art within society.
- AI technology has grown out of control and now threatens the artist’s livelihood with imitations of imitations. The soulless artwork is created without concern for what it replaces, and no concern in mind for what it means for the artists it removes. To confront this, artists must band together and influence companies and governments not to use AI artwork where necessary. The trade off here is that you risk this same stigma being attached to an independent actor who happens to use AI art because they can’t afford to pay an artist hundreds of dollars. This is understandable and no artist should be upset at them for this. Organize to target the large companies and governments, not individuals.
- Censorship and deplatforming, which I have previously discussed, continues to be an issue among artists. Where art can confront the controversial, the uncomfortable, or the distasteful, it exists still as art and should not be stifled beyond review and criticism. The moment an artist paints over another artist’s canvas, they have become a censor and not an artist, not matter how much I might personally dislike the artist’s depiction. To confront this, artists and authors must readily agree to openness and tolerance among their kin. This can also be fostered through the exchange of discussion and criticism in online spaces or local meet ups.
- ebooks and online publishing threatens to devastate print books and book stores. I previously acknowledged my own disdain for the big box stores, but I agree this is still a problem. To confront this, art societies must encourage print sales and physical representation of books be displayed. The ebook is here to stay, but it need not replace all print media with digital downloads. Author groups should encourage the formatting of print versions of ebooks as well as teaching new authors the benefit of selling physical books.
I feel these three steps, when taken by art societies, will greatly improve the direction of art and authorship in our society.
Thank you,
Frank Ormond
(END OF FRANK ORMOND’S RESPONSE.)
MATTHEW PUNGITORE’S RESPONSE—
Dear Frank,
A new Art-cognoscenti and a new intelligentsia must be formed to better serve Art and wisdom. We can no longer tolerate the irrationality and the insults that have been happening to the Art-world for decades. The human spirit must be resurrected, so must our surroundings, our towns, cities, the environment.
Artistic and intellectual societies have perhaps been too obscure, exclusive, or detached, and they should be reaching out much more than they have been to help more people, to educate people, and to create accessible circles of devoted artists. Artistic societies should do more to gather new members and teach them, pass on skills and techniques, so that artists can one day become masters of their craft. It should be easier for people who want to improve their craft, trade, or art to find a way into higher circles and societies.
One thing that could be done is the creation of influential new guilds that would collaborate with government agencies and well-established art societies to uphold higher quality standards, yes, but also to maintain affordable prices and costs for artists, artisans, and individuals operating within Art-zones; for example, such guilds would significantly lower all taxes, expenses, and fees on bookstores and galleries, thus aiding any landlords of said properties.
Every field of Art is interconnected, and they are interrelated with legislation and commerce. To save literature, we must revolutionize not only business and law but also fashion, music, architecture, and painting, too.
Wishing you all the best,
Matthew Pungitore
(END OF MATTHEW PUNGITORE’S RESPONSE.)
FRANK ORMOND’S REPLY TO MATTHEW PUNGITORE—
Dear Matt,
I am glad we share the same perspective on these things. It’s obvious that the art community as a whole needs to gather and push for accessibility and passing along knowledge. Techniques in painting, for example, are something many artists strive for all their lives and require a solid foundation to learn. Without a good sense of community and teaching these things could be lost to time.
Your idea behind creating guilds is a good one. I agree rallying together makes sense, but I feel that the polarization in our current culture will hamper such efforts. As long as artists continue to segment themselves from others due to political disagreements there can be no community. So how do we get around such things?
I feel that encouragement and criticism go hand in hand. We should provide criticism to ideas we disagree with, but highlight the good in such things as well. Art is one of the few places humanity has to pass along ideas and emotions unfiltered. We don’t want the community formed from these groups to apply their own filters.
It’s a hard thing to discuss because I understand the desire to not tolerate intolerance, but this is not what we’re discussing. I mean to say that people often interpret other artists by their politics and not their art. Such things have no place in the art world. I don’t care what Claude Monet’s voting record was.
Thank you,
Frank Ormond
(END OF FRANK ORMOND’S REPLY.)
MATTHEW PUNGITORE’S REPLY TO FRANK ORMOND—
Dear Frank,
To address your concerns regarding artistic communities and polarization, I will discuss six issues of importance:
- Ridiculous versus Renaissance.
- Duties of the Patricians.
- Rebuilding from the Ground up.
- Public Art.
- The Definition of Art.
- Modern Advances and Modern Decadence.
- Just as how Art is repelled by anti-art, so are artists and ministers of high culture and Beauty repelled by the bolshie activists and scolds of low culture and their globalist homogeneousness. No one should be forced into a group they dislike or a group who offends them. No one should find themselves limited to spaces that are humiliating and/or unsightly. No one should have to frequently endure the harmful effects of political correctness, misandry, misogyny, transphobia, racism, and classism. Those who do not want their kindred, folkways, languages, cultures, histories, legends, religions, spiritual practices, sacred lands, philosophies, and traditions to be forgotten, censored, erased, or replaced by societies who are against everything they value in every way; those who do not want to abandon their connections to their ancestors, the ancient world, and Mother Earth; and those who choose reverence over irreverence, Beauty over chaos, Love over lunacy: they are those who will join us in rebuilding and restoring our world.
- For my second topic, I would like to discuss what I think the upper classes of American society should be doing. It is the duty of patricians to fund the arts and high culture, but they should also be funding the fields of History and Archaeology, restoring sites of artistic, cultural, historical, and spiritual significance.
A slight digression, but consider the following: if there are people exhuming and disentombing in ancient burial sites, then the upper crust should pay professionals to put the mummies and the grave goods back where they were found and seal them back up. Let the souls of the dead rest in peace where they were originally buried long ago. Sacred objects and artifacts should not be spending too much time in laboratories, museums, and such.
In addition, the highest socioeconomic and political classes should have a noble duty to protect and cultivate the masses. The underclasses and the middle class could benefit from the guidance of the upper class, who should be instilling in the people of their nation, especially by setting a good example and behaving as proper role models, characteristics of sophistication, culture, good etiquette, courage, wisdom, strength, and respect for tradition. Those who have the largest amount of power and wealth should be building a civilized country, not a police state. Presently, there are probably a lot of people who do not have any kind of trust or faith in the upper class. What is needed, I believe, is a patriciate of philosophers, artists, scholars, and guardians on whom the people can depend for guidance, protection, and the upholding of shared values. - Legal and peaceful solutions should be found and put into action to rebuild our homes, our country, our lives from the ground up. The majority of contemporary art has become ludicrous because of the elites and major corporations. Those in control of the Art world do not agree with classical, traditional forms of Art and Beauty. Artists should be spreading awareness of the importance of objective Beauty and Classical Art. Instead of anger, let us act on Love, Pride, and Wisdom.
Artists should connect by their common interests and passions, their artistic ambitions, a desire to heal, to strengthen, and to beautify, instead of animosity or misery. One should do more than rant and eat one’s heart out over the evils and suffering of the world. Use your power to lift up yourself and others of like mind. - Think about the influence public art has on society. The buildings and monuments around us. The music in grocery stores, shopping malls, restaurants, and other public places. The roads, bridges, and train stations. Designs, murals, paintings, and images that decorate interiors. So on and so forth. Think about the works of Art that surround most of us daily.
Most of the architecture, monuments, and art pieces that decorate communal spaces are works of subversion, anti-art, graffiti, pieces that attack the traditional and the Beautiful.
Like a cacodemonic cacophony, all around us is the nameless raunch and swagger of contemporary music of any genre. In my opinion, most contemporary music, and a majority of music and music genres since the 1940s CE, in general, especially the mainstream music of today that gets played everywhere, has been catchy and entertaining yet mediocre, anticlassical, and obscenely shallow.
Remember, most major contemporary artists see Beauty and Tradition differently; they have the fame, power, and influence, so they currently decide what the standards are; they decide what our monuments, museums, cities, and fashions look like, what the music sounds like. Do you think their standards have been worthy standards? - Those presently in control of the Art world thrive on distorting the definition of Art. That is another reason why more artists should rediscover true Beauty and look for a definition.
What are the types of Art? To me, they are, mainly, the following: painting, stained glass, drawing, architecture, sculpture, pottery, ceramics, writing, music, oral storytelling, puppetry, the theatre, opera, dance, clothing, costumery, perfumery, jewelry, and cooking. There are probably other forms of Art that I have not mentioned here, but that is a topic that is too large for the scope of this discussion. Hopefully, I assume you got the gist of my meaning. As you may already know, I do not fully consider video games, photography, or movies to be kinds of Art. To me, photography and film are between prestidigitation and science; video games belong somewhere among sports, prestidigitation, and science. That, too, is a topic too large for this discussion.
A work of Art should have sufficient levels of Virtue and Beauty. Normally, artistic works, especially those of fiction, cannot be immoral or moral; there are, probably, exceptions, of course, just as there are exceptions to every rule, generally speaking. Nevertheless, having qualities of objective Beauty and/or Virtue can increase the artistic strength and aestheticism of a work. A piece of Art’s levels of Virtue are incredibly important, as a decently virtuous piece or composition is preferable. In some ways, the more unreal or subjective a work, the farther away from reality, the closer the work itself is to spirit, myth, and legend, the more artistic it is. Sometimes, even works of Art that do not obviously promote or represent any kind of moral, ethical values can still, potentially, have sufficient levels of Virtue. Sometimes, even works of Art that are transgressive or shocking can still, potentially, have enough virtuous form or virtuous traits in decent degrees.
Not every work of Art tells us something about the one who created it. Sometimes, an artwork says nothing about its creator; in fact, there are times when a work of Art transforms, exists for itself, creates its own world, has its own language, and removes any traces of the artist: in such a case, the artist of such a work of Art can claim that composition as their own creation, only the artist who made it can own or control the work in any way, the artist holds things like the copyright to the work, but said creation blooms with metamorphosis to the artwork’s unique inner presence.
In the end, it is important that we as artists create or at least try to create works of Art that are ethical, and our works should also be beautiful and thought-provoking. We must restore traditional concepts of Beauty before we can redirect and take Art to greater heights. Learn about and respect objective Beauty first, then discover your subjective Beauty. When Beauty and ornamentation are worshipped again, perhaps our cities, music, and fashions can return to the glory and elegance of times before the twentieth century.
- Modern Humanity (1900 CE to 2024 CE) has made wonderful moral, ethical, scientific, medical, and technologic advances that have made numerous aspects of present-day Life better than previous conditions; nevertheless, modern Humanity has also lost much. Yes, there are many things we today should be thankful for, but for the most part, so far, the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries have been a grim travesty of existence.
America today faces many dire problems. In our country, there is currently too much pain, injustice, fear, hunger, homelessness, social and economic instability and disparity, mass decline in general physical and mental health, unrestrained migration, undocumented or illegal immigration, firearm- and gang-related violence, organized crime, trouble and misery related to War and global conflict and the military-industrial complex, corruption in legislation and law enforcement, erosion of cultural and historical landmarks, and many other problems, but that is a topic much too large for me to really discuss adequately here in this article; therefore, I will bring the focus of our conversation back to the subjects of entertainment and Art.
Vice and Vanity are celebrated in the pop culture and mainstream entertainment of the United States and the West, undeniably, and a majority of the world’s contemporary artworks, movies, series, streaming shows, video games, mobile games, and whatnot encourage contentious distraction and division, mindless gratification, lowbrow vulgarity, and misandry. The world of contemporary Art, the fashion industry, the sport industry, the tech industry, academia, virtually everything nowadays is influenced or shaped worldwide, in one way or another, by the rich and powerful, big banking, big oil and energy, feminist and woke agendas, champagne socialists, technocrats, warfare, transhumanism, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, major corporations, and so forth. Hence, it seems to me that, not artistic passions, but a combination of the wealthy, capitalism, communism, and radical left-wing political agendas has been really controlling the course of contemporary Art and the Art scene since the start of the Cold War.
Public Art should not contribute to a culture of guilt and victimhood. It should not champion base, vulgar emotions; vain, narcissistic desires; empty debauchery; mechanical, technological, or scientific fanaticism; pop culture crazes; puritanical fascism; totalitarianism; or agitprop.
The public Art of any enlightened, rational nation should improve and sustain the majesty and virtue of that nation’s citizens and their ancestors; it also should extol their historical, spiritual, philosophical, artistic, political, and martial visionaries, leaders, and torchbearers. Additionally, a nation’s public Art should praise and reflect the major cultural, historical, and ethnic identities of said nation; the Gods and major deities of its citizens; and the shared righteous values of its populace and plebeians. More importantly, public Art should serve as a sublime touchstone for civic custom and principle.
Human beings should be cordial, forgiving, and well-mannered. People of any class should practice forbearance, courteousness, and public decorousness. People should be dignified, easygoing, understanding, and considerate. Public Art should reflect those magnificent attributes of virtue and grace. Honor and decency should be supported by public Art, which should also encourage compassion, goodwill, and aestheticism. Just as having a fair system of propriety is beneficial, having healthy standards of good taste in public Art and fashion is important, too. The buildings people are forced to see and the music people are forced to hear in public everyday should be aesthetically and classically beautiful.
Legal and peaceful change is needed. Those who do care about restoring Beauty to our world cannot rely on those who do not.
Respectfully,
Matthew Pungitore
(END OF MATTHEW PUNGITORE’S REPLY.)
POSTFACE
This article would not have existed without Frank Ormond’s support of my writings and opinions. Frank and I do not agree on everything, our faiths may be different, but, to my eye, both of us are interested in Literature enough to want to think up solutions that could reduce the current difficulties that writers today face every day. That’s how I see it. Our plan was to make something that would be a correspondence but partly a Q and A meeting. This project began when Frank expressed interest in the theories and suggestions I had stated to him about improving American Art and society.
Frank Ormond and I edited the basic skeleton of this article, and we worked together on crafting compelling questions that would best bring about the right analytical mood we required to suit and emphasize our theories about Art and Society.
Frank Ormond and I worked separately on our answers. I wrote my responses unaided and independently of him. Likewise, Frank wrote his responses independently of me. Readers will benefit from analyzing the two different, distinctive points of view. Our responses have a letter format; I like this structure, something conversational and conservative, since it allows us to pay homage to classic styles and ancient writings like Seneca’s Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium.
In this article, I hoped to raise a question: how can more support be provided for the works of small-, independent-, vanity-, self-publishing, and the like? Alas, this question, and the answer to it, is part of something much larger and complex. See, there are many different types of Art and artists, too many to list here; similarly, there are many types of entertainment—Art and entertainment are crucial for the development and survival of a healthy society; indeed, they are the true measure of a civilization; Art and entertainment, however, cannot flourish without a high culture. A society’s culture will be elevated only when, first, there is nurturing and cultivating of that society’s areas of etiquette, philosophy, and religion; education and history; health, fitness, therapy, and rehabilitation; economy, business, and law; agriculture and environmentalism; and politics.
It is my belief that supporting the development of the arts (such as patronage for beautiful works of drama, fashion, architecture, or literature), in ways that promote aesthetics or traditional standards of Beauty, even when those styles are somewhat avant-garde, would advance social cohesion, teach crafts and trades, create jobs, develop other areas of a civilization, and lift society out of the barbarism.
Low culture is aggravated by industrialism; mass production; ochlocracy, oligopoly, capitalism, communism, and other types of intemperate business and/or government systems; social media; pop culture; inflation; immoderate elitism; and severe authoritarianism. High art and high culture are favorable, therefore, and should be cherished. One way to preserve and strengthen national and ethnic cultures is by moving away from big business and supporting small business, supporting sage elders and new blood, tradition and revolution at balance, respecting what is behind us and looking beyond, forward, with hope. How can we save our cultures, our traditions, our faiths, myths and legends, Art, and the environment? Let’s grow awareness until solutions can be found.
I am honored that Frank Ormond thought highly enough of my ideas and propositions that he worked on this uncommon kind of discourse with me and allowed this project to be published up on his own blog. It has been a pleasure to converse in this unique way with Mr. Ormond and to read his opinions. I thank you, reader, for reading this; if you enjoyed what you’ve read here, let us know, and tell your friends, please! I hope this article brings people together in harmony. I hope this article will serve to inspire others to worship Beauty and Wisdom always. I wish you evermore the very best. May peace eternally reign.
With gratitude,
Matthew Pungitore
29 April 2024
Hingham, Massachusetts
LINKS
- Matthew Pungitore’s BookBaby Store
- Frank Ormond’s Amazon Store
Frank Ormond 