RandomBrandon.com Random Brandon Adamson

I recently did an interview with Swedish Radio discussing art and conservatism for a program they’re doing in light of their upcoming election. Here is a somewhat loose transcript of the interview:

Why did you start your conart website/group, http://conartists.org?

I have lived, worked and traveled around artistic and creative circles for most of my life, and in all that time I had never encountered a single other person who identified themselves as conservative(within those circles.) So several years ago I had an idea to create a somewhat secret society where conservative artists could network with one another and help each other out. Mainly though, it began as an experiment of sorts, like a radio signal that was beamed out to see if any other conservative artists out there like me existed in the universe. In the first year only two people joined! The next year many more started showing up. Fast forward a couple years and now we have over 100 members, all artists working through various mediums.

Some people would like to make it into a real political organization and become an actual political force. I’m pessimistic about all that stuff. I don’t see the point in trying much to change anything. Seems like a lesson in futility. And political activist types are usually annoying people. I don’t want to be one of them. For me then, it is just a harmless club.

Why do you think it is difficult to find conservative artists that are willing to talk about their political views?

I think that mainly it is just uncomfortable and most conservatives would not even bother.
The isolation from your peers that goes with being a politically conservative artist creates a sort of bunker mentality. Conservatives living in metropolitan areas are surrounded by liberals in all aspects of life, so they develop a thick skin and grow to become very tolerant of liberal points of view. There’s a certain politeness that comes with being in someone else’s territory, and not wanting to rock the boat. It’s not enough for liberals to just politely disagree with conservatives though. Generally conservatism is so alien and vile to them they think we’re evil, racist, heartless, sexist, bigoted, brutish, homophobes. They would criminalize our views and imprison us all if they could. Indeed in some countries they have, and do! So yes, it’s often just better to pipe down about politics and discuss mutual personal interests.

A professor I interviewed said that it is in the nature of art to be
progressive and that is something that is hard to combine with
conservative political views…What do you think about that?

Well, I think that generally artists tend to have their heads in the clouds and not be grounded in reality, so in that sense I agree with him. Imagination, creativity, isolation, anger, loneliness, desperation, the forces that drive people to be creative. These things are part of the human condition. Though they are often portayed and looked upon as alien creatures, conservatives are still human. Throughout history there have been countless conservative painters, writers, musicians, actors, playwrights, novelists, etc. In recent times I think it is more of a chicken and egg phenomenon though. Young people who become interested in art are bombarded with leftist cultural icons and education from an early age, so I think they just assume that’s what they are supposed to be and fall into those roles. A young person has to have the curiosity and initiative to seek out conservative literature or art(or the often hidden conservatism within many liberal works of art.) They would not be exposed to it by default.

In what way can you be political in your art and conservative?

Such a great and complicated question! Conservatism of course means different things to many different people. If I were to reduce it to a minimum, I would say that it is the resistance to change, specifically when the change threatens to be inferior to the status quo. It is the drive to preserve institutions, customs, and realistic notions of human nature, that are deemed to be worth preserving. It also is the desire to restore these things once they have been taken away and the perceived unnecessary changes have been forced upon us. Many artists are right wing madmen in their art, while they may be liberal politically. Conservatives generally despise modern art and most forms of abstract art, with a preference to more classical beauty, fundamentals, and technical proficiency…that basically these things are what they are and can’t be interpreted or perverted, truths can’t be molded to mean whatever one wants them to mean in order to appease each passing fad. As for me, it is somewhat ironic, but I personally am much more drawn to modernism, minimalism, pop art, etc…the kind of art most conservatives hate if they consider it art at all. I think it appeals to me because of the colors, the gargantuan, larger than life canvases and because I associate it with what I consider the golden age of America, 1940-1967. Though their original intentions were not to appeal to conservatives, it is quite ironic that now some people would be nostalgic and try to preserve those good old days of modernism. I find minimalism to be the most conservative form of art. The idea that something may be optimal when stripped to it’s bare functionality, beautiful in it’s basic color usage, and that continuously adding things to it won’t necessarily improve it’s aesthetic, but may in fact ruin it. More is not always better, and change is not always progress.

What would your Society-Utopia be? (will there be laws, will there be
schools, will there be free healthcare?)

I think the idea of any sort of Utopia is generally a leftist concept. There is no perfect world. You basically just take whatever you’ve got and do the best you can with it. As for the sort of ideal world I’d like to live in though, I would have to say the one depicted in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001 A Space Odyssey” comes pretty darn close. I think it’s an example of what western civilization should and could have achieved by now had we continued to push ourselves to the limits of our imagination. Those days are long gone. Not to worry though, as countries like China and India know quite well what brought us to the top and appear ready to fill the void. And I realize you have an important election coming up in Sweden…but I have to say that I think that democracy as a system of government has been a failure. It’s too much of a popularity contest. It’s so media driven now. People are shallow and uninformed. They will even vote/not vote for a person just based on how they look. Once people figure out that they can just vote the government to give them things, and more things, and yet even more things….all paid for by other people, then democracy is lost. Perhaps the old monarchies of the middle ages weren’t so bad. Sometimes you get a good king, sometimes you get a bad king. I think socialized health care is fine, and I support it… but the problem is that people on the left who support it never seem willing to accept the kind of restrictions required to make it financially feasible. You can’t have free health care, and mass immigration from impoverished third world countries, not to mention unrestricted reproduction. But who’s going to elect a politician who tells you that you’re not entitled to have things materialize for you out of thin air, when the other guy is saying that you can.