The New Philistines: How Identity Politics Disfigure the Arts

by Sohrab Ahmari

Contemporary art is obsessed with the politics of identity. Visit any contemporary gallery, museum or theatre, and chances are the art on offer will be principally concerned with race, gender, sexuality, power and privilege.

The quest for truth, freedom and the sacred has been thrust aside to make room for identity politics. Mystery, individuality and beauty are out; radical feminism, racial grievance and queer theory are in. The result is a drearily predictable culture and the narrowing of the space for creative self-expression and honest criticism.

Sohrab Ahmari's book is a passionate cri de coeur against this state of affairs. The New Philistines takes readers deep inside a cultural scene where all manner of ugly, inept art is celebrated so long as it toes the ideological line, and where the artistic glories of the Western world are revised and disfigured to fit the rigid doctrines of identity politics.

The degree of politicisation means that art no longer performs its historical function, as a mirror and repository of the human spirit - something that should alarm not just art lovers but anyone who cares about the future of liberal civilisation.

Genres: Art, Politics, Nonfiction, Cultural, Philosophy

128 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 20, 2016

About the author

Sohrab Ahmari is a founder and editor of Compact: A Radical American Journal. Previously, he spent nearly a decade at News Corp., as op-ed editor of the New York Post and as a columnist and editor with the Wall Street Journal opinion pages in New York and London.

In addition to those publications, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Times Literary Supplement, The New Statesman, The Spectator, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Dissent, and The American Conservative, for which he is a contributing editor.

Born in Tehran, Iran, he lives with his wife and two children in Manhattan.

Reviews

[Pavol Hardos · Rating 2 out of 5]

This guy was advertised to me as a thinking man's conservative.

Well, the search continues.

As a connoisseur of sorts of the art of reactionary writing, I think I could construct a case on the decline and fall of the quality of reactionary writing. It would be quite the meta-reactionary tract.

Alas, it is so, this guy is no Scruton.

Art is under siege – and truth and beauty and beauty and truth can become casualties unless … unless stuff happens! Well, reactionary siege mentality does not need a blueprint for what should be done – just stop the siege! Everything should be the same as before when I came to know it and like it!

Anyway.

All you need to know about this pamphlet is already on display in the preface. There we learn that when “nothing stirs inside you when you visit that latest exhibit”, you should not lose hope, “you are not alone”. Ahmari is with you. He has been one of those who “*dutifully* attend the important gallery openings, theatre productions, museum retrospectives but find nothing that moves them”. Ahmari is going to tell you why. It’s the new philistines of the art world – their obsession with identity politics is blurred by obscurantist jargon. They are making modern art into a political tool of the in-group and hip cognoscenti, while effectively “discouraging outsiders from daring to criticize”.

(Ay, because past art movements were known to be generally populated by men of the people with not a pretentious bone in their body.)

Ahmari never quite bothers with defining what a philistine is, but that there is quite an encapsulation. Note the word “dutifully”. He goes because he should, it’s de rigueur. But he feels alienated, it does not click, nothing stirs in his “soul”. He does not understand, and what he does understand he does not like. Of course, he is not a philistine, perish the thought, how could he be!? He likes Shakespeare and goes to galleries and such. He can reference Caravaggio & Fassbinder like the best of them.

And because he has his ears to the ground – he is not a WSJ editorial writer for nothing – he notices trends. And he can give them catchy names. New Philistines!

[hands behind head, he leans proudly backward in his gedanken chair]

Identitarians are horrible people, you see. They use identity to make a point! Of course, Ahmari brings out his Iranian identity to help him make a point, too. But that was different! These identitarians are making points he does not like! They politicize stuff he believes should not be politicized – i.e. it should stay the same – and of course that is not a political statement, how dare you!

Anyway, Iranian revolution taught him how dangerous politics is for the arts – revolutionary guards decided what art was of the wrong kind.

Of course, identitarian art is also of the wrong kind, but differently!

Identitarian art is *just* as oppressive as the revolutionary guards! Well, maybe not entirely, but close enough. And if you’re not convinced, why, he throws socialist realism into the mix too. It’s also not the same, but it could be! You see, these identitarians are obsessed with power, and view art through identity and think it matters in its evaluation, production, distribution and consumption. They imbue art with their icky ideology.

Whereas his viewing and the general viewing of art for the entirety of western civilization was always and always ideology-free. There were no power relations at play, at all, ever. Shut up. Yes, granted, there were other reactionaries in the past who decried the shape and direction of their contemporaneous modern art – that it’s going down the drain – but *this time* it’s reaaaaaally bad. This. Is. The. Worst. Ever.

Much wow. Such provocative.

So, the entire first part of the essay – an illustrative case of the alleged identitarianism in art – is precipitated by his bad experience of going to a theatre play and not having a good time. I am not making this up. The Globe theatre in London, the hallowed ground of Bard fetishists of the originalist persuasion, has been taken over by a new art director with ideas and Ahmari is not pleased. He has fond memories of the place being a Skansen (an entirely modernist invention, but I digress) of wood & mud & inferior sound plan & Elizabethan theatrics, when men were men and men were women, too.

Obviously, infusing a classic play with forced contemporaneity can ruin anyone’s evening, but Ahmari smells foul play. They changed a few lines – and added concerns he thinks probably should not be concerns. They made characters into London hipsters, made some of them gay, made an issue of gender parity of performers and also of rape culture. All the while Puck frolicked with a squirt gun, the horror!

*cough*

The second part is the intellectually hefty one. Ahmari reads a special issue of Artforum, one of those inaccessible venues of the hip cognoscenti, and translates for us the criteria of this approach to art. Art and Identity is the name of the special issue and ‘queering’ is discussed, and art as a political project, & green eggs and ham, and he does not like them Sam I am. Identitarian criteria of intersectionality, legibility, visibility, and individualism all come to be inspected.

Holy Malevich, what are they!?

They are illiberal, Ahmari intones.

Oh, OK.

Did I say hefty? I meant rote and straw-man-y. There is a good case to be made against some of the Artforum writing – they do sound philosophically moronic in their cultural relativism – but Ahmari is not interested in making a considered argument, he wants an ideological broadside. So no point is left unsweeping, no straw man left unconstructed. He can convince only someone who already agrees with him.

And this ideal conformist reader of his is then taken on a trip in the third part. And is s/he rewarded! Ahmari takes the reader on a tour of some events in London, and oh boy, are they hilarious – what with their identity obsessions and their jargon! CGI dildos, consumptive capitalism, ethnic twerking, artists rambling incoherently in a public talk. Is this the art elite!?

And in case you didn’t know, you also learn, by the by, that Foucault is the source of this identitarian jargon and Genet is also super-fucking-problematic because he supported Palestinian terrorism. How is that relevant for their evaluation? Beats me, but it is enough for Ahmari to dismiss them (‘conceptual poppycock’ is what Foucault receives – that’s outré even by 90s standards of reactionary writing). But, you see, it’s the identitarians who peddle formalistic ideological thinking that stifles creativity, knowledge, and curiosity.

Ahmari also tips his hand when he describes posters on a gallery, designed by a German artist, they support the Remain side in the June referendum. They are ‘preachy and dour’, Ahmari informs us, and they didn’t work, and though he was sympathetic to the Remain side, he asks:

-- "What aesthetic or cultural purpose is served when our art is so overtly politicized? Or when galleries weaponise their cultural capital in this way?"

He does not answer, he moves on. But this is telling. Mind you, this question is prompted by a political poster – designed by an artist. I guess he thinks that political posters should have no visual quality? But it does show neatly his primary confusion: art and politics should be separate.

And if you pushed him a bit, he might admit that that is nonsense, impossible, ahistorical etc. so he probably would have to retreat to: art and ‘politics I don’t like’ should be separate.

Which is all that this ‘provocation’ boils down to. He does not like it. And he resents that the cultural elite use their cultural capital for political purposes. Of course, when economic capital is used similarly, that is probably fine. But since cultural capital is something he is in low supply of – being a WSJ op-ed writer probably means a negative balance sheet – it should not be used for advancing politics he does not like.

Losing privilege to equality can feel like oppression, as someone wise observed. Ahmari’s problem seems to be of a similar sort – losing the shallow moorings of his philistinism to winds of time feels like his beloved Art is under attack. And of course – being an educated philistine – he knows words like ‘philistine’. So those who attack his shallows – offering their new views and new ways of art – must be philistines themselves.

[For reactionary polemics you might award this 3 out of 5 Scrutons, for strength of provocation a 1 out of 5 Zizeks: that averages it to 2 stars.]

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a Sohrab Ahmari fanboy. I endorse his recent full-throated calls for creation of a post-liberal future, and admire that he has boldly claimed the mantle of leadership. What matter if Ahmari’s prescriptions are not yet fully coherent? The mark of a true leader is one who can inspire others to follow him. A man who claims to know with precision every step along the way, and the solution for every problem, is an ideologue or a grifter, not a man of destiny. This short book, Ahmari’s first, though barely three years old, is interesting primarily not for its topic, the ideological degradation of contemporary art. Rather, it’s interesting for what it shows about the arc of Ahmari’s thinking, about the march of post-liberalism, and about how art relates to post-liberalism.

Ahmari’s growth, to appropriate a term beloved by the Left, has been pretty dramatic. As he relates in his 2018 memoir, "From Fire, By Water," he grew up a Marxist semi-agnostic in Islamic Iran, then moved to the United States as a teenager, and gradually drifted rightward. Most recently, a fight he initiated with David French of National Review exposed fracture lines on the Right and brought into the open a burgeoning line of conservative thought, one that is tired of being a beautiful loser and instead insists that winning is both possible and necessary. We will not discuss that much here, even though it is a fascinating topic, and one upon which much turns. What matters is that competent, rational, unashamed post-liberals have emerged on the Right. By that term, I mean someone who rejects most or all of the Enlightenment as a failed project, and who regards wholesale rework of the American system as both desirable and necessary. Under this definition, a populist conservative such as Tucker Carlson is not a post-liberal. He overlaps some, and he may be an ally in the wars to come, but the distinction is that Carlson, for today, still maintains that a restoration, not a rework, is possible of the American system. Those who have moved beyond that are post-liberals.

By itself, that’s not enough to make a movement. The ferment on the Right throws up lots of new ideas, some good, some bad, some in-between. Most die unloved and unknown. What makes Ahmari different is two things. First, Ahmari occupies a prominent public position, op-ed editor of the New York Post. No other conservative, much less post-liberal conservative, occupies such a position; conservatives are all either stuck in the conservative ghetto with no relevance beyond it, or like David Brooks, are house conservatives on the plantations of the Left, docile and obedient to their masters, and careful to never pose any actual challenge to Left hegemony. Second, Ahmari is the only prominent post-liberal with any charisma. That is, there exist several fairly prominent post-liberals, notably Curtis Yarvin and Adrian Vermeule (very different from each other, to be sure). Their collective charisma does not register on any meter one can find. And true, there are some semi-prominent men with charisma who seem like they are working up to become post-liberals, notably Michael Anton. But he has not come out of the Enlightenment closet, though as I have said, he will, soon enough. That leaves Ahmari, for now at least, as the man of the hour on the post-liberal Right.

This seems like an odd introduction to a book putatively about art and its degradation. Certainly, Ahmari wrote The New Philistines in 2016 about art, not about post-liberalism. But viewed from 2019, it is a stepping stone, a puzzle piece, in the development of Ahmari’s thought. If it were a book purely about art, I would have little to say, since with all forms of art, I am not able to say much of worth to others, because my own discernment and insight is close to zero. Whether it is music, painting, theater, or architecture, I do not especially enjoy it, or really understand it. (My Jordan Peterson-approved five-factor personality test confirms this gut understanding of myself; I score very low in “creativity and aesthetic sensitivity. ”) I am not repelled by painting, or sculpture, but do not go out of my way to view it. Mozart sounds like elevator music to me. Theater is boring. Architecture I view instrumentally, as modes for living and a projection of power, although if I had to pick an art where I had some actual thoughts, it would be architecture.

Ahmari wrote this book about art. So let’s at least do him the courtesy of evaluating what he says. Ahmari does not claim that he has special insight, but he is a lot more appreciative of art than I am. He is at pains on the first page to acknowledge that since Aristotle, claims have been made that art has declined, and to distinguish this historical tendency from what is happening now. His claim, which he attempts to demonstrate within the book, is that “Things that are going wrong with art are qualitatively worse than all that came before.” Ahmari does not dislike Modernist art, for example, or if he does dislike it personally, he does not reject that it has artistic value, even if it is based on “radical ideas about what counts as beautiful and how to convey truth.” Today’s art world, however, is wholly and deliberately disconnected from any conception of beauty. Rather, it is a set of noxious manifestations of identity politics, a tool in the struggle to obtain power and release from supposed oppression, rather than being “a mirror and repository of the human spirit.”

Now, I suspect this idea that one generation usually thinks that art has declined since the previous one is exaggerated. Perhaps it is sometimes difficult to distinguish fashion from art, but I suspect the Ancient Greeks may sometimes have carped about changes in art, yet still for the most part attempted to make objective aesthetic judgments, and did not assume newer was not as good. The same was probably true for other eras of the efflorescence of high art, from the High Middle Ages to the Renaissance to the Islamic Golden Age. I could be wrong, not being at all an expert in art history, but I suspect that this exaggeration is deliberate and a form of modern propagandistic sophistry designed to shut down criticism. My bet is that we are often lectured that unfavorable comparisons of today’s art to art of the past are the historical norm is merely an attempt to prevent us from complaining about actual degradation that is occurring in modern times, by making the complaint seem uniformed and illegitimate, and therefore not calling for any response except contempt.

This is part of a broader pattern of historical propaganda about intergenerational conflict. I have been wondering lately if it is true, as you age, you become a curmudgeon, viscerally rejecting and unable to accept change, and unable to discern whether change is good or bad. Is the common belief that you become a fuddy-duddy as you age true, in other words? After some thought, I am pretty sure that to the extent this is true, it is a modern phenomenon. In any pre-1800 society, to be sure, there was always some conflict between young and old. After all, the young are impetuous and ambitious, desirous of making their way in the world, and the old are more cautious, due to experience and the desire not to lose what they have.

But there is a crucial distinction between demands for energetic action and demands to change the framework of society. In the pre-modern past the young did not see the ideas, the principles, the morals, the values of the old as stagnant. Young and old accepted the same things, usually; the differences arose from choosing tactics to achieve common ends, and the young expected and desired to mature into the old. If you read about the history of Venice, for example, there are none of these demands by the young for necessary change, or resistance by the old to it. Instead, everyone evaluated proposed actions from his perspective and with the wisdom he had. Examining history, it becomes clear that creating conflict among the generations about the basic values and morals of a society is yet another poisonous fruit of the Enlightenment, created by the fantasy that society must always change and move “forward”—that new emancipations must always be discovered, and new supposed oppressions therefore laid at the feet of the old. The good news is that like most Enlightenment ideas, this one is coming to its inevitable end, along with the destruction wrought. In a post-liberal society, under Foundationalism, the young will cooperate with the old; it will look more like the Venice of 1400, in this respect, than any modern Western society.

Well, that was another long tangent. Ahmari wrote this book when he was still living in London, so all the art he directly profiles is there. He begins with the ruination of the Shakespeare program offered at the restored Globe theater, citing the insane and creepy things that the new director, Emma Rice, appointed in 2016, did and said in the few months she was in charge before the book was published. All revolve around identity politics; all are dumb, from making A Midsummer Night’s Dream about homosexuals to mandating that male characters must be played by women in order to achieve 50-50 “gender parity.” Ahmari accurately and insightfully compares it all to Socialist Realism—art in the service of politics, not transgressive, just “drearily conformist.”

What Ahmari could not have known is that Rice was fired in April 2018. The cover story given was that the Globe’s board didn’t like her use of “sound and light rigging.” That’s obviously not the real reason; presumably the theater, which as Ahmari notes caters primarily to “tourists and students,” had lost money when it moved away from traditional enactments of Shakespeare’s plays. But maybe not—the Globe immediately hired another woman, Michelle Terry, who also insisted on “gender parity,” and promptly staged a version of Hamlet—with herself as Hamlet, a man far taller than her playing Ophelia, and a tiny woman playing Laertes. Or maybe the board, in thrall to woke capitalism, just couldn’t bring itself to hire a normal person who would offer plays the audience actually wanted.

Talk about Shakespeare is windup. The “New Philistines” of the book’s title are the critics and other art “professionals” who evaluate art purely on the basis of the politics of the hour. They, and especially the insider’s magazine Artforum, are Ahmari’s main target. Much of what Ahmari is trying to do is simply explain to normal people the thought processes and vocabulary used by these professionals, who form a deliberately insular yet highly influential group, “artists” who reject all beauty and all traditional purposes of art, yet are massively funded both by government largesse and private handouts. Ahmari notes that Artforum, and all its ilk, are basically “a mix of radical feminism, racial grievance, anti-capitalism, and queer theory.” (A glance at their website at this moment will confirm that nothing has changed.) Ahmari does us the favor of explaining what queer theory is, to the very limited extent it is coherently explainable. He also talks about the buzzwords always found jumbled with queer theory, such as intersectionality, visibility, and legibility, all of which of course are merely kaleidoscopic cant used by those untalented and unproductive to demand they receive unearned and undeserved power and money. At some level, it’s all so boring, or would be, if it wasn’t so destructive and evil.

We end the book with Ahmari travelling around London to art galleries, narrating the various worthless garbage he finds. All true, though not really all that new. Normal people paying even the slightest attention to contemporary art have known for decades exactly what our betters are doing, often with our money, while showering contempt on us. What does Ahmari propose in response? That is where things get interesting.

Bizarrely, given his current political stance, Ahmari’s 2016 prescriptions sound like Jonah Goldberg. Ahmari has more style, but what he wants here is the same ineffectual pleas that loser conservatives have been pushing for decades. More (classical) liberalism! More Enlightenment thought! (He even quotes the odious Lionel Trilling, who used to be famous but now, like most Baby Boomer idols, is mostly forgotten, about how awesome liberalism is.) Invocations of “individual rights,” “popular sovereignty,” and the like, we are told, are the cure for identitarian power politics, whose advocates are anti-liberal, opposed to a beneficial universalist culture that has no particular values. All we need is more tolerance for all. John Stuart Mill is not mentioned, but might as well be. Ahmari even claims that the market will ensure that, while this degradation has a trickle-down effect, most popular entertainment will stay “immune to the politicisation exerted by the New Philistines.” You know whom the Ahmari of 2016 sounds exactly like? You guessed it. David French.

Perhaps part of why Ahmari has, this year, changed his tune is because he realized that he had not understood his enemies. In this book, he naively attributes their actions to ignorance or incoherence, not to the malice that actually motivates them. “It escapes the identitarians’ notice that their embrace of absolute relativism makes hogwash of all their pretensions to social justice: why should their measure of morality, aesthetic value or justice stand, if all such measures are contingent about history, institutions, and power relations?” As I have discussed at length elsewhere, such coherence is far less important to most ideologies than some combination of money (which flows in massive quantities to the identitarians, and not only in art), the sweet feeling of transcendence and meaning, and, most of all, the luscious feeling of having both moral superiority and power over others. Ahmari wonders why creators of identitarian “art” don’t see they bring no joy, and that the masses still flock instead to the older art available (for now) in galleries. There is nothing to wonder about; for Ahmari refuses to draw the obvious conclusion—they have no interest in joy, only in feeling superior to, and lording it over, others, while profiting handsomely.

Change his tune he has, though. As I say, the details of that are a topic beyond this review, but one I have addressed at some length elsewhere. It is all part of the ferment on the Right from which something will arise, and that right soon. Talking about art, however, has made me want to turn to two related topics about which I have been thinking for some time. First, why is it that in modernity, art is associated with the Left, whereas that is not the historical pattern? Second, what will art look like under Foundationalism, my own prescribed post-liberal system?

By art being associated with the Left . . . [Review completes as first comment.]

[Ben Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why do so many people who visit modern, contemporary exhibitions leave feeling unfulfilled and disappointed? Could it be to do with the fact that we're living in an age where a pair of glasses left on the floor at an art gallery now have the potential of being mistaken for an exhibit?

The truth, as Ahmari so eloquently points out, is that identity politics has seeped through the cracks, with identitarians shamelessly infesting the world of art with their warped views of the world and ostensibly rebellious causes behind why they've provided us with exhibits that are qualitatively far worse than what we've ever been confronted with before. A coat draped over the back of a chair is, in their mind, viewed as art - and we're falling for it! Thousands upon thousands of people flock to these galleries to stand before exhibits which feature things that you could easily do yourself, or could be accidentally assembled by a child who has grasped at arbitrary objects around them. At what point did we, as a society, decide that art no longer needed to aesthetically pleasing and value work that quite clearly took no effort or skill to create?

Despite my feelings of agitation invoked by nature of the subjects touched on in this book, I learnt a lot from Ahmari's knowledge of art and politics. He takes the time to explain things in layman's terms, thus avoiding the unnecessary convoluted language we're often faced with in books like these. Although it was relatively short, I put this down to the fact that all the points were concise and clear, as well as easy to understand. To have included another chapter would have simply been pleonastic of Ahmari, as all that was necessary to say, was said.

I'd recommend this to anyone who feels a pang of indignation when they're reminded of what the world of art has degenerated into, as you're certainly not alone in that respect.

[Alasdair Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every paragraph is a searing indictment which fizzles on the page. I was predisposed to like this book but it deals with the subject matter in a way that is unflinching and honest. However it is more a pamphlet than a book, less a full argument than a greatest hits. Something more systematic and quantifiable would be still more compelling.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent, short introduction to a wider debate as to what the purpose of art is. Ahmari clearly sets out what he sees as a problem, when art is led by political impetus rather than aesthetics. He is particularly honing in on conceptual forms of art, in which the political intent is the SOLE intent. Where, Ahmari asks, are questions of beauty, individuality and mystery? Why are we faced with works that are so resolutely ugly, inept, conformist (to an Identity Politics agenda) and obscurantist. He is very good at pointing out the twaddle-speak of some artists and curators. His description of Emma Rice's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Shakespeare's Globe is memorable in its skewering of her lumbering approach. Ahmari, who acknowledges at the close of the book his conversion to Catholicism, clearly wants an Art which feeds the soul, and acknowledges human beings' connection to each other as universal subjects. He is never going to get agreement from the elite atheist guardians of contemporary culture - but the book raises a very important question as to why these atheists ought to be the only arbiters of which art goes before the public, especially that which is subsidized by public monies.

[strawberryfields · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across this little book because Mr Ahmari was a guest on the National Review's Bookmonger Podcast (which I can highly recommend) to promote it.

What can be said about yet another author diving into the jungle of identity politics, and scrutinizing this particular brand of political discourse for his influence on contemporary culture? Well. First of all let me start off by saying that this is probably not a book that will win over new converts for the side of the argument that is highly skeptical of the aforementioned subject. While writing this in early 2017, with the inauguration of President-elect Trump looming as well as the incoming events of Brexit, it seems to me that this is very much a settled subject in the way that you have probably already decided which side you are on, for better or worse (depending on your own viewpoint of course). Identity politics is the flavor of the week in leftist politics, and they will probably not change for the next decade or so.

And Sohrab Ahmari certainly is a writer that is aware of this tendency. In "The New Phillistines", he engages on a journey into the uncanny depths of identity politics at work in London's cultural scene, be it at the Globe Theatre or at fancy-schmancy art exhibitions. There will be quotes that will make you scratch your head or just burst into laughter, but do not expect a prolific, fundamental critique of philosophical concepts or anything like that. And this is fine, even more so because Mr. Ahmari makes it clear from the start that he will not do that in any way. If you think that this sounds a little like the good old "preaching to the converted", then you are probably right as well. But it is a well-written book that offers a good insight or two into the topic and is not "just" another compilation of hilarious identitarian nonsense.

(probably more a 3,5 than a 4 star but out of sympathy I chose 4)

[Ume · Rating 4 out of 5]

(This review was originally posted on Waterstones.com)

And I'm glad for it.

This little book acts as a quick introduction into the problem with identity politics and how they affect our art. Frustrated with the predictability and blandness of today's culture, subversive for the sake of being subversive, Ahmari explores why the (fairly) new obsession with our race, gender, sexual orientation, etc, etc (etc...) over our existence as individuals can have such harrowing effects on the culture we produce. And, most importantly, our freedom. You might think the problem is over-stated, that I and the author are being dramatic - but Ahmari is armed with examples from the Globe to academia, on how and why we are being censored all the time.

The result, of course, is vapidness. Forgettability. When a story is no longer there to tell a story, to make us thing, but to promote a narrative, to produce propaganda, to tell us the message so we don't have to think about it - we have a problem. When we do away or have to change old art so that it better suits our now delicate sensibilities - we have a problem. It closes our minds and ironically, focusing on group prisms with which to view society only divides us from each other further. Art becomes more distant than it ever has.

This book gives a quick, entertaining, and sometimes unbelievable, overview of all of this and its implications. It is a call back to freedom - and to tell the truth in art again - about the world, about ourselves - and we'll remember how universal it all can be.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read on the prevalence of identity politics in the arts.

The argument goes that beauty and truth have been thrown out in favour of the singular new totem of identity politics. This makes art bad, boring and conformist. Identitarians seek to divide, to deny individuality in favour of group identities, and in that sense have formed an illiberal movement; they are the new philistines.

Ahmari goes as far as to argue that this is ultimately a threat to liberal democracy, that identity politics has Balkanised western culture into opposing camps, leading to the rise of nationalist and illiberal movements across Europe and America. While I'm not sure I'm convinced by it, its an interesting theory.

"A theory of art that reduces people to group ideology and collective causes has no patience for the mysteries and contradictions that are the warp and weft of real life. The identitarians celebrate individual difference, so long as you are different in the same way."

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have seen many of my own interests distorted by the cancer that is identity politics which meant that it was all too interesting to understand another man's frustrations at it's interference in his world. Some of the references and anecdotal experience near brought me to tears and overall the book reaffirmed my belief that we'll soon see the demise of identity politics. Let's hope!

[jimmy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this up to try to get a better understanding of a view opposing mine.

Barely a coherent argument against so-called "identitarian" art and culture. It sounded like every other guy I've ever heard condemning "snowflakes," but in book (pamphlet?) form.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short, but perfect to get you thinking.

[Peter Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because I am have enjoyed reading a number of Sohrab Ahmari's articles covering political issues. However, after the short read I could tell that I was not the intended audience for the book whose main intent was to convince me of something that I already knew: that high art and culture has forsaken it's noble mission to inspire and uplift the soul and has instead become embodied with the political goals of identity politics. I find his take completely correct, and perhaps it will be helpful for many people of goodwill who are unaware that the art world has been taken over with the agenda of political ideology. However, for someone who strongly believes in identity politics I don't know that Ahmari would be able to persuade them that the politicization of the art world is necessarily a bad thing since it would be promoting the world view to which they ascribe. Ahmari doesn't attempt to dismantle identity politics in the book but does provide a number of anecdotes showing that the logic of the "new Philistines" is incoherent and that nothing will stand in the way of "progress", especially art.

[Fabrício Tavares De Moraes · Rating 3 out of 5]

O diagnóstico de Ahmari não é original, nem mesmo abrangente. A política identitária, que substitui os ditames estéticos por um ânsia jamais satisfeita pela 'representatividade' de todas minorias (reais ou supostas), é de fato a nova chave interpretativa da intelectualidade no meio artístico. Não somos agraciados, porém, com uma análise mais detida do fenômeno, contentando-se o autor com descrições de suas visitas 'investigativas' a alguns centros artísticos de Londres, somente para trazer-nos os famigerados procedimentos e obras de arte chocantes e controversos. Ademais, o livreto é perpassado por uma litania sobre o liberalismo e suas conquistas e glórias que nos foram legadas, na típica exaltação acrítica dos campeões das ideologias. E aparentemente o autor não se dá conta que parte dessa problemática no mundo da arte advém de alguns ideais do liberalismo levados às últimas consequências.

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now this is an opinion I can argue with while feeling like a participant in a discussion. Ahmari cracks open an art world crystallized by the identity politics it had once successfully championed and then hardened into rigidity - while I find he is too harsh a critic and disagree with many an assertion, he does raise important questions that many are too afraid to voice with any coherence or confidence.

[Bob · Rating 1 out of 5]

I went into this somewhat curious. I'm a socialist, but I do enjoy a good piece of reactionary writing (Nietzsche, Schmitt, Burke, Douthat, & al.). I've often used the epithet philistinism to describe the past decade's liberal identitarianism & vulgar realist accounts of arts, which are often inimical to formal understandings of arts & structural understandings of political economy.

So, I hoped Ahmari, like Paglia & Bloom before him, might have a few populist but interesting formal or conceptual observations amidst the usual paint-by-numbers chauvinist mourning for north atlantic culture. Sadly, that wasn't so.

The first chapter is a tedious complaint about a *Midsummer Night's Dream* production at the Globe. In fairness to Ahmari, the production sounds awful, but he lionizes the prior artistic director of the Globe for his originalism & alleged fidelity to the Shakespearean texts. However, I saw 2 productions under that prior director at the Globe, & they were neither consistently originalist nor (& this is the much more important point) good. Beside given Ahmari's more recent & very public trans- & queerphobia , I suspect he wouldn't be comfortable w/ scrupulously originalist all-male production of Shakespeare anyway.

The second chapter is an extended critique of a forum on queer theory in an art journal. To Ahmari's credit, the critique attends to the concepts & arguments of actually existing identitarianism much more than most anti-woke screeds, but his critique is still pretty boring & basic (yes, indeed he does go for the MLK line about the content of their characters). More annoyingly, in the second chapter he berates Marxism for its historicism, yet he never bothers to differentiate this curst historicism from his prior chapter's blest originalism.

The end of the book's depressed meditation on Brexit is standard center-right fare. From what little I know about Ahmari, he seems to have made a harder turn toward integralism (i.e. catholic fascism) in recent years, so he might now repudiate the tepid universalism of this text anyway. That turn of Ahmari's is a disturbing indicator about the direction of the populist right in today's increasingly authoritarian world, but at least integralist Ahmari probably would've written a more interesting & venomous version of this book.

[Emmett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last book to be finished as the year ends and I'm glad for it. It articulates a viable and elaborate response to the ulta-politicisation of art and the reduction of all art to the hip-and-happening buzzwords of 'politicisation' and 'transgression' and 'subversion'. Their dominance is palpable and observable (just compare the Tate Modern to, say, any art gallery displaying paintings up till the 1900s). I love how this collection of short arguments is described by its publisher Bite Back as a series of polemics; it is very thought-provoking, and puts it better in words any incipient second thoughts I have been having lately about the state of modern art and the worth of art and criticism. What is art and its relation to beauty? What is it modern art and their capitalisation on shock value until the knife edge is dulled? This slim volume echoes similar thoughts first introduced to me by the philosopher Roger Scruton on the current denigration of the worth of beauty, as reflected in architectural styles and modern art themes, and art critic Camille Paglia, on the contemporary mutilation of high/classical art and its mythological nudes by force-fitting them into the postmodern lenses of power dynamics and feminist theory. Why is art ultimately a matter of power? Should it be? What are other counter perspectives to current mainstream so-called 'subversive' thinking? The chapters are very clearly laid out, the reasons cogent. Ahmari's account of what it's like in the art world today a bit laborious and embarrassing to read, but a needful dip into obscurantism that plagues critical writing. He gives the reader substantial reasons to reject the contemporary approach and rethink the purpose of art and return and renew other dimensions of artistic pleasure into the spectator's encounter. The cover art, I think, deserves a special mention - people watching/looking at old paintings is an enduring affirmation of the lasting power, allure and enchantment of the old masters' handiwork. Why do their names endure, and their works continue to draw hundreds of thousands? May they live on.

[David Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A peak behind the curtains of politics

I appreciate the conviction in Ahmari's writing. This book exposes the politics of identity for what it is: a dead end. He helps those of us who aren't experts in art to understand the broader impact the art world has on everyday life. (Perhaps not as well as Francis Schaeffer, but this book has a narrower scope,it seems.) He shows how "identitarian politics" has engulfed the art world to its hurt, and led to the rising of nationalist reactions like Trump, Le Pen, and others.

Thoroughly enjoyable and well paced, I heartily recommend "The New Philistines."

[Kurt Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though the author introduces this as an exercise in viewing the high art scene through the lens of identity politics, it ends up being more the converse. While this wasn't inherently unpleasant or unwelcome, it is nevertheless a bit of a mis-billing. So there's that.
Still, a satisfactory little book, for what it is.

[Barbora Kraml · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is so elitist I cannot but laugh at all the arguments. It was written for middle/upper-classmen who cannot get over the fact there is more to art than renaissance nudes, and fail to understand that all art is political.

[Kristina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lost for words. What bunch of waffle.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick enough to read in an afternoon, but pithy enough to read thoughtfully. I thought it was a good read.

[TE · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this littlelittlelittle book (more a tract or pamphlet, really) in the wake of having recently read Bluebeard, a profound Kurt Vonnegut novel. It centers on one of my favorite outrage subjects (guilty pleasure): crap art. Literally. As in "Piss Christ*" crap art, which more and more frequently obsesses over the scatological, these days. Ahmari's story is also an interesting one. His own experiences are grounded in having grown up in Iran in the wake of the "cultural revolution," when Western art was systematically destroyed. These early experiences seemingly imparted at least a degree of residual trauma, but also a deep understanding of human nature, something that eludes many of the artists he writes about: "That a theocratic police state could be this afraid of Renaissance nudes in books taught me early on about the power of great art and its connection to human freedom."

I was, however, somewhat disappointed with this book overall. It was informative, but it wasn't really about art as much as it was about culture, specifically identity politics, which he argues have infected the art world, to its very great detriment, and everyone else's. He states, in fact, that "[h]ow we got to this point - how identity politics came to disfigure our culture - is the main subject of this polemic." In short: it's a capable, clearly expressed and legitimate criticism of the modern art establishment, but there was also a lot of lost opportunity. In general, it was rather high on opinion and low on actual knowledge or insight. I found it very light on research, particularly supporting evidence. The author rails a lot about the legitimate problems in the world of elite art, but the book is just too superficial and the "fluff" factor too high.

An "introduction" is probably a good way to describe this book on the whole, if not a lengthy opinion piece, as there just isn't a lot of meat on the bones. It does an adequate (but only just) job of describing what the "problems" are, in Ahmari's view, but, as per usual, with commentary on social issues, it offers few solutions, or even alternatives. He asserts that "the things going wrong with art now are qualitatively worse than all that came before." I get that technology (and all its ills) progresses exponentially, as do its often-unanticipated consequences, but aren't problems almost ALWAYS worse than everything that came before? What comes next will inevitably be collectively worse than the "bad" that exists now, as well; that's kind of just how it goes - it's unavoidable, so why bother complaining about it? That probably harkens back to the age-old question: what is art, anyway? The author argues, successfully, I think, that it's more than mere self-expression, but, as he noted in the introduction, changes in artistic style have been occurring since the origins of art itself, as has criticism of said changes and new interpretations. The only constant is change. Even those pieces we consider classic and timeless were often rejected in their own day.

To that end, I would have liked to have seen far more examples and historic parallels in this book. In the preface, he states: "Art in the late nineteenth century still sought after beauty and truth." And... ""Modernist art promoted radical ideas about what counts as beautiful and how to convey truth..." Really? What did some nineteenth-century critics say about Impressionism and other, similar revolutionary art movements? Horrid finger paintings! Beauty (and truth) are in the eye of the beholder, and it's concerning to me when authors attempt to recall mythical "golden ages" of the past when everything was virtuous and beautiful, pure and wholesome: the problem is, of course, that these eras never existed. That said, I'm on board with there being a difference between a Monet painting and Piss-Christ.

Further, Ahmari's definition of what constitutes "identity politics" is problematic for me. Were there "identity politics" in the nineteenth centnury (since he refers to this period a lot) which bled over into art movements? What has consituted "identity politics" in the past and what effects did they have? Do we just conceive the concept differently now, as it focuses primarily on notions of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and the like, although the function remains much the same? I would really have liked to have seen a thorough discussion about this issue in light of the subject. Again, it's a lost opportunity to understand what occurred in the past compared to what's happening now, as it relates to artistic expression. Recall the old saying (Mark Twain, wasn't it?): the only history that hasn't already happened is the history you don't know.

Specific examples supporting some of the broad-strokes statements Ahmari makes would also have been helpful. I agree with some of his statements, but I would have liked him to demonstrate his points more concretely. For example, I want an example of Western art fulfilling its central role, in his words, "to serve as a mirror and repository of the human spirit." Mine would be a Bierstadt painting: I would describe in detail the sweeping, panoramic views of wild nature, dynamic portraits which were produced in a time before color photographs. The immense size and scale of the scenes, themselves painted on enormous canvasses, preserve frozen in time the last vestiges of an untouched and uspoiled American West, like the absolutely celestial "Among the Sierra Nevada, California" (1868), or the stunning "Looking Down Yosemite Valley" (1865), or "Storm in the Mountains" (1870), which seethes with energy and light such that it transports viewers to a single moment in time. Talk about visibility and legibility! Art, as he notes, is a visual novel, telling a story, often a very complex one, without words. But, pick your poison: just provide an example of something and discuss it in detail.

That said, it's a good overview to how identity politics has become intertwined with the arts, but its rather limited scope, depth and breadth make it a rather shallow and cursory treatment of a complex subject. I was expecting something along the lines of Camille Paglia's work, but this read more like an extended op/ed.

*Note: yes, Piss Christ is a thing. Technically, "Immersion (Piss Christ)" (1987) is a photograph by American artist/photographer Andres Serrano which depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a tank of his own urine.

--------------NOTABLE PASSAGES------------

"What I take issue with is the veneer of faux-complexity and inaccessibility that masks a poverty of good deas. I believe... that 'it is possible to achieve artistic perfection within any style.' What I long for is art - in any medium or style - that reflects formal rigour and intellect along with genuine mystery and individuality."

Identitarian art rarely manages to raise marginalized and 'subaltern' voices. Doing so successfully requires really listening to such voices in all their rich complexity - whereas identitarian art usually searches for subaltern props with which to bash the 'dominant' culture. Opposing the 'oppressive' mainstream is more important than examining the peripheral as it really is."

"Master its political grammar, and you can easily decode any piece of identitarian art. For all its claims to 'transgressiveness,' identity art is drearily conformist."

"I pity these artists... their curiousity is limited by politics: identitarian politics takes away their freedom to explore great big questions in an uninhibited way, without pre-determined answers and concepts. Foucault, hardline feminism and queer theory wrap their art like a straitjacket. If their English grammar sounds broken, it is becuse their creative grammar is, too, and the source of the brokenness is the same."

[Jenn Bradford · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one has suffered from being on the shelf too long, and that's on me. Currently working through a to-read backlog. I think this one's mid-2010s perspective on woke conformity in the arts has aged - not badly, just it's very of-that-weird-time-in-history, and it would've been better read then. Live and learn. Buy books and read them, don't hoard them!

Still, there's much to like. The point about banal ugly sexualised (but unsexy) art is still very relevant today, and his indignation about whatever was going on at the Globe Theatre came across as the well-read indignation of someone who actually loves the works under attack, not just an anti-identitarian commentator using it to make a point. I also enjoyed the author cutting through what my old friend (and artist) used to call 'artbollocks', the weird prose used in the art world to sound profound without actually saying very much. While his own identity as an Iranian came up, I didn't feel it was central - it was mentioned where relevant and not elsewhere. Essentially Sohrab Ahmari isn't having a go at ID politics while imposing his own.

The author also didn't pad it out with waffle, making it more like an extended essay than a book-length book - bonus.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wee little 2016 pamphlet discussing the pollution of the Arts by Identitarian Politics. Well trodden ground for moi but always worthwhile to dip one's toes back in the cesspit of leftist thought.

Ahmari really takes one for the team here; I respect anyone with the patience to sift and sit through such trash. Perhaps the shortness of the pamphlet indicates him tapping out after a few months haha. Ahmari details woke Shakespeare, trans twerking and Foucault forged films. Exhaustingly lame content aimed to shock and awe is my read this 'Art'.

It's obviously sad to see institutions debauched and coffers drained by such garbage. Unfortunately Ahmari is still tied to Boomer liberalism and such a philosophy doesn't know what to do with the woke enemy. I'd suggest clearing them out and/or Parallelism. 3/5

[Cartoisb · Rating 3 out of 5]

The New Philistines is a polemic about how the art world is now dominated by identity politics and the negative effects that this is having on artistic development and society in general. While the author makes an entirely valid and important point, and he does a good job of tying his argument together at the end, there is not much new information in the book beyond that which is already obvious from looking at the art world today, and the explanation of identity politics itself is a bit clumsy and lacking in interesting points that aren’t made better in more substantial books on the subject such as Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds . The book is also very short - essentially a long article packaged in an impressive-looking hardback volume, and I expect there are many similar writings freely available on the internet or in magazines that cover the same topic.

[Christopher Blosser · Rating 2 out of 5]

A much-too-short polemic against the infiltration of identity politics into the art world -- starts out with a bang but fizzles in the middle. Its content covers ground already trod by Mark Lilla (see The Once and Future Liberal ), who shares Ahmari's concerns regarding the politicization of, well, pretty much anything together with its unhealthy implications for the functioning of civil society.

[Books Of The Way · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sohrab Ahmari hits the nail on the head with this short polemic. The hard-left bourgeois in the arts and academia have encouraged and fostered the balkanisation of western nations through their dogmatic oikophobia, which they routinely pass off as "intellectualism".

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating exploration of the rot in contemporary art, showcasing how politics is downstream of culture.

[Chloe Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

It feels like it could have been longer.

[Afaf Finan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has helped me understand today’s predominant ideology and weirdness, and how art in all its forms has become the voice of these “Identitarian” views! I just wish it were longer…