Art Reboot

38 History shows us that the more entrenched the intellectual tyrant, the more subjugated art becomes. Instead of acting as a vehicle for enabling and enhancing civilisation, it becomes pressed into service in much less useful and often much more pernicious ways, not least political and religious propaganda, perhaps its most widespread use in recent centuries. Hence the need for a second revolution, one in which art can overthrow the tyranny of the intellect and regain its function as a conduit between intellectual and trans-intellectual ways of understand- ing ourselves. Such a revolution became necessary in the West, where art’s role had for centuries been focused on glorifying states and reli- gions. The importance of this has largely been lost amid the excitement about the twentieth-century art revolution. The work it produced was undoubtedly innovative and dynamic in its own right, but it created a widespread misunderstanding that it repre- sented the cutting edge of global art. In fact, it only represented the cutting edge of western art. Such misunderstandings about the true nature and impor- tance of cultural phenomena are common. Consider, for instance, the Crusades. To Christians and Muslims they were epoch- shattering, culture-threatening events; civilisation itself seemed at stake. Yet outside that arena they were largely irrelevant. Hegemonic western power, seen across so many aspects of culture in the last 400 years, carried modern western ideas about art around the globe in the twentieth century. Our adolescent excitement at finally growing up created an illusion of adult sa- gacity and aesthetic maturity that transcended western borders.