Frustrated Artists and Tyrants

5 min readOct 15, 2020

October 14, 2020, 11:31 pm
Filed under: art, business, dreams, music, Visual Art | Tags: arts culture, bad art, ecosystem, genocidal maniacs, Hitler, painting, quality, Silvio Berlusconi, singing, support, Supporting the Arts, tyrant

From listening to the Bunga Bunga podcast, I learned that Silvio Berlusconi started as a singer. He was reasonably successful and having a great time when, apparently, his dad shamed him, asking him if he was really going to be a singer for the rest of his life. So Silvio Berlusconi quit singing. Even though he loved it. And became a shady ass real estate developer instead. This led him to becoming a shady ass media mogul and then the shady ass prime minister of Italy. Did that go well for Italy? No, no, it did not. Would Italy have been better off if Berlusconi had just continued to do what he loved and just kept singing? I think so. I blame Berlusconi’s dad for the problems of Italy. I also blame the world that denigrates the arts and deems them not enough.

This makes me think about Hitler, of course. Hitler wanted to be a painter. He was rejected by the Academy of Fine Arts of Vienna, where he’d moved to pursue his dreams. He had a go of selling his work and found a few people to buy it. He was fucking serious about painting. Was he any good? No. But some people liked his stuff. They even paid for it — so hey — that’s something. But his failures in art led him to politics and the world ended up with a disaster. Do I blame the Academy of Fine Arts? Nope. No one wants to go to school with Hitler. And he was bad. So. Of course they had to reject him. But someone, somewhere might have encouraged him. I don’t know who but somebody could have kept that man painting and it would have saved millions of lives.

The stories of frustrated artists going on to do terrible things are many. And there are many frustrated artists who ruined the lives around them when they took their own. What I’m trying to say here is that I think we need to take frustrated artists seriously.

Think of all the tyrants we could have avoided if we’d just managed to be supportive of artists or even just gave them some time, space and resources to do their thing. I mean — good lord — Just give artists the space to be artists and the ones who would have turned out to be tyrants can just happily paint in their basements or sing in the clubs.

But — golly gee whiz — what if they’re no good? What if they’re a terrible singer or a lousy painter?

To that, I say, wouldn’t you rather have a gallery full of shitty paintings than the fucking holocaust? Live with the shitty art, for crying out loud!

Embracing art and artists is a great thing to do, just because art is great but it ALSO could be seen as a preventative measure. Prevent a tyrant! Support an artist! Even a shitty one! I swear everyone is so concerned with whether things are good or bad when, really bad art is entirely tolerable in a way that, say, genocide is not. And I say that as someone who, when I’m watching something terrible, acts as though I’m being quite melodramatically tortured.

I’m not trying to say that all frustrated artists are genocidal maniacs (if so, watch out for me!) but an awful lot of genocidal maniacs really wanted to be artists. They would have rather been singers and painters or authors or actors or whatever. I think a culture that encouraged these things would see a lot fewer genocidal maniacs. Support an artist! Prevent a possible global catastrophe! Buy that weirdo’s ugly paintings! You don’t have to hang them up. Go to that terrible play! Listen to that awful album! Do it for the world.

I feel like sometimes when people talk about supporting the arts, they really want to make sure they only support the really good stuff. Organizations have extensive applications to make sure they get work of which they approve. They require references or degrees or resumes to try and insure quality. If you propose running a lottery, they worry about how they will weed out the bad stuff.

But true support would mean supporting all of it — the wonderful, the good, the mediocre and the terrible. It’s like trying to save a forest by just saving a couple of the tallest trees. The forest thrives because of all of the trees, even the fallen rotting ones and to support a forest would mean supporting the widest variety of forest life. The same is absolutely true of the arts. The more supported the entire ecosystem is, the more good art we get out of it.

And if just having a robust arts culture isn’t enough of a reason for you, just think of investment in the arts as tyrant insurance. Support all the arts, even the bad, and maybe you’ll save us from the ravings of the next frustrated artists.

Again, I’m not saying artists are uniquely poised to be tyrants; Surely someone who had potent dreams in another field that were thwarted and discouraged, would be equally likely to turn sour. Anyone with their dreams dashed upon a rock might be likely to turn bad — but artists have their dreams dashed more often than most and there are few places in the world where an artist’s ambitions might be realized to their full potential. I think a world that encouraged its artists, whether they be good, bad, mediocre or genius, would be a much more interesting world. And if my theory is correct, it might also have a lot fewer tyrants in it.