Terry Teachout on Art & Persuasion

Terry Teachout, drama critic for the Wall Street Journal and critic-at-large for Commentary, among other accomplishments, was just awarded a Bradley Prize by the Bradley Foundation. Teachout’s remarks upon accepting the award are well worth a read. Here’s a preview:

“Unfortunately, America also has its share of earnest, well-meaning, narrow-minded folk who don’t much care for art, as well as some who flat-out dislike it. I understand why they feel that way: art can sometimes open doors that you’d rather keep closed. In addition to giving comfort and joy, art also has the miraculous ability to let us live in other men’s skins, to test our perceptions and beliefs against theirs, and perhaps to be changed as a result. It does this by portraying the world creatively, heightening our perception and enriching our understanding of things as they are. Art makes sense of life.

“To strive toward so noble a goal, the artist must first of all be able to tell the truth as he sees it about the world he sees around him. That task can only be pursued to the fullest degree under the aspect of freedom. Where there is no freedom, there is no art, save at the risk of the artist’s neck. And this freedom includes, among many other things, freedom from the paralyzing obligation to persuade.”

Although I agree with virtually everything in these observations, Teachout is surely wrong, at the end of them, to divorce art from persuasion. For an artist “to tell the truth as he sees it about the world he sees around him” is, in fact, to persuade. It is to say, “This is how things are–and if you aren’t seeing things this way, you need to start.” Satchmo’s riffs, Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”: these artists in these works are showing rather than telling. But in showing how things are they are calling us to a way of seeing we may not be used to. And that is a kind of argument, even if no words are involved.

I’ll have more on Teachout’s remarks tomorrow. Meanwhile, let me know what you think.