look i know this might be reigniting a struggle session but there's nowhere else on the internet where i can find the kind of nerd who will read something with that title. this isn't a response to anyone. i was busy at the time and didn't read very many of the comments. hopefully it didn't get too acrimonious. this is just my reaction to the kim jong un quote,

Art not related with the revolution, art for its own sake, is useless.

because the first thing i think of is the opening line of an old tom robbins essay, what is art,

The most useful thing about art is its uselessness.

kim's aphorisms all end with an implied "no i will not explain," which is frustrating because i get hung up on the word "useless" and what he really means by that. uselessness in the context of art isn't necessarily a bad thing.

robbins continues:

Have I lost you already? Wait a minute. My point is that there's a place---an important place, as a matter of fact---in our all too pragmatic world for the impractical and the non-essential... art has no greater enemy than those artists who permit their art to become subserviant to socio-political issues or ideals. In so doing, they not only violate art's fundamental sovereignty, they surrender that independence from function that made it art (as opposed to craft or propaganda) in the first place.

so for robbins art is in fact defined by its uselessness, art is purely about evoking aesthetic sensations that "somehow manage to enrich our lives." art that communicates a political message or advocates social improvement he decries as propaganda and "Calvinistic."

but soon he finds himself forced to admit,

Obviously, art doesn't exist in a vacuum. Like a coral animal, it is embedded in a vast undulating reef of economics, politics, religion, entertainment, and social movements of one kind or another. Yet,

yet! such casual dismissal of the very core issue! the fact that art exists embedded within this reef is a trivial concern to robbins. and i think it's worth exploring the different contexts in which these quotes were written and in which these writers live.

kim is writing within and for a society that has been forced to maintain a state of perpetual revolutionary military readiness against an invading imperialist army for over 70 years. whether or not you agree with that statement, that's the ideology they propagate. and remember, just because it's propaganda doesn't mean it's not true.

robbins is a liberal american selling books to other liberal americans, and as such must tacitly or explicitly endorse the prevailing american liberal ideology and capitalist realism even as he positions himself and his writing as anti-establishment, even as he advocates rejecting the puritanical, the calvinistic, the protestant work ethic and embracing a uselessness of art that allows us to be

...lifted out of mundane context and granted a temporary visa to a less ordinary dimension, where our existential burden is momentarily lifted and we surf a wave of pure perceptual pleasure.

art for robbins is sensual escapism, a way to transcend the great barrier reef of wordly concerns. and again he emphasizes that aesthetic impact (which doesn't mean "beauty") must be the primary purpose for something to be called art.

There's no denying that [Guernica] was a direct result of Picasso's revulsion at the unprecedented saturation bombing of a civilian village (a common military tactic nowadays, sad to say), or that the painting was intended as an impassioned protest against war in general. However, had Picasso allowed his stirred feelings to override his radical painterly principles, had he produced a traditional, literal, unimaginative rendering of military atrocity instead of this wild, virtuoso outpouring of Cubistic invention, you can bet the ranch dressing that now, 70 years later, museum visitors would not be standing before it in awe.

certainly the style affects our aesthetic reaction to something, but plenty of people enjoy art in several different styles, including older, traditional, literal, "unimaginative" styles of art that nonetheless continue to populate museums around the world. it's not like i see that painting depicting the burning of the library of alexandria and think "ho hum it would be art if it were just cubist."

Guernica succeeds politically because it first and foremost succeeds aesthetically. The memories it may once have invokved of Spanish fascism have long ago been eclipsed by the explosive, exhilirating force with which it deconstructs form and distributes it about the picture plane. Despite its underpinnings of horror and outrage, it is primarily a visual experience.

here i think robbins is telling on himself, especially in the way that he quickly brushes past any explanation about just how guernica succeeds politically or what that means. clearly picasso failed to end war or even saturation bombing of civilian targets, nor did his painting lead to the overthrow of the spanish fascists. and yet robbins characterizes it as an unqualified political success!

But in the works of Renoir, Calder, and Warhol, even more than in Guernica, the political implications are subtle, ambiguous, and, most important, subordinate to the aesthetic. That's what makes them art.

And art, like love, is what makes the world forever fresh and new. However, this revitalization cannot be said to be art's puporse. Art revitalizes precisely because it has no purpose. Except to engage our senses. The emancipating jounce of inspired uselessness.

robbins asserts useless art as emancipatory. let's just make the most aesthetically impactful artwork as devoid of political message as possible, and for robbins emancipation will necessarily follow. because by emancipation he doesn't mean ending actual systems of oppression. rather, he means an escape from "politics" through the medium of sensory input.

so overall it would seem robbins would agree with kim, that art not related with the revolution, art for its own sake, is useless. he would simply assert that by definition juche propaganda isn't art, because its primary purpose is to convey a socio-political message, one that inspires the people to continue their struggle against imperialism.

and perhaps kim would express hope that someday koreans can engage in useless art, when that struggle is over.