An Open Letter to Artists About the 2024 Election

We endured a long election cycle full of twists and turns. Our social media feed was dominated by election news. They told us that democracy was on the line.

Both sides accused the other of tyranny and fascism. We were told that we were on the brink of World War 3 and this could be our last election. The entire world watched on election night, nervous and fearful, believing whoever was elected would change everything.

Some stayed up late into the night to find out the results. Some woke up the next morning to a sinking feeling of impending doom, while others felt triumphant and hopeful. The weight of this decision for most felt pivotal and extremely consequential.

Most of us have been swept up in a lie of propaganda that politics decides our future. It is politics that will decide if we will live by tyranny or by liberty. Our fate wholly depends on either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.

Even those outside the U.S. have believed this lie. We have no control. We are subjects of our political system. Fascists will come and rule with an iron fist while we huddle in fear waiting to be locked up. We have believed that the very fate of our destiny is completely controlled by a party of Democrats or a party of Republicans.

The True Builders of the Future

Plato said, “Show me the songs of a land, and I will show you her laws.” Politics is not our ruler. The Democrats and the Republicans wield zero power. It is our prophecies that rule the land—the prophecies that are embedded in our songs, our poetry, and our paintings. Our future lives on the end of our brush. All politics are subjugated to our art. The politics of the last 30 years are the offspring of postmodern art and the war on Beauty.

Kandinsky spoke of a cultural pyramid where artists stood at the apex as prophets of the age, ushering culture into the new day. Below them were the inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Below this rung were the builders, engineers, and physicians. Near the bottom of the cultural pyramid are the politicians, lawmakers, police, and military in service to those above. Below this level are the masses. If we don't like our politics, we must look to the top of the pyramid.

The Fall of Beauty

The 20th-century high art was obsessed with deconstruction. Light, perspective, form, composition, color, and even spirituality were all deconstructed in one art movement or another in the 20th century. Artists challenged the notion of Beauty and aesthetic. They created what was ugly, contorted, twisted, and deranged.

The innovators, entrepreneurs, engineers, and builders followed suit and made our buildings and constructions ugly and oppressed. The artist prophesied for the elitist in order to validate his ego, and therefore our politics toppled the populist ideals with an elitist superstructure.

Breaking Down Barriers

But something profound occurred at the end of the 20th century. David Bowie identified it in an interview in 1999 with Jeremy Paxman when spoke about the phenomenon of the internet. He said, “We are on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying…..The barriers between creator and audience will be further eroded…I embrace the idea that there’s a demystification process going on between the artist and the audience….The internet has a communal power that is helping media become more and more about the audience and less about monolithic era-defining artists like The Beatles.” The internet is a decentralizing agent that circumvents Kandinsky’s pyramid and brings the masses and the artist on one level.

The elitist system cannot centralize power with this structure. The elites cannot control the art that is created, seen, and sold. The elites can no longer control the narrative. The masses desire Beauty, liberty, and truth. The internet guarantees populism rather than elitism.

Art is above politics. Artists by the sheer act of creating are by nature non-political. We pull the intangible into the material. We create what one second ago did not exist. We artists work intuitively from the ether, universe, or God. We make manifest what is whispered in heaven.

The Artist's Call

So artists, do not worry or be afraid. Our futures live on the tips of our brushes, not the lips of our politicians. Create the world you want to live in. Paint what is beautiful, and all will be restored to what is just and true. Let Beauty reign again as we enter into a high renaissance of a golden age. Where there is creativity, there is freedom. Where there is freedom, there is prosperity for all. In this climate of liberty, the oppressors will be vanquished.

Because it is the artisans and poets who lift their songs and their creations that scatter and terrify the powers that have come to oppress the nations.

What future do you want to paint into reality?

Share your thoughts in the comments below!