Calling on cultural organizations to close on inauguration day only serves to build the likes of Cindy Sherman and Richard Serra feel good about themselves
Its coming. The date is less than a fortnight away. 20 January is a day for the history books the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States. How to mark it? A day in bed with a bottle of tequila and some seriously depressing country music sounds about right and in a sense that is what some of Americas most admired artists are proposing.
I am not saying Cindy Sherman, Julie Mehretu, Richard Serra, Joan Jonas and 130 -odd other US art giants will be getting drunk for the purposes of the duvet, but they dont propose to do any work that day. They also urge museums and other cultural organizations to lock up and go home for the working day, all of it a J20 art strike in protest against the normalisation of Trumpism.
Emotionally, I completely sympathise. Why leave it at one day? A four-year ten-strike in which we all simply give up everything wherever we happen to be on countries around the world for the duration of Trumps term as president would feel entirely justified. The accession of this manifestly unqualified man to the most powerful office in the world, with one thumb on the nuclear button while he types out tweets with another, constructs everything seem futile.
Yet an art strike is just about the least effective idea for defying Trump that I have heard. The American left is in for a long, wretched reporting period irrelevance if this is its idea of striking back. I admire some of these artists greatly, but the notion that museums will help anything by closing their doors, or students will scare middle America into its senses by cutting art classes, tastes not of real hard-fought politics but shallow revolutionary posturing by some very well-heeled and comfy members of a cultural elite. These eminent artists come across as people who are used to being listened to without having to try. Worse, there is something nostalgic about the petition, as of this were the 1960 s all over again. Some hope.
Such a protest can only help the participants feel good about themselves. It is at best a route of saying not in my name, and cannot conceivably do anything to curb Trump or ensure his electoral defeat next time around. Lets face it: art and serious culture are entirely marginal to American life. Trumps victory demonstrates that. Shutting museums is not likely to have any impact on those who support him. With all due respect, they might be affected a lot more if reality television indicates went on strike.
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