Art, Propaganda and the Tyranny of Ideology

On the essence of art

The distinction between art and propaganda is as sharp as it is significant. To conflate the two is not only a semantic error, but a failure to comprehend the essence of art.

Art erupts from a violent confrontation with the unconscious—a process where buried instincts, archetypes, and collective memory merge to create expressions that transcend time and culture.

Artists plunge into the subterranean rivers of myth that course beneath civilization's surface. From these profound depths, they wrench forth creations that cannot be merely crafted - they must be excavated.

The propagandist, in contrast, operates within the shallow realm of rationality, logic, and persuasion. Propaganda moves with purpose but no depth. Like a shadow pantomiming flame, it can only mimic the technical mastery of art while lacking its essential fire.

This is no minor distinction. Where art reveals the eternal, propaganda binds creative expression to ideology.

Full and Empty Vessels

Political passion may possess the artist, but true art burns through the boundaries of rational purpose. The artist, seized by unconscious currents, becomes a vessel brimming with meanings that surge beyond their own understanding.

Nebuchadnezzar, William Blake, 1795

Consider Nebuchadnezzar. Blake's Nebuchadnezzar emerges from the mind of a fierce rebel, an artist who raged against industrial society and saw the Christian God as a tyrant.

In the biblical tale, God punishes the Babylonian king's hubris by reducing him to a beast crawling in the dirt— a demonstration of absolute divine power over mortal pride. But Blake, who saw the Christian God as a cosmic authoritarian imposing rigid order upon human freedom, transforms this cautionary tale into an indictment. His Nebuchadnezzar writhes not from divine justice but divine cruelty, his bestial transformation revealing the violence inherent in theological authority. The king's degradation becomes a mirror of humanity's subjugation under religious law, his contorted form evidence of spirit crushed by dogma.

Yet when I encountered this work at the Getty, I encountered something far more primordial than Blake's political rebellion: a truth that sent chills through my bones.

Its power lay not in its intended critique of divine authority, but in its raw exposure of nature's dissolving force. Nebuchadnezzar's form merges with the arching tree trunk, his identity bleeding into the natural world that consumes him¹. Only the horror etched on his face prevents his complete dissolution into the background—a terror that speaks not of God's tyranny, but of nature's inexorable power to unmake human pretensions.

Contrast this with Soviet Constructivism, epitomized by El Lissitzky's "Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge."

Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, El Lissitzky, 1919. Shows communists (red wedge) penetrating into the bourgeois (white circle).

Created in 1919, the work is a bold, geometric visualization of political conflict. The red wedge, symbolizing the communists, pierces the white circle, representing the bourgeois opposition. The sharp, angular forms and stark contrast effectively communicate the forceful message of revolution and victory. Yet, its success as a propagandistic tool underscores its limitations as art. The image operates within a narrow ideological framework, reducing its power to the immediate and utilitarian.²

Here, art becomes ideology's servant, an empty vessel stripped of vital force. Constructivist works remain trapped in the rational mind, their technical brilliance masking spiritual poverty. The red wedge piercing the white circle executes its political message with mechanical perfection, yet remains forever exiled from those profound waters where true art is born.

This distinction illuminates the essence of art itself. True creativity does not build arguments from language or reason, but plunges into the depths where archetypes dwell, bringing forth images that surge with the force of ancient memory.

AI and Robots - Imitators, not Artists

This brings us to a modern specter: artificial intelligence. Can AI create art? The answer is a resounding no. AI can mimic the strokes, the tones, the cadences of human creativity, but mere mimicry remains forever exiled from true creation.

Art arises from a uniquely human alchemy of instinct, memory, emotion, and intuition. It is the product of struggle—with oneself, with one’s culture, with the vast and ineffable mysteries of existence. AI, devoid of the unconscious, lacks the spark that ignites true art. It can produce the shadow but never the substance. AI is bound, like the propagandist, to the realm of argument and rationality.

Conclusion

The distinction between art and its imitators, whether propaganda or artificial intelligence, cuts deeper than mere aesthetics. It reveals the essential nature of human creativity itself. Where propaganda constructs arguments and AI perfects techniques, true art erupts from those profound depths where reason fears to tread. It emerges from our violent confrontation with the unconscious, from our eternal struggle with existence itself. This is why art alone can serve as a full vessel, brimming with meanings that transcend time and culture. Its power lies not in technical mastery or political purpose, but in its ability to channel those primordial forces that connect modernity to antiquity.

In this age of artificial minds and calculated persuasion, we must remember: true creation demands more than perfect mimicry. It requires descent into those deep waters where archetypes dwell, where memory mingles with instinct, where the artist becomes a vessel for truths that transcend their own understanding. This is art's eternal nature—not to instruct or imitate, but to reveal what it means to be human.

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1. Blake was indeed a brilliant poet, and correctly posits that the separation between man and animal consists in man’s ability to construct an identity, our greatest artifice against nature. Nebuchadnezzar is far more complex than a mere critique of the christian God’s authority - but for the purposes of this essay I focus solely on this aspect.

2. Constructivism bears a deep irony in that it directly mimics the form of suprematism. Suprematism, in sharp contrast to Constructivism, embodies a profoundly anti-materialist, anti-utilitarian philosophy. In "Suprematism" (Part II of The Non-Objective World), Malevich writes:

Art no longer cares to serve the state and religion, it no longer wishes to illustrate the history of manners, it wants to have nothing further to do with the object, as such, and believes that it can exist, in and for itself, without "things" (that is, the "time-tested well-spring of life").