“Democratic ages, in effect, foment the uncertainty of taste by abolishing every model.” – Nicolás Gómez Dávila
As England steels herself for her first grey winter under the Keir Starmer regime, with the mournful prospects of legalised euthanasia, illegalised public outdoor smoking, and the abolition of the remaining hereditary peers on the horizon—set to rain down like successive blows on the English constitution and nation—I have found my mind returning to an experience I had last year, visiting an art exhibition in the capital that beckoned a rather different future for our country and its culture to Starmer’s notion of “a new Britain.”
As championed by the late Sir Roger Scruton, one of the most compelling conservative arguments that the West suffers from cultural impoverishment and steady social decomposition is the nearly completely denatured and excellence-deprived state of contemporary art. Any aspiring counter-revolutionary movement might therefore first be detected in the generation of new buds of material culture offering the possibility of an alternative to the malaise of postmodern art.
My interest had been stirred by talk of a British “Vanguard” of traditional artists rejecting ugliness, abstraction, and egalitarianism, and so I visited “The Exhibition” in Fitzrovia, London last summer with several questions: If the artists reject postmodernism, what values do they affirm? What models do they turn to? What kind of stories do they want to tell? What are their ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty? My sense was that the answers to these questions are not fully formed but are being sincerely sought at places like this exhibition. Conservatives should therefore pay attention to the activities of this young coalescing movement whose art reflects its internal energy. As one of the main artists exhibited, Fen de Villiers, wrote:
Remember: in aesthetically starved times, the most revolutionary act is to actually MAKE something. Our raison d’être is to imagine things that aren’t here yet. That’s what artists do. That’s how we break through into new, exciting realms. Artists, break free!
The milieu that many of the exhibited artists have gathered to might be termed vitalist or heroically materialist. I heard the term ‘Art of Power’ repeated a number of times. Influenced by ‘metamodern’ internet culture; memes and thinkers like Neema Parvini, ‘Bronze Age Pervert,’ Julius Evola, and Curtis Yarvin, this space is more intellectually keen than previous generations of the ‘dissident right.’ It seem that it is at once more sincere and more ironic. What emerges is not so much ‘Right-wing punk,’ but a revival of classicist and regional art alloyed with a kind of techno-futurism. It is often refreshing and certainly intriguing.
This first Exhibition was curated and organised by Matthew Fall McKenzie, and featured more than fifty works by seven independent artists. The mediums used encompassed acrylic and oil painting, drawing, sculpture in plaster and bronze, printmaking, and textiles. Poems were written by one of the artists, ‘Columba,’ [1] and displayed alongside painted works, so that patrons were able to listen to an audio recording of his poetry on headphones.
Matthew Fall McKenzie’s works were perhaps most immediately prominent at the exhibition. One of the largest paintings on display was his Dante and Virgil in Hell. The vermillion and green of Dante and Virgil were mirrored by the hell beneath and the sky above. Almost crackling with infernal heat, this composition featured some of the best use of acrylics, light, and colour in the exhibition.
Another prominent artist displayed was Alexander Adams. Known in conservative circles for his book, Artivism: The Battle for Museums in the Era of Postmodernism, Adams has been the public voice of this collective in criticising ‘cultural entryism.’ He argues that there has been an ideological capture of museums, galleries, and public spaces by cultural Marxists, and he delights in exposing the opportunism and insincerity of support for these leftists by Regime institutions and corporations. I found the best Adams painting was the appropriately sombre Ruins. Adams gave expression to a tangible ennui in his oil works which were those that seemed to lament contemporary civilisational decline the most acutely.
Here and there were other signs that the artists were not unaffected by the prejudices of the times in which we live. The triumphant hunting nymphs of McKenzie’s The Great Hog Hunt seemed somewhat post-Sexual Revolution, meanwhile, the almost-pixelated sculptures of Villiers, as energetic and dynamic as they were, evinced slightly video-game proportions. His Prometheus was perhaps the most clearly ‘reactionary modernist’ work featured at the Exhibition.
Harald Markram’s works were some of the most mythological. Their angular Norse aesthetics were well rendered and demonstrated sensitivity and skill through both charcoal and oils. Markram’s landscapes were wistful, even a little bare and bleak. I found Coast Rocks to be the most poignant.
Christianity was generally underplayed in favor of various pagan themes throughout much of the space. One Christian work was a particularly Wagnerian Annunciation to the Shepherds by Markram. The ethereal colours pronounced a striking contrast between the grey shepherds and the gold-winged Arno Brecker-esque angels. The painting seemed to say, “We can have God, but only if he is manly and shows us how to be manly too!”
The bronze reliefs of Ferro continued the heroic and mythological themes. I thought his third vision of St. George impaling the writhing worm with a Zweihander was particularly good. Some of these bronze reliefs may have appeared crudely rendered but in an ‘authentically’ medieval folk-art manner. They were the kind of works you could imagine in a rustic Scandinavian stave church, conjuring images of heroic sagas recited in mead-filled longhouses over drinking horns among newly-Christianised peoples.
Samuel Wild (illustrator for the Mallard magazine) was responsible for an aquatint on paper that I particularly enjoyed—The Old Knight. The haunted subject had a ghostly look in his eyes that reminded me of the single grey flake that expires in the hands of the man in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road like the “last host of Christendom.” Another sign of England’s lost glory could be seen in Ferro’s The Three Lions textile. His re-interpretation of the coat of arms of England symbolised the historical trajectory that the artist envisioned. The first lion, scarred, grizzled but unbowed, signified England’s indeterminate past glories. The middle lion, emaciated, limp-wristed and with its tail between its legs, stood for England’s current decrepit state. The final lion was a realisation of what England could yet be: muscular, proud, and revivified.
If there was any consistent leitmotif at the Exhibition it was the will to power. Most of the subjects envisioned a striving, a conquering, and, often, some kind of palingenesis. Here one could sense the energy of the dissident right, or how it likes to imagine itself: that of the phoenix reborn. Would this phoenix be a revivified Western traditionalism or a futurist Nietzscheanism? There were throngs of young people at the exhibition on the two days that I visited seemingly pondering these two paths. It is to the credit of the artists and the organisers that they have harnessed some of that energy (not perpetually online!) and actually made something, as Fen de Villiers urges in the brochure.
One of the intellectuals associated with the artistic collective—Neema Parvini—organised a social media campaign for the political annihilation of the Conservative Party prior to the July general election (#zeroseats). Following Peter Hitchens, his logic was that the Conservative Party is the primary form of ‘containment’ to block authentic right-wing politics and that there was a unique opportunity to unbalance the system and cause more radical political change by destroying the Conservative party as the established ‘centre-right’ party. Unfortunately, this vision was not realised, partly because the ever-contrarian Hitchens himself denounced it, and the younger dissident right must now contend with a fractured political space and the continued sclerotic presence of the establishment-aligned Tories. Parvini’s campaign, though laudable, was a new front in the old—and perhaps for now unwinnable—war of electoral politics. Perhaps art and taste are where the Right’s efforts should be focussed. As Nicolás Gómez Dávila put it, “Art is the most dangerous reactionary ferment in a democratic, industrial, and progressive society.”
There were many people in attendance who were ardent to resist the revolutionary and oligarchic forces dissolving what remains of Christian European Civilisation. It would seem that any true ministers of God would do well to seek to teach, correct, and baptise this vanguard. Spanish jurist Miguel Ayuso has pointed out that, if the political sphere is closed off to us by our revolutionary adversaries, then we should focus on the pre-political sphere, the cultural one. Here was an instance of something like that beginning to happen and at the beginning of this darkling winter I look forward with interest to following the future activities of this ‘counter-cultural’ artistic collective.
Though there is far more that I could say, I will conclude by presenting the joint statement released by the artists who took part in The Exhibition. I hope you read it carefully and think seriously about art and the future of the West.
A STATEMENT from THE ARTISTS in THE EXHIBITION
“We come together because we are hungry for true beauty, aesthetic strength and vital expressions: a culture that energises! This is a momentous occasion: like-minded artists from across the world joining forces to herald a cultural shift. We refuse to merely remain on the sidelines watching as the flame of creation is smothered by petty ideology. Inspired by the collectives that have formed before us, we move unapologetically to carve out a new route in this time of artistic stagnation. If we don’t rekindle the fire, who will?”
These are the principles that we collectively stand for:
I. There is such a thing as beauty; it exists in what seems to us pleasing and correct. We are unafraid to use plain language to describe images and objects as beautiful or ugly, important or trite, art or not art. Art gains character when its maker strives for the remarkable — and loses vigour when the artist refuses to apply discernment.
II. Therefore, we realise that art at the highest level can never be egalitarian, nor espouse egalitarianism. There is no equality, nor can there be. Art must be excellent to be great, and this demands the exceptional achievements of individuals, sometimes working together. There is no replacement for the artist of talent or genius.
III. Art of power springs from a true and powerful vital essence found in many styles and techniques. We are aware that traditional forms and iconography can be parasitised and corrupted. It is this vital spark that should be respected and understood, then transmitted.
IV. We assert the primacy of aesthetics that embody values, and this can only be done through mastery of craft and understanding of materials. Art and message are indivisible — no verbal explanation is necessary because the art object contains everything needed.
V. Therefore, there is no single style or expression that is supreme. We shall incorporate whatever means and materials necessary; these may include new materials, old expressions and yet-to-be-discovered media, as long as they express the truths of human existence: struggle, imperfection and yearning for the transcendent.
VI. We welcome others to join us, but we reserve the right to disassociate ourselves from any such group or individual antithetical to our aims. Both individual excellence and group solidarity are important and must be balanced.
VII. We hold that art serves mankind by showing heroism, bravery, nobility and vigour. Artists should embody these aspirations as much as possible. Have courage and recognise that you may be called upon to suffer for these principles. It is an honour to serve; it is a privilege to be envied by those less able to.
