This was supposed to be Tom Wolfe break-dancing
I’ve casually been observing two alt-right-adjacent phenomena over the past few years, the first being the perceived adoption of alt-right ideas by the New York counter-cultural art and fashion world and the second being the mainstreaming of alt-right ideas among politicians and normie pundits. This article points out a few similarities between these phenomena and the counter-cultural processes Tom Wolfe described in his various non-fiction essays on contemporary art, architecture, psychedelic culture, and subversive leftist politics.
In the two alt-right phenomena I mention above, we have groups and individuals subverting the mainstream bourgeois consensus while also appealing to or persuading the bourgeoisie to their side. Simultaneously, journalists and other critical observers are overtly and covertly embedded in these groups, attempting to perform aspects of Wolfe’s own critical-journalistic function, which he performed within the leftist counter-culture during the 20th century.
Above all of this sits me. I offer observations from a superior critical perspective.
I want to stress the casual nature of my engagement because everything I’m writing about feels distant and unformed, largely because my life increasingly is consumed by the minutiae of works and days. This is a way of asking for forgiveness in the event that I clearly overlook something someone wrote or did (in other words, if I’m wrong, it’s okay because I’m busy). For instance, I have no idea if art is being created in New York or whether some of the people I mention are being sincere or have already espoused the ideas described below.
The Painted Word and Wolfe’s Model
Wolfe’s various non-fiction essays roughly follow the model he first articulated in The Painted Word, his analysis of the contemporary art scene in 1970s New York. In the book, Wolfe first describes the emergence of the avant-garde in Europe as artists left the patronage of aristocratic salons and struck out on their own, ceasing to be the “Gentleman” and becoming “Geniuses.” Instead of orbiting an aristocratic socialite, the artists joined café fraternities and orbited a “romantic figure” like Victor Hugo. These artists were motivated by a desire to be perceived as “classless” and liberated from the cynical, mundane, and material boundaries of bourgeois existence.
In Europe many of these artists were predictably leftist, but there were plenty of right-wing representatives among them. For example, the hostility to bourgeois mediocrity and tolerance, coupled with a romantic view of the hardscrabble worker, was alive and well among so-called “conservative revolutionaries” like Ernst Jünger. According to Wolfe, the work-product of such artists on the left and right tended to baffle or subvert the “cozy bourgeois version of reality.”
In spite of the revolutionary spirit of artists going their own way (AGTOW), Wolfe observes that the artists tended to stay pretty close to the bourgeoisie, often taking up shop just around the corner from where the bourgeoisie continued to host their soirees. This was, according to Wolfe, the result of a social equilibrium produced by mutually reinforcing personal incentives among artists and those he deemed “the smart set” or “le monde”: a collection of status-conscious bourgeoisie, publishers, and journalists.
In general, the smart set wanted to be “in fashion” where “things were happening.” The artists in turn wanted to be around money and institutional or public validation, both of which the smart set could provide. Wolfe mentions Freud’s description of the artist’s motivation in terms of “fame, money, and beautiful lovers.” I’d suggest that we can simply reduce this to fame.
However, the anti-bourgeoisie artist could sometimes be a bit too radical and dangerous. So the smart set produced a subclass Wolfe dubs the culturati, whose responsibility was to scout the counter-culture for exceptional and acceptable figures to promote, subsidize, and invite to parties. The smart set would get the “ancient” and “sacred” prestige of being the aristocratic benefactor of arts and genius, but more importantly, they earned the right to oppose the bourgeoisie themselves. Wolfe explains that the benefactor received the
“feeling that he, like his mate the artist, is separate and aloof form the bourgeoisie, the middle classes . . . the feeling that he may be from the middle class but he is no longer in it. . . the feeling that he is a fellow soldier, or at least an aide-de-camp or an honorary cong guerilla in the vanguard march through the land of the philistines.”
For Wolfe, this is a uniquely “modern need” and a “peculiarly modern kind of salvation (from the sin of Too Much Money).” By embracing the essentially leftist American counter-culture, the smart set could say to themselves and the world:
“See? I’m not like them – those Jaycees, those United Fund chairmen, those Young Presidents, those mindless New York A.C. goyisheh hog-jowled, stripe-tied goddamn-good-to-see-you-you-old-bastard-you…”
The smart set gets a little fame, a little absolution, and a license to be cool and popular.
What’s interesting for me is how this symbiotic relationship affected the content of art and determined which art became famous as an expression of “genius.” Wolfe describes these effects in terms of a process whereby an artist is elevated to social immortality.
The process begins with the artist performing what Wolfe calls the “Boho dance”, during which the artist really performs his bohemian, anti-bourgeois sentiments and acts as if he doesn’t care what the smart set thinks of his art. The process, if successful, ends with what Wolfe calls the “Consummation”, whereby the culturati chooses the artist, mainstreams his art, and showers him “with the rewards of celebrity.”
Between these two points, the artist engages in what Wolfe calls “double-tracking”: a cynical process of perception and adaptation during which the artist attempts to maintain the perception of being a bleeding edge radical in a way that attracts positive attention from the smart set.
Double-tracking means simultaneously tracking what fellow bohemians are doing, and whether and how the smart set are noticing the bohemians. It’s hard because the artist has to appear sincere in his beliefs, and many artists end up as true believers, causing them to be forgotten. Wolfe explains:
“Many artists become so dedicated to bohemian values, internalize their antibourgeois feelings so profoundly, that they are unable to cut loose, let go, with that cathartic shriek…and submit gracefully to good fortune; the sort of artist, and his name is Legion, who always comes to the black-tie openings at the Museum of Modern Art wearing a dinner jacket and paint-spattered Levi’s.”
This divides the counter-culture community between the Consummated artist and those who remain absolutely dedicated to the counter-culture -- dedicated to misanthropy and scandalizing the bourgeoisie to the end – and who palliate themselves with the fantasy that “History would surely record [my] achievements.”
The latter artists criticize the Consummated Genius as inauthentic and cynically motivated. Wolfe maintains that this divide is artificial, arguing that there is no artistic talent divide between a Braque and a Picasso, but only a double-tracking talent divide. All artists want the same thing: fame. They want their names to be on the lips of everyone, “even the god-damned journalists!”
Besides a talent for keeping an eye on trends and remaining on the bleeding edge of the avant-garde, the artist needs a talent for tracking what is enticing or alienating to the smart set. Picasso was able to trade the stained worker’s attire for suits, parties, millions, and the right to pollute Daley Plaza with an ugly sculpture, because he knew when to drop the pretense and flatter the smart set, and more importantly, he knew how to not pose a threat to the smart set’s material interests or values. Picasso, in summary, knew how to not cross the line.
In Radical Chic, Wolfe’s account of a party hosted by Leonard Bernstein in New York for the Black Panther Party, Wolfe uses Barbara Walters of the Today Show to illustrate how the smart set makes the line known to the performative radical seeking money and fame.
During the party, Walters explains that she sympathizes with the radicalism espoused at the party, referring for example to Eldridge Cleaver’s wife as a “very brilliant, very articulate woman,” but expresses concern about her own fate come the revolution:
“I’m talking as a white woman who has a white husband, who is a capitalist, or an agent of capitalists, and I am, too, and I want to know if you are to have your freedom, does that mean we have to go!”
The radicals are quick to explain that the final solution to the white bourgeoisie question is making everyone, including whites, free. Thus, the most sophisticated double-tracking radicals are able to keep the approval of the smart set by minimizing the Total White Death sentiments of less sophisticated double-tracking Panthers.
Journalism and the Alt-Right Boho Dance
The analogies to the alt-right are hopefully clear. There is for example a New York man of …