Retardataire arts and the hyper-online

Why commentators don't understand the dissenting art scene.

A recent discussion on X/Twitter resurrected the unending debate “Whither the right-wing arts?” I felt that usual sinking feeling, having followed (somewhat reluctantly and at a distance) numerous previous iterations of the discussions. Is there such a thing as right-wing art? Why are rightists unreceptive to the new arts? Why don’t right-wing millionaires patronise the arts in the way leftist NGOs and charities do?

The exact reasons why alleged right-wing arts lag behind where they should be are numerous and a suitable subject for other articles aside from this. A part is played by the oversupply of artists, a paucity of art-collecting culture, ignorance regarding the nature of the original artist’s prints, a generational aversion to patronising high art, the unrealistic expectations of artists, the abject failure of tertiary fine art education and other aspects. In this short piece I will cover one fact that eludes commentators because they are not part of the art world and therefore are not able to see how some mechanisms work.

Many commentators and political activists – especially when they operate primarily online – do no realise is that what is happening inside the arts is both significantly ahead of trends and simultaneously behind the curve. The art that creators are making is well in advance of what one sees in the galleries. Social media follows these artists but it takes a while for artists to gain traction and for their advances to become understood. On the other hand, what we see in venues (especially in large ones) is up to two, three or even four years behind. As late as 2025 we were seeing the advent of black-artist exhibitions that had been commissioned in the summer of 2020, prompted by the death of George Floyd and BLM’s institutional extortion of organisations. Biennales, exhibitions and publications routinely take 18 months to over three years to arrange. In the same way that “woke” movies commissioned in 2020 sometimes did not get released until 2025 – long after the high-water mark of woke had receded, following the popular rejection and commercial failure of woke – which made them feel jarringly anachronistic, fine-art organisations are still in full 2020 mode.

There is one critical difference between the popular and high arts. While Disney, Warner Brothers and (to a lesser extent) television streaming services are sensitive to commercial reception of their material, arts venues are often not. Indeed, many institutions were specifically set up not to respond to the financial viability of their activities. Venues such as the ICA, Glasgow’s CCA and others that operate as multi-arts hubs base their model on being community centres, linked to local residents (often minority ones, with strong political patronage) and charities. So they are deliberately contra commercial imperatives – assisted by their charity status, which insulates them from taxation and writes into their charter a stipulation that they can disregard generating profits – and they consequently act defiantly resistant to the general public reception to their political credo. Arts venues only have to please their own staff, favoured donors, associated creators and a tiny attending constituency, which is largely a politically orientated clique; most funding comes from Arts Council grants, support from cultural-political charities and donations from politically sympathetic patrons. Social projects are often slush funds for activism and socially focused arts events can fall within the ambit of social action, therefore making them viable for those funds.

Due to their commercial isolation and peculiarities of their micro-environment, we find arts organisations developing subcultures that could not otherwise survive. Overtly politically, provocatively transgressive, aggressively anti-majority, proudly self-serving, these artivist curators and their pet artists operate in a sphere that faces no administrative, legislative or financial oversight, set on one-upping their colleague-rivals within a loose global network of hyper-liberal arts. The British Council, which received £1.2 BN of state funding over 2020-4, allows British artivism and personnel to circulate abroad, meaning that foreign approval often matters more than the sentiments of any British audience.

So, when it comes to the public discourse on social media and the comment sections of newspapers, websites and YouTube, general commentators act as though the war has been won. Clearly woke has been beaten and (consequently) anti-woke tropes of “based”, “gigachad” and so on are likewise played out, no longer needed to skewer the vanquished beliefs of the libs. On a newly unrestricted X/Twitter, we get to ratio the Prime Minister on a daily basis. Just as SJWs were put to the sword by Trump in 2016, so the Ponzi scheme of endless unsustainable mass migration has been exposed by crime figures. Britain’s recent Muslim gang-rape inquiry has rendered “diversity is our strength” slogans absurd; we can all see the sinister agenda underpinning anodyne globo-homo graphics encouraging community integration; elected politicians openly advocate for remigration – a position that was considered extreme only a couple of years ago.

When politically savvy bloggers and podcasters approach the arts they look at a failure of an organically successful “right-wing” literature, cinema and fine art and scratch their heads. They both want that stuff to be there but they do not understand why we need a right-wing art movement at all because to them (having been through this debate multiple times in the last decade) they assume such stuff has already been produced and exposed, only to wither. The vitalist seed has been sown yet there are no crops. Clearly, there must be a problem with production or reception. This is the classic two-pronged fork that high-culture debate is impaled upon in the online sphere: we need better “right-wing” culture and why don’t the rich right patronise creators as the rich left do? These commentators do not realise that venues, curators, critics and publications in the arts are shielded in a redardataire armour of charity-status, liberal monoculture and NGO/state funding that allows them to exist in a 2015 stasis. It is perma-2015 in the public arts, universities and artistic foundations, where Trump is a dictator, white people have no culture, the voice of minorities has not yet been heard and we should believe all women. In this micro-district, the inhabitants are using selfie-sticks and pledging to defend the female-cast remake of Ghostbusters against incels.

Unlike Marvel course-correcting following failure of its female-led superhero films, there is no financial imperative for Arts Council-funded ICA and Art Monthly. The gravy train for environmental-activism installations runs on tracks too sturdy to be shaken. Their favoured artists are forever being platformed “to start a dialogue”, no matter how few people listen. One of the most startling impressions I get on those few occasions I visit a major venue of contemporary art is how empty they are. Attendance figures are manipulated by the inclusion of school-party visits and individuals using the café or gift shop only.

Even valiant efforts to make new vitalist culture available to the public are isolated sparks in a landscape where almost all venues reflect the values of the liberal left. The news channels that might carry the new art to a potentially receptive elite, sympathetic connoisseurs and a mass audience will not review these shows. “Start your own company/website/crowdfunding platform/social media/university/bank/payment provider”, as leftists sneered back in 2015, when dissenters were cancelled. They understood that once you have a lock-down on most available channels of commerce, distribution and communication, dissent is rendered so marginal that it might as well not exist. This exists still in the fine arts of 2026, notwithstanding new freedoms in X/Twitter, Substack and independent websites and venues. Dissenting art is progressing disappointingly slowly because we having to start our own galleries and publications from nothing; this slow train a-coming is having its rails laid one at a time.

While some influential figures have worked hard to fund and promote dissenting art, they do not fully understand the suffocating effect of liberal-left hegemony in education, professional bodies, venues, public funding and state sponsorship and promotion. I think this is primarily because (with all due respect) they are not creators at the highest level. They do not understand the despair and grief that a real artist feels entering the most prestigious museum of art, knowing that this place is run by enemies of his culture and his people and that his art will never have a chance of entering the pantheon of his predecessors. They do not realise how discouraging it is for young artists when they see usual channels of professional advancement strategically cut off and reserved for favoured groups. Many potential creatives are aware that they will never be able to receive a rigorous technical education, gallery representation, Arts Council grants, professional reviews, museum acquisitions, prize opportunities or public commissions because of their ethnicity, nationality or political/religious beliefs. Is it any wonder that many potentially brilliant artists assess these obstacles and turn away for an alternative career? Commentators have faced their own difficulties and cancellations but I do not think they fully understand how the blocking off the normal channels of development has crippled dissenting arts. They haven’t seen it from the inside. They haven’t walked into a room where every window and door is maliciously, sadistically bricked up.

There is hope. Gradually cancellation is becoming more difficult; there are more work-arounds. Groups are forming to promote new art; foundations to fund projects are emerging; we are establishing galleries and prizes; the old centre cannot hold, vitalist plant roots topple rotten towers. But do us a favour. Don’t say we didn’t make good strong work. Just because you didn’t see it, didn’t mean it wasn’t there. We didn’t see you at our exhibition openings. We didn’t see you promote our efforts. You didn’t buy anything we made. You’ve got no right to complain. You complain about not hearing new artists speak but that was because you weren’t listening. Start allowing artists to lead.

Follow us, promote us, buy something. We may not be the artists you hope for but we will improve and there will be others who follow us, but they only follow if the culture of dissenting patronage and support exists. Your efforts can break open some of those sealed windows and doors. That will require more than complaints; it will need actual support.