Political Correctness in Art Perception

This thesis explores the influence that the political attitude of an artist has on the perception of his paintings in a Western context. Using data gathered through an experiment, I apply a multilevel analysis to demonstrate that a right-wing attitude can have a negative influence on the perception of visual artworks. More precisely, discriminatory attitudes have a negative effect on the appreciation of paintings. Simultaneously, left-wing attitudes have no impact on the perception process, which suggests that left-wing attitudes are perceived as a default attitude for artists. It was further found that the degree and way of influence the attitude has on the viewer remains primarily a matter of cultural capital endowment. Whereas lower cultural capital respondents tend to behave in a politically correct manner, individuals with higher cultural capital draw from a greater pool of artistic background knowledge and are able to use the political attitude of an artist as a tool to enhance their cultural experience. Countering a strong body of opinion believing high cultural capital individuals to explicitly reject intolerant content as a way of symbolic exclusion, no significant outcomes can be detected in that regard. In fact, high cultural capital individuals demonstrate an increased interest in paintings made by artists with intolerant views. Different findings apply to artworks made by renowned artists. Political attitudes of canonised artists have no influence on the perception of their paintings which suggests that the socially constructed status of a creative genius prompts individuals to disregard their political attitudes. Finally, as cognitive dissonance theory suggests, artworks made by artists with the same political attitude as the respondents’ are preferred to paintings created by artists with different political inclinations than the respondents’. This behaviour is, however, confined to individuals with lower cultural capital since high cultural capital people do not specifically favour paintings made by an artist with left-wing inclinations.