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“Are your favourite films all about free-spirited individuals sticking two fingers up to authority?”

no

“Do you only like poetry that breaks all the rules?”

no

“Is your record collection a noisy mix of black sleeves and sweary song titles?”

no

“Or do you prefer the best sellers and the literary canon?”

no

“The plays reviewed in the NYT and the exhibitions recommended in the tourist guide?”

never

“The acclaimed, the popular, the definitely not anarchist?”

sometimes

“How has your taste changed over the years?”

yes

“Have these changes had any correlation to changes in your anarchist thinking?”

no

“In your milieu?”

no

“And finally, was it art that first pointed you down the weird and wonderful road to anarchyland”

It was anarchist texts, whether that counts as art or not. Or maybe that’s how I finally found it, not what led me to it. What first pointed me in a way was art. The question of poverty, in the broader sense, not just lack of food. A critique of the impoverishment in the quality of food, housing, the standardized and industrially mass produced vs the artisanal. How the impoverishment in the quality of life is not just due to the consumption of these products but the misery of their production. How there is an overproduction of junk food and products and trash, and still people that lack even these, not due to any real scarcity. How art often serves power and is easiest of all recuperated. How power builds a world in its own image, a labyrinth of facades hiding the totality of its own production and reproduction, through distortion, theatricality, separation, representation, etc.

When you see this world as it is, as it wants to be and as it portrays itself, and loathe it and want to rebel against it, then you might be led down anarchist alleys. Not even the art is salvageable. Art as a separate sphere, apart from daily life, impoverishes both.

Then there is art as a broader chunk of culture, material culture, related but distinct with notions of technics and technology. All interrelated with ways of life so that it can’t be separated with anything people do.

So what is a full life? A good life? A beautiful life? Whatever it is, it is what it is. Art makes parts of it seem grander than they are, while not matching the grandness of others, it can make things not rooted in life, it can make life easier and more convenient while being invisible or staying in the background, and it can also enthrall us while we ignore the destruction of the world that the production of art we participate in through our alienation.

It’s both a cause of misery and coping mechanism. All kinds of animals appreciate beauty and taste, fewer make art. It may not be necessary, it can please, displease or produce indifference. All these can saturate and bore.

As an anarchist, it makes no difference and there is no relevance. You can choose to suffer or enjoy art in total freedom, to be as bored or excitedly enthusiastic about making/experiencing art as you wish.

Exploiting others to make art or depriving others (including non-humans) from freedom, beauty and the enjoyment of a good life, or suffering from this yourself, does seem concerning to anarchists.