Gore Vidal's Execution Essay: Is Art A Democracy?

In the 2013 documentary, The United States of Amnesia, Gore Vidal said, “Art is not a democracy,” he goes on to explain, “in fact, art is the enemy of democracy.” Essentially, the gifted artist, one can argue, is one to whom the ancient Greeks said were favoured by the muses of creativity: accordingly, such divine assistance is undemocratically dished out. Precisely, it is because of the writer’s imagination and astuteness in carefully selecting and arranging words on a page, so as to convey the complex emotions of their characters, is testimony to their artistic ambition of invoking in the reader sublime awe. The creation of art (whether it be literary or any other) is one of the driving factors that fuel the artist’s ambition. Great art transcends time and space becoming, in a word, eternal. Those for whom are blessed with artistic genius, likewise, become …show more content…
It would be there in the old world of Europe, James would write – juxtaposing it with that of the new world of America. Drinking from the cornucopia of his European experience, James develops a high appreciation of the arts as a way with which “the past is made a part of the present, and continuity and tradition are made tangible.” (Bowden, 11) In what better way for Henry James to express such tangibility than for him to write a novel. Kelley notes the life of the French painter, Henri Regnault, whose “procrastination, brilliant rise, and sudden, tragic end” (Kelley, 188) would, no doubt, form the basis of what James would regard as his first novel, Roderick Hudson. In this work, James explores the artist’s ambition to create great works of art, not to mention the patron’s ambition to live through their protégé, and share in the fame found in the art world of Europe. In addition, James investigates the mother’s ambition to exercise control and profit from their