The article profiles the writer Isaac Butler and his new book on the origins of America’s modern culture wars, arguing that today’s political battles over art, speech and identity have deep roots in the late 1980s. Butler traces how the religious right shifted from cold war politics to domestic fights over contemporary art, turning culture into a political battleground. The piece matters because it links current disputes over censorship and free expression to earlier clashes, suggesting that the same arguments are being repeated in a more intense form.

A key example for Butler was the 2020 postponement of a Philip Guston retrospective, which he saw as a misguided response by arts institutions despite Guston’s lifelong anti-racist record and Jewish background. Butler, 47, describes that earlier era as the “birth of the modern culture wars”, comparing it to a first world war while casting the present moment as a second. The article also highlights figures and flashpoints from that period, including David Wojnarowicz, Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, Robert Mapplethorpe and protests over The Last Temptation of Christ, to show how disputes over art became highly politicised.