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Notes -
As a person who also studied theatre, I can only guess at the relationship between artists and progressivism:
Art, like any human endeavour, is subject to competitive pressure, and must experience progress. Now, we're familiar with progress in technology, but as a "soft science," art has a very nebulous definition--or even no real definition--of "better." There are technical aspects that saw progress, sure, but practically all of that happened before the 21st century (though our current epoch is home to the drawing tablet, Machinima, Blender, Virtual Reality, and AI art). Thus, competition in art inevitably becomes less about who can out-draw or out-sculpt the others, and more who can out-message or out-fascinate the others.
Now, I don't mean this to say that the post-modern developments in art starting with the aftermath of WWI were some sort of grand dick-measuring contest, but more that, once the lower-hanging(?) fruit of technical skill had been picked, there was a surprising inversion towards techniques and schools of art that traded away technical craft for higher-level ideas.
The new thing is always the most fascinating thing, and those first waves of artists who happened to subscribe to newer, more progressive political ideologies rejected the old ideals in favor of new ones. These political leanings carried into their art, rejecting the old methods in favor of new and experimental things, sometimes with their political message blended in (I mentioned the aftermath of WWI because it gave us the artform of Dada, a surrealist style that rejected all sense of, well, sense in response to the irrational horrors of the Great War).
There are plenty of conservative artists, but I do suspect that something about the conservative mindset does tend to result in more flawed art, even if it's not necessarily made purely for reaction's sake (see: Thomas Kinkade, whose commercial paintings are the ur-example of schmaltzy kitsch, overwrought and out-of-place). But that being said, as an artist, I find the modern-day post-modernist anti-whatever styles and messaging to be franky exhausting. Even when progressive artists try to push a positive message, it never sits quite right with me, though that may only be because I have trouble separating the art from the artist there based solely on their politics.
Thus, I find myself confined to a similar space as many in my generation and the ones preceding it (and even following): cursed with nostalgia for the past, seeking solace in the familiar and understandable, but knowing that this fixed place in time cannot be occupied for an extended duration, let alone forever; everything that was formative to me as a child will be ruined by new sensibilities or undermined by corporate greed, and at best, I will have to let go at some point. I want to move with the art, but the art is often so flawed to me and so, so hard to agree with.
It doesn't have to be this way forever, though. Artists prize a certain freedom of expression, and while not everyone wants the freedom to make art that might hurt some group's feelings, there are going to be those who may well need to tread on some toes to make truly compelling art. I think there must be some limit somewhere, and perhaps the pendulum will swing away from bananas on walls and towards rock n' roll someday.
Tl;dr art is subjective, which incentivizes novelty and subversion. Postmodernism is a feedback loop on those conditions.
To this I would add that information access is the enemy, or at least a contributor. Amateur artists can study at the feet of all humanity’s masters. Give it five years and they can have an AI do that for them. This incentivizes commentary as a route to novelty. New paintings aren’t made in a vacuum, so instead of competing with Rembrandt, it’s more practical to engage with him. Repeat this cycle for 100 years and you get comments on treatises on comments on jokes on technical details.
That said…I’m not sure what about that is hostile to the right.
True, all of that doesn't have to be hostile to right-wingers, but I think conservatism tends to downweight weirdness generally...however, the new Dissident Right, the 4Channers, and so on definitely embrace weirdness, so perhaps that's where the future of the right does indeed lie for aesthetics.
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