Reviews
Is all art political?
Given an increasingly globalised world, with a seemingly ever-growing emphasis on instrumentalised production and economic utility, is the making of art (that is, any art at all) in itself a political act in relation to such a context, or does art need to be overtly political in either appearance or intention to qualify for such a tag?
Tags: art, globalisation, politics
Replies to This Reviews
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Permalink Reply by Supermarket on -
I believe works of great beauty and social-political significance can be created readily in this current socio-political climate... I'm going about it with audio-visual performance art, which is also modular and can work as installation works too, driven by music... that way it can be broadcast as music video, projected in a gallery, performed in a night club, screened at film festivals... there have never been so many ways for an artists sentiment to be proliferated, if created with a good sense of communication and design.
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Permalink Reply by Beppe on -
Art and politics
The affinity between the work of art and the political action is ambiguous rather, in fact it can be understood in two antithetical ways: we can be thought that the work of art and the political action represent, in the human being, the organizational synthesis (the organic representation of the observed , the correct arrangement of the state), or that, in how much demonstrations of non organic multiplicity represent inevitable happenings of the humanity been born by the individuality of the single one and by the sociality of the group.
L' art has a social dimension through the ideal consideration of the public, that perceives the to be revealed itself some work however. This is the first possible bond between art and politics.
The analysis of the fact artistic brings however always to the politics because he always treats, for the individual as for the group, to find again the purity under what the social system denaturalizes. Every action that simply is not conformist, and that it both it same somehow pure*, it testifies one gone up again toward the origin of the aesthetical action.
It is under the real world, tame and violated, that an original feeling of respect can be glimpse for the human being. The art is the dynamic tool, that invents previously the political action, action that will show unknown possibility to the system, to its masters and its ideologists, it will be the artistry spread in the single daily practices, to transform the political and the system, to establish the utopia to overturn the institutionalized rules.
The crisis of the years 60, despite it substantial failure, it has had a function detector, on all the existing social structures, discovering the unthinkable one some institutions, of the impostures of the apparatuses and showing to everybody, in the electric shock of the historical moment, their bond with the dominant ideology.
The first results of such revolution have been those to contest the ideologies that maintain the subordinate man to the being, reducing him to pure witness of the facts, ideologies extremists for which the man is only a linguistic invention, evanescent figure "in a temporary system of concepts", " being ended that the exists really only for the time when the system calls him, founds him and a privileged place confers him" and subsequently forced to disappear inside the system
The politics through the art has to return to the man.
This ethical assignment of the art, renders explicit him in the moral duty to provoke the man because is man."
The man is not a mere concept, a simple sign but a concreteness, but identical to the substance of the environment in which alive, evidence "irrecusable and first" that he recognizes him in every gesture, in every action of the other human beings.
The social relationship among the various subjectivities is reestablished again on a cultural plan level where the man completes deliberate fit volunteers toward his similar, toward the world common of the objects looking for all the correlated dimensions of their values founding.
To gather these values means for the individual to undertake himself in the world, to have called to act against the technobureaucracy of the contemporary social system and all the ideologies against the structures of the society that suffocate the authenticity of the reality,: this means to try to build a new world in which creativeness is able still to represent a sign of the demiurge.
This struggle, shows the fund of religiousness neither dogmatic neither blind trust of the philosophy of Dufrenne against the theories of the modern objectivity, and of the integral humanism of Maritain showing the importance of the action of the man, of its creative ability, of its desire to change the life, to return her a sense against the techniques that want to use him and to put to keep silent him in attends him some death
To make politics the art is a taking of conscience of the necessity to practice the critical function from the artist.
Despite the symptoms that reveal the illness of it, the modern art it is not dead, the appointment in the social context, the ability of to affirm itself and to defend itself from the aggressions of the context, realizing her own behavioral norms and of search they do a tool of powerful and pure political intervention of it.
We don't misunderstand on the term "To make politics it ", that as total enslavement must not be intended to a party or to an ideology, the sixties teach.
The art goes down in politics to direct it, for to make aesthetics it, with the knowledge not to make to be subordinated to the political routine.
The today's political appointment can reveal as novelty to be, at times through actions that can seem contradictory, proclaiming the death of the bourgeois art of pure visual appeasement, refusing the markets of the art, inserting the artistic practice in the daily, revealing in its way of her "to answer to the inside order of the nature of to create" of the man, showing that, if the art cannot make the revolution, it is at least able to change the life.
Art and politics are two structures of the society and in how much such, we thought has to be conditioned from the ideology of the context or rather from what it expresses and it justifies the system; to this falsehood it needs to oppose, really through the art, a new origin of the truth. The antidote that allows to return its uncorrupted innocence to the art; it is the utopia, that aims to purge the institutions proposing another organization of it, another life.
From when the artist-priest, gone out of the magic phase that he saw him witch-doctor to know hidden, the power of the warlike king has been enslaved to (the patron) and confined to the role of artisan that produces for the one that the to appease hunger him and it protects him, to the art, he has been assigned:
1. a social status inserted in a series of microinstitution constituted from: artist, clientele, public, criticism, emoluments, favouritism, tangent, commerce, consumption, levitation of the costs, iper-production, exploitation, recycling,…. etc.
2. an idea sorter of "Beautiful", in degree, alone, to characterize the objects attributing them a value, independent from any other value.
Also the politics, in more evident way, it is institutionalized in the State. Institution for excellence, where political power takes root him vindicating it own autonomy towards the other powers of the society, the magistracy, the police, etc.
The art and the politics considered as substantially autonomous, in the points that their communion marks, they show in façade, in the relationship among the employees, an attitude that seems of formal indifference, in reality the relationships that are established they are of mutual subordination.
The utopia doesn't consider art and politics as separate institutes, but as the thought that fertilizes the appointment and the future of the man in the world.
The modern utopian relationship between art and politics assumes a character of irreverence and invention, therefore of extraneousness toward the philosophical thought of the to reflect. It makes to emerge therefore its relative with the action made necessary by the need, that manifests it in the gesture as realization of the desire, it is identified with the necessity to pursue the possible , the creation of the natural status of a new world in which liberty is realized through a process of economic liberation, politics and social whose end is that to free the man from the slavery of the need, from the war, from the struggle of class, allowing every a concrete material and spiritual self-realization.
Therefore this doesn't coincide with the classical utopia, that describes unreal contexts, but it is our social habitat that wants for a more equitable life to be restructured for everybody.
This utopia of the reality, takes root it in the society where, as Marcuse says, "the principle of reality is become the principle of output."
This utopia "warm" that nothing has in common with the technocratic fittingses, in how much rubber band of the change, must be put in the desire, of justice.
In the intention to realize this desire there is inherent the hope in itself, in we own ability to the action, that has to constructively express it, power of affirmation, opening toward a future improved by the personal appointment.
Today the utopia has gone over the same philosophers that have proposed its, in fact, it has taken conscience that the conquest of the State through the revolution and the installation of new orthodoxies, it is false and misleading.
The strategy of the utopia is to replace, to the revolution we thought about doing, the actions politically aesthetics, immediate and punctual that do today it.
Through the utopian action, together with the politics of the potentates, of the lobbies, of the parties of the armchairs, it will also find its dissolution the art of the institutions of the series that produces wealth to the "merchants of the temple" that through their communication they enslave the artist, twisting the truth of his lived. It needs to return a sense and a function to the art and this can happen only if it is again attributed it that halo of magic party and mysticism that it possessed near the primitive people, that sense of the beauty as intensity of the to appear, the gesture fully gesture that is granted to the sight how the magic, necessary and enough ritual, to the essence evoked of the "Thing":
The order put in scene, to do theatre from the ideology, has lost reason to be, the motive for the necessity and the universality is stopped; the justification and the motivations of the power are stirred again, the discussed competences, the tried virtues and the art it appears therefore motive and tool of innovation.
The aesthetical concept that surpasses that of "beautiful" it must be extended therefore by the objects to the actions in such way that the utopia incites the artistic production, in formal way, or rather that makes to die a certain conception of the art, to do yes* that it is the result interpreted in ethical sense of the Nature.
If these trials are occurred for Schönberg or Picasso, not for this they will be blocked for the anonymous bricoleur, that inside the art will be inserted for the actions that want to widen its sense and to bring the social upheaval to change the conditions of the production.
Beppe Devoti
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Permalink Reply by mike hinc on -
All art is political - whether it wants to be or not. By "being" it enters the world and the world is a political forum. Art cannot be "apolitical" anymore than people can. To pretend otherwise is an act of bad faith. By being "apolitical" or pretending to be so - bad art allows itself to be used as a tool in the political maelstrom. It disclaims responsibility.
I'm not advocating an art that proselytizes party factions - that would be propaganda - but I am suggesting that artists should be conscious of the politics around them and make their art accordingly. Anything else is mere decoration.
And Beppe - we can all make art. The world has changed since Marx. It's no longer the means of production that need Socializing - but the means of distribution. This is also true of many media industries.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Bowdidge on -
Well, we wouldn't be wanting any dangerous creative thinking going on, would we?
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Permalink Reply by Steve Maher on -
My opinion is even a strictly unpolitical statement is a political statement, by avoiding politics in action you are effecting politics as much as some one who intentionally sets out to engage in political activities. We are all politicians and we are all artists.
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Permalink Reply by ted stanuga on -
Steve and Mike, you both are right...I would like to posit the notion that the next layer of description is where the conversation gets interesting. What kind of politic a particular work or practice emulates is a conversation I would like.... I think that it begins with a look at utility and art. At first blush I think that art in a work is diminished by its utility... does a political statement carry some aspect of utility? There isn't as much art in the world as we think, I think.... Pax
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Permalink Reply by Nicholas Wright on -
Well Well seems like it just got interesting again on this thread....... what political ideology a piece of work can emulate? well i really have never thought of art as emulating a political ideology. Here is an idea how could art be used to create a system of communication used across borders. Without need for written language?? Now that would be a sure fire way of having the politicians at your knees! My personal view is that it is also a near impossibility, because most of the world is so tied up and obsessed with its own written form of language that it would attempt to instantly formalize the the visual with words.
May be as an artist i should spend the next year just speaking in images and not writing at all...............
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Permalink Reply by mike hinc on
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I don't think a work of art can emulate a political ideology. If it even asks political questions it runs the risk of turning into propaganda. But a political consciousness can be built into the work of be part and parcel of the work as a whole. This might leave the viewer asking questions of a political nature.
I think your recent work does this Nicholas - using beauty as a stalking horse. It's provocative in the best sense of the word. Of course it has been interesting to monitor reactions. There are those who still see only the cloying beauty - and thus miss the point of the work. The point of life in general really. That's the really depressing thing.
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Permalink Reply by Nicholas Wright on
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Ha Ha yes i know what you mean about being blinded by beauty at the opening to that show. Some very longterm family friends turned up they both had exactly the reaction I exspected to the show. They could not see past the tong in cheek section of the work. I could of predicted their response in a sealed envelope and been seen as a magician that day... hehe
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Permalink Reply by Nicholas Wright on
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just to hot up the situation heres an image... i have only justs scanned from my sketch book..............................................
title flag divide
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Permalink Reply by mike hinc on
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Strong image but unlike the work in your show that's political in the propagandic sense. There is no ambiguity and no leap of understanding for the mind of the viewer to make. Preachy.
Just to return the image swap - here's some of my "political" work. I haven't posted as normal work it as I think it too preachy. "Are you glad to be in America?"
Oh and I celebrated the Olympics with this. Guaranteed to get up both nostrils. "All sport is fascist." (And all art political) Ha!
