A recent post generated some discussion as to the relevance and status of political art on this blog and in society in general. I found this to be odd. Odd because in my view art is by it’s very nature political, inescapably so. In fact “political art” is almost a redundancy.
What is art? Artists, philosophers, historians, politicians, theologians, decorators, designers and investors have been debating this question since the invention of approval and disapproval. Webster defines art as”the conscious use of skill and creative imagination, especially in the production of aesthetic objects.”
While I comfortably accept Webster’s simple and elegant definition, in my view art is also the ultimate exercise of freedom and therefore the most political of statements possible. Every time an artist captures and reinterprets light, words or sounds, he or she is making a political statement. All art is political.
Artists can be divided into two categories: the honest who are true to their own aesthetic vision and muse and the dishonest who are not. Honest artists are anarchists and the most dedicated of libertarians. Dishonest artists emotionally and intellectually compromise their work in order to satisfy societal norms, commercial interests or peer pressure. But in either case, the product is a powerful political statement either supporting and furthering the politics du jour or expressing opposition. Both types of artists can produce great work. Honest artists like Van Gogh and Pollock and dishonest artists like Picasso and Warhol are good examples. I admit this differentiation is not so easily defined. Was Warhol paying tribute to commercialism and worshiping at its alter or was he satirizing and mocking it? Did Picasso mass produce art out of greed or are 50 versions of the same line a creative act of brilliance?
All of that aside, I believe that great artists are absolutely true to the themselves, expressing their inner vision with brutal and uninhibited candor regardless of the cost. And how can that be seen as anything other than a political statement?
Our old friend Webster defines “freedom” “as the quality or state of being free; as in the absence of necessity, coercion or constraint in choice or action.” Is that not also a definition of art and the process of its creation?
What act or set of actions in any society better exemplifies freedom?
Art is one of the first victims of censorship and persecution by dictators, authoritarians, totalitarians and theocrats. Few people or groups are more threatening to such systems than an honest artist. And dictators, theologians and corporations pay a premium for the dishonest artist who will create art in the furtherance of the cause or religious belief.
In a world where corporations, governments and organized religions spend trillions of dollars to control our perceptions and define our political, social and moral behavior, how can art not be seen as the most profound, challenging and liberating political statement of all?
As an artist, if you are true to your vision and true to yourself in the creation of your product, you are creating political art and making a bold political statement simply through your commitment to yourself and to your own muse. One need not depict an obvious political subject to create political art, one need only remain true to one’s self.
Richard,
How is it that the question, “Do art and politics mix?” is even a question, if it is so obvious that they are connected? How did art come to the point where it can be considered non-political?
Something that may relate to that, and the question of honest/dishonest artists (a provocative dichotomy) is the following:
I’ve heard this story before. Does anyone know if there is any truth in this? I don’t believe everything I read on the web, obviously, but it is an interesting story. Anyone know the facts?
Richard,
It seems you are saying that by the simple act of being an artist and not relying on mass produced representations, one is doing something political. It seems to me that if this were true, there would be more interest in and control over what artists do, by “the authorities.” To the contrary, it seems that artists have so much freedom today because most people don’t really care what they do. You had problems recently making photographs, but in a sense that was a misunderstanding of your intentions. If the police realized you were only making art, wouldn’t they consider you harmless?
Is this a question of cause and effect? Did art loose its political power because artists didn’t make use of that power?
Do artists have freedom of expression today because they are essentially powerless? Maybe making pretty pictures really is what we should be doing. Maybe the political aspect of art today is really something decorative, or a bit of spice in a stew, to mix metaphors.
What would be the real impact of art if what you are saying is true?
Karl,
Here’s your source: “The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and World of Arts and Letters”, by Frances Stonor Saunders. 1999, the New Press, NY, NY
“At its peak, the Congress for Cultural freedom [run by the CIA] had offices in thirty-five countries, employed dozens of personnel, published over twenty prestige magazines, held art exhibitions, owned a news and feature services, organized high-profile international conferences, and rewarded musicians and artists with prizes and pubic performances. Its mission was to nudge the intelligentsia of western Europe away from its lingering fascination with Marxism and Communism towards a view more accommodating of ‘the American Way.’…”
“Whether they liked it or not, whether they knew it or not, there were few writers, poets, artists, historians, scientists or critics in post-war Europe whose names were not in some way linked to this covert enterprise.”
There are some funny twists [“sublime paradox” as Saunders puts it]to this operation — re Jesse Helms who said, referring to a State Department exhibition including works of Georgia O’Keefe, Adolph Gottlieb and Ashile Gorky: “I am just a dumb American who pays taxes for this kind of trash.”
As for Richard’s argument, I would say, with something of a yawn, that we cannot help but be what we are, whether American or Dutch or agnostics — we imbibe our environment and partake of it. I’m not a fan nor an apologist for the CIA, but its “crime” in the case of nudging European intelligentsia is forgivable, unlike some other activities it engaged in. We are all guilty (born in sin, I suppose) of being of our time, and all we can do is our best to redeem ourselves. It is true that we are all political and art is all political. It is just as true that we are all animals and excrete and drink and eat to stay alive.
As for the idea that art is non-political, it was a maxim of the abstract expressionists, about whom some of Saunders writes at length.
Thanks June. I’d like to read this book. I didn’t realize that that was a maxim of the abstract expressionists. I don’t know very much about this movement, to be honest.
“It is true that we are all political and art is all political. It is just as true that we are all animals and excrete and drink and eat to stay alive.”
Okay, but where does this take us, with respect to art? If A is true and B is true, what does that tell us about A?
I see Leslie’s painting of Hello Kitty in front of the firing squad as a qualitatively different kind of thing than eating or going to the bathroom.
(He said with a yawn, but just because it’s bed-time here in Holland).
Touché Richard.
Karl,
First of all, the free expression of art in Western democracies is as political or non-political as the concept of freedom itself. And in many ways many of us do live in relatively free societies. I don’t think we see art as non-political, I think we mostly take freedom for granted. In many other societies throughout Asia and Africa art is extremely political, heavily censored and lands artists in jail or in exile.
Attempts to censor art still happen in the United States. Government grants are withdrawn when exhibitions make “unpopular” political statements. Such an attempt even happened here in New York City under the Giuliani adminstration when that mayor disapproved of art being shown in the Brookly Museum. The museum went to court and the First Amendment prevailed.
Botero’s wonderful series of Abu Gahraib paintings have been banned in most parts of the United States.
(http://rjr10036.typepad.com/proceed_at_your_own_risk/2006/10/banning_truth_i.html)
A tour of New York City art galleries is revealing in this regard. The market is dominated by dishonest art that panders to popular fashions and trends. That in itself is a powerful political statement–just not a good one.
And again, taking art as political for granted is very much related to the fact that we take freedom and our right to vote for granted (less than 40% of eligible voters in the United States actually go to the polls on average.)
If our freedom were to be threatened, our freedom to express ourselves artistically according to our own vision would also be threatened and would suddenly become much more obviously political. For now, happily, it mostly remains a subtlety.
Perhaps part of the touchiness around this question is connected with terminology. I guess there’s an academic notion of political which would cover just about anything related to political principles, such as the notion of freedom in society. Then there’s the perhaps more common usage, where political means something relating to or impacting political processes, such as elections, making laws, etc. I understand Richard to be saying that making “honest” art implicitly requires freedom, and is political in that sense. I understand Karl to be saying that in most Western societies, most art has so little impact on the political process that it could be considered non-political. I would agree with both these statements. I trust you’ll let me know if you think my paraphrasing is simplistic or just plain wrong.
I suspect many artists (and people in general) would consider themselves non-political, not always, but in terms of their art or other daily activities. But Richard’s point about this all changing in a society with less freedom is very well taken. And of course there many places where political policy meets art within current Western societies. But is being an artist inherently more political than being a tennis player (Althea Gibson, Jesse Owens, …)? Are some forms of expression different in this regard?
If you think art isn’t political, think back as recently to when John Ashcroft was Attorney General and he had the statue “Spirit of Justice” covered with a curtain when he gave press conferences, because he didn’t want a naked woman behind him! that tells me images still have power and mean something, AND people are paying attention, even to dead artists!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1788845.stm
Not sure if your comment was in response to mine, Leslie, but I don’t think anyone could claim art isn’t political as a general statement, or that there aren’t a lot of interactions between artists and artworks and politics. However, that’s a long way from saying all art and all artists are political. While I might agree with that in an academic sense, I think it would be denying the plain reality of how many people (including many artists) view themselves and their work. Now I think in fact there are many ways that most people are wrong about many things, but I don’t see the point of going to the extreme of saying all art and all artists are political (I’m not claiming that you say this). If all art is political, does political mean anything real anymore? Is “political art” simply a redundancy?
Richard, this is a good and thought-provoking post. But I’m going to split hairs here.
While all art can be looked at or discussed in a political context, I think that’s different from the art itself being political. An artist can make art about specifically political issues or they can explore other things that are not political in nature. You could look at this choice from a political point of view, but that doesn’t make the work political.
One can take the stance that an artist, by choosing not to explore political themes in their work is supporting the status quo. But that’s not necessarily the case. That same artist may be very involved in political causes that challenge the status quo, but be doing artwork that is about something else. I agree that art is an exercise of freedom, but so are many other things that occur in a free society. If you call it all political, it kind of dilutes the meaning of the word “political”.
I also have to disagree with you to a certain extent about dividing artists so neatly into the “honest” and “dishonest” groups. As you mention, “this differentiation is not so easily defined.” An artist may be honestly expressing their approval of the status quo, or they may be creating work that seems to challenge the status quo because of peer pressure to do so. In this case you couldn’t say the second artist is more honest than the first.
I do think it’s useful, and important, to look at art from a political point of view, whether the work itself is political or not. Thanks for contributing to our discussions. Good to have you here.
I think I have to confess to being the one who said all art is political, and I agree that saying that renders more specific discussion null and void and therefore the statement itself that all art is political is a useless one for discussion.
How’s that for a mea culpa?
I think my statement came in part out of an exhaustion with the topic, about which I have had many discussions. And cynically, perhaps the very fact of what Richard calls our freedom is what exhausts me. We have many ills in this country, but censorship, per se, isn’t really important enough to deal with.
The Botero materials are enormously powerful — they certainly rival Goya or even Picasso. But in actual fact they were/are being shown in the US. No brown shirts ripped the gallery apart and destroyed the paintings. The Marlborough owners are not in jail. It’s true that the Boteros were not at the big museums who generally like his “easier” work, or at least not at this time, although I bet in 25 years (god willin’ and the empire don’t rise) they will become a permanent part of a US collection.
But let me see if I can rephrase the problem a bit differently. I don’t like the discussion of art/politics/censorship because it deflects and minimizes clarity about the real problem — which has to do with corporate ownership of media, with growing monopolies in media, with the corporate take-over of the state in its broadest sense. It isn’t censorship as such that is facing us — it’s that we as citizens are being swallowed by global capitalism and faced with the possibility of a political coup.
Censorship implies a censor. And there isn’t a censor — there’s a cowardice about defying the source of funding, funding which doesn’t come from the government of, by, and for the people, but rather corporations, who exist for themselves, whatever “themselves” is.
I could go on and write a treatise about why “censorship” is small on my list of political worries –one reason being that I could go, after all, right to the Botero images on the internet. But the problem is more the control of media (and museums) by business interests with no civic sense, and with the propaganda machine that churns out the stuff that the media prints up and shows.
Beside these forces, censorship is small. It hardly matters that Botero shows his image at the Marlborough Gallery — much more important is that the government propaganda machine and the global business forces have joined up to smother us with lies. With so many lies, any truth that the artists show won’t have any effect. EVen if Botero showed at MOMA, it would have little effect on the political scene. A few MOMA curators would have some bad days, but politically it would be quite small. The photographs, on the other hand, that did get printed and shown on the internet, which were not art, were part of the anti-propaganda forces and had their effects. The media got torn open a bit with those photographs.
As you can tell, I have strong political opinions. And as politics go, my opinions seem to agree with those expressed by Richard. But I don’t see that a blog on art gets anywhere by maundering about censorship — partly because the word is inappropriate (it’s corporatism and state propaganda, not censorship) and partly because, as I think Birgit says, the discussion deflects us from the art itself.
Now, if someone wants to post on the Botero exhibit, that would be a different matter.
I hope I’m making sense. I want to talk about art, not fight about politics. I can have those fights right here in my neighborhood. But I can’t talk about art here in my neighborhood.
June, I agree, the biggest threat to the expression of truth in our country isn’t censorship, it’s spin.
Steve,
I wasn’t really responding to you – it was more of a free floating statement out there:)
But it was kind of in response to Karl’s statemnt that the powers that be are not even paying attention to art right now (my interpretation of his words).
June,
I don’t agree that censorship is the least of our problems. You can proabbly tell my political leanings from my comments on this blog – they are in line with yours and Richard’s. I guess I see censorship (my definition – any entity with power exerting control – including by withholding financial backing – over what art gets seen and what doesn’t) as a huge problem when you get into people’s right to freedom of expression. as an extreme example – Botero would not get an NEA grant, right? I think of the Mapplethorpe debacle of the 80’s. Those issues aren’t over just because the government has basically decimated the NEA. I remember when 9/11 first happened – I was in grad school and a group of students wanted to organize performances and protests in response. People were literally afraid to protest because they might end up on a list somewhere. We are farther away from that atmosphere today, but not much. There is lip service paid to our country’s right to free speech being one our treasures of democracy, one of the freedoms worth fighting for. But you better watch your back if you express yourself “TOO freely!” I do agree that we do not want A and P to become about political diatribes, but I for one am glad for the variety between this kind of post and ones critiquing sepcific paintings and other such “pure” art topics. And it is very much art related – what happens to the art after we make it? We talk about whether it gets commercial success or not in other respects, right? I get exhausted by politics too, but more because it is so bleak right now. This kind of post provides nice variety for A and P and is very provocative.
Having said all that, I do agree with you that corporatism and propoganda are huge threats as well. But I see them as part and parcel of censorship. If corporations control the media – don’t they censor content just as much as government does?
My questions to you Richard;
The categories of art as being honest and dishonest really do not ring true to me either, but I am curious about other artists who would fit on either list. How about soem contemporary artists? Can you give more examples? Van Gogh might have liked the opportunity to become “dishonest” if he had the chance to sell some work, but who knows…
I am the last person to judge the quality or success of an artist based on whether they reach commercial success (as you can tell from other comments I have made quite adamantly on this blog). But I am also hesitant to label artists who use, play with, recognize or address the commercial world in their work as dishonest. What is connection for you? In one of my contemporary art history classes, my professor put Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol together as the most influential and brilliant artists of our time. At the time I was so in awe of Beuys and in disdain of Warhol that I shuddered at the thought of uttering their names int he same sentence (I exaggerate a bit). Now I would feel very differently, and part of the prof’s point was that there are many ways to comment on society and be effective – from inside and outside. Beuys may be an artist you classify as honest, in contrast to Warhol. I am trying to understand your distinctions – want to flesh them out?
My politics are in line with those of Richard, June and Leslie and I prefer not to have my buttons pushed here on A&P too often.
I prefer discussions about art including political art.
I appreciate both Beuys and Warhol for Observations from their own Participation.
And the Political Perspective has rarely provided a deeper appreciation for any of my life experiences.
And Leslie: what do you think of Koons?
My view of honest vs. dishonest is, I think, relatively simple. It’s the difference between being true to your own vision vs pandering to popular tastes and financial considerations. I number many artists among my friends here New York and some faithfully and courageously (or foolishly) stay true to their vision. Others want to be shown and to sell their work (I say with some sarcasm.)
I suppose the difference between honest and dishonest can somewhat be defined by how an artist responds to such statements as:
“I love your work, but it won’t sell. Come back to me with something more commercial.”
“Blue is what it’s all about in the market right now. Can you redo these with more blues?”
“Sorry, gay is hot right now. I’m only looking for gay artists.”
It’s not unlike any other business: skilled networkers are more successful than people with talent and imagination.
Perhaps I don’t even mean “dishonest” in a negative way. There’s nothing wrong with earning a living.
I earn a living as a writer among other things…and there’s much that I write for myself, enjoying a very small audience…but I also know how to write for a larger audience and turn a profit. And in order to do that I can’t be true to myself or be completely honest as a writer.
D.,
Koons makes me sick and makes me laugh in the same moment (so I am laughing while feeling nauseous). Probably exactly the reaction he would relish!
Richard,
That does further clarify the whole honesty thing. But sometimes you don’t know how an artist responds to those questions, right? I myself worry about responding to the “market” in my own work. One series of my work gets a lot more attention adn accolade than another. THe other is more compelling and has deeper meaning to me. Which do I choose to wokrk on? THe answer is both, but I am tempted tocrank out the popular ones to make sales and generate more public interest…
And there are more subtel versions of adopting your work to the current trends and interests, right? From what I know of Pollock (not much admittedly and you can counter me here), he acted oblivious to responses to his work, but how could he be really?
My concern is that the honest/dishonest model uncomplicates what is complicated; it offers easy dismissal. And why do that?
Richard: do you dismiss Koons (Are you familiar with the airbrushed image of Koons sitting on a teacher’s desk before an enrapt class of elementary students?)? or Pollock, especially when he started to squirm under the Expectations?
If pandering to the market is dishonest, it’s also dishonest to pretend one is somehow separate from it. Any artist who was not born rich has to deal with the issue of making a living. They may support themselves by selling their work (within the market), by working at some job (also part of the market), or some combination of the two. It’s good to look at the world and try to change the things we think are wrong with it, but we’re kidding ourselves if we think we are separate from it. Whether we like it or not, we all contribute in many small ways to the forces that we oppose.
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I am a student doing a speech on if art and politics can be separated or not. I was wondering if you could explain a little bit more to me your position on the fact that art and politics can not be separated.