Monday, November 8, 2010
Revolutionary Art
Yesterday we had a discussion on what some of our favorite revolutionary art is. I couldn't really come up with anything. I'd mentioned Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses because it was the first thing that came to mind, and because in my mind it is a work that is hard hitting and has gall. I was rightfully critiqued, however. It seems that art that critiques culture, creates change, goes against the social norm, etc. or awakens is not enough. There is a piece of the definition I am missing, obviously. I suppose revolutionary art must have a certain aim, must be good, must hit a spot in the watcher and then evoke change (hopefully as some sort of action). Can you help me with this? What is your definition and what are some very hard hitting examples? I am eager to get this clear in my mind.
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As I mentioned, Sireneatspoetry, I'll comment more later this week. But I want to say one thing for now, which is that if you conceive of revolutionary art as a dialectic and not a process, then almost anything, including Salmond Rushdie (and I think he is revolutionary but perhaps in a more limited way than many think), CAN serve a revolutionary purpose for some audiences. So maybe even coming up with a definition of revolutionary art (by "fixing" it in an ideology beyond a rhetorical context) is anti-revolutionary.
ReplyDeleteMore later!
Also, you wrote: "rev. art must ... evoke change (hopefully as some sort of action)." I like that.
we talked about how Marcuse's ideas about art, from a purely theoretical perspective, are crystal clear and hard to disagree with. But he seems to fade into ambiguity and maybe even contradiction when trying to prescribe a clear direction for a revolutionary artistic praxis. He does, however, give some idea of what, to him, revolutionary art should look like. He says: "I believe that the authentic avant-garde of today are not those who try desperately to produce the absence of Form and the union with real life, but rather those who do not recoil from the exigencies of Form, who find the new word, image, and sound which are capable of 'comprehending' reality as only Art can comprehend - and negate it." He adds: "The authentic oeuvres, the true avant-garde of our time, far from obscuring this distance, far from playing down alienation, enlarge it and harden their incompatibility with the given reality to an extent that defies any (behavioural) application."
ReplyDeleteIn other words, the role of the revolutionary artist is to "comprehend" reality and then negate it. I think one way art can do this is by exposing "reality" as a social construct, as something that is contrived and can be changed, in the same way that a work of art is contrived and can be changed. In other words, if art can blend with history to show that both are constructed narratives and not destinies or biological imperatives, then people might awaken to the possibilities for change. To me, that's a big component of artistic "comprehension"--exposing the man behind the curtain. In other words, I think Marcuse is right in principle but wrong in his application. He cites Joyce as an example of a revolutionary artist, but Joyce said himself that "art is life". Either Marcuse's interpretation of Joyce is different than Joyce's or Joyce would qualify as one of the avant-guard artists that Marcuse critiques, an artist of everyday life. To me, art must expose itself as art--it must demystify itself and to "some" degree conflate with daily life--AND it must express its incompatibility with the prevailing paradigm (maybe through hinting at or pointing to rather than naming). I think art can create a longing for something better while simultaneously reducing human alienation by demystifying the creative process. But even that isn't enough. The artistic work has also to be self-conscious enough, as Marcuse explains, to avoid being accepted as something other than possibility. Put another way, the aesthetic pleasures of the revolutionary art work have to be deferred. If they are privatized, made available for individual consumption and thereby rendered as commodities, as exchange values, they integrate with The Spectacle and become instruments of pacification. They make life within an oppressive reality more tolerable and decrease the likelihood of revolutionary resistance. So Marcuse is correct in saying that art should maintain a distance from life for the purpose of
showing that the abstract and the material are separate things--that changes in the abstract (or spiritual) world are not "real" changes--but in another sense--that art and life are inseparable, are co-dependent and equally mutable--the connection should be manifested.
In my view then, revolutionary art should 1) expose "reality" as a socially-constructed fiction; 2) create a yearning for a better and incompatible (but "undefined") reality--for new possibilities; and 3) resist becoming an exchange value by remaining undecided and transparently requesting collaborative realization and exploration (within a material setting), i.e. inviting direct action.
I'm sure I'll find flaws with that prescription as I think more about it, but I'll leave it there for now.