Lecture 5; Marxism and Art

Lecture 5; Marxism and Art 25/11/11

Marxism is;

• A political manifesto leading to socialism, communism and the 20^th century conflicts between capital and labour.
• A philosophical approach to society, social sciences focusing on social and human behaviour.

What is Capitalism?

• Control of the means of production in private hands.
• A market where labour power is bought and sold.
• Production of commodities for sale.
• Use of money as a means of exchange.
• Competition/hierarchy; makes people compete and clash.

The way a society is organised affects the way you think about people and the world.

Materialism; not to be confused with the meaning we associate with it as that of people who are obsessed with buying goods. Marxist meaning comprises of the base which is the economic factors, forces of production, materials, tools, workers, skills etc. Relations of production i.e., employer/employee, boss/worker. Superstructure is the social institutions and the legal, political and cultural.

‘The history of all hitherto existing society us the history of class struggles’

Marx Communist Manifesto

Art directly reflects the idea of production; Marxist.

Base produces the content and form of the Superstructure.

Men control the means of production; therefore producing more women as sexualised in the media as it is male dominated.

If you are born into a Capitalist society then you are going to think in a Capitalist way. School teaches you to be controlled, preparing for later life of work. Grading produces competition.

Marxist thinking;

• Marxist reading of the government running the country is that it is not the government but in fact a bunch of rich people with a lot of power and control.
• Marxist reading of religion would say that the whole moral reading of say, Christianity, to be good/hardworking and then you will be rewarded in heaven because everything will be worth it, would say that it is not good or worth it because you are dead.

Ideology;

1.       System of ideas or beliefs e.g. beliefs of a political party.
2.       Masking, distortion or selection of ideas to reinforce relations through creation of ‘false consciousness’

Certain sets of beliefs disguise reality. The ruling class makes the view of the few seem like the view of the many.

Pierre Bourdieu ‘A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste’

• Aesthetic judgement is a social facility
• The Kantian ‘pure aesthetic’ is stylised and mystifying account of the particular experience of the bourgeoisie.
• Aesthetic senses and associated lifestyles define themselves in difference to one another ’taste is first and foremost  the distaste of the taste of others’

If you like art you generally are middle/upper class. Working class have to learn the middle/upper class behaviour in galleries/museums etc. Artists of the past were only really wealthy people, lucky and luxurious. The style of art was dependant on who bought it.

This is presented in the painting ‘Charles Townley and his friends in his library at Park Street in Westminster’ by Johan Zoffany, 1781-83. Zoffany was paid to paint Townley in a certain way to show what he has/owns, his wealth.

Also presented in ‘Mr and Mrs Andrews’ 1750 Thomas Gainsborough.

Robert Andrews is just married and wants to be painted in the surroundings he owns. Berger would say he just wanted to show off his control and capitalism. The painting presents an ideology as there are no workers shown in the image when they would have in fact been there in reality. Link to the National Gallery.

‘The Hay Wain’ 1821 John Castable.


He tries to express the glory of nature. A materialistic reading of the image would be that the painting was made for a rich landowner and he will have had to paint in a certain way to please the client. At the time of the painting there were riots because working class people were being prevented from owning land. The painting disregards what the reailty of the time was and what was actually happening. He paints workers going about their day when they were in fact revolting. He creates a false ideology to please his client. Artists had to suck up to the upper classes and climb the social ladder. It is displayed in the National Gallery in London.

Auctions of Artworks were only for a certain type of person who could afford the price of the work, to pay an extravagant price for something that is not a necessity, a luxury to show off their wealth. How do we determine what they are worth? Some people are not necessarily paying because they love the artwork but simply that they want something that is a fixed commodity and an investment, disregarding the work itself. The art becomes an exchangeable object.

Damien Hirst ‘For the Love of God’ 2007.

Here, Hirst is just trying to make an expensive piece of artwork that is not really art. This presents the bankruptcy of art.

Conceptual Art

• What can art do to challenge this system of art being made for financial exchange? And not for the love of it.
• Anti-Capitalist gesture; a form of art that’s impossible to commodify.
• The art world did however find a way to do this in the form of book editions.

Hans Haacke ‘MOMA Poll’ 1970.


Around the time of the Vietnam War. One of the main investors behind the gallery supports a war that the public don’t want. Some of his shows were withdrawn.



'Information', an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, claimed to be the first conceptual art exhibition mounted by a U.S. museum. The artist Hans Haacke posited this SYSTEM as art: a query, a response algorithm, and its visual feedback.
Question:
Would the fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced President Nixon's Indochina policy be a reason for you not to vote for him in November ?
Answer:
If 'yes'
please cast your ballot into the left box
if 'no'
into the right box.

'Ballots' were dropped into either of two plexi-glass ballot boxes [visitors chose "yes" twice as often as "no"].
New York Governer Nelson Rockefeller was a member of the board of trustees of MOMA and planning a run for the U.S. Presidency at the time.

-Extract from this website

Relational Aesthetics

• An emerging practice
• Bringing people together with no commodities exchanged, no money or financial gain
• Seek to set up relations where the real relations of people are exposed
• Artist and Audience connected and talking, a conversation engaging and connecting with the artist

Santiego Sierra goes to third world countries and pays for people to have things done to them or do things. E.g. stand in cardboard boxes. Exploiting conditions where people will debase themselves revealing their desperation for money.

1999, he paid boys to stand and have a black line drawn down their backs.

Victor Burgin ‘What does possession mean to you?’