Expanded from the “Iconoclastic Controversies” artist’s statement in November 2011
By Adam Turl
In its origins art (like all human activity) is ultimately rooted in material conditions—the struggle to meet basic material needs and thereafter to organize the surplus (wealth) created by collective human activity.
Art is no more autonomous a human activity than any other.
Art is ultimately situated in a social context in which ideas are either used to justify or oppose the unequal division of wealth in a society divided by social classes (and the accompanying oppressions and problems that flow from that division—sexism, racism, homophobia, nationalism, environmental devastation).
The “spiritual aspect” of art
But art, by its nature, cannot be reduced to its material origins or its location within politics and economics.
It occupies a similar social space to religion in that it not only deals with moral issues (which can be understood by a materialist examination of history) it also deals with intangible “spiritual” matters (that can’t be understood solely in scientific terms).
Art—at its best—can provide those who experience it with a sense that life is greater than the sum of its parts.
Art is a commodity
In capitalism, however, art is also a commodity to be bought and sold.
The art market produces a dialectical feedback that shapes and forms the content of art itself.
Economic changes therefore result—in contradictory, delayed and confusing ways—in cultural changes (however mediated by the intangible elements of art).
Capitalism also produces an overproduction of images, objects and cultural reference points—much as capitalism creates crises of overproduction in the “real economy.”
In the real economy an overproduction of commodities (which can’t be sold at a profit) produces recessions.
On the one hand, the economy produces enough goods and services that poverty and want can be eliminated. However, the structure of capitalism (geared toward profit) ensures the opposite result. People are thrown into poverty because, as Marx said, “there is too much civilization.”
The overproduction of culture
In art, this overproduction of culture appears to erode the spiritual, moral and intellectual force of art itself.
Instead of using the growing capacity of creative production to open up access to the creation of art to the majority of the population—which would produce something like a proletarian renaissance—capitalism channels most (but not all) creative production into two alienated spheres—the bourgeois art market and the proliferation of images and narratives designed or conditioned as a means to perpetuate aspects of the system (exploitive labor, consumption, mainstream politics, etc.).
That much “good art” continues to be produced in these spheres is a testament to the “intangible” aspect of art (the spiritual aspect) and the fact that resistance is hardwired into all arenas of class society.
Until the abolition of capitalism, however, the overproduction of culture increasingly confronts the beholder as white noise—whether it is Shakespeare or Dr. Phil, a can of soup or Andy Warhol’s cans of soup.
Since the 1980s, many have called this condition post-modernism. Most post-modernist authors are dense and unreadable. Luckily, Walter Benjamin succinctly and clearly described this phenomenon in his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” decades earlier.
Benjamin’s answer to the “erosion of the aura” of art was to politicize art—to put art squarely in the service of working-class revolution.
Since the 1990s a layer of artists, most importantly the installation artist Ilya Kabakov—have tried—with some success—to re-establish the auric nature of art.
Contrary to the arguments of many “left” art critics this in and of itself is not a reactionary project. Indeed it is an entirely correct project.
Artists should try to re-establish the auric power of art.
The problem is, of course, that auric power stems primarily from social construction, i.e. society agrees to give art auric power. It does this through institutions.
In visual arts the most important of these is the museum. It is here where Benjamin’s exceptions live—the fetishes of capitalist art, the original artifacts, those that by virtue of not being mechanical reproductions (or being imbued with power despite that fact) reside.
This is why Kabakov has primarily focused on constructing his installations in these “temples of power.”
The museum, much like the ancient Ziggurat, imbues the artist with magical powers.
Like the ancient Ziggurat that power comes from human sacrifices.
Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridges was built on the profits stolen from millions of Wal-Mart associates and millions of—mostly Chinese—manufacturing workers.
This is not to argue that artists should renounce museums—unless there is some specific social movement reason to do so—like an art handlers strike.
Every part of capitalist society is built on “dead labor”—on the capital sucked vampire-like from generations of slaves and workers. It can’t be escaped short of revolution.
Shaman trap
Indeed, the problem with Benjamin’s solution to these problems is that art can’t be reduced to politics.
Art is always something “more,” something “spiritual,” something expressive and emotive. The artist is not merely a craftsperson or technician. The artist is, in some way, a “shaman.”
Art’s function in society is in no small part to produce spiritual artifacts.
For capitalism, in Marxist terms, the primary use value of art is that it has a spiritual value.
This does not mean that the capitalists who buy art are particularly enlightened.
It does mean that the most important capitalist narrative—that capitalism is the crowning glory and culmination of human history—requires it to maintain the production of spiritual artifacts.
Failing to do so would be to admit the shallow baseness of its rule.
The earliest humans—who lived in egalitarian hunter-gatherer systems—allowed the division of society into social classes in part so that a minority could specialize in the arts.
Abdicating that charge completely would violate a 10,000-year-old social contract that no one remembers but is somehow etched in the cultural subconscious.
Since art can’t merely be in service to the revolution, artists find themselves confronted with two problems.
In the mechanically reproduced sphere they confront the old conundrum of the Byzantine and Islamic iconoclasts (and iconophiles).
An artist by nature produces art, but the unfettered “worship” of images has undermined “the center” of art. For the artist the creation of yet more art becomes a trap that gets tighter the more one tries to escape.
It is in this sphere that Benjamin’s solution is most applicable.
Unfortunately, no artistic practice, however radical, can hope to overcome the cultural contradictions of late capitalism.
In the “art world” proper artists can hope to re-establish art’s auric power but in doing so become tethered to bourgeois society that will ultimate consume the aura they have recreated and commodify and reify their work to its own ends.
Moreover, as the center of art dissolves, the art world has tended to be polarized between expressive and shamanistic art on the one hand, and conceptual and political on the other.
The offspring of formalism continues to be the official art of capitalism as abstract and semi-abstract paintings and sculptures adorn every major bank and corporate lobby or plaza.
Conceptualism can seem cloistered in an unknowable academicism—a specialty of a particular layer of producers, critics, curators and a bourgeois collectors.
False dichotomy in “fine art”
In truth a false dichotomy has been made between the idea of art as the product of shamanism (demonstrated by the work of Joseph Beuys as well as in the modern traditions of oil
painting) and conceptualism (demonstrated by the work of Marcel Duchamp as well as by the decedents of Dada and Fluxus).
The related materialist understanding of art is also key (articulated in its various elements by Benjamin, John Berger and Leon Trotsky and demonstrated by the work of Bertolt Brecht, constructivism, the Mexican muralists, among others.)
The false dichotomy of art is itself an “unnatural” product of capitalism.
While art practice itself can’t overcome the cultural prison of late capitalism artists can attempt to re-center art by seeking a rapprochement between shamanism and conceptualism, between formalism and political radicalism—even between “mechanical” art that has primarily political purposes and social-totemic work produced for the “art world” that has a dual aim of establishing aura and linking it to the forces that can liberate art.
Art and revolution
Art must begin to re-align itself with social revolution.
Art is irreducible to economics and politics but only the popular struggles of the exploited and oppressed for their own emancipation can actually liberate art.
Red Kiosk 