Between “The Rock” and a Hard Place: Towards a Conception of Populist Art and Aesthetics
Every gushing opposition is characterized by the fact that on occasion it perceptively exposes the contradictions of capitalist society, that it combats them with genuine embitterment and apt mockery, but also by the fact that it is incapable of comprehending the essence of this society. In most cases this results in an exaggerating distortion of the problems and leads to a point where true criticism turns into a social untruth.” — George Lukacs
With this paper, I will be going against the grain of what I believe to be the general direction or drift that this class has taken with respect to aesthetic critique. By this I mean that instead of focusing on the formal elements or aspects of a given painting, I will address the issue of context, which, as Joshua Taylor has noted, has the potential of “sharpen[ing] our awareness of the subtleties of [an artist’s] vocabulary and often reveal[ing] new content which to our direct view may not have been accessible” (139).
My adoption of this particular tack reflects the frustration that I have experienced thus far in attempting to adopt a personal criteria by which to judge art. While a few of our readings have ameliorated some of my frustration, our recent sojourn to the Art Institute only served to pique that frustration once again. For still missing from our face-to-face meetings with our chosen masterpieces was any reference to a given artist’s life — his or her times, whom he or she associated with, whom their influences may have been, and so on. In other words, the sort of stuff Taylor elaborated upon in his discussion of the French painter Jacques Louis David (140–8). It is here that the author addresses the important question related to the subject of art-historical context; that is, “How much of the artist’s style is his own, and how much does it simply hold in common with the time” (140)? It is questions like these that most most interest me, and while Taylor certainly acknowledges their immanent centrality to aesthetic critique, the fact that he accords such concerns second-class status. I guess this is where I would differ with those who would claim that Taylor’s book is devoid of ideology, or free of a particular ax that the author sees fit to grind. Because, after all, the privileging of one area of aesthetics over another (e.g., form over content/context) could hardly be characterized as free from controversy; and it’s my estimate that Taylor is taking a side in this controversy via Learning to Look.
Obviously our trip imposed certain unavoidable logistical restrictions upon what we could actually examine at the Art Institute; that doesn’t mean, however, that it wouldn’t have been “nice” to have had some art-historical context injected into our analyses, nor, I hasten to add, would it be so “horrible” to make this area of inquiry part of our presentations.
In light of our recent trip, I’d like to outline a “counter-experience” to what we had, which I would appreciate some feedback on:
- Pick just one artist whose work interests you and you’d like to know more about
- Obtain biographical and autobiographical works on or by the particular artist
- Research the movement that the artist may have been associated with
- Research the history of the times and places that the painter worked in
- And then finally unite all of the above with the formal tools obtained via our class readings and discussion
It’s my contention that if one doesn’t take steps similar to these, our analyses remains at the level of style only, and thus we miss the artist’s outlook and ultimately fail to truly appreciate his body of work.
This is not, however, the method I used to critique Blume’s painting, ‘The Rock.” I did implement the method when viewing the overly-hyped Georgia O’Keefe exhibit some years ago, which I thought was a perfect antidote to the “sight-bites” that most fellow attendants seemed perfectly happy with. And in the end I unmistakably benefited from the enhanced experience that my method brought me. Unfortunately, as I just noted, the exigencies attached to this particular paper prevented me from adopting this holistic approach here. But in my view, with Blume, not much is lost in the process. For in a way the painting “speaks for itself,” to borrow the rather worn cliche; and a deeper examination, while certainly potentially providing us with added insight, may not in the end contribute all that much to an analysis of such a transparent work.
Now before criticizing me for seemingly contradicting myself so brazenly, let me explain. As I see it, there is something about the very nature of Blume’s painting that mitigates the need for a deeper examination. And this I believe is its overt political message.
As the caption in our book tells us, Blume was responding to the aftermath of World War II, in particular, I suspect, to the devastation that was was wreaked upon Europe. The depiction of people of various nationalities in the painting would seem to lend credence to this observation. Moreover, given the extent of the destruction portrayed, in particular the leafless trees in the background, it might be argued that Blume had some knowledge of atomic bombs. The damaged Coca-Cola sign in the foreground would seem to implicate America at some level as well. In fact, it’s difficult to ignore the feeling that the painting doesn’t so much depict a European apocalypse as an American one, with “the rock” at the center perhaps being a European apocalypse as an American one, with “the rock” at the center perhaps being a metaphor for the atomic bomb, and the rest of the painting symbolizing what the United States may in the future reap as a result of what it was (in 1948) in the process of sowing. Minus any biographical data on Blume, one can only speculate on such matters. But if we recall the early documentary film of U.S. nuclear tests, sampled in contemporary agit-prop films like “Atomic Cafe,” placing “The Rock” within this context does not seem so far-fetched.
With this much in mind, clearly Blume’s painting is meant to convey an anti-war message--be it nuclear, or what we now refer to as “conventional.” This is what I meant earlier by the “transparency” of this painting. Its politics are loud and clear. And at this point I’d like to return to the quote of Lukacs’s that I began my paper with. I would argue that Blume’s painting epitomizes the sort of art that Lukacs finds problematic. His argument is rendered particularly salient in light of the hindsight acquired in the fifty years that have elapsed since the work was completed. Not only has Europe successfully rebuilt itself, but he Cold War is over; and with the U.S.S.R. having been perestroiked out of existence, the threat of nuclear Holocaust and the much-anticipated reign of the “road warrior” have been dispensed with into the dustbin of history. Blume’s painting was an “exaggerating distortion” in the forties, to use Lukacs’s words, and must certainly today be regarded as a depiction of a “social untruth.”
What Blume’s painting gives the lie to and what Lukacs criticizes is the notion that art can be effectively used as an instrument of or for political expression. In effect, art in the hands of the likes of Blume is a tool — one other media by which to coax people out of their apolitical stupor. Unbeknownst to Blume and apparently a good number of his students, the idea of “using” art for a political end negates what art must forever be: useless. By this I mean “autonomous,” and free from the instrumentalizing effects of capitalism, whereby the logos of the market — its “means-ends” rationality--is resisted. By turning art into what amounts to a banner, albeit without the requisite slogans inscribed upon it, Blume and company not only fail in their attempts to resist capitalism, they merely mirror a process that is constantly going on behind their backs: the commodification of culture. Art during the “hyper-capitalist” phase of market society is not only flattened into a means by which products are sold, but it becomes a product itself, mass-manufactured and advertised. Thus, we not only hear Baroque music being used to sell beer, but we find reproduction after reproduction of original works being sold to “middle-brow” consumers. “Art” is now everywhere but may as well be nowhere. Instead of retaining its uselessness to society, art reverts back to its original form. In ancient societies art was used to impart tradition and to serve ritual purposes; today, however, it is devoid of tradition and serves a myriad of purposes, none of which escape the reach of the many-tentacled market.
The concept of autonomous art, outlined above, and propagated my more than a few critics and practitioners, does not stand freely from its own immanently-derived critique, however. If taken to its logical conclusion, autonomous art must forever be dodging the co-opting capacity of what T.W. Adorno has termed the “culture industries.” In music, it is referred to as a musician or band resisting the temptation to “sell-out”; that is, signing a contract with a major recording corporation, and thus refusing to compose dissonant music. In art, works become more and more abstract or absurd. In the end, both “alternative” music and other so-called “bohemian” or “counter-cultural” art forms either find themselves limited to complete obscurity, and are therefore ignored; or they become caught up in the desire to “shock” society “by whatever means necessary.” Neither trend is very conducive to a much-needed theory of art. In the first case, the relationship between art and society is nullified, and in the second, it is reduced to a pseudo-conflict. A revised theory of art, it seems to me, needs to pose an alternative to both of these flawed aesthetics. And this is where the title of my paper comes in.
For all of his book’s flaws, Tolstoy’s What Is Art? at least points us in the direction of a third way. For not only does Tolstoy have the gall to insist on criteria by which we are to judge art, he has the wisdom to remind us that art has had an intimate historical relationship with cultural tradition. He understood, in my view, that art must have an intimate relationship with the society from which it emerged. Not only that, but he recognized that art should not have a relationship with only the elite of society. In other words, he thought that art could have and should have mass appeal, but in doing so did not have to be reduced to the pablum of mass culture.
One artist who seems to be in this vein is Thomas Hart Benton, a painter best known for his murals of the 1930’s. A writer of similar temperament would be James Agee, author of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Benton’s vision--the hope for an art rooted the regional and local cultures of the United States--, along with the tradition of writing represented by Agee and others--a “tradition that is native, rooted in local customs, and challenging in form and substance” — should be held up against the political Right’s glorification of “patriotic” art, as well as the likes of Blume and others, who for all intents and purposes kowtow to the avant-garde. As my friend Kevin Mattson has written, “A populist culture should be neither dismissive of people’s values nor degenerate into schmaltz.” And that native American tradition is out there, just waiting to be recovered. This paper should be regarded as a gingerly-laid step in the direction of that very process.
