Playwright August Wilson said "All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics." Just because it does not hit you over the head with it like Allen Ginsberg in America, or the Moloch part of Howl, there is politics in all art. The poem in question, "A" by objectivist Louis Zukofsky is frankly too long to deconstruct the politics of for the purpose of this response. I more want to focus on the premise itself of the connection between art and politics. The fact of the matter is that if a poem avoids politics, it is being political in doing so.
A way to frame this is the Degenerate Art Exhibition in 1937, in which the Nazis displayed Dadaist art as a way of telling the German people what kind of art was unacceptable. The art, whether it intended to or not, becomes political in the context it is placed. The Nazis sought to define what art is good and what art is bad. Any act of censorship politicizes an artwork, from "Howl" to the time when "Captain Underpants"was banned in my elementary school. The political context surrounding art informs the meaning the art undertakes. I disagree with Roman Jakobson's formalist conception because no art is created without its context, so no art should be looked at without its context. Essentially, my entire argument can be summed up by one Toni Morrison quote. She said "All good art is political! There is none that isn't And the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, 'We love the status quo.'" Thanks, Toni.
Just because it's fun, I've included some Dadaist art.
Bicycle Wheel, Marcel Duchamp
Mechanical Head, Raoul Hausmann
YES! This reminds me of Carol Hanisch's 1969 essay titled "The Personal is Political," which refuted the popular argument that abortion, women's health, sex, childcare, and household duties were personal to the woman and should therefore be left out of the political sphere.
ReplyDeleteIt has since become well-known in feminist rhetoric and was a huge propeller of exploring women's issues in the second wave of feminism in the 1960s.
As a politic major, I completely agree with you. I constantly think about the political aspect of literature and there is ALWAYS some political connection. Whether it is more individualistic or broader, it is always there, even if it's not Ginsberg's "America" serious.
ReplyDeleteI love that you brought up the Degenerate Art Exhibition. I know a decent amount about it so I thought I’d add a little more context since you’re right, this was part of a movement in which the Nazi’s were controlling not only the content of the art but also the style.
ReplyDeleteRealism was declared to be the only acceptable kind of art so that it could be used as a sort of ideological preparation to sell the idea of German greatness, heroism, purity of race, masculinity, and physical power. All sculptures were done in the style of Michelangelo’s David— ideal, perfect, pure, white bodies—promoting the idea that white Germans were the ideal and inheritors of the Greek/Roman power, and couching the youth who didn’t remember the humiliation of their defeat in WW1 to believe that they would be unstoppable in WW2. To prove that realism (and the ideas behind it) were ideal, the Degenerate Art exhibition demonized Modern Abstract Art as “crippled products of madness, impertinence, and lack of talent.” Abstract art was also equated with “inferior” races. A lot of the abstract portraits were placed next to pictures of Jewish or black people in order to point out similarities that they saw. The exhibit was used as proof that abstract art and all other races were primitive, animalistic, and uncivilized, while realism and the sculpted white body were superior in every way. Linking this to what you were saying, while in this case realist art was political propaganda both in context and in content, the content of abstract art was not—it became political because it was used as such by the Nazi’s
Interestingly, something very similar was happening in Soviet Russia at the same time, despite the fact that they had such opposite politics. The Nazi’s were promoting Heroic Realism while Russia was promoting Social Realism, but the art looked very similar. Instead of focusing on sculpture and this idea of the ideal body, the content was controlled to celebrate the working class and depict everyone reveling in their contribution. And, again, they used realism as a way to claim inheritance to Greek/Roman imperial power.
I think it’s interesting to add also that from right after the revolution in 1917 until around the 30s, Russian artistic propaganda was actually the complete opposite. Following the revolution, leaders had to decide what style of art would best work with the new communist vision, and they chose Abstract Art (usually minimalist cubism) because the harsh diagonal lines and shapes implied the energy, movement, strength, and modernity/progressivity of the new state. This changed because they realized that the problem with using avant-garde art for propaganda was that it just wasn’t obvious enough. To understand what the style was pushing against, the public needed to have some knowledge of art history; it was just too abstract for the working class to understand. This is why they switched to Social Realism and immediately began demeaning abstract art very similar to what they had just been promoting. I agree with what you’re saying about all art being political in some way, but I thought this was an example of the way that even when art is trying very hard to be political, it can maybe lose some of its impact and influence by being too abstract. In this case, both the Soviets and the Nazi’s realized that the best way to get people politically involved and influence public opinion was to be very obvious about what the art was trying to say.
Jonathan-
ReplyDeleteThis is such an interesting topic of discussion every time it comes up in art and literature classes (and especially when coming from someone with a background in politics). I suppose this is one of those issues I still find myself playing both sides of the ball on. I do believe that anything can be political, and by extension everything inherently is political, whether intended or not. And if one attempts to refrain from the political, is that not a tacit endorsement in some small way of the status quo? But then again, political "meaning" is about as subjective as it gets when trying to read works of art, and this too can be bent to one's will. Dada is a great example of these difficulties and ambiguities. I have a pretty poor background in art history and theory, but in that limited understanding, I feel as if the point for Dada was the rejection of these kind of projected artistic 'meanings', Theory is such a rabbit hole.