art and marginality

8/12/2019 Art and Marginality

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/art-and-marginality 1/4

Circa Art Magazine is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Circa.

http://www.jstor.org

Art and Marginality

Author(s): John RobertsSource: Circa, No. 30 (Sep. - Oct., 1986), pp. 44-46Published by: Circa Art MagazineStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25557135Accessed: 11-08-2014 11:21 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content

in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.21 on Mon, 11 Aug 2014 11:21:11 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cam

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25557135

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp





http://www.jstor.org/stable/25557135

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cam

http://www.jstor.org/



CIRCA

44

AND

MARGINALITY

John

Roberts

f

_______

4

_________________________________

r

-

?

______________________________________

-^

___T

__i___f

__________________________________________

______D^

*^*

i_____^

__________________________________________

_______B^

____^

_______________________________________________

^>-"-P^^

v

_J|^-_

^r^^

___________________________________________________

^___H_______

^^^^_B^

_______w

_______________________________________________________

_____EF

^^^^^*^

^^^__^^

^__.

_________________________________________________________^

*W^^^

__p^^^^___^^____K.

^____.

________________________________________________________^^^

^

^_____p__t

^*?

^__________

_____________________________________________________̂ ^^

_

w________P^

^_^9^_____

________________________________________________^^

_^___^^

______c_^_

^^^^^^

v

________

^_____S9^____

_________________________________________________^ ?____B^^^

w_

________l^___H___r

___________.

^__-___^__S^______________________________________________r

____

V1

^^^^_flr

_^^>

^^^^

j^fe*

vl^_______S_____________________________________________r ________^^

W

^^

iq^^ ^J/K^^

_fl____^

^^0^^^^

^_s________________________________.

vJZr

^T

^*_

l__________^^________________________________________________________r

_

**9_v _______r

^.T^**

^______r

^^^__________________________________________̂

k

?-

^^

_flr

-_t__-__X

-^____v

________^

^^______________________________________^^

^fl___L __P^ _____E_^

^

^^^____B?

r -

^^_>

^

^_____L

_____B^

______T^B______^

__

______?

^F^^^

^^________

__>

________^^^__________<

________

__^?fc^

^_____/_^^^^_____L

_.

___________________

______

>

^___k_

^9_____L

_b^_*^____?^^"^r

__________.<___^^_^__^__"

_^L^^^^^^^^^^^^_____

l_fe

^i________'<_______

_________^^^^^-W_^

____________________________________________________

^^____r^^^^fc/y_k^L____TC_W

^_____________________________________________________.

^T_^^_k_

JZL

"W

^^___LHBL-,

dk_/

Discussion

over

the shrunken

public

space

for

art and

its criticism is

the

central

terrain

of

post-war

Western

art.

In

fact the

political

strategies,

aesthetic

bifurcations and

managerial

neuroses

of

post-war

art

are

structurally

determined by the theorised or felt

marginality

of

art's

social role.

All

major

theorists of

art

under

capitalist

modernity

have taken

on,

irrespective

of

political

position,

the function

of

art

as

operating

out

of

a

sense

of historical

closure.

For

Adorno under

the

freeing

of

art from

its communal

"cult function"

modern

art

was

inconceivable

now

without the

moment

of

"anti-art";

for

Greenberg

modern

art

traumatised

by

the kitsch

of

dominant

narrative

traditions

and

the

mass

media could

only

revitalise

its

humanizing

role

by

withdrawing

from such

messages

into

'pure

form';

for

Benjamin

in the

wake

of

the

second

technological

revolution

art

had

to

take

on

the

new

media

if

it

didn't

want to

lose

further

political

ground

to

the

bourgeoisie.

Each

of

these

positions

could

be

said

to

represent

the critical

parameters

under

which

the

majority

of

art

has

been

produced

snce

the '50s

and

the

rise

of

post-war

media

culture:

the

anti-traditionalist

critique (post-Dada

(Rauschenberg,

New

Realism),

performance, body

art,

conceptual

art),

the

expressionist-Romantic

(Abstract

Expressionism,

post-painterly

abstraction,

neo-expressionism)

and

the

political

?

analytic (deconstructive

photography, art-as-sociology).

One

may

of

course

say

these

categories

are

arbitrary,

or

rather

that the

work

placed

in

these

categories

have

different causal histories than

implied

by

the

categories,

but nonetheless

we

might

point

with

some

degree

of

conviction

to

a

tripartite

division

in

post

war

art's

self-conscious

articulation of

its

resistance

to

capital

and

its

institutionalisation

of

art:

the

anti

aesthetic,

the

formalist,

and the

political-instrumental.

That all three

of

these

categories

have been

found

wanting,

insofar

as

their

aesthetic

responses

to

the

reification

of

art

under late

capitalism

have shown

to

be

partial

or

idealised,

(for example

that

painting

is

dead)

is

perhaps

the

basis for

that

opening

up

of

ossified

vanguard

art

categories

that

is

now

nominally

?

on

the left

at

least

?

called

postmodernism.

In

essence

art's

'powerlessness'

can no

longer

be

'resolved'

on

the twin

horns of

Utopian

modernism:

radical withdrawal

or

functionalism,

i.e.

that

society

will

eventually

'catch

up'

with

the

challenges

of

art,

or

that

mechanical

production

can

finally

democratise

art

for the

public

sphere.

In

this

sense

the

weakness

of

the

above

modernist

models is

that

their

view

of

the

importance

of

art

is

predicated

on

the

assumption

that

art's

powers

of social

transformation

this

century

have

ineliminibly

'lost out' to

the reified

structures

of

the

capitalist

life-world.

Thus

at

the

beginning

of

Aesthetic

Theory

Adorno

says:

"Everythingabout

art

has

become

problematic:

its inner

life,

its

relation

to

society,

even

its

right

to

exist.

One

would

have

thought

that

the

loss

of

an

intuitive

and

naive







CIRCA

45

t

*

;s

>^^*^'-a;;;

^;^^RRH^^^^0^RRRjRRRRR^P^ Tf^B"

>

*SPkjj;"-- -MRRT

^,

>^rr>*

approach

to art

would be offset

by

a

tendency

to

increased

reflection

which

seizes

upon

the

chance

to fill

the

void

of

infinite

possibilities.

This

has

not

happened.

What looked like

an

expansion

of

art

turned

out to

be

its

contraction. The

great

expanse

of

the

unforeseen

which

revolutionary

artistic

movements

began

to

explore

around

1910

did

not

live

up

to

the

promise

of

adventure

and

happiness".

Likewise

in

Modernist

Painting

Greenberg

sees,

in

the

wake

of

the

collapse

of

the

Enlightenment

project,

a

purely

self

regulating

job

for

art,

a

holding

in,

within the

high-arts

of

painting

and

sculpture,

of the

highest

aspirations

of

the

Western

fine-art

tradition.

In

Benjamin

the

demise

of the

ritualised

and

socialised

relations around

the

production

and

consumption

of

cultural

artefacts

can

only

be reinstated

through

embracing

the

technological

advances

of

capitalism

itself.

However,

if

Benjamin's

model at

least offers

a

practical understanding of the place of

the

fine-arts

in

the

post-Enlightenment

world,

nonetheless all

theorists

conceptualise

the crisis of

art

from

within the thematic of

a

fall. Art then for

this

pessimistic

modernist tradition is

something

that

has been central

(under

other

names)

in

pre-capitalist

cultures

and which exists

today

in

a

permanent

state

of

sclerosis

or

limbo,

before

its

future

restitution

under socialism.

Now

this

is

not to

say

that

under

socialism,

understood

as a

break with

capital,

such

a

restitution would

not

involve the

democratisation of

the

production

and

consumption

of

art,

but

that the structural exclusion of art from

the lives of most

people

under

late

capitalism

have been

subject

in

theory

and

practice

to

forms

of

analysis

which

have

distorted both the conditions

under

which

art

might

reasonably

be

made

and

talked about

under

capitalism

and

reinforced the

interests of

those who

act

as

its

managers

and

mediators.

Essentially

the

pessimistic

modernist

tradition with

its

dual and

contradictory

emphasis

on

withdrawal

and

functionalism

has

too

readily

taken its

sense

of

marginality

from

the

meanings

of

the

dominating:

that

successful

art

rests

on

its

capacity

to

'get

across

to

a

lot of

people'.

As

a

result

art

has

either

resisted

all

discussion of

effect

(art's

powers

of

communication

lie

outside

any

form of

political

rationalisation,

pace

Greenberg)

or

taken

it

on

hysterically

(the

need

for

a

more

popular

art,

murals

etc).

Much

of the

discussion

around art and

politics

in

the

seventies in

Britain

took

on

the

arguments

of the

latter

against

the

former

in

a

kind

of

up-date

of

the

confrontation

between

John

Berger

and

Patrick

Heron in

the

1950s

around the

respective

virtues

of

'socially

concerned

art'

(art

that

dealt with

Big

Human

Themes) and experimentation (art that

was more

heuristic in

ambition).

Art

for

Society

and Art For

Whom with all their

gross

idealisations

(the right

content

produces

the

right

effects:

more

people

in

the

galleries,

votes

for

the

Labour







CIRCA

46

Party)

was a

good example

of

this and

a

perfect

example

of

how discussion

over

art's

marginality rarely

gets

beyond

either

the

sentimental

or

self

satisfyingly

smug

?

particularly

in

Britain

where

a

good

deal

of

the

nervous

reflexes of this

Manichean

discussion

can

be

mapped

out onto

the

deep

antipathy

towards modern

art

amongst

the British

ruling

classes and the

hegemonic

nature

of

'popular'

British

TV

culture.

Anyway,

what the

crisis

of

the

pessimistic

modernist tradition allows

us

under

the critical rubric of

postmodernism

is

to

discuss art's

production

in

a

way

that

abrogates

the

necessity

of

talking

about

art

as

if its

marginality

constituted

a

loss. This of

course

means

moving

from

a

position

that

sees

art

as on

the outside of

our

culture

looking

in

the dream of

parity

or

popular

legibility,

so

to

speak

?

to

one

that

sees

art

as

ideologically

mobile

and contentious

within the

culture

itself. A position that places art within

the

intellectual

arena

of

many

critical

constituencies

and

across a

number

of

ideological

fronts,

subject

positions

and

expressive

resources.

To

articulate this

dispersed positional

logic

is

therefore

not

to set

up

a new

theory

for the visual

arts

but

to

recognise

that

historically

art

has been

made

with

and

performed

on

many

and

varying

cognitive

and

aesthetic

materials within

many

places

and

with

varying

effects

in

mind.

This

dispersal

of

critical interests

and

expressive

resources

within

a

political

culture

which

is

non-hierarchical

and

non

predictive in relation to the how and

what of

art

maybe

obvious,

but

given

the

vested

interests of

left

careerists,

art

for-the-people proselytizers

and

the

centralizing

impulses

of

the

market,

such

a

democratisation

has been

overridden

and

undertheorised.

In

a

sense

with

the

emergence

of feminist

and

anti-racist

discourses

into

the

British

art

arena

this

necessity

for

a

view

of

politics

and

representation,

art

and

knowledge,

form

and

function,

as

being

bound

by

a

multitude of

interests

and

operative

on

a

multitude of

sites,

has

become

glaringly

obvious.

As Art &

Language

said

a

few

years ago

'Socialism in

one

artwork'

is

a

total

fallacy.

Clearly

therefore

we

are

talking

about

a

deeper

shift

in

our

understanding

of

art's function and

place,

a

shift

that has

barely

begun,

but

one

that

might

be

labelled

in

the

language

of

Gramsci

a

'war of

position'

or

in

the

language

of

the

philosophy

of

science

a

proliferation

of

content

spaces.

Once

we

begin

to

start

talking

about art

in

these

terms

as an

articulation

and

re-working

of

cognitive

and

expressive

materials

at

work

in

the

culture,

then notions

of art

lying

in

wait

for

a

restitution

of

its

social

function

become

otiose.

Perhaps

such

thinking

has

been

thought

of

as

otiose

for

a

good

number

of

years,

but

recently

under the

articulation of a postmodern

problematic

which

has dealt

death

blows

to

Eurocentrism

and

patriarchy

the

cultural

space

to

position

these

arguments

has been

opened

out.

However

this

is not to

say

there

is

a

coherent

sense

of

enterprise amongst

those

who

are

dealing

critically

with

our

culture

and

its

hegemonic

agendas,

or

that

there should

be,

but

that there

is

now

an

increasing

sense

?

particularly

among

students

?

that the debates

that

were

judged

to

be

important

under

American modernism

and the Art For

Society

debates

(that

SDP

phase

of

British art

politics)

are

both

irrelevant

and misleading; that art cannot be

accredited

simply

in

terms of its

formal

coherence

or

its

'correct'

or

'popular'

content

or

on

the

supposed

radicality

of

the medium.

In

this

sense

although

it

would be

foolish

to

overlook

the

structural

impediments

to

the future

institutional

penetration

of this

process,

nonetheless

it would

seem

that

new

forms of

cognitive

mapping

in

art

^rirrmrrrrrrrrrrr1e ^rrrrrW

w

^mHBHH

Nick

Hedges, 'Unemployed

Sisters'.

Photograph

forShelter

1970,

from

the

Whitechapel

Art

Gallery

exhibition

'Art

or

Society',

1978.

attached

to

a

stronger

sense

of

social

particularity,

are

emerging

and

dispersing

themselves within

the

culture.

The

mythologies

of

art-for-the

masses

and

art-as-autonomous

expression

are

in

retreat.

John

Roberts'

book

'Utopian

Reading:

Politics,

Art

and

Modernity'

will

be

published

in

the

near

future

by

Verso.

Art and

Language

'Index:

The

Studio

at

3

Wesley

Place

painted by

Mouth

(II)'.

nk

n

paper

mounted

canvas,

135"

x

286",

1982.

Ski-

^^^_^_B_____r____r|^__*'

_<^^*''_i^-**'*'^^^^_BPi__l_____^________S_S

*

"^T?-^

#

>

*r*^ 3ii____?"V'

/F

/tT

<"~Xvv?-,

7MP5___ _ _?_8

%*

*

'lfc__li^^__rJ_P*^S_Pt'J_r

*

J





art and marginality

Documents