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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Art with A message: A Postcard word be easier, wouldn't it?

  
 
at the scarwash
03:39 / 04.06.03
For many years I have (probably justly) incurred the wrath of those around me by maintaining that art created with a message or political agenda in mind is usually less valuable than the vague idea I have of "pure" art. I know that this is nonsense, and admit that there have been a great many pieces of art that were created in reaction to political or historical events that have immense cultural worth. For instance, a case can be made that the ungodly mess of the first world war was a major factor in the evolution of modernism in art and literature. Guernica. "Blowin' in the Wind." Catch 22 (although my recent re-read has been less than rewarding). Certainly, I have to admit that world events, politics, the substance of every thing that is a protest song or anti-war novel, every instance of discrimination or oppression in the world is just as good an inspiration for a work of art as any other, and better than most. But many works of art that seem to have been activelyt created as a statement about or against a political or historical factor seem somehow...lesser. Not as valid as, well...hell if I know. Works of art that just feel created. Tha do not prostitute aesthetics asd soapboxes. I have several friends that are working on pieces critiquing America's current approach to the rest of the world. Messages that need to be sent, no doubt. These works will be consumed by an audience of mostly like-minded concerned liberals, who will feel somewhat justified and vindicated in their beliefs. They will not convert anyone. They will be out of date in a year at most, when America will unleash the next Horseman of the Apocalypse on the world (or whatever), and they will no longer be topical. Does the built-in expiration date invalidate them as works of art? Is Bob Dylan's "Hurricane" a good work of art, despite the fact that it's one of the most boring songs he ever wrote?

The reason I'm posting this is not to condemn or offer value judgements upon protest art. I'm just trying to question my views, and hoping that the Good Ship Barbelith can aid me.
 
 
at the scarwash
03:40 / 04.06.03
WOULD be easier. Jesus. Sorry.
 
 
netbanshee
04:24 / 04.06.03
Reminds me of a conversation I had a few hours ago. Every work of art is a product of its time. Whether or not it was the impedus of its creation, it still has an important role in its ability to be produced as well as its impact. Work that sometimes speaks further than the specific correlation of current events is fine and good but may not contain as active as a message in comparison.

I brought up the conversation I had because it refered to works of art or writing from the early 20th century and why some things that were produced back then have such a strong and reoccuring feel. Now it's easy to refer to the modern classics and to be inspired by them, but the lot of us wondered if the topsy-turviness of the times and the work that was produced may be analogous to the times we live in and what is being created now. In this example, the backdrop was WWI, WWII, and the depression... very heavy shit. And this angst helped fuel those movements quite a bit or at least some of the breakthroughs. I think it'd be safe to say that there's plenty of room to do so now without wondering if we're stepping on the toes of what's valid and invalid.

In fact.. feel free to share some of it with us...
 
 
Persephone
12:23 / 04.06.03
Okay look, I'm stamping this post with my special HALF-BAKED stamp. This is something that I've started thinking about, and it's very sketchy...

1. It sticks in my head that linear perspective was not always known by people. I mentioned this in an earlier thread, I read this in Gombrich. So you have these paintings by Uccello that are really hilarious, they're packed with things pointing away from the viewer and so forth. The idea that I'm going with here is that humans as a species have been learning how to do art since the beginning of time, and that humans as individuals learn how to do art in this stream of context.

2. Now switching now to something by Alan Watts that I read probably ten years ago, and this is about three levels of consciousness that people may progress through in their lives. Level one is, you look at a mountain and you see a mountain. Level two is, you look at a mountain and you see the multitudes --physical, spiritual, cultural, historical and so forth-- of the mountain. Level three is, you look at the mountain and you see the mountain.

If you connect points #1 and #2... and uh, think specifically in the context of art... you perhaps get that humans as a species have been learning how to look at the mountain since the beginning of time. And don't forget that humans as individuals are still learning yadda yadda in this stream.

3. I was reading Modern Times, Modern Places and getting impatient with being told how human nature changed and how everything fragmented after World War I ...not because I don't believe that everything is fragmented, but because I don't imagine --and don't really believe-- that everything hasn't always been fragmented. Which is tantamount to say that human existence must always have been as I exist now. Which I reject, like a good girl. But I am really starting to understand that I have almost no capacity to get around my own experience.

4. Uh. This does have to do with art, I swear. Because it seems to me that "art created with an agenda or message" is the standard form of art these days --e.g., conceptual art. There's pure concept art, of course. But it seems like a plain old painting can't just be a plain old painting to be art. It has to be painting plus... I guess, concept.

My question is, Was it always this way? And my two answers at the moment are, Of course, and Of course not. Because I'm stuck at point #3...
 
 
Linus Dunce
18:34 / 05.06.03
I'm having problems with the idea of "pure" art. I think even the most benign, limner art could be said to function, in production and display, as a cultural mirror and therefore have an agenda of some sort, albeit conservative.

On the flip side, I do get what you're saying about some "political" art being less worthy. Perhaps the answer is that good stuff, like Guernica,* is ostensibly about a specific event but applies to war or whatever in general. It is a painting of the bombing of a town in the Spanish civil war but it speaks also of the deaths of civilians in London, Hamburg, Nagasaki, Cambodia, Afghanistan, etc. The US-critical stuff your friends are working on, even if it makes a topical point, may not be very memorable or valuable if, for instance, it is so specific it says nothing of the Russian treatment of Chechnya. Great art (to me :-) is like a good pop song -- it sounds as though it's about something specific ... but it's not.

*and probably Catch 22 and what about To Kill a Mockingbird?
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
19:13 / 05.06.03
I dunno about this, you know. I mean - I can take your point that some works of art with a political motivation aren't as good as others, and therefore seem less worthy, but I think actually what it comes down to is that you don't think it's as good. There are loads and loads of works of art with no political motivation whatsoever which I, personally, think are really bad/pointless/ghastly/aesthetically unpleasing...

I think that the question of art being 'pure' or 'unpure' is a bit of a red herring, to be honest, and often it has the same sort of resonance as accusations of 'selling out' do in music. Or, in other words, I don't really care what the motivation behind something is: is it any good? Do I like it? If I don't like it, I might have several different reasons for not liking it, and one of those might be that I dislike the message, or think it's banal, or whatever, but it's certainly not the only possible reason.

I like Hodgkin, who basically has no obvious political agenda; I like Goya, who had a huge political agenda. There's no reason why art with political motivation won't last, for the reasons Ignatius has outlined...

'Man hands on misery to man,
It deepens like a coastal shelf...'

as a miserable old sod once said.
 
  
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