Week 3

So after reading the two Benjamin articles this week I’m thinking a lot about the role of the artist in society. The Author as Producer was very provocative in its resoluteness that the Platonic ideal of the artist was unreasonable. This was pretty much the opposite of the premise of Andrea Friaser’s article last week that argued strongly in favor of the autonomous artist (while also acknowledging that it was really possible.) Then I also found myself referring back to the Motherwell reading from the first week that seemed to argue for a middle ground between the artist as political servant and the artist as necessarily independent and autonomous. Of course, not even Motherwell is convinced that such a middle ground could exists, he is just saying that for it to even be possible the artists must completely believe in its possibility.

So I will try to unpack this a little starting with Benjamin. He states that in Author as Producer and in Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction that art that doesn’t serve revolutionary causes is antirevolutionary, reinforcing capitalist structures, and essentially it aestheticizes politics, which is fascist, can only end in war, and war is bad unless you are that batshit futurist he quotes at the end of Art in the Age who seems to really love war. But these were all written in the 1930s, in the throws of the great depression, and between the wars. I suppose capitalism must have seemed pretty bad then, and it by no means seems perfect now, but one wonders what sort of politics (if any) the artist should serve today. I suppose I make what would be called political art now and I can’t really figure out if my work serves a politics or not. I think if anything it is the hopelessly pragmatic political agenda of critical theory mixed with Plato’s autonomous artist. Meaning I start from this place where I want to be radical and didactic and thrash after evil or something, but then I take a step back and whatever I’m thinking about becomes to complicated to react decisively to so I just make my work try to ask questions and then maybe if I can mange it, also be beautiful (which makes me feel a little guilty, always.) But I think for now this is ok, because the world as it exists, just seems too complicated, to entangled and messy for artists to believe in one kind of politics. It all seems to great to be encompassed by one theory.

I suppose I am a child of prosperity, so this must influence my view, but I come down on the side of Fraiser (for now.) The artist must be as free as possible, must not know the result of their pursuit when they undertake it, and must be brave enough to risk the dangers of autonomy in order to make anything meaningful. Benjamin’s “Producer Artist” does not sound at all like an artist to me but more like an activist, a revolutionary. Not an un-noble thing to be by any means, but if you are too sure of your politics there is no room for growth in your art.