2. “il faut etre de son
temps”
“one must be of one’s
own time”
Charles Bauderlaire
3.
4. • “it has been part of the
genius of neoliberal theory
to provide a benevolent
mask full of wonderful
sounding words like
freedom, liberty, choice,
and rights, to hide the grim
realities of the restoration
or reconstitution of naked
class power, locally as well
as transnationally, but most
particularly in the main
financial centres of global
capitalism’
• David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism
10
5. • Does art offer a way of
intervening in the world?
• Is art an effective form of protest
and dissent?
• Does art depict an alternative to
how things are?
• Is it a form that might initiate
change ?
• Are there still spaces for art to
‘protest’ against the state of
things? 5
5
6. Does radical art get absorbed by the
Text
museum, the institutions of art?
6
7. What does it mean to be an artist?
Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899)
Self Portrait (1895)
‘obstinate dreamers for whom art has
remained a faith and not a profession;
enthusiastic folk…whose loyal heart beats
high in the presence of all that is beautiful.”
Richard Gerstl, (1883-1908),“Self Portrait
against a Blue Background”, 1901. Oil on Henri Murger “Scenes of Bohemian life”
canvas, 159 x 109 cm. Leopold Museum,
13. Art with a ‘purpose’
“The social engagement of realism did
not necessarily involve any overt
statement of social aims or any
outright protest against intolerable
political conditions. But the mere
intention ‘to translate the
appearances, the customs of the time
implied a significant involvement in
the contemporary social situation and
might thus constitute a threat to
existing values and power structures
as menacing as the throwing of a
bomb”
Linda Nochlin
Realism
14. Gustave Courbet, A Burial in Ornans
1849. oil on canvas; 313 x 664
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
“To be in a position to translate the customs, the ideas, the
appearance of my epoch, according to my own estimation; to
be not only a painter, but a man as well; in short, to create a
living art -this was my goal.”
Gustave Courbet
15. 'In our oh-so-civilised society it is necessary for me to lead the life of a savage; I must free myself
even from governments... To do that, I have just set out on the great, independent, vagabond life
of the bohemian.’
Gustave Courbet
16. Honoré Daumier (French, 1808-1879). The Third-Class Carriage, ca. 1863-65. Oil on canvas.
25 3/4 x 35 1/2 in. (65.4 x 90.2 cm). H.O. Havermeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H.O.
Havermeyer, 1929.
17.
18. Manet, Edouard, Execution of the Emperor Maximilian
1867, Oil on canvas, 252 x 305 cm
Kunsthalle, Mannheim
19. Francisco de Goya. The Third of May, 1808: The
Execution of the Defenders of Madrid. 1814. Oil
on canvas, 266 x 345 cm. Museo del Prado,
Madrid, Spain.
William Hogarth
Gin Lane
1750-51
Etching and line engraving, 359 x 341 mm
21. “You pretend to be timeless
and stand above party, you
keepers of the ivory tower. You
pretend to create for man-
where is man? ...Come out of
your houses even if it difficult
for you, do away with your
individual isolation, let
yourselves be possessed by
the ideas of the working
masses and help them in their
struggle against a rotten
society”
George Grosz. Self-Portrait,
Warning. 1927. Oil on canvas. 98 x
George Grosz ‘Instead of 79 cm. Galerie Nierendorf, Berlin,
Germany.
Biography’
22. George Grosz. The Pillars of Society. 1926. Oil on
canvas. 200 x 108 cm. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin -
Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Nationalgalerie, Berlin,
Germany .
23. George Grosz The City. 1916/17. Oil on canvas. 100 x 102 cm.
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid, Spain
Germany: a Winter's Tale. 1917/19. Oil on canvas.
24. Max Beckmann
The Night 1918-19. Oil on canvas. 133 x 154 cm
Kunstammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
25.
26. Thomas Hart Benton, The Ballad of the
Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley, 1934,
Oil and tempera on canvas.
Grant Wood
Return from Bohemia
1935
29. “When art gets involved with politics, art always loses”
Pablo Picasso ‘Guernica’ 1937, Oil on Canvas
33349x777cm, Museuo del Prado, Madrid
“I am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting..But if I were a shoemaker,
Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessary hammer my shoes
In a special way to show my politics.”
Picasso
31. New Times, New Methods
“New problems appear
and demand new
methods. Reality
changes; in order to
represent it, modes of
representation must also
change. Nothing comes
from nothing; the new
comes from the old, but
that is why it is new”.
Bertolt Brecht “Popularity
and Realism”
"And Yet it Moves"
John Heartfield, 1943.
32. 1969-1970; Jon Hendricks, Irving Petlin, Frazier Dougherty, photo by Ron L. Haeberle; Art Workers Coalition; Offset; 24
13/16 x 38 inches
33. “A growing number of artists have
begun to feel the need to respond to the
deepening political crisis in America.
Among those artists, however, there are
serious differences concerning their
relations to direct political actions.
Many feel that the political implications
of their work constitute the most
profound political action they can make.
Others, not denying this, continue to
feel the need for an immediate, direct
political commitment. Still others feel
that their work is devoid of political
meaning and that their political lives are
unrelated to art. What is your position
regarding the kinds of political action
that should be taken by artists?”
Artforum
34. Martha Rosler
Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful, 1967-72
Photomontage printed as color photograph
20 x 24" or 24 x 20" (print size)
http://www.MarthaRosler.net
36. “If you make protest paintings you are likely to
stay below the sophistication of the apparatus
you are attacking. It is emotionally gratifying to
point the finger at some atrocity and say this
here is the bastard responsible for it. But in
effect once the work arrives in a public place, it
only addresses itself to people who share these
feelings and are already convinced. Appeals
and condemnations don’t make you think”
Hans Haacke in Art and Politics
Quoted in Modernism in Dispute
37. The Assault on Culture with a Capital C - The Barbarians are at the Door
38. “Popular, transient,
expendable, low
cost, mass
produced, young,
witty, sexy,
gimmicky,
glamorous and big
business.”
Richard Hamilton
40. The Birth of Pop - British Pop’s Ambivalent Populism
“The definition of culture is changing as a result of the
pressure of the great audience, which is no longer new
but experienced in the consumption of its arts.
Therefore, it is no longer sufficient to define culture
solely as something that a minority guards for the few
and the future (though such art is uniquely valuable and
as precious as ever). Our definition of culture is being
stretched beyond the fine art limits imposed on it by
Renaissance theory and refers now, increasingly, to the
whole complex of human activities. Within this
definition, rejection of the mass produced arts is not, as
critics think, a defence of culture, but an attack on it.”
Lawrence Alloway “The Arts and the Mass Media”
41. The Roots of Pop - Social, Political and economic changes
Education expansion 1950s - 1960’s
By 1969 there were three times as many
universities as there had been thirty
years before – while state contribution to
education rose form 7million in 1947 to
157 million in 1966 – the number of
students in the sixties doubled form 7 to
14% of the population.
“Britain had by accident bred a class of
young people from ordinary homes who
now had some idea of the privileges
previously enjoyed only by boys from
upper-class families.”
Shawn Levy
‘Ready Steady Go:Swinging London and the Invention of Cool
(london 2002), pg. 66
43. British Pop’s Ambivalent Populism
You’ve never had it so good - 60’s Pop
• The use of pre existing, ready
made, mass media imagery within
‘fine art’. The conflation of the ‘low’
with the‘high’.British pop is often
hand painted pop.
• Often expresses a paradoxical
relationship with the pleasures,
materials and forms of post war
consumerism - simultaneously
attracted and skeptical..looks
forward and back…
• This commitment to using popular
imagery has broader connotations - •Peter Phillips
it signals a desire for a transformed •The Entertainment Machine 1961
cultural landscape -one where the
old hierarchies of taste and value
are questioned.
47. British Pop’s Ambivalent Populism
Joe Tilson Peter Phillips
Vox Box 1963 Custom Print No. 1 1965
48. British Pop’s Ambivalent Populism
Patrick Caulfield
Patrick Caulfield
Black and White Flower Piece 1963 After Lunch 1975
49.
50. The Roots of Pop - Social, Political and Economic changes
Responses - The Culture Industry
• Culture industry is a term coined by
Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) and Max
Horkheimer (1895-1973).
• The idea that the factory style production
of popular culture produces standardised
products that manipulate and seduce the
consumer (or masses) with quick,easy
gratification that leaves the consumer
passive and ultimately unhappy.
• A central idea in Adorno and Horkheimer
critique of mass culture is that it creates
false needs - needs which are
manufactured and of course satisfied by
capitalism
51. The Roots of Pop - Social, Political and Economic changes
Responses to
“The effectiveness of the
culture industry depends
not on its parading of an
ideology, on disguising the
true nature of things, but on
removing the thought that
there is an alternative to
the status quo. “
Theodore Adorno
The Culture Industry
52. ‘something is provided for
all
so that none may escape’
Adorno, T & Horkheimer,M, Dialectic of the Enlightenment (Verso, 1997) p. 123
53. The Roots of Pop - Social, Political and Economic changes
Responses to - A Cultural Cold War? High versus Low
“We can assert with some
confidence that our own period is
one of decline: that the standards of
culture are lower than they were fifty
years ago…I see no reason why the
decay of culture should not proceed
much further, and why we may not
even anticipate a period of some
duration, of which is possible to say
that it will have no culture. “
T.S.Eliot, Notes towards a Definition
of Culture, quoted in Greenberg.
‘The Plight of Culture’.
54. American Pop - ‘Modern’ Hard Edged Pop
• While sharing British artists
fascination with the ephemeral
of the mass media, American
pop was formally far more
progressive / avant garde - not
least in its use of commercial,
mechanical techniques (silk- Edward Ruscha. (American, born
1937). Standard Station. 1966.
screening, acrylic etc.) Screenprint, composition: 19 5/8 x
36 15/16" (49.6 x 93.8 cm);
• Taking ‘sides’ with the popular
against the idea of ‘elite’
culture still has the socially
revolutionary inflection of British
Pop, but in America , this spirit
fo democratizing culture is more
pronounced.
55. American Pop - ‘Modern’ Pop
“I am for an art that is
political-erotical-mystical, that
does something other than sit
on its ass in a museum.
I am for an art that embroils
itself with the everyday crap
and still comes out on top. “
Claes Oldenburg
56.
57. “The thesis of the present essay is
that Warhol, though he grounded his
art in the ubiquity of the packaged
commodity, produced his most
powerful work by dramatizing the
breakdown of commodity exchange.
These were instances in which the
mass-produced image as the bearer
of desires was exposed in its
inadequacy by the reality Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych (1962)
of suffering and death.”
Thomas Crow
‘Saturday Disasters:Trace and
Reference in Early Warhol’ in
‘Modern Art in the Common Culture
Andy Warhol, Elvis I & II , 1963
Silkscreen ink and spray paint on linen
(silver and blue canvas) 82 x 82 in. (208.3 x 208.3)
58.
59.
60. “If you can’t beat it, Warhol
suggests, join it. More, if
you enter it totally, you
might expose it you might
reveal its automatism, even
its autism, through your
own excessive example.
Deployed first by Dada, this
strategic nihilism was
performed ambiguously by
Warhol, and artists such as
Jeff Koons have played it
out since.”
Art Since 1900
62. “Art could only
survive by
disengaging itself
from ideological
confusion and
violence”
Clement Greenberg
Kenneth Noland (American, 1924-), Gift,
1961-2, acrylic on canvas, 182.9 x 182.9 cm,
Tate Gallery, London.
63. “Harold Rosenberg challenged me to
explain what one of my paintings
could possibly mean to the world. My
answer was that if he and others
could read it properly, it would mean
the end of all state capitalism and
totalitarianism”
Newman “The Sublime is Now”
Barnnet Newman
Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue?, 1966
75 X 48 inches
Oil on Canvas
64. Jackson Pollock, Mural on Indian Red Ground, 1950, oil and enamel on
board, 183 x 243.5 cm, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran.
65. “Art could only
survive by
disengaging itself
from ideological
confusion and
violence”
Jackson Pollock. (American, 1912-1956). One:
Number 31, 1950. 1950. Oil and enamel on Clement Greenberg
unprimed canvas, 8' 10" x 17' 5 5/8" (269.5 x
530.8 cm). MOMA
66. “My opinion is that new needs need new
techniques. And the modern artists have
found new ways and new means of
making their statements. It seems to me
That the modern painter cannot
express this age, the airplane, the atom
bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the
renaissance or of any other past culture.
Each age finds its own technique.”
Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock. (American, 1912-1956). Full Fathom Five.
1947. Oil on canvas with nails, tacks, buttons, key, coins,
cigarettes, matches, etc., 50 7/8 x 30 1/8" (129.2 x 76.5
cm). Gift of Peggy Guggenheim.
67. Affirmative and Mute?
‘Visual Muzak’
Lucy L Lippard
Jules Olitski born 1922
Jules Olitski Instant Loveland 1968
69. “Why is it that whilst the world outside spirals
in ever tighter circles of terror and repression,
and the potential avenues of avoidance or
resistance become squeezed by the growing
dominance of capital and its civil and military
bulldogs, artists retreat further into a hermetic
world of abstraction, formalism, deferred
meanings and latent spiritualism? Do artists
really [..] have no choice but to accept that
the gallery is now fit solely for the exploration
of formal issues? […]That the world is a
different place since 9/11 is a truism, but it
Claire Barclay could (and has) been argued that there is a
need now, more than ever, for artists and
Jim Lambie writers to engage with the moral and ethical
parameters of our globalising world. “
Nick Evans
Tired of the Soup du Jour
http://www.variant.randomstate.org/16texts/
Soup_du_Jour.html
Cathy Wilkes
70. Goya
(Great Deeds of War! Lives Lost!) Pl. 39
Desastres de la Guerra, 1810-20 (Disasters of War)
