We cannot fully escape the matter of modernity in
our movement through Marxism as the two seem to be considered very closely or
nearly hand in hand. Marx in his “Material Production and Artistic Production,”
“Alienated Labor,” and “The Materialist Interpretation of History” argues that
the conception of progress should not be accepted in the usual fashion which he
then provides an example of as modern art. That once you move past the realm in
which the art was created could it still be the same as intended?
Theodor Adorno and Max
Horkheimer come into play with their “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as
Mass Deception.” They push the envelope that art has been twisted to conform
for the masses, that individuality is dead. Those who try to move out of this
predetermined and approved style are cast out. Mass culture makes you believe
you have your choice when it has already been laid out in front of you.
T.J. Clark uses
Greenberg as a launching point to state his theories about the avant-garde and
modernism. In contrast to Greenberg, he claims that style and foundations in
modernism are actually in relation to practices of negation. He believes that
Greenberg arrived at his conclusions in multiple essays due to the Marxist
culture found in New York during 1939. Michael Fried then uses Clark as a
launching point and though not trying to defend Greenberg, heartily and almost
viciously disagrees and attempts to disprove Clark. Fried thought that Clark
made “erroneous” assumptions about Greenberg’s essays and that modernism uses
negation as inspiration in their work but they do not rely on it exclusively as
a unifying and driving force.
T.J. Clark, in his “On
The Social History of Art,” identifies audience from public and the important
of audience to the making of art. That to use history to explain and define art
is misleading. The aim of the avant-garde was to fundamentally take the world
of art from the Parisian art world. Art history only includes those made famous
by the movements in the art sphere and not those on the outer rims,
In His “Olympia’s
Choice,” Clark moves on to discuss the sexuality and presence in Manet’s famous
painting. It caused outrage and an uproar contemporarily but he believed it had
deeper meaning than a prostitute painted in a non-academic fashion. It drew
attention to the world it came from.
Walter Benjamin, in his
piece “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” discusses a more
contemporary subject to our present as did “The Culture Industry.” It focused
on film and photography and the effect of modernity on art. The mechanical
production of art, relying on technology, he believes had lost the spirit of
the making of art in traditional means. It makes it more accessible for mass
consumption and mass media.
Finally, Pierre
Bourdieu greets us with an attack on taste and its definition. He argues social
class defines a person’s taste. Art is created for certain levels of social
class and is understood by only those classes.
- Socialism is the low form of communisim
- Capitalism and the growth in the large barriers and disparity of the classes
- getting closer to fuedalism
- the merchantile system of the Renaissance
- Marxism stuff is hard to read and deal with. Art is mass produced, consumed, etc
- utopian ideal of equality and the alienation of the worker, etc
- 19th century very important because things change.
- the ability to buy clothes off the rack
- prostitutes can wear the same clothing as the bourgeious women
- 18th century American
- sumptuary laws
- amount of ribbons and lace,
- 25% of disposible income spent on clothing
- disconnected from the people who make what we buy
- the process is hidden
- because it is exploitative
- Funny how it is trying to change with Food rather than clothing
- Food Inc.
- Grown in Arkansas, etc
- mostly locally, not enough power to defeat the system on a global scale
- Clothing-wise
- Buy less
- fashion is transitory
- built in process of obsolesence
- exploitation of workers, etc
- Pierre Bourdieu
- taste is dependent of social class
- instilled in us from birth/young age
- capitalism, corportate feudalism
- Walmart
- so many levels
- bad treatment of employees
- built crystal bridges
- give a sort of education
- give way out of this area, crystal bridges internship
- take the best of it and disregard the worst but be critically aware of what is behind the good. always something shady
- Choice
- Why an art museum?
- some people won't get it
- contribute to some peoples education
- some people walk straight through
- others stop and wonder and give talks and go to lectures
- Bourdieu says to humiliate people who don't get it because they were lower class
- it is free
- all students get to go to Crystal Bridges k-12 anywhere in Arkansas paid for.
- month later after the museum visit, the children measured across the board that they had increased tolerance of people who are different than them
- lower class people who are always working can be a gateway to society?
- but not going to spend money
- not going to sit and talk in the gallery about what they saw
- Alice Walton thinks of it as a Democratic thing
- location and free
- Can art be democratic?
- usually seen as a high culture thing
- Educational system favors those who have education frameworks and backgrounds
- teachers are complicite and forced to reinforce the class structures, etc
- change of voice/accent because it marks you
- ellocution lessons
- madonna
- beyonce
- Kate Middleton
- PIERRE
- Upper class likes photographs of things not usually expected or traditionally beautiful
- Page 35. Cabbages
- beauty can be seen in trivial objects
- or things that are 'ugly' or 'vulgar' that can be taken and shown as abstract and different from high art
- norm: things must be difficult and unique to be good.
- that becomes almost predictable itself
- must know what you say, must know cultural capital
- if you dont know discourse and information about art and asked questions as an artist you seen like an idiot
- TASTE AND CHOICE
- Crystal Bridges go to create taste in Arkansans.
- Not sure why Alice Walton wants us to become smarter?
- Make Arkansans look smarter?
- Build up glory around the Home Office?
- you have to have that taste, you have to like it. Your taste is determined
- stuffy, classist, etc.
- you are supposed to like certain things because of your position and you cannot deviate from it.
- You may like different types of jeans?
- you pick your colors and style but you only have the illusion of choice
- Color obsolesence. Ankle jeans. Skinny jeans. Etc
- You dont get a choice in your taste.
- You have to follow what your major/required to read
- we operate in what is expected
- art museums and natural history museums
- their levels of illusion
- art: no engagement.
- we make standards for this system
- if you do not meet the standards even though you may be smart you just do not fit what they want
- your value as a person is not valued in the system which makes you incompetent
- the very world we live in is reinforced by technology
- sometimes technology is more real than actual life for us now
- political aesthetics end up as war
- we use our technology for messed up means because we haven;t come to terms with it
- make bombs
- make fertilizers that end up in soda
- instead of dropping seeds we are dropping bombs
- we witnessing our own destruction
- self alientation to the aesthetic of the first order
- democratic system we dont really live in
- illusion of choice
- art today has no political power
- part of a group called Retort
- 40 plus members of artists, teachers, etc
- joined situationist nationale
- change happens because of the individual
- counter hegemonic devices, asserting independence of thought
- political active
- comes from some means
- probably from upper bourgiouse
- Thinks marxist ideals in Greenberg were wrong
- takes the flatness arguement
- very much reliant on Greenberg than he would rather say. wants to claim his own space and wants to do so while saying something originial rather than being Greenbergs advocate
- At Hopkins still
- lot of good people doing research for him
- good at story telling
- goes back to primary sources
- gives him power so you can to take his word for is
- Olympia is put next to Jesus and eventually skyed
- she is not trying to be a coy or mysterious. Not legible courtesan
- she is dangerous and boyish. She was not a woman so what was she?
- prostitution is a touchy subject for the bourgiouse
- money and sex is mixed and thus is a rough and awkward situation
- bodies turning into money
- women and money were degraded. money loses its integrity until the glitter of gold redeems her
- comparison of high prostitution and finance
- she is like a money bag in your face. she is money. creates a discomfort
- fiction of Titian's Venus of Urbino
- Venus has money, no wants for anything
- she is a Venus so she is not wanting for anything
- Olympia is a common prostitute name and it is clear her profession
- she does not hide it from you
- debauchary of their daily existence
- danger in the image
- so uncomfortable that sex and money is readible on the street and in high art that it is no longer the fiction of the courtesan
- sex and money become fact on canvas
- ties to formal realm
- her gaze was very direct and unapologetic
- she looks at you "Yea I am Here" fact. No dreaminess. Fact
- danger of change for women
- formally became fact: the things around her were things her body could buy. They are not very important. Puts her into a particular class which makes the viewer a type of sexual body of class and money
- particularity to this body that is not explicitley woman
- looks unfinished, looks flat (first modern painting for different reasons)
- Greenberg says flatness cuz rejection of social space
- Clark says flatness social history sexualized body in the world. Not making the illusion of paint. The way the paint is handled.
- Marxist in seperate ways
ARTICLES
CLARK
FRIED
NOTE: When I paste my notes from my Evernote app it changes the background of my blog entry to white. I am sorry for the constant checkerboarded look!
