VER THE PAST three years renewed popular uproar the press "modern art'. This gained momentum in the notorious Tate bricks affair, swept nappies sanitary towels at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and canvases at the Hayward, and last manifested itself over a prize-winning blue monochrome in Liverpool.
There have been outbursts of this kind before, of difference is that they can no longer be dismissed as arter du, is a pastme response to a blank, grey canvas or a pile of bricks? Late modernism has indefensible.
has this situation What is to be done? To answer these questions, we must go back into history.
The word 'art' acquire its present meaning at the end of the 18th century Raymond Williams has explained, it came to stand not just for any human skill, as previously, certain 'imaginative" skills.
It simultaneously came to signify a been about purveyor of that truth. At this time and blank definite but the "philistine'. What, Britain.
become arisen? galleries, public, art organisations only began to when, as museums began to emerge.
It well bourgeoisie but only for 'creative" as if it CONTEMPORARY IMAGES: 'Mightier than man beast' — illustration from Coventry Climax advert (top left); Carl Andre's bricks exhibited at the Tate (top right); and Terence Cuneo's Banquet in Guildhall, oil paint on canvas, for which he was paid over £20,000. special kind of truth, imaginative truth, and the word 'artist' came to indicate a special kind of person, a was being transformed by the efflorescence of industrial capitalism and one of the many effects of this was the creation of a new professional category; that of institutiona lv-trained artists whe had acquired the skilful use of certain representational conventions, and who made their livings by producing pictures which were sold "realist' predominantly on an open market This was something entirely new in *It was only with the development of the professional fine art tradition that one found the establishment of art schools, art magazines, commercial exhibitions open to the critics, alla dELISES — the entire apparatus of the new profession. It was also only They at this time that art historians and known that the tends to represent everything which is peculiar to itself was somehow 'natural', universal and timeless. John Berger has shown how this applied to the technical pictorial conventions of the decadence fine art tradition postomy, hid on. These cretive word pud lic. chiaroscuro, perspective, taught not as the conventions which the "Truth'.
view of the Victorian ruling classes.
The flat, "planar' quality of th painting, and the relative Doar any esseligious subject matter witness the historical persistence of feudal components in those classes, despite the achievement of the ICO ELOI ideology of art, too. Art historians studied a wide range of objects from civilisations other than their own.
treated Greek mirrors and medieval altar pieces as "art', example, even though such objects had served quite disparate functions within disparate cultures.
From existing bourgeois societies, however, they designated only a very narrow range of images produced by the fine art professionals standing oil painting had been under entrepreneurial manuscript illumination had been in certain feudal societies.
Under this situation the old fine art tradition underwent a process kenosis, or self-emptying. This begins as a crisis of subject matter; it ends with the vacuities of late modernism, and the attempts by painters first to take the conventions the sole content of their work, and then to abandon even those while still calling themselves artists.
The question is really not so much, *Why is the fine crisis?' as 'How has it managed to survive at all?"
The old fine art tradition had acquired a relative autonomy through the entrenchment institutions and majority of intellectuals continued to adhere to its ideology of art"
Was something transhistorical. Art historians barely recognised the existence of the new art forms of the mega-visual tradition, But this, in itselt, probably would TOU have prevented tradition from becoming residual organ culture, like SCIO -ilumination companies of the City of London. What saved it was politics, pure and simple. At precisely the moment when it seemed about to metamorphose into an appendix, the state began a massive transfusion of money into it Keynes, a thought that rampant philistinism was one of the unacceptable faces of masked by suitable expenditure.
In fact, what emerged - especially in the visual arts — was a squalid Character see - conventions of growing dissociation artist and any public, except an art What went wrong? It is easiest to they were, but as the way of depicting see this through looking at Keynes' own thought. He was understandably In fact, they were a highly specific determined that state patronage of the way of depicting the syncretic world- arts in Britain should be radically unlike the oppressive socialist realist system in the Soviet Union.
In his view, the artist in the West pace in much 19th century British was to be 'absolutely free'. He sai that everyone knew that the artist was *individual and free, undisciplined, unregimented and uncontrolled...he (sic) walks where his spirit leads him. titanic He cannot be told his direction. He industrial does not know it himself.
Keynes, in other words, took the Something similar applied to the 19th centurey, bourgeois view of the artist to its most extreme formulation - conveniently forgetting that the cultural achievements called 'the great ages of a commun for ivilised life had been realised b artists whose particular freedoms had been severely constrained.
Keynes also totally ignored the dominant, static visual art form under monopoly those The truth was that the artists who worked for the great corporations, themselves. capitalism, and less of ZINE markets.
Andrew interesting of painting as territory.
Cuneo, art tradition in bird of schools, academies.
universal and volume of sales the fine art La mere within contemporary manuthe livery possibility for the For senate socialist bailerina's husband, in favour which could be decently professionals, government anachronistic external world Nonetheless, by the physics to in the 19th century.
Berger makes of what he advertising.! her work, historical future.
In recent months there has been a tendency to place less and emphasis the farcical absurdities within the late modernist enclave, and to stress the residual fine practices still maintained by specific audiences, through specific Brighton has done work mapping out this The pictures concerned range through regimental portraits by Shepherd's charging elephants, landscapes produced in East Anglia, the images of worker artists, paintings continuing tradition of Stalinist socialist realism Effectively, this sort of work shows what the fine art tradition would have been but for state intervention.
There are those, on both left and The right, who argue that the visual arts should simply be handed back to this free market. They point out that the in such fine art residuals is very high, and that the work produced is no worse than the decadence of late modernism.
However, I believe Gramsci that the struggle over culture must be for the "high ground". It is only within the subsidised sector of the existing fine art tradition that there is even a emergence of a truthful, imaginative visual praxis which struggles to take its standards from a possible historical future, that To argue against the continuance of state support is, in my view, to argue of handing the visual representation of the world back to the distortions of the mega-visual and inept. alternatives of the residual "free market' artists.
But can this possibility of a truthful, imaginative visual praxis in fact be realised? The problems are not just social, political and economic. They are also aesthetic The confusion at the core of fine art practice over the nature of realism' parallels that in say physics about the nature of the As a materialist, one asserts the primacy of the material world, and its existence outside of consciousness.
one is then confronted inability of contemporary provide a convincing, consensus theoretical representation of that world of a kind which existed In A Painter of Our Time, John This hero, an artist, write: "There will be no consistent method of drawing this side of socialism. A method of drawing is the result of an identity of interest in reality. Bourgeois culture now only has a diversity of interest in fantasy.
It is the unenviable task of the fine seeks a truthful visua praxis to begin within the welter of that diversity of interest in fantasy and to attempt to transcend it by realising, as a moment within his or La glimpse of a possible Socialist Challenge 1 March 1979 page 13
Communicating theory IAMES Francis's article on Chartists (8 February) oversimplifies some important issues. There was a wonderfully revolutionary impulse to Chartism. But it existed side by side with backwardness and chauvinism.
A feature of the demonstration in 1848, for example, was a fist fight occasioned by some of the English marchers taking exception to a speaker being French. And in Scotland large sections of the Chartist movement were organised on religious lines, with Sunday prayer meetings, Bible quotes, and specially appomcu prcacners In any case, many backward ideas were inherited by the British working from its pre-history. colonies, the Navy, marine all contributed. Indeed, there were large-scale anti-Welsh riots in London in the 1480s, and there's a good case for pushing the origins of English/British chauvinism in masses back to the Scottish and Welsh wars of the 13th and 14th centuries — hundreds of years before imperialism. I don't think we will make much progress in tackling the backwardness amongst British workers unless realise all-embracing and deepseated it is.
Asa subsidiary point, there is a case for saying that the left theoreticians in Britain must take some blame for the persistence and growth of political backwardness, because there have arely been attempts to communicate ory. The private language of, say, Left osophy guarantees the continuaon of backwardness just as much as the TASE monster The the merchant straight left.
political and "indistinguishable just how tactics now?
Liverpool)
strike Radical TALKING IN A BELFAST • OF COURSE) TO A WOMAN WHO IS A MEMBER OF THE of the left. Unfortunately, however, political experience has taught us that should we be attacked by the state or right-wing forces, we could not expect much support or solidarity from the NUT Although we have not taken the same decision as Rising Free, we can sympathise with their reluctance to stock material which they disagree with and which could make them vulnerable to attack. But to describe this, as you do, as 'collaboration with the British government's repression' the dent, methods of Stalinism' is completely unfair. Who's using Stalinist smear BOB DENT (News from Nowhere, Teachers and the NUPE WE were concerned to read your report (15 February) on unofficial AND WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE VOSDIDILITIE OF GREATER UNITY AMONG IME VAKIOUS LEFT GKOUP TIN BRITAIN? J some of the most solid supporters of this policy were members who would not regard themselves as the most militant within the school.
To follow up our action, several members from the school attended an all-London meeting on 13 February to discuss coordinating further action in support of NUPE and to support the picket of NUT headquarters on 24 February against Kynaston), HILDA Westminster NUT) (both in personal capacity Confusion on Labour?
JOHN Ross writes (8 February) about a move within the National Union of Public Employees to disaffiliate from He criticises this idea, arguing that it would aid Tory influence and infiltration In union'. But he does not explain how TKIENDS IN THE ARE SO SECTARIAN!
Labour Party. If the articles quoted above represent the International Marxist Group, why does it not enter the Labour Party?
By standing candidates against the Labour Party, the IMG disqualifies its members from joining. Why stand candidates when the idea is to change the Labour Party? The IMG needs to resolve policies PAUL KEGAN (London N5)
Books for South Africa SOME months ago you published an appeal from Carl Brecker and myself for 'Books for South Africa'. The response was quite good, and I think it only right that we should let those who contributed know what we have so far done with the money collected and the books donated. the Has _IS NOT A SEC line of the ther special appeal these contradictions in its London N1.
(London)
VIREN MENDEN.
Books and pamphlets have been sent to groups in Zambia, Botswana, Ghana and Nigeria. In response to a we also sent some books, surplus to the requirements of the South African comrades, to revolutionary groups in Turkey The contacts we have established in this way have proved very productive; groups receiving material through the *Books for South Africa' scheme have put us in touch with other groups. There is therefore a need for a continuous fund to keep this project one Donatons shone be sentio: Books for South Africa, PO Box 50, CHARLIE VAN GELDEREN