This page is dedicated to ‘Art and Power’s’ guest artist R. Max Vollmer. For the conference, Max made an installation in the Workshop Theatre’s Studio 1, where a number of the conference panels were held. This installation came to fruition with a performance entitled ‘fragments – Brocken’, which spoke to the Art and Power conference theme.
‘fragments–Brocken’: A Post-Performance Discussion
Max
Why did you read out text in German? You must have known that most would not understand it?
There are many facets to the – in my view – very limited power an art work may have. The greatest may be the power to unsettle if given the chance. Here I was in the somewhat privileged position of having a captive audience. Attending an exhibition, the viewer may turn around and walk away from any work without having to engage with it; you were not able to do that here. The experience of being deliberately excluded, of language excluding you, provoked at least this question; it also meant to lead directly to the key sentence which I did translate: “We live in language.” Words and language shape our relationship to reality. For example, if you are addressed while travelling on trains as ‘customer’ instead of ‘passenger’ as you were in the past, you perceive yourself foremost as engaged in a commercial transaction rather than as a person who is travelling from A to B. (By the way, in Germany you are still addressed as ‘Lieber Fahrgast’ – literally: ‘Dear passenger-guest’. I appreciate this. It only shows that, through its common usage of the English language, British society is more susceptible to be americanised.) This is of course deliberate: companies want you to think of yourself as consumer, the highest goal in this our present society. Although this is presented to you as an increase in your freedom: – you have the choice to buy or not to buy – you are being deceived, it is in fact a reversal of power from you to the company. At one time, the function of infrastructure was to provide you with a vital service, in today’s Western society you count only as customer to companies. The world is stood on its head.
You touched upon the question of art and ethics. On the one hand you said (quoting Baumeister) that ‘art reflects the conscience of the world’, on the other hand you asked us to imagine the 12 years, 1933 to 1945, of the 3rd Reich as a gigantic work of “self-destructive art”. Would you elaborate on this?
This was really central to my performance: Questions concerning art and ethics cannot be separated from questions of art and power. Does art have an ethical dimension and, if yes, must this, of necessity, be morally positive?
Let me make it clear: I did not ask ‘Could the 3rd Reich be a work of art?’ but: ‘If we consider the 3rd Reich for a moment as a work of art, what would be the consequences?’. The 3rd Reich was certainly never conceived as ‘art’; whether or not it may be considered art – there are precedents of objects not made as art but now held to be art – is the wrong question. The interesting question is: Imagining it for a moment as an immense work of art, what would follow from that?
Practically all human activity has a side to it that is morally compromised. Perhaps that is inevitable because being human also means being capable of atrocities no animal would commit. Humanism is really a misnomer. Traditionally, the inhuman, i.e. ‘beastly’ side of humans is projected onto ‘savage’ animals (e.g. Machiavelli maligns wolves). Humans tortured and killed in the name of Religion. Knowledge and science is used – or should it be ‘misused’? – in the same way. Is philosophy less compromised? Perhaps, but what do we make of the work of Carl Schmitt that supposedly inspired Washington’s neoconservatives? Art has been used for propaganda purposes in the service of power interests, but here this compromised side is not intrinsic to the art-aspect of any such work but rather grafted onto it, forming a separate layer so to speak. However, looking at the 3rd Reich as art would entail that also art could be capable of murderous atrocities, that also art could become morally compromised. Or is that a contradiction per se?
The work of Gustav Metzger is concerned with the inhuman side of what humans can do to humans; his work is ethically highly moral. But in his manifesto of self-destructive art that I read out he arguably hints that art itself may embrace this inhuman side of human nature. He says,
“[…]
Rockets, nuclear weapons, are auto-destructive.
Auto-destructive art.
[…]”
Acknowledgment
Many thanks to Mary and Stuart Manley of Barter Books, Alnwick, for the book donation.
Sources of text-extracts:
Jonathan Littell: Die Wohlgesinnten, Berlin Verlag 2008, pp 882-3,
Orig. publ. as : Les Bienveillantes, Gallimard 2006
Bertolt Brecht: Über alltägliches Theater (1930)
In: Schriften zum Theater, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a. M.1969, pp 217-18
(Engl. transl. in: Boal, London 1979, pp 108-09.)
Augusto Boal: Theatre of the Oppressed, Pluto Press, London 1979, p 109
Orig. publ. as: Teatro de Oprimido 1974
Willi Baumeister: Das Unbekannte in der Kunst, Verlag DuMont Schauberg, Köln 2nd ed. 1960, p 106
Gustav Metzger: Manifesto auto-destructive Art (1959, 1960)
In: Gustav Metzger, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford 1999
Kurt Schwitters: Obervogelsang (ca. 1946)
In: Friedhelm Lach (Hg.): Kurt Schwitters. Das literarische Werk. Bde 1 – 5. DuMont Buchverlag Köln 1974 – 1988. Bd. 1. Köln 1988. S. 248
http://www.kurt-schwitters.org/
projected image: Bhopal, wall surrounding Union Carbide plant; photo: R.M. Vollmer 2005
http://www.bhopal.org/whathappened.html
I have just been reading about your performance and am very sorry indeed to have missed it.
How did you feel it went? Did you enjoy the experience?
I am very interested in the idea of what would happen if you were to look at the 3rd reich as if it were art. For myself, this question has resonance because it underlines to me the extent that art is seen as completely removed from everyday life for most people. We are used to talking about events in history in terms of their political, economic, sociological, psychological etc meanings, but throw the word art in there and people get very worried.
How do you define art? For me, it is a way of thinking about the world and therefore equal to any of the ways of thinking named above… so it is entirely justifiable to look at histoical
atrocities with it in mind, of course including other readings too.
Thank you, Nicola, for your thoughtful comment.
I think of art as a realm of human endeavour that is ‘fuzzy’ – i.e. something may regarded as ‘art’ by some but rejected as art by others: kitsch for example – , often overlapping with other domains (religion, craft ….) and that escapes definition just like ‘time’ (“I know what time is but when you ask me, I know not”: I think it was Augustine who said that).
To me doing art involves creating new realities with whatever material is chosen, even if the material is as abstract as ‘thoughts’, – in becoming reality the work gains independence from its maker, starts its own life by communicating with whoever is willing and perceptive to engage with it – maybe a bit like having a child: a unique new ‘reality’ comes into being, but then, of course, a child, a living being, can never be considered as a ‘work of art’ (or could it?); it gets very confusing. But what if the created art-work is not just a painting of ‘hell’ as it has often been done, but a ‘hell’ itself? Some of the performances by Marina Abramović may come close to this.
Is the artist’s wish to communicate inherent to making art and essential? I tend to think: yes, but am not sure at all.
I’m weighing in, Max, in response to Nicola’s comment about art, doing so via your comments about art creating new realities with the chosen ‘materials’ and the notion that an art work, in addition to merely representing hell, can actually be a sort of ‘hell’.
I think that in pointing to art’s material economy your statement enables us to build upon and open up Nicola’s search for a definition. I agree that art can provide unique ways of looking at (i.e., contemplating and perhaps even ‘understanding’)the world. What initially comes to mind is how Emily Dickinson everytime shows me phenomena in nature (the ubiquitous sunset or a bird in flight) as i was somehow never able to SEE or know it, despite my having LOOKED at such phenomena before or even repeatedly.
Yet, supervening on this is the fact that art can also provide a sense of the world, and perhaps even a way to exist in it. On this line an art work depicting hell in one way or another, to return to your example, would be capable of producing its own special hell with which the spectator must contend, doing so with whatever senses she or he might choose or, more precisely, be forced to put to use in the interpretive process.
NICOLA
I agree with Max that art is indeed “fuzzy” and difficult to define.. not least since the old idea that “it’s art if I say it is” can easily apply to an artist’s whole life, the world, everything.
I am interested in the idea you posit, Max, of “new realities” and enjoy that you say this rather than “new possibilities”. It’s optimistic. It underlines the power art can have. I said earlier that for me, art is a way of thinking about the world; but this does not underline the necessity to communicate those thoughts, as you mention. It is vital to me that people get at least the tiniest glimpse of what I am trying to say with an artwork.
I’d also like to go off on a bit of a tangent if I may, as I would like to think about when this idea of communication might get very tricky indeed. For example, would it be possible for someone to be at a Marina Abramovic performance and not see it as a hell at all? What if they see it as a heaven? What does the artist do then? This would be a terrifying “new reality”, in which the looking has encouraged an unpalatable seeing. It would be the bringing into being of a deeply horrible reality, even worse than the “hell” originally intended, for which the artist would have to bear some responsibility… or would they?
Nicola’s last post, the ‘bit of a tangent’ portion, puts me in mind of Francis Bacon’s dogged insistence on the beauty of some of those paintings which critics, and no doubt the public, understood to be obscene and ugly.
I’ve read the discussion so far…seems to be complex, but I’ll try to express what I’m thinking…
Pondering over the thought of “…looking at the 3rd Reich as art…” I wondered what or where the source of art in general is?
I can’t think of art without linking it to the thoughts of an individual (or a group of individuals) who is in conversation with the surrounding world. To me art expresses and materializes individual and independent thoughts – thought as a creative process.
Metzger’s and Abramović’ work have been mentioned. Without being really familiar with their work I think – correct me if I’m wrong – destruction and pain are their materials to express what they think. It’s the processes in destruction and pain they use.
I think also they “…transform the external war to make it their own war of consciousness…”* (which to me might be as well a definition of art).
Uff…to come to a conclusion: I cannot see ‘individual and independent thoughts’ in the ideology of the 3rd Reich nor can I see that ‘the external war has been transformed into an inner one’.
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To Max’s first question in the discussion (Why did you read out text in German? You must have known that most would not understand it?) made me think of the following essay by Oliver Sacks:
http://www.junkfoodforthought.com/long/Sacks_Reagan.htm
Sometimes those who don’t understand a language might get layers of a speech that the knowing won’t get…
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*Beuys on Christ. A Position in Dialogue / F Mennekes – Joseph Beuys (1984)
F Mennekes: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3545240,00.html
I will try and respond to Nicola’s and evesdropper’s comments first, which centre on communication in art. At a closer look, communication in art is, first, a dialog between the artist and the work-in-progress followed by a second dialog between the work and the audience/spectator in which the work reveals – given time and attention – more and more of itself (I will leave aside art-works that invite visitors to participate and modify the work; modification could also result from changes in the aura of a work through fame etc. or simply through decay, and of course no two persons will respond the same way). Most artists, I think, and as Nicola said of herself, would like such communication to be complete, i.e. the artist wants to communicate through the work with the audience. But for some artist the dialog with the work may be paramount, they may not care about any audience or actively hide the work like Balzac’s (fictional) painter Frenhofer (1) or Henry Darger.
Is the artist responsible for any misreading of the work? Although the maker, once the work leaves his/her hands, looses the power over it, a certain responsibility remains, I think. Adorno even went so far as making artists responsible for any misuse of his/her work even long after their death, like music to be played for the torturer’s relaxation after a hard days work. But Abramović is different in so far as in some of her performances she temps the spectator to be corrupted by her performance, to give in to his or her sadistic impulses or – to use artandpowers words – she is producing her own special hell to which the spectator must respond; stronger even: she FORCES the spectator to respond by handing to him/her the power to end the performance for example, the 2 column performance, “Expansion in Space” (2) ends only by spectator intervention before she is knocking herself unconscious. Does that make the work itself sadistic? NO, as little as the work of de Sade can be called sadistic, rather the opposite, both are moralists.
But we still have not come any nearer to an answer to my original question (for which the III. Reich only served as a provocation): Is ART really the one exemption among all human endeavours in being truly HUMANISTIC? Is it not possible to find examples of art that clearly could be labelled anti-humanistic, ‘deprived’ or worse? Perhaps KITSCH? Provided kitsch is accepted as a form of Art? (3) Isn’t kitsch art or pseudo-art that plays under false pretences with emotions, that is false, that lies? And if you argue that kitsch is ‘non-art’, isn’t the reason you exclude kitsch from art exactly because kitsch is corrupting? That it is the ‘hell’ to the ‘heaven’ of art – although maybe often a quite jolly and pleasurable ‘hell’ opposed to a ‘demanding heaven’? (4)
I am sorry, Sabine, I am not convinced by your argument about ‘independent thought’. We get here into a philosophical argument about how independent thought can be. Thought, not least through language, is always culturally imbedded; independence can only be relative. Could one not argue that national-socialism is a further development of fascism and thus shows some independence of thought? What strikes me when reading some pages of ‘Mein Kampf’ is just how sentimental and ‘kitschy’ they are! And the yearly large state-sponsored art exhibitions in Munich were full of kitsch of an Arno Breker and others. Kundera says (5) “kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word”; and: in a totalitarian state, “in the realm of totalitarian kitsch […] everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished. […] In this light, we can regard the gulag (and concentration camps, I may add) as a septic tank used by totalitarian kitsch to dispose of its refuse.” So then the question could be reformulated: Can kitsch ever be a form of art? Or is it always opposed to art but, it seems, somehow linked to art like ‘heaven and hell’ or ‘god and the devil’? If we choose the latter, art is then, by definition, a humanistic endeavour, always, without exception.
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(1) Balzac, Le Chef-d’Œuvre inconnu
(2) http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PD41IRukna8&feature=related
(3) Kitsch should be distinguished from ‘bad art’ which is art that failed in some aspect of the rules it has set itself; in this I agree with Tomás Kulka who (in :’Kitsch and Art’) opposes kitsch to art.
(4) Don’t let’s forget that Faust had quite some fun from his dealings with the devil!
(5) In: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, part VI
I don’t think kitsch can be excluded from the realm of art, as uncomfortable as the thought might be for many people.
What do I mean when I call something “kitsch”? I think of the three pottery ducks which flew across my grandma’s bathroom wall. It seems simple. Next I think of Van Gogh’s sunflowers reproduced on a tea towel. Already a bit more problematic. Finally, I think of the rainbows that the Chapman Brothers painted over their collection of Hitler’s watercolours… it looks pretty tacky to me, but perhaps layering 21st century kitsch on 20th century kitsch cancels out the kitsch?!
Can I think of any examples of Art that are definitely not “kitsch”? I think of Mona Hatoum’s sculptures and the performances of Marina Abramovic. Easy. But I also think of Robert Rauschenburg’s goat and then Tracey Emin’s bed – I’m not so sure everyone would agree with me there. Finally, I come to Jeff Koons’ work… work which is so cold and calculating, it surely cannot be kitsch, even if it references it endlessly. (I say this, by the way, as a fan of his work).
My point is that Art is big enough to encompass many forms, kitsch being not only one form amongst many, but also – crucially – defined in the eye of the beholder. Kitsch is not outside the realm of art, but part of it. What is kitsch for me, may well not be for you.
It is a historical inevitability that we should define Hitler’s taste in art as kitsch – we NEED it to be so, because – understandably – we need him to be a cretin down to every last detail of his being. I agree with Max here: our thoughts/tastes/attitudes our dictated by the culture within which we find ourselves. However, we should consider that perhaps what really underpins any posited Art-Kitsch dichotomy is intellectual snobbery: it posits Rationality against Emotion (including the sentimentality by which kitsch is mostly defined). Personally, I think this is a strange thing to do, since, for myself at least, the greatest art appeals equally to both.
It seems that I haven’t been able to express the train of thought of my last post properly. I find it has been reduced to two words (independent thought). You could leave out ‘independent’, and call it ‘individual thought’ – it wouldn’t change what I was trying to say. (‘Independent’ meant to underline the word ‘individual’ which has to do with what you, Max, say in the first lines of your last post:” …of course no two persons will respond the same way…”.)
But taking things from the fragment “independent thought” I agree with Max and Nicola that we are embedded in the context of language, culture, race, gender etc. And I am aware of the deterministic discourse in philosophy to which, I guess, you allude, Max (?). Yet, I’m not happy with the thought that an individual’s existence can be reduced to its context. Then he/she wouldn’t be an individual anymore (which is very interesting for any kind of totalitarian or exploiting system). I dare say that I am (or any person is) more than a cocktail of parental genes spiced up with some socio-cultural ingredients in a politico-economical surrounding. I thought that part of what makes us human is that we can step back and REFLECT on our motives, that we can have a knowledge why we are doing something. This REFLECTION is based on our will to go beyond the ‘context’ we are embedded in. It appears to me that this is the task which Beuys calls “…the own war of consciousness” (as mentioned above).
Apropos the question whether kitsch is art or not: I think as long as the definition of art is fuzzy the answer to this question will be fuzzy as well.
Let us resume our discussion. I will now only respond to Sabine and leave the question of kitsch for later.
I am not as optimistic as you, Sabine: I would think few are really willing to stand back and think for themselves and analyse their motives: intellectuals, by definition, and hopefully artists (but ‘primitive’ artists, although possessing a unique artistic ability, do not fall into this group, also by definition). You yourself call this reflection a task, in my view, a task few attempt and far from being a universal human characteristic – maybe I just lived too long.
But you are right, Sabine, I failed to respond well to your contribution of the 7/11/08. I will try again, try to fail better: Are you really saying(1) that you can’t imagine the III. Reich, all of its 12 years existence, not just its ideology, as a ‘work of art’, my original request, disregarding the unprofitable question whether it was or not? Ever since Duchamp a negative answer may no longer be possible: Imitating Duchamp and many conceptual artists since, I could simply declare it to be a ‘work of art’ – my own now. Granted, the ‘work of art’ would then not be the historical physical horror of those 12 years, but the idea of it. Have I answered here my own question or have I failed? Is the idea of a reality as different from the reality as a tragedy played out on stage from it happening on the streets? Or am I trying to push art into a forbidden field?
(1) You wrote: I cannot see ‘individual and independent thoughts’ in the ideology of the 3rd Reich nor can I see that ‘the external war has been transformed into an inner one’.
To Nicola’s thoughts about kitsch: Do you really want to say, Nicola, that objective judgement of art is impossible? serve redundancy notice on all art critics? Of course, there is a subjective element in art criticism and art critics may get it wrong, but this is a long way from declaring that good or bad art and kitsch is entirely in the eye of the beholder! Criticism is difficult because it requires judging each work by the rules it sets itself – there are no longer universal applicable rules as there may have been once. Successful criticism requires knowledge, experience, sensibility etc, and will not simply rely on a spontaneous emotional response. The same applies for recognising kitsch which I find much easier than judging the quality of an art work, because all kitsch obeys similar rules: to create a fake harmony, see Kundera.
Whether or not kitsch should be included under art is for me only of interest in so far as it concerns the wider questions of art and ethics which I posed earlier. There are arguments that support either view: for inclusion speaks that it may be difficult, at times, to judge whether a work of art is kitschy or not. With other words, there can be a smooth transition from art (non-kitschy) to kitschy art; for example, Raphael’s Sistine Madonna is considered to be a masterpiece but isolate the two putti (a popular poster) and they become kitsch. Does that mean that there are kitschy elements in this painting? Perhaps yes!
Against inclusion speaks that there are kitsch objects that make no claim to art, for example, the ducks you mentioned, Nicola, or the religious kitsch of mass-produced Christ statuettes. Kulka, whose book on kitsch that I mentioned before still seems to be the authoritative work, argues against inclusion. For me it remains an open question.
It is certainly NOT ‘a historical inevitability that we should define Hitler’s taste in art as kitsch’ and Hitler was certainly not a ‘cretin’: a successful demagogue needs to be clever, cunning and unscrupulous. As to his taste in art: he venerated Wagner and a seminal experience in his life was his first Wagner opera (as related by Speer to Gitta Sereny). Kundera spells out why kitsch is a necessity to fascist/Stalinist dictatorships: The promised paradise of the bright future society is not to be disturbed by any dissonance.
I agree with you, Nicola, that great art appeals to both, emotion and rationality but disagree that ‘Art-Kitsch dichotomy is intellectual snobbery [and] posits Rationality against Emotion’: kitsch posits fake emotions as true emotions.