"In a situation where miserable reality can be changed only through economic growth, the concern with aesthetics demands justification." These are very nearly the first words of The Aesthetic Dimension, Herbert Marcuse's 1978 critique of Marxist aesthetics. Except Marcuse spoke of "radical political praxis", not "economic growth".
I have adapted his question for our current dominant ideology, for I don't suppose that a German Marxist philosopher is bedtime reading for Basingstoke MP and culture secretary, Maria Miller. Former economics graduate and advertising executive, Miller likes her culture to be functional, to be judged by how it boosts the wider economy. And it is part of Marcuse's argument that art becomes mere propaganda when it is forced to bend the knee to the prevailing ideology – and that is true whether it be Marxism or free-market economics.
In a thoroughly depressing speech given last month to gathered arts executives at the British Museum, she told them: "When times are tough and money is tight, our focus must be on culture's economic impact." The argument for publicly funded arts needs to be reframed, she insisted, "to hammer home the value of culture to our economy". Those whose orchestras and theatres and galleries are recipients of government funding were hardly in a position to say what they really thought about this touchy-feely philistinism from their bean-counting paymaster.
I do hope that Miller – and a few of the arts executives too – get to see the perfectly timed Propaganda exhibition that opens today at the British Library. There they can see what happens to art when it does the bidding of the political classes. Or instead, maybe Miller will listen to the recent intervention of Anish Kapoor on the opening of his new exhibition in Berlin, unfavourably comparing the respect and support that Germany gives to the arts with that of Britain. "In short, Britain's fucked," he concluded.
Marcuse's attack upon the aesthetics of his Marxist forebears was that they didn't much care for aesthetics at all. They just wanted art to serve the purposes of revolution – hence the collapse of the aesthetic into the sort of realist propaganda with which communism specialised and with which Miller's approach has so much in common. They both want to turn art into advertising.
I ought to confess my interest in all of this, for it may seem that I do not have a dog in the fight. I do. "The power of art," says Marcuse, "lies in its power to break the monopoly of established reality." My fascination with religion is its ability to do precisely the same. That it is able to suggest there is more to reality than the flat-footed empiricism of those who believe that if you can't count it, touch it or weigh it, it doesn't exist. In an age where religion has made itself look so foolish, art carries the torch for the sort of transcendence that art and faith once shared. Kapoor's work, for instance, rightly resists categorisation. And his extraordinary biomorphic sculptures have a beauty and significance about them that cannot be reduced to mere explanation. Like religion, he is trying to say things that cannot be said.
The Marxes and Millers of this world are a mortal danger to true art for they are constantly seeking some reductionist explanation of its value. It may be that some conclude that art (and religion) should therefore have nothing to do with the state and thus give up on state support. I have some sympathy with this. But the alternative may be that these arts executives will then spend their time schmoozing wealthy funders in the Ivy, lunches that always come with strings attached. And art is too valuable to be placed in the hands of those who think value means money.
Two points in his argument are critical. First, art that is driven and shaped by political ideology and/or the highest bidder used to be known by another name: propaganda. Fraser calls attention to the current exhibit of 20th and 21st century state sponsored propaganda at the British Library for a crash course in understanding what is at stake when art is reduced to serving the ideological imagination. (For more information go to: http://www.bl.uk/whatson/ exhibitions/propaganda/ index.html) Those of us who have read both Animal Farm and Brave New World - maybe even Fahrenheit 451 - will recall that when the public imagination is force fed a diet of restricted images, sounds, creative forms or movements, the soul of a people is slowly starved to death.
Second, it used to be religion that helped ordinary human beings envision a world better and more beautiful than the status quo. Fraser writes: "The power of art," says Marcuse, "lies in its power to break the monopoly of established reality." My fascination with religion is its ability to do precisely the same. That it is able to suggest there is more to reality than the flat-footed empiricism of those who believe that if you can't count it, touch it or weigh it, it doesn't exist. In an age where religion has made itself look so foolish, art carries the torch for the sort of transcendence that art and faith once shared. Ours is an era bound by the bottom line - our metaphors for all that is important are driven by the world of commerce - so much so that many no longer know how to think beyond what is currently profitable and/or expedient.
All the more reason for a robust creative economy that is not constricted by small minds and hard hearts. This is a place where artists and creative people of faith can find common ground. Mako Fujimura, a visual artist and person of deep spirituality, wrote about his former neighborhood in lower Manhattan. Along Canal Street there once was a thriving trout fishing opportunity - but those days are long gone. Into this reality, Mako makes the following observation:
I contend though that the problem is not that Canal Street is no longer the trout stream, but that we no longer imagine that it ought to be one. The issue is succumbing to the futility of the situation at hand, and despairing of the world as it is, saying there's nothing we can do about it. When we cease to seek a world that ought to be, and stop using our imaginative capacities generatively, we have forfeited our capacity to hope, and re-create. In this sense, recreation, even the leisure of fishing, points to re-creation, our central task of rebuilding a broken universe. If a trout, or other enchanted creatures of nature, cannot be allowed to inhabit our urban world, swimming against the currents of the economy and flowing into the currents of cultural production, we have already closed the door to the generative reality, making the re-humanization of our world unattainable...
In the confluence of such an imaginative journey, economy and culture flow into each other, as double headwaters into our future world; therefore if we care about any of these streams, we must ask audaciously, "Can't Canal Street be a trout stream again?"Art brings possibilities of re-creation back into the broken world. Artists are instinctively generative, and they are used to asking impossible questions. That's why they are the first to enter dilapidated corners of the cities, and to see before anyone else, the potential for re-creation in an abandoned loft. Far after the trout disappeared, artists moved into abandoned Canal Street. Soho then became home to many arts institutions, galleries and artists. The streets were teeming with creative talents. Paul Taylor Dance, a premier modern dance company, practiced there. The painter Romare Bearden, the first African-American visual artist to receive the National Medals, had his studio right on Canal Street. But Romare Bearden passed away, and Paul Taylor Dance Company has been replaced by the Gap. (Refractions @ http://www. makotofujimura.com/writings/refractions-31-trout-the-dow-and-our-bottom-lines-part-ii/)
Let me suggest that as our local Berkshire creative economy matures, we need to honor the voices of artists - and creative people of faith - with as much if not more value than politicians and the business community. To be sure, we can find common ground as allies - and must work together for the common good - but not if art is only a means to selling a product. Or worse yet, becomes a vehicle for beautiful but narrow-minded propaganda.
credits:
1)Anish Kapoor's piece Two Blues at the Lisson Gallery in London, October 2012. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty http://www.guardiannews.com/?guni=Article:guardian logo
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