Introduction
Ever since the achievements of Renaissance humanism with the
triumph of art over nature, with the development of new artistic
techniques (the optics of perspective, the structure of anatomy, the
mixing of pigments, and the development of movement) art was
strengthened and, combined with the scientific explorations and
achievements of the Enlightenment, led to the idea that Man could become
stronger and better and hold an optimistic view of the future. He could
improve his well-being and even take control of nature to create a
better life for all. This view continued through the decades and was
associated with social revolutions and political activity which
connected progressive ideas about society to artistic forms of
expression which would illustrate and advance the hopes and desires of
the masses for a better life and future. These artistic movements
changed and developed from the Enlightenment to Realism to Social
Realism and then to Socialist Realism as artists both inspired and
reflected the people’s progressive movements the world over.
However, at every juncture, oppositional movements also stepped in
and opposed progressive change and revolution by the people; from the
Romantic movement in Revolutionary France to the Modernist movement to
Postmodernism and now Metamodernism. These movements have derided every
aspect of the progressive forces, from the quietist “l’art pour l’art”
of Romanticism to the attack on artistic form by Modernism, to the later
attack on ideological content by Postmodernism and now the
‘oscillation’ between the two (form and content) of Metamodernism, a
movement caught between self-obsession and the pressing desire of the
masses for ideas and culture that will deal with climate change,
financial crises, terror attacks and the neo-liberal squeeze on the
social welfare system.
These two movements, Romanticism and the Enlightenment, have their
basis in attitudes towards and beliefs in the efficacy of the burgeoning
scientific movement. Romanticism, beginning in the 1770s formed the
basis of an anti-scientific strand in culture over the last two hundred
years while the Enlightenment formed the basis of a scientific strand
roughly between between 1715 and 1789. Both strands have been in
opposition ever since, their ideas reflected through various cultural
movements which sprang up in different countries and at different times,
some revolutionary and some reactionary.
Let’s take a look at these two opposing strands in more detail.
The Anti-Scientific Strand
Romanticism
One of the most important movements is Romanticism particularly as it
still has a strong anti-science influence today. Romanticism was
characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism and glorified
the past and nature, putting emphasis on the medieval rather than the
classical traditions of ideals of harmony, symmetry, and order. The
Romantics rejected the norms of the Age of Enlightenment and the
scientific rationalization of nature which were important aspects of
modernity. Isaiah Berlin believed that the Romantics opposed classic
traditions of rationality and it basis in moral absolutes and agreed
values which
led “to something like the melting away of the very notion of objective truth”.
Objective truth and reason were elevated by the artists and
philosophers of the Enlightenment to understand the universe and solve
the pressing problems of the world. However, Romanticism promoted the
individual imagination as a critical authority allowed of freedom from
classical notions of form in art (harmony, symmetry, and order).
Romantics were distrustful of the human world, and tended to strive for a
close connection with nature to escape elements of modernity such as
urbanisation, industrialisation and population growth and therefore
allowed them to avoid questions centred around the working class, such
as alienation, the ownership of the means of production, living
conditions and conditions of employment. The Romantics pursued the idea
of “l’art pour l’art” (art for art’s sake) believing that art did not
need moral justification and could be morally neutral.
According to
Arnold Hauser in
The Social History of Art:
“Revolutionary France quite ingeniously enlists the
services of art to assist her in this struggle; the nineteenth century
is the first to conceive the idea of “l’art pour l’art” [ital] which
forbids such a practice. The principle of “pure”, absolutely “useless”
art first results from the opposition of the romantic movement to the
revolutionary period as a whole, and the demand that the artists should
be passive derives from the ruling class’s fear of losing its influence
on art.” [1]
This position originated with the elites in the nineteenth century
and serves the same function, Romanticism being the main influence of
culture today.
Modernism
By the beginning of the 20th century, the Modernist movement
was generally referred to as the “avant-garde” until the the word
“Modernism” became more popular. Modernism was the rejection of
tradition, and the creation of new forms using reprise, incorporation,
rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody. The Modernist
‘rejection of tradition’, like with Romanticism, is the rejection of
classical notions of form in art (harmony, symmetry, and order).
Modernism (like Romanticism) also rejected the certainty of
Enlightenment thinking. Modernism emphasised form over political
content and rejected the ideology of Realism and Enlightenment thinking
on liberty and progress.
The Realist movement began in the mid-19th century as a reaction to
Romanticism, and Modernism was a revolt against the ‘traditional’ values
of Realism. Realist painters used common laborers, and ordinary people
in ordinary surroundings engaged in real activities as subjects for
their works. However, Modernism rejected traditional forms which over
time became less and less ´real´ and more abstract and conceptualised.
The Great War brought about more disillusionment with Enlightenment
ideals of progress among the Modernists who turned inwards and attacked
art forms, instead of war-mongering capitalism. The Romantic continuity
in Modernism produced individual, horrified reactions but were
ultimately no threat to the ruling elites. Like an angry child smashing
his own toys, the Modernist attacked his particular cultural forms and
then expected the public to pick up the pieces. What was left was
atonalism and abandonment of traditional rhythmic strictures in music,
the departure from traditional realist styles in art and the
prioritisation of the individual and the interior mind and abandonment
of the fixed point of view in literature. The Dada movement, for
example, was developed in reaction to the Great War by ‘avant-garde’
artists who rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern
capitalist society but then only to respond with nonsense and
irrationality in their art works.
As for the Great War, the avant-garde and Modernism – like the
Romantic movement and the French Revolution – failed the masses again as
it stood outside the people’s movement, turning in on itself and
attacking reason instead of uniting with the progressive forces against
war. In the end it was mainly the political movements of
James Connolly in Ireland and
V.I. Lenin in Russia (the two geographical ends of Europe) who organised the working classes against the war and destruction.
David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974), the
revolutionary artist and founder of the Mexican Mural Movement, had this
to say about the Modernist ‘avant-garde’:
“If we look closely at their work it is the most
reactionary movement in the history of culture. It has not developed
anything new in composition or perspective and has lost much of that
which has been accumulated over twenty centuries. It is based on the
hysteria of novelty for the sake of novelty, in order to satisfy a
parasitic plutocracy. The artist who changes his style every 24 hours is
the best-known artist. When he has exhausted all the solutions, the
others become his followers and sink into repetitious imitation.” [2]
The allusion here presumably to
Picasso (1881–1973), famous for changing his style many times, is interesting in relation to
Joaquín Sorolla
(1863–1923) the great Spanish artist whose depictions of ordinary
Spanish people in monumental works of social and historical themes was
overshadowed by Picasso until relatively recently. Cubism, credited to
Picasso as its inventor, was an art style that conflicted with the
representational system in art that had prevailed since the Renaissance,
as the subject was depicted from differing viewpoints at the same time
within the same painting.
Many pseudo-scientific explanations were given to explain Cubism
regarding art in modern society, new scientific developments etc but
even Picasso himself
ridiculed this:
“Mathematics, trigonometry, chemistry, psychoanalysis,
music and whatnot, have been related to cubism to give it an easier
interpretation. All this has been pure literature, not to say nonsense,
which brought bad results, blinding people with theories”. [2]
Indeed, Cubism is probable the most parodied of all forms of Modernist art.
Other Modernist forms such as Expressionism have been seen to be at least critical of capitalism and war, but according to
Lotte H. Eisner who
quotes a ‘fervent theorist of this style’,
Kasimir Edschmid:
“The Expressionist does not see, he has ‘visions’.
According to Edschmid. “the chain of facts: factories, houses, illness,
prostitutes, screams, hunger’ does not exist; only the interior vision
they provoke exists.” [p10]
Therefore, the external reality of life and death for the working class is ignored for the ecstasy of ‘interior visions’.
For Eisner, writing in The Haunted Screen, German Expressionist cinema is a visual manifestation of Romantic ideals. She
writes:
“Poverty and constant insecurity help to explain the
enthusiasm with which German artists embraced this movement
[Expressionism] which, as early as 1910, had tended to sweep aside all
the principles which had formed the basis of art until then.” [pp9-10]
Richard Murphy also notes:
“one of the central means by which expressionism
identifies itself as an avant-garde movement, and by which it marks its
distance to traditions and the cultural institution as a whole is
through its relationship to realism and the dominant conventions of
representation.” [3]
Expressionists rejected the ideology of realism, and Expressionist
art, in common with Romanticism, reacted to the dehumanizing effect of
industrialization and the growth of cities with extreme individualism
and emotionalism, not collective social empathy and political change.
After the Great War and the Russian Revolution, in the 1920s and
1930s, the idea of depicting ordinary people in art spread to many
countries in Realist and Social Realist forms especially as a reaction
to the exaggerated ego encouraged by Romanticism. In the United States
the Ashcan School was well know for for works portraying scenes of daily
life in New York city’s poorer neighborhoods. However, the unsettling
depictions of the darker side of capitalism by the Ashcan School was
soon displaced with Modernism in the Armory Show of 1913 and the opening
of more galleries in the 1910s that promoted the Modernist artwork of
Cubists, Fauves, and Expressionists.
This takeover by Modernism in New York continued into the 1940s and
1950s with the development of Abstract Expressionism, an art form which
was soon promoted globally as a counterweight to the Socialist Realism
style developed in the Soviet Union, especially during the Cod War. The
loose, splashing and dripping of paint in the work of Jackson Pollack
became used as a symbol of the ideology of freedom and free enterprise
in the United States. The victory of Modernism in the United States
served two purposes: national and international. It dampened down the
critical dissent of the Ashcan School while at the same time serving as a
useful tool of foreign policy.
According to
Frances Stonor Saunders in
The Cultural
Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, Abstract
Expressionism was “Non-figurative and politically silent, it was the
very antithesis to socialist realism. It was precisely the kind of art
the Soviets loved to hate.” [4] This was Modernism at its zenith as the
wealthiest of art investors and the most influential art critics
promoted Abstract Expressionism as “independent, self-reliant, a true
expression of the national will, spirit and character.”[5] However, the
size of the confidence trick being perpetrated on the unsuspecting
public became unsettling. According to Saunders:
“It was this very stylistic conformity, prescribed by
MoMA and the broader social contract of which it was a part, that
brought Abstract Expressionism to the verge of kitsch. ‘It was like the
emperor’s clothes,’ said Jason Epstein. ‘You parade it down the street
and you say, “This is great art,” and the people along the parade route
will agree with you. Who’s going to stand up to Clem Greenberg and later
to the Rockefellers who were buying it for their bank lobbies and say,
“This stuff is terrible”?” [6]
The imposition of Modern Art on the public was also noted by the journalist,
Tom Wolfe, who wrote about the 1960s and 1970s art scene in New York in
The Painted Word:
“The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything
in Modern Art, the notion that the public scorns, ignores, fails to
comprehend, allows to wither, crushes the spirit of, or commits any
other crime against Art or any individual artist is merely a romantic
fiction, a bittersweet Trilby sentiment. The game is completed and the
trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened. […]
We can now also begin to see that Modern Art enjoyed all the glories of
the Consummation stage after the First World War not because it was
“finally understood” or “finally appreciated” but rather because a few
fashionable people discovered their own uses for it.” [7]
It was also in the early 1970s that the Irish artist Seán Keating
(1889–1977), a Realist painter who painted images of the Irish War of
Independence, the early industrialization of Ireland and many portraits
of the people of the Aran Islands, was brought face to face with
Modernism. In a well-known televised interview, Keating, now in his 60s,
was brought around the ROSC’71 exhibition and asked to give his opinion
on the exhibits. As
Eimear O’Connor writes:
“When confronted by The Table, made by German artist Eva
Aeppli (b.1925), Keating said it was ‘downright horrible perversity,
nightmare stuff … an old lady who had gone completely mad and is
dangerous … I think it is morose … vengeful against the human race…'”
[8]
This baiting of a famous Irish humanist whose love of the Irish
people and progress displayed the new confidence of the Irish elites who
had jumped on the Modernist bandwagon as an symbol of fashionability
and of final acceptance by the European elites who would allow Ireland
to join the EEC (EU) in 1973.
Economic Pressure by Seán Keating (1949)
Scene of man bidding farewell to his family as he prepares to emigrate from Aran Islands.
(The Irish peasant betrayed: elevated as a national symbol before Independence yet ignored afterwards.)
Postmodernism
In the meantime, Postmodernism was gaining strength. Some features of
Postmodernism in general can be found as early as the 1940s but it
would compete with Modernism in the late 1950s and became predominant by
the 1960s.
Postmodernism is defined as
follows:
“Postmodernism, also spelled post-modernism, in Western
philosophy, a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad
skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason;
and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and
maintaining political and economic power. Postmodernism as a
philosophical movement is largely a reaction against the philosophical
assumptions and values of the modern period of Western (specifically
European) history—i.e., the period from about the time of the scientific
revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries to the mid-20th century.
Indeed, many of the doctrines characteristically associated with
postmodernism can fairly be described as the straightforward denial of
general philosophical viewpoints that were taken for granted during the
18th-century Enlightenment, though they were not unique to that period.”
In other words, Postmodernism had a direct line of descent from
Modernism and Romanticism before that. The same Romantic characteristics
show up again – the suspicion of reason, subjectivism and denial of the
ideas of the Enlightenment. Once again cynicism towards the idea of
progress and working class improvement is the mainstay. Every technique
and trick of avoidance of the important issues facing the people’s
movement is used in
Postmodernism:
“common targets of postmodern critique include universalist notions of
objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, language, and
social progress” and “postmodern thought is broadly characterized by
tendencies to self-referentiality, epistemological and moral relativism,
pluralism, subjectivism, and irreverence.”
Postmodernist artists decided that past styles (once criticised for
being ‘traditional’) were now usable in a parodic way along with
appropriation and popular culture. The Postmodernist critique of
universalist ideas of objective reality and social progress, or the
Grand Narratives, has particular implications for the working classes
and popular political movements as their liberatory philosophy and
ideologies are based on them – whatever their supposed successes or
failures in the past. To take them away is to fall back on the
neo-liberal philosophy of the end-of-history and more of the same
globalised capitalism ad infinitum. After the attack on Form in
Modernism, we now get an assault on Content in Postmodernism.
When applied to the people’s movement itself, such as the French
Revolution, Postmodernist historiography for example, all but wipes out
its historic relevance and importance. As
Richard J Evans
writes in
In Defence of History, Simon Schama’s book
Citizens: A
Chronicle of the French Revolution over-emphasises the bloody and
violent nature of the revolution as if the politically-conscious people
taking their lives into their own hands were irrational beings exploding
with an animal lust for violence. Evans comments:
“In Citizens, indeed, the French Revolution of 1789-94
becomes almost meaningless in the larger sense, and is reduced to a kind
of theatre of the absurd; the social and economic misery of the masses,
an essential driving force behind their involvement in the
revolutionary events, is barely mentioned; and the lasting significance
of the Revolution’s many political theories and doctrines for modern
European and world history more or less disappears.” [9]
The more opaque forms of relativistic Postmodernist writing and
thinking were exposed when Alan Sokal refused to get into line and
exposed the French Postmodernists in a hoax essay published in
Social
Text in 1996. According to
Francis Wheen in
How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World:
“As a socialist who had taught in Nicaragua after the
Sandinista revolution, he [Sokal] felt doubly indignant that much of the
new mystificatory folly emanated from the self-proclaimed left. For two
centuries, progressives had championed science against obscurantism.
The sudden lurch of academic humanists and social scientists towards
epistemic relativism not only betrayed this heritage but jeopardised
‘the already fragile prospects for a progressive social critique’, since
it was impossible to combat bogus ideas if all notions of truth and
falsity ceased to have any validity.” [10]
The obvious contradictions and cul-de-sacs of Postmodernism
eventually brought it into decline and soon doors opened for a new
obfuscatory philosophy to buttress increasingly crisis-ridden globalised
capitalism – Metamodernism.
Metamodernism
According to
Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker in ‘Notes on
Metamodernism‘:
“The postmodern years of plenty, pastiche, and parataxis
are over. In fact, if we are to believe the many academics, critics, and
pundits whose books and essays describe the decline and demise of the
postmodern, they have been over for quite a while now. But if these
commentators agree the postmodern condition has been abandoned, they
appear less in accord as to what to make of the state it has been
abandoned for. In this essay, we will outline the contours of this
discourse by looking at recent developments in architecture, art, and
film. We will call this discourse, oscillating between a modern
enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, metamodernism. We argue that the
metamodern is most clearly, yet not exclusively, expressed by the
neoromantic turn of late”.
So there you have it – this is the best that Metamodernism can offer –
a return to Romanticism! We have now come full circle as “the
metamodern is most clearly, yet not exclusively, expressed by the
neoromantic turn of late”.
And where is this pressure coming from, to allow a little reality back into the
arts?
“Some argue the postmodern has been put to an abrupt end
by material events like climate change, financial crises, terror
attacks, and digital revolutions […] have necessitated a reform of the
economic system (“un nouveau monde, un nouveau capitalisme”, but also
the transition from a white collar to a green collar economy)”.
So the contemporary crises of capitalism and climate change are
finally impinging on the disintegrating Postmodern artistic
consciousness and the answer is reformism and ‘new capitalism’. However,
Metamodernism
is “Like a donkey it chases a carrot that it never manages to eat
because the carrot is always just beyond its reach. But precisely
because it never manages to eat the carrot, it never ends its chase”.
With a little bit of progressive critique, the Metamodern artist can
regain credibility without ever really challenging the status quo.
From all of the above we can see the common threads tying
Romanticism, Modernism, Postmodernism and Metamodernism together:
individualism, art for art’s sake, suspicion of reason, subjectivism and
denial of the ideas of the Enlightenment. All individualist movements
that oppose the idea of collectivist ideology and action. Movements that
ultimately serve the status quo and the ruling elites. Yet some of
these same elites were involved in the development of the concepts of
the Enlightenment in the beginning. What happened to them?
Night’s Candles Are Burnt Out by Seán Keating (1927-28)
Ardnacrusha – Ireland’s first
power-station built by Siemens post-independence in the 1920s, a
hydro-electric dam built on the river Shannon, north of Limerick.
(Disillusioned Irish workers unemployed and drinking as the new elites begin the process of state-building.)
The Scientific Strand
The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment was an intellectual and philosophical movement that
dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 18th century.
Enlightenment thinkers believed in the importance of rationality and
science. They believed that the natural world and even human behavior
could be explained scientifically. They felt that they could use the
scientific method to improve human society. For the artists and
philosophers of the Enlightenment, the ideal life was one governed by
reason. Artists and poets strove for ideals of harmony, symmetry, and
order, valuing meticulous craftsmanship and the classical tradition.
Among philosophers, truth was discovered by a combination of reason and
empirical research.
In the field of political philosophy the English philosopher
Thomas Hobbes
developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the
right of the individual, the natural equality of all men and the idea
that legitimate political power must be “representative” and based on
the consent of the people. Therefore the Enlightenment popularised the
idea that with the use of reason and logic social development and
progress would be the norm for the masses and science and technology
would be the instruments of human progress. The ideas of the
Enlightenment paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th
and 19th centuries as it undermined the authority of the monarchy and
the Church. The French Revolution become the first main conflict between
the men of the Enlightenment and the aristocracy. Within the arts this
conflict arose between those who believed that art had a role to play
and those who believed in art-for art’s-sake. As Hauser notes:
“It is only with the Revolution that art becomes a
confession of political faith, and it is now emphasized for the first
time that it has to be no “mere ornament on the social structure,” but
“a part of its foundations.” It is now declared that art must not be an
idle pastime, a mere tickling of the nerves, a privilege of the rich and
the leisured, but it must teach and improve, spur on to action and set
an example. It must be pure, true, inspired and inspiring, contribute to
the happiness of the general public and become the possession of the
whole nation.” [11]
However, the rising bourgeoisie who advocated the ideas of the
Enlightenment realised that their objectives and those of the
revolutionary public were not the same:
“Yet as soon as the bourgeoisie had achieved its aims, it
left its former comrades in arms in the lurch and wanted to enjoy the
fruits of the common victory alone. […] Hardly had the Revolution ended,
than a boundless disillusion seized men’s souls and not a trace
remained of the optimistic philosophy of the enlightenment.” [12]
Thus began the conflict between the new rulers, the bourgeoisie, who
wanted to set limits on progress, and the interests of the toiling
masses who had not yet achieved one of the most basic concepts of
Enlightenment philosophy: the natural equality of all men. This struggle
for political and social freedom took different forms over the next
century or so but had as one of its bases the idea that the arts would
play a role.
Realism
As the bourgeoisie stepped up its development of capitalist society
building factories and markets, the Realist movement reacted to
Romanticist escapism in favor of depictions of ‘real’ life, emphasizing
the mundane, ugly and sordid. The Realist artists used common laborers
and ordinary people in their normal work environments as the main
subjects for their paintings. Its chief exponents were
Gustave Courbet, Jean-François Millet, Honoré Daumier, and
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.
Courbet hated the aristocracy and royalty, and advocated political and
social change. He painted ordinary people and in sizes usually reserved
for gods and heroes. Realist movements, like the Peredvizhniki or
Wanderers group in Russia, developed in many other Western countries.
Social Realism
Meanwhile, as the the Industrial Revolution grew in Britain, concern
for the factory workers led to a meeting betwen Marx and Engels and a
major change in the ideology of the working class organisations seeking
better conditions. While the Romantics believed that the Industrial
Revolution and its exploitative extremes in the factories was the result
of science, the Marxists instead questioned the ownership of the
factories and who benefited from the greatly increased power of the new
means of production, means that could benefit society as a whole.
Therefore while the Romantics looked back to the medieval artisans and
peasants, the Marxists saw science creating new possibilities for a
better future for everybody.
Social Realism grew out of these changes as Social Realist artists
drew attention to the everyday conditions of the working class and the
poor and criticised the social structures which maintained these
conditions. The Mexican and Russian revolutions gave a fillip to the
Social Realist movement which reached its height of popularity during
the 1920s and 1930s when capitalism was under severe pressure from the
global economic depression. The Ashcan School in the USA and the Mexican
muralist movement were two groups who exerted a huge influence at the
time and many of the artists involved at the time were supporters of
political working class movements. While contemporary Social Realism has
been kept in the background it is still a popular style with
progressive artists.
Socialist Realism
As nationalist struggles of the nineteenth century changed into
socialist struggles during the twentieth century, the style and form of
the art changed too as ordinary people were now depicted as subjects
with dignity and power. This style became known as Socialist Realism. It
was pronounced state policy at the Soviet Writers’ Congress in 1934 in
the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other socialist
countries. Like Social Realism, Socialist Realism also met with fierce
denunciations and controversy. However, despite its caricature as a
style that depicts people as naïve, happy, joyous ciphers, its
originators condemned any attempt to portray people living in an idyllic
paradise as the work of shallow artists who would never be taken
seriously by the
populace:
“An artist who tried to represent the birth of socialism
as an idyll, who tried to represent the socialist system, which is being
born in hard-fought battles, as a paradise populated by ideal people –
such an artist would not be a realist, would not be able to convince
anyone by his works. The artist should show how socialism is built out
of the bricks of the past, out of the material which the past has left
us, out of the material which we ourselves create in the sweat of our
brow, in the blood of our toil and struggle, in, the hard battles of
classes and in the hard toil of man to remold himself.”
Socialist Realism went into decline in the 1960s as the Soviet Union
itself went from crisis to crisis until its end in 1991. Today it is a
style which is still much criticised. Why is Socialist Realism such a
taboo? Because Socialist Realism is a quadruple whammy – it contains
four elements that elites don’t like:
- Anything to do with the Soviet Union (then) or Russia (today)
- Any depictions of the working class anywhere (which are not subservient)
- Any discussion of socialism or socialist ideology (past, present or future)
- Any realist depiction of opposition to capitalism (that could influence others)
If one looks at ‘history of Western art’ books it becomes apparent
that there are very few positive images of the working class but plenty
of images glorifying monarchs, aristocrats, the middle classes and Noble
Peasants (the useful idiots of nationalism). Representations of
peasants usually take the form of non-threatening genre paintings and
any Socialist Realist art is excluded.
Irish Industrial Development (oil on wood panels) by Seán Keating (1961)
International Labour Offices (ILO) Geneva, Switzerland
(Positive images of Irish workers by Irish artist in Geneva – must be Socialist Realism!)
Conclusion
The fact is that Romanticism in its different forms has made sure to
keep the working classes out of the picture and the only response of the
peoples' movements should be to keep Romanticist influences at arms
length. Romanticism has become the capitalist art par excellence.
Romanticism vacillates between cultures of despair and Nihilism. It is
opposed to logic and reason and its extreme individualism ensures a
divisive affect on any collectivist organisation. Romanticism pervades
most mass culture today and sells egoism and impotence back to the very
people who turn to it for solace from desperation.
The long conflict between Romanticism and Enlightenment ideas
contained in art movements over the last two centuries is set to
continue as new responses to the contemporary crises of capitalism try
to ameliorate the situation or fundamentally change the system
underpinning it. What is needed are new national debates on the role and
function of art in maintaining or changing the structure of society.
Debates similar to those described by an eyewitness to the Paris
Commune, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, who wrote: “a whole population is
discussing serious matters, and for the first time workers can be heard
exchanging their views on problems which up until now have been broached
only by philosophers.” [13]
*
Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork
consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well
as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing
based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of
Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed
country by country at http://gaelart.blogspot.ie/. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Notes:
[1] Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art, Vol 3 (Vintage Books, 1958) p147
[2] D. Anthony White, Siqueiros: Biography of a Revolutionary Artist (Booksurge.com, 2008) p413
[3] Richard Murphy, Theorizing the
Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and the Problem of Postmodernity
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1999) p43
[4] Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (The New Press, 1999) p254
[5] Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (The New Press, 1999) p254
[6] Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (The New Press, 1999) p275
[7] Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word (Bantam Books, 1987) p26/7
[8] Eimear O’Connor and Virginia Teehan, Sean Keating: In Focus (Hunt Museum, 2009) p33
[9] Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History (Granta Books, 2000) p245
[10] Francis Wheen, How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World (Harper Perennial, 2004) p89/90
[11] Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art, Vol 3 (Vintage Books, 1958) p147
[12] Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art, Vol 3 (Vintage Books, 1958) p157
[13] Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, in Le
Tribun du Peuple, May 10, 1871, quoted in Stewart Edwards, The Paris
Commune 1871 (Quadrangle, 1977) p283
