Some Notes on Political Art

What is political art? What makes art political?

It is very difficult to define political art. Views on what makes art political can range from the idea that all art is political (i.e. it either implicitly supports or explicitly opposes the status quo) to pointing out, for example, the obviously political murals on walls around Belfast. As a way of narrowing the former and broadening the latter I suggest here a view of political art that uses three categories: Portrayal, Promotion, or Projection.

Portrayal
In the first category ‘Portrayal’ covers art that says ‘this is what happens if, is happening now or happened in the past’. This kind of art describes events or situations that people find themselves in as a result of social or political structures. Any political perspective is implicit in the art but is also free-floating. For example, a painting of a white man whipping black slaves describes a particular situation where the black man may say, ‘Yes! That is how we are treated!’ yet the slave-owner may say, ‘Yes! That is the way to treat them!’ Thus both sides can see the confirmation of their point of view in the work of art.

For the slaves, the ultimate effect of such art may be positive or negative. In a positive sense it may create group awareness and solidarity, or, in a negative sense, it could also consolidate inertia, a feeling that nothing can be done to change the situation. The art styles or movements of Realism, Social Realism and Naturalism could fit into the category of ‘Portrayal’.

Promotion
In the second category of ‘Promotion’ ways and means towards the resolution of the problem are presented. That is, a particular aspect of an event is highlighted over other aspects. This aspect would concentrate on the people or groups who are actively struggling to change the situation in which they find themselves.

Thus one view of an event, that which would encourage others or strengthen an activism already present, is promoted over images of the event that may have the opposite effect. In this case, the politics of representation takes precedence over the representation of politics.

Unlike ‘Portrayal’, this type of art is harder to manipulate from an opposing point of view. The politics is generally explicit and can have a positive inspirational effect. The art styles or movements of Socialist Realism and ‘Political Art’ (e.g. murals, banners, posters etc.) and Social Realism to a certain extent could fit into the category of ‘Promotion’.

Projection
In the third and last category ‘Projection’ refers to art that takes disparate elements and then recombines them to form a new image. It is an art which says ‘This is what could happen or could be if ...’. Art styles or movements such as Surrealism, collage, utopian or visionary images would fit into this category. Such speculative art can have a positive effect of providing inspiration by suggesting ideas that are outside one’s usual ways of thinking, and can be implicitly or explicitly political.

For example, a picture showing the Rock of Cashel (ancient fortress in Co. Tipperary, Ireland) with a Japanese Shinkansen bullet train speeding by may be a jarring conjunction of images but suggests the possibility of a super fast transport system in Ireland. Therefore it has social and economic implications for the Irish State which in turn makes it implicitly political.

However, like in the first category Portrayal, opposing political viewpoints can claim this image for their vision of the future. The same scene would be explicitly political though, if, for example, ‘Workers of the world unite’ was written on the side of the Shinkansen.

Thus it can be seen from the above categories that the representation of particular actions or the inclusion of particular types of text ties an image down to an explicitly political perspective. The past, present and future, with some overlapping, are also covered in this way of seeing or defining political art.





World (Social) Realist Art (Index of Countries)
This blog page is part of an ongoing project by artist and part-time lecturer Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin (http://gaelart.net/) to explore Realist / Social Realist art from around the world. The term Realism is used in its broadest sense to include 19th century Realism and Naturalism as well as 20th century Impressionism (which after all was following in the path of Courbet and Millet). Social Realism covers art that seeks to examine the living and working conditions of ordinary people (examples include German Expressionism, American Ashcan School and the Mexican Muralists).

Click here for (Social) Realist Art Definitions, World (Social) Realism and Global Solidarity, Art and Politics, Social Realism in history and Country Index.

Suggestions for appropriate artists from around the world welcome to caoimhghin@yahoo.com.

War Triptych

War triptych by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin http://gaelart.net/

After World War II the world split into two large geopolitical blocs and spheres of influence with contrary views on government and the politically correct society:
1 - The bloc of democratic-industrial countries within the American influence sphere, the "First World".
2 - The Eastern bloc of the communist-socialist states, the "Second World".
3 - The remaining three-quarters of the world's population, states not aligned with either bloc were regarded as the "Third World."
http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_countries.htm

The First World War was to a large extent the war of the First World re-carving global markets with the intention of obtaining a greater share for themselves. Trench warfare was the dominant form with soldiers going over the top in waves of attacks or risking being shot by their own officers if refusing to do so.

Although we don't hear the term so much now, the Second World referred to the Soviet Union. In their desire to defeat the Soviet Union politically and economically the capitalist powers supported and funded the development of munitions factories in Germany in the hope that Germany would become a springboard for an attack on the Soviet Union. This the Nazis did do eventually with a massive array of tanks and soldiers in a war that cost the lives of 15 million soviet citizens.

It has been argued that the Third World war is actually upon us though the superpowers have chosen to fight by proxy rather than head on. In some cases direct intervention has been employed provoking local reaction in the form of car bombs, the most recent weapon in the asymmetric warfare between the weak and the strong.

Art and Politics: Garry Trudeau

http://www.democracycellproject.net/blog/archives/art_and_politics/index.html

Leo Tolstoy on 'Good, Truth and Beauty' in Art

Leo Tolstoy discusses the differences between Good, Truth and Beauty in Chapter VII of What is Art?

Tolstoy writes:

Aesthetic theories, and the very name of this science, emerged about one hundred and fifty years ago among the wealthy classes of the Christian European world, simultaneously in various nations — Italian, Dutch, French, English. Its founder, its shaper, the one who gave it scientific, theoretical form, was Baumgarten. [...]

If a theory justifies the false position which a certain part of society is in, then, however baseless and even obviously false the theory may be, it will get adopted and become the belief of that part of society. [...]

Such, too, is the astonishing theory of Baumgarten’s trinity — Good, Truth and Beauty — according to which it turns out that the best that can be done by the art of peoples who have lived eighteen hundred years of Christian life is to adopt as its ideal the same one that was held by a small, half-savage, slave-owning people two thousand years ago, who portrayed naked human bodies very well and built buildings pleasing to the eye. [...]

The good, the beautiful and the true are put on the same level, and all three concepts are recognized as fundamental and metaphysical. Yet the reality is nothing of the sort.

The good is the eternal, the highest aim of our life. No matter how we understand the good, our life is nothing else than a striving towards the good — that is, towards God.

The good is indeed a fundamental concept, which metaphysically constitutes the essence of our consciousness, a concept undefinable by reason.

The good is that which no one can define, but which defines everything else.

But the beautiful, if we are not to content ourselves with words, but speak of what we understand — the beautiful is nothing other than what is pleasing to us.

The concept of beauty not only does not coincide with the good, but is rather the opposite of it, because the good for the most part coincides with a triumph over our predilections, while beauty is the basis of all our predilections.

The more we give ourselves to beauty, the more removed we are from the good. [...]

The concepts of beauty and truth not only are not equal with the good, not only are not of one essence with the good, but do not even coincide with it.

Truth is the correspondence between the manifestation and the essence of the object, and is therefore one means of attaining to the good, but in itself truth is neither the good nor the beautiful, and does not even coincide with them.

Thus, for instance, Socrates and Pascal, and many others as well, regarded a knowledge of the truth of useless objects as discordant with the good. As for beauty, truth has nothing in common with it, and is for the most part opposed to it, because, while exposing deception, truth destroys illusion, the main condition of beauty.

And so the arbitrary uniting of these three incommensurable and mutually alien concepts served as the basis for the astonishing theory according to which the difference between good art, conveying good feelings, and bad art, conveying wicked feelings, was totally obliterated; and one of the lowest manifestations of art, art for mere pleasure — against which all teachers of mankind have warned people — came to be regarded as the highest art. And art became, not the important thing it was intended to be, but the empty amusement of idle people.

[My emphasis]

For more quotes by Tolstoy on the role of art in society see World (Social) Realism and Global Solidarity [also from What is Art?].


World (Social) Realist Art (Index of Countries)
This blog page is part of an ongoing project by artist and part-time lecturer Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin (http://gaelart.net/) to explore Realist / Social Realist art from around the world. The term Realism is used in its broadest sense to include 19th century Realism and Naturalism as well as 20th century Impressionism (which after all was following in the path of Courbet and Millet). Social Realism covers art that seeks to examine the living and working conditions of ordinary people (examples include German Expressionism, American Ashcan School and the Mexican Muralists).

Click here for (Social) Realist Art Definitions, World (Social) Realism and Global Solidarity, Art and Politics, Social Realism in history and Country Index.

Suggestions for appropriate artists from around the world welcome to caoimhghin@yahoo.com.

Some Notes on Authenticity and Social Realist Art

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.
Rebecca West


Realism — in the meaning of the portrayal of things as they are seen without embellishment or interpretation — started in Europe and expanded to other parts of the world. It became a powerful tool to halt the flow of time by preserving images on canvas, and it came to dominate the world of art — until the emergence of photography. As photography took over most of the meaning of the realistic mode, abstract art flourished and prevailed. Artists applying the realistic mode were considered outdated, lagging behind, and became sort of outcasts.
Carla Bianpoen - The Jakarta Post
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/08/27/chusin-setiadikara-inventing-another-realism.html


Those who give their lives, their knowledge and their time to social struggle have the right to expect great help from the artist. And I cannot imagine a more inspiring role than that which the artist is asked to play for the defence and advancement of civilization.
Paraskeva Clark (1898-1986) Canadian painter
(Anne Newlands Canadian Art: From Its Beginnings To 2000. Firefly Books Ltd.(2000) pp. 74)




Jean-François Millet The Man with a Hoe 1863
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Millet_%28II%29

Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_realism


Can artists use visual art to explore the process of globalization in the same way that writers write about global events? The writer has to research generally accepted facts from many different sources. So too the artist should be able to research imagery to be used as the basis for his/her art. Just as the writer often has to rely on other people’s writings, the artist often depends on other people’s images, unless, of course, the writer or artist has the time and the finance to visit the places themselves.

However, the issue of authenticity can crop up, i.e., experiencing a situation oneself seems to be more important for the visual artist than the writer. Why is this? Writers and composers often make works of art based on situations outside their own direct experience. We can mention, for example, Persian Letters (Lettres persanes, written 1721), the satirical work by Montesquieu or the more modern example of Ge Gan-Ru’s String Quartet No 5 ("Fall of Bagdad"). Most artists work from photographs at some stage yet the romantic image of the artist on the street or in the fields en plein air seems to persist.

While there is no doubt that are many benefits to painting outdoors, the difficulties of painting en plein air are well described by the artist Berthe Morisot when she wrote to her sister in 1875:

I have worked a little, but what rain we have had for a week! Today we have been to Ryde. I set out with my sack and portfolio, determined to make a water-colour on the spot, but when we got there I found the wind was frightful, my hat blew off, my hair got in my eyes. Eugene was in a bad humour as he always is when my hair is in disorder - and three hours after leaving we were back at Globe Cottage.


Winslow Homer Artists Sketching in the White Mountains 1868
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_plein_air)

In a subsequent letter she writes:

I made an attempt in a field, but the moment I had set up my easel more than fifty boys and girls were swarming about me, shouting and gesticulating. All this ended in a pitched battle, and the owner of the field came to tell me rudely that I should have asked for permission to work there [...] On a boat one has another kind of difficulty. Everything sways, there is an infernal lapping of water; one has the sun and the wind to cope with, the boats change position every minute etc.

(Christine Lindey Keywords of Nineteenth-Century Art)

Of course, experiencing and recording a situation oneself is possible today for many people through modern travel and photography. Yet is it morally better to take one´s own photographs rather than using other people´s? Kennedy Odede, a resident of Kibera, one of the largest slums in Africa, writes:

Slum tourism has its advocates, who say it promotes social awareness. And it’s good money, which helps the local economy. But it’s not worth it. Slum tourism turns poverty into entertainment, something that can be momentarily experienced and then escaped from. People think they’ve really “seen” something — and then go back to their lives and leave me, my family and my community right where we were before. I was 16 when I first saw a slum tour. I was outside my 100-square-foot house washing dishes, looking at the utensils with longing because I hadn’t eaten in two days. Suddenly a white woman was taking my picture. I felt like a tiger in a cage. Before I could say anything, she had moved on.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/opinion/10odede.html)

Wesley Allsbrook
(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/opinion/10odede.html)

Odede is sceptical of the long term benefits of such experience on the tourists:

To be fair, many foreigners come to the slums wanting to understand poverty, and they leave with what they believe is a better grasp of our desperately poor conditions. The expectation, among the visitors and the tour organizers, is that the experience may lead the tourists to action once they get home. But it’s just as likely that a tour will come to nothing. After all, looking at conditions like those in Kibera is overwhelming, and I imagine many visitors think that merely bearing witness to such poverty is enough. Nor do the visitors really interact with us. Aside from the occasional comment, there is no dialogue established, no conversation begun. Slum tourism is a one-way street: They get photos; we lose a piece of our dignity.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/opinion/10odede.html)

At right, Norman Rockwell’s After the Prom (1957), and the vignette he cast, composed, and oversaw the photographing of beforehand—a planning stage crucial to Rockwell’s creative process (http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/11/norman-rockwell-200911).

Yet the photograph as a source has much in common with sources for the writer in the sense that it is based on the generally accepted facts of a situation. Of course, the source may catch out the unwary artist or writer but that does not undermine the verity of the generally known information about any given situation. So can the artist create art of a global nature and what is the role of such art? It seems to me that the art most fitted to exploring such issues is Social Realist art for reasons that will be discussed below, and its role is to help develop global solidarity.


James Christian Steward When Time began to Rant and Rage


Sean Keating Men of the South
http://www.crawfordartgallery.ie/Paintings/SKeating.html

The following essay will look at the issue of authenticity in Social Realist art by looking at photography as a medium which contains ‘facts’ to the same extent, more or less, as other media. This is more complex than it first appears and will be discussed in terms of authenticity of sources, content, and form. This will be followed up by an examination of Modernist and Postmodernist perspectives on authenticity and society, a brief history of Social Realism, a look at Social Realism and aesthetics from Tolstoy's perspective on the meaning and role of art in society, and finally how all this can be related to global solidarity.



Definitions – aspects of authenticity

Authenticity of source

Conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance, or belief, for example, an authentic account by an eyewitness.

The facts of a situation can be in the form of a photograph, report, film or eyewitness account.

Do the sources of the artwork conform to the facts of a situation? An actor’s voiceover of actual dialogue is authentic in the sense that its source is known but due to censorship the source is not allowed to be used. Actors can act out an account of a torture scene.

For an artwork, facts can be taken from a photograph or film, or re-enacted by models based on an eyewitness account or report.

Thus the source of the facts is important in so far as it can be believed to be true or consistent with facts already generally agreed and accepted to be true.


Leon Golub Interrogation II 1981
http://artblogbybob.blogspot.com/2008/01/paint-it-black.html

Authenticity of content

Conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features, for example, an authentic reproduction of a colonial farmhouse.

As above, the artwork can conform to the original by painting the essential features of the content of a photograph, thus retaining the authenticity of the content.


American soldiers stand behind a pyramid of naked Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, Iraq in this undated photo.(AP Photo/Courtesy of The New Yorker) May 5, 2004 http://www.smh.com.au/news/After-Saddam/Abu-Ghraib-torturer-gets-10-years/2005/01/16/1105810774811.html


Fernando Botero Abu Ghraib
http://www.hwaethwugu.com/blog/archives/2006/11/18/fernando_boteros_abu_ghraib


Susan Crile Arranged: Naked Mound of Flesh 2005
http://www.myartspace.com/blog/archive/2008_12_01_blogmyartspace_archive.html

Authenticity of form

Worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact, for example, paints an authentic picture of society.

The artwork can conform to the facts of a situation and if the form used does not distort, undermine or negate the content of the facts contained therein, as far as the generally accepted facts allow, the artist can produce an authentic picture of a given situation.


George B. Luks Allen Street c.1905
http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/category/animals-with-jobs/

While the above examination of authenticity applies to Social Realist art, Modernist and Postmodernist art had/have a different attitude to authenticity.


Norman Rockwell Freedom of Speech 1943
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/R/rockwell/rockwell_speech.jpg.html

Modernist and Postmodernist perspectives on Authenticity

The term Modernism is given "retrospectively to the wide range of experimental and avant-garde trends in the arts that emerged from the middle of the 19th century, as artists rebelled against traditional Historicism, and later through 20th century as the necessity of an individual rejecting previous tradition, and by creating individual, original techniques." (http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/c19th/modernism.htm)

Modernism tended towards a break from art history in terms of a more subjective approach to authenticity, that is faithful to the artist’s self and not external reality. As Harold Rosenberg writes:

"The aim of every authentic artist is not to conform to the history of art, but to release himself from it in order to replace it with his own history." (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harold_Rosenberg)

Postmodernist art on the other hand, "describes tendencies perceived as relativist, counter-enlightenment or antimodern, particularly in relation to critiques of rationalism, universalism or science." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism) Thus, art theorists who took up the ideas of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida deconstructed formal values such as originality, authenticity and uniqueness in art.

Modernism, Postmodernism and the Social Realist project

Viewed from the perspective of Social Realist art, Modernism and Postmodernism create problems for the Social Realist project of creating "unvarnished pictures of life's struggles" as Modernism deconstructs form and Postmodernism deconstructs content.


John Sloan 14th Street at 6th Avenue c.1935
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/n/newdeal.html

Modernism rejected traditional forms which over time became less and less ´real´ and more abstract and conceptualised, (though not all Modernist art rejected Enlightenment thinking):

"Among modernists there were disputes about the importance of the public, the relationship of art to audience, and the role of art in society. Modernism comprised a series of sometimes contradictory responses to the situation as it was understood, and the attempt to wrestle universal principles from it. In the end science and scientific rationality, often taking models from the 18th-century Enlightenment, came to be seen as the source of logic and stability, while the basic primitive sexual and unconscious drives, along with the seemingly counter-intuitive workings of the new machine age, were taken as the basic emotional substance. […]The Russian Revolution catalyzed the fusion of political radicalism and utopianism, with more expressly political stances. Bertolt Brecht, W. H. Auden, André Breton, Louis Aragon and the philosophers Antonio Gramsci and Walter Benjamin are perhaps the most famous exemplars of this modernist Marxism." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism)


Ben Shahn The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti 1931-32
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/So.html

While traditional art forms are deconstructed in Modernism, content is deconstructed in Postmodernism:

"Postmodernism describes movements which both arise from, and react against or reject, trends in modernism. Specific trends of modernism that are generally cited are formal purity, medium specificity, art for art's sake, authenticity, universality, originality and revolutionary or reactionary tendency, i.e. the avant-garde. […] One compact definition is that postmodernism rejects modernism's grand narratives of artistic direction, eradicating the boundaries between high and low forms of art, and disrupting genre's conventions with collision, collage, and fragmentation. Postmodern art holds that all stances are unstable and insincere, and therefore irony, parody, and humor are the only positions that cannot be overturned by critique or revision." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art)

History of Social Realism

The term dates on a broader scale to the Realist movement in French art during the mid-1800s. Social Realism in the 20th century refers back to the works of the French artist Gustave Courbet and in particular to the implications of his 19th-century paintings A Burial at Ornans and The Stone Breakers, which scandalized French Salon–goers of 1850, and is seen as an international phenomenon also traced back to European Realism and the works of Honoré Daumier and Jean-François Millet. The Social Realist style fell-out of fashion in the 1960s but is still influential in thinking and the art of today.


Gustave Courbet A Burial at Ornans 1849-1850
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Courbet

Many artists who subscribed to Social Realism were painters with socialist (but not necessarily Marxist) political views. The movement therefore has some commonalities with the Socialist Realism used in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, but the two are not identical - Social Realism is not an official art, and allows space for subjectivity. In certain contexts, Socialist Realism has been described as a specific branch of Social Realism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_realism


Gustave Courbet The Stone Breakers 1849
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Courbet

Social Realism developed as a reaction against idealism and the exaggerated ego encouraged by Romanticism. Consequences of the Industrial Revolution became apparent; urban centers grew, slums proliferated on a new scale contrasting with the display of wealth of the upper classes. With a new sense of social consciousness, the Social Realists pledged to “fight the beautiful art”, any style which appealed to the eye or emotions. They focused on the ugly realities of contemporary life and sympathized with working-class people, particularly the poor. They recorded what they saw (“as it existed”) in a dispassionate manner. The public was outraged by Social Realism, in part, because they didn't know how to look at it or what to do with it.
George Shi, University of Fine Arts, Valencia


Honoré Daumier Le Wagon de troisième classe (The third-class wagon) 1864
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Paintings_by_Honor%C3%A9_Daumier

Social Realism in different forms

Since the days of Courbet´s Social Realist paintings the desire to reproduce reality has taken many different forms. New media replace older media in their ability to re-create ‘reality’. Still photography replaces painting, film photography replaces still photography and digitization replaces analogue film photography, 3D replaces 2D. Does that make one form better than another? No, as there are advantages and disadvantages to the different forms.

As Walter Benjamin writes about one of the advantages of painting in 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction':

The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed. It cannot be arrested. Duhamel, who detests the film and knows nothing of its significance, though something of its structure, notes this circumstance as follows: “I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images.” The spectator’s process of association in view of these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm


Edward Hopper New York Movie 1939
http://www.edwardhopper.info/New-York-Movie.html

Different forms can lead us to think in different ways. A painting of a slum can lead us think about the poverty contained therein but a documentary, with its ability to include so much more information about the situation, can lead to confusions about whether or not they are worse off after all as our knowledge of, for example, their better sense of community could lead us to think that maybe slum life is not so bad after all. So at each level of reality the rhetoric of the image increases too, both in terms of image (quality) and expense (ideology). The better the quality of the image is the more we are led to believe it is true while the more money spent on the image the more it is limited to the ideology of those financially supporting the project.


George Bellows Cliff Dwellers 1913
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bellows

Therefore the reproduction of reality in art is no more and no less legitimate than in other forms. Newer forms do not replace older forms as being superior. Each form continues with its interpretation of reality through time yet not necessarily in isolation as the different forms can influence each other in terms of ways of seeing.


George Bellows Both Members of this Club 1909
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bellows

Social Realism and aesthetics

One could argue that Leo Tolstoy wrote a Social Realist manifesto when he wrote 'What is Art?' (http://cyberspacei.com/jesusi/authors/tolstoy/art/index.htm)', despite being quite a fundamentalist Christian himself. He believed that the concept of 'Beauty' was one developed by the upper classes for its own entertainment:

No longer able to believe in the Church religion, which had betrayed its own lie, and unable to adopt the true Christian teaching, which denied their entire life, these wealthy and powerful people, being left without any religious understanding of life, returned willy-nilly to that pagan world which locates the meaning of life in personal pleasure. [...] Having recognised pleasure - that is, beauty - as the standard of what is good, people of the upper classes of European society returned in their understanding of art to the crude understanding of the primitive Greeks, already condemned by Plato.
(Chapter VI)

Tolstoy contrasts the life of the labouring man with the art of the wealthy classes:

And this opinion, that the life of the labouring people is poor in content, while our life, the life of idle people, is full of interesting things, is shared by a great many people of our circle. The life of the labouring man, with its infinitely diverse forms of labour and the dangers connected with it on the sea or under the ground, with his travels, dealings with proprietors, superiors, comrades, with people of other confessions and nationalities, his struggle with nature, wild animals, his relations with domestic animals, his labours in the forest, the steppe, the fields, the orchard, the kitchen garden, his relations with his wife and children, not only as close and dear people but as co-workers, helpers, replacements in his work, his relation to all economic questions, not as subjects of discussion or vanity, but as questions vital for himself and his family, with his pride in self-sufficiency and service to others, with his pleasure in time off, and all these interests pervaded by a religious attitude toward these phenomena – to us, who have no such interests and no religious understanding, this life seems monotonous compared with the small pleasures and insignificant cares of our life, not of labour and creativity, but of the use and destruction of what others have made for us.


Ilia Efimovich Repin Volga Boatmen 1870-1873
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ilia_Efimovich_Repin

We think that the feelings experienced by people of our own time and circle are very significant and diverse, but in reality almost all the feelings of people of our circle come down to three very insignificant and uncomplicated feelings: the feelings of pride, sexual lust, and the tedium of living. And these three feelings, with their ramifications, make up almost exclusively the contents of the art of the wealthy classes.
(Chapter IX)


Ilya Efimovich Repin Portrait of Leo Tolstoy 1887
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ilia_Efimovich_Repin

Tolstoy believed that:

Art begins when a man, with the purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.

Thus the simplest case: a boy, who once experienced fear on encountering a wolf, tells about this encounter and, to call up in others the feeling he experienced, describes himself, his state of mind before the encounter, the surroundings, the forest, his carelessness, and then the look of the wolf, its movements, the distance between the wolf and himself, and so on.

All this - if as he tells the story the boy relives the feeling he experienced, infects his listeners, and makes them relive all that the narrator lived through - is art.

Even if the boy had not seen a wolf, but had often been afraid of seeing one, and, wishing to call up in others the feeling he experienced, invented the encounter with the wolf, telling it in such a way that through his narrative he called up in his listeners the same feeling he experienced in imagining the wolf - this, too, is art.
(Chapter V)

Thus, Tolstoy believed that relating one's experience or relating creatively something outside one's own experience forms the basis of a sense of community or solidarity. He sums up his view in the following way:

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.
(Chapter V)


Chéri Samba SIDA (AIDS)
http://akorra.com/2010/08/17/top-10-famous-african-paintings/

Solidarity

An important aspect and often the driving force of Social Realism is solidarity with a group or class that struggles against injustice and hardship. As Aurora Levins Morales
writes:

Solidarity is not a matter of altruism. Solidarity comes from the inability to tolerate the affront to our own integrity of passive or active collaboration in the oppression of others, and from the deep recognition of our most expansive self-interest. From the recognition that, like it or not, our liberation is bound up with that of every other being on the planet, and that politically, spiritually, in our heart of hearts we know anything else is unaffordable.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_solidarity)


Pablo Picasso Massacre in Korea 1951
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_in_Korea

However, solidarity has tended to come from voluntary groups interested in helping others such as Médecins Sans Frontières, The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Oxfam International, Amnesty International etc. More recently efforts have been made to put the concept of international solidarity on a more solid foundation. The United Nations Human Rights Council has assigned an independent expert to work on a report in which he is developing the concept of a human right to international solidarity.

On October 1, 2009, a majority of the members of the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution taking note of the report and requesting the independent expert to continue his work, with emphasis on developing guidelines, standards, norms and principles for promoting international solidarity and analyzing developments in international economic, social, and “climate” fields.
http://www.globalgovernancewatch.org/spotlight_on_sovereignty/un-human-rights-council-adopts-a-socialist-view-of-international-solidarity

However this development is not the only new development as new radical-democratic global solidarity movements begin to come together and seek alternatives to capitalist globalisation.


Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo La fiumana (The Living Torrent) 1895-6
http://www.kunst-fuer-alle.de/english/art/artist/image/giuseppe-pellizza-da-volpedo/15203/9/106147/fiumana--1895-96/index.htm

In the realm of art, Social Realism is an art form which can also play an important role in highlighting injustice and hardship. In the words of Armstrong Williams:

In short, we cannot grow, we cannot achieve authentic discovery, and our eyes cannot be cleansed to the truly beautiful possibilities of life, if we simply live a neutral existence.



El Roto
http://www.elpais.com/vineta/?d_date=20100620&autor=El%20Roto&anchor=elpporopivin&xref=20100620elpepivin_3&type=Tes&k=Roto




Further Reading:

The Social and the Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere
Edited by Alejandro Anreus, Diana L. Linden, and Jonathan Weinberg
http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-02691-X.html


The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (Paperback)
by Frances Stonor Saunders (Author)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cultural-Cold-War-World-Letters/dp/1565846648/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275049804&sr=1-4


Facing Facts: Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850-1920 (Paperback)
by David E. Shi (Author)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Facing-Facts-Realism-American-1850-1920/dp/0195106539/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275049970&sr=1-8


The Murals of Revolutionary Nicaragua 1979-1992 (Paperback)
by D Kunzle (Author)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Murals-Revolutionary-Nicaragua-1979-1992/dp/0520081927/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275009001&sr=8-2


Dimensions of the Americas: Art and Social Change in Latin America and the United States by Shifra Goldman (Ed.)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dimensions-Americas-Social-Change-America/dp/0226301249/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277735106&sr=1-4




World (Social) Realist Art (Index of Countries)
This blog page is part of an ongoing project by artist and part-time lecturer Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin (http://gaelart.net/) to explore Realist / Social Realist art from around the world. The term Realism is used in its broadest sense to include 19th century Realism and Naturalism as well as 20th century Impressionism (which after all was following in the path of Courbet and Millet). Social Realism covers art that seeks to examine the living and working conditions of ordinary people (examples include German Expressionism, American Ashcan School and the Mexican Muralists).

Click here for (Social) Realist Art Definitions, World (Social) Realism and Global Solidarity, Art and Politics, Social Realism in history and Country Index.

Suggestions for appropriate artists from around the world welcome to caoimhghin@yahoo.com.

Exploring Globalisation

A list of books, authors and videos on globalisation, the global economy and the New World Order.

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Paul Grignon

Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created

Money As Debt (5 parts)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sanOXoWl0kc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTv1fo6sKmo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qicabStQkc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kpSbkaD4tM

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American Casino

American Casino /Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VdqiUzKW-c

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Noam Chomsky

Books
Hegemony or Survival : America's Quest for Global Dominance

Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media


Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh7ps1KWl_M

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Michael Rowbotham

Book
The Grip of Death: A Study of Modern Money, Debt Slavery and Destructive Economics


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Ellen Hodgson Brown

Book
The Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System And How We Can Break Free

Video
Web of Debt - Ellen Brown - (5 parts)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU0XiklHPMc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_ZbEVfKJ1w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2EY6enOz74
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPmPLmtreAU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHm_rtTwNYA


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Free Documentaries

http://freedocumentaries.org/index.php
At Freedocumentaries.org, you can stream interesting and provocative documentary films for free

AMERICA: FREEDOM TO FASCISM
Join Aaron Russo as he explores the connection between income tax collection and the erosion of civil liberties in America.
http://freedocumentaries.org/theatre.php?filmid=199&id=1111&wh=1000x720

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Michel Chossudovsky

Book
The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order

Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYcYaVs1-aM

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Research / News


http://globalresearch.ca/
The Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG) is an independent research organization and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists.


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Michael Hudson

Book
Super Imperialism - New Edition: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance

Video
michael hudson America: Host or Parasite?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ertii-36Rzs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pwAFohWBL4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAVy9F95kNg


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Gerald Celente

Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46MEqEgdLTg

obamageddon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_18t2_XvZRA

4 parts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDkxwVBbUV4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_QmRphWw0Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuPUojH965s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpk7SDJ47MI


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjQ-854uBUc


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Ward Churchill

Books
On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Consequences of American Conquest and Carnage

A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present

Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5nba4_x-J8


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Howard Zinn

Book
A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present

Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arn3lF5XSUg


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Michael Parenti

Book
Democracy for the Few

Video (9 parts)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a9VnxZEHGg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_97_EHQBVgg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdiPnvYLvWM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-D24ZEae5o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir3WKY4pJE4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEEdcDWFr_0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_kl5qUA0LM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjr2A3zea7A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo-5PoipGnA

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United States public debt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

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William Engdahl

Books

A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order

Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order

Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Video
http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/index.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLuJNYW6AtU

Economic crisis ten years of hell?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsmzfDKPzMs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuNZCt4HtiI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVhVr3jU2NM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Toz0n9l-WDg

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Anthony Sutton

Books
WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/index.html

WALL STREET AND THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/bolshevik_revolution/index.html

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Democracy Now
http://www.democracynow.org/
A daily TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, airing on nearly 800 stations, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the U.S.

Subprime Loan Officer

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/28/former_wells_fargo_subprime_loan_officer

Former Wells Fargo Subprime Loan Officer: Bank Targeted Black Churches as Part of Predatory Subprime Lending Scheme
Jacobson-web

Up until two years ago, Elizabeth Jacobson was the top producing loan officer in the subprime division at Wells Fargo. Today she is speaking out against the practices of her former company. Earlier this summer, she filed a sworn affidavit with a federal court in support of the city of Baltimore’s lawsuit against Wells Fargo for pushing high-interest, subprime loans onto African Americans in Baltimore and the Maryland suburbs, leading hundreds into foreclosure.

Dream Scene - Gangs of New York

While watching Gangs of New York a few nights ago I noticed an extraordinary mise-en-scène shot that really struck me for its compact way of creating a mini narrative within the framework of the main narrative. In one long shot the story of many Irish men was told, from their arrival in America to their tragic end in the land that they had hoped would fulfil all their hopes and dreams.

Gangs of New York is a 2002 American historical crime film set in the mid-19th century in the Five Points district of New York City. It was directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan. The film is loosely inspired by Herbert Asbury's 1928 nonfiction book The Gangs of New York. It was distributed by Miramax Films and was nominated for numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Picture. (wikipedia.org)

The film begins in 1846 and quickly jumps to the early 1860s. The two principal issues of the era in New York were Irish immigration to the city and the Federal government's execution of the Civil War. The story follows Bill "The Butcher" Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis) in his roles as crime boss and political kingmaker under the helm of Boss Tweed (Jim Broadbent). The film culminates in a confrontation between Cutting and his mob with the protagonist Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his immigrant allies, which coincides with the New York Draft Riots of 1863. (wikipedia.org)

An extraordinary mise-en-scène shot that almost serves as a mini film within the film tells the story of the fate of many new arrivals into New York in a time of civil war in America.

Mise-en-scène is an expression used in the theatre and film worlds to describe the design aspects of a production. Stemming from the theater, the French term mise en scène literally means "putting on stage." When applied to the cinema, mise-en-scène refers to everything that appears before the camera and its arrangement – sets, props, actors, costumes, and lighting. Recently, the term has come to represent a style of conveying the information of a scene primarily through a single shot – often accompanied by camera movement. It is to be contrasted with montage-style filmmaking – multiple angles pieced together through editing. Overall, mise-en-scène is used when the director wishes to give an impression of the characters or situation without vocally articulating it through the framework of spoken dialogue, and typically does not represent a realistic setting. (wikipedia.org)



The scene starts with Bill and Amsterdam turning their backs as Bill responds, “Not our future” to the Boss Tweed who has just claimed that they were turning their backs on the future i.e. the political and economic potential of the new immigrants. The camera then pans to the left as the new Irish immigrants who have just got off one ship from Ireland are queuing up at the recruiters harbour table where they are sworn in to the army.

Army Recruiter: That document makes you a citizen, and this one makes you a private in the Union army. Now go fight for your country.

A song is overlaid on the scene sung by a woman with the following lyrics:

Irish Singer: [singing] Well, meself and a hundred more, to America sailed o'er, with our fortunes to be made, so we were thinkin' / When we got to Yankee land, they shoved a gun into our hands / Saying "Paddy, you must go and fight for Lincoln."/ There is nothing here but war, where the murderin' cannons roar, and I wish I was back home in dear old Dublin.

The camera pans following the new recruits as they move on up to one who is changing his Irish cap for a soldiers cap. Others are getting into the uniform in assembly line fashion as another recruiter puts a gun into their hands. They then get into another line fully kitted out moving slowly towards another gangway for the ship that will take them to the war. Two soldiers can be heard conversing:

Irish Immigrant: Where we goin'?
Another Immigrant: I heard Tennessee.
Irish Immigrant: Where's that?

The camera then slowly pans along the new recruits as family members, possibly his wife and daughter, run up to one new soldier. A girl with red hair talks to a another worried- looking soldier. As they start up the gangway another soldier asks:

Irish Soldier: Do they feed us now do you think?

[Earlier in the film new recruits were promised three square meals a day if they joined up]. As they move slowly up the gangway the camera cranes up higher and we can see soldiers sitting around on the ship waiting. Just then a coffin comes into view [with the number 61 stuck to it] as it is lifted with ropes by a crane in the direction of the quays. The coffin flies over the heads of the line of recruits and more coffins come into view for the first time. Soon we see two rows of 10 coffins each neatly laid out and being inspected by soldiers. Two workers carry one of the coffins past the line of new recruits [who don’t seem to notice it] and up the quay presumably to a graveyard. At this point there is a cut to a presentation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.



This whole mise-en-scène shot lasts one minute and eight seconds.

Historical and political ironies

Of the many ironies in this scene two stand out. In a slightly earlier scene the politician says:

Boss Tweed: That's the building of our country right there, Mr. Cutting. Americans aborning.

They may be new American citizens but the scene on the docks starts with the idea of birth and ends with death symbolised by the rows of coffins revealing the way many immigrants were seen as cannon fodder for a war they knew nothing about. Their basic desires for acceptance and food led them to a fate they were scarcely aware of.

Continuing the above dialogue, Bill, a Protestant, states his view of the Irish bluntly:

Bill: I don't see no Americans. I see trespassers, Irish harps. Do a job for a nickel what a nigger does for a dime and a white man used to get a quarter for. What have they done? Name one thing they've contributed.
Boss Tweed: Votes.
Bill: Votes, you say? They vote how the archbishop tells them, and who tells the archbishop? Their king in the pointy hat what sits on his throne in Rome.

The second irony here is that Bill sees them in religious terms and feels no solidarity or empathy for their plight as victims of British colonial policy back in Ireland despite the fact that Bill’s own father also suffered at the hands of the British:

Bill: My father gave his life, making this country what it is. Murdered by the British with all of his men on the twenty fifth of July, Anno Domini, 1814. Do you think I'm going to help you befoul his legacy, by giving this country over to them, what's had no hand in the fighting for it? Why, because they come off a boat crawling with lice and begging you for soup.

Another irony here is that the Irish immigrants were queuing up to fight and die for their new home despite not knowing very much about the issues involved and had just come off a boat ‘crawling with lice’ and begging for soup. Their lack of awareness is emphasised by the fact that they don’t seem to notice or question the array of coffins on the quay that they are walking past. They seem blissfully unaware that they have jumped from the frying pan into the fire in their relief and excitement of having finally arrived in America.

Of course, Bill was right when he said that the immigrants were not part of his future as the reign of gangs in New York was eventually overtaken by a unified state and built up on the backs of the many immigrants who would pour in for many years to come.