A previous post, More on Painting, touched on the issue of identity, in terms of “self-differing”, or the self as a collection of “innumerable configurations of personality and emotion” as opposed to an “all-at-oneness”. This is a more esoteric aspect of identity than what has become known as “identity politics” in which various groups who define themselves by gender, sexual orientation, or level of ability, rightly demand greater recognition, respect and a share in social benefits.

While these demands warrant attention & positive societal action, the issue of identity and its implications for art has become a confusing areas for artists and critics in the post-modern era. The issue has ballooned into something out of all proportion to its importance as a focus for the arts. While in its original form, the exploration of identity presented some social challenges and critical philosophical questions, it has become an ideology with all the attendant dangers of wildly popular but poorly understood ideas.

The first victim in the art world, especially with regard to painting, has been an understanding of self. As I understand it, the idea of self-differing, or the self as a collection of personal and emotional reactions, is a re-stating of the relativist philosophy that Socrates opposed.

The Sophists believed that “you can never step into the same river twice” because every moment is different and there are no constants. They extrapolated from this that, because there are no constants, there can be no right or wrong, so every person should act in their own interests. Today’s neo-liberals are the modern version of this thinking.

Socrates countered this with a belief in ethical virtue as something that should be aspired to and is immutable, permanent and unchanging. As such he was the father of absolutism that continues in today’s religious traditions and other groups with unswerving beliefs in moral absolutes.

A definition of the self as a collection of “innumerable configurations of personality and emotion” is a pillar of post-modernism and revives the sophistry that Socrates opposed. A widely accepted modern version of sophistry has facilitated imposition of the Neo-Liberal agenda which has been accompanied by the rise of “identity politics”. While having no wish to detract from the justified demands for equality made by disempowered and disadvantaged groups, the cost of identity politics has been a fragmentation of what might otherwise have been a unified opposition to unfettered capitalism. The popularity of a relativist perspective and fragmentation through identification with smaller minority groups may be responsible for low voting numbers and a general lack of participation in organized political groups, especially among younger voters (or non-voters).

The relation between identity politics and relativism is described by writer Ian McEwan in his novel, Nutshell. He describes the young as “…on the march, angry at times , but mostly needful of authority’s blessing, its validation of their chosen identities. …I may need advance warning if upsetting books or ideas threaten my very being by coming too close…I’ll feel, therefore I’ll be. Let poverty go begging and climate change braise in hell. Social justice can drown in ink. I’ll be an activist of the emotions….My identity will be my precious, my only true possession, my access to the only truth.” This captures the naïveté of identity politics and suggests why it has been nurtured and embraced by neo-liberals.

In the visual art world, more so than most, the primacy of identity has had a schizophrenic effect. On one side, artists who create large, grand or durable artworks are suspected of egotism. This potent charge has encouraged a generation of artists who ensure that their works are small and self-effacing, or if not small, constructed of recycled waste products. In this view large paintings are a throwback to the modernist era when gigantic artistic egos created giant canvases.

The flip side of the current obsession with identity in the visual arts is  the unprecedented importance placed on the personality of the artist rather than the artworks themselves. Artists are brands, marketed on the strength of name recognition, rather than artistic excellence.

Nutshell: McEwan, Ian, Vintage Publishing, London, 2017

Who can judge excellence in a world without right or wrong, good or bad? The last absolutist critic to have any influence, Clement Greenberg, based his judgments of excellence on his own good taste, rather than any more fulsome philosophical rationale. Having been discredited in accordance with the current relativist world view, along with the modernist artists he championed, the market has become the final arbiter.

That we have become a culture of change, rather than a changing culture also lends itself to the neo-liberal agenda. Where the only constant is change, it has become the only absolute and almost a religion. The most damning accusation that can be levelled against those who oppose any change is that they are “afraid of change”. Thus changes, no matter how harmful or ill-advised, are protected from critiques and in every election, all parties claim, “it’s time for a change!” as though it were an ethical virtue. But the change brought about by victorious Western political parties has been an intensification of Business-As-Usual policies that enrich some and impoverish an increasing number of people and the natural world. The climate change crisis can be directly linked to the policies of parties calling for change, such as the two Canadian examples, below.

In conclusion, the effect of identity politics has been to make most people in Western cultures more aware of, and tolerant of, differences. However, the melding of Identity and Neo-Liberalism has been used by elites to deflect attention from pressing issues of environmental degradation and economic disparities. In the arts, the focus on identity has encouraged a self-reflexive culture, where art is all about itself rather than a mastery of the medium and its aesthetic potential, which has contributed toward commercialization and stunting of Western culture. While contemporary art products can be whimsical, clever and highly original, they lack commitment. Much of what we see is unconnected to the artist’s soul, expressing ideas mainly from the busy, market-oriented mind.

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The question is whether painting is relevant and can have an impact on the wider society, or whether it is an art form that is only about the painters’ connection to the painting and the viewer’s personal connection to the painting. Is it a passive art form or can it make the leap from canvas to galvanizing political action?

Paintings in History

In many periods of history, painting has played a powerful role as political propaganda. Earlier civilizations such as the Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks and Romans used murals, bas-reliefs and sculptures to celebrate political triumphs and the power of the elites. This tradition continued through the 20th century with the commissioning of paintings and sculptures commemorating battles won and their victorious winners. As the last centuries’ winners have been outed as ruthless and immoral by any standards, there has been demands for removal of these sculptures and paintings from the public realm. So in that sense, paintings depicting the triumphs of ruthless men have had a strong political impact even in the present day.

There have been powerful paintings that generated controversy and influenced public attitudes and even political outcomes that were not sanctioned by ruling elites. For example, the painting below, Raft of the Medusa, had scandalous political implications in France; the incompetent captain, who had gained the position because of connections to the Bourbon Restoration government, fought to save himself and senior officers while leaving the lower ranks to die, so Géricault’s picture of the raft and its inhabitants was greeted with hostility by the government. As Jake Hirsch-Allen says in his analysis, “the power of The Raft as a political tool of propaganda was immediately apparent and has been its most enduring historical facet. As the story of the Medusa became a cause célebré, embroiled in the complexities of
Bourbon-restoration politics and tensions between the Liberal and Royalist factions…and, as
events progressed, with the highly emotive subject of the slave trade, the Raft of the Medusa
itself became a symbol these debates.”

Though Géricault’s painting was still part of in the heroic “history painting” style, this muscular work was transformative in re-defining the scope of painting’s subjects and impacts.

The Impressionists

While Impressonists such as Claude Monet and Edouard Manet are not usually associated with shaping political attitudes, their work had influence. As art historian Nancy Locke said in transcripts of her talk to students at Penn State University, “By painting the homeless, for example, Manet depicted the social implications of poverty. Similarly, by painting scenes which blurred class lines (like many subjects of the Impressionist canvas), artists influenced shifts in society.”

In his paper on Intersections of Art and Politics, John Kim Munholland, argues that Monet also communicated a strong political message, “The Rue Montorgueil, Celebration of June 30,1878 and its twin The Rue Saint-Denis, Celebration of June 30, 1878, in which the words “Vive la République” appear on a flag…blurred class differences with their patriotic, republican messages. Set in the streets of a popular quarter of Paris, they reminded viewers that the Commune uprising also had been an expression of outraged and frustrated nationalism among the people of Paris, who had held out against the Prussians during the siege, but had been forced to capitulate by the Versailles government.”

Early-Modernism

The “history painters” and Impressionists sought to influence the direction of their societies through content, or depiction of their subjects. The modernists scorned content and expressed themselves only through form. For instance, Piet Mondrian, working during the appalling upheavals in Europe during the 1930’s & 40’s, believed that his work was a “plastic vision” that would help to set up ” …a new type of society composed of balanced relationships”.

According to the online Encyclopedia Britannica, Mondrian’s artistic direction was “Rooted in a strict puritan tradition of Dutch Calvinism and inspired by his theosophical beliefs, he continually strove for purity during his long career, a purity best explained by the double meaning of the Dutch word schoon, which means both “clean” and “beautiful.” Mondrian chose the strict and rigid language of straight line and pure colour to produce first of all an extreme purity, and on another level, a Utopia of superb clarity and force. When, in 1920, Mondrian dedicated Le Néo-plasticisme to “future men,” his dedication implied that art can be a guide to humanity, that it can move beyond depicting the casual, arbitrary facts of everyday appearance and substitute in its place a new, harmonious view of life. This kind of magical thinking is like a poignant glimmer of a previous era’s optimism about art and the human imagination. Mondrian’s philosophy could be thought of as self-indulgent navel-gazing, except for the fact that it produced these astounding works of art and revolutionized thinking about painting.

Modernism

From a twenty-first century perspective, the conviction that rigidly controlled lines and blocks of colour could contribute to world peace seemed laughable. Modernists, like the Minimalists who came after Mondrian, did not share his belief in the power of art to transform society. Like Frank Stella they had a reductionist approach to art, wanting only to demonstrate that every painting is “a flat surface with paint on it—nothing more”, and rejected the idea art as a means of expressing emotion. He summarized his apolitical and anti-social approach by saying, “My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object… All I want anyone to get out of my paintings, and all I ever get out of them, is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any confusion…. What you see is what you see.“

So with Modernism, painting became what in another blog is described as “self-reflexive”, or concerned only about itself. This could be considered to be a political statement as it is in keeping with the growing individualism of the second half of the twentieth century. Ties to community were weakening and western governments pressured their citizens to become individualistic consumers to bolster the economy.

The drive for purity by Modernists like Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, and Kenneth Noland influenced, and was strongly influenced by, the thinking of the American art critic, Clement Greenberg. His theories could be said to have built on the ideas about purity that inspired Mondrian, but lacked the painter’s Calvinist & Theosophical zeal.

Greenberg believed in progressively purifying painting of all representation and illusion and promoted the hard-edged and colour-field abstractions of his favourite artists. Mondrian believed that his painting would contribute to a more harmonious and peaceful world. The only rationale provided by the Modernists for cleansing away any spatial depth or sculptural qualities in painting, was that it is ridiculous to try to create spatial illusions on a flat surface. Modernists did not feel that art should play a role in the larger world, but believed in “art for art’s sake”. The rise of a consumer culture and the commodification of art during this period was not a concern.

Post-Modernism

The Postmodernists were more aware of consumerism and the emerging role of the art market but the movement tried to neutralize it by absorbing it. Postmodernists reversed the Modernist contempt for popular culture, the mass media and mass consumerism and looked for inspiration in the everyday. In his blog The Postmodern Revolution, David Adams comments that this approach “…seemed much more vital than modernist art. (See for example fig. 7, which also suggests the revival of painting that took place).”

Adams goes on to say, “…postmodernism refers to the end of an epistemologically centered philosophy based on the efforts of a knowing subject to know truth by achieving a true mental representation of objective reality (the Cartesian subject-object dualism). It argues (among many other things) that there is no temporally invariant truth since human understanding is always historically-based (or “contingent”).

Post-modern relativism, which has been discussed in other blogs, was a direct outgrowth of the individualist and anti-social introspection of the Modernist era. In this approach, not only does painting have no relation to anything outside itself, it assumes that there is nothing outside itself that is true – only what a particular individual might happen to believe. This brings us to the present day where relativism is widely held and could be called the dominant paradigm. Part of this paradigm is that there can be no possibility of an authoritative assessment of artistic worth or quality as everything is only relative. Anyone’s taste in art is equal to anyone else’s as there are no absolute or even conventionally accepted criteria. Into this moral and authoritative vacuum, the market has taken on the role that used to be held by what used to be called experts on art.

The Market Monster
In a culture of getting and spending where there are no other standards for gauging excellence in art, the marketplace is the logical arbiter. A painting is worthwhile if it can obtain a high price. A previous post, On Theories of Art, suggested that objective assessments of art are difficult to attain because art is about feelings rather than reason, but feels the need to be justified by some form of reason other than marketability. As in all aspects of life in a capitalist society, the market has skewed relations between artists and their work and between artists and viewers.

Though written in 1975, Harold Rosenberg’s Art on the Edge, contains many ideas that remain highly relevant. Rosenberg calls the influence of the marketplace on the direction of contemporary art “…a process of transformation whose end is not in sight” (p.8) and over 40 years later, this transformation continues to mutate. For an artist, alternatives to the market are either art-as-criticism, (parody, irony, subversion) or making art for oneself. The irony is that ironic, subversive, parodies of art have been absorbed by the establishment so that they happily sponsor shows that are opposed to them. “To create the illusion of an adversary force, everything that has been overthrown must be overthrown again and again”. (p.90)

This relates to a discussion in the previous post describing the current epoch as not a changing culture but a culture of change. The ideology of constant change has, like the end of history, eliminated real change. It will not be possible to rescue art from the market’s perverse influences through renunciation of artistic sins that went before. And it is naive to believe that one art form or another can have an effect on a pervasive economic system that manipulates every aspect of life.

The Contemporary Era

As I am an artist not a scholar, this is a necessarily brief and sketchy overview of the social and political influence of the visual arts, especially painting, over the last 100 years. I have divided art history into three major art movements: Pre-Modernism, Modernism and Post Modernism. These divisions are only visible from historical perspective and the current era is made up of many disparate schools such as Post-Post-Modernism, Anti-Art, Conceptual Art, Site Specific Art, Installation Art, etc. Their commonality is the assumption that easel painting is dead, or at least irrelevant. But as I have argued here, jettisoning easel painting and conventional concepts of aesthetics, has done nothing to bring greater harmony or halt the commodification of art. Western societies teeter on the brink of instability and the art market continues to go from strength to strength. As I update this blog in April of 2024, I include the latest figures for the art market in 2023 from Artsy:

“The art market experienced a down year in 2023. Total sales in the art market fell by 4% year over year to $65 billion. The figure represents the lowest since the COVID-blighted year of 2020, but is still higher than pre-pandemic levels when sales were $64.4 billion”.

However, their good news for art market was:

“Most dealers and auction houses expect stable or improving sales in 2024, and those predicting lower sales were in the minority both for their own businesses and with their peers.“

This is not the Utopian, harmonious culture that Mondrian hoped to bring about through an extreme purity, superb clarity and force in painting. The modernists and post-modernist that followed, and the elimination of aesthetics and painterly painting they endorsed, have been happily absorbed by the market. So where does this leave contemporary art and artists? This is a topic for future blogs about even more on painting.

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