Saturday, May 27, 2006

This Modern Art

Art & Me
I often claim to be an admirer of art, but in truth, art for me consists of pixels, not pigments. This is not say I prefer art online to art offline, but rather I have no choice. In the economics of artistic expression, rural America faces neglect. There are no art museums, no murals, no street performers, and so on and so forth.

I am far from fluent in ‘art theory’ and the extents of my artistic abilities are somewhat narrow. I dabble here and there in painting and ceramics, which I quite enjoy, but my works are, to say the least, less than avant-garde.

I appreciate art dearly in all its forms; art is the highest expression of man. It is man’s most humanistic act — art says, “Hey look, look what I’ve seen, look what I can imagine, look what I can do”.

Art & Society
In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artifacts could always be imitated by men. Replicas were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by masters for diffusing their works, and, finally, by third parties in the pursuit of gain. Mechanical reproduction of a work of art, however, represents something new. Historically, it advanced intermittently and in leaps at long intervals, but with accelerated intensity. […] Lithography enabled graphic art to illustrate everyday life, and it began to keep pace with printing. But only a few decades after its invention, lithography was surpassed by photography. […] Since the eye perceives more swiftly than the hand can draw, the process of pictorial reproduction was accelerated so enormously that it could keep pace with speech. (Benjamin)
In the 1450s, Johannes Gutenberg popularized the printing press in Europe. In 1826, some three centuries and three-quarters centuries later, Nicéphore Niépce took the first photograph. Together, these two men revolutionized society in two ways. Gutenberg’s printing press established wide-scale literacy, allowing persons beyond the royal families and clergy to experience written knowledge and fantasy. Niépce’s invention brought visual literacy, allowing person to see the world without experiencing the world.

Even more so, the 20th Century took this revolution further, namely with the internet and personal cameras. With hardly any effort on my part I can open up my web browser, enter ‘http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page’, and have access to a million or so articles. With a digital camera I can take photos of anything and transfer them to my computer, upload the images to a webhost, and suddenly I can show anyone with access to the internet my photos. Certain dialectic has taken place here; there is an increase in the quantity of artists and naturally, there is a change in the quality of artists.

Here art has gone through another dialectical change. The first human artists were cave dwellers painting with animal’s blood and their hands. The creation of cities and class society brought art out-of-itself, art developed new techniques using new materials but only a privileged few were able to engage in artistic activities. Now, art returns to itself, as the broad masses of people have the opportunity to be artists or experience art but with new techniques and better methods.

Art & Socialism
I do not remember the exact phrase, or the exact context, but I believe Lenin once said ‘a Social-Democrat once said that the postal service is a model of socialism. That is true’. Art is socialism under capitalism. Any person may partake of art and receive the full value of their work, art. A person can distribute their art across the world.

What is socialism? Socialism is a society where man receives the full product of his labor. With his fellow workers at the cooperative, he distributes his products to the community. Again, I badly paraphrase Lenin, but Lenin once said in Can the Bolsheviks retain State Power? Lenin says that capitalism sows its own seeds of destruction and replacement. Lenin argues that a proletarian state reorganize the banks, syndicates, and cartels along the means of socialist production in replacement of capitalist industrial organization. In modern society, we will unify and socialize production utilizing computers, the internet, and all of our new technological devices.


Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
Marxists Internet Archive 1936. 27 May 2006.
<http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm>.

4 comments:

Rob said...

You should check out Christopher Caudwell's work on art, it's not the most developed stuff ever, but I found it rewarding.

E. Williams said...

I've seen Christopher Caudwell on marxists.org. Do you have any specific recommendations?

Rob said...

Check yo'self befo' you wreck yo'self.

Specifically the one on art.

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