Page 16 - Studio International - December 1970

Art and politics world, the working-up of inorganic nature, is It is perhaps worth stressing that Marx's
materialism is quite different from a crude
the expression of man as a conscious species
in'the Russian being ... through it nature appears as his work economic determinism which would dismiss
all 'forms of thought' as mere passive reflec­
The crucial difference lies in
and his reality.'
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revolution-2 Marx's ideas of class and class rule as a tions of economic reality. The Marxist
philosopher, Plekhanov, was particularly con­
fundamental reality. For him only the ruling
cerned with this difference in his Materialist
class in any society are able to express them­
Andrew Higgens selves in this creative process, even though the Conception of History. He emphasizes that,
according to the materialist conception of
whole society may participate in it. For this
reason 'what the working man sees in the history, the ·determining element in history is
world that he has created is a gigantic fetter ultimately the production and reproduction of
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upon him'. Although in theory the process of real life: 'More than this neither Marx nor I
transforming nature can absorb the creative have ever asserted. ' 52 In other words ideas and
faculties of all men (since for Marx as for social systems are not passive but interact
Malevich, man is essentially an artistic being with reality to change it, just as it modifies
who 'knows how to apply everywhere the them. As Plekhanov says, ' ... once the forms
inherent standard of the object', 47 and who of his consciousness have sprung from the
PART 1 DESCRIBED THE PHILOSOPHY UNDER­ 'forms things in accordance with laws of bea­ soil of social being, they become a part of
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LYING THE FUTURIST TRADITION BEFORE, uty' 8), in practice, 'In the labour process ... history', 53 i.e. dynamic in themselves. It is this
DURING AND AFTER THE REVOLUTION, AND WAS productive activity is experienced not as one's interaction which the dialectic method 'recog­
PARTICULARLY CONCERNED WITH THE IN­ own but as activity for another, and as nizes. Dialectic 'includes in its comprehension
FLUENCE ON THIS TRADITION OF HEGELIAN activity of another, life as sacrifice of living, and affirmative recognition of the existing
IDEALISM. PART 2 OUTLINES THE PHILOSOPHIC production of the object as loss of the object state of things, at the same time also, the
MATERIALISM OF LENIN AND TROTSKY, AND THE to an alien power, an alien man.' 49 Malevich recognition of the negation of that state, of its
WAYS IN WHICH THIS INFLUENCED THEIR ATTI­ can see this when he describes workers as inevitable breaking up; because it regards
TUDE TO CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS AND THEffi 'machines', but the concept of manipulating every historically developed social form as in
THEORIES ABOUT ART AND POLITICAL ACTION. material conditions to change their situation fluid movement, and therefore takes into
is foreign to his philosophy. account its transient nature not less than its
In one important way Marx's theory of These linked ideas in Marx's thought, his momentary existence; because it lets nothing
human behaviour does reflect the influence of materialism and his doctrine of classes, are the impose upon it and is in its essence critical and
Hegel, particularly when Hegel talks of man's central ones in any consideration of the revolutionary.' 54 In this there is no crude
productive, as opposed to theoretical, self­ artist's relationship with society, and par­ rejection of the importance of ideology:
realization. In Marx's ideas all productive ticularly a society in revolution. His materia­ merely the discovery of an ultimate material
activity is creative, Even ideas become 'pro­ lism, by stating, for example, that ' ... man's cause for change, in contrast to Hegel's World
ducts'. 'Material production is the basic form, consciousness changes with every change in Spirit. Dialectics also resolves the duality of
50
but man is a producer too in, all the non­ the conditions of his material existence', rules mind and matter, which makes the word
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material forms of life.' 1 Marx mentions reli­ out any hypothesis that the Russian avant 'reality' such a problem for the idealis,t
gion, the family, the state, law, art and science garde anticipated the Revolution. At the tradition, by rejecting the search for absolutes
as so many 'modes of production'.' (Man) . . . is same time, as I hope to show, his class theories, behind the changing face of the world (a
endowed with a multitude of creative capaci­ inseparable from his philosophic materialism, search which invariably leads to the mind as
ties, faculties and drives that seek outlet in cast into doubt the revolutionary status of the only reality) and discovering empirically
productive activity.' 42 History becomes the Constructivism, which in other ways appears the laws of those changes; laws which them­
conflict between these drives and the natural to echo his view that it is material production selves change with reality, so that no single
world, both of which are fully 'real'-a con­ in general, as opposed simply to the fine arts, pattern is retained, and laws which are used
flict in which ' . . . the history of production that is man's creative activity. Concerning to change the world, not simply contem­
is . . . a history of man's own self-externaliza­ idealism, he says of Hegel, 'My dialectic plated. Dialectics 'lets nothing impose upon
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tion.' 3 Man produces himself in this process: method is not only different from the Hegelian, it'. Hegel's dialectics are also concerned with
' ... the so-called world-history is nothing other but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life­ 'becoming' as reality, but it is a becoming in
than, the production of man through human process of the human brain, i.e. the process the mind; Marxist dialectical materialism is
labour, nothing other than the becoming of of thinking, which under the name of "the concerned with becoming in the real world, in
nature for man.' 44 Malevich certainly echoes Idea", he even transforms into an independent which man plays an active part.
this idea when he says that the products of subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, It is in this context that we have to place the
'utilitarian reason' are higher than the paint­ and the real world is only the external, clash between the Russian avant-garde
ings that imitate them, but he still refers phenomenal form of "the Idea". With me, on artists and the Marxist politicians, Lenin and
utilitarian reason back to the Hegelian world the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the Trotsky. We know that Lenin either ignored
movement as its first cause, while for Marx, material world reflected by the human mind, or disliked Russian avant-garde art. As
'The practical production of. an objective and translated into forms of thought.' 1 Lunacharsky says, 'the new artistic and
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Contributors ANDREW HIGGENS teaches art history and complement­ WILLIAM TUCKER, the sculptor, has recently been
Gregory Fellow at Leeds University. He teaches at St
ary studies at St Martin's and Maidstone Colleges of
to this issue Art and at Willesden Polytechnic. Martin's School of Art. Three of his articles on modern
sculptors were published in Studio International earlier
JONATHAN BENTHALL is lecture programme organizer this year.
at the ICA, London.
RICHARD woLLHEIM is Grote Professor of Philosophy of
Mind and Logic at the University of London and PATRICK HERON'S most recent exhibitions have been of
teaches at University College. He has written a book on prints at Leslie Waddington, London, and of paintings
aesthetics titled Art and Its Objects, published in 1968. at the Caballa Gallery, Harrogate.
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