Page 22 - Studio International - June 1974

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function of a private patron. The public dignity Politics in art apart from society is maintained. Artists such as
of the artist, being older and better established, those who anonymously contributed balloons
was then far greater, and the artist had a strong Whatever the intention of the artist, all art is to the mouths of politicians on posters during the
claim on public resources. The scientist has innately political. Yet it will be seen that the French presidential election campaign, appear
long since escaped from these monkish origins; political statement which any art makes may be to have succeeded in combining political
personal affluence and public support are no interpreted as either active and intentional or content with political action.
longer imagined to be damaging to his creative passive and probably unconscious. What Art can be political, as already indicated,
instinct. On the contrary they are deemed actually constitutes politics in art seems to be a when it sets out to challenge the system
necessary for it. The artist, by contrast, still much more difficult subject for artists to define. whereby society sets up the conditions for
depends extensively on private patronage; he Certainly the content doesn't necessarily have supply and demand in the art market and
has come, along with the rest of the community, to be political. The most political thing that any promotes a limited number of 'star' artists to
to accept the view that public support to the educationalist could do would not be to teach all meet this end. Such strategic art work might
arts could be dangerously repressive of the the children Marxist-Leninist theory, but include Susan Hiller's Street Ceremonies (1973)
artistic spirit.4 It is obvious that the resulting simply to effectively make the matter of or Milan Knizak's Goldfish (Prague). These
saving in public funds - as compared with a education equally available to everyone. works might be considered political in the sense
society that sets the same store by the arts as, Similarly the most political action for an artist that they suggest that the act of making art may
say, by moon travel - is very great. is to effectively destroy the myth that only not be limited to a god-like genius working in
Thus the arts. They will continue to be a `artists' can do it. Not, like Beuys, by isolation.
major stronghold of the individual and the small announcing in the Tate and the Whitechapel The months of April and May in London
firm. They will also be an expanding part of that all workers are artists, but by creating provided a number of occasions through
economic life. The opportunities for enjoyment situations in which the art can be invented by which it was possible to examine the validity of
from artistic development have no visible limit;
they are almost certainly greater than those
from technical development.
But this expansion would be much greater
were the sources of our present attitudes on art,
science and technology better understood. The
arts now have an infinitely smaller claim than
science and engineering on both private and
public resources. This, we have seen, is the
result not of public preference but of
conditioned belief. People - including artists
themselves - are persuaded to accord
importance and priority to what is within the
competence and serves the needs of the
technostructure and the planning system.
The means for emancipating belief - for
releasing it from service to the planning system -
is a matter to which, obviously, we must
return. q
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH

When the late Ian Fleming, the manufacturer of
James Bond, turned himself into a limited company a others. David Medalla (left) and John Dugger at the
short while before his death, it was a matter of Royal College of Art conference.
world-wide comment. Most art is political in the passive sense that it Photo: Su Braden
' While the contrast between the popular reaction to confirms the capitalist ideal of an art which, like
technical and to artistic innovation depends on social gold, will override the vagaries of the these theories. There was the independent
conditioning, this may not be the whole explanation.
It may be that visual reactions are inherently stockmarket and always maintain its worth in showing of Lucy Lippard's selection of
conservative and then, with time, undergo money terms. The engagement of art with twenty-six women conceptual artists at 48
accommodation. For this reason new grotesqueries capitalist economics results in a contribution to Earlham Street, and the discussions which took
in dress or automobiles - those for which no one
would dream of advancing any artistic claim - - politics. In our society there exists an intrinsic place there; the ICA's celebration of
become after a time visually tolerable. definition of cultural barriers, reinforced at the alienation and Conrad Atkinson's exhibition,
" In his prepared remarks for the return of the first present time by public cultural and educational `Work, Wages and Prices'; at Congress House
astronauts from the moon Dr George C. Mueller,
space-flight director for NASA, urged Americans institutions. In crude terms this may be there was a realist painting exhibition mounted
not to 'substitute temporary material welfare for described as bingo and the pictures for one by the Artists' Union to express solidarity with
spiritual welfare and long-term accomplishment'. section of society, and opera and art collecting the miners; and at the Royal College of Art
He went on to plead that we 'dedicate ourselves to the
unfinished work so nobly begun by three of us to for another. When the artist accepts the there was the marathon Anglo-Dutch
resolve that this nation, under God, will join with all commercial gallery as a context for his work, he Conference on Art and Politics/Theory and
men in the pursuit of the destiny of mankind . ..' The
power of such spiritual commitment should not, is coincidentally accepting as the 'public' to Practice.
however, be exaggerated. Dr Mueller subsequently which the work is directed, the cultural and All these events dealt in their own terms with
accepted a higher salary as a vice-president of General economic group which buys art. politics as the content of the work; either the
Dynamics. See Richard F. Kaufman, The War
Profiteers (Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs- A great deal of art is apparently political in politics of the art world itself or with definitive
Merrill, 1970), p. 80. content. Yet the politics of the cultural barriers political topics. Yet now these are all over, one
Architects, being needed by industry, are are left unscathed. It is all too possible to can see that they have produced no clear
emancipated from the belief that artistic
achievement is damaged by economic association or produce radical slogans in the ICA; but in this statement about politics in art. Such a statement
personal affluence. situation the bourgeois myth of the artist set would assume at least a mutual perception
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