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Art Matters: Illuminating Contemporary ArtShepparton Art Museum2015
LECTURE 3: ART, POLITICS AND CENSORSHIP
“what types of relations are being produced, for whom, and
why?”
Claire Bishop, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,’ October, Vol 110, Fall, 2004, pp.51-79
Political Approaches
• Postmodern politics• No universal sense of truth• Self-organising and local, but also fragmented
• Cultural materialism (materialist dialectics)• Requires cultural interpretation of art to consider a range of contexts:
Art theory Social practices EconomicsPsychology Technology Popular cultureGender Race SexualityGeography Urbanism Historical research
• Does not predict what form culture will take
Chantal Mouffe, “Art and Democracy:Art as an Agnostic Intervention in Public Space”, 2008
“Can artistic practices still play a critical role in a society where the difference between art and advertising have become blurred and where artists and cultural workers have become a necessary part of capitalist production?” P.7
“This has led some to claim that art had lost its critical power because any form of critique is automatically recuperated and neutralized by capitalism.” P.7
“According to the agonistic approach, public spaces are always plural and the agonistic confrontation takes place on a multiplicity of discursive surfaces.” P.10
Chantal Mouffe, “Art and Democracy:Art as an Agnostic Intervention in Public Space”, 2008
Four different kinds of critical art:
•Art which engages with existing political reality•Art which explores non-normative subject positions•Art which critiques its own political condition•Art which attempts to imagine alternative ways of living
Some Key Ideas from this lecture
• Art is open to different readings depending on the viewer, and some viewers will interpret works in more political ways than others
• Contemporary theory increasingly argues that all art is political• Art either reinforces, rejects or renders invisible the status quo• Alternative argument is that art is just for art’s sake: aesthetics
• While art might be political, it could be argued that it doesn’t change the world; however, it does exist in a relationship with the world and can influence action
• Art under capitalism struggles to challenge the prevailing order since capitalism is dynamic (Mouffe)• The way to challenge this, according to Mouffe, is agonistic art
• Hal Foster says political art is about “actuality”, registering different levels of experience (aesthetic, temporal, social, historical) in a work
• It can be difficult to make challenging work without facing censorship