Beral Madra on the impact of global instability on contemporary art production
We constantly examine, interpret, and criticize the basic connections, relations, intersections and interactions between art production, politics, economy, religion, traditions, and all other issues related to human life. From the Paleolithic cave painting that visually defines the intellectual existence of man on earth, his relationship with nature and his social activity, this relation is an eternal discussion.
When a question is asked about contemporary art, a long list of sciences, such as history, theology, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, economics, law, political sciences, language and philology, logic, aesthetics, ethics, technology, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, statistics etc. enters into the sphere of discussion, information and knowledge.
The relationship of art with all these sciences, information and knowledge can be examined in different ways, but when art, politics and economy convene, it is useful to focus on the following features: relations and intersections between political history and art history; the relationship and interventions of political power and economic systems with art production; the political and economic dimensions of the production processes and results of art production; and the position and function of art production within the parameters of the current global political, economic and cultural order.
Firstly, the historical process in which this question is asked is decisive in terms of the answers produced, even if the question is asked today. I would like to remind you of the effective depressive features of this process by quoting from an interview given in 2016 by the wise sociologist of the period we live in, Zygmunt Baumann.
Attracting attention with his theory of "liquid modernity" in the 1990s, Baumann wrote that ‘all agreements are temporary, fleeting, and valid only until further notice.’ He defines this as a crisis of democracy: trust has collapsed and political leaders are believed to be not only corrupt but also incompetent. He continues:
Power has become global, and politics is still local. The hands of politics have been cut off. People no longer believe in the democratic system because it does not keep its promises. We follow this in the migration crisis; it's a global phenomenon, but we're still narrow-minded. The current crisis is the crisis of democracy, the crisis of democratic institutions. (1)
In Zombie Capitalism (2012), Chris Harmann also outlines the economic crisis :
The economic crisis that started in 2007 is sustained by ghoul economic institution systems and zombie banks that threaten the world. According to this, the capitalist system does not provide any benefit to people, on the contrary, it creates constant chaos and crisis by directing political systems (democracy as well). The future of the system is not in the form of a return to stable growth, but of recurring instability and upheaval with an escalating ecological crisis. (2)
While Baumann and Harmann criticize this period, new definitions or ideologies have been given to the existing order: Post-truth and Artificial Intelligence (AI). It has been announced that the power centers of global politics, economy and technology are manipulating the truth, which is one of the primary mental and spiritual needs of humanity in the traditional context, towards their own interests and removing the border between lie, truth and imagination. This undoubtedly points to a situation that coincides with the crisis of democracy that Baumann stated. Social media has also been cited as the nurturing ground for all these actualities.
Bauman in an interview on social media says:
Social media does not teach us to have a dialogue, because it is very easy to avoid discussion… However, many people do not use social media to unite, to open up horizons, on the contrary, they find themselves comfortable only where they can hear the echo of their own voices and what they see is the reflection of their own image… Social media is very useful because it provides pleasure, but it is a trap. (3)
Today, art production takes place in the environment created by these multifarious crises: democracy, economy, post-truth, techno-feudalism, and social media. A global pandemic of almost three years has been added to these crises; and its future implications are still being discussed.
This is not a new situation in terms of the meaning and functions of Modern and Post-modern art productions. The art movements of the 20th century, which form the basis of the aesthetics, forms, and function of today's art production, were also produced during the great political crises that formed the mass wars.
Here, the most important tool we can use to evaluate the situation well is memory. On 21 Oct 2013, Professor Umberto Eco spoke on the subject of the loss of collective memory: .
Mass media is mainly interested in the present… Unfortunately, such a loss of memory is at work even in the scholarly world. …Societies have always relied on memory in order to preserve their own identity …and when some act of censorship wipes out a section of a society’s memory, this society undergoes an identity crisis.(4)
The 1917 revolution created two unique and influential art movements, Constructivism and Suprematism, and paved the way for the formation of the great political revolution. There were multiple instances during the 20th century where political leaders' involvement in the arts did not support the arts and artists. Indeed, the interventions of Lenin and Stalin seemed to have erased Constructivism and Suprematism from the art map prematurely. Adolf Hitler, on the other hand, censored all kinds of art products that did not resemble his own Kitsch paintings under the title of “Entartete Kunst” (degenerated art) and tried to destroy the entire production of German Modernism; except for the pictures that his generals smuggled out and hid in underground warehouses.
Hitler's 1937 speech is published on the internet. I present for your information a few sentences that spew hatred:
National Socialism will purify Germany and our people from any influence that is dangerous to its existence. This cleansing will not happen in a day; so those who create these dangers should have no doubt that sooner or later the hour of their annihilation will strike... These prehistoric, stone age cultivators may return to their ancestral caves to make those primitive international scribbles...
It is a fact that today there are politicians in non-democratic countries who make speeches that evoke this speech! (5)
In the 1950s, art production was used as an effective means of diffusion for US global political-cultural activity . The fact that the USA brought its art to the world through Europe starting from 1947 and throughout the 1950s is an interesting example of the use of art as a tool for nationalist political interests. In particular, the production of Abstract Expressionism led to the emergence of individuality and free expression in art, which the USA advocated in terms of national cultural identity, and the development of modern art museums and galleries. (6)
The fall of the Berlin wall allowed the pioneering art productions in Eastern Europe and Russia, which were not observable during the Cold War, to be visible, and to write an integrated history of European art production. The communication and exchange between art movements in Western and Eastern Europe started the redirection of the principles and contents of Modern art towards the Globalization ideology.
While writing in exile in France, Walter Benjamin proposed the conscious politicization of art as opposed to the aestheticization of politics, which in the last resort inevitably turns into war. For Benjamin:
Aestheticized politics interfered with art; for this reason, a distinction should not be made such as art with political content and art without political content, all art should be political and created by socialist actors. There were two options: continuing to produce aesthetic products that take their place in the functioning of the dominant order by hiding their political nature, or to oppose the dominant order by producing relations that will create a new order. (7)
Throughout the 20th century, art continued to do so with various aesthetics, forms, and strategies. These tides and positive-negative developments in the 20th century art-politics relationship are an important memory for interpreting the current situation. When art is politicized, the barren, shallow and narrow minds of anti-art politicians and the bureaucrats who follow them reach for authoritarianism. They leave no gaps in social life, controlling creativity and preventing all kinds of art and cultural events that give the audience the power to comment and criticize. When these minds shrivel up in the face of the indirect expression and sealed content of modern art, such powers think that they can save the situation only by attacking; if they have power, they are not afraid to use it. Authoritarian governments, which adopt ideologies against free thought and expression, see nations as a homogeneous society. While adopting populist politics and determining who is an artist and who is not, they do not intend to leave a single gap in the field of art that is beyond their control.
In the first quarter of the 21st century, while these contradictions and relations continue with fundamentally similar features, new forms of art production emerged. Art productions often appear as a critical, stimulating and resisting aesthetics through the complexity, contradictions, and crisis eruptions of politics-economy-media relations. Political and social responsibility and visual and auditory performative language are used to stimulate society. Adopting the fact of truth, art production keeps this kind of negative politics in custody.
In EU countries where freedom of expression is relatively more protected by progressive democracy and constitutions, the production of contemporary art is a tool to confront the profit-making power of neo-capitalism and the culture industry and keeps adverse policies under surveillance, relatively competently. In so-called non-democratic countries these interests and principles do not apply effortlessly.
For example, for authoritarian governments in Turkey and many non-Western countries, there have been two dangerous types of art during Modernism: literature and cinema. Countless artists from these fields have been sacrificed. On the other hand, the paintings produced in the field of visual art until the mid 1970s were critical of the order in low doses. Socialist contents in figurative painting were mostly visual material that leftists used as a tool. Abstract painting was outside the sphere of interest of political power. While verbal and literary art and moving image became the nightmare of ruling governments, painting was seen as harmless material. In the 1980s, during Post-modernism and later during Globalization, the private sector embraced art and culture as branding. Yet, keeping the brand on the agenda triggered a kind of monopoly. In countries where authoritarian governments are dominant, the private sector had to create its cultural policy according to the imposed political order.
What kind of relationship should there be within these conditions? If contemporary art, and especially contemporary art with a critical and political content, has entered the parliament of a country, it means that there is a healthy relationship between art and politics in that country. The most authoritative example of this is exhibited in the Federal German Reichstag building. The entire building is equipped like a contemporary art museum. In the Middle Court Hans Haacke's installation Die Bevölkerung (peoples) is a major example. If an artist can freely question, criticize and comment on a political problem, a social trauma, or a massacre, in his country or in the international environment, then there is a healthy relationship between art and politics in that artist's country.
In countries with damaged democracy, the change in the culture and art industry should be as follows: culture and art centers belonging to state and local governments should be restructured as independent enterprises; specialists should manage them. All productions related to contemporary arts should be extended to the most remote corners of the countries. State and local governments should stop protecting the function, intruding on decision-making and commenting on contemporary art aesthetics, forms and discourses. Promotion of contemporary art and cultural productions to international art environments should be free and independent; however, state, and local governments should support these initiatives financially. Balanced budgets should be supportive, rewarding and encouraging for creative people rather than activities.
Covid-19, the global pandemic and quarantine has dealt a further blow to the crises that non-democracy, Zombie-capitalism, social media, and post-truth have created and continues its own uncanny crisis without political-economic-cultural discrimination. As one stands on the threshold between the recent past and the future, one can perceive this change with amazement. The global pandemic rules also faded the inequality between global culture and art industries. The preconditions for the as yet unpredictable change are set in motion. However, after the pandemic, since February 2022 the war between Russia and Ukraine has created a new instability in terms of culture and art not only between these two countries, but also in the whole EU and related countries. Artists and art experts had to resign or leave their homeland.
Will the features that have been valid and invalid in culture and art systems until today be valid in the future? The current article by Daehyung Lee on Artreview answers this question very optimistically:
The future is not a utopia that comes inevitably. It's an extremely fluid landscape that changes constantly depending on what we imagine. And whether it is a dystopia or a utopia depends on the dreams and actions of people living now. (7)
Let's join this optimism and assume that even if the future is uncertain, based on the examples so far, the production of art can affect people’s lives for the better; giving them the power of perception, interpretation, and criticism, and helping them make positive decisions about the future despite the difficulties imposed by politics and economy.
Beral Madra is an art critic and curator based in Istanbul. She sits on the Board of Room to Bloom, a feminist platform of emerging artists working in the field of ecological and postcolonial feminism. Room To Bloom is a partnership project coordinated by European Alternatives.
(1)Ricardo De Querol, ‘Interview: Zygmunt Bauman: “Social media are a trap”’, El Pais, 25 Jan 2016, accessible at https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2016/01/19/inenglish/1453208692_424660.html
(2) Chris Harman, Zombi Kapitalizm: Kuresel Kriz ve Marx'in Yaklasimi (Turkish) Paperback, Antikapitalist Yayinlari (2012).
(3) Bauman, Ibid.
(4)“Against the Loss of Memory,”, Lecture by Professor Umberto Eco at the UN Headquarters, New York, (October 21, 2013) accessible at: https://www.whileiremember.it/against-the-loss-of-memory-umberto-eco/
(5) Hitler’s 1937 Speech, accessible at https://comicism.tripod.com/370130.html
(6) Claire Brandon, ‘Abstract Expressionism and the Global Impact of the Venice Biennale in the 1950s’, in Andrianna Campbell (ed.), In Focus: Cathedral 1950 by Norman Lewis, Tate Research Publication (2018), https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/in-focus/cathedral/venice-global-impact, accessed 3 March 2021.
(7)Fatma Erkak, ‘Walter Benjamin’de Sanat, Esteti̇k Ve Poli̇ti̇ka İli̇şki̇si̇’, (Ankara, 2019), accessible at https://dspace.ankara.edu.tr/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.12575/69076/588636.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
(8) Daehyung Lee, ‘ART, The Super Vaccine’, Artreview, 25 September 2020, accessible at https://artreview.com/art-after-pandemic/
PULL-QUOTES
“Power has become global, and politics is still local. The hands of politics have been cut off.” - Zygmunt Baumann
“If an artist can freely question, criticize and comment on a political problem, a social trauma, or a massacre, in his country or in the international environment, then there is a healthy relationship between art and politics in that artist's country.”
“The production of art can affect people’s lives for the better; giving them the power of perception, interpretation, and criticism, and helping them make positive decisions about the future.”