It's Over, Grandma

The title of this post is the last line of The Triplets of Belleville, which has become a favorite in our household. Of course, in this context, I mean the election and my commenting on it (at least for now).

So, since bullfighting season is over, it will be back to recipes, art, and music.

John Salmon left an interesting suggestion for my fantasy art show: propaganda art. I have a soft spot for good propaganda art (particularly posters), and could see this as a great show. My favorites of vintage agitprop come from the early days of the Russian Revolution, before Lenin turned against modern art. Most Social Realism leaves me cold, but those early Roosky Commies had style. If only they applied it to marketing vermouth or something.

Of course I cannot praise Commie agitprop without giving a nod to the Italian Futurists and their relationship with Il Duce. My favorite bust of Mussolini comes from the Futurists, and I also remember a great series of plates that commemorated the Fascist Revolution.

Of course my favorite period of Modern European History (in terms of reading about it - it really would have been better if it did not have to happen at all) is the Spanish Civil War. For propaganda art, the Commies probably won, but they were not all that solid (no, I don't count Picasso, because he didn't do that much of it, and La Guernica only works as propaganda if you know the title. If it had been called Dresden, the painting could still be read exactly the same. And come to think of it, La Guernica works as a painting by shortchanging its propagandistic intent (see also Brecht, Bertolt)). The Nationalists really did not have a good body of propadanda art, although the arrows with yoke is a marvelous logo.

In America we have had some good propaganda art, particularly in the Labor movement. Some of the sixties stuff wasn't bad, but they were already going down the road of unfairly subjecting the art to the message.

Unfortunately what we have for mainstream art nowadays is all propoganda with very little art. It does sadden me that the folks who gave us the "Internationale" have degenerated into Judy Chicago.

Of course I have to agree with Robert Hughes on the complete uselessness of message painting. I don't think anyone has ever been converted to any political system by a painting. Sure the party faithful will find a resonance, but I don't think that there is a work of art in the world that can make a rational person decide that their understanding of the body politic needs adjustment.

And I am glad that that is the case. I would fear anyone of any political persuassion who used a painting as a political argument.

But, as I have said before, content in art is secondary to composition (under which heading I have to place color - sorry to all of you who are still fighting the war between the classicists and the colorists) and personal introspection (the much harder thing to quantify in art criticism).

Good propaganda art, then, allows good composition by providing a framework for the artist to work around, just as the sonata allegro form does not make the music but gives a structure for the composer. However, man is a political animal, so it would be daft to demand an apolitical art. Art and politics will always intersect, or at least nod to one another as they pass in the night. The best we can hope for is that the politics informs the art without crushing it outright.

Anyway, this notion of a fantasy art show is a good one, so think one up. Here is one for you to ponder:

Representations of coffee in art. Coffee cups, with or without fur. Cafes. Plein air paintings of coffee plantations. Commercial art on coffee labels. The design of espresso machines. Intricately worked ibriks from Turkey.

Posted by erik at November 6, 2004 1:55 AM | TrackBack