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Art, Revolution and Communisation Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen Version of Record First Published: 02 Apr 2012 This article was downloaded by: [University of Iowa Libraries] On: 09 January 2013, At: 14:10 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Third Text Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctte20 Art, Revolution and Communisation Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen Version of record first published: 02 Apr 2012. To cite this article: Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen (2012): Art, Revolution and Communisation, Third Text, 26:2, 229-242 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2012.663973 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. Third Text, Vol. 26, Issue 2, March, 2012, 229–242 Art, Revolution and Communisation On the Transcendence of Art as Meaning without Reality Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen If the revolution is to take place, mankind has to progress from ten to eleven fingers. Pierre Guyotat Attach yourself to what you feel to be true. Begin there. The Invisible Committee One of the definitive characteristics of modern art – and after all it is with modernity and capitalism that art becomes art in our sense, severed from religious and feudal institutional contexts – has always been its directly 1. Andre´ Breton, Diego Rivera political dimension or its relationship to revolution. As Andre´ Breton and Leon Trotsky, ‘Pour un and Leon Trotsky write in their manifesto ‘Towards a Free Revolutionary art re´volutionnaire inde´pendant’ [1938], in Art’: ‘We believe that the supreme task of art in our epoch is to take part 1 Jose´ Pierre, ed, Tracts actively and consciously in the preparation of the revolution.’ Ever surre´alistes et de´clarations since German Romanticism, philosophy has furnished art with an auton- collectives: Tome I: 1922– 1939, Le Terrain vague, omous status that has turned it into a sphere in which there has been an Paris, 1980, p 337; ‘For a intense, unique, critical and self-critical praxis which works with and com- Free Revolutionary Art’, Downloaded by [University of Iowa Libraries] at 14:10 09 January 2013 ments on not only social and political conditions, but also the problems Dwight MacDonald, trans, in Charles Harrison and and limitations of art itself. But the autonomy of art is both a blessing Paul Wood, eds, Art in and a curse – thanks to it, the artist is on the one hand not subject to exter- Theory 1900–2000: An nally formulated rules or prescriptions; on the other hand this autonomy Anthology of Changing Ideas, Blackwell, London, also has a built-in limitation, since it means that artistic praxis in reality 2003, p 535 has limited social impact. As the German literary historian Peter Bu¨ rger 2. Peter Bu¨ rger, Theorie der writes, art is detached from daily life and is therefore without tangible Avantgarde, Suhrkamp, effect.2 Art is only to a limited extent political, or is characterised by Frankfurt, 1974, p 17; Theory of the Avant- limited politics; that is, at any rate, the artistic avant-gardes’ reading of Garde, Michael Shaw, the autonomy of art. It therefore became their project in the 1910s trans, Minnesota and 1920s to integrate art and life, to question and preferably dismantle University Press, Minneapolis and London, the autonomy of art, as an element in an extensive revolutionary trans- 1984, p 13 formation in which the differentiations of modern life were redefined, Third Text ISSN 0952-8822 print/ISSN 1475-5297 online # Third Text (2012) http://www.tandfonline.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2012.663973 230 such that it (again?) became possible, as Marx writes, ‘to hunt in the 3. Karl Marx and Friedrich morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after Engels, Die Deutsche dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, Ideologie: Kritik der neuen herdsman or critic’.3 The goal of the avant-garde’s romantic anti-capital- deutschen Philosophie in ihren Repra¨sentanten ism was to transform the differentiations and abolish the parcelling-out of Feuerbach, B. Bauer und different experiences and the categorisation of human life into the rela- Stirner, und des deutschen tively discrete spheres characteristic of life in modern society.4 But the Sozialismus in seiner verschiedenen Propheten important thing in this context is that the intense assault on the art insti- [1845], in MEW, vol 3, tution by the avant-garde movements and the attempts to let art and life Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1973, fuse together were really only another version of the modern ideology of p 33; The German Ideology: Critique of art, by which art is assigned transformative, even revolutionary powers, Modern German such as would allow the avant-gardes still to subscribe to the notion of Philosophy According to Its Representatives art as possessing critical potential; this was precisely why it was necessary Feuerbach, B. Bauer and to break out of the institution and affirm the original Romantic idea of a re- Stirner, and of German enchanted world.5 Art was a subversive force, in so far as it was no longer Socialism According to Its Various Prophets, Progress rooted in the art institution. To be true to itself, art had to negate itself and Publishers, trans, available the art institution and take part in an all-encompassing overhaul of bour- at http://www.marxists. geois capitalist society. This was why inter-war avant-garde groups like org/archive/marx/works/ 1845/german-ideology/ Dada and the Surrealists were involved in attempts to challenge the art institution; all the challenges took place with a view to permitting the crea- 4. As early as Earliest System- Programme of German tivity with which the artist had been furnished – as part of the constitution Idealism (Das a¨lteste of art as an autonomous sphere – to seep out into everyday life. This was Systemprogramm des why the avant-gardes ridiculed the role and identity of the artist and tried deutschen Idealismus) from 1796–1797 G W F Hegel, F to abolish it in favour of an activation of the viewer, who otherwise only Ho¨ lderlin and F W J stood passively contemplating the leavings of the artist, and who thus Schelling formulated such a both pointed towards another society and a cohesive existence, but at project, in which art, as a new mythology, is to unite the same time confirmed the established order and its divisions into separate spheres of society ‘work’ and ‘art’. as though they were siblings of some sort. As a reaction to the bourgeoisie’s rolling-back BROKEN PROMISES of one feudal institution after another, art was thus assigned the function of This duality in art had already been mapped by the German philosopher being or creating a new and member of the Frankfurt School Herbert Marcuse in the mid-1930s, universalist superstructure. In art it was possible to in ‘On the Affirmative Character of Culture’. On the one hand art, accord- realise the community that ing to Marcuse, is in possession of or can give form to a utopian dimension; the free market did not it can create images of another world, although it is a product of this world. permit. See Bernhard Lypp, ¨ It holds out – with a quotation from the French novelist Stendhal of which Downloaded by [University of Iowa Libraries] at 14:10 09 January 2013 Asthetischer Absolutismus und politische Vernunft: several members of the Institut fu¨r Sozialforschung were very fond – ‘une Zum Widerstreit von promesse de bonheur’.6 Art is, in other words, an expression of humanity’s Reflexion und Sittlichkeit im deutschen Idealismus, preoccupation with its own future happiness, and in that sense it transcends Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1972 society at a symbolic level. It is a kind of sanctuary where a number of fun- and Andrew Bowie, damental needs that are suppressed in capitalist society are met virtually. Aesthetics and Subjectivity: From Kant to Nietzsche, The victims of the rationalisation of bourgeois society, which standardises Manchester University and categorises human life and marginalises mankind’s spontaneous crea- Press, Manchester, 2003. tivity, are given a voice and awoken to life in art, which in this way, accord- 5. For analyses of the avant- ing to Marcuse, functions as a refuge or a waste dump for marginalised gardes as part of a broader Romantic anti-capitalism, experiences and modes of expression. Modern art thus possesses a subver- see Michael Lo¨ wy and sive potential in Marcuse’s view. Robert Sayre, Re´volte et But in accordance with the Marxism of critical theory, Marcuse me´lancolie: Le Romantisme a` contre- applies a perspective to art that stresses its function in a wider context courant de la modernite´, within the framework of the establishment of modern society, where 231 Payot, Paris, 1992 as well rationalisation and differentiation are the code words. Within this frame- as Jochen Schulte-Sasse, work art is a place of hibernation for the anarchistic imagination that is ‘Imagination and Modernity: Or the Taming rapidly being eradicated by an accelerated process of rationalisation; but of the Human Mind’, in this imagination is also prevented from having any broad social impact Cultural Critique 5, 1987, precisely because it is confined to the sphere of art.
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