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Fostering Strategies Revised Solange.Pages SOLANGE MANCHE // FOSTERING STRATEGIES OF RESISTANCE, 53-65 FOSTERING STRATEGIES OF RESISTANCE: THE ART SPACE AS AN ESCAPE FROM ALIENATION SOLANGE MANCHE UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT NETHERLANDS [email protected] SUBMISSION DATE: 29/12/2016// ACCEPTANCE DATE: 09/05/2017 // PUBLICATION DATE: 12/01/2018 (pp. 53-65) KEYWORDS: Art Spaces, Culture Industry, Frankfurt School, Alienation, the Museum as a Factory, Hegel, Karl Marx, Post-Fordism, Antonio Negri, Commodification of Art. ABSTRACT: This article reflects upon the Marxist tradition of considering industrially produced cultural products as being inherently deceitful and politically misleading, trying to go beyond the avant-gardist prejudice of the Frankfurt School that denies the spectator any agency. By giving an extensive rethinking of initially Marx’s concepts, such as commodification, it is argued that it cannot be an object — an art object in a specific space— in and by itself that offers a way to escape from the working day, but that it is the tension between the object and the space in which it is presented that accords agency to the observer; whereby, the relation between object and subject are inherently different from, and eludes, alienation. In order to reach this conclusion, the article uses examples from both late 20th century and contemporary art1. Throughout the 1930s and early and Max Horkheimer. Even if they 1940s a steady stream of German lived just outside Hollywood, Adorno exiles in flight from the Third and Horkheimer’s view of the culture Reich travelled from the East Coast that was being produced there was to settle in Los Angeles. As if by anything but positive. When writing magic, a substantial portion of the about the culture industry in their work Weimar intelligentsia found itself transplanted along a line running Dialectic of Enlightenment they state: from the Oceanside community of [T]he technical media are Pacific Palisades through relentlessly forced into uniformity. Brentwood, Bel Air, and Beverly Television aims at a synthesis of Hills to Hollywood (Schmidt 2004, radio and film. [I]ts consequences 148). will be quite enormous and The German exiled James Schmidt promise to intensify the impoverishment of aesthetic refers to counted Theodor W. Adorno matter (Adorno 1989, 124). 1 I would like to thank Volkan Çidam for his outstanding teaching on Marx. Without his diligence I could not have written this article. FORMA. REVISTA D’ESTUDIOS COMPARATIUS //VOL 16 FALL 2017 // ISSN 2013-77 53 SOLANGE MANCHE // FOSTERING STRATEGIES OF RESISTANCE, 53-65 In the renowned chapter of their 1944 independently from each other” (165), work, “The Culture Industry”, from and the manner in which the products which the previous quotation is taken, get exchanged. Because the working Adorno and Horkheimer seem to process is more and more atomized, the despise popular culture quite severely. only significant social interaction that Indeed, in his Aesthetic Theory, Adorno people undertake takes place during the makes a clear distinction between the exchange process, whereby the normal high and the low arts, a categorization social relations of production that is also found, although not referred themselves become obscured. The latter to by using the same categorical terms process certainly also holds true for the in “The Culture Industry”. Even if this culture industry. However, the cultural paper will mostly look into the product has another dimension, because opposition between the culture industry it can express something and convey a and the arts that emerges from Adorno message. The cultural product does not and Horkheimer’s consideration of the only hide social relationships between culture industry in Dialectic of men because of the way it is produced Enlightenment, the terms of high and low and exchanged, but also intentionally art will be used as an additional way to hides “social reality” (124) in order to refer to the distinction. The divide maintain the hierarchy based upon the between “low art, [or] distinction between “the dispossessed” entertainment” (Adorno 2002, 240) and and “the people at the top” (121) who the high arts, in Dialectic of Enlightenment are the industrialists. Adorno and can be solely understood to be based Horkheimer, in order to show how upon the way entertainment is cultural products legitimize social produced: in industrial fashion. Indeed, hierarchy, analyze standard film plots the technology of the culture industry and come to the conclusion that they [led to] no more than the achievement propagate the illusion that being in a of standardization and mass production position of power, and the possession (121), whereby culture became an of riches is largely a matter of chance industry like any other industry under obtained by “winning a prize” (146) or capitalism. However, the culture marriage, whereby, the person in this industry, by producing commodities advantageous position cannot be held that can be the vehicle of messages, like responsible neither be contested. Thus films, makes products that can be, and in a similar manner to the commodity are intentionally, endowed with Marx speaks of in Capital, the cultural powerful qualities of deception. The commodity also does not portray social term of commodity as used by Adorno relations justly. and Horkheimer should be understood like Karl Marx describes it in his Capital. Adorno, in his Aesthetic Theory, accords great importance to what he calls the In the first chapter of his magnum opus, truth content of art. “The truth content Marx explains that the commodity of artworks is fused with their critical “appears as [an] autonomous [figure] content” (Adorno 2002, 35). As Michael endowed with a life of [its] own” (1982, Kelly confirms it, the question of art 165), whereby the “relation between for Adorno is above all a question of people” that the object encompasses “how art can best realize its truth “takes on the character of a content and thus its capacity for thing” (Lukács 1971, 83). The critique” (Kelly 2007, 100). In contrast appearance of products as being to the high arts, entertainment, detached from any social interaction is according to Adorno, does not dispose, due to both the way an object is being as he demonstrates in “Culture produced, by “individuals who work Industry”, of any truth content. On the 54 FORMA. REVISTA D’ESTUDIOS COMPARATIUS //VOL 16 FALL 2017 // ISSN 2013-77 SOLANGE MANCHE // FOSTERING STRATEGIES OF RESISTANCE, 53-65 contrary, he repeatedly refers to it as the rumpled sheets, and detritus untruth. Seeing a distinction between including cigarette ends, condoms, the high and the low arts based upon desiccated apple cores, the way they are produced or their contraceptives, a used tampon, a ability of offering social critique, child’s toy, vodka bottles and dirty however, seems quite an irrelevant knickers (Fanthome 2008), position to be taking in the 21st century. by exhibiting, as the title indicates, her Contemporary art, broadly dated from own bed. Emin’s work is self-reflective the 1950s onwards, presents many cases upon very intimate and private matters. of artworks that are produced in It does not concern itself, overtly, with industrial fashion and do not engage in larger societal questions. The work in direct social critique. Andy Warhol is a itself is a ready-made: a mass-produced perfect example of an artist who item exhibited in an art space. Thus, adapted intensive modes of production both Warhol’s and Emin’s work contain that he retrieved from the media elements which are found in Adorno’s business, and even called his studio the view of the culture industry and low art. factory. The efficiency of taking Warhol’s Judging upon the previously discussed practice as a way to prove that Adorno’s features of the art works, it could be categorization of high and low art do concluded that both do not deserve the hold anymore is indeed doubtful, for it name of art. Simply trying to determine has to be acknowledged that Adorno whether we should call something art or also views the new to be a quality of the not is likely to reveal more about the high arts. preferences of the categorizer than High art, according to Adorno, about the artwork or object itself. distinguishes itself from the culture Therefore, it might be more fruitful to industry by continuously challenging depart from another consideration that itself in finding new forms of aesthetic can be distilled from Adorno and expression. Indeed, Warhol’s manner of Horkheimer’s text, which looks at the production was quite revolutionary in relation between a cultural product and the art world at the time. However, its audience or spectator and its trying to determine which one has more subsequent effects. It is in this view that weight on the other, the mode of Emin’s and Warhol’s work will be production or challenging to find new reconsidered later on. forms of expression, in order to classify Warhol, does not bring its appreciation any further. In addition to which, it is debatable whether his work was intended as a controversial critique of the popular media. The imitation of its style and fascination for celebrities, however, makes it impossible to deduce from his art itself whether it was or not intended ironically. Tracey Emin’s work My Bed, firstly exhibited in 1999, ! expressed the aftermath of a Fig. 1. Tracey Emin, 1998. My Bed2. relationship break-up, with dirty, 2 Emin, Tracey. 1998. My Bed. Tate Modern, London. Source: Wikipedia, posted 24 July 2011, accessed, 08 January 2015,
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