Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/materializingartOOOOdoyg Materializing Art History Materializing Culture Series Editors: Paul Gilroy, Michael Herzfeld and Danny Miller Barbara Bender, Stonehenge: Making Space Laura Rival (ed.), The Social Life of Trees: Anthropological Perspectives Tree Symbolism Materializing Art History Gen Doy Oxford • New York First published in 1998 by Berg Editorial offices: 150 Cowley Road, Oxford, 0X4 1JJ, UK 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012, USA © Gen Doy 1998 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berg. Berg is an imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1 85973 933 4 (Cloth) 1 85973 938 5 (Paper) Typeset by JS Typesetting, Wellingborough, Northants. Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King's Lynn. Dedicated to Av and Liz, Mary and Ruth ... with love and thanks for all the time you've spent with me. Contents Acknowledgements ix List of Figures xi Introduction 1 1 Marxism and Dialectical Materialism 11 2 A Social or a Sociological History of Art? 45 3 A Social or a Socialist History of Art? 7 5 4 How is the Personal Political? 105 5 Concretizing the Abstract 173 6 Marxism, the Postmodern and the Postcolonial 203 Conclusion 257 Select Bibliography 261 Index 267 VII Acknowledgements Thanks to the staff of De Montfort University Library, especially the staff in the inter-library loans section. I am also grateful to the Research Committee of the School of Arts and Humanities, De Montfort University, for funding to help with the costs of photographs and permissions. I have attempted to contact all the copyright holders. However I was not always successful. If there are any who would like to contact me, I would be happy to rectify omissions. I am greatly indebted to Adrian Lewis for his meticulous reading of my manuscript and his very helpful comments, and to my editor Kathryn Earle at Berg Publishers, who was her usual efficient and cheerful self throughout the production of this book. I was helped enormously by the Pat Hearn Gallery and the Jack Tilton Gallery, New York, who lent me slides of Lyle Ashton Harris' and Renee Green's work. Marie-Cecile Miessner sent me material I needed from France, for which, as always, many thanks. Grateful thanks too to Lucy Marder and her successor at Jersey Museums, Louise Downie, for all their help with material on Claude Cahun. Very many thanks to David King for sending me a photo of Zina Bronstein from his collection, and to Helen Kornblum, for kindly allowing me to reproduce a Modotti photograph. Martin Richards lent me some of his collection of books on left politics and culture for which I am, as always, grateful. I am also indebted to Paul Mason and Keith Hassell for help with information about Ernest Mandel and various aspects of Marxism, politics and culture in the twentieth century. Special thanks to Pete Challis for finding me a new computer at a crucial stage in the preparation of this book. Throughout the book any words in square brackets are my additions to quoted texts. Finally, thanks and love to my sons Sean and Davey for giving me some peace to get on with preparing and writing this book. I am a very fortunate parent. IX ;P" List of Figures 1 Degas, Leaving the Bath, ca.1882, etching 12.5 x 12.5 cms State 5, Cabinet des Estampes et de la Photographie, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. 2 Cahun, Poupee 1, September 1936, photograph, 20.5 x 15.5 cms, Jersey Museum. 3 Cahun, Self-Portrait, photograph, ca.1921, 10.9 x 8.2 cms. Private collection. 4 Cahun, Untitled, photograph, 1932, 9 x 7.5 cms, Jersey Museum. 5 Modotti, Yank and Police Marionette, gelatin silver print photograph, 23.5 x 18.5 cms, 1929, Helen Kornblum collection. 6 Modotti, La Tecnica, gelatin silver print photograph, 23.5 x 18.5 cms, 1928, Museum of Modern Art, New York. 7 Still from Zina, director K. McMullen, 1985, British Film Institute Stills Library. 8 Photograph of Zina Bronstein, ca.1931, David King collection, London. 9 Cremonini, The Compartments, oil on canvas, 97 x 146 cms, Bologna, Raccolte Comunali, photo Witt Library. 10 C. Beaton, photo of Model in front of Pollock Painting from Vogue, 3.1.1951, 24 x 18.5 cms. Courtesy Vogue. Copyright 1951 The Conde Nast Publications Inc. 11 Malevich, Black Suprematist Square, oil on canvas, 79.5 x 79.5 cms, 1913-15, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. 12 Van Gogh, A Pair of Old Shoes, oil on canvas, 37.5 x 45.5 cms, 1886, Stedelijk Museum Vincent Van Gogh, Amsterdam. 13 Warhol, Diamond Dust Shoes, synthetic polymer paint, diamond dust and silkscreen ink on canvas, 229 x 178 cms, 1980, The Andy Warhol Foundation. Photo copyright the XI xii List af Figures Andy Warhol Foundation, Inc./Art Resource, N.Y., and permission from Design and Artist Copyright Society, London. 14 Renee Green, Revue, Mixed media installation, 241 x 638 x 36 cms, 1990, Courtesy Pat Hearn Gallery New York. 15 Renee Green, Revue, Mixed media installation, 241 x 638 x 36 cms, (detail) 1990, Courtesy Pat Hearn Gallery New York. 16 Lyle Ashton Harris, Toussaint VOuverture, Duraflex colour print 40.5 x 50 cms, 1994, photo courtesy of Jack Tilton Gallery. 17 Lyle Ashton Harris, Venus Hottentot 2000, Duraflex colour print 40.5 x 50 cms, 1994, photo courtesy of Jack Tilton Gallery, New York. Introduction As I write this introduction, I exist in a society whose leading cultural theorists and news media invite me to situate myself in the 'new world order' and accept the demise and disintegration of Marxism. No doubt my readers will be in the same position, since they are likely to encounter this book in one of the countries positioned within the dominant imperialist economies of the world. Some readers conversant with postmodern theoretical writings may also be wondering why I am addressing them resolutely in the first person from a conscious authorial position as an individual subject, when the death of the author and the individual subject in history, society and psychic space have been proclaimed. As will become clear in this book, I accept neither of these arguments, so will not be speaking/writing as "I". Why then am I engaged in a project to re-examine social histories of art and re¬ formulate a Marxist approach to the study of culture, since the Marxist method has apparently been proved disastrously wrong, and the existence of an imperialist 'new world order' self-evident? Can't we all conclude from what we see and hear daily that a new world situation exists, demanding new theoretical approaches and shifts within our understanding of ourselves and our position within contemporary society, culture and politics? The terms postmodern and postcolonial denote new cultural, economic and political formations which apparently require a revision, in part or perhaps in totality, of previous oppositional theoretical approaches to culture and its historical development. It will be my argument in the course of this book that Marxism, far from being proved inadequate and flawed by the events of twentieth century history, still provides the best methodological framework from which to understand culture and its living historical development. Indeed I will argue that the Marxist strand within 'the social history of art' needs to be retrieved and refocused. I want clearly to distinguish, 1 2 Materializing Art History and distance, Marxism from Stalinism. I will also be attempting to show how various figures and theoretical approaches within the non-Stalinist left contributed to a tradition of Marxist analysis of visual culture. I want to examine what Marxism actually is, what its theoretical method entails, and what the relationship of Marxism was and is to the rise of Stalinism and the collapse of the bureaucratically controlled societies of Eastern Europe in the period after 1989. I will seek to show that Marxism had very little to do with these societies after the late 1920s, hence their collapse cannot be regarded as a proof of Marxism's failure. However it is also important to recognize that the Marxist tradition itself has suffered serious setbacks, and that organizations throughout the world which seek to continue and refocus the political theories of Marxism are themselves fragmented and split. Of course Fascism and Stalinism played a significant part in this disintegration, but material, objective factors such as physical violence, isolation, and legal and political persecution were not completely responsible. Errors by the Marxist left and failure to grapple with new problems and developments thrown up by imperialism in its modern phase since the end of the Second World War cannot simply be blamed on adverse material conditions in which political and cultural theoreticians and activists of the left must operate. I will also be considering weaknesses in Marxist thought which need to be addressed, for example, the lack of a Marxist theory of the human subject. Throughout this book I will be arguing that conscious thought plays an important role in historical events, whether cultural or political. Marxism argues that both objective (material circumstances) and sub¬ jective factors (human consciousness) interact in historical and social change. When material circumstances are overwhelmingly unfavour¬ able to Revolution, no amount of subjective will by small numbers of people can change this.