Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 03:12:48 +0200 (MES)
From: Ulrich Brinkmann <ule-AT-zedat.fu-berlin.de>
Subject: Beuys and the political assessment of art


In reply to Ostrow/Kaneda, Mon, 27 May 1996 11:22:47 -0400, on the 
fascism of Beuys:
The basic point of your argument seems to be the following: 
"Susan Buck Morse in discussing Benjamin's  statement
concerning 'aesthetics and politics', points out that the goal   of 
fascist aesthetics is to anestheicize the individual's experience of 
everyday life, therefor subsuming and dis-orientating them"
This might certainly be true of the fascist mass events, however, it 
doesn't really apply to Beuys, nor to poetry, nor even philosophy (vide 
Heidegger...). 
Apart from that (and the fuzziness and unhistoricity of your definition 
of "fascism" (I wonder what a left' fascism might be?)), I detect in your 
line of argument a certain position about what the function of art might 
be. The function of art seems to be, in your view, that of either 
realigning the individual to society via an offer of compensation (bad, 
fascist), or else to -- what? To make conscious the social alienation and 
fragmentation the individual is subject to? This would mean to categorize 
art along a conscious vs. unconscious, or rational vs. mythic line. The 
trap is probably the attractiveness of political morality, which assigns 
to rationality a positive value (perhaps rightly so). If you apply this 
enlightenment rationality to art, however, you might want to align every 
art to the political bad guy, that is fascism.
Of course the situation is complicated because the political' is never 
just that -- i.e., the political retains some functions of religion, 
which in turn lost some of its ground to art. Another point of attraction 
of political metaphors in analyzing art, then, seems to be the easy way 
of translating the cultural problematics of the function of art and 
politics into a rationalist-humanist agenda. That connection, however, is 
in my view outdated and hasn't much helped to either find proper answers 
to political problems (like the Frankfurt School cultural analysis of 
fascism hasn't actually helped solve the problem of the lack of 
rationality in politics but only helped to maintain a high-cultural point 
of view on these matters) nor very much helped in the analysis of what 
might art be (or how to make art -- or what to make of art).

So, I'd hail Alistair Dickinson in his questioning of the usefulness of 
the fascist epithet and ask: what do we gain if we call Beuys -- or is it 
Beuys's art? -- fascist? 

What seems to be so interesting about Beuys is that he uses political 
concepts for an art which is not only the medium but also tries to 
control the discourse around the medium. This non-political approach to 
political mythicisms of today is not in itself bad, but might be. It is 
just that a rationalist critique does not help very much. Calling Beuys' 
art fascist implies a lot of prejudic-ions which rather serves to 
establish a received morality than to find criteria by which to assess 
the political impact of art.


Ulrich Brinkmann                                         "War was?"
                          ** ule-AT-zedat.fu-berlin.de **             privato:
Freie Universitaet Berlin    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^   Fon: +49-30-615 76 78
Berlin, Germany                         Waldemarstrasse 48,  D-10997 Berlin
WWW:        **    http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~ule   **




     --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---