Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 02:14:10 -0400
From: ostrow-AT-is2.nyu.edu (Ostrow/Kaneda)
Subject: Re: Beuys and the political assessment of art


, it
>doesn't really apply to Beuys, nor to poetry, nor even philosophy (vide
>Heidegger...).  You'll have extend your explanation beyond mere assertion,
>why is it that Beuys by taking up the themes of mysification can not
>partake off a project that is substantially Fascist in content?  as does
>Elliot,  Pound, Benn etc. I'm sorry but other than Heidegger himself and
>Paul DeMann I can not think of any philosophers who aligned their thught
>to such an aesthetic.
>Apart from that (and the fuzziness and unhistoricity of your definition
>of "fascism" (I wonder what a left' fascism might be?)),
I know that we in the States are not meant  to know much history but again
I would ask you to demonstrate where my analysis of Fascism is un-historic.
Such a statement proposes that my discription of fascism a Revolution from
above, as nationalistic, as romantic, proposing to resolve conflict by a
system of mediating cartels, etc does not correspond to not only the theory
but the practice of fascism.

As to left wing Fascism , we have the  S.A. better known as the brown
shirts, fromwhence national socialism derived its name.

 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?

The question here is obviouisly the nature of the society that one is being
reconciled to. There is also a problem here in that I do not think I spoke
of art but of aesthetics.
 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)

 For example:  Art may also be viewed as the means to  resists  or provide
an alternative to erzats quality of Mass Culture.  If for a moment we  view
High Art in general and vanguard art in specific  as the maintance of a
system of values that the  bourgeoisie has abandoned and yet are of still
of significance both socially and aesthetically  art may be seen as
functioning as both a model for  forms of dissent as well as  a means of
consciousness raising. In  this schema, the consciousness Art induces is
produced by and  in turn produces a  desire for the authentic.
Idealistically it is  believed that this consciousness because it is
capable of grasping the authentic within its changing forms, will
contribute to  overcoming the alienation and abjectification that is
produced by the material conditions of Capitalist society.  Such an art
need not be explicitly political but only implicitly so. As a matter of
fact art that political morality at least under the present terms of
Western culture tends to make not very good art and  nor significan
politics, for it  tends not ot provide a signifcant analysis of its own
ideological premises nor  propose alternatives, it tends to function only
reactively. It also tends toplace the viewer outside of the decision making
process.


 If you apply this
enlightenment rationality to art, however, you might want to align every
art to the political bad guy, that is fascism.

Once again I would have to correct you, there are other bad politics that
do not constitute Fascism, I am not one of those who naively apply that
term to anyone whose politics are not to my liking. Fascism is a specific
political formation and ideology, it connotates something other than a mere
conservatism either politically or aesthetically.

To be continued......





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