Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 13:19:53 +0100
From: Daniel Haines <daniel-AT-tw2.com>
Subject: Re: art/capital


John Appleby wrote:

> 'True art, which is not content to play variations on ready-made models but
> rather insists on expressing the inner needs of man [sic] and of mankind in
> its time - true art is unable not to be revolutionary, not to aspire to a
> complete and radical reconstruction of society'.
> 
> 'If, for the development of the forces of material production, the
> revolution must build a socialist regime with centralized control, to
> develop intellectual creation an anarchist regime of individual liberty
> should from the first be established. No authority, no dictation, not the
> least trace of orders from above! Only on a base of friendly cooperation,
> without constraint from outside, will it be possible for scholars and
> artists to carry out their tasks, which will be more far-reaching than ever
> before in history'.
> 

hi john,

so where do you stand in relation to this view of revolutionary art?  

to me it seems to offer an idealistic and "bourgeois" view of art, the
view of art as the expression of a subject,  and to assign it a
political possibility which the subject itself is denied within
contemporary society.  i don't have a problem with the idea that art is
- by definition - the making of new models/ the remaking of the world,
but i wonder why, within "capitalist axiomatic", we attribute a
radicality to this?  However, I would argue that with the "expressive"
subject (rather than the divine, or the genius as a transcendent
attribute)  placed at the center of the creative, art is effectively
recuperated within capitalism and requires only the addition of more
axioms to neutralise any of it's potential radicality.  

any thoughts on this??


dan h.
-- 
"...musicians must substitute for the limited variety 
of tones posessed by orchestral instruments today 
the infinite variety of tones of noises, reproduced 
with appropriate mechanisms..." 

	Luigi Russolo, 'The Art of Noises' (1913)