H O M E E X H I B I T I O N S G A L L E R Y M A N I F E S T O A R T  T H E O R Y L I N K S

ARMANDO ALEMDAR - A DIALECTICAL PHILOSOPHY OF ART INTRODUCTION “Whenever I meet students they ask me the same question. Can art change society? In one sense the answer is obvious. Art has changed society just as technology has, and plague has and accident has and politics has...Most art may not change very much. But the idea of its potential to do so gives it powerful allure.” 1 It is not as a playwright but as a painter, living and trying to practice my craft in England, that I face an unexpected problem that reflects the ongoing debate in academic circles concerned with art history. The problem? Formalist modernity as opposed to Post-modernity, in non-artspeak language, narrative and object versus concept and subject matter. For the British to say that modernism is dead does not mean a lot because modernism in the visual arts never actually lived to the full in Britain. However it thrived in Europe in the last century. British patrons were slow to patronise the new art from the continent. Paradigms of modern art (not the same as Modernism) like Picasso, Mondrian, Kandinsky and Dali - a quartet of European artists who spent a lot of time in the Louvre- never found a single counterpart in Britain.2 On the other hand British culture was receptive to Post-modernist ideas welcoming and developing American Pop art in the sixties. British conceptualist art of the 1970's was the beginning of an evolution of artistic thought and ideas that has made Britain a commercial centre of artistic activity in the late 20th century. And it is as a painter that I want to study artist's mores and their position in Britain in view of the fact that we are living in a society impervious to if not derisive of high art. Although Leonardo’s Mona Lisa still smiles when she muses on all the many transformations - not to say defacements - she has permitted modernism, for the purpose of our study we are drawn to the Dali Gioconda, a Marxist vampire, sporting Dali’s waxed mustache and clasping a handful of surplus profit. (her admirers’- including the paradigms of modern art mentioned above - entrance fees to the Louvre) [Dali’s portrait as the Mona Lisa after Leonardo Da Vinci, photograph by Phillipe Halsman, 1973] For Post - modernists Leonardo’s Lady Lisa became a symbol of their modern idea when she posed for the cover of New Yorker [February 8th 1999] (plate I) wearing a Monica Lewinsky mask. Could we surmise that recent art history from Dali and Duchamp to Andy Warhol and post-structuralism is ear - marked by the disguises the queen of the Louvre has worn in the last forty years to the ongoing masquerade of art history. As art is at one and the same time the reflection and cognition of life it seems to me that there are at least two stances for the artist to assume; succumb to Post-modernist values or like Edgar Allan Poe's sailor, after careful observation as he sank into the maelstrom to understand the nature of the vortex and thus be carried out by the same spiral that sucked him down.3 An intriguing question surfaced in my painter's mind - could it be possible to paint the narrative and use it as a way out the Post-modern abyss. William Frederick Hegel and Karl Marx gave me clues ( the former could be the hidden spirit of modernism, the latter the body in which the spirit of modernism dwells). Initially I thought that if the role of art and the artist in a society could rest on Marxist philosophy linked with Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Art, the paradox implied by the two German philosophers names could be resolved and an understanding of what a Marxist vision could have meant for art emerge. From my painter's perspective the Marxist vision broadened the horizon of my investigation. I decided to adopt a philosophical approach to our subject in the appropriate ontological conditions. Many avenues of inquiry appear such as the relationship of the work of art to the public; whether there is such a thing as progress in art and of course, whether there can be such a thing as progress in society. Does human thought evolve progressively; can art really change society? By linking Hegel, art and Marx the subtle but crucial role of art in social relations and society can be revealed. We will become aware that art is not neutral, even when it is a modernist art for art's sake work, which has been produced in particular social environmental conditions and for particular reasons. Art reflects, transforms and changes life regardless of whether we acknowledge in post - structuralist terms that representation of life is real. What happens to the artist and his art when separated from life and inaccessible to so-called ordinary people? This is indeed a social issue. The application of Marxist theory to answer this question provides more fruitful clues. With the unique exceptions of impressionist and post-modernist art, since 500BC art has aspired towards beauty and an ideal, affirmed and absolute. This aspiration compatible with Hegelian theory would be questioned by Marxism which would want to know about the material conditions that provided the spring board. Art affirms and philosophy envisages a general view of progress and development as a part of a process, style in art, dialectics in Hegelian and Marxist philosophy that requires time for the organic evolutionary process. Even for Karl Marx communism could never have been an end, but a starting point toward man's greater humanity. Although we know the names of many architects and sculptors in ancient Greece, these craftsmen as they preferred to see themselves, worked together to build a temple or a carve a statue to acknowledge the Idea.4 Such humble creativity did not involve ego. The artist was not important but the work of art everything, fashioned anonymously for the gods, imbued with cultural traditions. In the 20th century, media hype is responsible for the shift in focus of attention from the work of art to the artist, creating the super artist like a Picasso or a Dali who’s works are less known than their personal lives. As Suzi Gablik observes: "Just how successful the strategy of estrangement has been in liberating the artist from becoming yet another commodity - producer - of - of aesthetic "goods" - or in establishing any real alternative to the corporate value system, is open to question, since...most of that art is ambivalent all the way through."5 It is generally assumed that Modernist art in the western world is not only different from art from other parts of the world but also superior. Unfortunately, correct as this assumption may be, it has problematical implications because the iconography and symbolism of modern art is diametrically opposed to the politically correct aesthetic of today's society. Can the artist be socially concerned even if his art is indifferent? As an individual, is the artist part of society? The modernist artist as delineated by Clement Greenberg could not integrate himself and his art into society because he was isolated. The isolated condition of today's artist could be a part of the dialectical processes necessary to change our material conditions. Gen Doy in Materialising Art History gives an example of the unfolding of dialectical processes in art history. "...Dada itself negated its own nihilism by drawing attention to itself as a cultural movement with a body of theory and practise thereby negating its own attempts to destroy culture. Similarly we could see such a process in certain aspects of Pop art where high art is challenged and negated by images of popular mass culture, only for this new Pop art to enter the domain of high culture, the museum, gallery and art market.6 If the hypothesis of a history of styles is accepted it must be embedded in a dialectical materialist postulate identifiable in sociological terms although one believes, like Hauser, that dialectical processes are not necessarily inherent in all natural and historical phenomena but are an eternal struggle between truth and ideology. As we re-postulate the philosophical thought of Marxism, Frederick Jameson aside7 we will investigate its apparently inconceivable relationship to the post-modernist movement Although Jameson detects as well as investigates the farcical post-modern conditions in which a supposedly socially concerned work of art is born, we will dare to imagine that the rage today against the grand narrative is but one more dialectical stage in the material processes of man and society. Whatever the implications of Marxism within the social and cultural framework, one important factor remains. Karl Marx has provided us with an invaluable theory to further the understanding of the meaning of art and its role in an evolving society. BACK   FORWARD