[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 62, Issue 15

[John Haber]

I feel like I learned a lot today.  Saul Ostrow's post was particularly
dense and astute.  I see it as asking one to see art from more than one
perspective.  It can simultaneously be personal and in a social context,
intrinsic and instrumental, even though these values may operate by
excluding one another.  One can't necessarily privilege one as the good
side, the other as the dark side.  The bad news is that the personal can
be self-indulgence or "bourgeois individualism," and the social can be
complicit with a repressive present.  The good news is that the personal
can be refusal and the social can be engagement. 

Davin Heckman's idea that it's the critic's job to make these choices
has a definite appeal, since that allows the artist to make the
requisite messes, as he says, and since even the artists I dislike the
most rarely have dubious motives.  Besides, it gives contributors to a
discussion like this something to do.  It's probably not an answer
either, but at least it starts a discussion. 

He also asks if there's anything especially damaging or novel in the
present, thanks to capitalism.  On the face of it, no.  Art that sucks
up to tyranny of the past doesn't sound any less troubling.  If past
social, economic, and political orders were likewise torn, so that art
could embody their promise, that would apply today, too, it would seem. 
One problem might be success:  it's gotten harder in the last generation
for art to claim any kind of refusal, because art has new audiences and
higher financial stakes.  That's probably flawed, too, though:  the
growth in patronage in the Renaissance doesn't seem to have set art
back.  Or another problem might be the terms and mechanisms of success
now.  It's harder to speak of refusal when capitalism thrives by
absorbing rather than repressing expressions of refusal, and conversely
it's harder to speak of success when the terms of broader success
include more and more struggling artists.  (There's a parallel to
success in the market economy co-existing with greater inequality.) 
That could be opportunity, too, if it means a greater opportunity to
exploit the proverbial cultural contradictions of capitalism. 

It's intriguing that the news today is Deitch's appointment in LA,
polarizing people as to whether it shakes up art roles in a way that's
overdo or rewards existing roles in the interconnection of a glib MBA
with a taste for glitz and a client in Eli Broad.  He could overspend on
installations, whereas his predecessor had overspent only on
infrastructure (and Thomas Krens or the New Museum would overspend on
both), and it's hard to figure out which is worse. 

I don't know and should really just shut up for a few days at least and
go home.  On Yeats and the quarrel with oneself as opposed to with
others, though, there's another version -- Frost's "lover's quarrel with
the world."  Since capitalism (or any of its rivals in other countries)
is not going anywhere tomorrow, my sympathy is for artists, audiences,
and dealers who keep thinking and feeling anything. 

John
http://www.haberarts.com/