06.02.2014
Art: Postmodernism, fetishism and Marxism
Libertarianism is no substitute for a Marxist critique, writes Rex Dunn, as the racist chair controversy continues to rage
In his article, ‘Bondage and bigotry’ (January 30), Paul Demarty leaves me “bemused” - just as he was by recent events in the International Socialist Network. Demarty appears to substitute a libertarian argument for a Marxist one on the subject of art and fetishism and its broader implications. This is because he chooses to engage - uncritically - with a still pervasive postmodern discourse.
As an art theory, the latter seeks to justify the neo-dadaist’s desire to shock people; not as a means to critique bourgeois art-for-art’s-sake, but in order to inflate the value of such ‘work’ as exchange value. This replaces aesthetic value or the intrinsic worth of the art object as a thing-in-itself, which then has the possibility to distance itself from prosaic reality, as a means to critique the latter in its own terms. (Hence it is easier to justify as art objects modernist works as diverse as Matisse’s idyllic paintings or Heartfield’s political photomontages.) Whereas the problem with a lot of contemporary art is that the individual work is short on both creativity and aesthetic labour; therefore it is not able to stand in its own right - ie, as an autonomous art object; it can function equally well as a ready-made commodity; its status is enhanced by the use of shock effects. This is one reason why a lot of contemporary art is regarded as an exchange value, beloved of Russian oligarchs et al (at least as long as these shock effects remain potent; the problem is that sooner or later they become passé; hence it loses its market value, as Damien Hirst has discovered in recent years). At the same time, ‘art works’ such as Hirst’s pickled animals or Allen Jones’s Chair (see below), require a lot of labour on the part of the art theorist/critic in order to justify their existence in aesthetic/ intellectual terms.
Postmodernism may be described as the fag-end of modernism, which ends up in the camp of subjective idealism and full-blown obscurantism. It is a reflection of the ubiquitous spread of commodity fetishism, which is the hallmark of an increasingly obscene late capitalism. In objective terms the role of postmodernist theory is to provide an intellectual fig leaf for a decadent bourgeoisie, however flimsy.
Therefore, as a Marxist, I am obliged to take issue with Demarty’s article. To this end, I have divided my critique into three main areas of disagreement. Firstly, he blurs the distinction between art (which by its very nature is ambiguous) and discourse (which is unambiguous or should be!) Secondly, like the Russian avant garde in the 1920s, he adopts a sectarian - authoritarian - attitude towards any criticism of the contemporary art scene. By so doing he resorts to the methodology of slander, such as describing any critique of, say, art depicting aspects of BDSM as ‘reactionary’ and even worse. Thirdly - and most importantly - he fails to realise that the whole question of fetishism sits uneasily (to say the least) with Marx’s theory of alienation, which has its origins in his early writings and is fully developed in Capital.
Art and discourse
Demarty informs us that “The main thrust of Jones’s sculptures is a playful reference to the fetish and BDSM scene … the pieces are bound up ... with the contemporary ‘sexual revolution’.” That “the use of humans as furniture ... is a documented sexual fetish, known as forniphilia”. He then defers to The Guardian’s art critic, Jonathan Jones, who suggests that the sculptor, Bjarne Melgaard, “in making the [woman depicted as furniture] black, means to retoxify the art of Allen Jones, to offend people with an image long accepted. The intention is the opposite of racist: it is to question power and representation. Are you offended by this black woman’s abuse? Then why is it OK for white women to be similarly humiliated in a respected pop art icon in the Tate collection?” Indeed!
Demarty’s logic seems to be: question one form of abuse by replacing it with another. That’s OK! Continuing with his theme of white, privileged, middle class artists’ obsession with the “sexual revolution” and race themes, he moves onto American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s images of naked black men as sexual objects - for the delectation of others: Now “blackness itself is the fetish which is somehow more troubling than the enjoyment of inflicting and receiving pain [ ? ]. Mapplethorpe’s black nudes - which are technically impeccable [ no argument there! ] and, yes, hot [ ! ] - trouble our complicated consciousness of race because they make explicit its link to the murky imperatives of human sexuality” [ ! ]. Melgaard’s sculpture crudely beats one over the head with this problem, and its relationship to racism is problematic (in the way that Ku Klux Klan propaganda is not).”
Demarty’s problem here is that he fails to acknowledge the fact that one cannot compare political discourse - either from the left or the right - which is unambiguous - with art, which is always ambiguous. As a result, in the case of Melgaard’s and Mapplethorpe’s respective works, they are in danger of merely reinforcing racism and sexism, especially among those who might see these works, but have not got the time, inclination or expertise to read the voluminous texts that must accompany them as a sort of health warning for the minority who are familiar with postmodern discourse.
Demarty is at least prepared to admit that Melgaard’s Chair is “bad art”, but only because it is “derivative”; not because its meaning is highly ambiguous - dubious in fact - and must be clutched back from the conclusion it might be racist and sexist by means of strenuous argument. I assume that Demarty is motivated by a nebulous notion of artistic freedom. But please don’t labour the fact that the value of work such as Melgaard’s is determined by its primary role as an exchange value, not by its aesthetic qualities, which are virtually nil!
Authoritarian
What follows next in Demarty’s article is reminiscent of the Russian avant garde in the early 1920s. Not only were they famously criticised by Trotsky in a series of articles, later published in his book, Literature and revolution. But by the end of the 1920s they were hoist by their own petard at the hand of Stalin’s art commissars, who now decreed their own version of what official Soviet art would be like: ie, it would revert to a traditional form, soon to be known as ‘socialist realism’ (although it was neither socialist nor realist). Thus the brief era of experimental art, along with a flourishing avant grade, came to a tragic end. Many of the artists disappeared into the gulag, never to be seen again. For those who wished to survive, the imperative was that art must serve the state - or else.
But before this happened the avant grade were free to advocate their own prescriptive view of art, which became increasingly sectarian and authoritarian. ‘Down with art’ was their battle cry, the implication being that art must become part of production in order to ‘change life’ directly; otherwise it is socially useless. (But this was a utopian idea, as Trotsky was quick to point out, although he defended their right to their own point of view, as well as to practise experimental art.) Yet for the avant garde, anyone who defended bourgeois art, in particular the notion of art-for-art’s-sake, was a reactionary, perhaps even a counterrevolutionary. Therefore their art should be suppressed.
In today’s context Demarty adopts the same attitude. This includes the methodology of ‘guilt by association’, which has more to do with Stalinism than a defence of artistic freedom: “… to declare Melgaard’s chair as ‘just racist’,” he opines, “is reactionary philistinism” on a par with Mary Whitehouse. The “image of domination must necessarily map onto a desire to degrade and dominate outside the fantasy of the sexual fetish - which more or less rules out BDSM, practised and enjoyed by a significant fraction of the human population, altogether ... I cannot describe this attitude as other than ignorant, sexually conservative bigotry, worthy of a Ukip councillor, but not a socialist [ !! ].”
In full flow, Demarty goes on to his pièce de résistance: such “strident moralism and the idea that the privileged need to be ‘educated’ by the oppressed [ ie, black people and women ] are the deflected products of the worship of the Cultural Revolution”. Therefore any anti-racists or feminists who dare to criticise Melgaard’s celebration of ‘forniphilia’ is under the influence of American Maoism!
Alienation
At no point does Demarty consider that advocacy of ‘art and fetishism’ might be problematical for Marxists. As I understand things, from a very early stage, for Marx the phenomenon of fetishism is synonymous with alienation. This happens when the social side of human beings is transformed - it reappears as a characteristic of the property of things; these things now appear to be endowed with social or human attributes.
Marx started with the example of religious fetishism. Historically man has suffered, both physically and mentally, from his struggle against the material conditions of nature and society, which can only be alleviated by inventing a god or gods. On this basis, by means of labour by hand and brain, man creates religious fetishes, which he then allows to exercise power over him. Man feels impelled to worship these figments and objects which spring from his imagination; otherwise there is no possibility of relief from his suffering; this is human self-alienation, stage one.
As we all know, Marx uses this explanation for the rise of religious fetishism as a model for the fetishism of commodities in Capital. As Lucio Colletti points out, it encompasses “the whole history of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labour on the basis of commodity production. Marx makes it clear that the ‘veil’ is not added by bourgeois interpreters of the ‘social life-process’ ... but belongs to this process, which therefore appears to political economy as what it really is” (introduction to Karl Marx: early writings London 1973, p38).
The same applies to art theory, it would seem! I see a parallel here with sexual fetishism. It arises from the fact that the effects of alienated labour are reinforced by commodity fetishism, which penetrates every pore of human life; especially in an age when this is also the basis of the mass reproducibility of the image; concretely the ubiquitous spread of the entertainment industry or what Adorno calls the ‘culture industry’, whereby sex as a commodity to be bought and consumed, along with the pornography of violence, play a dominant role.
Of course, not all entertainment is mindless and habit-forming; neither does it naturalise our alienated existence necessarily; sometimes entertainment can also make us think about the reality of our existence: the fact that we often treat each other as things, including parts of our bodies, which are separated from the person: ie, in the private and intimate aspects of our life.
The 1976 Japanese film, Ai no corrida (In the realm of the senses), is a case in point. It is based on the true story, set in the 1930s, about an obsessive sexual relationship between an inn-keeper and a geisha (his social inferior). Nevertheless, the geisha falls passionately in love with the man, which is underpinned by the fact that she can only escape her life of poverty and insecurity if she is able to persuade her lover to leave his wife and marry her. But social class and a rigid social code are against her. As the tension mounts between them, the inn-keeper sends her off to service the sexual needs of a retired teacher. The motive might have been to get rid of her or to make some extra money. Whatever. Instead the old man introduces her to sexual fetishism. A bit of harmless slapping, etc, appeals to her, partly as a means to alleviate her frustration. She also realises that it could be a way to prolong her relationship with the inn-keeper. When she returns to her lover, she soon persuades him to assume the role of the teacher, as a consensual victim within the confines of BDSM.
As a result their relationship becomes more and intense, more obsessive, in defiance of social reality. Thus a relationship which originated as straightforward carnal love between a man and a woman becomes transformed by means of sexual fetishism. This latter behaviour begins to transcend everything. However, there is no way out of this cul-de-sac and so it ends in tragedy. In her desire to prolong her orgasm - and to delay that of her lover - the woman resorts to strangulation of her partner. One day she goes too far - but he also appears to have a death wish - and he ends up dead. Grief-stricken, the woman cuts off his penis and carries it around with her - the ultimate sexual fetish. In this instance, one is reminded of Freud’s theory of Eros and Thanatos; it could also be argued that here also his theory of Civilisation and its discontents is played out on a personal level.
Libertarian
It seems to me that, wittingly or not, comrade Demarty has opened up an authoritarian, unambiguous space for degrading images of one’s fellow human beings, by means of a libertarian discourse in defence of ambiguous art, which in this case is highly dubious and invites criticism, certainly by readers of this paper. Such a response is spurred on by the photograph which accompanies his article. It shows the oligarch’s young ‘moll’ nonchalantly sitting on the aforesaid chair.
Thus Demarty suggests a strange affinity with a member of the Russian oligarchy, including his much younger girlfriend, who is also (probably) a sort of patriarchal ‘pet’. He fails to see that the ‘work’ of art in question is more like a commodity of exchange than an art object, redolent with aesthetic qualities. Thus he blurs the relationship between Marxism and humanism, which is Marx’s starting point as an intellectual and revolutionary, from which he never wavers. Where would Marxism be without humanism? Answer: it would be bereft of its raison d’être, which is the struggle to abolish ‘inhuman, unsocial man’ in favour of ‘human, social man’.