2Moksha re;re;Rest in peace, Lionel Hampton.
Hey Michael–
Thanks for the warm words. Total solidarity with your action over in UK…. I hadn't thought of those abstract expressionists in that way before; I want to see that side of Stuart Davis and Clement Greenberg now, esp. since I'm not really familiar with either in the first place. My favorite militant expressionism type artist is Basquiat by far…not only were his paintings great, but he brought graffiti (the way I got into 'art' and text) into the cultural spotlight, even if briefly. Maybe it's more of that awareness-is-a-trend type behavior of those who consume art.

Only isolated political pieces that come to mind that have had enduring respect in our cultural memory in the West are like- Guernica, some of the Dadas and 'degenerate art' in general… I dunno; sometimes it feels like the power of those pieces has endured not so much because of their militancy, but because of mitigated elements of redefining art, etc. Not to shoot down those works by any means.

Pop art–especially in the big guys like Warhol–seems to be the most mature and complicated 'political' art to me, in that it shows the breaches of political society on our very minds…

_Directly_ militant art? None of the above names seem to come close (except Basquiat). Spray it on a wall–it will demand about as much attention as if it was in a gallery, and will last in popular memory for about as long. Moreover, non-art types will see it. Acknowledging that your art will be destroyed within the week is a powerful influence on the expressive faculties/sensibilities.

…that is, it leaves no room for bullshit.


–Vijay

>Hi Vijay
>I've been relooking at your site - I think it's great
>-so visually striking- i really like that lo fi ( but
>not in any way hackneyed) quality
>I entirely agree with your defence of militancy - I
>spent the first ten years of my working life doing
>agit prop theatre - now my work is less explicitly
>political ,my life if anything more so - currently
>involved in support work for striking firefighters
>here in the UK ,plus coalition against the war stuff.
>(It's interesting how political commitment gets
>written out of the art historical record- So many of
>the abstract expressionists made political work prior
>to ww2; Stuart Davis whose work looks like an amazing
>precursor to pop art was a union activist and politico
>and (god help us) -even Clement Greenberg was briefly
>a Trotskyist.
>I'm entirely for straightforwardness, for humanism,
>for an art that somehow ( maybe at quite a remove)
>addresses our desire for a decent and equitable world.
>best
>michael
>— Vijay Pattisapu <disco@junglist.com> wrote:
>> Militant stuff gets old in the art world. So it gets
>> old, period. So justice just gets out of style, I
>> guess. People like that savvy, subtle style (I have
>> to admit I'm degenerating into one of these
>> weasels), and those who try hard to convey an
>> honest, direct message that's not packaged for the
>> artist-artsy community aren't very well received.
>> Many of my friends hate Rage Against the Machine the
>> band, because, as they say, 'they only talk about
>> one thing!' I say so what, they got millions–you
>> heard me right–millions (they went platinum several
>> times!) of American kids into politics. That's more
>> than constantly re-evaluating the form of art has
>> been doing lately, anyway. While political art may
>> not be 'artistic' according to academic aesthetic
>> theory etc., it has a strong place that shouldn't be
>> brushed aside. Political cartoons. That picture of
>> the naked Vietnamese girl running from US troops in
>> a napalm-carved out village. Bush's warm, reassuring
>> smile on TV. Those little!
>> yellow aid packages dropping with the little yellow
>> bombs over Afghanistan. This is art, this is
>> imagery, this is infectious. Though it may not be
>> obvious to the intellectuals, the art is in its
>> application rather than its form–its gallery, the
>> world. There are more and more places where politics
>> is a joke…there are more and more places of
>> injustics and complex situations to analyze. It's
>> not a dumb resistance to oppression. Artistic
>> intelligence is a strong tool that shouldn't be
>> discarded, and when that touch of charisma is
>> adopted into the art, it shouldn't poison everything
>> into cowardice, leaving it as a huge farce of
>> pseudo'existential' despair.
>>
>> Nobody will see your tears through their own.
>>
>>
>> An example of what I said not to do:
>> http://www.2moksha.com
>> -Vijay
>>
>>
>>
>>
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