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A Dark Art For A Dark Time - Wps
A Dark Art For A Dark Time - Wps
'If works of art are to survive in the context of extremity and darkness which is
social reality, and if they are to avoid being sold as mere comfort, they have to
assimilate themselves to that reality. Radical art is the same as dark art.' (T. W.
Recently [1985], I visited an exhibition held in a local church publicizing the work
concerning political prisoners and torture. The texts describing torture were the
most disturbing and upsetting; the photographs were less powerful and, least
disturbing of all, were the paintings. This exhibition set me wondering what the role
and value of artworks was in relation to such an issue. Is it possible for art to depict
At first sight the idea of combining aesthetic pleasure with scenes of death and
torture seems obscene and contradictory. And yet, depictions of Christ dying in
agony on the cross have been central to Western European art for centuries; they
have been objects of worship. We also know from the existence of sadism and
masochism that pleasure and pain are not mutually exclusive entities in human
experience. However, is the effect of such art to aestheticize human suffering and
thus make it slightly more tolerable? Can a work of art depict suffering in such a
way that its reality is communicated to the viewer? But if this can be done, would
not the compassionate viewer turn away in horror and disgust as they might from
witnessing the real event? And if a work of art produces a sense of disgust, will not
Adorno and Marcuse - on the question of art and suffering one finds that the
autonomy of art is often stressed. (I would rather say relative autonomy because if a
fundamentally uninvolved in suffering ... the autonomy of art tends to diminish the
scope of suffering' (Aesthetic Theory). Marcuse makes a rather different point: 'a
representation of the most extreme suffering still contains the potential to wring out
enjoyment ... Art cannot represent suffering without subjecting it to aesthetic form,
So, it would seem the relative autonomy of art necessarily imposes a distance
from reality: an image of torture is not the same as actual torture. This
encourage indifference or voyeurism, while on the other hand it may permit critical
illusion representations - such as horror movies strive to close the gap between
representations and their referents. When a horror film succeeds in this aim, the
audience can no longer bear to look at the screen. Modern art generally eschews
production and its artifice. Modern representations of pain are, therefore, often
highly stylized. Picasso's 1937 Woman Weeping is a case in point. This painting, it
seems to me, will not cause any viewer to cry in sympathy with the depicted
character. The angular shapes and distortions of the woman's face certainly signify
unhappiness but the viewer's emotions are not stirred and manipulated as they are
human pain and its pictorial depiction. In the case of Picasso this seems a healthy,
positive achievement, whereas in the case of Roy Lichtenstein's war comic images it
art can play in modern society a compensation for the stress and banalities of
everyday life, art as comfort and consolation. Matisse's refusal to deal with the dark
after a day's work exemplifies this attitude. (Though T.J. Clark's Open University
video on Matisse argues that there are tensions and conflicts underlying many of
one-sided account of human experience. As Adorno once put it: 'dissonance is the
truth about harmony'. In contrast, Francis Bacon's work suffers from the opposite
fault. And there is something disturbing about the success of his work: why do
wealthy people want as wall decoration suave, elegant, gold-framed images of blood
and pain, one wonders?
However, in spite of their recognition that art elicits enjoyment from suffering,
the Frankfurt School were not in favour of artists avoiding such subject matter.
Indeed, Adorno has remarked: 'it would be better for art to vanish altogether than
to forget suffering ... suffering is the humane content of art'. (Aesthetic Theory). And
Marcuse has commented that while the horror portrayed in Goya's etchings of war
Civilization).
So, horror and suffering are made visible and preserved in works of art. In this
way they are memorialized and, for as long as the works exist, they testify to the
brutality of the human species. A case in point are the drawings and paintings
effective source of knowledge about the world: today we tend to rely upon the
news media and scientific and social studies. And yet, in this instance, art supplies
a unique kind. of knowledge: the value of these works - over 2,000 done by non-
professionals long after the event - is that not only do they provide objective
information about the effects of atomic bombs, they also supply a subjective
detached and clinical to capture these feelings. (See Guy Brett's account in Art
Guernica is perhaps the most famous depiction of war in the modern era. It is a
twentieth century history painting prompted by a fascist air attack on an
undefended Spanish town. Max Raphael, in his book The Demands of Art,
discusses the discord of form and content in Guernica but his essay begins with
'The objective style of historical painting that served as a vehicle for ideas
had become inadequate because new powers had arisen to dominate both society
and the individual - capitalism and technology. Technology put to capitalist uses
led to a new alienation of man from himself and from his group, an alienation
that could not be overcome but only camouflaged by hollow concepts of nation,
freedom, equality, etc ... Behind all these masks a transformation took place in
confronts his fellow man but, rather, the abstract powers of money and the
machine, powers which serve his progress only for a time, the better to destroy
new powers which have degraded mankind to mere material and have elevated
bombs to the metaphysical status of a new omnipotent devil; at all events, no such
Despite his respect for Picasso's imagination and creative powers, Raphael
judges Guernica a failure. However, his analysis is an internal one. What he does
not consider is the role the mural-scale picture played in publicizing the
destruction of Guernica, the fact that it was exhibited in various European cities
and in the USA where it served as a rallying point, a focus for anti-Franco
campaigns. In this way it helped to raise money and support for the Government
cause. This suggests that a work of art's social and political value cannot be
representation for artists: the sheer scale of destruction and pain a nuclear war
depict nuclear war and its aftermath. Peter Watkins' film The War Game (1965)
banned from TV for so long, was a notable pioneering venture in this genre. And
atomic explosion is probably the commonest image. Even Andy Warhol has
across the canvas it becomes progressively darker and darker. Thus it depicts the
elimination of light and life from the planet Earth. Guy Brett has rightly criticized
this representation for its fatalism and political immobility. One could also add that
most mushroom cloud images imply an external vantage point, that is, the
viewpoint of a distant observer who may indeed be the pilot who dropped the
bomb!
Kennard points out in his Photo-montage video, posters of mushroom clouds are
sold in print shops as bedsit decor. Like skulls and skeletons as emblems of death,
the mushroom cloud is a visual cliché. Its potential for communicating the reality
of the nuclear holocaust has, in my view, been exhausted. Artists who continue to
use such symbols argue that they constitute a language familiar to the public and
communication is vital - but there comes a time when no one attends to tired
rhetoric.
For apocalyptic visions of the last moments of mankind one has to turn,
paradoxically, to pre-atomic age images such as John Martin's The Deluge (1834)
or The Great Day of his Wrath (1852). It is only in such extravagant confections that
These paintings once seemed absurd fantasies; today, they appear increasingly
plausible.
disintegration of matter. To see Pollock's work in this new way certainly alters
one's view of its significance and meaning. Yet there is no directive towards
Another instance of the link between beauty and war are the decorative
embellishments found upon swords and armour. Our ancestors, it would seem,
thought nothing odd about beautifying their implements of killing. And, of course,
one should not overlook the aesthetic appeal of military uniforms, badges, flags,
were carried to their ultimate conclusion in the Nazi party rallies at Nuremberg
during the 1930s. (The phenomenon of 'mass ornament' was analysed by Siegfried
Modern military weapons are not usually ornamented. This is because they
obey the modernistic engineering dictum 'form follows function'. Even so, beauty is
submarine in John Heskett's book Industrial Design indicates: 'The organic form of
the nuclear powered USS Ray is the manifestation of a functional harmony with its
Heskett's book discusses some weapons of war but most texts on the history of
Consumer goods, such as typewriters and automobiles, have been studied by them
ad nauseam. It is time they paid some attention to the design of weapons of war,
systems of surveillance, riot control, instruments of torture, and so forth. All these
items are designed by somebody even if they are not 'name' designers. Design
In the writings of the Frankfurt School, art's relationship to radical political praxis
is a constant problem. Adorno saw modern art's social value precisely in its
independence, its refusal to perform utilitarian tasks, in its very uselessness. For
Adorno, making authentic art was in itself a practice of resistance and protest
irrespective of political content and political intervention. The problem for me, with
this formulation, is that it seems to imply that art cannot contribute positively to
political struggles. Perhaps one can call the pursuit of art without political
active resistance.
Let us take a swift glance backwards. For most of history artists have been
dependent upon the rich and the powerful for patronage. It is hardly surprising
therefore that artists have, until recently, glorified and celebrated the rich and the
powerful. And this celebration included their countless wars of conquest and
subjection. Since the advent of the modern era, artists have enjoyed greater
independence. They can now decide to align themselves with the exploited rather
than with the exploiters, with the victims or war rather than with the victors. They
can even decide to criticize militarism - as George Grosz and Terry Atkinson do -
rather than to glorify it. British official war artists no longer find it possible to
glorify warfare and to identify wholeheartedly with their country's forces, hence the
Falklands conflict.
Today, humankind at last faces the possibility of a war to end all wars. A war
which will mean the end of the human species including, one is gratified to note, the
question. And if art cannot even contribute to its own self-preservation then it
hardly deserves to survive. But, regretfully, I have to report that in Britain meetings
of groups like 'Artists Support Peace' attracted a tiny response and no major 'name'
Some tribute ought to be paid here, however, to Peter Kennard who has
demonstrators of the Greenham Common Women, and to Brian Barnes for his
At this point I would like to return to the issue of aesthetic pleasure. No one is
way
as to give pleasure to the viewer. This suggests that the aesthetic pleasure
associated with art can be used as a positive factor. I will cite two examples from
States there is a section on the minutemen missiles hidden in grain silos in the mid-
West, the breadbasket of America. By the poetic use of language, music and
images Anderson makes this somewhat dry information vivid and memorable. In
Frankie goes to Hollywood's Two Tribes song/video (by Godley and Creme) the
cockfight between the aged leaders of the USA and the USSR. Of course, it is
difficult to estimate what effect such records and videos have - whether they reach
the already converted, whether they are consumed merely as entertainment. But
equally we should not assume they have no persuasive effectivity.
A continuing weakness of British art history is its ignorance of the history of the
discipline itself, the achievements of its European founders. If one considers the
intellectual project of an art historian like Aby Warburg for example, what is
civilization from its images.' (E. Gombrich's Aby Warburg). Warburg conceived of
his atlas of images - a late visual display called Memory - and his library and
research institute (now part of London University) as 'a receiving station that
registers the give and take between past and present … that can thus assist us in
I should explain that Warburg was fascinated by the pathos formula in art,
that is, the ways in which powerful expressions of emotion are represented. And
between impulse and action. The gap allowed time for reflection in which we could
bring our primitive impulses to kill or rape under control. Interestingly, Warburg
was worried by the inventions of telephone and telegrams because they threatened
to destroy the distance upon which civilization relied. And now we live in an age of
computers with almost instant reaction times. In the command centres of the USA
and the USSR, military decision are based upon computer information, computer
Warburg has become a reality. If the computers detect a missile attack, is there
now time to check that an attack is actually taking place, or does the response
have to be immediate? The irony of nuclear war is that the human species will
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This article is a revised version of a talk given at the AIR Gallery in London in
Disarmament). The article was first published in the art magazine Aspects, (32)
Spring 1986.