NOTES after supervision and some reading..
Maybe something on
How could we or have we used arts to represent resistance? (Is represent the wrong word? Mobilse, develop, interrogate)
Look at work in the past 6 months:
Student
March 26th
June 30th
NSSN
or
In what ways does arts raise class conciousness?
Maybe focusign on class, consumption of arts or use of art ?
See Peierr Boduire..
Maybe look at work of one artists?
Suz Muna
Dennis Rudd
Read art as a weapon
http://libcom.org/history/art-weapon-frans-seiwert-cologne-progressives-martyn-everett
Surrealist manefesto..
The art of interruption - john roberts
Photography turned experience of working class into authenticity rather than expressions of class conciousness.
lieterature and art
ReplyDeletehttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/1965/10/26.htm
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pdOCq1Xqg0MC&pg=PA72&lpg=PA72&dq=art+and+working+class+consciousness&source=bl&ots=WywBkGUlPL&sig=N-YaAaEHG4J7c3kVNlMyHBVC9RA&hl=en&ei=V0ocTsCLEMOHhQeD1eCwBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCIQ6AEwATgU#v=onepage&q&f=false
art, alienation & Humanities
Class struggle, art and censorship
ReplyDeletehttp://pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/class-struggle-art-censorship.html
A number of well-known political artists and anti-war veterans gathered outside of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles on Jan. 3 to protest the white-washing and censorship of an anti-war mural created by Italian street artist Blu in early December.
The mural depicted coffins of soldiers with dollar bills draped over them instead of flags; a clear representation of the imperialist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: soldiers sent to the battlefield to die while corporations and the rich profit. The exhibit was part of an initiative taken by MOCA to promote “street art.”
According to MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch, the mural would have offended or misrepresented a nearby VA hospital and a war memorial to Japanese American veterans.
The actions taken by MOCA cannot be seen as anything but censorship. A recent poll taken by CNN shows that 60 percent of people in the United States are against the war in Afghanistan. This is an all -time high and clearly shows the rising anti-war sentiment in the country.
Leon Trotsky
ReplyDeleteCommunist Policy Toward Art - 1923)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/art/tia23.htm
Trotsky speaches!
ReplyDeleteLeon Trotsky
Class and Art
Culture Under the Dictatorship
(May 1924)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/05/art.htm
art and class struggle - alan woods speech
ReplyDeletehttp://www.marxist.com/ArtAndLiterature-old/art_and_class_struggle.html
It is a fact that one of the first serious indications of the emergence of our species, homo sapiens sapiens, is the existence of art, that is to say in a concrete expression of aesthetic sense. This theory has recently been disputed because of the discovery of certain artefacts belonging to a pre-human species - Neanderthal Man. These undoubtedly show a certain aesthetic quality. But what we have here is not yet art - only the embryo from which art could develop.
As a matter of fact, it is possible to argue that such elements exist in other animal species, even in some of the lower species. For example, the Bower bird builds what you could call architectural structures, which are not nests. They apparently have no practical function whatever, and the birds that build them decorate these structures with extraordinarily elaborate compositions. They select certain combinations of colour which you might argue indicate the presence of an aesthetic sense even in these birds.
But in fact, the structures of the Bower bird are not useless; they are in fact very practical structures. They are constructed by the male of the species in order to attract the female. In other words, they are for the purpose of mating. And one can find similar phenomena throughout the animal kingdom. Usually it is the male that dresses up in gaudy colours to attract the female who tends to be rather unattractive in most cases. But in any case, there is a fundamental difference between these cases which are found in many species and human art. These activities in lower species are instinctive, they are genetically determined. In this case, specifically for the purpose of mating.
Art as a form of communication
Surrealisms revollutionary heart
ReplyDeletehttp://www.socialismtoday.org/120/manifesto.html
They met in Mexico, 1938. Leon Trotsky, co-leader of the Russian revolution, André Breton, cofounder of the surrealist movement, and Diego Rivera, revolutionary Mexican artist/activist. Together, they formulated the Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art. Trotsky, in exile and hunted by Stalin’s agents, was the main author, Breton and Diego its signatories. On the 70th anniversary of the Manifesto, MANNY THAIN looks at the significance of this collaboration.
Leon Trotsky and the Art of Insurrection 1905-1917, Frank Cass, London, 1988, pp158
ReplyDeletehttp://www.revolutionaryhistory.co.uk/rh0301/insurr.html
"This is a fascinating and most disturbing book, disturbing because it is written by an American army colonel who appears to be a good deal more aware of the problems of Socialist insurrection - a key aspect of Leon Trotsky's thought - than the vast majority of those who call themselves Trotskyists. The author has used the Russian edition of Trotsky's Collected Works, published in 12 volumes in Moscow between 1925 and 1927 and cites these references, which makes crosschecking with the far more limited English and French language material available to this reviewer difficult. Essentially the work divides into three: firstly and most novel to me, Trotsky's rôle in the debates among revolutionaries after 1905 about the tactics necessary to overcome the Tsarist army, involving the complex and subtle interaction of politics and military technique; secondly, the comments and analyses on the Balkan wars and the First World War of Trotsky the brilliant journalist; and finally an account of the way in which Trotsky mobilised and commanded the Bolshevik seizure of power - all clearly and well written in less than 200 pages."
Trotsky – Literature and Revolution
ReplyDeletehttp://artisticactivism.org/2009/03/trotsky-literature-and-revolution/
"Leon Trotsky, from Literature and Revolution, 1924 trans. Strunsky reprinted in Art in Theory: 1900-2000. ed. Harrison and Wood pp. 443-447
“To reject art as a means of picturing and imaging knowledge because of one’s opposition to the contemplative and impressionistic bourgeois art of the last few decades , is to strike from the hands of the class which is building a new society its most important weapon. Art, it is said, is not a mirror, but a hammer: it does not reflect, it shapes. But at present even the handling of a hammer is taught with the help of a mirror, a sensitive film which records all movements. Photography and motion-picture photography, owing to their passive accuracy of depiction, are becoming important educational instruments in the feild of labour. If one cannot get along with mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one reconstruct oneself or one’s life, without seeing oneself in the ‘mirror’ of literature? Of course no one speaks about an exact mirror. No one even thinks of asking the new literature to have a mirror-like impassivity. The deeper literature is, and the more it is imbued with the desire to shape life, the more significantly and dynamically it will be able to ‘picture’ life.” p. 443"
http://www.gfxworld.ws/index.php?/news/comments/art_and_revolution_ernst_neizvestny_and_the_role/
ReplyDeleteJohn Berger, "Art and Revolution: Ernst Neizvestny and the Role of the Artist in the USSR"
TINA MODOTTI: LIFE, ART, AND REVOLUTION
ReplyDeletehttp://bak.spc.org/luna-nera/gillian/tina_modotti.html
"Tina Modotti was an artist whose photographs, above all, captured the lyrical beauty inherent in shape and structure. Her eye for planes, lines, curves and shadows, together with her recognition of the importance of the void, or space, in a composition, make her work - from portraits to still lifes - unique.
Modotti’s oeuvre is not large; she could, it may be argued, be seen as primarily a neophyte, since she gave up her work during the political tumult of the 1930s - gave it up just as she had achieved true independence of vision, and greatness was within reach.
Tina Modotti sacrificed her work to the times she lived in; driven by fervent anti-fascism, she became a tireless worker for the Communist cause. Perhaps inevitably, the relentless infighting, factionalism and revanchism ground her down. Urged to work for the Party, Modotti’s artistic photographic work was scorned and she was advised to take a photojournalistic approach. Instead, she lay down her cameras, and continued to work for what was, to her and many others living in the shadow of Hitler, Franco, Mussolini and their host of imitators, the only hope of social justice.
Tina Modotti was a woman whose physical beauty and much-remarked gentle charisma made her an object of admiration and curiosity for men and women alike. Her affairs were legendary, especially when viewed in the context of the 1920s. Having gained her first taste of public attention portraying dusky exotic femmes fatales in Hollywood, Tina Modotti seems destined to have played the same role throughout her own life."
Manifesto
ReplyDeletefor an Independent Revolutionary Art
Signed: Andre Breton and Diego Rivera
http://www.marxists.org/subject/art/lit_crit/works/rivera/manifesto.htm
We can say without exaggeration that never has civilization been menaced so seriously as today. The Vandals, with instruments which were barbarous and comparatively ineffective, blotted out the culture of antiquity in one corner of Europe. But today we see world civilization, united in its historic destiny, reeling under the blows of reactionary forces armed with the entire arsenal of modern technology. We are by no means thinking only of the world war that draws near. Even in times of ‘peace’ the position of art and science has become absolutely intolerable."