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TWO

9.5 Theses on Art and Class

1.0 Class is an issue of fundamental importance for art.

1.1 Inasmuch as art is part of and not independent of society, and society is marked by class divisions, these will also affect the functioning and character of the sphere of the visual arts.

1.2 Since different classes have different interests and “art” is affected by these different interests, art has different values depending on from which class standpoint it is approached.

1.3 Understanding art means understanding class relations outside the sphere of the visual arts and how they affect that sphere as well as understanding class relations within the sphere of the visual arts itself.

1.4 In general, the idea of the “art world” serves as a way to deflect consideration of both these sets of relations.

1.5 The notion of an “art world” implies a sphere that is separate or set aside from the issues of the non-art world (and so separates it from class issues outside that sphere).

1.6 The notion of an “art world” also visualizes the sphere of the visual arts not as a set of conflicting interests, but as a confluence of professionals with a common interest: “art” (and so denies class relations within that sphere).

1.7 Anxiety about class in the sphere of the visual arts manifests in critiques of the “art market”; however, a critique of the art market is not the same as a critique of class in the sphere of the visual arts. Class is an issue that is more fundamental and determinate than the market.

1.8 The “art market” is approached differently by different classes; discussing the art market in the absence of understanding class interests serves to obscure the actual forces determining art’s situation.

1.9 Since class is a fundamental issue for art, art can’t have any clear idea of its own nature unless it has a clear idea of the interests of different classes.

2.0 Today, the ruling class, which is capitalist, dominates the sphere of the visual arts.

2.1 It is part of the definition of a ruling class that it controls the material resources of society.

2.2 The ruling ideologies of society, which serve to reproduce this material situation, also represent the interests of the ruling class.

2.3 The dominant values given to art, therefore, will be ones that serve the interests of the current ruling class.

2.4 Concretely, within the sphere of the contemporary visual arts, the agents whose interests determine the dominant values of art are: large corporations, including auction houses and corporate collectors; art investors, private collectors, and patrons; and trustees and administrators of large cultural institutions and universities.

2.5 One role for art, therefore, is as a luxury good, whose superior craftsmanship or intellectual prestige indicates superior social status.

2.6 Another role for art is to serve as financial instrument or tradable repository of value.

2.7 Another role for art is as a sign of “giving back” to the community, to whitewash ill-gotten gains.

2.8 Another role for art is as a symbolic escape valve for radical impulses, to serve as a place to isolate and contain social energy that runs counter to the dominant ideology.

2.9 A final role for art is the self-replication of ruling-class ideology about art itself—the dominant values given to art serve not only to enact ruling-class values directly but also to subjugate, within the sphere of the arts, other possible values of art.

3.0 Though ruling-class ideology is ultimately dominant within the sphere of the arts, the predominant character of this sphere is middle class.

3.1 “Middle class” in this context does not indicate income level. It indicates a mode of relating to labor and the means of production. “Middle class” here indicates having an individual, self-directed relationship to production rather than administering and maximizing the profit produced by the labor of others (capitalist class) or selling one’s labor power (working class).

3.2 The position of the professional artist is characteristically middle class in relation to labor: the dream of being an artist is the dream of making a living off the products of one’s own mental or physical labor while being fully able to control and identify with that labor.

3.3 A distinctive characteristic of the visual arts sphere, therefore, is that it is a sphere in which ruling-class ideology dominates, and yet it is allowed to have an unusually middle-class character (in fact, it is by definition middle class—the “art world” is defined as the sphere that trades in individual products of creativity rather than mass-produced creativity).

3.4 In part, the middle-class character of the visual arts relates to 2.5–2.8 above. From a ruling-class perspective, it is beneficial to promote the example of middle-class creative labor for a variety of reasons.

3.5 Nevertheless, the middle-class perspective on the value and role of art is not identical to the ruling-class one; artists have their own way of relating to their labor and consequently their own value for “art.”

3.6 The middle-class value of art is double-sided: on the one hand, “art” is identified as a profession, as a desirable means of support.

3.7 On the other hand, “art” is identified as self-expression, as a manifestation of creative individuality (whether that is expressed through a specific style of craftsmanship or as an original intellectual program; art-theory debates about the importance of the hand of the artist or “studio” versus “post-studio” production displace this more fundamental and structural sense in which the sphere of the visual arts preserves individuality).

3.8 Two permanent contradictions therefore dominate the sphere of the visual arts. The first contradiction is between the fact that the visual arts are dominated by ruling-class values but defined by their middle-class character.

3.9 The second contradiction is internal to the middle-class definition of “art” itself, which is split between notions of art as profession and as vocation and therefore comes into contradiction with itself at every moment where what an artist wants to express runs into opposition with the demands of making a living (in a situation where a minority dominates most of society’s resources, this is often).

4.0 The sphere of the visual arts has weak relations with the working class.

4.1 The working class here is defined as consisting of those laborers who are compelled to sell their labor power as a commodity to make a living and therefore have no individual stake in their labor.

4.2 There are many links to the working class in the visual arts: gallery workers, anonymous fabricators of artistic components, nonprofessional museum workers, and so on. Most artists are themselves employed outside the “art world”—the dream of having fully realized middle-class status remains aspirational for most people who identify as “artists.”

4.3 Still, the form of labor at the heart of the sphere of the visual arts, the production of artworks, remains middle class—far more so than most other so-called creative industries.

4.4 One consequence of this predominantly middle-class character is the visual arts’ approach to dealing with the social and economic contradictions that it faces. An individualized relation to labor means that middle-class agents tend to conceive of their ability to achieve their political objectives in individualistic terms, with their social power deriving from intellectual capacity, personality, or rhetoric (it is this reality that is behind the displacement of the discussion about art’s contradictions onto considerations of the “market”—a construct in which free individuals enter into economic relations with one another—rather than considerations of “class,” a concept that implies fundamental, opposing interests that go beyond the individual).

4.5 On the other hand, because being a member of the working class involves being treated as an abstract, interchangeable source of labor, the working class’s ability to achieve its objectives depends much more on its ability to organize collectively. This is a form of resistance that is difficult to achieve within the sphere of the arts (all talk of an “artists’ strike” remains satirical outside a situation like that of the 1930s government art support in the United States, where artists are employed as a bloc).

4.6 Because the ruling structure of society is capitalist—that is, the exploitation of wage labor to maximize profit—the working-class position is actually closer to the core of society’s functioning than that of the middle class; middle-class workers, by the very nature of their semi-independence, have only the ability to shut down their own production, whereas an organized working class can directly affect the ruling class’s interests.

4.7 The specific nature of the working class suggests its own relation to the concept of “art,” distinct from either capitalist or middle-class notions.

4.8 On the one hand, one working-class value of art is determined by the reality of “creative industries,” in which creative laborers are employed who have a working-class relation to the products of their expression; that is, they produce creative products not as an expression of their individuality but simply as a task. Viewed from this angle, “art” is demystified—it is not a uniquely exalted form of expression but simply one more human process that is the subject of labor.

4.9 On the other hand, inasmuch as working-class labor is controlled from above, the ideal of “art” might also represent a form of labor that is opposed to the demands of work, as freely determined expression, whether private or political. Viewed from this angle, art is deprofessionalized and in this sense is actually more “free” than the middle-class ideal of personal-expression-as-career.

5.0 The idea of “art” has a basic and general human sense on which no specific profession or class has a monopoly.

5.1 “Art,” conceived of as creative expression in general, can be seen as representing a function as basic as exercise or dialogue and a need only slightly less fundamental than eating or sex (“slightly less fundamental” because the question of creative expression comes after simple survival—you must first secure food before you can think of cuisine).

5.2 Conceived of in this way, every human activity has an artistic component, an aspect under which it can be viewed as “creative.”

5.3 However, in any given historical situation, some forms of creative labor are valued over others; some types of labor are considered more exalted, others less so.

5.4 Which of the various forms of labor are considered truly “artistic” on their own is governed by the present ruling class [2.2], which presides over the dominant relations of production and by this means has influence over both the character of non-artistic “labor” and the value of “art,” as well as the intersections between them.

5.5 However, the general artistic impulse does not simply vanish in the face of its specific historical determinations; insofar as a basic sense of art as creative expression exists, humans also have a certain day-to-day creative investment in their labor, since all labor is the creative transformation of matter or life.

5.6 On the other hand, insofar as the general impulse toward creativity is cramped and thwarted by the demands of a specific historical setup, there exists the impulse to escape these and express freely outside of them.

5.7 Because “art,” in the sense of general creative expression, is a basic impulse, no class has a monopoly on it; however, the organic worldviews of different classes can be closer or farther from expressing the possibilities of its general realization.

5.8 Both ruling- and middle-class worldviews preclude the idea of “art” as general human expression: the ruling class because it defines the value of art according to the interests of a narrow minority; the middle class because its interest involves defining creativity as professional self-expression, which therefore restricts it to creative experts.

5.9 The working-class perspective, then, can be seen to reflect the most organic contemporary conception of generalized creative expression (even if circumstances don’t always allow this conception to be developed or expressed)—“art,” in this light, is at once a subject of labor just like any other [4.8] and opposed to the alienation of the present-day labor process [4.9]. It is therefore implicitly free of any professional determination and common to all (though this aspect, in the present ideological setup, is often channeled into middle-class creative aspirations—which can itself be seen as one of uses of the “art world” for the ruling class [2.8 and, following from this, 2.9]).

6.0 Because art is part of society [1.1] and because no single profession has a monopoly on creative expression [5.0], the values given to art within the sphere of the contemporary visual arts will also be determined in relation to how “creativity” is manifested in other spheres of contemporary society.

6.1 “Art” in common parlance has a double meaning: It designates creative activity in general and represents work that circulates within the specific tradition and set of institutions of the visual arts; thus, something can be “art” (that is, creative) but not be “Art” (that is, not fit within the visual arts sphere), or something can be “Art” (that is, can be easily classifiable within the sphere of the visual arts) but not be “art” (that is, not be particularly creative).

6.2 Contemporary visual art therefore has a paradoxical character: It is a specific creative discipline that arrogates to itself the status of representing “creativity” in general (when someone says that he is professionally an “artist,” he is often both trying to indicate that he works within a certain set of traditions and institutions and implying that his labor has a certain especially creative character).

6.3 This overlap stems from the middle-class character of the contemporary visual arts—the middle-class perspective being precisely the one in which one’s investment in creativity in general overlaps with one’s professional identity.

6.4 However, equally paradoxically, contemporary visual art, as opposed to every other type of creative labor (music, film, acting, graphic design, cake decoration) has no specific medium—that is, no specific form of labor—attached to it; when you say that you are an “artist,” you imply nothing about the specific character of your work (contemporary art, in this way, is a kind of reductio ad absurdum of the idea of creative individuality).

6.5 This lack of definition is in inverse proportion to the extreme hyper-definition of labor in a variety of other contemporary creative industries—video games, film, and television all involve creative labor employed on a massive, impersonal, and very specialized level.

6.6 Because capitalist relations of production are the dominant relations of production and these other “creative industries” are more fully organized around capitalist production, they also have a more central importance to contemporary society—they are at the center of innovation, investment, and public attention on a level with which the sphere of the visual arts cannot by itself compete.

6.7 Nevertheless, while it cannot compete with these industries, contemporary art takes on its significance in relation to them—while they represent creativity tailored to capitalist specifications, the sphere of the visual arts generates its cachet precisely as the sphere in which individual quality and intellectual independence are preserved (in much the same way that politicians avoid talking about the working class by talking endlessly about the importance of the middle class, an exaggerated intellectual significance is given to the importance of the middle-class “art world” to escape the reality of the extent to which contemporary creativity is dominated by impersonal industry).

6.8 The visual arts, in relation to visual culture or culture in general, thus finds itself with few stable paths. It can attempt to merge with these other, fully capitalist creative spheres, but only as a junior partner—it does so at the cost of giving up its reason for existing as a separate, privileged sphere at all, which is that it represents autonomous creativity not directed by the pure profit motive.

6.9 On the other hand, contemporary visual art also faces a dilemma if it does not engage with other, more dominant creative industries; in that case, its audience becomes narrowed to only the very rich and those who have the privilege to have been educated in its traditions, which makes clear the narrow horizon, and, consequently, lack of freedom within which this supposedly free form of expression maneuvers.

7.0 Art criticism, to be relevant, should be based on an analysis of the actual situation of art and the different values at play, which are related to different classes [this point simply draws the conclusion, for criticism, of 1.9].

7.1 Art criticism is itself a middle-class discipline, based on norms of individual intellectual expression; since relevant art criticism involves analysis of the actual class situation of art, it involves transcending purely subjective, individual, professional opinion.

7.2 However, transcending purely “subjective” criticism does not imply the false “objectivity” of art criticism that imposes a philosophical or political program on art; this sort of scholastic criticism equally implies a middle-class perspective (often one based in the academy), insofar as it advances a purely abstract, intellectual program and fails to address the actual social situation of the visual arts (for example, simply insisting that art “be political” without seriously analyzing for whom or to what ends “political art” is directed actually reinforces the framework of individualistic, professional expression).

7.3 Acknowledging that contemporary art has a middle-class character is not the same as denouncing the sphere of the visual arts for “petit-bourgeois decadence”; one must judge art in terms of the contradictory values given to it by competing class interests, which in part means recognizing the sphere of the visual arts as a significant repository of legitimate hopes for self-expression. Insofar as contemporary society thwarts or distorts self-expression, the urge to follow one’s own creative path can itself be a political impulse.

7.4 However, the middle-class character of the visual arts does mean that this sphere is faced with certain dilemmas [see, for instance, 3.8, 3.9, 6.8, 6.9] that cannot be resolved within that sphere itself as it is currently constituted [4.5, 4.6]; a realistic and effective critical worldview starts from this standpoint.

7.5 Artistic quality is not something that can be judged independently of questions of class and the present balance of class forces because different classes have different values for art that imply different criteria of success [see theses 2, 3, 4].

7.6 Insofar as different class influences are at play in the visual arts, an artwork is never reducible to one meaning; quite often, artworks amount to compromises, attempting to resolve a number of different influences into a single artistic formula (a work might, for instance, be executed in a style that is attractive to art collectors, but also attempt to put an original professional signature on it and at the same time express some type of sincere political solidarity).

7.7 To state that every contemporary work of art will by definition be a product of contemporary society and thus bear the marks of the contradictions of its actual material situation does not imply that all art can be reduced to the same problem. Effective art criticism implies having a dynamic analysis of how specific aesthetic values are related to the present balance of forces and making a judgment with regard to what factors are playing the most crucial role at any given moment with any given work.

7.8 There is an aspect of taste that implies nothing political and is simply the product of personal experience and history (that is, there is no contradiction if two people have the same political analysis of the world but different aesthetic preferences). But such judgments are of secondary importance here. “I liked this” is a legitimate opinion, but it is not criticism that is serious, interesting, or useful.

7.9 Art criticism is not political because it imposes a political framework on contemporary art but because accurately representing art’s real situation implies understanding the dilemmas of middle-class creative labor in a capitalist world [see 3.8, 3.9] and, therefore, implies a political critique of that setup.

8.0 The relative strength of different values of art within the sphere of the visual arts is the product of a specific balance of class forces; there can be more or less progressive situations for contemporary art, even in a capitalist world, depending on the strengths of these different classes and what demands they are able to advance.

8.1 These demands, to be effective, should be organically connected to actual struggle—they cannot be an abstract program cooked up by a few and imposed as a program for art without any connection to actual movements within that sphere. Nevertheless, some provisional suggestions can be advanced, flowing from the analysis in the preceding theses. All of the following ideas have some support and expression, currently—the trick is to extend such initiatives to the point where they become more than purely symbolic gestures [thus fitting the criteria of 2.8] and are strong enough to shift the dominant values of art.

8.2 Above all, private capital has disproportionate influence on the visual arts; therefore, increased public funding for arts institutions can have the effect of reducing the intensity of the contradiction facing the visual arts.

8.3 Such institutions should be democratically accountable to the communities they serve, so as not to replicate the effect of top-down influence on art through bureaucratic directives; currently existing institutions should be made more democratic; institutions should pay the artists they exhibit, rather than exploiting artists’ professional aspirations by extracting free work from them.

8.4 Art’s current definition as a luxury good, or as the primary concern of a specific professional sphere, limits its full significance. Programs should be launched and supported that offer venues for artistic activity that are not necessarily aimed at the rich or already initiated.

8.5 Research and critical projects should be funded that investigate, explore, and support, on a large scale, alternative definitions and sites for creativity; “art” is not always produced by or for the market, a fact that should be a fundamental starting point (this involves transcending the “critique of the art market” paradigm, which assumes that the problem is simply making the market more democratic).

8.6 Contemporary art suffers from a narrow audience. Access to art education is largely (and increasingly) determined by income level and privilege; art education should be defended and made universal (this point itself involves a critique of the notion that art is a luxury).

8.7 There is no reason why the immense quantity of artistic talent that currently exists, unable to find purchase within the cramped confines of the professional “art world,” could not be put to work generalizing art education, thereby providing itself with a future audience.

8.8 This kind of common identity could form the basis for organizing artists as something more than individual agents, each working on a separate project; it therefore would also lay the foundation for a more organically political character for contemporary art.

8.9 Creative expression needs to be redefined. It should not be thought of as a privilege but as a basic human need. Because creative expression is a basic human need, it should be treated as a right to which everyone is entitled.

9.0 The sphere of the visual arts is an important symbolic site of struggle; however, because of its middle-class character, it has relatively little effective social power [4.5].

9.1 Achieving the reform objectives of thesis 8, therefore, entails that the sphere of the visual arts transcend itself and purely “art-world” concerns; such reforms will be best achieved by linking up with struggles outside of the sphere of the visual arts (for instance, linking the fight for art to the fight for education [8.6]).

9.2 Whatever these specific struggles are, it is an organized working class that is best placed to challenge dominant ruling-class relations [4.6], which is the precondition for challenging dominant ruling-class values of art and improving the situation of art.

9.3 The dual working-class values for “art” [4.8, 4.9]—as the subject of normal labor and as free expression in surplus of the demands of day-to-day labor—seem to imply a contradiction; this contradiction, however, is based on the current economic setup, in which a ruling-class minority dictates the conditions of work.

9.4 Such a contradiction is transcended in a situation in which laborers democratically control the character of their own labor, and, consequently, the terms of their own leisure; it is only such a state of affairs that offers the potential for the maximum flourishing of human artistic potential.

9.5 It is toward such a perspective, which involves changing the material basis of society, that those who care about art should turn. In the absence of such a perspective in the sphere of the visual arts, its representatives will turn in circles, responding to the same problems without ever arriving at a solution. Art’s situation will remain fraught and contradictory; its full potential will remain unrealized.