Archive for February 2009
Call me a sucker for the working man
Q. You’re active politically. In the past few weeks you have called for artists to boycott Israel and for New Yorkers to condemn Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s recent visit to Israel in support of Israeli military actions. How do you distinguish between your political activity and your art?
A. They are two completely different things.
Q. How so? Aren’t they conjoined, in a sense?
A. Yes, they are conjoined in the sense that this is like asking me how I distinguish between my love life and my art, or my family and my art, or the food I cook and my art. Or my physical activity and my art, or my intellectual pursuits and my art.
Baker: …I have been very struck in your previous interviews and writings by your insistence on separating your art and your political work. You insist on a division between the realm of the political and the realm of the aesthetic. Surely this has not been the stance of most contemporary artists who also have an activist dimension to their practice…. Their artistic practice is part of their political practice. You seem to insist that this cannot be the case. Or that it shouldn’t be the case. I’m wondering about the reasons for this insistence.
Chan: There is only one. Freedom.
Baker: Freedom in the realm of art?
Chan: In all realms.
Baker: I don’t understand.
Chan: Freedom is the closest word we have to describe the desire to imagine that what we do has meaning beyond instrumentalization.
Baker: So you insist on separating the aesthetic and the political in the hope of preserving a space of freedom for both realms?
Chan: [Silence.]
Baker: I’m not sure that is what I remember your having said in the past, in other interviews.
Chan: Are you remembering what I said? Or what others have said about me?
Baker: I don’t know. Maybe I’m remembering what Martha Rosler said about what you have said. She called you delusional.
“I just think putting people to work is more important than putting more art on the wall of some New York City gallery frequented by the elite art community,” Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia, was quoted as saying in the Congressional Quarterly’s online publication last month. He described arts as “the favorite of the left.” “Call me a sucker for the working man,” he said. (Americans for the Arts later challenged Mr. Kingston’s assertions, saying that as of last year his own Georgia congressional district was home to 778 arts-related businesses employing 2,663 people.)
Art and politics have in common that they’re two professions whose only barrier of entry is a statement of intent. The artist who can’t sell works and the politican who can’t win elections are stock characters in their fields; both learning curves feature much volunteering of time and keeping of day jobs. So their similarity may be one reason why the two cannot stand each other.
So why are artists being so careful about separating their art from their politics? The politicians sure aren’t showing artists that respect. The politicians would destroy them the first chance they get. The Senate—as in THE Senate—just tried to lump together museums with casinos and golf courses to cut their funding. Museums: what used to be considered our cultural patrimony. Is this coyness because artists afraid of looking stupid? Because the politicians aren’t.
Just stop worrying about this Chinese wall, this pretend distancing from own work, and go after them. Get Cantor, and Coburn, and Kingston out of office. If you’re going to throw down, throw down.
Times: Saving Federal Arts Funds: Selling Culture as an Economic Force
