Putting the F Into Art

George W Bush: a self-portrait. Whether the odd constructionof this painting (enormous shoulders... the veil of water between the man and the man mirror... the perfectly framed but indistinct face etc) is deliberate or the result of enthusiastic amateurism, the fact he chose to share this with the public is fascinating: what a compelling picture.

Art Attack!

This is a totally fascinating story. A man has defaced a Mark Rothko mural in the name of ‘yellowism’ and claims his act added ‘value’ to the painting. Of course he hasn’t and the guy is an anti-social pest, but his act exposed the difficulty we have as a society where commodity meets creativity.

The man, apparently called Vladimir Umanets, compared his act to Marcel Duchamp, who displayed a signed urinal in 1917. Despite the best efforts of neo-liberal economic apologists, we cannot shake the idea of value being connected to labour and skill. It takes great skill to produce representative art, physical dexterity, not to mention patience and concentration. Representative art was made obsolete by the camera. Artists branched out into impressionism, expressionism etc. But how difficult is it to depict an abstract object in a visual medium?

If art seems less like art more like whatever somebody with the wherewithal says is art (and who decides who that somebody is – it’s a fundamentally undemocratic process) then what is to stop subversions such as these? The answer is, of course, to open up an artistic commons, where cultural artefacts aren’t assigned to individuals, creators and owners, in the way they are now. Why must the value (economic or artistic) of a work of art come necessarily come from artisanal skill and dedication, when it could just be deemed beautiful?

Novels etc

Opinions are like bums, everybody has them and, unfortunately, far too many people seem to be proud of them, at least that is in online comment boxes.

There are times when as a Marxist you argue something that is reasonable, forward thinking and correct but it so offends people’s notions of common sense it just doesn’t go in. One topic I’ve noticed is police, prisons and the law, the other is art and copyright.

(As far as it matters) China Mieville has chucked a grenade into a debate at the Edinburgh Book Festival, and good on him:

China Miéville, author of novels including The City & the City and Embassytown, has described anti-piracy measures for literature in the digital age as "disingenuous, hypocritical, ineffectual" and "artistically philistine". Speaking in Edinburgh at a debate on the future of the novel, Miéville said that just as music fans remix albums and post them online, so readers will recut the novel.He and his fellow writers should "be ready for guerrilla editors", he said, adding: "In the future, asked if you've read the latest Ali Smith or Ghada Karmi, the response might be not yes or no, but which mix?" There was, he said, a "blurring of boundaries between writers, books and readers, self-publishing, the fanfication of fiction".

This is very offensive to authors and publishers (and wannabe ubermensch in comment boxes). One participant described his ideas as “dot communism”, which is a) red baiting and b) rubbish. Another argued "original text will always still be there. It will not be stolen”.

What China is describing is not communism but capitalism in action. The reproducability of art is both the guarantee of capitalist culture and its doom. It means novels, for example, can be mass produced and sold. Mass literacy and mass publishing are a condition of each other. Yet it means as more and more text is produced and published more and more people are capable of producing and publishing text. 

Copyright laws exist firstly to protect the owners of the means of cultural production, in this case the publishing companies, but it also preserves the aura of sacred creativity around authors. Long fiction has been trapped in the artisan stage of production. There is no such thing as a one-person film set or one-person newspaper. Why should fiction be the preserve of literary titans? 

Attempts to preserve the aura of the original text are reactionary, whether we realise it that or not. Mieville is right, if fiction has a future it belongs to editors, not authors. Collective creation is only ‘communism’ to the small group of people privileged by current relations of artistic production. Capitalism is collective labour plus private appropriation. If you want a true creative commons you have to take over the publishing companies, record companies, film studios etc.