SECTION I: CHAPTER 1: DEFINITIONS

This Section lays out the terms required to create a common language and the

parameters for discussing the democratic society and art as a democratic act.

Democracy is defined here, not merely as a system of voting to enable ‘rule by the

people’, but more broadly, as a set of values, namely freedom and equality. The

understanding of these values is based largely on the work of Spinoza, as interpreted

by Antonio Negri, and also Arendt, Sartre and Lévinas. The notion of counter-Power is

introduced, which is taken from Negri's interpretation of Spinoza, as well as the

notion of art as a democratic act in the light of these definitions. The purpose of this

discussion is to establish what is meant in this thesis by power, counter-Power and

art as a democratic act.

Ann Coxon, one of the curators of ‘democracy!’, a Royal College of Art exhibition in

2000, wrote for the catalogue that democracy is:

A term with a broad range of meanings, democracy includes both the

sense of participation and that of representation. Attempts to

‘democratise’ artistic practice are, and have been, many and varied. In

the strictest sense of the word, democracy applies only to states or

organisations governed by their populations. To speak of art as

‘democratic’ is then to suggest an analogy with, or at least an

extension of, what are taken to be democratic principles. Certainly, it

is easier to consider how the production of a work of art might be seen

in democratic terms, than to determine how it may in and of itself be

democratic.8

This thesis sets out to do just that: to determine how art may in and of itself be a

democratic act. First I will briefly discuss some of the interpretations of the term

‘democratic’, which are not useful here but which are alluded to above. Democracy

contains the ideas of both participation and representation. The rule of the people is

believed to be fairer or better than the rule of one group or one individual because

8 Democracy! exhibition catalogue, Royal College of Art, London, The Pale Green Press, 2000, pp47-48

19

the idea of democracy is underpinned by the idea that in enabling the rule of the

people, individual freedom and equality are enshrined as being of value. To quote

Ball and Dagger, editors of Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal, there is an

intrinsic ‘connection with freedom and equality, since democracy implies that in some

sense every citizen will be both free and equal to every other’.9 This is not to be

confused with liberal values which are both more broad-ranging and a specific

political ideology.10 Though often seen as inter-related, liberalism is not, in fact,

synonymous with democracy, understood as either ‘rule by the people’ or as the

underlying values of freedom and equality. Democratic action here is understood as

actions of individual freedom and equality and therefore it is also defined as

necessarily counter-Power where power is understood as action that is against

freedom and equality. I will elaborate on the theoretical conception of power and

counter-Power used in this thesis in the next part of the chapter with reference to

Negri's text, Subversive Spinoza: (Un) contemporary Variations.

Power in the context of this thesis is understood to include the operations of both the

state and the market in London 2000-2006 as well as other interiorized mechanisms.

Both the state and the market uphold a commitment to freedom and equality while

also demonstrably militating against individual freedom and equality in specific

circumstances and in particular ways.11 Power is characterised here as both systemic

and interiorized as Hardt and Negri describe in Empire.12 Its action is conceived as

hostile to individual freedom and equality and it is located both interior and exterior

to the individual in society. As Deleuze and Guattari characterise capitalism, power is

9 Ball, T., & Dagger,R. (Eds), Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal, Harlow, New York, Longman, 1999, p39

10This thesis espouses freedom and equality in concert, not liberalism. One interesting critique of liberalism can be found in Against Liberalism, 1997 by John Kekes. Though from a politically conservative point of view, and therefore not my own, the criticisms he makes are nevertheless valid.

11Criticism of the contemporary market as a system from within the discipline of economics can be seen in the work of Nitzan and Bichler. They assert that the market is ultimately anti-competitive and restrictive of diversity (Bichler, S., and Nitzan, J., The global political economy of Israel, London, Pluto Press, 2002). This contrasts with criticism of how the free market has failed to deliver by Stiglitz or the critique of neo-liberalism from an anthropological / sociological point of view by Harvey.Stiglitz, J., Globalisation and its discontents, London, Penguin 2002Harvey, D., A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005

12Hardt, M., & Negri, A., Empire, op cit, pp3-41

20

understood as hierarchical, repressive, exploitative with relations embedded in

servitude.13 Definitions of freedom and equality which underpin this thesis are

grounded in Spinoza's philosophy, written at a time prior to both democratic rule and

capitalism, and specifically Negri's interpretation of his Tractatus Politicus

(1675-77).14

Democracy, as a system, arguably affords us the likeliest possibility of freedom and

equality, though both de Tocqueville and Heidegger caution against the threats to

autonomy, of mediocrity and mob rule inherent to a democracy15. As freedom and

equality are core values in the democratic society, I use the term ‘democratic’ here to

encapsulate these values and to describe the society which privileges these values.

This thesis is not concerned with other values associated with liberal democratic

society or mechanism of democracy like votes. After all, democratic societies have

failed to deliver freedom and equality time and again and spectacularly so in the West

even since universal suffrage. Even with elections, a society may not be democratic in

the sense used here. Here democratic specifically means the values of freedom and

equality.

This thesis focuses specifically on how the mechanisms of power are enacted through

the artworld, how power instrumentalises art for its own ends overtly and how

cultural practitioners take on the values of the state and the market, thereby

reproducing the conditions of power and undermining values of freedom and equality.

Before defining art as a democratic act where democratic action is understood as

action which enacts freedom and equality that is counter-Power, I will first attempt to

wrest the understanding of the terms of freedom and equality from liberal theory. For

13Deleuze and Guattari speak specifically of capitalism when they describe abuses of power in Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, but their description may be seen as characteristic of Power more generally. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F., Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London, Athlone, 1984 translated from the French by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R Lane

14Negri, A., Subversive Spinoza: (Un) contemporary Variations, edited by Timothy S Murphy, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2004, pp9-10

15Kleinberg, E., Generation Existential: Heidegger's Philosophy in France, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2005Tocqueville, A. de, Democracy in America and Two Essays on America, translated by Gerald E Bevan, introduction and notes by Isaac Kramnick, London, Penguin, 2003

21

this I turn to existentialism (Sartre and Spinoza) and Lévinas. My aim in doing so is to

produce a slightly different, a broader and perhaps more ethical but less politicised

understanding of these terms than that used in traditional political theory.

22

1.1 FREEDOM AND EQUALITY

At the close of the twentieth century, theorists such as Hardt & Negri and Deleuze &

Guattari conceptualise a sense of ‘democratic involvement’ that intervenes into the

iniquities of late capitalism. They do so informed by but moving beyond traditional

Marxist discourse. Like them, I find traditional Marxist thought both informative and

problematic and though its history of critique informs this thesis, Marxist theory is

least useful to this thesis where it emphasises revolution led by a group at the

vanguard or one specific group like the ‘proletariat’. With an existentialist emphasis

on the individual's relationship to the world, I emphasise instead individual

engagement: collusion, complicity, cooperation or the reverse. I also find traditional

Marxist theories less useful in understanding global capitalism, neoliberalism and the

new world order than the work of Deleuze and Guattari. It is beyond the scope of this

thesis to analyse the beginnings of a potential new tradition in revolutionary thinking,

one tailored to the twenty-first century, of which Hardt & Negri and Deleuze &

Guattari may be considered two distinctly different founders (though David Harvey

returns the analysis to terms of ‘class war’ so there may be a future for Marxist

theory yet). I use their work, in addition to Foucault, to read Arendt, Spinoza and

Sartre ‘backwards’.

The focus of this part of the thesis is the analysis of the concept of power. It is

Spinoza who first imagines a democratic society where each individual is both free

and equal to any and every other individual. Informed by an Enlightenment sense of

the individual in a time that preceded nation-states, votes, or legally enshrined rights

or responsibilities, he theorises the possibility of a society which helps to maintain

individual freedoms premised on the notion of a radical equality. He describes the

necessity of a democratic society, one based on freedom and equality that is counter-

Power, without any detail describing the polity itself. Instead Spinoza can be

understood as making the case for a society based on freedom and equality and one

where action must also be counter-Power where power threatens to undermine

freedoms and equality. It is Hannah Arendt who defines democratic action for this

23

thesis. She states the case most clearly for why political action (here termed,

democratic action) must happen and must happen in public. It is her urgency for

action that occurs in public that informs my understanding of art as a democratic act:

that it is an action which must occur in public. The subtle analysis of the banality of

evil by Arendt also puts the emphasis on each and every individual action regardless

of whether it is performed by someone with ostensible power or otherwise. This

understanding of power (the idea of a 'desk-killer' and the banality of evil) and the

importance of action underpins the idea of art as a democratic act as applied in this

thesis. Art as a democratic act here is not merely any expression by an artist enacting

their right to freedom of expression but it is action in public which enacts -

consciously, concertedly or otherwise - freedom and equality that is counter-Power.

These terms will be examined and qualified below.

This thesis draws primarily on the post World War II work of Arendt, Sartre and

Lévinas. This is because, I believe as a consequence of their experience of Nazism,

freedom and equality specifically and ineluctably are the sine qua non of the

democratic society for each of them. Later theorists, like Deleuze and Guattari, Hardt

and Negri or Mouffe and Laclau, may share this understanding but do not focus on it.

Here I wish to draw out the urgency of these values in the contemporary context

using theorists whose understanding springs from the experience of totalitarianism.

The reasons for the comparison between the contemporary moment (London

2000-2006) and the very nadir of totalitarianism is elaborated on in Section III.

Spinoza theorizes both equality and freedom and the ineluctability of both to the

democratic society when he states:

[E]very natural thing has as much right from Nature as it has power to

exist and to act. For the power of every natural thing by which it exists

and acts is nothing other than the power of God, which is absolutely

free.16

16Spinoza, B., Tractatus Politicus II/3, in Negri, A., ibid, p16 and p33

24

In this quote we can also see why Spinoza is seen by some as the father of

existentialism (though existentialism inverts the thesis by killing off God:

everyone is absolutely free because each of us faces Death, a non-God,

futureless state). Existentialism offers a concept of freedom which is more

useful to this thesis than that offered within liberal humanist discourse

because existentialist freedom is the freedom to act; it is the first condition of

action, which is, on principle, intentional. On the other hand, liberalism defines

freedom as, firstly, a basic value and one among many, and secondly, freedom

is important because ‘it enables individuals to make reasonable choices among

values and conceptions of a good life.’17 For liberals, freedom is the freedom to

act towards an end, ‘the good life’, whereas for the existentialist, freedom, is

the freedom to act in toto. Sartre explains this in the following passage:

Thus, totally free, undistinguishable from the period for which I have

chosen to the meaning, as profoundly responsible for the war as if I had

myself declared it, unable to live without integrating it in my situation,

engaging myself in it wholly and stamping it with my seal, I must be

without remorse or regrets as I am without excuse; ... The one who

realized in anguish his condition as being thrown into a responsibility

which extends to his very abandonment has no longer either remorse or

regret or excuse; he is no longer anything but a freedom which perfectly

reveals itself and whose being resides in this very revelation.18

Similar to this existentialist freedom and distinct from liberal freedoms, Spinoza's

freedom is inherent to the notion of democracy here. It is the freedom to act.

Spinoza also articulates a notion of equality that is inherent to the understanding of

democracy used in this thesis. He articulates this freedom, the freedom to act, with a

positive equality across all human beings (in fact, across every natural thing) defined

before a greater exogenous power. It is this relationship to a greater exogenous

power that necessarily determines all human beings as equal. For Spinoza, this is

17Kekes, J., op cit, p718Sartre, J.P., Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology,

translated from French by Hazel E Barnes (1943 trans 1957), London, Methuen & co Ltd, 1966, pp555-556

25

God, for Sartre (or other existentialists like Heidegger), it is Death, the death of God

and one's own death. Warnock explains it:

The characteristic of a human being is certainly that he must progress

alone towards his unique destiny, his death. To this extent each man

must be related to the world by his own connections with it and by no

one else's. The realization of this truism is the secret of authenticity.19

The concept of authenticity has been thoroughly problematized ever since Benjamin's

'Work in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' and most especially since Krauss

published The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. 20

Nevertheless I include Warnock's quote on existentialism for its explication of the

central idea of a relationship between Being and Death and the concept of choice

consequent of this realisation. Even with the concept of authenticity understood as a

problematic one, this relationship (between Being and Death) nevertheless makes a

compelling argument across the existentialist philosophers. Freedom and equality can

be understood to exist across all human beings because of our inherent relationship

to God (Spinoza), or to Death (Sartre's existentialism. Of course Heidegger's

emphasis on freedom utterly negates the other core concept to this thesis, namely

equality. This will be discussed further in Section III). In his analysis of equality,

Spinoza understands all humans are equal, not only in relation to God as described

above, but despite culture:

[B]ut all people share in one and the same nature: it is power and culture

that mislead us, with the result that when two men do the same thing we

often say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other, not

because of any difference in the thing done, but in the doer.21

At first glance this may appear to be a culture-nature argument similar to that which

Simone de Beauvoir made in The Second Sex (1949). In it, she argues that we now

understand that ‘there are no longer unchangeably fixed entities which determine

19Warnock, M., Existentialism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, (1970) 1996, p6920Some of the implications of this essay for the concept of authenticity are drawn out

by Krauss in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Cambridge Massachusetts, London, MIT Press, 1986

21Negri, A., op cit, p45

26

given characteristics such as those ascribed to woman, the Jew, or the Negro’. 22 She

says that there is no biological imperative to the condition of one gender or ‘race’.

Spinoza on the other hand is actually saying, not that there is no biological

determinism, but that we, society, accept different behaviours from different people

depending on where they are situated in society: rich, poor; men, women; old, young;

self, Other. We understand and accept actions differently from different people, but

that all people act similarly because all people act from God. In one person a set of

behaviours is acceptable, in another it is unacceptable. For example, a set of

behaviours by a woman may be considered acceptable whereas in a man it is not. This

is also true of a set of behaviour by a ‘white’ person compared with a ‘black’ person

and vice versa, or a set of behaviours is acceptable in an upper-class person but

unacceptable in a poor or a working class person. Spinoza's emphasis is on equality

before God. Since his time and particularly throughout the nineteenth and early

twentieth century, equality came also to mean sameness. The discussion by Michèle

Barrett about Laclau and Mouffe's use of the work equivalence illustrates this

elision.23 The tight weave in the assumption that equality means sameness was

unpicked particularly by theorists of identity politics where equality-with-difference

was the keystone of political activist thought. Queer theorist and cultural critic Eve

Kosofsky Sedgwick argued for this in Epistemology of the Closet (1991). She begins

with a set of axioms: the first one being, ‘People are different from each other’. She

then goes on to say:

It is astonishing how few respectable conceptual tools we have for

dealing with this self-evident fact. A tiny number of inconceivably

coarse axes of categorization have been painstakingly inscribed in

current critical and political thought: gender, race, class, nationality,

sexual orientation are pretty much the available distinctions.24

22Beauvoir, S. de, The Second Sex, translated and edited by H M Parshley, (Le Deuxième Sexe 1949, translated 1953), Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1976, p14

23Barrett, M., The Politics of Truth: From Marx to Foucault, Cambridge, Polity Press, pp51-80.

24Kosofsky Sedgwick, E., Epistemology of the Closet, Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991, p22

27

As self evident as it is that people are different from each other, it is still difficult to

conceive fully and appreciate this proposition, both philosophically and in actuality, in

interpersonal or societal relationships. While Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe

attempt to conceptualise and embrace difference within radical democratic politics,

the assumption that ‘equal = same’ continues, obfuscating concepts of equality,

particularly in liberal and socialist or social democratic thought, from Rawl's

egalitarianism in A Theory of Justice (1972) to feminist socialist theorist Michèle

Barrett's critique of Laclau and Mouffe in 1991.25

Emmanuel Lévinas is particularly useful here in theorizing equality as opposed to

sameness. He conceptualises difference, the Other, philosophically and requires of us

an ethical engagement with the other as Other.26 Lévinas noted that since the

beginning of Western knowledge, based on Ancient Greek episteme, knowledge

(philosophy) has been based on an assumption and an alarming paradox. Knowledge

is understood as universal and yet Knowlege all stems from, and is confined to, the

particularity of the Greco-European experience and tradition. Knowledge is a system

based on philia, a system of like-ness, on the exchange of the Same with the Same

and therefore it inherently has a horror of the Other. This horror can only be

minimised when the Other is assimilated as part of the Same. Therefore, the other is

not allowed to be Other, but it must be an extension of the Self / the Same. Examples

of this type of extension of the Same, can be seen in Orientalism or Primitivism –

where a culture, a person or a cultural artefact is not understood in its own terms but

as part of what is already ‘understood’ or imagined of that culture.

Simon Critchley explores what a Levinasian politics looks like:

25Barrett, M., op cit. It could be argued that Laclau and Mouffe's strategy to use the word equivalence rather than equality throughout Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics, (translated by Winston Moore and Paul Cammack, London, Verso 1985) is precisely because of the word's historical baggage where equality has meant sameness but a full discussion of this question lies outside the scope of this thesis.

26The Levinasian notion of the 'unknowableness' of the Other is criticised by Grant Kester in Conversation Pieces: Community + Communication in Modern Art (op cit pp120-123) because, he deduces, it models an ethical engagement based on 'mute supplication' (p123). My reading of Lévinas is more akin to Critchley's. I find Lévinas's thesis therefore more generative than Kester's (and Nealson's) reading suggest.

28

‘Politics begins as ethics’ means that political space is based on the

irreducibility of ethical transcendence, where the community takes on

meaning in difference without reducing difference. Political space is an

open, plural, opaque network of ethical relations which are non-

totalizable and where ‘the contemporaneity of the multiple is tied

around the dia-chrony of the two’ [Otherwise than Being or Beyond

Essence 1974]. Levinasian politics is the enactment of plurality, of

multiplicity.27

From within political theory rather than philosophy, Mouffe similarly demands that

‘we acknowledge difference – the particular, the multiple, the heterogeneous – in

effect, everything that had been excluded by the concept of Man in the abstract’. 28

Through Lévinas and Laclau and Mouffe we are able to conceive of equality through

difference. No longer must there be a conceptual tension between freedom and

equality as twentieth century political orthodoxies have it. It is this tension that is

said to be at the heart of tensions between socialism and liberalism, where socialism

stresses equality and liberalism freedom, given that both share equality and freedom

as values. As has been demonstrated though, neither socialism nor liberalism invoke

the sense of freedom and equality here theorized as the core values at the heart of

the democratic society. The democratic society is one where freedom and equality

occur in concert, where equality is multiple, based on difference, on an ethical

engagement with the Other and where freedom is the freedom to act in the

existentialist sense. Importantly, democratic action is also understood as necessarily,

counter-Power.

1.2 COUNTER-POWER

Counter-Power is a concept gleaned from Spinoza articulated via Negri. Not to be

confused with anti-Power (which is a simple binary opposite, a reaction to power that

is simply antithetical), it is the type of freedom integral to democracy. Actions that are

27Critchley, S., The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, (1992) 1999, p225

28Mouffe, C., The Return of the Political, London, Verso, (1993) 1997, p13

29

counter-Power can be seen as similar to an existentialist freedom to act. Negri

articulates this action of counter-Power as:

Spinozism is political thought, the claim of collective freedom against

every kind of alienation, the acute and ‘prolix’ intelligence against every

attempt – even the most subtle, even the most formal – to set the

externality of command, of legitimation, over organization of social

production... It is power against Power [potenza contro potere]. That is

power against, or counter-Power [contropotere].29

Spinoza equates being (ontology) with freedom and freedom with action. It is human

to act. Hannah Arendt articulates and espouses a similar connection between freedom

and action three centuries later in The Human Condition (1958). Her freedom and

action is also not quite existentialist, but there are similarities, studying as she did,

under Heidegger. Maurizio Passerin d'Entrèves in writing about the political

philosophy of Arendt describes it as:

[For Arendt], to act means therefore to be able to take the initiative and

to do the unanticipated, to exercise that capacity for freedom which was

given to us the moment we came into the world. To act and to be free

are, in this respect, synonymous: to be free means to engage in action,

while through action our capacity for freedom is actualized.30

Spinoza and Arendt both conceive humanity similarly in that they believe it is the

human condition to express, to act, to make happen when the human is free to do so

and that freedom is humanity's birthright. In both there is a sense of the particularity

of each individual, that it is individuals who make up a public, and that the focus must

be on individual action. This form of multitude is not one of a collective, where each

individual is merely a cell in the body corporate as trades unions are conceived or a

People's Democracy, and directed centrally. In this conception of democratic action

each individual is in their own right a person of action, vita activa. Action is not

purposeful in a party political way, but purposeful in a multifarious, singular way

29Negri, op cit, p97 30Passerin d'Entrèves, M., The Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt, London,

Routledge, 1994, p66

30

corresponding to individual intention and conviction, with, or without, regard to

collectivity. This individuated and plural concept of action is ‘unpredictable’, as

Arendt would have it but it is also necessarily counter-Power because it denies

hierarchy, fixity and undermines relations based on subjugation. If action is the

natural manifestation of one's humanness, and each of us is different and

differentiated, our actions will be necessarily multiple, without conformity to power

however it is manifest, because it is an individual expression of freedom and this

expression of freedom is expressed equally.

The democratic society allows for action that is free and as every individual is equal,

democratic action enacts freedom and equality in concert. A democracy allows this

action, actions of freedom and equality, to occur in public space, as Arendt describes.

Spinoza might say a democratic society allows freedom and equality to occur at

another level again, that within the human:

It is not... the purpose of the state to transform men from rational

beings into beasts or puppets, but rather to enable them to develop

their minds and bodies in safety, to use their reason without restraint

and to refrain from the strife and the vicious mutual abuse that are

prompted by hatred, anger or deceit. Thus the purpose of the state is,

in reality, freedom.31

For this reason art may be considered not only an instance of democratic action but

art as a democratic act is vital to the democratic society. The democratic society is

maintained by actions for freedom and equality. Art may be an instance of this.

31Spinoza, B.,Tractatus Theologico-Politicus XX, 231-232 in Negri, A., op cit, p23

31

1.3 ART AS A DEMOCRATIC ACT

Democratic action is here defined as any action which enacts freedom and equality in

concert. Importantly, democratic action is neither freedom without equality nor

equality without freedom. Democratic action is also counter-Power, by definition, as

power is understood as hegemonic and acting against freedom and equality. Power

cannot tolerate freedom or equality by definition therefore actions of freedom and

equality are necessarily counter-Power. Within this thesis, exogenous power is

understood primarily as the actions of the market and the state, both separately and

together which serve to undermine freedom and equality and the interiorization of

these mechanisms by the self. Hardt and Negri describe this notion of power in the

passage as follows:

the new figure of the collective biopolitical body, which may

nonetheless remain as contradictory as it is paradoxical. This body

becomes structure not be negating the originary productive force that

animates it but by recognizing it ; it becomes language (both scientific

language and social language) because it is a multitude of singular and

determinate bodies that seek relation. It is thus both production and

reproduction, structure and superstructure, because it is life in the

fullest sense and politics in the proper sense.32

The phrase ‘art as a democratic act’ is here to be understood not merely as ‘political’,

though it may be that as well, but as any action whether or not it is regarded as

‘political’ that enacts freedom and equality that is counter-Power.

The context for such actions is paramount. Art as a democratic act must occur in the

public realm. Such action is, as Arendt emphasises, vital to the democratic society.

Quoting Passerin d'Entrèves on Arendt:

32Hardt and Negri, Empire, op cit, p30

32

[T]he public realm as a space of appearance provides the light and the

publicity which are necessary for the establishment of our public

identities, for the recognition of a common reality, and for the

assessment of the actions of others.33

Importantly, art's democratic potential is only realised in public because it is there

that we negotiate ourselves in the face of the Other, as Lévinas might have it. To

paraphrase Passerin d'Entrèves, it is in public that the acceptability or

unacceptability of action is tested. In the democratic society the limits of power to

suppress freedom and equality are regularly tested through public action. Public

action that enacts freedom and equality are requirements of the well-functioning

democratic society and art may be an instance of this type of public action.

This is not to say that an action must have a mass public in mind, but it must be

public. Actions with no audience, done as hobbies in the privacy of the home or

studio, are therefore not considered instances of art as a democratic act here. It is art

in the public realm which creates society. C Wright Mills warns of the dangers of the

mass society to the democratic society. This he distinguishes from a society of

publics:

At the opposite extreme [from a society of publics] is a mass, 1) far

fewer people express opinions than receive them; for the community of

publics becomes an abstract collection of individuals who receive

impressions from the mass media. 2) The communications that prevail

are so organized that it is difficult or impossible for the individual to

answer back immediately or with any effect. 3) The realization of

opinion in action is controlled by authorities who organize and control

the channels of such action. 4) The mass has no autonomy from

institutions; on the contrary, agents of authorized institutions penetrate

this mass, reducing any autonomy it may have in the formation of

opinion by discussion. ... In a mass society, the dominant type of

communication is the formal media, and the publics becomes mere

media markets: all those exposed to the contents of given mass

media. ... As more people are drawn into the political arena, these

associations become mass in scale; and as the power of the individual

33Passerin d'Entrèves, M., op cit, p141

33

becomes more dependent upon such mass associations, they are less

accessible to the individual's influence.34

Mills characterises Nazi Germany and Communist Russia as example of mass

societies, whereas 1950s America is somewhere between public and mass. Arguably,

today both USA and UK, as well as many other countries in the West, can be

characterised as mass according to the above descriptors. Action that is counter-

Power is particularly important in creating a society of publics, where, according to

Mills:

public opinion is the result of each man's having thought things out for

himself and contributing his voice to the great chorus. To be sure,

some might have more influence on the state of opinion than others,

but no one group monopolizes the discussion, or by itself determines

the opinions that prevail... the autonomy of these discussions is an

important element in the idea of public opinion as a democratic

legitimation.35

Democratic action is imperative to a democratic society because each of us creates

that society. Each and every action by each and every individual is cumulative. This is

Sartre's view from his vantage point of post-Occupation, post-Vichy France. Our

action creates society; each action for equality and freedom creates the conditions for

equality and freedom, each action for hierarchy and repression creates the conditions

for hierarchy and repression. And art has its place in this process.

Art is described as democratic in action, not intrinsically, as it is the relationship

between the art itself and the context in which it operates that determines its

democratic achievement. Throughout this thesis, art is described as an action. There

is no reference to a ‘democratic art’. I use the phrase 'art as a democratic act' to

emphasise its contingency: art's potential as democratic action being contingent on

context which I hope to demonstrate in Section II through the analysis of Tate

Modern.

34Wright Mills, C., The power elite, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press, 1956, pp304-307

35 ibid, p299

34

In this chapter, I hope to have adequately defined the terms which will be used

throughout the thesis. I have outlined the importance of both freedom and equality to

the notion of the democratic society as used here, emphasised the relationship of the

action ‘counter-Power’ within democratic society and the importance of art / action in

public and therefore constituting it.

35

CHAPTER 2: INSTITUTIONAL DEFINITIONS OF ART

If art has a vital role in a democracy, being performed in public and helping to

establish ‘our public identities, for the recognition of a common reality, and for the

assessment of the actions of others’, 36 it then can be seen as having the potential to

be the very enactment of democracy. Over the period 2000-2006, the platform for art

as a democratic act was diminished by various political and cultural forces which will

be described and analysed in Section II. This chapter will demonstrate how the very

definition of art actually undermines this potential in the first place. The institutional

definition of Art, which is discussed in depth below, in fact can be seen to undermine

art's potential as the very enactment of democracy. The artworld, by employing an

exclusive and hierarchical definition of art, helps to create a context for art that

potentially undermines values of freedom and equality, irrespective of artistic or

curatorial intention to the contrary.

London 2000-2006 is the focus of analysis in this thesis and it is in London, especially,

that institutional practices around definitions of art come to the fore. London can be

seen as the primary site of power in the UK in terms of politics, global economics, the

artworld and the art market, which makes it particularly useful in any analysis of the

culture-power nexus. London is also the primary site of artworld discourse for the UK

disseminated through the art college system and the press, which is largely based

there, promulgating norms and standards.

This chapter explores the definition of art through Wittgenstein, Danto and Dickie

and that while art may potentially be the very enactment of freedom and equality, this

potential is often undermined by its very definition. Examples of how the institutional

definition of art operates in will be provided by examples of artwork by Carl Andre,

Martin Creed and Jeremy Deller. I will address ideas of value within the artworld,

considering types of art that are excluded from institutional consideration (including

explaining the use of the terms Art and prefixed art) and how this maintains anti-

36Passerin d'Entrèves, M., op cit, p141

36

democratic values through economic and cultural capital. I will use Dickie's theory of

the institutional definition of art to demonstrate how and where the boundary of Art is

policed and the implications of this type of policing for art as a democratic act.

2.1 WHAT IS ART?

The definition of art is philosophically problematic and contested in the Western

philosophical tradition since Plato. For this thesis I enter the fray for two reasons:

first, to clarify examples of practice included in this thesis as ‘art’, and second, to

highlight the implicit hierarchy and inherent exclusions in artworld definitions of art,

despite a contemporary artworld discourse to the contrary. Ever since the late 1960s

with Joseph Beuys' proclamation that everyone is an artist, there has been an

artworld axiom that art is ‘anything defined as art’, a position substantiated

philosophically by Wittgenstein in 1958.37 Against this is the countervailing fact that

art that is valuable as Art is constantly policed as will be demonstrated below. George

Walden criticises the artworld for being a ‘closed system’ where values, cultural and

economic, are created through the collusion of insiders and initiates.38 The

discrepancy between what art is (hierarchical and exclusive) and what art claims to

be (democratic and inclusive) sees an everyday working tension between the artworld

and democracy as defined above.

One starting point for defining art is with philosopher of language, Ludwig

Wittgenstein. In Philosophical Investigations (1953), Wittgenstein describes language

as a set of language-games within which the words of a language function and receive

their meaning. This view of meaning as use represents a break from the classical view

of language, of meaning as representation. Art is meaningful as art because the word

37 Though there are many practising artists, curators and historians who contest the idea that art can ever claim a democratic engagement, ever since artist, Joseph Beuys, declared that everyone is an artist, the idea has currency and is manifested in a variety of ways in the contemporary artworld as will be discussed.

38Walden, G., ‘Contemporary Art, Democracy and the State’, Art for all : Their Policies and Our Culture, Warnock, M., and Wallinger, M., (eds), London, Peer, 2000, pp26-30

37

‘art’ is used to mean artistic practices and objects known as art.39 This is not

tautological, but definitional.

Wittgenstein is also useful in defining art through his construction of open concepts,

where art may be compared to other open concepts like games. An open concept is

one which is not definable by a set of rules or common attributes like the definition of

cat or chair; where the object defined has a set of properties common to all things cat

or chair and therefore definable according to those common properties. An open

concept is defined by a set of family resemblances where one thing might appear like

another, and a third might be similar to the second but the third and the first thing

have little discernible in common. Things that are ‘art’ share this set of family

resemblances between things that are agreed to be art. This definition seems to allow

for the multiplicity of approaches, practices and products currently contained within

a working conception of (modern and contemporary) art. Wittgenstein is useful for

explaining how examples of Italian Renaissance chapel painting, a 24,000 year old

sculpture found near Willendorf in Austria and John Cage's ‘4 minutes and 33

seconds’ of silence are all ‘art’. His definition is useful for explaining what is already

considered art. It is not useful in attempting to discover why one thing is art while

another isn't or in predicting whether something be defined as art or otherwise. His

definition deals with what is in language, not what could be or why. For this, I turn to

the Institutional Theory of Art because it does offer exactly this: a concept of art as it

is including the possibility of a definition of art as it could be in the future. Arthur

Danto aired his epistemological concerns with an expanding definition of art which

suddenly, in the early 1960s, could include Brillo boxes. He asks:

What in the end makes the difference between a Brillo box and a work of

art consisting of a Brillo Box is a certain theory of art... It is the role of

artistic theories, these days as always, to make the artworld, and art,

possible. It would, I should think, never have occurred to the painters of

39 Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations, (translated and edited by G.E.M. Anscombe), Second Edition, Oxford, Blackwell, 1958. See also G. Graham, Philosophy of the Arts, An Introduction to Aesthetics, London, New York, Routledge, 1997 for a discussion of Wittgensteinian theory.

38

Lascaux that they were producing art on those walls. Not unless there were

neolithic aestheticians. 40

Danto places philosophy as an a priori condition to art-making. His is a rather

Platonic conception where the idea of art or aesthetics exists and only then the

reality. Art requires a discourse of art to exist, otherwise objects are something else.

As Arthur Danto noted with traditional African masks and weapons, objects can be

rendered as art and moved from one context (and therefore value) to another with

relative ease, predicated simply on a paradigm shift in definition within the

artworld.41

George Dickie on the other hand did not attempt to create inherent truths about art

and aesthetics. Instead he makes observations about the artworld as a social

phenomenon. His is an especially useful theory for this thesis in that he analyses

philosophically art and the artworld from outside artworld values. It is a ‘value-

neutral’ 42 theory because George Dickie's contention is that ‘art’ is simply a term

conferred by the artworld and it is only through this conference of status that a given

artefact or object becomes ‘art’. Art is not something that exists outside this

conference of status. Art is made by the consensus of people with the power to define

what is art. From my perspective this includes artists, particularly those who have

been through art colleges or universities, critics, art historians and curators,

academics, some journalists, in short, the artworld, who have the power to choose

what is included as art. 43 They are legitimated, in Jean-François Lyotard's term, to

make that decision, that act of inclusion, of their work, or any other object or event in

the world around them. Robert Yanal defends Dickie's theory against a host of

40Danto, A., ‘The Artworld’, The Journal of Philosophy, Volume 61, Issue 19, p581, American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Sixty-First Annual Meeting (October 15 1964)

41Ibid, p57342Yanal, R., 'The institutional theory of art', The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, Michael

Kelly (ed), Oxford University Press, 1998. Online. Available HTTP. <http://www.homepage.mac.com/ryanal/InstitutionalTheory.pdf> (accessed 29 September 2007)

43Art and Value answers Dickie's many critics including Danto. He clarifies his theory and what he means by the artworld when he states that it ‘is a cultural construction – something that members of society have collectively made into what it is over time.’ Dickie, G., Art and Value, Massachusetts, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 2001, p60

39

criticisms including Noël Carroll's objection that Dickie's theory fails to address

either the qualities or functions of artworld. It is a criticism from within artworld

values. As Yanal says, ‘If “art” can only be defined in terms of its role in social

practice, then this may just be a brute fact about the concept of art, not an objection

to the institutional theory.’44 Whatever the criticisms of the Institutional Theory of Art

overall, I understand it to be profoundly applicable to the artworld since the early

twentieth century and especially since postmodernism.

Today, art is understood by many, if not all, contemporary practitioners to be anything

an artist says is art. In fact, many artists can be seen to manipulate this power to

legitimate as art through an art practice that centres on employing the very slippages

and inherent shock-value this definition of art allows. There are many examples of

objects becoming art on an artist's say-so, from Carl Andre's ‘Equivalent VIII’ (1966)

(the infamous pile of 120 firebricks in rectangular configuration, 2 piles of 60 bricks

laid longwise in 6 x 10 arrangement) to its next generation reprise as Martin Creed's

blob of blu-tack ‘Work No79’ (1993).

Figure 1 Figure 2

Figure 1 (left): Carl Andre ‘Equivalent VIII’ (1966) 60 fire bricks. Figure 2 (right): Martin Creed, ‘Work No79’ (1993) blu-tack.

44Yanal, R., op cit, p4

40

Artist Jeremy Deller employs the artist's ‘Midas touch’ self-consciously, and by doing

so his work ends up reflecting on that gift. For example, in 2000, Tate Britain hosted a

showcase exhibition of new British art, ‘Intelligence’, which included Jeremy Deller

and Alan Kane's ‘An introduction to Folk Archive’ (1999-ongoing). ‘Folk Archive’ is the

curation and display in museum vitrines of the kind of art and craft-work that is

usually excluded from contemporary art galleries. The archive includes traditional-

folk crafts and working-class art and craft objects. While neither Deller nor Kane

describe their work as a reflection on, or intervention into, the Institutional Theory of

Art, they do allow that:

‘Folk Archive’ is an attempt to explore and document such creativity

[from outside the artworld] in Britain and Ireland with the aim of

celebrating the diversity of these significant cultural activities. ‘An

introduction to Folk archive’ ... presents for the first time a few examples

of the artists' findings during a year-long search across Britain. These

include, for instance, meticulously crafted objects obtained from Women's

Institute bazaars, photographs and video footage documenting fairs,

Morris dancing, political demonstrations and performative practices such

as tattooing.45

‘Folk Archive’ toys with the power to legitimate as ‘art’. The artefacts in ‘Folk

Archive’ would ordinarily be overlooked by the artworld and dismissed as kitsch but

in the hands of contemporary artists, reframing discourse, the objects become Art. In

this work, Deller and Kane perform the Institutional Theory of Art: the act of

transformation. They do so knowingly to comment on what is told about value and the

value of Art.46

45Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/intelligence/deller.htm> Accessed 20 June 2005

46 Interestingly, this work can also be seen as a response to Clement Greenberg's 1939 essay ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’. Theirs is a visual art response to text-based criticism.

41

Figure 3: Jeremy Deller, ‘The Battle of Orgreave’ (2001) Still from the film of the re-enactment on 17 June 2001 at Orgreave, South Yorkshire, The Battle of Orgreave, 2002. Dir Mike Figgis, Artangel, Channel4 A re-enactment of the police breakup of a 1984 National Union of Mineworkers' picket.

Given that the Institutional Theory of Art can be seen to work positively, conferring

high status on objects which previously may have had little or none, it must also

indicate that some objects have little or no status within the terms of the theory. If

some objects or practices are Art by definition, then, logically, other objects or

practices are not-art.

2.2 WHAT IS NOT ART?

There are numerous exclusions to what is legitimated as Art. Specifically these are

practices dismissed under the label of ‘education’ and ‘community art’ as well as

‘commercial art’ and ‘political art’ as I will demonstrate below. From time to time,

almost by way of accommodating the orthodoxy of the Institutional Theory of Art,

objects or events that would ordinarily fall into one or more of these non-art

42

categories are elevated to the status of Art. I will argue that the line between what is

Art and what is not-art is arbitrary. The rules for inclusion and exclusions are

constantly shifting, not only in time as Danto observes, but at any one moment there

are many exceptions to each rule. There are arguably so many exceptions that the

idea of an objective set of criteria for inclusion within capital A Art is irretrievably

undermined. This part of the chapter will argue and help to substantiate the theories

put forward by Lyotard, Buchloh and Mattick that the only criteria for distinguishing

Art from non-art is cultural capital, or in other words, money and class.

Jeremy Deller's re-enactment of political demonstrations as Art is a case in point (Fig.

3). As I will discuss below, many if not most instances of ‘political art’ are deemed

not-art yet Deller's artwork is sanctioned as Art by the mainstream artworld. Given

that theoretically any artist legitimated by the artworld may elevate non-art to Art,

where does the line lie? What is the difference between Art and non-art, given that it

is artists who work in education, community and political art as well as non-artists?

Which artists are legitimated as creating Art and why? What is the root difference

between, say, Martin Creed's blob of blu-tack and the blu-tack of an artist working as

an administrator at Tate galleries?

Martin Creed's piece of blu-tack was made as Art and included in the ‘Turner Prize’

2001 and ‘Intelligence: New British Art’ 2000, both at Tate Britain. The blob of blu-

tack by an administrator working in the office of Tate Britain is not art. This is true

whether or not that administrator is also an artist in her spare time, or even if she is

always an artist but today she is helping out in the office. Being an artist does not

make everything touched into art except in particular conditions, such as declaring it

so and/or having the right audience. The Institutional Theory of Art allows that

artists and other members of the artworld can declare an object, artefact or event as

art. The administrator may also be an artist and has also chosen to make art from blu-

tack. She could ‘quote’ the Martin Creed piece post hoc or if she happened to make a

blob-of-blu-tack-as-art which pre-existed the blob by Martin Creed and was done in a

recognised art context, the issue would be around copyright and again, not whether

43

the blu-tack is art or not. This imagined scenario illustrates the fact that in the

contemporary artworld, under circumstances sanctioned by the artworld as valid,

anything an artist says is art, is art. Yet, I will argue, only certain artists create Art.

Ultimately, the concept of value lies at the heart of this question. Economic value, as

Jean-François Lyotard and Benjamin Buchloh observe, is increasingly the only value

applied to art within the artworld.47 As Lyotard stated as early as 1979:

But this realism of the ‘anything goes’ is in fact that of money; in the

absence of aesthetic criteria, it remains possible and useful to assess

the value of works of art according to the profits they yield. Such

realism accommodates all tendencies, just as capital accommodates all

‘needs’, providing that the tendencies and needs have purchasing

power. As for taste, there is no need to be delicate when one speculates

or entertains oneself. 48

Potential to obscure definitions of value within Art lies in the intersection of economic

value and ‘cultural capital’. Defined by Pierre Bourdieu, cultural capital is the system

of taste and value that maintains social relations, preserving and reproducing the

dominant position of the dominant class.49 Capital A Art maintains cultural capital,

preserving the link between high culture and economic value. Without cultural capital

there is a limit to the economic value of an object. This is one reason why a

legitimating discourse is vitally important to parts of the artworld. A legitimating

discourse creates the cultural capital which affords potential increases in economic

value.

47Buchloh, B., Neo Avant-Garde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American Art form 1955-1975, Cambridge Massachusetts, MIT Press, 2000, pp xxxi-xxxiii

48Lyotard, J. F., The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979 French) translated 1984 Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, Theory and History of Literature, Volume 10, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1987, p76

49Pierre Bourdieu's analysis of how taste enacts class distinction and division and how it becomes an instrument of domination is critiqued within the concept 'cultural capital'. As a concept, it is useful in distinguishing between something that is of high financial value yet low class-status and in understanding how this distinction comes to be so. Bourdieu, P., Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, (1979 translated from French by Richard Nice), London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984

44

The artworld readily polices the boundary of what has cultural capital and what has

not; what is Art and what is not art. While some members of the artworld state that

anything anyone says is art may be art (following Beuys's famously ‘democratic’ idea

that anyone is an artist 50), it is indisputable that ‘Art’ with cultural capital is deemed

so on the say-so of specific individuals and institutions. Deller and Kane's ‘Folk

Archive’ demonstrates the point. Curators and artists preferring to be part of a

democratic, even a meritocratic, artworld will espouse the idea that anything anyone

says is art is art or Art, particularly so if the artist has been to art college or has an

art history degree. Whereas, in practice there are many examples to the contrary. For

example, Platform has made Art since 1983 but its socially and politically engaged

practices have been variously understood as Art or otherwise over the intervening 25

years depending on the status of this type of practice within the artworld at any given

time. Definitions of Art change over time and practices and strategies that are

included in one decade may be excluded in later decades.51 It is notable that the

social, economic and political context of both the artworld and the wider world

changes over time and that these contexts (the artworld located in a specific

geographic location and in its wider social, economic and political context) are

related in a way that is complex and intertwined.

While abdicating responsibility for defining art, the mainstream or institutional

artworld instead determines Art that is of Value, specifically in terms of cultural

capital and, as mentioned, cultural capital is itself a system for creating and

reproducing hierarchy. It is in this very act of definition that Art can be understood as

anti-democratic because the very definition of Art hinges on a system of status and

hierarchy not freedom and equality.

Not all members of the artworld are interested in hierarchy and status primarily but

rather freedom and equality which is where conflict in the definition arises. Here I

will attempt to demonstrate the various boundaries that the artworld polices between

50 Beuys, J., What is Art? Conversation with Joseph Beuys, (essays and edited by Volker Harlan), Forest Row, Clairview Books, 2004 ‘[E]veryone is an artist who draws, since everyone depicts and represents: everyone represents, some more, some less.’ p24

51Online. HTTP Available <http://www.platform.org> (accessed 11 December 2006)

45

art and ‘non-art’ practices. ‘Non-art’ practices include ‘community art’, ‘commercial

art’ and ‘political art’. The rationale for how the artworld polices each of these

boundaries will be described below as well as some of the many exceptions to

artworld rules. Community art or art in an educational context is one boundary

policed by the artworld. Sometimes it is Art and sometimes it is not art. Community

art in London over the period 2000-2006 was predominately government or charity

funded and, to vocal parts of the London artworld like Andrew Brighton, either

irrelevant or invisible except when used as an ideologically useful antithesis: this is

not art.52 Community art is sometimes referred to as public art and is often dismissed

as ‘worthy’ by those in the artworld who wish to police this boundary. It is considered

therefore of little or no artistic merit. When making this case, publicly funded

‘community’ or ‘public art’ is contrasted with Art bought and sold in galleries and

which is thereby afforded inherent value. Exponents of this view, like Munira Mirza,

imply that the market has no agenda while the government clearly does.53 Evidence

that contradicts this view is presented later in Section II of this thesis. As power, the

market does in fact instrumentalise art for its own ends. I will demonstrate later in

the thesis that the market overall skews the display of art and that individual

corporations do have an agenda for the arts which is to reflect business and market

aims.

Practitioners and exponents of innovative community art find themselves defending

their practice as Art. In fact, community art is so maligned that for a symposium on

Public Art at Tate Modern in 2005, architecture historian and theorist Jane Rendell

coined ‘critical spatial practice’ to distance herself and her interests from what she

imagined as the more dubious end of the community art / public art spectrum, that

which is maligned by artworld players.54 Rather than tackling the hierarchy of

52Most consistently vocal on the subject is Andrew Brighton who has written articles for various publications including in Wallinger, M., and Warnock, M., (eds), Art for all? : their policies and our culture, op cit, pp36-41 Also, Hylton, R., The nature of the beast: cultural diversity and the visual arts sector: a study of policies, initiatives and attitudes, 1976-2006, Bath, ICIA (Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts), 2007

53Mirza, M., (Ed), Culture Vultures : Is UK arts policy damaging to the arts?, London, Policy Exchange, 2006

54RealPlayer file of the Tate Modern symposium Friday March 4, 2005 Online. Available HTTP <http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/archive/MakingPublicSeminar2/> (Accessed

46

artworld values, she decided to add another category of potential value, that of

‘critical spatial practice’. This type of coinage follows precisely Danto's dictum that

changing discourse creates Art. Even self-consciously, a change in the words used

about objects or events by the right people may help to alter their status as Art. At

least, this is what Rendell hopes. On the other hand, Grant Kester and Suzanne Lacey,

exponents of community art in the USA, defend community art, not resorting to

Danto-inspired neologisms, but instead highlighting community art practices which

are highly innovative and therefore to be understood as 'avant-garde'. Kester writes:

One could argue that challenging existing definitions of art is the

very essence of the modernist project. ... On this basis, then,

dialogical art practice is part of a more venerable tradition of self-

critique within the history of modernism.55

By engaging with practices that eschew artworld hierarchy and exclusivity,

contemporary community and public art practitioners in the US and the UK seem to

find themselves at odds with artworld notions of value. These art practices are less

valuable when they are seen as non-art. In order to be seen as Art, as valuable, they

require legitimating discourse. Section II will demonstrate how Bourriaud does this

successfully with 'relational aesthetics'.

At the other end of the spectrum is purely commercial art, which is therefore no

longer Art either. This type of practice includes the art on postcards and greetings

cards and is sometimes distinguished from Art as the type of product that is made

predominately to be sold. The fact that Tate or any other legitimating artworld

organisation refused at this point to engage with the art of Jack Vettriano, despite

being Britain’s most successful painter in commercial terms, seems to underline this

point. 56 The discussion with Thelma Golden of the Studio Museum Harlem, New York

at Tate Modern 14 June 2005 further illustrates the tension for the artworld in

21 June 2005)55Kester, G.H., Conversation Pieces: Community + Communication in Modern Art,

Berkeley, London, University of California Press, 2004, p18856Jack Vettriano is a Scottish contemporary artist whose works are sold in their

hundred of thousand in the form of postcards, greetings cards and posters, including limited edition posters and posters on canvas.

47

policing this boundary.57 She talked about curating an exhibition of these types of

practices called 'Black Romantic' (2002) and yet how much she disliked the art on

display. Jerry Saltz's review of the exhibition for The Village Voice summarizes the

issues at stake for the artworld:

Skill is in ample evidence, and several artists stand out, but much of

what's on view resembles Hallmark, mall or commercial art. ... Black

art is a realm where black pride is the ultimate virtue, accessibility

and uplift are admired, subject matter trumps form, and illustration

isn't looked down on. More importantly, it is a sphere where

modernism never happened.58 [my emphasis]

With this quote, it can be argued that perhaps it is the relationship to modernism

which serves as the defining requirement of 'Art' in the contemporary artworld. And

yet there are instances of practices legitimated by the artworld which defy this. One

major example is contemporary traditional Australian Aboriginal art which has no

real relationship to the Western Modernist tradition and yet which is legitimated by

the artworld.59 Certain artists such as Emily Kngwarreye and ‘schools’ such as Pintupi

sell for vast sums on the New York art market.60

The reason for policing the boundary between commercial non-art and Art can be said

to lie in Art's perceived distance from economic considerations. Paul Mattick analyses

the importance of this perceived distance:

Art can therefore incarnate free individuality, validating the social

dominance of those who collect and enjoy it, and signifying a cultural end

to which the making of money becomes a means. The freedom to starve,

57 'Three Perspectives: Curating in the Black Diaspora', 14 June 2005, Tate Modern with Simon Njame, Okwui Enwezor and Thelma Golden as part of 'Africa05'Online HTTP Available. <http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/webcasts/curating_black_diaspora/> Accessed 7 July 2005

58Saltz, J, 'A World Apart', The Village Voice, May 7 2002. Online HTTP Available. <http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-05-07/art/a-world-apart> Accessed 7 July 2005

59For a discussion of the contested and misunderstood relationship that the wider artworld has with traditional Aboriginal art practice see Marcia Langton, 'Homeland: sacred visions and the settler state', Artlink, Volume 20 No 1, pp11-16

60Altman, J., and Hinkson, M., 'Auctioning Aboriginal Art', Australian Indigenous Art News, vol 1, No 2, pp17-18

48

provides a model for that of the ruling elite (who have the education and

leisure necessary for the appreciation of art) purchased by the unfreedom

of the many. It is precisely its distance from market considerations, its

‘non-economic’ character, that gives art its social meaning – and its

market value.61

In other words, the artworld polices this boundary because it's the non-economic

character of Art that gives Art its economic value. Art's economic value is based on

cultural capital acquired from this distance. As the cultural capital of art is based on

the appearance of freedom from the market and commercial art is by its nature

conspicuously tied to the (mass) market, the difference between art and Art lies in

this market transparency. Non-art is transparently commercial, whereas Art is an

elite market and therefore somehow not-commercial.

If this were a consistent position taken by the artworld, there may be some rationale

to an ipso facto exclusion of commercialism. Yet, over the period 2000-2006, purely

commercial ventures do find a place within art institutions such as the Guggenheim

New York's ‘Giorgio Armani’ exhibition and Guggenheim Bilbao's ‘The Art of the

Motorcycle’ both in 2000. This occurrence, far from dispelling Mattick's account,

provides further evidence. The distinction between art and Art lies in the fact that

Jack Vettriano's work has no or low cultural capital, being ‘working class kitsch’,

whereas Armani being a millionaire clothing other millionaires and celebrities, has

cultural capital by virtue of his proximity to power.

The third area of demarcation in the artworld is politics. Generally speaking political

gestures are precluded from artworld definitions of art, particularly in the West by

artists of the West. US artist Martha Rosler has stated:

What isn't allowed is direct political expression, at least of the left half of

the spectrum, in mainstream contexts, and what's most interesting is

that it's not repressed or censored, it's erased. ... So you wind up with a

kind of self-erasing collective memory, and people including and

61Paul Mattick, Art in its Time:Theories and Practices of Modern Aesthetics, London, Routledge 2003, p4

49

especially those who work in the news media, constantly engage in self-

censorship.62

This is as true of contemporary art in Britain over the period 2000-2006

where political art was generally understood as outmoded, didactic or

instrumentalist though its status did change discernibly over the period as

will be illustrated in Sections II and III. During other periods in London,

particularly the more overtly political times like the 1970s and 80s, Art

included politically and socially engaged practices. The tension between

aesthetics and ethics (or socially engaged art practice) is understood as a

legacy of Clement Greenberg's ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’ 1939 in which he

propounds the case for the transcendence of art over life.63 Again, there might

be some legitimacy to policing this boundary along these lines, if only in the

present context, if the artworld was consistent on this point, but it isn't.

Figure 4: Yu Youhan, Mao & Blonde Girl, (1992) Acrylic on canvas

62 'Martha Rosler interviewed by Robert Fichter and Paul Rutkovsy', Interventions and Provocation: Conversations on Art, Culture and Resistance, Harper, G., (ed), New York, State University of New York Press, 1998, p13

63Greenberg, C., Art and Culture: Critical Essays, Boston, Beacon Press (1961) 1965

50

In the West, as Rosler describes above, political art is erased and artists self-censor.64

In countries where social engagement and overt politics is seen by the West's

artworld as acceptable, perhaps even expected, and part of the cultural stereotype,

political art is lauded. The growing profile of contemporary Chinese art including the

predominance of a politicised portrayal of Chairman Mao is one such example.

So too the 2003 exhibition of new Brazilian art at London gallery, Gasworks proves an

example of acceptable politicised Art. The publicity for the exhibition describes it as:

All of the artists and curators included in ‘Gambiarra’ drew on the

languages of contemporary popular culture of Brazil as sources of

inspiration and used their practices to comment on the political and

social aspects of a country which has weighty economic contradictions

and a population that is one of the most ethnically diversified in the

world. Working in a wide range of media, the artists and curators

included in ‘Gambiarra’ presentations were true representatives of a

younger generation of practitioners whose work possessed the same

creativity, prosperity and multiplicity that people have come to

associate with visual art from Europe, combined with a more explicit

and overtly political voice.65

As Stallabrass implies in Art Incorporated (2004), much of the profile given to

artwork from formerly invisible parts of the world (from the point of view of

London) does one of two things: either it upholds neo-liberal values of

unfettered market forces and increasing globalisation or it maintains desirable

stereotypes of that nation and its struggles:

More generally, the criteria for inclusion are quite obvious – work

should reflect [for example] Chinese conditions that are well known

and of concern in the West: political repression, economic growth and

consumerism, the subjugation of women, and the control of family

size. These overtly ‘Chinese’ concerns should be expressed in

64See also Martha Rosler's essay in The Subversive Imagination: Artists, Society & Social Responsibility, Becker, C., (ed), New York, London, Routledge, 1994, pp55-93

65Gasworks gallery website Online HTTP Available. <http://www.gasworks.org.uk/shows/brazil/> Accessed 21 June 2005

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recognizably contemporary Western modes to produce a manifestly

hybrid object.66

And in the case of Latin America, it is discourse, if not the artworks themselves that

maintains familiar stereotypes of a nation and its struggles, as ‘Gambiarra’ illustrates.

Artist and art historian Carol Becker problematises the situation further, observing

that :

Some who move through such an elite world of art, culture, writing,

production and exhibition now seem to answer only to the art world.

Even though the work seems to be socially motivated, the only real

consequence of such critical efforts is the degree to which the work is

found acceptable, unacceptable or exceptional by the art world,

measured by the reviews it receives – the quality of the paper trail it

generates, and relatedly the sales it ultimately accomplishes.67

Again we see illustrated that it is only when art is institutionalised as Art, valued

within the art market and its press affiliates, that it shifts categories away from non-

art. Becker implies that socially or politically motivated art only becomes Art at the

behest of a whole system of economic privilege based on cultural capital, facilitating

the transformation. As Buchloh states:

[C]onsensus entails the transfer of models of corporate consolidation

onto the restructuring of cultural production itself, the definitive

foreclosure of those spaces and practices of dissidence and deviance

that had made possible the social registers and individual identities of

cultural production. By contrast, these tend now to be organized around

strict principles of exchange and surplus value production as the single

criterion for the credibility of culture.68

In other words, it is Art's economic value which underpins its credibility within

culture and it is worth observing that the economic value of Art is based on the tastes

of a tiny segment of society who collect art and those who facilitate this process.

66 ‘Much in the art world since 1990 has offered a tame exemplification of those virtues purloined by corporate culture.’ p63 Stallabrass, J., Art Incorporated: The Story of Contemporary Art, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004

67Becker, C., op cit, p2768Buchloh, B., op cit, p xxxiii

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Art of Value is bought in the high-end primary market, specific commercial galleries,

and the secondary and tertiary markets of the auction houses. 69 Value in the artworld

is set by a few specific commercial galleries and increasingly within the auction

houses. 70 This value is not created through the supply-and-demand mechanisms of a

mass-market. Instead value in an elite market is created and maintained through a

system of insider trading, the exclusive selection of appropriate buyers and what

amounts to price fixing.71 It is a system that is not acceptable or even legal in any

other type of market. There is little that is 'on the record' about how the art market

operates, both in academic circles and in the wider press. Louisa Buck was

commissioned by Arts Council England in 2003/4 to provide just such a guide.72

Market Matters: The dynamics of the contemporary art market is a relatively useful

guide to the London artworld over this period and yet it is less than candid regarding

the workings of the art market, veering towards a belief in the myth of meritocracy

underpinning the (art) market, which will be discussed at length below. Instead Alvin

Hall's series on the art market on BBC Radio 4, ‘Alvin Hall's Secret Collections’, May –

July 2005, is more illuminating. It appears that despite the fact that Alvin Hall is

himself a collector of Art, he nevertheless can see the way it operates as an exclusive,

self-perpetuating closed system. Only like-minds are even allowed to enter the market

through a process of vetting and social humiliation done through the commercial

galleries. A transcript of the BBC Radio 4 programme helps to show the operations of

the elite art market and demonstrates how the art market operates in a way that is

surprisingly different from a mass market. Michael Hort (MH) and his wife, Susan

(SH), collectors of contemporary art are interviewed by Alvin Hall:

MH: ‘When we first started collecting, the artists that were in demand,

people didn't want to sell us. ... because they could sell them to great

69Buck, L., Market Matters: The dynamics of the contemporary art market, Arts Council England, 2004.

70 ‘The Rise of the London Art Market’, conference Tate Britain, 8-9 February 2007. This point was particularly noted by Georgina Adam, art market correspondent for The Art Newspaper and Oliver Barker, Sotheby's auctioneer for contemporary art.

71I am not only referring to the price fixing done by auctions houses Sotheby's and Christie's ('Top auctioneer tried for price-fixing' 8 November 2001 BBC news) but the overt 'price fixing' and vetting that 'responsible' dealers do in order to 'protect their artists' from the worst of market fluctuation and 'flipping' (selling an artwork at auction soon after its purchase in a gallery in order to make a quick profit).Online HTTP Available. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1644997.stm> Accessed 17 September 2007

72Buck, L., op cit

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collectors, they could hand pick 'em, that's how it was. I'll tell you an

interesting little story, actually, Simon Watson...’

SH:‘He was not terribly nice to me when...’

MH: ‘and Susan went into his gallery once with a friend of hers who

was an art collector that he knew and he had his show of the young

artist Richmond Burke. He was a hot, hot gallery, anyway’

SH: ‘Yeah but he was hot enough so that he could not only decide who

could buy the piece but he would tell you which piece you were able to

buy. ...’

[my transcription]73

Through this process of socialisation, a process which may be likened to public school

'fagging', these like-minds become unlikely to question a system to which they have

strived to become part of and through which they are privileged. After all, as

Georgina Adam art market correspondent for The Art Newspaper explains, it is new

money which buys art while old money sells it. 74 The 'more democratic' experience of

art fairs like Frieze Art Fair has arguably obviated some of the process of vetting by

its market stalls atmosphere. Nevertheless the above quote is a brief insight into the

operations of the art market as it operates in London and New York - the two places

where prices are set globally and also therefore, arguably, global culture and 'taste'.

It could be argued that it is particularly within the context of a bull market that the

boundary of art is policed as there is much more at stake. Art must be rigidly fenced

off from non-art practices to ensure its cultural capital and therefore its economic

status. It may not be coincidental therefore that 'dematerialised practices', to use

Lippard's term, flourished during global recession. A bull art market, a fair

description of the London art market 2000-2006, may be seen to foster those artists

or those practices concerned with the hierarchy and status of the art market; a bear

market will afford, if not the opposite, then a multiplicity of approaches as the ground

is not particularly fertile for any one type of practice. Nevertheless, the relationship

between economics and art, and particularly the relationship between economics and

the avant-garde, is more complex than this brief analysis allows. Suffice to say, there

is a relationship and that this relationship can be understood to involve mechanisms

73My transcription, 31 July 2005, ‘Alvin Hall's Secret Collections’, May – July 2005.74 ‘The Rise of the London Art Market’, conference Tate Britain, 9 February 2007.

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of power. I have argued that this operates even within the very definition of Art and

that this arguably predisposes Art by its nature, by definition, to work seamlessly

within the mechanisms of power, understood here through Deleuze and Guattari as

hierarchy, status, fixity, stasis.

In summary, since Beuys there has been a cherished belief within parts of the

contemporary artworld that art is anything called art. This may be understood as a

quixotic nod in the direction of democracy, the democracy of participation, stating

that anyone can participate in art, but in reality, while anyone may produce art, only

some can produce Art that is of value. In fact as the thesis has attempted to

demonstrate, many contemporary artists' careers play with this orthodoxy and the

apparently inexhaustible shock value for the general public and the media in art being

anything an artist declares it to be. The reality of the artworld belies this. Some types

of art practice are relegated to an inferior, prefixed, qualified status: commercial art,

public art, community art, political art - not art . Yet there are many exceptions within

each of these categories, which itself can be seen as helping to substantiate the

Institutional Theory of Art and the economic imperative behind it. The hierarchy-

fixated artworld generally uses the prefixed categories to dismiss those art practices

and their practitioners. Prefixed art is either by artists who haven't been to art

college, or to the right art colleges, or, in the case of politically or socially engaged

practices, it is art which can be seen to have truly achieved the avant-gardist aim of

bringing art into life.75 This process of policing the boundary of art serves to

undermine the potential of art as an instance of democratic action. How artists and

curators negotiate this relationship with artworld power is discussed in the following

Section. Tate Modern is a case study in these tensions: the tension in contemporary

75Rosler, M., ‘Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment’, 1985, The Block Reader in Visual Culture, BLOCK editorial board & Stafford, S., (Eds), London, New York, Routledge, 1996, p259Kaprow, A., Essays on the blurring of art and life, (edited by Jeff Kelley), Berkeley, London, University of California Press, c1993Also,in Bürger's theory of the avant-garde, it was nineteenth century Aestheticism which separated art from life, and the European avant-garde which demanded that art become practical again, part of the praxis of life. Bürger problematises this avant-gardist presupposition, that art should return to the praxis of life, by the end of his text. Bürger, P., Theory of the Avant Garde, (1974 translated from German by Michael Shaw), Minneapolis, Minnesota University Press, 1984

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art practices between hierarchy an, status, fixity and freedom and equality that is

counter-Power over the period 2000-2006. Tate Modern can be understood as a

crucible where factors prevalent within the London artworld come together in the

highly visible and highly pressurized environment of an internationally significant art

gallery, subject to direct pressures from the state and the market as well as the

pressure from partnerships with individual corporations. The case study of Tate

Modern will demonstrate that there is both overt and covert pressure on culture to

act in accordance with (the wishes of) power and against freedom and equality that is

counter-Power, even when an institution is ostensibly committed to the latter. The

case of Tate Modern highlights the pressures on individual practitioners in the

contemporary artworld, as well as institutions, to act against values of freedom and

equality, though as discussion of the institutional definition of art above

demonstrates, Art qua Art has already these tensions within its very definition.

Tate Modern is the first international, successful and popular museum of art opened

in Britain since the ‘new world order’ of globalisation.76 The changes in corporate and

state power and their subsequent impact on art and culture can therefore be seen

most clearly in the example of Tate Modern, though the changing context of power is

reflected more broadly in the wider artworld as well.

76The term 'new world order' is a reference to the following: Stiglitz, J., Globalisation and its discontents, op cit; Singer, P., One World: the ethics of globalisation, Melbourne, The Text Publishing Company, 2002; Pilger, J., The new rulers of the world, London, Verso 2002; Harvey, D., A Brief History of Neoliberalism, op cit as well as the New Labour government policies and approach to politics and citizenship as described in Giddens, A., The Third Way, Cambridge, Polity, 1998.

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