I
want to write about the emotions that exist in political issues and about the
politics of my emotions.
Can
I be an artist committed to social justice? Not in a socialist realist sense,
of course: Ben Shahn, painted, photographer, and muralist, once criticized
Diego Rivera for depicting workers stereotypically, “with heavy wrists.” I’m
looking for art that doesn’t eschew the complexity of human experience in order
to make a political point, because life always exceeds any depictions of right
and wrong.
This
being said, all human experience does have a moral dimension—looks like I’m
using moral and political interchangeably here. For me, art that doesn’t to a
certain extent “make a point”, or even worse, is not aware of the arguments it
does make, isn’t good art.
The
politics of emotions: I was nine and my little brother was four and my mother
worked until four pm everyday. In exchange for a sum that my mother at times
complained about, an elderly neighbor came to our apartment, heated up our
lunch for us, and waited while we ate. She lived in the same apartment
building, with her daughter and her son-in-law, who in turn had two daughters.
I think she must have wanted a son, or at least a grandson, because my little
brother could get away with murder in her presence; he was four, but she
spoonfed him his lunch, voluntarily. At times, he’d just refuse to eat, and
she’d wait patiently until he finished playing with his toys. Once he gave her a
card he had made for her birthday: “My sunshine!” she exclaimed with a lot of
emotion, then she wiped off a tear from the corner of her eye.
I
could never elicit this kind of response. Months of good behavior, helping out
with the dishes etc. could barely receive approval: tanti Eleonora wasn’t actually very expressive emotionally and I
never saw her very effusive around her own granddaughters. But there were more
than actions at play there: there were emotions, and hers gravitated toward the
young male.
The
politics of emotions (2): once my friend Cristina asked me whether I had
noticed that people (back home) loved women only if they were really unhappy—if they
could say poor X, she has three small children and her husband deserted her and
now she’s about to lose her job, or poor Y, who has cancer and her husband
drinks and what’s going to happen to her now… it seemed, according to Cristina,
that everyone loved unhappy women in terrible life situations not of their own making. That was one way
women could get social approval back home.
Are things any different here?
hmmm well of course I write a lot about artists, some of whom did fairly beat the viewer over the head with the political message, but others offered emotionally evocative pieces intended to "raise consciousness, invite dialogue and transform culture" as they liked to say. That definition of feminist art came from the art historian Arlene Raven
ReplyDeleteI want to know more about these artists; their work must be made even more difficult by an art environment that claims that art should be free of politics etc. But for me the most interesting artists would always offer a point of excess, where the work exceeds its political message, from which it follows that ideally I'd like to avoid a certain literalness which is present in the work of Judy Chicago for example.
DeleteBut I'll check out Suzanne Lacy's work and maybe you can suggest more artists--where's the retrospective you were writing about in your recent post?