‘When the U.S. Government Paid the Working Class to be Artists’, jan 31, artsy magazine online.
Saw this article about artists of the WPA, and the freudian admission in the title caught my eye. First of all you can’t hire someone to be an artist who hasn’t paid the dues, it isn’t day-labor. Even so there is a working class point of view, and some artists have it. The article says they discovered an old cache of thirties-era posters in a trunk somewhere, advocating worker solidarity, concern for the environment, book reading, such as that, just a few words with graphic content to convey the message. Some of them needed no words at all.
Rich people don’t like working class nothing, and that goes double for art. They were highly offended by Diego Rivera and his peasant army of painters and poster designers, communicating back and forth throughout the thirties, establishing common ground for the bulk of humanity, so subversive. The war consolidated control for the few, and the entire social consciousness art movement was denounced as ‘communist inspired’ -- tarred, feathered, rode out of town. In its place, most folks already know, came years and years of rich people’s art -- collectible, deductible, abstract and mute.
After the long repression there’s new conversation in an old language, the universal visual mode which requires no translation, yet conveys meaning and emotion, charm and consolation, and many layers and shadings of thought words can’t touch. Don’t trust translations, summaries, or critical reviews, usually produced by art’s hanger-ons, hogtied with words and concepts, consensus seeking unseeing nabobs. Use your own eyes instead, you’re qualified. We’re all qualified. So what if we’re working class, assigned to the economy’s infantry, subject to incoming from all directions. Art addresses that.
The time for government programs has past. Their self-perpetuating ‘peer group’ reviews failed to advance a common heritage, failed to make art accessible to the people who paid the bills or to produce an art sustainable on its own. Working class people, who isn’t really, are going to increasingly recognize in art an encapsulation of what they feel and experience, or they won’t. It isn’t up to anyone else. The essential silliness of the competitive acquisition cult at the high end of art’s media visibility hasn’t been helpful, but it’s not really relevant on a working class level, and no one cares. Art gets real when times get tight. It happened before, FDR had the vision, but this time uncle isn’t going to hold its hand.
Saw this article about artists of the WPA, and the freudian admission in the title caught my eye. First of all you can’t hire someone to be an artist who hasn’t paid the dues, it isn’t day-labor. Even so there is a working class point of view, and some artists have it. The article says they discovered an old cache of thirties-era posters in a trunk somewhere, advocating worker solidarity, concern for the environment, book reading, such as that, just a few words with graphic content to convey the message. Some of them needed no words at all.
Rich people don’t like working class nothing, and that goes double for art. They were highly offended by Diego Rivera and his peasant army of painters and poster designers, communicating back and forth throughout the thirties, establishing common ground for the bulk of humanity, so subversive. The war consolidated control for the few, and the entire social consciousness art movement was denounced as ‘communist inspired’ -- tarred, feathered, rode out of town. In its place, most folks already know, came years and years of rich people’s art -- collectible, deductible, abstract and mute.
After the long repression there’s new conversation in an old language, the universal visual mode which requires no translation, yet conveys meaning and emotion, charm and consolation, and many layers and shadings of thought words can’t touch. Don’t trust translations, summaries, or critical reviews, usually produced by art’s hanger-ons, hogtied with words and concepts, consensus seeking unseeing nabobs. Use your own eyes instead, you’re qualified. We’re all qualified. So what if we’re working class, assigned to the economy’s infantry, subject to incoming from all directions. Art addresses that.
The time for government programs has past. Their self-perpetuating ‘peer group’ reviews failed to advance a common heritage, failed to make art accessible to the people who paid the bills or to produce an art sustainable on its own. Working class people, who isn’t really, are going to increasingly recognize in art an encapsulation of what they feel and experience, or they won’t. It isn’t up to anyone else. The essential silliness of the competitive acquisition cult at the high end of art’s media visibility hasn’t been helpful, but it’s not really relevant on a working class level, and no one cares. Art gets real when times get tight. It happened before, FDR had the vision, but this time uncle isn’t going to hold its hand.
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