Saw members of ‘Pussy Riot’ on Charlie Rose last night. Worst musicians and most fearless artists I’ve ever seen. Art stares back into the face of brutal soul-crushing authority while everyone else examines their shoes, and it’s the vulture who turns away. This is after journalists have been publicly poisoned, political opponents bogusly charged, tried, and sent to prison, and under the constant surveillance of the secret police. Art may in the end be the only solution.
Pussy Riot is not about subversive lyrics, sly derision of those in power tolerated from above as feckless even useful dissent. It’s courage and defiance they personify, and they’ve willed it to ripple out from them through performance because they understand art isn’t passive. Art both reflects and directs self-image, the realm of possibilities for the individual and for their community, as totalitarian regimes have understood well enough. Those who would control minds fear art more than foreign armies, and their feeble attempts to subdue and bend it trace a real yet unwritten history of the twentieth century. Well documented are the darkly hilarious machinations of fascist and communist national cults trying to limit and restrict art only to make it more virulent and powerful.
Art in the west has been buffeted by different forces. Here art sells stuff and even sells itself. Ask Andy Warhol about politics and he’ll talk about carpeting the streets (saw the interview) but walking through his shop he’ll order more Lisa’s, “we can always sell those” (from a documentary). At least in a democracy there’s no attempt to control art from above, unless you count the NEA, myriad foundation grants, and state-supported teaching institutions everywhere. Here the artist doesn’t fear heavy footsteps followed by loud knocking in the night, but still there are challenges. The first is an almost totally alienated audience. Squeezed on one side by the vulgarity of commercialism and from the other by an academic establishment passing out honors and grants and hiring teachers from within a state-supported farm system, the general public opted out, walked away, and the vested interests said good riddance. Each takes a much bigger chunk from a much smaller pie.
Pussy Riot is a hard act to follow. Artists here can’t count on one sorta goofy performance resulting in a gigantic state show trial seen all around the world, and which in effect puts the state, itself, on trial. That’s a lot to ask. Here artists need to be honest with themselves and hope their example will endure, as paintings do, and ripple out at least a sense of independence and some notion of purpose beyond money.
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