Blog 1: Gene Ray- "On the Conditions of Anti-Capitalist Art"

Ray, Gene. "On the Conditions of Anti-Capitalist Art: Radical Cultural Practices and the Capitalist Art: Radical Cultural Practices and the Capitalist Art System". Left Curve. No 31. 
 Left Curve Publications: Oakland, 2007. March 2008.http://www.leftcurve.org/lc31webpages/anticapitalistart.generay.pdf

Gene Ray is a critic and theorist who has written essays surrounding the issues at the intersection of art and radical politics. In “On the Conditions of Anti-Capitalist Art: Radical Cultural Practices and the Capitalist Art system”, Ray writes about what he refers to as “anti-Capitalist” art practices and throughout the text discusses three models or position of practice that artists can choose from.

In this writing he discusses that art under capitalism leads us to believe that artists are free to create work that exists only within the realm of art, that art is autonomous (as a self governing entity, free to act independently from “life”). However I fell that art can be used as a tool to endorse the system of power, control and lack of freedom, as it is “a social institution that is organised into a system, of rules and conventions serving social functions that are largely ideological.” (Ray, 2007: 2) In this sense art is a product of society (as the Frankfurt School suggests, like a “branch” of culture), rather than a product produced separately from culture.

Ray explains however that under the capitalist system “artists enjoy more freedoms of expression than do people in everyday life” (Ray, 2007: 2) and this is why I believe that art can act as a powerful tool in influencing and opening an awareness of things that control and motivate our everyday life.

As art is affected by culture, it can also effect and transform society and it is interesting for me to ask in what ways it can. Martha Rosler describes art as functioning in society in many ways, from decoration to domination,

"to the capacity to re-imagine a situation either through an image or words, and combinations or other forms of representation, that help to put a defining edge around the thought, and help people crystallize their thinking, to help people to be able to look into and through a situation. To give people a place to stand, critically and intellectually, to be able to orient themselves toward a situation. To not feel overwhelmed or powerless or clueless." (Wright, 2000: 3)

The way that Rosler describes art as a crystallising of thought, suggests to me that art has a function that transcends the system it exists in and allows for individualism and free thought. I think Rosler’s 1974 work The Bowery In Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems, shows that descriptive systems (photography and language) may be inadequate. It suggests to me that systems can be critiqued, and challenges us to think about systems themselves. The artwork here plays a heuristic role because it exists or “crystallises on the thinking realm.” (Wright, 2000: 3) The work encourages the viewer to think rather than just accept it as a standardized product of mass production.



Art in this sense has the potential to empower the individual; something that capitalism threatens to take away.

References:

Ray, Gene. "On the Conditions of Anti-Capitalist Art: Radical Cultural Practices and the Capitalist Art: Radical Cultural Practices and the Capitalist Art System". Left Curve. No 31. 
 Left Curve Publications: Oakland, 2007. March 2008. http://www.leftcurve.org/lc31webpages/anticapitalistart.generay.pdf

Linksnet. 20th 2008. http://www.linksnet.de/autor.php?id=1321.

Wright, Stephen. “Martha Rosler in conversation: packaging the public sphere”. Parachute. No 97. January / March 2000. Wilson Web, University of Auckland. 5th January 2008. http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/hww/
results…ngle_fulltext.jhtml;hwwilsonid=CUUTTMUOKOAHFQA3D
INCFF4ADUNGIIVO