The Philosophy of Art:
by Gerard J Kelly
The Politics of Aesthetics
I was introduced to the philosophy of French philosopher Jacques Rancière during my Masters studies in Art History Class. I was very interested in what Rancière was saying about art and its relationship to politics and how the two were intertwined and yet in conflict with each other. I also interpreted what he said about the effectiveness of art-actions to instigate change in the world as an expression of the belief that art
was not an effective way to instigate political change. He seemed to be telling us that when artists take a political stance and then realize that stance in their art that they are effectively pissing into the wind! People may be immediately taken by the work and forced to acknowledge that the power of the art before them moves them to sympathy, but it seldom if ever moves them to action. As soon as these spectators are out of ear shot of the artist, and out the door of the gallery they are much more concerned with getting a taxi, or planning their own social lives than they are about making change in the world. That would take effort and effort they can little afford in their own selfish busy lives. The Artist leaves the gallery after much ado about nothing, feeling he or she has opened eyes and doors and that now they have arrived and will cause the world to see things as they do, but of course they are lying to themselves! If you are titillated to interest in this philosopher and new darling of the elite art connoisseurs of the world then you should read his book, The Politics of Aesthetics .
Ben Davis of Artnet once wote:
"Rancière has the undeniable virtue, for
the esoterica-obsessed art world at least, of being something of an odd duck".
A one-time fellow traveler of Marxist mandarin Louis Althusser, Rancière split with him after the May ’68 worker-student rebellion against the de Gaulle government, feeling that Althusser, a partisan of the Stalinized French Communist Party, left too little space in his theoretical edifice for spontaneous popular revolt. Against this background of disenchantment, Rancière set out to explore the relationships between philosophy and the worker, rethink ideas of history and try to construct a progressive theory of art.
This is the area where aesthetics and politics mix
and either agree or disagree.
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