Kenny Schachter dissects the history of political art and ponders its uncertain future

[F]or me, being asked to write a political article
is near mortifying, ie hard work. Admittedly, 
I am more of a Daily Mail kind of person than 
a consistent Guardian reader. It’s not that I don’t care or am uninformed, I am an avid consumer of newspapers, periodicals and CNN (I recommend buying stock, pronto), but when it comes to art that proselytises, I have regularly shied away rather than paid much attention to the genre. 
But post-Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, I’m not sure I have the luxury of turning a blind eye (or two) any longer to art that engages socially and politically.

I would say few, if any, museumgoers are religiously discriminatory or against black people and the LGBTQ community. I would suggest many actually voted for Trump (though they surely wouldn’t tell you so), but that was primarily for his staunch anti-tax and deregulatory pro-business take. Traipsing the aisles of any iteration of the Basel fair merry-go-round, inevitably you will encounter art that hits you over the head with ringing righteous messages. How does it amount to more than preaching to the choir (a predominantly white band, I might add), and worse, selling the agitprop artworks that make their pedantic positions manifest for veritable fortunes?

Let us explore where political art is at now and how it arrived there. What’s an abridged evolution of the importance, the relevance, the commodification, and the ethics of art with politically derived content? I admit a bias undertaking the enterprise; I am idealistic, but cynically so, and as mentioned, I recoil from didactic art that, in most instances, would be better served by the written word. 
Art is above all a visual medium, which for me is characterised by an open-endedness; also, there is an element of timelessness in great art and politics is inherently pegged to an era.

William Hogarth (1697-1764) was among the first to make scathingly critical serial paintings that spun sequential stories, pointedly probing the mores of the time – works that were equally observational and damning in judgment. The tales that Hogarth chronicled in A Rake’s Progress (1732-33) highlighted the foibles, lack of judgment, weaknesses and human frailties he witnessed in the society that unfolded around him. The cultural and political indictments that Hogarth depicted communicate their sharp messages with the same cutting fierceness now as ever before.

Hans Haacke (b. 1936) has been fearless in his relentless attacks of bases of power of every stripe, pulling away the curtains that obscure hypocrisy and corruption across various sectors. Haacke’s work, Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971 was unceremoniously pulled from his solo show at the Guggenheim Museum in the early 70s for schematically laying bare, in a flow chart for all to see, the incestuous financial interdependence of museum trustees. Poking at the legitimising self-entitlement that comes from museum board affiliation, that that work was yanked from Haacke’s exhibit didn’t come as much of a surprise.

In The Mythic Being (1973) Adrian Piper (b. 1948) dressed as a black man, replete with faux moustache and afro, acting erratically, perplexingly muttering repeated excerpts from her journals while she trundled down the streets of New York clocking people’s reactions with a videographer in tow, like an anthropologist trying to needle their subjects and gauge the backlash. In another work, Self-Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features (1981), she rendered herself to be more pronouncedly black in a never-ending quest to confront, challenge and question our deeply held perceptions of race and social hierarchies and prejudices – even if we are not outwardly aware ourselves. Andy Warhol (1928-1987) elevated celebrities to deities, immortalising them on silkscreened canvases and in a parallel universe inserted himself into the world he began by recording.

It worked pretty well in almost every respect. Akin to Andy, in a different way, is Chinese dissident provocateur Ai Weiwei (b. 1957) who cloaks himself in politics to couch his art making. Beyond the immediacy inherent in his chosen medium, which could be anything from installations and interventions – breaking or painting over classic vases – to fabricating countless varieties of objects like security cameras, chairs and chandeliers, the politics are another dimension. For some reason the artist refers to these multiple objects as unique works, which is an economic conundrum for another occasion. By critiquing the news in such a ubiquitous manner, Weiwei simultaneously made news (and art) from it all. Like anything, there are limits and boundaries that sometimes get traversed, for instance the artist lying foetal-like on the beach in Greece emulating a drowned Syrian infant refugee was of questionable taste and proprietary, but you can’t question his ultimate aim.

Since I started out in the art world decades ago, Rirkrit Tiravanija (b. 1961) from Buenos Aires, Argentina of Thai descent, has kindly and graciously been dispensing free meals like
a reverse Robin Hood that robs the rich – by way of institutional subsidies – to feed the richer (and a smattering of lesser-off artist types). Jerry Saltz has reported on his repeated visits mainly to chat up young artists and sundry other gallery-goers, while copping decades of spring rolls. No offence, I think there are many qualities to Rirkrit’s body of work formally and sculpturally, but in the context I’ve seen some, the message is defanged.

Swiss-born Thomas Hirschhorn (b. 1957) on the other hand dwells in the land(scape)
of shock and awe. His shoddily slapped-together politically-inspired installations with a hardware store aesthetic are regularly held together by mere tape. The works bring to light grossly violent and inequitable human suffering at the hands of ruthless political posturing and power-mongering. The pieces seem as though they have a short shelf life, are often colourful and arrayed in an arresting mix of media. A typical Hirschhorn is comprised of all manner of found objects and printed images thrown together in a whirlwind, makeshift though cohesive mess that tells a narrative story through sculpture. More often than not, the images show bloodshed, body parts, strife and devastation in disturbing graphic bloody detail. Not for the faint of heart.

American artist Jonathan Horowitz (b. 1966), recently made a manipulated photographic work entitled Does She Have a Good Body? No. Does She Have a Fat Ass? Absolutely. The words were Trump’s from an interview in which he was referencing/denigrating Kim Kardashian. The work was an appropriation of the president (it pains me to type) shot from behind in the midst of a golf stroke, with the sky tweaked to a fiery, foreboding orange hue. His rump is far from appealing and resembles a misshapen, 3D trapezoid.

Unlike much art with a cause, Horowitz’s works are open-ended, funny and above all ambiguous, which for me constitutes a key ingredient of good. Art that is open to different readings and interpretations is in effect unfinished but for what the observer brings to the equation. Not to deny the intent of the artist but to leave room for the viewer to decipher and analyse. Art is a slow burning process of organic absorption and transformation, rather than a one hit fix driving a point.

Bouchra Khalili (b. 1975) is a Moroccan-French filmmaker, who has made art out of the lives of illegal refugees, in a manner divorced from the physical presence of her subjects yet very much in their own voices (literally). In Khalili’s 2016 MOMA show, The Mapping Journey Project, the individuals were removed from the shots – only hands tracing the routes used to escape the tyranny and subjugation of their homelands, and their own spoken words. Khalili met the subjects at transportation hubs, like Vito Acconci’s Following Piece, but sought permission to shadow them. The voices themselves are the real human and emotional map, painting pictures of the day-to-day struggles and determination necessitated to flee. Not to be flippant, but within a few short weeks of the Trump administration, there are already plenty with (horror) stories to recount of their own. What’s next is anyone’s guess.

Does art have something to prove beyond being good, whatever that may (or may not) mean for you? Should it? On a basic level when we are exposed to such institutionalised insanity and unstableness I would say, probably for the first time in my life, that there is at least a little responsibility to be political in some guise or form: whether by way of identity politics incorporating issues of gender, race and sexuality or the repression of dictatorial political and religious overstepping – or just taking a position on social media or making a cool sign and marching somewhere (you are spoiled for choice now). But to each their own, otherwise there is the risk of a knee-jerk reflex for uniformity, which itself is coercive… and boring.

The profound physical and mental displacement emanating from Trump’s capricious, inhumane and unlawful travel ban is bound to be the next stomping ground for artists. The populist push has been instigated by global threats to economic sustenance and security and a growing disenfranchisement worldwide. I fear what is next; I trust I am not alone, and art could, and will, help us all to assimilate the resultant chaos. Yet my feelings remain that the commercial art world (which is most) is impervious to being swayed by protest art; you can safely generalise that they lean left socially, and (far) right fiscally. Besides, a lot of overtly political or conceptual art necessitates an instruction manual, which is beyond the transcendent visual experience I’m after.

Art as an agent of change, a soft cultural capital, cannot be underestimated and is now impregnated (it may not be able to get an abortion in the US soon) with as much significance as it ever has been. Okay, so I’ve come full circle, but if you can’t contradict yourself – who can you? For better or worse, the floodgates have been opened for proactive art that will verge on a new form of performance provocations! The reaction of the world will be to wholeheartedly embrace this coming new art form, the feel-good factor in fractious times to come. And of course, historically, every time artists have set out to make difficult, unwieldy, seemingly immaterial fodder in the name of art, the marketplace has sucked it right up. That won’t change.

Follow Kenny Schachter @KennySchachter

This essay originally appeared in Hunger 12, Stand For Something, out now