Marxism and Art

First published in 1948, Frederick Antal's Florentine Painting and its Social Background was an important milestone in Anglophone art history. Based on European examples, including Max Dvořák, it sought to understand art history's relationship to social and intellectual history. When Antal, a Hungarian émigré, arrived in Britain in 1933, he encountered an inward-looking discipline preoccupied with formalism and connoisseurship; or as he phrased it, art historians of 'the older persuasion' ignorant of 'the fruitful achievements of modern historical research.' Despite its considerable scholarship and erudition, Antal's book was not warmly received, largely because he had used historical materialism to understand the production of art and the development of styles. Antal's class-based account of the social position of the artist and the role of the patron in determining the emergence of early Renaissance styles was especially controversial. However, although Marxist analysis was used to challenge the assumptions of Anglo art history, it was not Antal's intention to weaken art history's disciplinary autonomy. With historical materialism, he sought to place art history on a firmer historical footing. Most importantly, this approach was compatible with the discipline's Central European tradition, where art-historical scholarship was framed by questions of method and based on broad historical research. Without defending its more deterministic features, this article supports a re-evaluation of Antal's book, as an important forerunner of interdisciplinary art scholarship. 2 It considers why Antal's legacy has not endured, despite the 'social history of art' enjoying widespread acceptance in English-speaking art history in later decades.

It might seem odd to be talking about art in a journal about the political economy of communication, but I would counter that art is one of humanity's oldest and most stable forms of communication. The decoration of the body and of the dwelling go hand in hand (literally) with human development. The creation of aesthetically pleasing and culturally symbolic artefacts and performance is a hallmark of human society. Art emerges alongside the use of tools, expanding material wealth, increased social interaction and the beginnings of class society. Art is also closely aligned with the aesthetic/spiritual development of humanity and, thus, is directly related to the development, content and dissemination of ideology, including religious beliefs and superstition. In a nutshell, art makes the subjective realm of mental production material through the application of creative concrete [1] labour. Further to this, the contemporary theoretical debate about the political economy of art-particularly, how to properly evaluate or theorise the labour of artistic producers-has resonance with similar issues in communication, such as the valorisation of play on social media platforms. Finally, I think communication scholars can also benefit from an engagement with the aesthetic that is often missing from studies of contemporary media forms. There is a long history of formulating a political economy of art and aesthetics in the Marxist tradition and it is fertile ground for a discussion of both the dialectic and the relationship between subjectivity and materiality in social history. Each of the writers discussed here make the dialectical connection between the subjectivity of the aesthetic and Marx' materialism by referencing the intimate connections between Marx's own writing and his critical reading of Kant and Hegel. However, they diverge on several key points too, pointing to both the fragmentary 'theory' of art that can be distilled from Marx and also to the complexity of historical and contemporary debates about the 'value' of art. Key themes include defining an intrinsic use-value for art (the realm of the aesthetic) and theorising art work and artistic labour within a Marxist/post-Marxist political economy. Marxism also has an abiding interest in the nexus between art and ideology in relation to revolutionary politics and the class struggle. Good art is transgressive, according to the Marxist tradition, because it lays bare the contradictions of the social system and can actually help with political education. Necessarily, this is more than a debate about how artistic artefacts, or the

Iona Singh’s book wants to remind us that the materials matter; that how the work is made matters. However, it is not simply a reminder that art involves, or should involve, a superior artisanal expertise. Interwoven into this theme is a Marxist philosophical justification: Marxist materialism points us away from pure unhistorical Ideals and towards an aesthetic praxis. But Marxism as understood by Singh is meant to require a sensibility that incorporates poetry and feeling, a sensitivity of perception and emotional response. “I contest that alienation itself functions in the discipline of art history to generate a failure to incorporate a sensual physical aspect to the theory of art.”

« [D]ans toute l’idéologie, les hommes et leurs rapports nous apparaissent placés la tête en bas comme dans une camera obscura » (Marx et Engels, L’Idéologie allemande). Dans cette célèbre métaphore, on peut rétrospectivement voir les prémices d’une tradition ininterrompue de problématisation marxiste du medium photographique. Véritablement initiée au lendemain de la Révolution de 1917 dans le sillage de l’avant-gardisme russe, avant d’être enrichie par l’apport du marxisme hétérodoxe venu d’Allemagne, elle s’est poursuivie dans les années 1970 avec le renouveau de la photographie ouvrière et le développement de conséquentes études théoriques et historiques, pour enfin prendre un nouvel essor en ce début de XXIe siècle dans le cadre d’une réflexion plus générale sur l’histoire croisée de l’art et du mode de production capitaliste. Rodtchenko, Tretiakov, Brecht, Benjamin, Kracauer, Berger, Spence, Rouillé, Nesbit, Sekula, Ribalta, voici quelques-uns des noms, parmi beaucoup d’autres, que l’on croisera dans ce foisonnant guide de lecture signé par Steve Edwards, qui témoigne de la vitalité et de l’irréductible hétérogénéité de la théorie-pratique matérialiste de la photographie.

Chercheur indépendant, résidant à Budapest depuis 1986, Bob Dent est l’auteur de plusieurs ouvrages sur la Hongrie en général et sur Budapest en particulier. Le plus récent étudie les rapports entre art et politique pendant la courte République soviétique hongroise de 1919. L’auteur présente son travail dans cet entretien réalisé et traduit de l’anglais par Sophie Coudray.