Critical approaches to the arts II - Module II (Art and politics)

Art and politics

SESSION 1: INTRODUCTION

This course is about images and the ways in which they embody meanings. Thus, during this session we

will also start looking at images together – to exercise our eyes, and to get us started with the questions

that will keep us busy for the rest of the term.

Marat Assassinated, Jacques Louis David 1793, Musée Royal des beaux arts.

In what way is this image politically influenced?

This is one of the heroes of the French Revolution who was

murdered while he was having taking a bath. But aside from you

know the information. So this is already an interesting comment

that you made because it allows us to see something. And that's

something is that we tend to come to images. and to incorporate

images based on the prior knowledge we have about the subject. At

a first glance I think it is political because the subject matter that is

represented in it is political: it is a hero of the French Revolution.

But, what does this particular portrait with this particular

representation of the assassination of the hero of the Revolution,

due to its subject matter? So if you are the artist you have a million

possibilities, some more bloody, peaceful you can represent him in

a myriad of ways. The artist decided that this particular way

worked. So what does it do to us? Visually. What do you think are

the elements that the artist is stressing by means of the particular

representation that he's using?

One of the pillars of the French Revolution was precisely an attack on religion and on the superstition

that religion was all about. So already here we have a bit of a heuristic problem, because we have a

painting painted by one of the key artists of the French Revolution, he's very much involved in the

staging of the revolution and the Post revolution in France. So this artist decides to represent one of

the heroes of the French Revolution, and he does so weirdly, representing him and casting him in a

shape that we inform in a visual form that is modelled onto Christ Deposition.

Marat was a very influent politician during the French Revolution, murdered by politic rivals.

This looks much like Christ Passion, it’s political because he refers to a Christian tradition to make

Marat an hero of revolution. David is a scenographer of the French Revolution. This artist decided to

represent this scene in this way comparing it to the Deposition of

Christ by Raphael, 1507, Rome, Borghese Gallery.

The similarity between the two paintings in terms of the way that the

body is represented might be more immediately apparent to you all.

So in David, Marat had his arm stretching out limply from the

bathtub and in the Renaissance painting you have similar pose with

prices reclining limply in the arms of his followers as he is

abandoned death. The moment the artist decided he was painting a

hero that has died unjustly (in the opinion of the painter) he had a

catalogue of examples as an artist. Everyone is culturally trained. I

mean, we may not be formally trained as artists, but we have all

grown up and we have been raised within a certain visual regime. We

grew up looking at certain images surrounded by certain

environments, and those are the things that we go back to when we are confronted with the problem of

create something new. That is also true for an artist so an artist sits down to a similar pose, so he is

confronted with the challenge of represented something that is in a way, radically new, but also in a

different way that will only be as understandable to him, but also to the viewers if that novelty is rooted

into something that I can understand. So the range of visual models that will convey the meaning of the

scene that you represent is then not necessarily narrow down, but is focused onto a certain number of

subjects and the Passion of Christ. Even in revolutionary France, so even in a context where you know

the human attack on religion was being undertaken, of course images of the passion of Christ that is of

the emblem of unfair suffering in 18th century France, will be known to everyone, and so there's an

overlap, but that is deliberately created. The paradigm of unjust suffering, that is Christ and the reason

conflation of course between religious and political ideas, not on the plane of ideology. The French

Revolution is opposed to any religious regimes but in terms of how it constructs the cult of this

particular heroes. And it's interesting to note that you know the term cult here is not overly emphatic.

That it is a palimpsest where political meaning is construed deliberately via the superimposition of

different layers that are visit visual. You know this image reminds you over the position.

Meleager Sarcophagus, C2 AD, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It represents again the death of a hero. Look at how many

others bodies represented again, we can't see anything of that

body below his chest, but we can just imagine how it recline.

The image of Marat evocates very powerful models, that would

be present in the visual dna of 18th century French viewers.

Never underestimate the power of the similarity. So this image

shows them represented in a very similar pose. What's the main

difference? People, because the hero Marat here is alone. So

what this painting is telling us is that that Meleager or Christ's

death was 20% redeemed by the presence and the honour that

their friends had. But this particular hero was killed in the

intimacy of his house and in solitude. Marat received public funerals, the most solemn funeral tribute

that you could possibly imagine. This painting is telling us is a story about solitude abandonment and

isolation in death. So the hero, as an isolated, is a lonely character and all this just by visual. You don't

need anything else, you just need to look at the image and compared with the others.

They are both heroes in the artist’s opinion, Christ is the emblem of a person who suffer and there is a

connection between religious and political areas, both these people are suffering. The use of the cult is

very precise, this is a very complex image, political meaning are construct on an image that invite you to

compare it to others images.

Meleager Sarcophagus, the same position of the body, out the arm. He has been dead for ideological

reasons, as Christ.

Zanele Muholi, Julile I, Parktown, Johannesburg, 2016

There is something punchy about this painting, and this

pond should come from the gaze of the figure represented.

So the fact that the figure is staring right back at us, and so

it engages us as viewers, you know, there's no way around

it. She looks at us. And after she did, not that we look at

her even as the image is not necessarily an easy imaged on.

And so there's something political about that.

There is visual tension between the way that the body is

represented and what it shows/doesn't show. So the body

is covered but the posture is not shy or withdrawal, while

the opposite, it engages. It isn't a body that is aggressively

counting after us, but it isn't a body that is withdrawing or hiding. It is a body that is there, sort of

doing its own thing, but also quite. So there is that tension. And then the other points were picking up

falls on the blackness of figuring. If I heard correctly about the relationship with the tradition of the

representations in the news. The artist decided to be a visual activist more than an artist. She is an

international artist, very important.

Representation of a black woman without any dress. She is trying to cover her body, but the posture is

not shy. It isn’t a body that come aggressively to us and it is not also a body who is shy, she want us to

see her. The presence of newspapers is condemning the fact that all around the world we are concerned

about many things but not enough about poverty and social injustices. Political thing is not relied only

about who the Govern works or about laws, but it’s about social-culture.

Looking at questions in this picture that are sociocultural, about poverty, injustice, or the role of the

marginalised is primarily, but it is an issue with inevitable implications for the ways in which everything

about what our communities are, what they should be, and how much function that ultimately is an

issue about policy and about politics.

Art and culture build the foundation of what our polities are, they built the means by which our society

works. Every artwork in the moment when it stands in front of you and you look at it, it regards you.

Italiano “riguardare” = to look back or to look again, when you look at an image, that image concerns

at you, engage you, force you to take a position/posture, and every time you take a posture, as

individuals and citizens you are taking a political position that maybe you are not aware of, you are

contributing to build a certain type of society/community.

How we negotiate and renegotiate our daily behaviors in recent time, the boundary is not exclusively

biological, it is social and political because you decide how you prevent yourself, wearing a mask you

are implicitly taking a position that is political, and this is true for everyday behavior.

Muholi is a South African artist, very active member of LGBTQ+ community, campaigning, part of

associations and organizations for equal rights, this image is part of a series of self-portait, so this is the

artist. The series is called “Hail the Dark Lioness” she produced it in 2016 and she produced a

number of similarly and perfectly crafted images, absolutely polish photographic portraits with various

kinds of disguises which have in common either the use of this unusual props related to topics like

poverty, apartheid… but always reused and manipulate, this is really political. The artist works actively

in the political arena and she is in the racial debate.

Giorgione an Titian, Sleeping Venus (Dresden Venus), 1507-12 circa, Gemaldegalerie

Evidently the last one is an artwork that is political explicitly, emphatize social and racial inequality.

However also this is an image that very craftly and very

deftly mobilizes the whole arsenal of the art historical idea.

Even if we don’t remember this specific painting, we have

those in our memories, we came from this tradition. The

comparison: what the Sleeping Venus adds in order to

understand better the Muholi?

Question of engagement, the Muholi looks at you, the

image of the Venus is not only not looking, but she is

sleeping and therefore she is offering her body to the

viewer unknowingly.

Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538, Florence, Galleria degli

Uffizi

This is allegorical representation of Venus with the idea of

Renascence beauty, with a perfect white skin, which offers

to the viewers gaze, but it’s a bit different from the

previous one. This Venus is awake, she is engaging the

viewers’ gaze and she is openly erotic because in one hand

she has flowers and with the other she touches her

personal parts. That Venus is sitting on an unmade bed, a

very intimate place. She is not ashamed about her body.

If you compare it to the photograph, there are similarities but also differences. The place where is the

Venus of Urbino is an intimate space, a house, very strange because is suspended between the interior

and the exterior, we can see a curtain drown between the space where servants are working and the

space of the woman. We don’t understand where exactly we are, but it is a private space. The space of

the photograph does not seems like a domestic one.

A certain artwork is produced by certain individuals: sometimes on commission of other individuals or

institutions or groups, and the fact that an artwork is produced for the market doesn't mean it is

neutral: it is produced for a certain audience, so by specific individuals or full specific individuals or

institutions, and in anticipation of a certain usage. All of these issues, so who makes it for whom, for

what use are fundamental for our understanding of how an image works.

So in these two cases, of course, one (Venus Urbino), as you're saying, is a marital gift, so the idea that

this is an openly erotic painting that offers the female body to the viewer, it is also about to what

marital life is, with intimacy between two members, what shared spaces they may have and the question

of who did seem that painting is also there important, so what is on public view or on private view?

Who could have access to that image and what kind of expectation would viewers bring to the image?

The same questions we can ask this photograph here (Muholi). Obviously the answers are different, so

this is a photograph produced by an artist for public display in artistic context. So again, galleries

museums would be analysed. It is meant for public viewing. It is meant to be sold, but the client is not

pre identified so it is not made on commission. So all of these questions of course affect the ways in

which the images work. But to go back to the question: what does the gaze of end the body language of

the two images due to us? Let's consider one last image.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Reclining Venus, 1625-30, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Goya, Maya Desnuda, 1797-800, Madrid, Prado

The Goya’s painting is a late 18th century painting and as you can see this plays along with all of the

preceding images, so this comes at the end of a very long story and tradition of representations of the

female nude; so what does it do that is different from the other ones? And what kind of conversation

again exists between these two images here?

It’s a question of subject and object, because you can portrait even the same body in the same way, but

there is a fundamental semantic difference when that images is produced by a male photographer or a

male painter or even a woman painter. So if I take a selfie of myself, or if you take a photograph of

myself, the two things are very different. At the very least, in the first case they’re telling something

about how I want to be represented, whereas in the other case they’re saying something about the ways

in which you see me, or you would like me to be seen, or you think it is relevant for others to see me,

so there is a shift in the perspective that is also important to keep in mind. This question of subjectivity

versus the objectification is very central to her work as an artist (Muholi), so the whole series of this

“Hail the Dark Lioness” is made of self-portraits which are very different, but most of them really play

on the art historical cannon, on repairs on the genre of portrait and female portraits particularly, but

subverted in various ways. Now, as I mentioned before, she does it with a declare intention to provoke

and subvert. It is about instating and establishing black identity in an artistic context that in her opinion

has neglected blackness, black representation, black women, LGBT community self-identity. This is

very much at the forefront of her artistic agenda. Now this is important, but in a way this is the most

evident thing about this image, even if you didn't mention it to start with, I think part of the reason

why you didn't raise the issue of blackness is because you know that was too obvious to even mention.

But the point is, the reason why this image is so powerful is because it contradicts but engages with the

whole tradition of visual representations of this subject. So in a way, the message I suppose that I am

trying to offer you to give you is that I think we're bombarded and I hope we'll have more time to

unpack this, we evidently live in a world that is full of inequality and injustice: racial, class related,

religious, all sorts of inequality. And you know, I absolutely want you all to be fully aware of this and to

be thinking about these issues very carefully. However, there has been a very strong wave of critique

against the art world or against certain academic disciplines, even classics (study of recent Rome), which

having passed by some parties as being inherently racist. Now I think this is very problematic because it

is certainly true that the art historical canon, the way that the female nude has been represented, these

bodies were represented for the male gaze by men, they objectified women, and I’m not going to argue

against that. What I am going to caution as all against is that we draw the consequences we should stop

studying those paintings because that's racist in favour of other paintings. What I'm saying is, you know

oblivion is never a strategy. Partly because we don't become less racist or less unequal. If we close an

eye on a certain tradition, we only lose awareness. So in a way, those prejudices become ingrained, we

don’t become better, so what I'm advocating for, and I think this is a very good example of what you

can do with the power of knowledge, is engaging and knowing all the traditions. It’s not about

forgetting. I'm all for the integration of art from minority, more global understanding of the history of

civilization, but that cannot and should not become a formal intellectual property. Let's become more

aware and let's become more inclusive, but let's not forget, let's not burn down. She is a black woman,

the image is so powerful because it contradicts but engage the tradition, oblivion are never the answers.

Course aims:

This course aims to introduce students to the reciprocal interactions between the visual arts and

politics. Developed ad a series of case studies, it tackles two main questions:

- To what extent can political meanings and values be infused into artworks and monuments?

- Conversely, in what ways do images and artifacts interrogate the political sphere?

The course focuses on monuments and artefacts created in the Mediterranean from antiquity to ca.

1500. It also exposes how some of these monuments were culturally reinvented in the ideologies of the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and how the study of pre-modern art is currently informed by –

and how it can constructively to – contemporary concerns with diversity.

Key Questions

- What do specific images, monuments and artefacts say about the cultural identity, historical memory,

and political ideologies of a community?

- In what ways can they contribute to construct, advertise and disseminate shared ideals and values?

- How and why do certain social groups reject specific monuments and images, a