Art is often best when it’s absolutely deranged. We are irrational, incoherent beings, and artists and writers should embrace this once more.
— Dean Kissick, ‘The Painted Protest’
Contributed by Saul Ostrow / In “The Painted Protest: How Politics Destroyed Contemporary Art” in the December issue of Harper’s, Dean Kissick presents a provocative critique, arguing that since the 1990s art’s politicized expressions of discomfort have diminished its quality and impact. As a remedy, he calls for artists to return to romantic ideals of beauty, strangeness, and emotion. He contends that artists should prioritize innovation and aesthetic rigor while focusing on universal human experience rather than political correctness. While his case is compelling on the surface, Kissick overlooks crucial historical and economic factors that have affected the art world. The shift in art’s focus is a result of not only political engagement but also a complex interplay of post-industrial social, economic, and cultural forces that emerged in the 1960s and have led to changes in how art is created, valued, and consumed.
The transition from manufacturing-based economies to service- and information-oriented ones is ushering in a tech-dominated culture that is profoundly influencing our sense of self and material being. The post-structuralist dismantling of modernist narratives of progress and technological optimism, which previously governed artistic production and sustained artists’ ambitions, is now institutionalized. This has produced confusion about cultural relevancy of traditional practices, leaving art audiences disoriented. By itself, this phenomenon lends some credence to Kissick’s complaint. But he fails to acknowledge that art and its seeming retreat into nostalgia and politics is a symptom and not the cause of art’s irresoluteness. His vision of “getting back to how things were,” for instance, ignores the impact of white heterosexual males’ domination of Western art and politics. It has marginalized women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and indigenous peoples. It is primarily the work of those groups that Kissick considers inadequately creative. While some might dismiss his argument as a veiled assault on diversity, it is more constructive to examine it in the full context of art’s political economy, taking into account artistic production, market forces, cultural values, and the inherently political nature of art. The touchstone for this kind of analysis is Arnold Hauser’s seminal 1951 work The Social History of Art (revised in 1999), which challenges the idealized view of the artist’s autonomy by framing art as a product of the economic and social environment.
Tablet: 875 x 645.2 cm / 344 5/8 x 254 in LED signs: 390 x 13.9 x 10.2 cm / 153 1/2 x 5 1/2 x 4 in each
Kissick kicks off his argument with Arthur Danto’s reinterpretation of Hegel’s “end of art” as the proposition that art had transcended the need for self-definition through a strict historical narrative, allowing for more diverse forms of expression. While some read this as an “anything goes” approach, Danto only meant to mark the end of modernism’s particular historical framework. Kissick says this abandonment of modernism has led to the present-day focus on marginalized voices and equity issues. What he declines to acknowledge is that the political turn in art is, in fact, a revival of the doctrine of social realism, which emerged in the early twentieth century and focused on questioning existing societal structures.
In particular, he does not take note of influential political artists such as Hans Haacke or the Feminist and Black Arts Movements of the 1970s. He neglects several critical aspects of the contemporary art world, such as art market and art institutions’ bias towards what some would consider “failed” political art, like that of Jenny Holzer and Judy Chicago, that is politically engaged but may lack aesthetic power. Nor does he address the preferences of museums and major galleries for work, like Simone Leigh’s or Theaster Gates’s, that is provocative enough to stimulate political discourse but not so radical as to threaten stakeholders’ interests. These dynamics elevate a certain kind of politically-themed art while suppressing work that might drive real political change, leaving truly radical artists bereft of financial support and venues and limiting their visibility and impact. In sum, Kissick does not provide a comprehensive analysis of the relationships governing cultural production and its distribution in the contemporary art world.
He can’t seem to imagine any reasons for the lack of creativity in art other than its politicization. But there are several additional ones. For example, many artists working today lack a clear critical, political, or aesthetic perspective, and by default are guided simply by what seems marketable. To some degree, this phenomenon is attributable to art schools and media’s professionalization and mainstreaming of art and the expectations they engender among artists about commercial success. Certainly, the modernist determination to resist the seductions of the art market has been set aside. Artists now largely accept as unavoidable the influence of market forces on cultural production, leaving them, art critics, and art institutions to grapple with how best to sustain art’s potential while nodding to the tension between market value and cultural significance.
The post-World War II economic boom produced a surge in art sales and prices. Prices didn’t always align with a work’s cultural importance or artistic merit. But the amount spent on a work of art became, however dubiously, an accepted indicator of both. On this score, a pivotal moment came with the 1973 Scull Auction at Sotheby’s, which established contemporary art as a financial asset and source of quick profit. It set record prices for living artists, with works selling for many multiples of their original purchase prices within a few years. This set the stage for the art market excesses that began in the 1980s, which widened the gap between price and cultural significance. This commercialization of art demonstrates the cultural limitations of a capitalist system in which all things can be commodified.
Kissick’s exhortation for art to be more aesthetically challenging and innovative elides the reality that the transition from modernism’s master narratives to post-modernism’s pluralism reflects the fractures and instabilities of global capitalism, also evident in the breakdown of traditional social and political structures, the rise of consumer culture, and the pervasive sway of mass media. For better or worse, the politicization of art that he laments merely indicates what art can express during our current period of cultural and social transition. It is not inherently degenerative but does express the disintegration of established cultural norms and the emergence of aspirations that have not yet been fully defined and absorbed into the cultural mainstream. From this perspective, art’s present malaise can be understood as a symptom of the confusion that inevitably accompanies societal change.
About the author: Saul Ostrow is an independent curator and critic. Since 1985, he has organized over 80 exhibitions in the US and abroad. He has served as art editor at Bomb, co-editor of Lusitania Press, and editor of the book series Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture published by Routledge. Formal Matters, a collection of his essays, was recently published by Elective Affinities.
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Excellent ! The key words here (for me, anyway) are cultural relevance, artistic merit and symptom.
Thanks for writing this, Saul.
Thanks for pushing it, Adam.
Thanks for publishing it, Sharon.
This is a brilliant, informed, clear and balanced response t0 Dean Kissick’s article.
It’s great to see another excellent opinion piece on Two Coats so soon after Laurie Feindrich’s take down of Instagram. I wonder though, if Ostrow thinks artists such as Jenny Holzer, Judy Chicago, Theaster Gates and Simone Leigh are not truly radical nor capable of driving “real political change”, who are the artists that do meet that standard?
I sympathize with Kissick’s critique of art that relies too much on the identity of the artist for its relevance, but I certainly don’t think the answer is more “deranged” art. It’s the museum curators who are overemphasizing what amounts to only one of the many trends one can find, or invent, from the raw aggregate of what artists choose to make.
As to Ostrow’s critique, it fills in many of the blank spaces that aerate Kissick’s treatment of his chosen topic. But Ostrow’s fuller picture only illustrates how contemporary visual art designed to address political topics affects nothing outside the art world and very little within it. Jacob Riis attained real world results. Zola’s, “J’Accuse…!” was certainly effective but was a letter published in a newspaper, not in his usual fiction (art) medium. Ben Shahn’s “Sacco and Vanzetti” was painted long after their execution. Social Realism became politically effective only when twentieth century tyrants co-opted it.
Ostrow’s assessment that, Kissick’s essay avoids mention of, “the fractures and instabilities of global capitalism”, is not as relevant as it sounds. Pluralism is what we got when the institutionalization of individual aesthetic expression (modernism) succeeded beyond it wildest dreams and grew exponentially across the globe. Capitalism and art market pressures ran parallel to the exponential growth of the professional artist population. The Scull auction is as good a place as any to mark its launch, but it was inevitable that an investor market was going to froth up to the surface. How could it be avoided? In what historical period did artists choose to give their work away for nothing?
A couple of (historical) models would be Helene and Newton Harrison, Dindga McCannon, Wallace Berman, K.P. Brehmer, Wolfe Vostell. Hans Haacke, Guerilla Girls, Maureen Connor, early Fred Wilson interventions, Dread Scott, etc. Many of these artists were part of social, and political movements.
This essay spends several paragraphs upbraiding Kissik for not discussing topics he never set out to address, and concludes with the boilerplate Marxist explanation that the source of Kissik’s complaints lay in capitalism. This is not a trenchant critique.
I’m not convinced by Ostrow’s suggestion that black and feminist art is a revival of social realism. The implication that you can plug issues of race and sex into an art of class critique ought to rankle a real Marxist anyway. Even if I grant the point, another remains: it appears that such socially or politically aware art petered out for the same reason that high modernism petered out – not capitalism, but because the possibilities of the mode got explored to death by too many artists seeking too little available originality. People eager to notice that about modernism are not eager to notice it about the protracted political turn. Alas, we’re now faced with the problem of finding transcendence in the ruins of the narratives, and Kissik seems directionally correct.
I left a comment on Dec 29th. And I’m almost certain (aged memory may play a role here) I’m already a subscriber.
Re Franklin your comment:
I’m not convinced by Ostrow’s suggestion that black and feminist art is a revival of social realism. The implication that you can plug issues of race and sex into an art of class critique ought to rankle a real Marxist anyway.
Actually, it’s a long held view by Marxist (as well as being held by Marx himself) that all forms of discrimination are class issues – these forms of oppression are used to divide the working class, and weaken their collective power and ability to challenge the system. Obviously, you don’t know very many true Marxists, I’m assuming you have us confused with neo-liberal and progressives.
Having clarified that point, let me address what you seemingly miss construed when you read my analysis of Kissick’s complaint- Rather than blaming capitalism – my conclusion is Kissick’s nostalgia for a perceived golden age of art fails to grapple with the systemic changes that are shaping contemporary Western culture under corporate capitalism. In doing so I attempt to explain the weakness of his critique, is a consequent of it not being grounded in a comprehensive understanding of the forces at play .As such, I upbraid Kisscik for not addressing topics that affect his thesis.
As to my own failings, I should have pointed out that the present period is not unique; and since the 18th century there have been several periods of cultural malaise, which like ours have been characterized by widespread cultural discontent, social upheaval, and a sense of disillusionment and banality. It was during these periods of cultural stagnation that new social movements and cultural ideologies arose . The very values you and Kissick bemoan the loss of were the product of one such period and were labeled in their own times were condemned as degenerate .
So, while I agree that there is a cultural and an artistic flatteningc taking place in the present moment, I disagree with Kissick that art’s political turn is the cause . In writing this piece, it was my intent to offer a more nuanced understanding of our current circumstances and their place in a broader context.
@Saul: I have known some true Marxists, at least by their own designations, and I’m talking about something different – not explaining racial or sexual discrimination in terms of class, which would indeed be Marxist, but replacing class woes with identity woes in a quasi-Marxist argument and proceeding as if it was coherent, as in most of contemporary progressive thought (or at least instinct). Kissick’s stated complaint (not the subhead, that’s probably not his) is that the politics under discussion are vacuous. “We are bombarded with identities until they become meaningless.” That’s why it strikes me as beside the point to bring up Haacke et al. Kissick is not comparing the state of affairs unfavorably to fifty years ago, but ten.
If anything, you’re not putting adequate blame at the feet of what you’re calling institutional post-structuralism. Kissick is onto something when he asks, “When the world’s most influential, best-funded exhibitions are dedicated to amplifying marginalized voices, are those voices still marginalized?” The answer of course is no. So the institutions and attached power structures are forced to find excuses to continue a concluded project, at which point the associated exhibitions, and possibly much of the work in them, are existentially fake. Kissick comes close to saying as much when he speaks of the wall labels at the last WhiBi, “which read like the everything-is-connected code-breaking ravings of an overeducated cabal convinced that a hidden semiotic language of resistance lies below everyday objects, camera angles, orientations, and gestures made so very many times before.”
Re: “When the world’s most influential, best-funded exhibitions are dedicated to amplifying marginalized voices, are those voices still marginalized?” Franklin’s response is “The answer of course is no.”
I find your response wonderfully naive when it comes to how the world works – and its chain of command – you speak as if marginalization were a willful things, rather then systemic and programmatic affects – Thie systemic nature of inequality (inequity) makes it resistant to superficial changes like museum exhibitions. Such exhibits are window dressing. Subsequently, I agree with you such exhibitions and much of the work in them fail to address underlying systemic causes of racism, and sexism. True change requires examining the power dynamics at play in cultural institutions and society at large.
As you know institutions depend on the powers to be, as such they are the last to abandon position if its at all funded – when there are major systemic changes occurring as they are now (in corporate capitalism) – institutions tend to be the last to get the message – as such large institutions and government bodies often resist change due to systemic factors – as for the Whitney they have yet to get anything right so its a bad example – though we may want to look at thier board members . As to American/ British post-structuralism it was ushered in by th elites of the Bush administrations and many of us on the Left both Marxist and none, found it opening the door to fascism – it was argued argued that the relativism inherent in some post-structuralist thought could be co-opted as it has been to undermine objective truth and open the door to authoritarian tendencies (as it has been) – The right with its penchan for romanticism, subjectivism and mythology did not have to adopt this mode because they were already always an example of, seemingly your critique is of the academic language adopted by mid-brow liberals who as I point out in my essay they lack a clear critical, political, or aesthetic perspective, and by default are guided simply by what seems marketable. As such the language you abhor is once again part of the elite capture of Liberal politics. This very much mirrored by MAGA’s superficial engagement with complex issues, by reducing them to marketable soundbites without substantive understanding or commitment to the underlying principles. As I point out this is symptomatic – the real questions lie beneath or behind these. so I will return to my point in writing my criteria of Kissick’s essay : I wanted to underscore the need for a more nuanced understanding of how culture and art are co-opted and manipulated within existing power structures, so as to reinforce rather than challenge the status quo. If we want a new vanguard culture we have to be aware of the forces at play, it’s not enough to say just go and do it the way they did.
Re Peter Malone: How could it be avoided? In what historical period did artists choose to give their work away for nothing?
This has little to do with Kissick and is quite speculative but given The Constructivists and Bauhaus artists sought to unite art with industrial production and social purpose, if they had been permitted to continue to develop thier ipractices, several developments might have occurred:
Art could have become more integrated with everyday life reducing its status as a separate, commodified entity as such the nature of the artist would have changed rather than an individual creator might they would have socially-oriented artistic practices, which would challenge traditional notions of art to by focusing on creating “a truly demotic art which could be more accessible.
Re Saul Ostrow: Art could have become more integrated
But it didn’t! What could be more speculative than pining for what might have been? And I agree, it has little to do with Kissick’s essay, which I thought was about art losing its meaning to ideologues.
Re Peter Malone : Kissick’s essay, which I thought was about art losing its meaning to ideologues.
Funny that you don’t understand Kissick’s essay as ideological.
Everything looks ideological to an ideologue.
Hey guys- what?
I’m two margaritas in and I have to say I don’t know what this is even about?
Can you say it better
The painted protest versus Art’s political economy, the titles say it all.
The welcomed Kissick – Ostrow polemic overlooks a basic human factor, how the senses, a powerful biological mechanism, affect our life experiences, animals included. An awareness of the science of perception and how the eye connects to the brain, the heart, and emotions, is missing in writings on our current moment in art.
The effect a work of visual art has on us humans, comes from its expression as a visual product, its formal resolution and its reason for being, regardless of the time it was created. We perceive the artist ‘s individual sensibility that comes across the work, we can be moved, fascinated, repelled or repulsed. The individual spirit is seen in the universal act of art making.
The label Contemporary art is self-explanatory, it is limited in time. Dismissing the art of the past makes us feel like we are living in a superior artistic moment, similar to the narrow view of the New York art world towards the art of the world. Our media and material driven culture of imposed agendas; limits artistic freedom and produces curators and artists driven by institutional recognition; and material success. Materialism and capitalism reign.
We learn about expression by looking, it’s all there from a flower to a Rembrandt. If art is the highest and most difficult expression of life, there is no time to waste, we have a lot to look at. We are missing out on life and its riches.
Saul – I write less as an art world intellectual and more as a historically rooted gallerist that can relate to Kissick’s sense that this might be a time for rebalancing, and his call for art that is more romantic and universal (the natural world?) and less idea and identity driven. I am curious as to how you see Jackson Pollock, whose art is arguably romantic and universal – you seem to indict and diminish him (and other white heterosexual males) for their “domination of Western art and politics.” Could there be a place for someone out of the Pollock tradition in the art world of today and tomorrow?