Can the pleasurable be political?

In this essay I will be exploring the collapse of cultural hierarchies that emerged

with the critique of modernism’s lofty ideas about art and the emergence of a post

modernism of resistance and pleasure. I will be referencing the work of Jeremy Deller,

discussing examples of his socially engaged art practice to consider whether this can

be seen as a post modernism of resistance and pleasure and a new kind of modernist

avant-garde thought. It will also be interesting to debate the collapse of cultural

hierarchies and consider whether this shift is a dumbing down or an enrichment of

culture, a disadvantage or potential.

Modernists assumed that art had a capital A and culture had a capital C and

that both were separate from the pleasures gained from everyday life. They were

disdainful of popular culture and tried to make art separate from ordinary objects.

Greenberg considered low cultural forms to be kitsch and advocated a hierarchy with

art and literature at a high cultural end and everything else at the bottom as separate

and irreconcilable things. His ideas embody the modernist agenda, which post

modernism critiques. In his essay avant-garde and kitsch, he argues that kitsch and

popular culture have caused the downfall of avant-garde art and diluted their aims for a

better culture. He decided that flat abstract painting was the purest art form, raising the

status of abstract expressionist art in America.

“Kitsch’s enormous profits are a source of temptation to the avant-garde itself…

ambitious writers and artists will modify their work under the pressure of kitsch…

borderline cases appear…the net result is always to the detriment of true culture” 1

With postmodernism, the distinction between the art world and other objects in

the world has been blurred, rather than a collapse of one into to the other. People can

now find low culture appropriated by the art world, a branching out of art in non art

spaces, the use of non art materials and a change in attitude about what art can be.

Culture is more complicated than Greenberg’s avant-garde verses kitsch and erupts

into a plethora of forms, updating past traditions and inventing new hybrids of old and

new, high and low culture. If we are no longer judging art based on a hierarchy of

quality, how can we know what art is, and if its good? Brian Ashby has commented in

an essay in art review,

“The fact is that the question ‘is it art?’ seems today only to be asked by the

tabloids, art professionals having stopped worrying about it years ago, having wisely

concluded that the only way to tell a work of art from something that sticks to your shoe

is its presence in a gallery.” 2

If this is true, that art is only art if it is in a gallery, then what can be made of art

outside of a gallery setting? Much of Deller’s work does not conform to the traditional

notions and rules of what art is. After a residency in San Francisco, rather than having

a “static gallery exhibition”, he created a guidebook titled After the Gold Rush, in which

he set out to give a historical account of a place, but ended up being more about the

individuals he met along the way and their personal memories of a place.

“I wanted to celebrate the physical and personal openness that I have

encountered here through enticing the reader on a journey…it is also a treasure hunt of

sorts around the state of California. At certain points you can meet the people I’ve met

and interviewed, and if you do they will give you a gift” 3

His art is open to people who wouldn’t necessarily visit exhibitions, it is also

travel writing, personal anecdote and travel photographs as art, that modernists would

place low on the hierarchy as it confuses two genres, art and literature. At the core of

his work, Deller wants people to engage and exchange with each other and with other

cultures. This work can be seen as post modern in its acceptance of personal local

stories that have replaced modernist attempts to tell grand narratives of universal

truths. He offers up his personal journey along with memories told from the people he

met there, from the owner of a Burlesque Museum, a banjo player, a member of the

Black Panther Party, people in the Mormon Church and from the army. He

“recontextualises the recent past to reveal hidden histories” and gives alternatives to

the prevalent histories. 4 Fig. 1, shows one of the places he visited.

Deller collaborated with Allan Kane to produce Folk Archive as a response to

the question of what might constitute modern day folk culture, and gives an alternative

representation of the UK’s creative life and a re-examination of popular forms of art, art

found on the streets, during carnivals, festivals, and protests. It also includes things as

seemingly insignificant as hand painted food signage, decorated cakes and flower

arrangements as well as costumes at carnivals, protest banners and instances of

traditional village May day celebrations. The wide ranging criteria for choosing work

included humour, modernity, insight, a unique voice, ambitious subject matter,

refreshing directness, endeavours beyond normal expectation and pathos.5 This itself

is a mixture of modernist notions of unique art and post modernist qualities of humour.

Deller extends this idea of low culture as popular culture to include traditional folk

culture, documenting instances of contemporary folk happenings that seek a communal

pleasure in the public arena. Fig. 2, is an example of traditional carnival costumes

being updated.

Dan Smith thinks it is odd to describe the activities in folk archive as art,

harbouring modernist dogma that popular forms of culture are low culture and purely

entertainment. He is critical that “there is a Homogenisation of all creativity as art”. 6

The one thing that all entrants have in common is that they would not usually show

their work in an art context or consider themselves as artists.7 That Deller and Kane

have chosen to include them in a touring exhibition as well as an archive questions

what we can consider the art to be, and suggests that most cultural expression can be

seen as creative. But is it art just because its been transposed into a gallery setting and

book compiled by artists? Sam Jacob interviewed Deller for his article art for all! and

was evidently impressed.

“It shows that contemporary culture is vast and broad and endlessly surprising

and by comparison how parochial and conservative mainstream culture tends to be.” 8

Deller and Kane maintain in their preface that they are simply transposing the

works from one form of public display to another more traditional presentation of art in

a gallery. Dan Smith comments that they present the archive without acknowledging

the problems and complexities of transforming art found in the streets to art in an

exhibition. He notes that the archive in not being critical of itself, makes art seem

1 Greenberg quoted in Frascina, 1985, p.26

2 Ashby, article The End of Art, art review, Dec/Jan 2000

3 Deller, 2001-2002, p.6

4 Button, 2003, p.203

5 Deller & Kane, 2005, p.2

6 Smith, essay Folk Art? , Art Monthly, Summer 2006

7 Deller & Kane, 2005, p.2

8 Jacob, essay Art For All! , Modern Painters, May 2005

ahistorical and neutral and exploits the people it represents.9 This is typical of the kind

of criticism facing post modernism, with opinions that everything popularist lacks

criticality and intelligence and is a point for further debate.

“By taking a straightforward approach they risk artificially homogenising the

contents of folk archive and aligning themselves with the wordless power of institutional

authority” 10

Their enthusiasm, interest and excitement in art that occurs outside of the

gallery makes me doubt the accusation of being a wordless authority. Part of their aim

is to make accessible cultural forms that might otherwise be missed and overshadowed

by bigger narratives and institutionalised art. However Dan Smith’s observation that “it

challenges the relationship between creative practice and theory in order to stop one

becoming a tautological account of the other” is valid; part of the point of the archive is

for people to enjoy and consume the book as a starting point to rediscover the vast

range of engaging local creativity, from outside prescribed art arenas.11 It is deliberately

open to interpretation and is accessible in a way that over theorizing art and making it

difficult as the modernists did, can confuse and detract from the pleasures of what you

are looking at

“Deller’s aim is to draw attention to activity taking place On the fringes of the

mainstream, from forms of self expression linked to vernacular or folk culture, to

overlooked events he feels need reappraisal” 12

The cultural activities Deller see’s fit to re examine here, stem from traditional

backward looking English culture in the arts and craft tradition, pagan ceremonies and

the tradition of carnivals. Deller and Kane take an uncertain position between artist,

anthropologist and community artist. The criticism they face about being exploitative to

the communities they represent is debatable. On the one hand they are sincere in

voicing small narratives of a wide range of people and on the other using their status as

artists for personal empowerment and fame under the banner of a socially engaged

practice. Deller is most recently famous for winning the Turner prize in 2004, and is 9 Smith, essay Folk Art? , Art Monthly, Summer 2006

10 Smith, essay Folk Art? , Art Monthly, Summer 2006

11 Deller and Kane, 2005, p.2

12 Button, 2005, p.202

therefore very much part of the system of gallery recognition and sponsorship. Deller is

however challenging Greenberg’s notion of art being a true culture, and everything else

somehow being less valid as an experience and it is this cultural snobbery that Deller’s

archive critiques. Carnival was degraded in modernism but it remained alive in

consumer culture, and was part of the reason for the failure of modernism and the

emergence of post modernism. 13

“It is its depth of feeling, its forms of attention and affection that gives Deller's

populism its ethical dimension... He has not swapped critique for celebration. Deller’s

work is serious about art and serious about popular culture. In no way could it be said

that he sacrifices art for the sake of an all singing all dancing entertainment.” 14

This “ethical dimension” can be seen as part of the emergence of a post

modernism of pleasure and resistance that interrogates existing practices. In a post

modern era, creativity is increasingly seen as an everyday practice with an acceptance

of pleasure and spectacle that allows for shared identity and experiences. Popular

forms of expression such as carnival are no longer seen as vulgar and common without

the overarching dogma of modernist hierarchies. Greenberg would have seen Deller’s

examples of folk culture as no more than kitsch, cute and unintelligent because the

pleasures he got from art, were pleasures of meaning and an appreciation of theory

and form. The pleasures that can be had in postmodernism are not limited by the rules

that define art. Pleasure in art can increase our understanding of it through an

increased interest in it and is one of post modernism’s potentials.

Part of the debate critics have with postmodernism is whether it continues the

avant-garde’s opposition to conservative, mainstream culture, or if it has lost political

substance in favour of a homogenised popularist stance. It can be argued that there is

an emergence of postmodern artists who are both pleasurable and socially engaged in

a similar way to the radical opposition of the status quo seen in modernist avant-

gardes. There is not such a simple collapse of high into low culture but that creativity is

bubbling up out of old traditional cultures, using forms of the carnivalesque and

communal forms of expression to give new voices to it.

13 Partington, 2007, lecture Spectacle and Sensation in Visual Culture

14 Beech, essay High on Good Shit: Towards an Ethical Relation to Popular Culture, in Deller, 2001, p.94

Modernist avant-garde sought a break with tradition, they were overtly political in

their desires to change society. Dada is a prime example that sought to be radical in

opposition to the status quo. Unlike most modernist avant-garde movements, they also

blurred cultural hierarchies, using found materials not traditional to art, collaging

images from mass culture and having an anti art attitude. Where other modernist

avant-garde movements like the Russian constructivists rejected popular culture as

mere entertainment and opposed it, Dada was the start of an acceptance within

modernism of low culture. See Fig. 3 for Duchamp’s mischievous alteration of a famous

painting. I can see this modernist rebellion being continued by postmodernism and in

particular in Deller’s art practice which not only is anti high art but is socially engaged

with projects that include members of the community from often diverse and different

backgrounds. 15

Acid brass is a performance initiated by Deller, where the Uk’s leading brass

band played acid house club anthems. It brought together two distinct genres from both

ends of the cultural hierarchy, which are also linked together in a spider diagram titled

The History of the World, shown in Fig. 4. It is revealed through this that they have

more in common than at first glance, both resulting from deindustrialisation of the

North, Folk music and political activism. Deller combines tradition with contemporary in

new hybrids that draw attention to activities on the fringe of culture. Unlike the

modernist avant-gardes he is not opposed to tradition, but creates conversations

between traditional and contemporary popular music. This in itself is not unique, as

there is a long history of mixing music genres, but gives a new voice to sidelined

subcultures.

“So many barriers were broken down by this concert combining two such

juxtaposed music genres, age difference, dress styles, and the North/South divide” 16

Greenberg’s notion that kitsch is the enemy of avant-garde art is not so cut and

dry, as we have seen in Deller's work, Kitsch and carnivalesque once considered low

culture are now being used as forms of social protest that although pleasurable, still

have a political edge. Folk Archive demonstrates a mixture of hard edge politics and

subtle disruption. It documents the banners created for protests on the streets, next to

hand painted signage, in a do it your self attitude. Featured in the archive, shown in

15 Spicer, A, 2007, lecture The Avant-garde and Postmodernism

16 Peacock in Deller, 2001, p.84

fig.5, Wastemonsters is a protest organisation with a website where you can down load

and print spoof parking tickets with green messages on, to stick to uneconomical cars

such as 4x4’s. 17

Lyotard is a critic who accepts that society has become more diverse and

multicultural and that there exists a range of identities and opinions, so questions

modernist claims of universal truths. In his influential text, the post modern condition,

he looks for a version of history that doesn’t try to reduce everything to a grand

narrative but has scope for “a more chaotic landscape full of fluid identities and diverse

social groups”18. In politics there has been a collapse of polar opposites of left and right

in the same way that there is a blurring between the distinctions of high and low

culture. At the same time there are also extreme views and an intensification of beliefs

in acts of terrorism. People are now more concerned to fight over individual issues than

pledge allegiance with a large scale political party.19

“Everything is in some sense political…everything is capable of being

oppressive, but you can just as easily find acts of resistance to that oppression in the

most seemingly trivial of places” 20

This challenging of power on an everyday basis has opened up politics so you

can challenge the system in everyday small choices and acts of defiance from

choosing fair trade products, giving your tube ticket to someone when you’ve finished

with it, or buying clothes from charity shops. In Deller’s work small acts of defiance are

shown in people taking to the streets in carnivals to claim back collective experiences

of pleasure in public spaces, and interventions in the public realm such as sticking an ‘I

love joyriding’ sticker to the front of a police car shown in Fig.6.In this sense post

modernism is still avant-garde in its opposition to authority and power systems, but it

uses more modest, quieter disruptions on an everyday scale rather than trying to be

universal, it gives freedom back to individuals.

“post modern theories look for ways we can all, as Lyotard put it, ‘gnaw away at

the great institutionalized apparatuses…by increasing the number of skirmishes that 17 Deller, 2005, p.47

18 Ward, 2003, p.174

19 Ward, 2003, p.175

20 Ward, 2003, p.176

takes place on the side lines.’ ” 21

Michel de Certeau echoes Lyotard, in his belief that everyday life is creative in that

“we engage in power struggles, pleasures, and acts of disobedience, and in doing so

we can create important cracks in the dominant economic order”.22 Jurgen Habermas

has critiqued Lyotard’s ideas as “a sell out of genuinely radical politics and a lazy

acceptance of the way things are”23. Postmodernism’s celebration of difference he

says, strikes at the heart of socialisms faith in community and collective action and is

therefore still part of the modernist agenda and is itself a grand narrative. 24

Lyotard’s arguments support my view that the pleasurable can still be political.

His rejection of modernist universal ideals of revolution in favour of a constant

discussion about values as they change to different people at different times is more

productive and desirable than the threat to cultural diversity in conforming to one idea

about culture and lifestyles. His postmodernism is a form of “critically revivified

modernism”25 and continues some aspects of modernist avant-garde thought.

21 Lyotard quoted in Ward, 2003, p.176

22 Ward, 2003, p.178

23 Ward, 2003, p.178

24 Ward, 2003, p.179

22 Lyotard, quoted in Harrison and Wood, 2003, p. 1122

Illustrations

Fig. 1 Deller, The Exotic World Museum of Burlesque, 2001-2002, photograph, 10 x 21cm, p.53, After The Gold Rush

Fig. 2 Anonymous, Carnival Costumes, Notting Hill, 2003, photograph, 30 x 20 cm, p.18, Folk Archive

Fig. 3 Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q., 1919, pencil on a reproduction, 19.7 x 12.4 cm, p.78, High and Low Modern Art And Popular Culture

Fig. 4 Deller, The History of the World, 1998, Screen print, 66 x 112 cm, p.50

Fig. 5 Wastemonsters, downloadable spoof parking tickets, 6 x 5 cm, p.46, Folk Archive

Fig. 6 Deller, I love Joyriding, 1992-1999, photograph of car bumper sticker, 10 x 5 cm, p. 19, Life is to Blame for Everything

25

Deller’s art practice embraces popular culture and is embodied in its accessible

seductive and enjoyable qualities that are there for anyone to appreciate. His use of

non art venues and interventions in public spaces are anti establishment and accepts

that there is a diverse culture and audience that exists outside of accepted notions of

culture perpetuated by galleries and museums. The lighthearted pleasures in Deller’s

work I believe are an enrichment to culture that is just as critical of society as modernist

avant-gardes. Where they were loud and oppositional to tradition, Deller and

postmodern practitioners use the forms and arena of the past and mainstream culture,

to reach a vast and varied audience and subvert power structures through subtle

interventions with in it.

Notes