YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU ARE: the new American flavor twist

In an insidious turn of events, it appears the freedom and democracy of America has been intercepted and destroyed by itself. If you can make sense of this, the idea that America is free and democratic without an actual evaluation of the country as being free and democratic and without a concrete definition of what freedom and democracy means to people nowadays is destroying the very thing which it believes it is doing, being free and democratic. The truncated response to the elimination of public art funding and all its complexities shows how this sort of haze of definitions so common in the common American is being used by politicians for personal gain.

How could anyone deny the ridiculous outweighing of perspectives examining the discourse of politicians and the opposing artists? D’Amato spitefully proclaims that artists and those who support them, “defame us and to use our money” (Hyde 253). It is as if these two sectors are on opposite ends of the earth rather than in the same country fighting for the same ideals, sentiments, and desires: “the virtues of the government derive from the virtues of the people” (Hyde 255). The artist is still a part of society that represents it in a personal, non-commercial, often more real than acceptable way that seems to underscore the civic jobs of politicians. It is glaringly obvious to me that the politicians that cause such a fuss over controversial artwork are more stirring up the natural emotional and intellectual power artwork has for political gain rather than actually caring that this artwork exists and that public sees it. It is even more crudely evident by the actions and the slanderous words of politicians, the insensitive, impersonal remarks such as Jesse Helms remark, “I have fundamental questions about why the Federal Government is supporting artists the taxpayers have refused to support in the marketplace” (Hyde 168). This all seems like a backhanded slap at the (art) people that said bad things about them publicly, undermine their rights of passage persuasively, and give the populace a real taste of freedom, something politicians can only talk about. It is as if they want to use art’s inherent properties to their own ends. And actually this is nothing new either: “Big government was necessary … to wage the Cold War, developing the requisite technology and surveillance not only to fight off communism as an ideology, but also and more importantly to consolidate hegemony of American capitalism” (Yudice 289). What better way to convince the world of America’s empty promises of freedom and the glories of democracy than show the artwork that demonstrates that? It is as if these politicians want to jump the gun and use the freedoms of the art world as an example of this great nation but at the same time mark it as “unnecessary and purposefully decadent, undermining the hard work and practicality of the working class.” The definitions of art and what it stands for seem, at least on the public level, to ride the tide of political agenda right down to its conflicting center. Come on, guys, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Americans get angered because, gee, they don’t give themselves the context or the attention spans to know what such a statement means, no less reflect on how it could be a benefit to them. It’s different, it’s intellectual, it’s free, I CAN’T DO THAT OR UNDESTAND, so let’s squash it!

As always in business terms (something all Americans should understand), let us look at the numbers. Money has been distributed to art industries, support, administrations, and managements when it is fitting for a political aim as in the Cold War era, an example used by both essays (“The Children of John Adams: A Historical View of the Fight Over Arts Funding” by Lewis Hyde and “The Privatization of Culture.” by George Yudice). Both authors show an alarming interest slip of the government when their monopoly on world culture was deemed a success by the fall of the Berlin Wall. Shortly after this, artistic aims were seen as not usable by the government anymore, so it was high time for the assimilation of latent racist/sexist beliefs to be enraged and show their ugly heads. As always the rich feed on the uneducated vulnerability of the poorer classes. Though one might point out America’s poorer class have always been richer by global standards, this complaint is a political diversion of issues once again. It is a common plight, a strategy by demagogues for centuries, yet for some reason it still works because of Americans’ love of the dramatic, emotional appeal, their want of a collective unity it seems, however desperate that is. As both essays address, the government’s dull public discourse coats the euphemistic and demagogue terms that seek to disenfranchise and “undercut any kind of collective action not in accord with its beliefs” (Hyde 260). They operate as if America truly is a “democracy as a homogeneous space filled with citizens, each equally empowered (Hyde 261) What is the heart of the conflict and what are these alarming beliefs that so enrage the public? Sex, drugs, and politics? Movie producers have made millions on the exploitation of these topics in the last 20 years, yet an artist is publicly crucified? But as Hyde so bluntly puts it: “the appeal to the ‘common’ man and woman is there to preserve a set of privileges already in place” (Hyde 161). Are we not a country famous/infamous for diversity, is it not cultural cannibalism to insist we are all the same, and that if not we must eat our own words/identities for the sake of the collective? Or is it that American ignorance is making “someone” a very wealthy owner of the controversial art of dead artists worth millions now because of its public recognition.

Europeans seem immune to this national cannibalism and cyclical rhetoric, hiding agendas a hundred appendixes thick. They have a basic understanding that government must reflect and honor all the individuals in it and let the cities run at their will without sapping them of their autonomy, causing strife and separation and blame to run rapid in a desperate quest for survival at all costs. They let their communities be inter-dependent, not codependent. “Almost all arts funding is administered on the state and municipal levels…. Each city invariably takes great pride in its cultural offerings … contributes to the quality of their lives …prestige to their community” (Osbourne). A strange principle indeed and their art policies and budgets reflect this: “a median of forty dollars per person in Western European countries” (Yudice 288). The American numbers regarding public art funding compared to this are hideous: average Eauropean tax dollar reserved for art is $40 an individual, in America it’s fifteen cents. Why, the American would ask, would Europeans allow so much money to be taxed from them for mere frivolous expenditures? This logic may be quite foreign to Americans: “Political interference in the arts is a firmly established taboo in German government …. Private sponsorship of the arts is rarely encouraged … viewed with extreme mistrust … will lead to less funding based on the sporadic whims of the patrons who often have superficial tastes. Embarrassingly, it is often referred to as the American model” (Osbourne). Why, oh why, would they ever think such a thing. Why I don’t even understand where this comes from it is so foreign to me. I think I need to go travel and spend a thousand dollars to borrow someone else’s culture because my country won’t let me have one. It’s too damned expensive. Cruises seem more pragmatic and acceptable.

Hyde, Lewis. “The Children of John Adams: A Historical View of the Fight Over Arts Funding” Art Matters. New York University Press, New York: 1999. pg. 167-181.

Yudice, George. “The Privatization of Culture.” Art Matters. New York University Press, New York: 1999. pg. 167-181.

Osbourne, William. “The German Arts Funding Model.” Jan 4 2002. March 25, 2004. http://www.oxbourne-conant.org/funding_model.htm.

THE DIFFICULTY OF FREEDOM AND EQUALITY IN ART

In American society today, a layer of passivity and indifference resides over culture and the general public. In its fast-passed, convenience-oriented ways, the tendency is to gloss over the cultural frays which may disrupt the homologous workings of this vast, often confusing, capitalist system. It is quite easy to get caught up in this impulsive, perfect world of the commercialization of culture, governement, and society, but when one steps back, jumps off that bandwagon long enough to reflect on our ever-receding past and conscience, this system is not completely what it proclaims to be. The most glaring example of a culture in denial is its public show of reactionary impulses towards its own contributing members, especially the part that is known for being a reflection of itself: controversial, ethnic, or political art.

Kara Walker and James Luna are two artists that deal with the politics of their ethnicity in a less than subtle manner. Their artwork does not glorify their race, nor is it easy to label them as being negative towards it. They are that maddening state of in between, that hard to define reality that is so hard to deal with. They are personal; they are confrontational; they make no apologies for their harshness, and they are very hard to ignore. In Kara Walker’s sadomasochistic silhouettes, there is a sharp irony in the reminiscence of black plantation slavery and the insidious sweetness of cartoons. The violent sexual content of her work is overshadowed by historical issues of race and repression only viewed in modern times. The hatred painfully evident in her work shows how deeply ingrained “the experience of ‘otherness’” has gone. She goes so far as to state, “I’m like a walking sin for these people,” (Beem). Her internalization of cultural pressures is at once alarming in its violent outburst, and starkly comic in a way that seeks to deny how blacks are viewed as charactures to an ignorant and insensitive populace.

Most would contend that Walker’s imagery (and they would not be incorrect) is negative and sensational. The conflict arises in the argument of a fellow artist Betye Saar, who writes, “the art world is very manipulative … the thrust is for sensationalism,” (Beem). Even Michelle Wallace addresses this discrepancy: “if Walker’s work were more preocuppied with the demeaning sexual relations between black men and white women, the art world might not be so enamored of her product” (Wallace 177). The question is of the responsibility for what artists with a certain public affect must admit to and how much they are subject to social awareness and what constitutes censorship. Other artists disagree with a good point and a bit of admiration for Walker’s honesty: “Hamza Walker faults Saar for taking literally imagery that Kara Walker uses ironically … [which are] the trope of racism … trope of Civil War … much larger issues of humanity” (Beem). And as Wallace points out, “the object hasn’t been the primary thing in visual art for some time” (Wallace 180). The same sort of contention could be made for James Luna’s work. His is even more intense because he uses his own person as the object of humiliation within a context of addressing Indian social problems. Many say the same of him as well, that his work is largely sensational for the sole purpose of attention and personal gain. But Luna disagrees, “Some people thought I was exploiting my culture. I thought that was stupid; I am Indian, what culture am I supposed to use? … Some people only want to talk about the romanticized or glamorous Indians, but I want to look at the problems we’re facing” (Stiles 801). “Part of the whole process of recovery is talking about the problems … there will always be things that we need to face, even though they will not make people happy” (Stiles 801).

There is a larger question underlying all of this is, though: if culture isn’t ready for this kind of art, should we deny ourselves and resign not to make it? I thought minors and children were the only ones we “should” protect from intense intellectual, controversial, or blatantly sexual material, will it soon be adults as well? The transparency of the whole issue is alarming, as Wallace gives lead to, “The right was unwilling at the moment to tolerate some of the more nihilistic impulses of modern art was … a minor symptom of a much more extensive disease” (Wallace 168). The fact is Americans have a very bloody past that is in danger of being forgotten and suppressed deep down so it can never be resolved. Still, the recovery process is being delayed by purposely suppressing the artwork that might bring a badly needed wake up call to our own group psychology. “Because this aspect of our past is so deeply buried that almost no one except academics and serious aficionados of Amercian history is in any position to know much about slavery and its aftermath …. Psychological trauma which remains unaddressed by the conscious mind does not just go away, it just hangs around, continually fucking up lives” (Wallace 171). It is a well known fact that even with milestones like the Civil Rights Movement and Affirmative Action, cultural partiality still exists in ridiculous statistical significance. Michele Wallace writes extensively on the stark reality of a culture that has no sense of its diverse self as it tries to make an abstract principle of equality for all an unrealistic liberal goal: “we run up against fundamental cultural differences that pertain to the very ethnic, sexual, gender, and class issues being struggled over.”(Wallace 177). Because the real fight is much deeper, one that most cannot address because of the cultural denial that is so rampant as a result of constant prodding by the dominant mainstream, the predominatly white “liberal bourgeoisie or conservative yahoo,” that race is and hasn’t been for awhile an issue. But the facts again stand in stark contrast. What we need is a mode to fully realize what has been done so that this culture can be what it wants to be, “land of the free and home of the brave,” instead of “land of mass denial and home of the cowards,” not the make-up hiding the scars. Art can do that for us, we just need to have the open mind, and the true painful awareness of all that freedom and liberty means, to listen.

Stiles and Selz. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. Berkeley; U of California Press, 1996.

Wallace, Michelle. “The Culture within the Cuture Wars: Race.” Art Matters. New York University Press, New York: 1999. pg. 167-181.

Beem, Edgar Allan. “On the Cutting Edge or Over the Line.”

As the years go by and I get older and supposedly wiser, the evaluation of my culture and what makes up my culture has resulted in one strange, reoccurring action: an attempt to disassociate myself from popular culture to find meaning and “truth” about it. It is as if I am in a vacuum of misinformation and misleading cultural guides. If I were to fervently prescribe to what American pop culture feeds its average practitioners, I would be fearful of all foreign cultures and peoples, obese (or had major plastic surgery done), and happily ignorant of where it came from and why I have insomnia or need pills for anxiety attacks. I would just go to work and not ask questions. This is a highly generalized statement, but if one were to really look into the most influential leaders of a society: the media (television and its sidekick advertising), the government (president Bush, the flailing, spineless Democratic opposing party), and the major religion (Christianity), these “principles” are what is mostly taught. Whereas, things such as liberalism, environmental issues, post-modern and foreign art, and political dissent are commonly cornered into being an unnecessary controversy that just wants to shock and disrupt the working system. One can see the signs of the split in this society between people who prescribe to being lead and those who are sick of being told what to do, who to do it with, and what to wear while doing it. The art movements of the past three decades have actualized the diversity of perception on American Pop Culture for a wide group of people.

The Pop Art Movement of the 1970s with its most famous leader Andy Warhol, particularly defines popular culture’s most vilified idiomatic icons. The artist’s major works amount to a process of regurgitating pop culture back onto itself, and then proclaiming it as an empty cyclical process that essentially means nothing. “Because the more you look at the same exact thing, the more meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel, ” Warhol proclaims on the state of his absence and desire for repetitive absolution in aesthetics (Stiles 340). He insists he is only reflecting what he sees; he is just representing “the US in my art, but I’m not a social critic … I’m just a pure artist” (Stiles 340). Here the split shows itself in all its disconnected glory. There is a separation of the environment and the art, of the intent or material and the emotional, ethical, and moral affects of such actions by a person or a culture. Warhol admires this separation and he thinks of it as something altogether different, absolutely wonderful in its simplicity and conscience freedom. He states time and time again how really great it is to just accept, lie down, and bask in the sameness of everything. How everyone and everything in America can appear to be so like the other, we can hardly tell anything apart and truly we shouldn’t be able to; it is in fact beautiful that way in its absence of boundaries. As Warhol says himself, “What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest.” He uses Coke soda as a prime analogy, “the president drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too.” Andy Warhol continues to mention the happiness of emptiness, the perfect consumer, the epitome of what we should all be like in pop culture, and it is exemplified in his art pieces: repetitive images of Brillo boxes, sloppy colorful Marilyn Monroe portraits, and Campbell’s soup. It is as if all boundaries have been lowered for US citizens, and Warhol sees a new form of cultural and aesthetic beauty in the one-dimensional promise of commercial equality purported by American industry. His commentary is exceptionally fascinating because it articulates what it means to be successful and popular in American society: empty progress, ignorant happiness, emotional vacancy, meaningless art frolicking, big factories, catchy baseless images, mindless repetition. In short, a culture purposefully blind, generalized, and ignorant to what it does globally to continue as a fully functional, commercial machine.

Of course, not all artists see it this way, which shows the split in American culture.

In the 1980s quite an intense controversy arose between the interests of the artist and society with Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc.” This art piece was much more aggressive about society and an awareness of itself than Warhol. The sculpture, one piece of curved steel jutting out from the main plaza of a federal building, obtrusively blocks both the sight and walking path of the worker. Apparently, it was a little too persistent in pronouncing itself as a reminder of just where we live and how unbearable that reality can be when magnified or “tilted” just a little. In Serra’s effort to sustain a public awareness of space, the public was not at all happy about being exposed to this sort of thinking in this manner, so close to home and everyday work. The debate about this sculpture ranged from all sides of the social and political spectrum, and Serra battled in court for it not to be removed because it showed “the forceful reminder of the social impact of public art” (Beardsley 128). Is a society ready to be given this kind of art, or is the artist unnecessarily burdening a public space? Many question it because it raises issues of art as only a beautiful side project, to be gawked at by the onlooker, who is left in awe of human talent and perception. This lead many to wonder, “whether people are looking for the replication of the hostile environment or the alleviation of it” (Beardsley 128). Is it more important for the space to be pretty and pleasing or aware of itself and thinking?

In public art today there is an enormous debate on growing dissatisfaction of the artist as being mere decoration for an industry. The welcoming of abstract or indisposed classical public art shows how attuned to visual appeasement the public is. Or at least, the businesses and government officials that endorse these works are. They believe that if it is their money and their eyes that have to endear it, the art damn well better look good and not be at all threatening or confrontational of where it stands and what the environment around it truly means. The very language of abstract art is to impart purely formal concerns without the hindrance of any other sort of meaning, while the use of old classicism in public front yards and parks, like Poirier’s “Promenade Classique” or Smyth’s “Piazza Lavoro/Mythic Source” lends itself to speculation, as in the deployment of “classical ornament without concern for its original function or meaning … invites suspicion of merely fashionable intentions” (Beardsley 143). And it is well known among public works artists that it is good to balance the budget by making art for the businesses, mere “amenities” as Martin Puryear calls them, and making one’s “real” art (Beardsley 155).

This whole issue of whether the buyer should be sated is unfortunately halted when one evaluates other properties of the public space and how acceptingly intrusive it can be if given the right social standard. Adbusters magazine is a large and diverse collection of journalism and art that reveals how these same businesses that discourage obtrusive artwork, also subscribe to use it when they see fit to sell something. This account by a reporter is quite a common occurrence today for all of us: “Driving to the airport to pick up a friend, I stop at a red light. My eyes wander to a bus-stop bench across the intersection. “Norma Whitfield – Your Real-Estate Connection.” Wham. Before I even have time to react, the advertisement has entered my mind and lodged itself between the folds of my thoughts. Another chunk of my mental landscape, grabbed without consent” (Arnold). Even better still let us look at Andy Warhol’s Coke analogy in a new light: “You see a can of Coke in a movie, and you stop following the plot to deconstruct Coke’s marketing strategy and determine that you’ve just been subjected to paid product placement” (Arnold). The statistics on the average American’s exposure to advertisement and the generalized pleasantness of their business image is one million marketing messages per year (or over 3,000 per day) (Arnold). Has it come down to this then? The average American accepting without too much complaint the onslaught of commercialization, while not being able to stand a piece of art by one of the most influential modernist artist of that same culture? A government that will endorse the removal of a controversial public art piece whose essential purpose is awareness, while not raising a finger to protect our everyday environments from consumerism? The results of a culture knee-deep in mislead prioritization of this manner is just as subtle: “anxiety and attention deficit disorders, depression, suicide, workplace violence and addiction is now a staple story of our news media” (Arnold).

“Too much imagination … is threatening” (Beardsley 155). Is this what it means to be an artist in today’s society? Can this statement be unfortunately true in American society? And what does that mean? Have we truly advanced to being a culture free of societal boundaries because of its mass commercialization and availability of materials to everyone as Andy Warhol comments on? Is this possibly a lie dressed in a colorful, empty package toted by the very people that would have us buy into it? And more scary still, are we even aware enough of our own mental, societal environments anymore to make such statements?

Beardsley, John. “Beyond Earth Works: the New Urban Landscape.” Earthworks and Beyond. New York, Abeeville Press, 1998.

Stiles and Selz. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. Berkeley; U of California Press, 1996.

Arnold, Kevin. “Tragedy of the Mental Commons.” Adbusters. Jan./Feb. 2004. Feb. 19 2004. <http://adbusters.org/magazine/51/articles/mentalcommons.html>