Research- Ethics and the Visual Arts (Strongly Influential text)
Research- Ethics and the Visual Arts
Edited by Elaine A. King and Gail Levin 2006
Notes and reflections
This book has been very influential as it is one of the only of its kind. The main issue is that it is american based however due to england being a western country many of the timeline based events are applicable to the Uk also. This allows me to reference the book to cross examine with texts which focus on the UK, such as 'Cultural Capital'. I have focused mainly on chapter three as it is most relevant to my own work.
A perspective on Ethical Art Practice
By Elaine A. King and Gail Levin
‘Questions of ethics in the art world usually receive little attention until breaches force issues into the public eye.’ p.vii
This is sadly true for so many sectors. Until something is forced out due to a vast neglect of ethical conduct, it remains hidden. This, as this book later mentions, is due to for-profit breaches of ethical conduct. Money is the leading cause of these decisions being firstly made and later hidden.
‘Yet by now, works of art have gained Increased investment value and commodity status. This significant shift affects both policy and practice.’ p.viii (Paraphrase in Diss)
‘Corporate donors and collectors with questionable motives increasingly replace traditional sources of funding- as the seemingly more altruistic patrons of the past have given way to more materialistic and scheming collectors.’ p.viii
The above quote for me shows the ways on which these corporate giants try to gain the control of culture itself. They want to commodify culture to the extent that it is then who gives people the arts. This, leads people to lose faith in government controls and to believe that these companies aren’t as damaging as they actually are to society and to the planet. It is a complicated web which artists have become complicit in due to the lack of alternative or the conditioning of acceptance.
All the chapters of this book sound very Interesting however due to ethics broad reach some of the topics do not directly relate to my research. Issues such as heritage of museum items, they ultimately do tie to the capital gain in which may argument has its grounds. However, it is an area which I do not directly research and therefore I will be focusing on a few specific chapters of this book for reading and analysis.
Chapter 3
Consuming Emancipation: Ethics, Culture and Politics
Saul Ostrow
‘Ethics has been subsumed by capitalism’s new aesthetic ideology, which regards all personal judgments as nothing more than expressions of individual preference or tastes that represent freedom, while attempting to bound us to amorality in which good or bad (evil) are rigidly fixed qualities.’ p38
This text outlines the way in which culture exists and it’s parallel existence to capitalism. I don’t often find texts which are directly linking capitalism to culture and art however the link is undeniable and the commodity culture which emerged is the forbearer of many issues which stand today within the art world. This chapter will be important in my research and dissertation tos uplift many of my own, currently unsupported, theories.
‘There is an irony in the transition from the demanding vision of the nineteenth century of cultural redemption, which required hard work and self-reflection, to the promise offered up today, which is defined by the consumption of goods.’ p39
‘Commerce has appropriated and reinterpreted the New Left Slogan of ‘the personal is political’. This rallying cry, which was meant to sum up the ideal that politics and life are intimate, intertwined in an everyday way, has been used to generate a model of self-improvements and to create feckless consumers.’ p39
‘The appeal of reflection through consumption is built on the notion that while group identity is necessary, self-reflexivity is not...’ p39
‘We are seduced by mass cultures repetitive representation of the symbolic satisfaction to be obtained in the marketplace of goods and in the fantasy world of mass entertainment, which is portrayed not only as an affirmation of freedom of choice, but also as a political act itself’ p40
‘It is easy to see how important it is for capitalism to maintain the mythical view that material conditions and social relations are culturally informed rather than economically induced.’ p41
‘Walter Benjamin notes how racism uses mass media to anaesthetise politics, and also that mass media has created the conditions under which Art was to make the transition from its roots in magic to being merely for exhibition. This new condition made art explicitly political. What is this implied is that the new art, with its ability to form and inform mass perception and consciousness, was now and explicit rather than implicit political tool- and therefore as the perfecting mimesis, capable of giving form to the representation of the world of experience, it was a weapon on the struggle to unfettered the means of production and the consciousness of the masses.’ p41
This text discusses the cross over between left and right wing politics and the way that each used culture. Right wing politics uses culture as a means of control and indoctrination. This is the middle-class agenda allowing their own cultural ideals to be idolised. Unaware, the right then tried to emancipate culture through self reflection and knowledge. However the only cultural path to improvement set out then was through the right wing way of consumption improvement. This chapter investigates this vicious chapter reminding the reader that the individual should not be blamed directly and that collective means should overcome the individual mindset of capitalism.
‘It is imperative that we find the means to establish an embodied sense of our individual and collective identity capable of denying capitalism access to the power that it accrues through the technological disembodiment of experience and the aestheticization of everyday life.’ p44
‘To achieve our objective of emancipation, our criteria and aesthetic practices, which include all forms and categories of knowledge, and reflect the more general economy of intellectual and material production, must be rethought within the context of the political economy of social power. ‘ p46
‘Art, not as a category of objects, but as a mode of production, stands in contradistinction to those practices that would reduce human possibility to a finite number of principles and conceptual categories.’ p46
‘But it is not enough to slow the progress of capitalism totalling project of global control. We must, through a critique of the cognitive and aesthetic propositions that order relations such as immediacy and mediation, semblance and expression, action and judgment create a counterbalance to capitalism’s promise of self realisation and transcendence through symbolic consumption.’ p47
By Elaine A. King and Gail Levin
‘Questions of ethics in the art world usually receive little attention until breaches force issues into the public eye.’ p.vii
This is sadly true for so many sectors. Until something is forced out due to a vast neglect of ethical conduct, it remains hidden. This, as this book later mentions, is due to for-profit breaches of ethical conduct. Money is the leading cause of these decisions being firstly made and later hidden.
‘Yet by now, works of art have gained Increased investment value and commodity status. This significant shift affects both policy and practice.’ p.viii (Paraphrase in Diss)
‘Corporate donors and collectors with questionable motives increasingly replace traditional sources of funding- as the seemingly more altruistic patrons of the past have given way to more materialistic and scheming collectors.’ p.viii
The above quote for me shows the ways on which these corporate giants try to gain the control of culture itself. They want to commodify culture to the extent that it is then who gives people the arts. This, leads people to lose faith in government controls and to believe that these companies aren’t as damaging as they actually are to society and to the planet. It is a complicated web which artists have become complicit in due to the lack of alternative or the conditioning of acceptance.
All the chapters of this book sound very Interesting however due to ethics broad reach some of the topics do not directly relate to my research. Issues such as heritage of museum items, they ultimately do tie to the capital gain in which may argument has its grounds. However, it is an area which I do not directly research and therefore I will be focusing on a few specific chapters of this book for reading and analysis.
Chapter 3
Consuming Emancipation: Ethics, Culture and Politics
Saul Ostrow
‘Ethics has been subsumed by capitalism’s new aesthetic ideology, which regards all personal judgments as nothing more than expressions of individual preference or tastes that represent freedom, while attempting to bound us to amorality in which good or bad (evil) are rigidly fixed qualities.’ p38
This text outlines the way in which culture exists and it’s parallel existence to capitalism. I don’t often find texts which are directly linking capitalism to culture and art however the link is undeniable and the commodity culture which emerged is the forbearer of many issues which stand today within the art world. This chapter will be important in my research and dissertation tos uplift many of my own, currently unsupported, theories.
‘There is an irony in the transition from the demanding vision of the nineteenth century of cultural redemption, which required hard work and self-reflection, to the promise offered up today, which is defined by the consumption of goods.’ p39
‘Commerce has appropriated and reinterpreted the New Left Slogan of ‘the personal is political’. This rallying cry, which was meant to sum up the ideal that politics and life are intimate, intertwined in an everyday way, has been used to generate a model of self-improvements and to create feckless consumers.’ p39
‘The appeal of reflection through consumption is built on the notion that while group identity is necessary, self-reflexivity is not...’ p39
‘We are seduced by mass cultures repetitive representation of the symbolic satisfaction to be obtained in the marketplace of goods and in the fantasy world of mass entertainment, which is portrayed not only as an affirmation of freedom of choice, but also as a political act itself’ p40
‘It is easy to see how important it is for capitalism to maintain the mythical view that material conditions and social relations are culturally informed rather than economically induced.’ p41
‘Walter Benjamin notes how racism uses mass media to anaesthetise politics, and also that mass media has created the conditions under which Art was to make the transition from its roots in magic to being merely for exhibition. This new condition made art explicitly political. What is this implied is that the new art, with its ability to form and inform mass perception and consciousness, was now and explicit rather than implicit political tool- and therefore as the perfecting mimesis, capable of giving form to the representation of the world of experience, it was a weapon on the struggle to unfettered the means of production and the consciousness of the masses.’ p41
This text discusses the cross over between left and right wing politics and the way that each used culture. Right wing politics uses culture as a means of control and indoctrination. This is the middle-class agenda allowing their own cultural ideals to be idolised. Unaware, the right then tried to emancipate culture through self reflection and knowledge. However the only cultural path to improvement set out then was through the right wing way of consumption improvement. This chapter investigates this vicious chapter reminding the reader that the individual should not be blamed directly and that collective means should overcome the individual mindset of capitalism.
‘It is imperative that we find the means to establish an embodied sense of our individual and collective identity capable of denying capitalism access to the power that it accrues through the technological disembodiment of experience and the aestheticization of everyday life.’ p44
‘To achieve our objective of emancipation, our criteria and aesthetic practices, which include all forms and categories of knowledge, and reflect the more general economy of intellectual and material production, must be rethought within the context of the political economy of social power. ‘ p46
‘Art, not as a category of objects, but as a mode of production, stands in contradistinction to those practices that would reduce human possibility to a finite number of principles and conceptual categories.’ p46
‘But it is not enough to slow the progress of capitalism totalling project of global control. We must, through a critique of the cognitive and aesthetic propositions that order relations such as immediacy and mediation, semblance and expression, action and judgment create a counterbalance to capitalism’s promise of self realisation and transcendence through symbolic consumption.’ p47
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