Does Marxism Help our Understanding of Aesthetic Experience? Reflections with the help of Lukacs and Benjamin.
Presented to International Forum on Marxist Aesthetics, Changchun, China (November, 2022). Preliminary draft to be revised and expanded. Do not cite or quote.
Jennifer Todd begins a provocative essay with the question indicated in our title. In a manner different than Ms Todd I will take up the question of how the insights of Marxism develop our understanding of aesthetic experiences, drawing on the varied and not always consistent writings of Georg Lukács and Walter Benjamin. To an extent I will follow Todd’s analysis, departing from it somewhat to explore an additional theme in Benjamin’s thought regarding jetztzeit and images as the medium of historical representation. In the end I will conclude that not only does a Marxist approach help us understand our aesthetic experience, and in so doing clarify our own purposes, but is perhaps the only way to grasp works of art in their true cultural context.
To illustrate how this approach works I will make reference to two recent exhibits of 20th century art: a retrospective of the work of the American painter Alice Neel and an eclectic exhibit that reviews several genre of art from Weimar Berlin. In both cases the exhibits address our own era through reflections on class struggle in earlier historical settings.
Introduction
John Berger taught us in Ways of Seeing: “It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world.” I take this to be one of the elemental insights of Marxist aesthetics — we are in the world instructed by how it is given to us in aesthetic experience. Sight may be our primary access to the phenomenal world, but our auditory and tactile perceptions likewise establish our place in our lived environment. If we accept this, then we should ask whether holding a theoretical position about how aesthetic experience establishes our place in the world helps to make that kind of experience more (or more properly) part of action and helps to clarify our understanding of the lifeworld.
We live in an age of hyper capitalism under which even some of our most intimate experiences are commodified. For many the natural point of view is transactional, the market value the chief and perhaps only value of an exchange, with the primary concern being only “how much can I sell this for?” This kind of thinking sees the commodified item of the transaction apart from the history or circumstance of its creation; it is a financial asset only and if it is appreciated for any other reason that is merely supplementary to what is seen as the primary value. In the world of art the epitome of the tendency is the non- fungible token (NFT) the value of which is attributed exclusively to its status as a privately owned, exchangeable commodity. There is no other intrinsic value as indeed it is nothing
more than an assertion of ownership.
In a world dominated by this kind of extreme market capitalism is it possible for a Marxist approach to redeem aesthetic experience, not merely understand works of art in a context greater than commercial exchange value, but to be moved by works of art in ways that enrich the human condition?
We should focus on what art, not in the sense of τεχνη — not on how we should understand the technology of art reproduction and distribution (although that is an important issue that bears on our topic), but on art as a distinctive phenomenon that reveals an opening to the world that penetrates the hyletic data and organizes experience in a way that tells us as much about ourselves as about the ostensible object of our perception (the work of art itself) or whatever the artwork may point to beyond itself. In this sense the encounter with art promotes a dialogue between myself, here and now, and an alien realm. The encounter with a work of art brings us face to face with another, perhaps wholly unfamiliar or perhaps a reconfiguration or re-presentation of what had been comfortably familiar.
This re-presentation may strike us as new either because it doesn’t fit into the habitual architecture of our experience, or because it violates or threatens to destroy the standards that support our ordinary understanding of the world. This kind of encounter was what Robert Hughes meant by the shock of the new. There are many examples of this. Consider the audience response to the first performance of Igor Stravinsky’s Lê Sacre du printemps. The uproar itself raised questions: what in the performance was eliciting the shock? Tellingly the audience that night themselves were far from expressing a consensus; was it the instrumentation, the unconventional choreography, the anti-humanistic interpretation of the myth, or perhaps just because it challenged the bourgeoise expectations for a gay night on the town? Any of these possibilities would suggest at least that the performance was shocking because the interpretations at hand were inadequate to grasp what was presented. The audience that first night were unprepared – or might we say wrongly or inadequately prepared – to respond in any way that was not dismissive? This issue puts us on a slippery slope that in particular challenges Marxist aesthetics.
Works of art call for, demand even, a level of interpretation in order for one to establish their
τόπος, where they are situated, vis-a-vis the art. This is true even in consideration of Archibald McLeish’s dictum that a poem should not mean, but be... One does not search for expository propositions somehow concealed in poetry, music or painting. As Benjamin points out we cannot read works of art the way we do photo journalism. It is precisely because works of art do not translate into propositional truth that interpretation is the necessary condition and an unavoidable aspect of the dialogue between the work of art and its human interlocutor. It is this context that we ask if and how Marxism can help to open aesthetic experience.
Marxist Aesthetic Theory
A Marxist theory of aesthetic experience continues to be a work in progress. After Plekhanov and Bakhtin this ongoing project was most profoundly influenced by the work of Walter Benjamin and György Lukács.
As Todd points out, in his early (pre-Marxist) writings, “Lukács held that the form of art overcomes the ambiguities, imperfections and misunderstandings inevitable in everyday life.” This suggests that the mediating influence of theory, Marxist or otherwise, is unnecessary, superfluous; a direct intuitive response provides the guiding influence of art. Yet for the young Lukács, social life is not made coherent by the unambiguous intentions evident in art. As a consequence art cannot provoke an authentically meaningful life. After he turned to Marxism he held that this characterization of social life was one stage of capitalist development. Does this insight permit allow for the overcoming of the disjunction between art and life or, in Berger’s terms, allow us to establish our place in the world in an authentically meaningful way? Lukács argues that artistic forms both derive from and inform the structures of human historical action. Thus the art of the past can increase our self- consciousness as historical beings capable of meaningful action. (How this works for modern and contemporary art for Lukács is problematic as he considers the work of some (Kafka, for example) to be little more than the expression of a decadent bourgeois attitude. But, he maintained, great art can transcend its social context through the portrayal of individuals who create new types of significant action in the face of social constraints. The American painter Alice Neel would be an example of this possibility.
[Discussion with examples of Neel’s work to be included in full version.]
Walter Benjamin approaches the question from a different angle. The issue of the mechanical reproducibility of art suggests a disenchantment with art that that is a growing sign of our times. The way we appreciate art, according to Benjamin, changes as a function of changing patterns of social experience and the developments of technology. One could argue on this point that technological development is the proximate cause for both social change, i.e., the vantage point from which works of are encountered, and works of art themselves.
Benjamin’s famous concept of the aura asserts that the uniqueness and authenticity of a work of is lost or at least weakened by its mechanical reproduction. In the presence of a work of art’s aura one is drawn into it. With some paintings I have had this sort of experience: the painting compelled my attention and I felt removed from my time and place as a viewer standing in a place in the museum to a party to the event-circumstance of the painting. Rembrandt’s portrait of Lucretia, showing her immediately after she has stabbed herself upon being raped by Sextus Tarquinius (the 1666 version) stopped me in my tracks as I entered the room where it was being displayed at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Attesting to Benjamin’s point that each work of art is unique, this experience was not repeated when I later saw the (1664) version displayed in the National Gallery in
Washington, DC. And this is the case a fortiori with a digital reproduction such as the one I show here.
Something similar, although admittedly less powerful, happened at the Alice Neel retrospective at the Centre Pompidou. In this exhibit early works that captured the state of society during times of economic hardship that marked the failure of capitalism to provide for basic human needs. In this work Neel clearly exhibits her communist worldview. So in the case of Neel we see an example of a raised social awareness on the part of the artist and a specific effort to disclose this understanding through her painting.
Upon reflecting on the variety of work collected for the exhibit in of German art in the 1920’s in Copenhagen at Louisiana we are struck by the centrality of technology in the sensibilities of Weimar, Germany, as these examples show.
Walking through the galleries of this exhibit I couldn’t help but see this period mirrored in our own and as a consequence situated myself in today’s society with new insight.
Brecht’s poem, 700 Intellektuelle beten einen Öltank an (1927), shown at the beginning, satirically characterizes this fascination on the part of cultural leaders.
Preliminary, Tentative Conclusion
By considering examples from various aesthetic media, visual, musical and literary, along with scholarly and theoretical writing, I have posed the question of whether a Marxist perspective changes the character of aesthetic experience and consequently how one responds to art.
The short version of my conclusion and answer to this question would be, yes, Marxism does help to improve our understanding of aesthetic experience. One need only refer to the work of the eminent critic John Berger to appreciate this. My own recent aesthetic experiences similarly elevated my social consciousness and class awareness. What at this
point is not clear to me is whether the Marxist perspective on history more powerfully frames aesthetic experience than other worldviews. Walter Benjamin’s work addresses this issue and I shall rely on his voice, including the important concept of jetzzeit, as I continue this research.