On Political Art
I’ve just returned from a short trip to Europe, and along with my recent tour of museums in Vienna and Munich, a couple of recent articles have me thinking about political art. The first is “A Painting for a World in Collapse” by Jerry Saltz in New York Magazine. The piece talks about Theodore Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa, one of my all-time favorite paintings:
In the article, Saltz describes the environment in which Gericault created his masterpiece, the historical event he wanted to portray, and the “message” he aimed to convey. I’m reminded of many of the details I love about this work that I’d forgotten, and I learned details that I didn’t know before. But the most important bit for me—the one I really think about a lot—is what makes good political art:
[A]s with Géricault’s great aesthetic-political accomplishment, [great political work] is not solely and obviously ‘political.’ It is great not for what it’s supposed to be about but for the ways it employs forms, materials, and imagination. Art works in mysterious ways. Neither Donald Judd nor Andy Warhol, Bridget Riley nor Yayoi Kusama, Charles Eames nor Zaha Hadid makes what looks like “political art.” Yet each changed the way the world looks and the ways we look at the world. That’s revolutionary — that’s political.”
I’ve always viewed my works as political, or at least more explicitly political than not. They delve into contemporary issues, and ground themselves in the historical and cultural moment. My second book, for example, is about space tourism and wealth inequality.
I don’t think I write primarily or even intentionally to persuade a reader to my own views; I’m more invested in having a conversation, and having the book be in conversation with what’s going on in the world. But pressed to describe what makes my stories “political,” I’d say it’s more the content rather than the form. It’s what the stories are about rather than how the stories are told. Of course it’s not so black-and-white, and Saltz doesn’t say that it is; but it makes me wonder if I might be doing too much on the politics end of things and not enough on the artistic end.
This relationship between the aesthetic and the political is a minor theme in “Anxiety and Irresponsibility: What Is to Be Done About Literary Moralism?” by A. Natasha Joukovsky for LitHub. It is in response to another essay, and rejects the “prevailing literary ethos” that “that the primary function of social novels is social change, that social change lends fiction real-world utility, that its real-world utility makes fiction a craft, that this craft requires labor, and that this labor includes a responsibility to historical accuracy and progressive politics.”
Without conceding that this ethos is in fact “prevailing”, I agree with the rejection of novels needing real-world utility, and having change as their primary purpose. A novel doesn’t have to cause an external or even an internal change in the reader, let alone society. But if they did, wouldn’t that be a good thing? Wouldn’t it be nice if a piece of art is both “great for what it’s supposed to be about” and “for ways it employs forms, materials, and imagination”? Por que no los dos?
Independent of the question of whether it should, Joukovsky does admit that fiction can and does influence reality. But she’s quick to emphasize that
[L]iterature’s potential for influence is not derived from a moral purity test—it is derived from aesthetic success. Said another way: novels can only influence the real world if they captivate, and beauty is the necessary and sufficient condition to captivation. . . . The Handmaid’s Tale is a successful novel not because it is anti-fascist and supports reproductive justice, but because it is beautifully, dare I say stylishly written. From the first paragraph we get lines like “the music lingered, a palimpsest of un-heard sound.” This is why I want to read on.
The use of The Handmaid’s Tale is apt here, especially given how it’s been such an influential rhetorical tool in recent years. Atwood’s red robes and white bonnets are almost ubiquitous in any pro-abortion rally. Did the book affect me because of its themes and topics? Yes, to some extent. But it gripped me, took hold of my imagination, inspired and continues to inspire me to write because of the world it vividly portrayed, because of the thrilling ways it unfolded its story.
Now, looking back on “political” books or art that I really love, I find the same holds true. Saltz, again:
Géricault’s Medusa . . . told me things I’ve known and lived by ever since. To encounter a work of art for the first time is to confront, for an instant, something you’ve never seen in your life. You are reminded that what you’re looking at was once (or perhaps still is) contemporary art in direct conversation with its own time. All art is a kind of exorcism. This is what gives art its power to change the conditions of our life.
Something new, something captivating, something beautiful. These are what move people. These are what cause change, more than the critiques of capitalism or colonialism or any other -isms that I rail about in my work. These two essays, and the work that they examine, are a good reminder of that.
Photo credits: The Raft of the Medusa photo from my phone; pen photo license-free via Unsplash; handmaid photo license-free via Shutterstock.