on consideration of what art might be considered political – one’s mind turns to works of art, objects and perhaps political artists / images such as Guernica and War Cripples / or to escape the shadows of the past and move discussion of art beyond Picasso and Dix – let us look at works such as the installations of Kendell Geers and the femmages of Miriam Schapiro /
painted as the centrepiece for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World Fair / although Picasso was not a political artist in the sense that he avoided overtly political subject matter and messaging in his art / this piece reflects the artist’s response to what was a highly political affair / the death of the innocent in the aerial bombing of guernica shocked the artist and this image toured around Europe spreading awareness of the very real threat of fascism
the style of this famous painting – known as verism – is recognisable by its exaggerated realism that serves to emphasise the grotesqueness of three disfigured soldiers reduced by war to the appearance of machines – each ignoring his physical misfortune to concentrate on the game at hand / Dix was himself a soldier in world war I
Geers and Schapiro confront their audience with pieces that in turn confront the status quo / Geers – in Kode-X – using the idea of the 19th century Wunderkammer [wonder-room – shelves filled with orientalist delights in the houses of wealthy collectors] but replacing the expected objects with voodoo-like objects wrapped in hazard tape / in this installation – displayed in an exhibition of ‘african’ art – he confronts the expectation of the western audience regarding the exhibition’s theme – and challenges the exhibition itself by attacking the notion of such a theme by subverting the traditional display method of ‘ethnic’ objects /
Schapiro’s femmages – using the word collage which denotes a high art form and rendering it explicitly feminist –use materials associated with women artisanal labour – transforming them into works of high art / in doing so she challenges the audience to look on traditional materials in a new way / she also confronts the art world by forcing it to question the inherent sexism in the consideration of what is art by transforming decorative art into high art / the corpus of her work (particularly post 1970) stands as a testament to the introduction of feminism into what was (and in many ways still is) a patriarchal art world
both these artists – however – confront the audience and challenge the status quo by use of single objects, installations and other materials / their engagement with the audience is via the audience’s experience viewing and reacting to that object / following the response and analysis of that object the audience is left with nothing more / in short – the work of art has only one point of access /
this is not to say that the impact of these works is insignificant or that political art which revolves around individual objects is ‘merely’ engaging with an audience on one level / Geers and Schapiro are fine examples of artists who have seriously challenged the status quo and incited real change in the art world – and occasionally beyond / Geers – in pissing in Duchamp’s urinal – and Schapiro in the exploration of the personal as political and the formation of the pattern and decoration movement have both been a part of activist art / my intent in including them here was more to do with moving away from the traditional examples of political art and looking at more recent examples / and – the works of art described here is political – it is not activist /
art of activism aims to go beyond this plane of single-interaction and engage with its audience to the point that the line between artist and audience becomes more blurred / it is for this reason that it is much harder to pinpoint and name activist artists – as it is not just their names associated with a work or project / rather it is the representation of a collective expression / the collective aspect to activist art can be achieved in various ways – either by a wide distribution and transmission of the object thereby reaching a wide audience each of whom is confronted and challenged / by encouraging or obliging the audience to participate in the creation of the art / and many other methods that will be explored further and learnt about over the course of this writing
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