The State and the Arts

Articulating Power and Subversion

Judith Kapferer, Judith Kapferer

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780857450722
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Städtische Soziologie

Judith Kapferer and her collaborators present an insightful volume that interrogates relations between the state and the arts in diverse national and cultural settings. The authors critique the taken-for-granted assumption about the place of the arts in liberal or social democratic states and the role of the arts in supporting or opposing the ideological work of government and non-government institutions. This innovative volume explores the challenges posed by the state to the arts and by the arts to the state, focusing on several transformations of the interrelations between state and commercial arts policies in the current era. These ongoing challenges include the control of repressive tolerance, complicity with and resistance to state power, and the commoditization of the arts, including their accommodation to market and state apparatuses. While endeavouring to avoid the currently dominant pragmatic and didactic priorities of officialdom, the contributors tackle social and cultural policy and practice in the arts as well as connections between national states and dissenting art from a range of genres.

Chapter 1

THE END OF ARROGANCE, THE ADVENT OF PERSUASION

Public Art in a Multicultural Society

Henri Beunders

After a decade or so of increasingly intensifying debates on controversial modern art, a decade that saw the removal or destruction of hated public art and a life-threatening fatwa, the physical violence against people and property has begun. In the early twenty-first century, Europe is the center stage for outbreaks of politically motivated violence against the material symbols of ‘the enemy’—against writer-politicians, writer-artists, cartoonists, producers, and publishers.

Acts of violence have included the burning of ‘colonial cars’ in 2005 in the French banlieus, the ghettos where ethnic minorities live; the assassination of a controversial political candidate, Pim Fortuyn, in the Netherlands in May 2002 by a radical animal rights activist because he was “not against wearing fur” and was seen as a “danger to society in general”; and the murder of the Dutch writer and film director Theo van Gogh (a descendant of Vincent van Gogh) in November 2004 in an act of ritual slaughter on an Amsterdam pavement in retaliation for the ‘anti-Islam’ movie he had made. In the backlash of the van Gogh murder, a dozen schools, mosques, and churches were torched. Less than a year later, in September 2005, the ‘cartoon war’ started with a series of cartoons about the prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper, including one that portrayed Muhammad with a bomb for his headgear. A half-year later, the Danish consulate in Beirut was burned, and the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus were set on fire.

All of these acts of violence against the ‘symbols of oppression’, the distributors of blasphemy, and the proponents of ‘hate speech’ have been caused by tensions within multicultural societies, which most European countries only in recent decades have turned into. Furthermore, all of these incidents have a relation to ‘the arts’. They were either ‘symbolic’ acts, such as burning cars that represented the hated native French, or a direct reaction to the artistic publications of a writer, a filmmaker, and several cartoonists. Subsequently, when governments attempted to calm down the public and soothe public opinion at home and abroad, ‘art’ suffered once again. In November 2004, the mayor of Rotterdam, amidst the violent turmoil of van Gogh's murder, ordered the immediate destruction of a piece of public art next to a mosque. The mural, which featured white doves and the words “Thou shalt not kill,” came under fire when Muslim citizens protested that they were unjustly associated with the murder because the artist had added “2 November 2004” (the date of van Gogh's death) to it. In February 2006, London condemned the publication of the Muhammad cartoons as “insensitive,” while Washington declared that it was “unacceptable” to incite religious hatred by publishing such pictures (Economist, 9 February 2006). Whereas in 1989, when the British writer Salman Rushdie published his Satanic Verses and the Iranian ayatollahs issued a fatwa to kill the author for his fictional, artistic insults of Islam and Muhammad, the reaction of London, and the rest of the West, was “We stand by our man, and his art” (Gonzalez 2005).

What is left of the adherence to ‘freedom of expression’? The present disarray on the value or necessity of freedoms of speech and expression to Western democracy is fueled by ethnic and religious tensions between the old Christian majorities (or those with Christian roots) and the new Islamic minorities. The September 2001 attacks in the name of Islam on the ‘heart of the West’ and the subsequent ‘war on terror’, followed by the terrorist bombings in Madrid (2004) and London (2005), have been called the proof that Samuel P. Huntington (1993, 1996) was right in predicting 10 years earlier a ‘clash of civilizations’.

In analyzing the fate of public art in multicultural societies, we will see that the present disarray the West has fallen into about the meaning of ‘freedom of expression’ has various origins: firstly, the crisis in modern art itself; secondly, the ongoing democratization of politics; and, finally, the mediatization of all public acts. The answer to the question ‘Who decides what is tolerable?’ will be that in the end it is not the law, not the artist, not the art elites, not the authorities, but rather the general public or ‘public opinion’ that decides the fate of publicly exhibited art. To put it another way, the cultural climate in a country is the real judge. One particular question that arises is how tolerance toward controversial art can be promoted in today's tense political climate. The answer will be that the fate of public art depends on the ‘art of persuasion’. It seems that, as all forms of arrogance sooner or later are bound to be punished, the era of the ‘arrogance of public art’ has come to an end.

The Ideology of Abstract Art

Changes in social, political, and religious beliefs have, throughout history, always resulted in parallel changes in the production of public art, as Dale Lanzone¹ has described in “The Public Voice,” a short and elegant essay on public art in the US: “The ‘allowed’ and ‘profited’ meanings that are directly or indirectly expressed through a public work of art form a complex composition of ideas incorporating dreams, ambitions, myths, and fears—the many nuances of the objective and subjective self as a public entity. Works of art are necessarily encoded with the intelligence, vision, and resonating will of the dominant influences of their time.”

These words on the history of public art in the US generally apply to Europe, as for any country, although Europe has, of course, a different history and especially a more traumatic twentieth century, with World War I and II as a double watershed that has resonated in the art world. For both continents, the same general historical sketch applies. In the era of bourgeois nationalism, from the mid-nineteenth century up to World War II, governments vehemently promoted art in public places. As Lanzone (2000: 3) explained the case in the US: “Fuelled by the resonance of commonly understood figurative sculptural narratives, works of art created during this time continue to attract support and interest from the general public to this day and are often looked upon by public decision makers as the standard for greatness in American public art. Public works of art of this period idealized and affirmed the officially supported social, economic, and political doctrines of the time, thereby gaining broad-based public acceptance and support.” For Europe, however, this was true to a lesser extent.

In Europe, artistic developments progressed in a more diverse manner than in the United States, as Europe is more diverse. And in the world of the arts, Europe was in a perpetual state of ‘civil war’, much like those wars being fought in the streets and on the battlefields. There was classical, neo-classical, and naturalist public art. There was avant-gardist public art and social realist art in the Communist Soviet Union and in Nazi Germany, both denouncing the ‘decadent bourgeois art’ of the liberal West—“entartete Kunst” (degenerate art), as Hitler called it (Barron 1991).

These ongoing ‘cultural wars’ in Europe ended in 1945 when the real wars ended, and like the real ones, the results were devastating. Germany was left a vacuum, as was Italy to a lesser degree. In despair, but at the same time purposefully and willfully, Western Europe embraced all things that promised a break from its disastrous past. While in the US, ‘newness’ and ‘modernity’ formed the holy set of cultural values that legitimized the consumption-production cycle, believed to be necessary to sustain rapid economic growth and technological development. Concurrently, for the arts it meant that “the previous traditions and imperatives for public art that communicated social purposes and values were eschewed in favor of independent, forward-thinking expressions of bold, personal visions” (Lanzone 2000: 4).

In the United States, the urge for permanent artistic renewal may have been part of the triumph of capitalism and what the American economist Joseph Schumpeter (1942) once called its essence—“creative destruction.” In Western Europe, the official attitude toward art was predominantly formed by the negative: everything was allowed and promoted as long as it did not resemble social realist art, the propaganda tool of defeated Nazi Germany and that of the West's powerful new enemy, Communist Soviet Union. Figurative representation and narrative idealism were de facto banned from public life (except for war memorials). In the Netherlands in the 1970s, some citizens founded an association for figurative art in protest of the “state ideology of abstract art.”

The belief in many Western countries that free and modern art should be abstract instead of figurative caused a great “uncertainty of taste,” but nobody wanted to be depicted as a “conservative.” Consequently, this uncertainty was never expressed clearly and artists were given more or less carte blanche. It is not hard to imagine some of the reactions of the judging state commissioners when confronted with incomprehensible works of art. Former politicians and decision makers later admitted that in some cases all they were able to utter was “how interesting” or “most peculiar,” while in reality being either disgusted or totally clueless (Beunders 1998: 184). Since the late 1950s, in fact, artists could unboundedly do what they liked. They became both icons and iconoclasts and were worshipped as heroic, courageous, and visionary creators of “the world to come,” in which everything would be better and freer.

During the Cold War, freedom and democracy were the key words in the West, with the emphasis on the first word in order to contrast the ‘better’ Western world against the category of ‘people's democracy’ that existed in the East. While in the US the ‘Red Scare’ in the early 1950s led to dramatic forms of restrictions on the arts and self-censorship, Western Europe—under its own or the American nuclear umbrella—was able to celebrate freedom even more fully. Court cases for public acts of blasphemy, for insulting royalty or a friendly nation, or for corrupting morals seldom resulted in imposing a fine or jailing the offenders.

The Ideology of Human Rights

In the West, freedom and human rights were inseparable. Looking back from the early twenty-first century, it is easy to see how unbalanced the titles of the two grand official declarations on the matter were. The first was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the United Nations in 1948, at a time when the UN was dominated by Western powers. The second was the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, also known as the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which was adopted under the auspices of the Council of Europe in 1950. Established in 1949, the Council of Europe was founded by 10 states: Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The Convention of 1950 was the first international legal instrument safeguarding human rights.

For the following 50 years, both Western governments and the Western public read and reiterated only the words “human rights,” or only one word, “rights.” “Rights” were the main issue, whereas the other key words of both documents, “duties and responsibilities,” were not emphasized as much. Both documents were inspired by Christian beliefs and are partly a secular rephrasing of biblical commands. Of course, the UDHR article regarded as the most important was and still is: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.” However, in the UDHR this statement only materializes in Article 19; thus, it is preceded by no less than 18 other rights. Take Article 1: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” This proclaimed equality of everyone in “dignity and rights” is followed by a command to act “in a spirit of brotherhood.” In Article 29, the UDHR commands once again: “Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.”

Freedom of the arts is not included at all in the UDHR. Only once, in Article 27, is there a reference to the word ‘art’: “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancements and its benefits.” While Article 27 makes note of art, it is merely focusing on the public—participating, enjoying, and sharing—not on the creating artist.

In the ECHR, the freedom of expression is even more restricted. Ironically, this restriction of the freedom of expression is formulated in the very same article (Article 10.1) that proclaims it: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.” The second part of Article 10.1 contains an even longer list of limitations of this freedom: “The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.”

It is even worse. In some national constitutions in Europe, the subject of art is not mentioned at all (Peaslee 1968). In other constitutions, there might be a paragraph merely mentioning that “the state should promote art.” In other words, there is very little concern given to the arts as a basic right of freedom in European constitutional legislature. The fact that human or constitutional rights might clash with each other and with all the prescribed duties to the community was, of course, well known to domestic authorities and judges, who in court cases had to decide which of the constitutional or international rights prevailed. However, during the Cold War, both governments and public opinion kept advocating the importance and prevalence of the human right of freedom above all other interests.

Toward the end of the millennium, however, things began to change rapidly. In the 1990s, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) was set up. ECRI's remit is to combat racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and intolerance. This suggests a potential conflict with the freedoms of speech and expression. The fact that many people prefer other constitutional articles to the freedom of speech was deplored by the media and the Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn early in 2002. Fortuyn declared that, “when forced to choose,” he would prefer the constitutional right of free speech over the first article in the Dutch constitution, the prohibition of discrimination (Volkskrant, 9 February 2002; see also Eckardt 2003).

I will mention only briefly another trend in recent years, which is of growing importance to the question of freedom of speech and artistic expression—the matter of copyrights. Among scholars and judges, there is a concern for the steady proliferation of intellectual property rights. The reason is that an overstretched protection may be in conflict with the general interest and may impinge on the freedom of speech. In a world where one cannot even use the words ‘refreshes best’ because they are copyrighted, the public domain is declining (Hugenholtz 2000). With copyrights on enormous collections of music and photographs being sold for billions of dollars to the world's richest companies (e.g., Sony) and wealthiest people (e.g., Bill Gates), general and cheap access to this cultural heritage—a basic human right—is in danger.

Public Art and the Democratization of Politics

The pseudo-religion of modern abstract art, informed and promoted by both governmental and artistic authorities, created a gap within parts of the wider public, which sometimes did not ‘understand’ this art at all and often openly despised it. The question of what exactly constitutes art became more and more confusing, even for the cultural theorists. This had already been the case since the early twentieth century. Avant-garde art itself was full of iconoclasm, especially in relation to museum art. Marchel Duchamp put a signed pissoir in a museum and suggested using a Rembrandt as an ironing board. Jean Tinguely built art machines that eventually destroyed themselves.

In the 1960s, some artists wanted museums to be burned down because they were “the coffins of art.” Art had to be democratized and put on public display. This theory became practice in the 1970s, when the aim of art was both embellishment and giving meaning to the living environment of the ordinary citizen. Democratized art in a way became a state ideology in some countries, celebrating the welfare state and at the same time civilizing the people. However, the manner in which this ideology was produced and presented can be regarded as paternalistic.

As a result of the democratization of art since the 1970s, the definition question became clearer and lost any aura of scholarly value. As Joseph Beuys declared, every object could be considered art and everybody could be an artist (Harrison and Wood 1992: 890). The ultimate consequence is that everybody can therefore be considered an art critic, regardless of formal educational or artistic background (Beunders 2000). Up to today, Beuys's statement is still popular among cultural theorists and artists themselves: art is whatever the artist says it is, and art is sacred, to be protected forever by the authorities. This is the arrogance of the art world that caused a backlash in society against some pieces of modern art. In the center of the debate and political strife were some specific pieces of public art and the question as to whether the state had to fund artists and pieces of art that ‘insulted’ the very people whose taxes had paid for its production and exhibition (Mitchell 1992).

The question o...