Art Alienated: An Essay on the Decline of Participatory Art
G.S. Evans
SUMMARY
This essay argues that art has been reduced to a commodity by
capitalist economy and culture; as a result, people buy art rather than
make it for themselves. The essay's basic contention is that the
decline of participation in making art has resulted in a general
alienation from art.
The first third of the essay discusses the various ways
pre-capitalist cultures (with a focus on Medieval Europe) managed to
integrate art into the fabric of daily life and the resulting
widespread participation of its members in the making of art. It quotes
contemporary accounts of people singing, dancing, making crafts and
storytelling in the course of their normal daily lives as examples of
how people can participate in art without having to make art the
primary focus of their lives. The second third of the essay chronicles
the gradual destruction of this communal participatory art as
capitalist economic and social structures came to the fore. It
discusses the greatly heightened prestige of art specialists and how
their art, disseminated through art commodities (paintings, concerts,
books, etc.), gradually came to dominate the artistic realm. It also
argues that this domination of the art commodity over art participation
reached its culmination with the development of mass media in the 20th
century. This allowed the art specialists' products to reach directly
into the home (by way of radio and, especially, television) in a very
captivating way, thereby destroying many of the remaining forms of
participatory art. The essay then explores the current state of
participatory art, noting that a good eighty percent of the adult
population in advanced industrial countries rarely or never make their
own art, while only ten percent could be said to make their own art on
anything even approaching a regular (i.e., monthly) basis. This is
contrasted with the near universality of art participation in
pre-capitalist societies. The final third of the essay discusses
various aspects and ramifications of alienated art in our society. This
includes an analysis of the hero worship of art specialists, the
consequent denigration of the amateur artist, and how our living
patterns, attitudes, and even the nature of our popular art (e.g.,
people accustomed to seeing big-budget movies will likely find
traditional stage drama boring and uninteresting) make it difficult or
impossible for most people to rediscover the joys of making their own
art. The essay then concludes with some suggestions as to how artistic
alienation could be overcome, arguing that only fundamental social and
economic change could overcome the inherent tendency for art to become
alienated in a capitalist society.
I would consider this essay to be complementary to the works of
writers such as Ivan Illich and André Gorz. It
elaborates on themes that they set forth in their
writings, most notably Illich's concept of a radical monopoly
(when an industry, in this case the art and entertainment industry,
"becomes the dominant means of satisfying needs that formally
occasioned a personal response") and Gorz's belief in the importance of non-work time (what is now called
"leisure" time) as a key to the development of a radical society where
people have the opportunity to reach their full personal and human
potential.
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Keywords: art, alienation, participatory art, art specialist, art commodity, Ivan Illich, André Gorz, radical monopoly.
Length: 50 pages.
Contact: gsevans88(at)hotmail.com (comments welcome).