[PEN-L:29947] Re: art and the commodity form

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 8/26/02 6:51:21 PM Pacific Daylight Time, michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:


> I found this article interesting because it suggests the way that
> these pictures seem to represent a clear vision of capitalist
> production where, as Marx said, the "worker [is reduced to]
> nothing more than personified labour-time [and where all]
> individual distinctions are obliterated" (Marx 1977, p. 353).
>
> CHRONICLE of HIGHER EDUCATION
>
> A glance at Issue 24 of "The Journal of Decorative and
> Propaganda Arts:" Art and politics during the Depression
>
> To their detriment, working-class men were often eroticized in
> American art of the 1930s that dealt with themes of work and
> workers, writes Erika Doss, a professor of art history at the
> University of Colorado at Boulder. "Widespread representation of
> male workers as sexualized bodies -- as passive objects of
> pleasure for others rather than the active subjects of their own
> autonomy and agency -- advanced marginalization of the working
> class," she argues.
>
> Portraying masculine workers as seminude, she writes, not only
> stripped them of the trappings that, in American culture,
> suggest wealth, status, and class, but also revealed the
> inadequacies of the human body -- even though the male body
> often was presented by fine artists and illustrators as a
> physical icon of national economic recovery.
>
> But in helping to define labor as "just a body," she suggests,
> the depictions were taking part in a long-fought battle between
> management and labor over working conditions, wages, and
> recognition of workers. The New Deal government supported works
> of art in its political aim "to generate unity and restore
> confidence in American capitalism and democracy," and also to
> persuade Americans "of the benefit and inevitability of a
> national economy in which government and business were closely
> allied," she writes.
>
> Ms. Doss claims that eroticization was all the more damaging to
> labor because, at that time, the Great Depression exacerbated
> long-active, deeply rooted tensions in American life relating to
> class, masculinity, the work ethic, and identity. "Notions of
> work, and those of a moralizing work ethic, have been seminal to
> American understandings of self and national identity from
> seventeenth-century colonization to the preset day," she writes.
>
> --
>
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929



On the same continuum is the depiction of the "workers" and "farmers" - as art form, in the Soviet Union of the same period. This phase of history in the evolution of the industrial infrastructure most certainly liquidates the individuality of the individual person and this liquidation is "objectified" as monuments - art, glorifying personified labor time.

Whether this personified labor time is purchased by individuals or the "collective" or rather utilized through public ownership of the fundamental factors of societal reproduction is important, but it is also important that this "objectification" of labor  - as art, arises simultaneously under radically different property relations. Industrial society is a historical configuration no matter what property relations, although property relations are important. Industrial man appears to be more and more "wack."

To gut man - the individual human, of their individuality and portray him devoid of spiritual essence is industrial societies - not simply capital, monuments to insanity. Capturing the various forms of this essence is the art. Perhaps these monuments of insanity are less insane than the monuments of the era that birthed industrial society. In this sense they should be preserved as historical artifacts with a warning sign attached:

"Intense observation can lead to ill health, including anxiety attacks, headache and in extreme cases, nosebleed. Humans under 21 years of age must be accompanied by an adult. Remember, this was the last epoch of insanity"

At this specific moment in time what monuments would glorify man in the era of 24/7?

The thought is chilling.

From liquidating the individuality of the individual to finally liquidating the individual as personified labor time. 24/7 means you are out of time.

I think a whole lot of us need to come up with some answers that can be articulated in the specific way in which the mass of individuals who have been gutted of their individuality - but don't know it, think. Life itself is losing value as value is driven towards zero and separated from life itself.

No development in society can destroy purpose and the continuing quest for its realization. This is the indestructible instinct that will save us, once it is harnessed in a peaceful manner.

The destruction of labor-time as a social category, does not have to mean the destruction of the individual laborer or their individuality. Laboring gutted of value - as an economic category, transforms ones laboring into an evolving art form and recreates the individual.

The date is now  August 28, in the year 2680. Marian has just come home from working.

"Hey baby, did you create anything today and if so what was it and how did you get their?"

Reply: "Actually, I wasn't creative at all today but had a revelation."

"What was that, baby."

Reply:

"I don't like you and you can be responsible for the apartment. I'm going to the north of  Italy for a few years. Sorry."


Melvin P.