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Weekly UpdatesArt Power
By Boris Groys
MIT Press, 2008
224 pp./$22.95 (hb)
Boris Groys is well known for his scholarship on state-produced art--a subject that he previously explored in The Total Art of Stalinism (1992). His most recent book, Art Power, continues to explore this topic. The first half of the book is a series of essays on the state of contemporary art. It provides insight into the ways that the art world functions, including chapters on diversity, innovation, curatorship, bio-politics, film, digitization, coauthorship, tourism, and art criticism. These discussions are nuanced and grounded through the use of specific examples. The second half of the book focuses on political propaganda, with especially strong discussions of warfare, Nazism, Communism, Post-Communism, and "Others." Almost all of the essays in this book were published between 2000 and 2007, but by organizing them thematically a new cohesion emerges.
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Groys is at his best when writing theoretical essays and criticism, and that is what we are privileged to read here. He believes that such criticism serves a practical purpose because "When works of art aren't provided with a text--in an accompanying pamphlet, catalog, art magazine, or elsewhere--they seem to have been delivered into the world unprotected, lost and unclad" (111). His intent as a critic is to clarify the meaning of art, but also to keep possibilities for interpretation open-ended.
This book uses cultural theory and philosophy in the best possible way. Groys uses jargon sparingly but still engages with complex ideas. He avoids becoming entrenched in the ideas of one thinker by citing a wide range of individuals, including Waller Benjamin, Douglas Crimp, Arthur Danto, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Immanuel Kant, Soren Kierkegaard, and Jean-Francois Lyotard. The text is straightforward enough that it could be used as a textbook, but it is worth reading by all practicing artists, critics, and art historians.
Groys wrestles with both concepts and institutions. He notes, for example, that it is widely considered impossible to write about modern and contemporary art "as a specific phenomenon, as a result of the collective work of several generations of artists, curators, and theoreticians--for example, in the same manner in which one would write on Renaissance or Baroque art" (1). This plurality might lead us to believe that any object can be validated within the contemporary art world, but Groys believes that this is also untrue. He points to trends that unify contemporary art practices and exclude others. He notes that paradoxical images are particularly common, as is "an excess of taste, including the pluralistic taste" (3). He explains the challenges that have faced museums and biennials in recent decades, as contemporary artists have come to view art as conceptual rather than physical. To adapt he notes that "the art world has shifted its interest away from the artwork and toward art documentation" (53).
Most of the examples that Groys refers to in the first half of the book are well known, including Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917), Kazimir Malevich's Black Square (c. 1923), Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes (1964), Derek Jarman's film Blue (1993), and Shirley Levine's appropriations. These objects were made for the marketplace, but one of the strengths of Groys's work is that he encourages the art community to look outward at images that were not meant to be sold. This is the focus of the second half of the book, in which he explores propaganda that attempts to perpetuate or change society.
When discussing nationalist propaganda, Groys points out the contradictory ways that politicians understand their cultures. For example, it is often claimed that "Europe is not just a community of economically defined interests but something more namely, a champion of certain cultural values that should be asserted and defended. But we know of course that in the language of politics 'something more' as a rule means 'something less'" (173). Especially when discussing the political use of art, Groys pushes his arguments to their logical extremes. This is not a flaw--the technique makes his ideas clear and concise. When exploring the relationships between art-making and warfare, for example, he notes that "In a certain sense the heroic war action of the past was futile and irrelevant without the artist, who had the power to witness this heroic action and inscribe it into the memory of humankind" (121). Later he analyzes techniques of contemporary war propaganda by noting that "the terrorists and warriors themselves are beginning to act as artists. Video art especially has become the medium of choice for contemporary warriors" (122).
If there is a flaw in Art Power, it is the production values of the book. This volume would have benefitted from an index, bibliography, and illustrations. The lack of reproductions is most unfortunate when he discusses understudied trends in state-sponsored propaganda. Some readers may find it useful, therefore, to read it in conjunction with books about political art that include reproductions, such as Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West by Susan Buck-Morss (2000) or The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany by Jonathan Petropoulos (2000). The ultimate message from Groys is that it is important to develop a critical framework for understanding artists trying to change society. This book is a fine stride toward meeting that challenge.
TRAVIS NYGARD is a PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, completing a dissertation on the visual culture of American agribusiness during the twentieth century.
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