ART AS REVENGE
“Because of its personal nature, the history of art is a revenge by individuals against the impersonality of the broader history of humanity.” Milan Kundera
Dante gave the Gods reasons to flee Europe. He helped to establish for the first time in human history, individuals and individualism as the centre of social consciousness. To a degree this liberated us from delusional ideas, but they have left us with two distinct problems.
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
The first is that without the guidance of the church* each individual becomes responsible for structuring their own moral code and ethical boundaries. As a species we are so deeply flawed, often lazy, unthoughtful, unread, uninformed or misinformed**, fearful of facing ourselves alone in the night or in silence or being overly dependent upon others to tell us what to do. As an unintended consequence, we have created a world economy which, by any humane measurement, has tragically failed. Since the stealth-like introduction of neoliberal policies 42 years ago, most people have become poorer, less well educated, more unhappy and dissatisfied, and in the US and the UK our average age of death has dropped for the first time since the 1930’s.***
SUSTAINING THE BIG LIES
The second problem is that to sustain the neoliberal status quo’s Big Lies that we are better-off and that there is no alternative, their distortions of the educational system, their narrow re-writing of history in schoolbooks, their ownership of most newspapers, radio and TV stations, their control of the huge social media platforms and of the popular culture, have purposely blinded us from understanding the world and our roles within it. This has led many to fill the gaping hole of understanding in our minds and hearts with the status quo’s propaganda. It leaves many of us to define life in terms of myths, often perpetuated by their interests that are not in favour of our wellbeing.
LIVING IN OPPOSITION
What this means for creative artists, documentarists (as photographers and other journalists), intellectuals and human rights lawyers is the necessity of being in opposition to the Big Lies and therefore to be in opposition to the status quo.
History is often the result of conflicts between those who believe in our better angels and those psychopaths who lust for power and wealth. There is a profound difference between the broad history of the world and that of arts and artists. As Milan Kundera wrote****, “Because of its personal nature, the history of art is a revenge by individuals against the impersonality of the broader history of humanity”.
IMAGINING YOUR AUDIENCE
Thinking about this and about how I try to attract an audience for my blogs, for making meaningful documentaries and photo-essays, it leaves me wondering. I know that I have had an imagined audience in my mind, or perhaps in my heart for many years. It consists of the many intelligent workers and shop stewards I met in the ten industries I photographed during the 1970’s, and the warm hearted longsuffering men and women I met while photographing in the black community, and the marchers, some of whom were left wing activists and some whom were radicalised workers, who walked from Birmingham to London to protest about unemployment, and the well-intended people I have the fortune to continue to meet, and the young people and students I continue to engage with whom so achingly search for a safe and meaningful future, and the handful of artists and intellectuals I have spoken with and admire for their personal and professional struggles to do the work they believed would change the world even in the face of the establishment’s rejections and the wider population’s ignorance.
And so, to my imagined audience I write and film and photograph, to share what I know in order to create a slightly better world. What else can one do? I am not sure I have hope, but I do believe, to maintain my humanity, I must choose to make oppositional work.
BETTER ANGELS
Recently, as I have begun to think that all our failures to remember the lessons of history and how often we ignore the ‘Never Again’ slogan, that our problems reach beneath the level of our epoch and particular social, economic and political cultures, into our psyches, and it is there, as a species we need to appraise why we are so self-destructive and so cruel to each other.
This has led me to begin to realise that there are different informal ways I can offer my pictures to those who read and look at these blogs, while always remembering that artists (and documentarists) can only thrive in freedom, even if that freedom is only in their heads and hearts, and that they are, by necessity, against the exploitative, violent and repressive status quo, or maybe against the worst aspects of our species.
NOTES
*I am saying this in an objective way as I am a non-believer and I have a critical view of the role of church institutions and their ideologies throughout history.
**The American humourist and wit, Mark Twain said something like, “AIf in the morning you do not read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do read it you are misinformed.”
*** The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have reported that life expectancy fell for the second year running in the US in 2021, meaning the country has experienced the steepest two year decline in a century. British Medical Journal
***From 2011 increases in UK life expectancy slowed after decades of steady improvement, prompting much debate about the causes. Then in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic was a more significant turning point, causing a sharp fall in life expectancy, the magnitude of which has not been seen since World War II. The Kings Fund
**** TESTALMENT BETRAYED, Milan Kundera, novelist
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Rings loud and true, Robert. I was particularly struck by something I have often discussed with my sons and friends and acquaintances (sometimes with a different aim) - ''their distortions of the educational system, their narrow re-writing of history in schoolbooks''. I have realised numerous times, the lies told during my school days, for example, and beyond. Namely, I feel cheated of many historical truths which have become apparent, either as a cascade or drip by drip.