SALT, ONION AND KNIFE inspired by the novel MEMED MY HAWK by Yasar Kemal, photograph: Robert Golden
Some people responded to my last essay, the first to outline a few of the influencers on my work. To continue, this week I’ll concentrate on Ernst Fischer (1899 – 1972).
Fischer held “that art is not some optional form of entertainment, a pleasant luxury of civilised life, but an essential or constitutive part of human consciousness and social being.” from an article THE NECESSITY OF ART: A MARXIST APPROACH by Dominic Alexander
Fischer is best known in the West for this book: published in 1959. He became a mentor to the English novelist, essayist, film-maker and painter, John Berger, who, with Albert Camus, the French philosopher, novelist and essayist, are my two greatest influencers …more about them in the near future.
Fischer, not unlike Marcuse (whom I wrote about in the previous essay), stood against the work-a-day closed-minded trite use of art by the Communist party and by Marxists. He understood that progressive art would always be about something more than simply feeding a propaganda machine with its narrow concentration on building the power of the demagogue or the party or the state. Perhaps he understood that violent revolution replaces one gain of psychopaths with another.
He wrote, “Art is necessary in order that man [people] should be able to recognize and change the world. But art is also necessary by virtue of the magic inherent in it”.
A Peach because “art is also necessary by virtue of the magic inherent in it.” photograph Robert Golden...
It was his recognition of both the magical element of aesthetics and creativity and the need to respond to the problems of society that helped me to understand I wasn’t compromising my social commitments by accepting that both were a viable part of creative work.
When I was a young photographer trying to understand the world, to do the right thing with my images and to not succumb to the pressures I came into conflict with, whether from art directors and editors on various magazines, or socialists in left wing political parties.
The right wing establishment always wanted to impose on my storytelling their attitudes and their publisher’s politics. This focused me on the conflict between those paying me and those trusting and allowing me into their lives. Of course it was the latter I choose and of course it led to more conflicts. Those on the left wanted everything reduced to simplistic visual and spoken language. No subtlety, no room for ideas, only shouting headlines and vulgar texts which made the popular gutter press seem intelligent.
I was searching for help looking for wisdom from others, trying to find ways to survive financially, My only solace was in reading these writers I’m describing to you, to find ways to see if others had the same traumatic emotional and intellectual life in creativity, to figure out what was, in the short and long term both sensible and moral. It eventually became painfully clear that speaking truth to power would never allow me to find peace within the system unless I accepted that I would not be able to criticise the status quo.
Reissued with an introduction by John Berger THE NECESSITY OF ART is a beautifully written mediation on art’s importance in seeing and understanding our world. Fischer clarified for me the relationship between my creative imagination and the surrounding social reality.
He understood that artists needed to engage with society, that they had no choice if they wished to have an audience. He clearly rejected hyper-consumerism, but he maintained an optimistic humanism.
Today, years after having encountered his writing directly and since having read almost everything published by Fischer’s intellectual son, John Berger, I have cultured a broader, more tolerant humanism. None the less, I feel compromised by the dark moment we are in with social democracy having given way to neoliberal culture, politics and economics, with increasing inequality between rich and poor, with oil and gas corporations unstoppable in their compulsive search for greenhouse gas creating fuels, with fascism and its accompanying racism, nationalism and therefore, violence and chaos.
Child abandoned by local schools, doctors and social workers because he is deaf. Srebrenica, Bosnia, photographs Robert Golden
What suited me was that within Fischer’s Marxism there was a rejection of Soviet communism and an embrace of humanism. His writing taught me to back away from accepting ideas, hopes and dreams that were alien to me, and that I should be embracing my own instinctual humanity.
Thinking of art and artists, one of my documentaries is about the wonderful contemporary artists, Ricky Romain, whose work is both mysteriously beautiful and apposite about our time; it is exemplary of Fischer’s view of the true nature of art. You can view the 28 minute film for free, here.
thank you Gareth...kind words.
Ever since I first saw it, I have loved the simplicity of the Knife, Salt and Onion picture.
Thanks Bob for reacquainting me with it, and, perhaps we may see some more of your atmospheric food shots.