SEEING SOCIAL REALITIES
How Arnold Hauser helped me become a better documentarist
In the last two weeks I have written about three art historians/thinkers
concerned with aesthetics*: György Lukács, Herbert Marcuse and Ernst Fischer.
They were all middle-European intellectuals.
Now I want to tell you about Arnold Hauser, (8 May 1892 – 28 January 1978)
He was a Hungarian/German art historian and sociologist,
also a middle-European intellectual.
His four volumes SOCIAL HISTORY OF ART,
were a landmark in the study of art.
His revelations of how art is always influenced by the social structures
which surround and inform the artists
allowed me to understand those political, economic and cultural rules
of acceptable ideas that consciously or not,
formed my life but encircled my documentary work
with political restrictions and distortions.
To come to understand the importance of class based politics
in relation to the present embrace of identity politics
helped me to forge a holistic view of society.
If we try to understand everything from the point of view
of identity politics
without acknowledging the always underlying influence of class
on virtually everything in our lives
including poor education, racism, job opportunities and attitudes towards others,
we lose sight of the broader society.
Both must be accounted for, and both must be allied.
When there were riots in America’s black neighbourhoods a few years ago,
looking at the crowds on the street, you could see elderly and young whites joining battles along with the black people against the police.
It was no wonder that between the governing and media cabals
they shut news coverage down as quickly as possible.
They recognised that the lines of battle
were between the ruling class and the poor working class (regardless of race),
not just between police and black people.
Early in my career it had become clear that when my work
simply told a humane story of the industrial working class
there would be a spontaneous knee-jerk rejection
from editors, art directors and publishers.
They were probably unconsciously submitting to the rules and safeguards
of the status quo’s cultural canon**which forbade any articles sympathetic to the working classes, especially during strikes.
You may think this is overstated
but this class conflict runs deep in the political and cultural veins of the British
and to a degree, in Americans.
Hauser’s story about the rise of the new middle classes
in Florence, Italy at the beginning of the Renaissance
helped me to understand why I felt and still feel alienated
from the middle classes in the US and the UK.
Their preoccupations with security, wealth, social status,
with maintaining rigid social and cultural rules
and a rigorous but to me questionable moral code,
were not to my interests.
Not that I’m better or more sensitive or more compassionate
but rather because of my own alienating history,
I chose to be liberated from those things
which, in childhood, had made me so unhappy.
This removed me from being a participant to being an observer,
perfect for a documentarist.
At the same time I also recognised I did not want to be a judge
but rather only an observer.
This is difficult.
Hauser’s detailed histories examine how,
when the means of growing food and manufacturing commodities changed
as a consequence of evolving markets and technological developments,
or from plagues and wars,
then the production of art*** also changed
through the choices of arising generations.
He described the guiding principles of art in the medieval period,
when the culture was controlled by aristocratic landowners,
the church and often the crown.
For them, people were simply a reflection of God
and thus of little interest as individual human beings.
But with the rise of an urban, property owning
and newly wealthy pragmatic mercantile class
contending for power over the state and the church,
they wanted art to serve their needs and wants.
Art became more realistic, depicting the world more directly
because they wanted an art that described their homes,
and their things, manifesting their standing and wealth
in their ordered towns and then distant countryside,
all a reflection of rising power and ego.
Recognizing this linkage between art and technology,
art and markets and their evolving tastes
combined with coming to understand how class informs the desires
and needs of people
were more eyeopeners for me.
I needed to be more aware of these actual but hidden realities
to help me make sense in my photographs and films,
in societies otherwise alien to me.
These links helped me to see the nature of people’s lives
in a hidden and obscure world of smoke and mirrors.
Every vital reality is secreted behind walls of popular culture,
fake or uninformative news
often using tittle-tattle to guide the average person’s attention
away from what really matters,
from what they really need to know
to be an informed public, an informed voter
and a citizen invested in freedom, justice and equality.
I was given access and to a degree intimacy
because the people I photographed sensed that I was not judging,
that I was in some ways a friend,
and that, to a degree, I understood who they were.
NOTES
thank you and yes...the power of words and concepts we can gather to face the barbarians, the more we can protect freedoms, justice and creativity....
In the UK where artists are fighting for survival and the very word art seems like a dirty word to so many in power, these essays about the cultural writers of the past, are giving us words and language and concepts to use. Important we also know our art history.