Handwerker Gallery Newsletter

Fall 2001 – Volume 3, Number 2

What Does a Materialist Art History Do:
Andrew Hemingway's Response

Andrew Hemingway is a reader in history of art at University College London. He is the author of Landscape Imagery and Urban Culture in Early 19th-Century Britain (Cambridge University Press, 1992) and numerous articles and contributions on Marxist art history. After his April lecture at the Handwerker, "Proletarian Love and Revolutionary Art in New York 1935," we e-mailed Hemingway a set of questions asking him, among other things, to talk more on similarities and differences between the European and American cultural situation in the 1930s; propaganda art and the social functions of art; and the importance and signification of a materialist art history. In his response he chose to focus on the last issue:

This is a complex question, or rather group of interrelated questions, and thus only a complex answer will do. Firstly, we should be clear that what you’re asking is: "Is a Marxist practice in art history possible at this juncture, or at least a practice that starts out from the Marxist tradition but takes a suitably critical attitude towards it?" I can't answer your question without invoking that other philosophical premise of historical materialism, namely realism --- since if Marxism is premised on a materialist ontology, it is also grounded in a realist epistemology.

I think that there are three common assumptions that must be addressed preliminary to your questions about "possibility" and "functions": (1) that Marxism has been decisively discredited by developments associated with the term poststructuralism that are these days called "theory," and by the conditions denoted by that interrelated term postmodernism; (2) that the collapse of Communism in the former USSR and Eastern bloc states, the decline of social democratic parties in the bourgeois democracies of Western Europe, and the marginalization of socialism within political discourse of those societies have together foreclosed the prospects of the left in the traditional sense of the term; and (3) that conditions within the academic and cultural fields militate against a leftist practice. Obviously these assumptions are intertwined in important respects, but for the sake of simplicity I’ll address them separately.

"Theory" is a catchall category, but it generally denotes tendencies such as poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, feminism/postfeminism, queer theory, theories of difference, and so on. I need hardly say that these tendencies, whatever their disparities, have in common a distrust of metanarratives. A lot of "theory" encountered in cultural and critical practice is not expounded by persons who have any real knowledge of the history of the ideas they blithely dismiss. So I don’t think that at a philosophical level there’s any problem in defending either the realist or materialist premises of historical materialism, and anyone who’s interested in a sophisticated body of writings that effectively does both can consult the work of Roy Bhaskar. However, given that there is plenty of work being done to defend historical materialism at a theoretical level, the question remains as to why Marxism doesn’t have more adherents. It is not that historical materialism is not winning the battle against its critics because its intellectual resources are inadequate (if we measure winning in terms of sheer numbers appeal), but rather because larger social and political forces are against it doing so. And this brings me to the second and third assumptions.

Even those who cling most intransigently to the traditions of revolutionary socialism --- and who have been most adamant in their criticisms of Soviet communism and most dismissive about the achievements of social democracy --- acknowledge that the working class of the advanced industrial countries has experienced a profound series of reverses over the last quarter century. Although there have been anticapitalist demonstrations in Seattle, Prague, and Gothenburg along with stirrings of labor militancy in a number of countries, a lot of the energies that have driven the street protests have had more to do with anarchism than with traditional forms of working-class organization, and unions have been left without an effective political voice by the conversion of social democratic parties to neoliberalism along with the crisis of the international communist movement in the wake of 1989. Comparably, in the United States, labor unions have lost whatever purchase they might once have had on the Democratic party. However, recent developments also show that capitalism is as crisis-prone as ever and that the idea of capitalist stabilization long-term is a chimera.

The left may not be in a good state at the moment, but it is more needed than ever. One shouldn’t expect to be always making direct connections between the higher levels of historical inquiry and immediate political issues. Important work, not clearly indexed to current concerns, is being done that contributes to our understanding of both history and our own times. I think the art-historical left that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s has not, for the most part, lived up to the imperatives placed on it by the long-term problems I’ve been talking about. This is largely because its commitment to socialism was pretty "academic," and this made it easily susceptible to more fashionable intellectual trends once it became apparent that the left was entering a phase of long-term adversity. A notable exception to this is Karl Werckmeister, whose recent books Citadel Culture and Icons of the Left seem to me exemplary, whatever differences I might have with them on specific points of interpretation.

This leads me to the third assumption, which concerns both the sociology of culture and the micro-sociology of academe. The functions of high culture are always by and large conservative ones in bourgeois society, and art history has always been and remains something of a playground for the rich. It’s not among art history faculty or students, generally, that one expects to find individuals whose class experiences would predispose them to be sympathetic to Marxist ideas. More- over, late-20th century developments in the art market and cultural institutions (especially museums) have tended to contain and nullify the radical cultural strategies that were invented in response to the social and political unrest of the 1960s and ’70s.

Further, as the role of the "independent intellectual" has become increasingly hard to live in an economic sense, those who aspire to play it have been forced to depend on academic positions to support themselves. Academia is not a particularly favorable environment for those who set out to criticize the social order. Structurally speaking, the primary function of universities and colleges is to inculcate the young with values that will be serviceable in the reproduction of the existing order of things. This goal is becoming more openly acknowledged at the moment as a result of the "businessification" of education in Europe and the corresponding enunciation of "training" (rather than education in the true sense) as education’s primary goal. The consequences of this businessification in terms of how education is managed, attitudes to research, and the deterioration of conditions of service have been profound. So things are getting more difficult, and the response of academic workers can only be the same as that of other workers, namely organization. In this regard, the appearance of RAHL (the Radical Art History List, an e-mail information service, rahl@condor.depaul.edu) and RAAHC (the Radical Art and Art History Caucus of the College Art Association) are initiatives that, correctly I think, are concerned with both "bread and butter issues" and with intellectual exchange on the left.

Is a Marxist art history possible, and what would it be like? Marxist art history continues to be done, but it is extremely varied in its forms and so is perhaps not always recognized as such. In addition to my own work, I would cite, for example, the work of Caroline Arscott, David Craven, Carol Duncan, Steve Edwards, Tom Gretton, Jutta Held, Pat Hills, Paul Jaskot, Barbara McCloskey, Fred Orton, John Roberts, Alan Wallach, and Karl Werckmeister because I know their works firsthand, but there are plenty of others. Given the range of sophisticated practices that the term has to cover, it would be presumptuous for me to get prescriptive. So with this in mind, I’ll offer a "wish list" for a materialist art-historical practice:

Marxist art history needs to establish a more articulate relationship and dialogue with Marxist theory. In my view, much Marxist art history has been too inward looking, too preoccupied with developments within the academic discipline. Actually, I don’t believe in Marxist art history, only in an all-encompassing historical science that encompasses the domain of art along with all other social phenomena.

Given that most sophisticated Marxists have been obliged to embrace a more multicausal conception of historical explanation in recent times --- partly because the phenomena of gender, racial, and nationalist oppressions cannot be addressed adequately within the terms of the classical doctrine. We need a more synthetic accounting of the relationships between class power and these other forms of inequality.

I think we should take a more confident and combative stance in relation to "theory." While acknowledging that we can learn from some of what goes under that name, I feel strongly that empirical methods need to be defended against the widespread assumption that theoretical work in itself produces truth, and that we should use that method to puncture the errors this illusion generates. Developments in the philosophy of science in the 20th century provide a method of thinking that does not confuse the truths arrived at through empirical research with identity thinking, as anybody who has majored in philosophy should know.

Although some of my friends and colleagues in the Marxist camp disagree with me, I believe we need a more skeptical attitude to conventional hierarchies of value. In my view, it is the task of Marxist art history to call established values into question, not to simply validate accepted "masterworks" by a different set of criteria. I think historical materialism needs a more developed theory of pleasure than it has at the moment.

Finally, what would be the functions of a materialist practice? My brief answer is: to make trouble. I can’t see how there can be a Marxist art history worthy of the name that is not agonistic, that does not constantly work to expose how cultural products and cultural institutions endlessly function to reinforce inequality and oppression. But to put it all in the negative would be undialectical. Marxist art history must also work to disclose the contradictions in cultural phenomena, the moments of resistance and opposition that oppression constantly generates, the moments of hope and utopian striving that provide an exemplar for contemporary practices. Diego Rivera famously likened the revolutionary artist working in bourgeois societies to a "guerrilla fighter." It’s a romantic idea, but I think it posits an ideal that the Marxist historian and critic can aspire to --- however difficult the task.

Andrew Hemmingway talks after his lecture with Ithacan reporter Sami Khan '04