CHAPTER 2 ART AS A SOCIAL INDICATOR
2.3 THE EXPRESSION OF RESISTANCE IN ART
2.3.3 The Language of Resistance Art and Local Conditions
Although each country is unique, certain motifs run through cultural history that allow us to perceive a pattern or order (Elliot, 1990). Similarly, art illustrates trends and patterns that allow one to gain an insight into the messages of art thus becoming a window through which to make sense of the image.
Marxism as an ideal is seen to deal with issues of revolution, oppression and mass liberation.
Many of the world’s foremost resistance art pieces were born of Marxist societies and locally, socialism was seen to be the driver behind art as a weapon of resistance with many local forms of expression adopting the Russian proletcult model of revolutionary art (ibid.).
The proletcult, or proletarian culture, promotes the idea of People’s Culture as distinct from the oppressive culture, locally manifested as apartheid. Is regarded as being distinct from fine art however, this distinction is not due to the art works’ style or competency but rather applied as a label to indicate its anti-institutional virtues. In South Africa, after 1917, members of the proletcult attempted to establish a new world through the destruction of the past, surprising given the historicist writings of Marx himself, Engels, Labriola, Fischer and many other Marxist philosophers. This led to the dissolution of the proletcults in South Africa by 1920 but the basic notion of People’s Culture as a tool to serve the political reappeared globally during the Soviet Cultural Revolution (1928-1932), in China and Eastern Europe during the late 1940’s and early 1950’s and subsequently throughout the whole communist world. “Institutionalised by Stalin, People’s Culture became an instrument of oppression rather than liberation.” (Elliot, 1990: 7)
By the late 1980s the notion that art was a weapon of the struggle was firmly entrenched and in 1990, after decades of war through art Judge Albie Sachs called for the autonomy of culture; “put simply, art should not have to be either a weapon or an illustration of the struggle.” (1990: 7). Sachs felt that although culture is born of social context, it can take many forms. The literal expression of resistance in art does little to enhance culture, if
30 anything it detracts from it because in its preoccupation with stylised content it ignores the development of a relevant and justified means of expression, focussing exclusively on enervated imagery (Sachs, 1990).
Although most Marxist theories revolve around resistance to the West and capitalism, they provide insight into the method employed by resistance artists locally.
Mao Tse-Tung (1942) expressed art as artistic or political with both criteria subject to his weighing of their value as “good” or “bad” depending on the nature of the work’s motive and effect. It seems reasonable to assume that Tse-Tung’s weighing of value would be toward the development of his political future – he later stated that work which is too emotive poisons the mind of the people and must be eradicated. Seemingly extremist in execution, Tse-Tung’s critical evaluation of motive (subjective intention) and effect (social practice) is a valuable tool in understanding the generation of resistance art.
Every piece of art is born of necessity, a need which must be passionate enough to bring it forth (Malraux, 1935). As previously expanded upon by Gideon (1954), art is the physical form of man’s emotions meaning that the greater the need and emotion, the more powerful the piece of art is likely to be. The concentration of human emotion and experience in an art work can lead to the nihilism of rational form and can be so intense that instead, a physical symbol suggests itself subconsciously (Clark, 1970).
In this context, sign and symbol are critical. The intensity of emotion cannot be
“…discharged through animal outcries or grimaces.” (Gideon, 1954: 427). What is required is to discover a dialectic between the inner self and the outer world as no level of development can be maintained in the absence of connection with our emotions. In other words symbol and metaphor in resistance art allows the work to transcend its medium, to express both the artists’ subjective intent and to expose the viewer to multiple readings of a work.
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Fig ure 2.17 : Contemporary South African artist P enny Siopis’ I’m So rry (Series o f Ten ) (2004) manipulating symbolic elements and colours to voice opposition to woman and child abuse. (source: Krut, D. at
http://www.davidkrutpublishing.com/artbase/abf-artwork.php?artist=36&artwork=114, accessed: 22-05-2012)
Symbols employed by an artist are only successful if they can convey the message he/she is intending to communicate. However, Clark (1970) feels that nearly all intensely felt symbols have a universal quality which makes them comprehensible. This seems plausible in the light of a global culture but it is more likely that although some symbols are universal, still any others are contextually bound to a society or culture.
Fig ure 2.18 : Contemporary South African artist Nicholas Hlobo’s Un thub i (2006) relying on a viewer’s similar cultural background in order to express meaning in an art work of personal struggle and internal resistance. (source: Artthrob at
http://www.artthrob.co.za/Artists/Nicholas-Hlobo.aspx, accessed: 22-05-2012)
32 Malraux (1935) states that every work of art becomes a symbol, although not always of the same thing. He feels that every individual in their own capacity must engage with art and strive to understand it, and in so doing turn hopes into will and revolts into revolution and through the age-old sorrows of man ignite a new consciousness.
From this it becomes apparent that resistance art is unsurprisingly largely the product of socialist ideals. The social temper in South Africa prior to 1994 meant that social injustice was rife and the movement of artists toward political ideals which supported equality was logical. The mode though which resistance art communicates draws from symbols as well as culture in order to accurately express the intent of the artist. It is reasonable to assume that resistance artists in South Africa under the discriminatory, ever-vigilant cloud of apartheid had to use symbols and cultural references to ensure the longevity of their works. Had they not, their works would most certainly have been destroyed, as seen with many works destined for global export from Rorke’s Drift.