Herbert Marcuse's The Aesthetic Dimension: Subversive Qualities of Art
Regarding the first claim of Marcuse, he states that "Art's separation from the process of material production has enabled it to demystify the reality produced in this process" (Marcuse 22). He continues by saying that "to ascribe the nonconformist, autonomous qualities of art to aesthetic form is to place them outside...the realm of praxis and production" ( Marcuse 22). Marcuse says that art "can be called revolutionary if, by virtue of aesthetic transformation, it represents, in the exemplary fate of individuals, the prevailing unfreedom...thus breaking through the mystified (and petrified) social reality, and opening the horizon of change (liberation)" (Marcuse xi). It would appear that art and the artist can teach us about life and illuminate aspects of human existence that may not have been clear to us before, or have become obscured or oppressed. Art can expose and open up a dialogue analysing power structures and power imbalances and it can agitate against injustice and structures of control and domination. Marcuse feels that these aims must be achieved through sublimation and that obviously political or didactic art contains less power to dissociate. Art must dissociate the audience and awaken them to the realities of the their situation alerting them to concepts of alienation, class consciousness, hegemonic structures and ideological narratives. Art must contain the power of estrangement. Marcuse feels that the key location of these activities is in the imagination or the imaginative space which remain autonomous and free from the concerns of labour and consumption. Carol Becker feels that Marcuse's position can be explained by "his belief in the imagination - its regenerative abilities to remain uncolonised by the prevailing ideology, continue to generate new ideas, and reconfigure the familiar" (Becker 114). Marcuse sees the role of art as one of resistance against, and subversion of, powers of dominance. In our case that power is late-capitalism. Marcuse feels that art's "value is as a tool that can regenerate the lost, hidden, creative, spiritual, and intuitive aspects of human life which capitalism has denigrated" (Becker 118).
In realising the true subversive potential of art, this is where Marcuse advocates formally challenging art and the realm of aesthetics over social-realism. For Marcuse, "the critical function of art, its contribution to the struggle for liberation, resides in the aesthetic form" (Marcuse 8). Marcuse goes on to claim that "the radical qualities of art, that is to say, its indictment of the established reality and its invocation of the beautiful image...are grounded precisely in the dimensions where art transcends its social determination and emancipates itself from the given universe of discourse" (Marcuse 6). Marcuse believes that "aesthetic form, autonomy, and truth are inter-related" (Marcuse 9). He believes the "truth of art lies in its power to break the monopoly of established reality [of those who established it] to define what is real. In this rupture, which is the achievement of aesthetic form, the fictitious world of art appears as true reality" (Marcuse 9). Art can achieve these aims through dissociation and estrangement. Marcuse quotes Adorno to support his claim, Adorno states that the "autonomy of art asserts itself in extreme form - as uncompromising estrangement" (Marcuse 30-1). As a final word on the importance of dissociation and estrangement I will quote this passage:
In this sense art is inevitably part of that which is and only as part of that which is does it speak against that which is. This contradiction is preserved and resolved in the aesthetic form which gives the familiar content and the familiar experience the power of estrangement - and which leads to the emergence of a new consciousness and a new perception
(Marcuse 41).
Marcuse argues that art without explicitly "social" themes, especially such art, can produce a shift in consciousness or, "a negation of the realistic-conformist mind". Marcuse argues that this is more likely to occur in non-social realist works, works whose subject matter is separated from social realities. This is because those realities have become sublimated in the work, and contact with the work brings about a corresponding de-sublimation in the viewer. By meeting these criteria, by avoiding the obviously political position, and by not being overly didactic, art can resist being co-opted, absorbed or becoming banal.
What is Stan Douglas being subversive against? Does Abbott & Cordova meet any of the criteria outlined in this essay according to the ideas of Marcuse? Does Abbott & Cordova sublimate social reality, does it estrange or dissociate the viewer causing a shift in consciousness regarding the local powers of domination and oppression? Does it show a possibility of a better way of living? Regarding aesthetic form, if Douglas is already re-creating, or fabricating, a "historical reality", why not push it further and completely construct a fictitious space/place/time that addresses multiple DTES issues by playing with the realities of place and time. He has already used multiple images to create an image that is physically questionable and aestheticised so why not create the synthesis of content and form that Marcuse calls for. "Aesthetic form is not opposed to content, not even dialectically. In the work of art, form becomes content and vice versa" (Marcuse 41). I think that by not meeting many of the above mentioned criteria regarding the subversive potential of art, Douglas has created a work that is co-optable, easily absorbed and banal.