MAXIM KANTOR
CAPITALIST REALISM
The Avant-Garde Had Wanted To Change the World. Now It's Trying To Preserve
It Without Changes. Why?
In the olden days it was said: "Sotsrealism is a declaration of love to
the bosses in language they understand." The bosses wanted a demonstration
of love for the withering homeland and a denial of the fact that a big world
existed outside-with palm trees, dollars, and free art.
The bosses corrected the artist if he declared his love unclearly or not at
all. However, if the socialist bosses were angry, the artist had a way out-by
appealing to a higher organization. That was the capitalist authorities.
Talk in freedom-loving circles was about civilization and innovation, not about
banks. Nevertheless, it was important to know that the complex of "civilization-
avant-garde - progress" was supported by the powers-that-be and that they
would not allow the avant-garde to be hurt. It was good to know that there was
a big world out there that our weak homeland had not shut out; and that where
the culture was progressive, the creature comforts were better, too. Fresh roses
in the back of a Rolls-Royce work very well with the oils of Parisian paintings;
this has long been noted. On the whole, it was like a Soviet play on an industrial
theme; the bad factory director blocks the way of the innovator, but there is
the kindly secretary of the regional Communist Party committee-he will help.
The Power of the Majority
In the play, there was a happy end; the director died of a heart attack
and the Party secretary took the innovator out into the big world.
Now he is among the good majority. Before, the majority was bad: the artist
was certain that the crowd was wrong. Then it turned out that the Soviet "majority"
was in fact a "minority," if you look at it in context of the educated
world.
People used to complain about the abundance of nomenklatura. However, the number
of businessmen and politicians who are connected by mutual interests is immeasurably
greater. We used to think that the entire infrastructure of our society lied:
Pravda, Moscow Sewing House, Mosfilm, exhibitions, and the women in the lines.
And in the big world, things were just the reverse: the infrastructure (Times,
Armani, Hollywood, exhibitions, and ladies at banquets) told the truth. What
happened is described by the mathematical rule: the majority is bad when it
is not enough of a majority.
The progressive majority supports the arts and has parades of the faithful.
It is na?ve to think that there is any boss who does not like declarations of
love. This is a characteristic need of bosses. The hope of the thinking artist
is that the higher bosses and the good majority are united in their desires
with the creative person: they all want progress. First they sold the West denunciations
of their own regime (enlightened people like to know that their neighbors live
in a dreary hole) and then (when the need for public repentance was over) they
began reproducing the language of avant-garde self-expression accepted in capitalist
society.
Ideology of Progress
The product that was once produced by the ideology of Sotsrealism was homogeneous:
it seemed you could glue all the paintings together to form one huge panel.
How could it be otherwise, if artists reproduced a limited selection of emotions?
The product created by free avant-garde artists is homogenous for the same reason.
The works of Russian, Czech, and Lithuanian avant-garde painters blended into
installations indistinguishable by personality. A Chinese avant-garde painter
appears, and in a year's time he's hard to distinguish from his American colleagues.
How can it be otherwise, if he serves the ideals of progress and expresses the
same selection of emotions? This general style is called the "avant-garde":
it is assumed that capitalist democracy is a progressive society and the art
that services it is progressive, that is, the avant-garde. In Soviet times a
similar term was used: Sotsrealism was called "advanced." In order
to precisely differentiate between "advanced" and "avant-garde,"
we must answer a few questions.
The avant-garde was intended as an expression of the energy of the proletariat,
but began expressing a complex of bourgeois rights and freedoms. Why?
The avant-garde was intended as an expression of the utopia of equality, but
began expressing the fact of inequality (in the commercial, social, and legal
aspect, life is better in a progressive society than in a non-progressive one).
Why?
The avant-garde was supposed to display an independence from money, but became
a zealous player in the market, and the degree of avant-gardism is determined
success on the market. Why?
The avant-garde used be the synonym for a rejected minority, but became the
synonym for the success of a legitimate majority. Why?
The avant-garde had wanted to change the world. Now it makes every effort to
preserve the world without changes. The avant-garde used to identify itself
with revolution. Now the connoisseur and consumer of the avant-garde is the
rich bourgeois. Was that the goal of the avant-garde?
And finally, the most astonishing: how could it happen that the same signs can
express one thing (notionally, socialist) and then a diametrically opposed thing?
The signs themselves have not changed: a square is a square, but its meaning
is the opposite. And this happened not over the course of thousands of years
(who knows what they wanted to express in Sumerian art), but over fifty years.
Can anyone imagine that Delacroix's painting Liberty at the Barricades is calling
for a suppression of the Paris Commune or that the Barge Haulers of the Volga
for the exploitation of hired labor? Or imagine that the icon Christ's Descent
into Hell was painted to celebrate the greater triumph of Hades?
Christian Image and Pagan Language
The resemblance between the art of Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany has
long been noted. Of course, Hollywood reminds us of Mosfilm, American Pop Art
of the Russian avant-garde, and Warhol of Shilov. Every ideological product
resembles every other ideological product. Sotsrealism and Caprealism are indistinguishable
in principle: they are stages of the same process. Ideological art, that is,
art that manipulates primary emotions (with vitality, intensity, power, and
so on), is needed for the construction of big empires. One empire has died,
but another empire needs ideological art, too. Based on all its characteristics,
this power art can be defined as pagan-it is comparable to Roman, Egyptian,
and Babylonian art.
The history of 20th-century empires is also the history of replacing Christian
art with pagan art. To put it another way, by substituting sign for image. The
distinction of the image is that it is concrete: Christ does not resemble Mahomet,
nor does Marianne (Liberty at the Barricades) resemble a Volga barge hauler.
Concreteness (that is, individuality) is not suitable for big construction projects.
But Malevich's square resembles Mondrian's square in the same way that Hollywood
and Mosfilm leading men resemble one another.
Pagan art expresses itself through anthropomorphic forms (Deineka's athletes
and the colossuses of the Third Reich) and through totems and ornaments (Malevich's
squares and Pop Art). They are all signs. A sign signifies nothing by itself,
that is, it expresses force and push, but the content of the force and vector
of the push can be of any kind at all. Caprealism appropriated the attributes
of Sotsrealism, since the sign (the main attribute of the avant-garde) is easily
adjusted to any cause. It is one-size fits all, like the notional concept of
progress and the notional concept of civilization.
The ideologists of Sotsrealism (who wrote spiritual articles about the landscapes
of their native regions) became sell-out intelligentsia with the same ease that
regional Communist Party secretaries became oil magnates.
March Right
Just as they used to make up a Sotsrealist history of art, now they've made
up a Caprealist one. According to one version, Laktionov was born of Rublev,
according to another, Warhol was born of Rembrandt.
Party history is always being rewritten, rewarding the loyal: it has been proven
that it is a straight shot from Rublev to Black Square, but no place can be
found for Petrov-Vodkin and Tolstoy. In fact, the Warhols and Laktionovs are
born of each other and they multiply like dreary ideological projects. There
is no progress is art: Malevich is not better than Rembrandt, Warhol is not
better than Breughel, an installation is not better than the Sistine Chapel.
However, it is works of humanitarian art that are measured by criteria of thoughts
and feelings; ideological art has other goals. The Spartans listened to anthems
and went into battle. The workers sang the International and died for false
ideas. Speculators look at freedom-loving squares and performance art, and then
go off to chop budgets and privatize oil fields. The masters of Caprealism express
themselves, and their managers, approving their impulse, also express themselves.
The bosses have a lot of material for self-expression-the whole big world, and
the servicing costs little squares.
This is how we live-in the discourse of progressive freedom.