Political art is propaganda

From the definition that we set up in class for propaganda, it seems to me that art cannot serve a legitimate moral or political function without being reduced to propaganda. In our discussion on Friedrich Schiller, we defined propaganda as any material that attempts to motive action or to persuade. While we did put certain caveats on our definition, that it is propaganda especially when it manipulates facts and tries to motivate without giving good reasons, but I think that to some degree that is what art does. It does not really show you “facts” and often it tries to motivate you without any particular reason you can point to. Of course, there are degrees to which art demonstrates its political or moral goals, but if it attempts to teach you a particular lesson than it is a form of propaganda. One of the barriers to thinking about art as propaganda is that people often think of propaganda as government-produced or just simply bad art. This is not entirely the case, however. Some political art certainly is the stereotypically bad state-created art, but there are actual private artists that want to make a political statement with their art that is truly considered good art.

Art that is something like a poster produced by the government, for instance the posters created by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to convince people of the good qualities of the ‘New Deal,’ is not very good art, but it serves a specific function. These works of art have a specific purpose to persuade and motivate Americans to do certain things like go to the zoo or to get a job. A majority of these posters describe things that were good or neutral actions, but they were intended to help motivate people to kick-start the economy. They “manipulated” facts to try and make a point and motivate action. This, I consider, is the stereotypical construction of propaganda. It is simple, overtly political, and fairly easy to understand. Political does not, however, simply mean that it must come from the government or the state. Political can mean anything that dictates or influences our political frameworks.

The work of someone like Kara Walker, although it is much better art, also serves particular political and social functions. In one of her most recent installations A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant, Walker created a giant statue of a black female figure using stereotypical images about race and gender. There are so many intricacies to her artwork that it would be impossible to totally explain in this blog post, but needless to say it is an amazing sculpture with many different meanings and purposes. Without a doubt, Walker is trying to persuade and motivate. One way to understand that she is trying to influence people is by looking at the images and history she is drawing upon in her work. Another way to recognize this is by looking at the recent news that she recorded the faces and reactions of people viewing her art as a way to capture the negative and offensive reactions people had to her art. Here she reversed the gaze of the viewers to her sculpture and made them a part of the artwork to challenge them.

Kara Walker is not a politician, in the governmental sense of the word, and from what I know the government does not primarily fund her. This does not mean, however, that she cannot produce political works of art. Her magnificent sculpture serves many political and social functions and in doing so attempts to motivate people to action. Although it is a great sculpture artistically and it does not compare to the posters created by the WPA, it is just as much propaganda. As we have discussed many times in this class, the power of artworks is something that you cannot specifically point to or totally understand. Any work that is political is therefore inherently propaganda. It does not need the work of “facts” to generate its power; it is just an essential function of artwork to motivate. I do not think that all artwork necessarily is political, however. There are certainly issues of the male gaze and other such gazes that promote a sort of hidden political project, but I think there is abstract art that can avoid that issue and is therefore outside the realm of politics and propaganda.