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Marxism

Marxism from an art perspective

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andreeagrigorescu1462
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2 views

Marxism

Marxism from an art perspective

Uploaded by

andreeagrigorescu1462
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Week 8 - 'All That is Solid

Melts into Air' (25-11-


2024)
Modernisation: A process of rapid change through industrialisation and technological
innovation, associated with the notion of progress.

Paul Signac Le Demolisseur,


Felix Thorigny, Improvements to Paris, Lithograph for the Temp
transformation of Montagne Sainte-Genevieve, 1877. Nouveaux series, 26th
September 1896.
8–1883)
io-political and economic theory that critiques capitalism and advocate
ty achieved through proletarian revolution. Marx's ideas have profound
, economics, sociology, and the arts.
Lewis Hine, Girls at sewing machine showing curvature of
spine, 1917
Hegelian Dialectics
Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis:

Thesis: A Representation of an initial idea, condition, or state of being.


Antithesis: Represents a negation or contradiction of the thesis, challenging its validity.
Synthesis: Resolves the conflict between the thesis and antithesis, creating a new, higher level of understanding or state that
incorporates elements of both.

This process is not linear but cyclical and dynamic, continuously repeating at progressively higher levels of complexity.

Example:
Thesis: Feudalism (a hierarchical socio-economic system).
Antithesis: Bourgeois revolution (challenging the feudal order).
Synthesis: Capitalism (a new system combining elements of both while superseding them).

Contradictions in this system are always a part of the system and they become a Motor of Change:
For Hegel, contradictions are inherent in all things and drive development. A concept or condition contains within itself the seeds of
its opposite, which eventually emerge and lead to transformation.

Rather than avoiding or resolving contradictions in a simplistic way, Hegel sees their interplay as essential to progress.
Hegelian Dialectics

‘An interpretive method […] to relate specific


entities or events to the absolute idea, in which a
proposition (thesis) is necessarily opposed by its
apparent contradiction (antithesis), and both
reconciled on a higher level of truth by a third
proposition (synthesis).’

Georg Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 1807

Hegelian Dialectics and the movement of history


The Whole as Dynamic and Interrelated:

Reality, for Hegel, is a totality of interconnected processes. No concept, entity, or phenomenon


exists in isolation; its identity and meaning are shaped by its relations to others.

Dialectics captures this relational nature by showing how each part of a system reflects and
influences the whole.

The Historical and Logical Process:

Hegel views history as the unfolding of the "World Spirit" (Geist) through dialectical stages. This
process represents the self-realisation of human freedom and reason.

Each stage of history reflects a particular synthesis of contradictions from previous stages. History
progresses toward greater freedom, reason, and self-awareness.

Sublation (Aufhebung):
A key feature of dialectics is sublation, where contradictions are not simply negated but preserved
and elevated into a higher unity.

The synthesis "overcomes" the conflict while retaining essential elements of both thesis and
antithesis.
•Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and
anthropologist — atheism.

• Adam Smith (1723–1790) and David Ricardo (1772–1823)


economists — surplus value.

•Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) and


other French socialists — scientific socialism.

•Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) — reason, progress, and human


autonomy.

•Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) — critique of inequality and


thoughts on alienation.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
Manifesto of the Communist Party,
cover of the first edition, February
1848, printed by the Workers'
Educational Association, London.
"Capital" by Karl Marx in an 1867
edition from the Saitzew Collection
in the Zurich Central Library
The Legacy of Divergent Paths:
Europe and Russia in the 19th
Century
Richard Hartmann’s factory in Chemnitz, Dresden, Germany, 1868
Manchester, England, 1870
Repin, Ilya. Barge Haulers on the Volga. 1870–187
Oil on canvas, 131.5 × 281 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
Unknown photographer. Burlaks. 1900s.
Unknown photographer. Burlak Women on the Volga River. 190
Courbet, Gustave. Les Casseurs de Pierres (The Stone Breakers). 1849.
Jean-François Millet, "The Gleaners" (1857)
Repin, Ilya. Barge Haulers on the Volga. 1870–187
Oil on canvas, 131.5 × 281 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
Vasily Perov, The Drowned Woman (1867
Sergei Eisenstein's October: Ten Days That Shook
the World (1928): A Pivotal Cinematic and
Revolutionary Landmark
LInk to the film,

Eisenstein, Sergei. October: Ten Days That Shook the World. 1928. Soviet Union: Goskino.
Boris Kustodiev,
The Bolshevik
(1920)
Pavel Filonov,

Defeater of the City,

1914–1915.
ak Brodsky, Lenin at the Smolny (1930)
The Problematic Legacy of the Russian
Revolution
issitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1920.
Aleksandr Deyneka,
he Textile Workers,
1927.
avel Filonov
ormula of the Petrograd
roletariat
1920-1921)
Alexander Deyneka,
The Defense of
Petrograd, 1928.
As Briony Fer writes, “The line becomes a site of tension
and negotiation, a boundary and a bridge. In
Constructivist art, it is not merely a compositional device
but a fundamental means of articulating the new spatial
and social order envisioned by revolutionary ideals.” (The
Language of Construction).
Lyubov Popova,
Constructivist Composition.
1921.
Lyubov Popova,
Spatial Force Construction.
1921.
Marxist Ideals in the Constructivist Aesthetics
The emphasis on lines in Constructivist art ties directly to Marxist
ideology in several ways:
Rejection of Individualism: Lines are not used to express individual
expression but to articulate collective aspirations, reflecting the Marxist
critique of bourgeois individualism.

Integration with Production: Constructivist lines serve functional


purposes, symbolizing the alignment of art with industrial and societal
goals.
Dynamic Evolution: The abstraction and tension within lines
represent the dialectical process of historical change, central to Marxist
philosophy.
Art as a Tool for Change: By using lines to create rather than
depict, Constructivist artists positioned their work as active
Alexander Rodchenko's Workers’ Club (1925) and
Marxist conceptions of time
er. Workers’ Club. 1925. Installation. Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels M
Conclusion
alk Around Moscow. Directed by Georgy Danelia. Mosfilm, 1963.
“And then, suddenly, it was the time of Chernobyl, and
everything disappeared, everything, and then, after a
while, everything came back, electricity, houses, cars —
everything except culture and me.”

Jean-Luc Godard, King Lear, Yoram Globus Menahem Golan,


Jalal Toufic in his book The Withdrawal of Tradition Past a Surpassing Disaster
(2009). Toufic writes that ‘the material persistence of the documents blinds
[history] to the exigency of resurrection.’ Although the documents or other
cultural artefacts themselves might be materially present, according to Toufic,
they are immaterially withdrawn, i.e., unavailable, due to the effects that a
surpassing disaster has on them ‘The surpassing disaster leads to the
withdrawal not of everything, but of tradition, and touches not everyone, but a
community, with the caveat that this community is reciprocally defined by it as
the community of those affected by it.’
Jalal Toufic, The Withdrawal of Tradition Past a Surpassing Disaster (Forthcoming Books,
2009): 15-16, http:// www.jalaltoufic.com/publications.htm (accessed November 18,
2022).
The insistence on the glorification of the Soviet times makes me sad. This
sadness, however, is not unknown to people before me. In ‘Theses on the
Philosophy of History’ (1940) Benjamin quotes Flaubert: ‘Few will be able
to guess how sad one had to be in order to resuscitate Carthage.’
The root cause of this sadness Benjamin sees in ‘grasping and holding the
genuine historical image,’ he comments further by saying that ‘the nature of
this sadness stands out more clearly if one asks with whom the adherents of
historicism empathise. The answer is inevitable: with the victor.’
When imagining oneself to be on the side of light, where all the events were
good and all the good people were victorious, one has to question the source
of that light for it very well may be from the bombs detonating somewhere in
Ukraine today.
Additional Images
oris Kustodiev,
e Death of the Political Commissar,
28.
Jacob Riis "Five Cents a Spot," 1888–89, lodgers crowd in a Lewis Hine, Bibb Cotton Mill, Macon, Georgia, 1909
Bayard Street tenement

Capitalist (Bourgeois): Owns the means of production (e.g. the factories, land or institutions)
Worker (Proletarian): Owns only their body and its ability to labour
Demuth, Charles. My Egypt. 1927
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie
over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere,
establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of
the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in
every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the
feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national
industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by
new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all
civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but
raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are
consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old
wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for
their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local
and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction,
universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual
production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common
property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more
impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a
world literature.
From the Communist Manifesto,
Bridgman, Frederick Arthur. Towing on the Nile. 18

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