Art and Politics Editorial
Geometer ‘Art and Politics’ issue:
You can view all of the articles in this issue HERE.
“Issue”, given that we publish on the web, is to be taken broadly. But over the next few weeks we will be publishing essays and poetry covering a broad range of issues at the intersection of politics and art. Kicking things off this week we have an interview with Guy Denning and a poem sequence by Steve Ely. Guy Denning is an English painter now living in France who
combines his figurative development of Franz Kline’s abstraction with an interest in classical mythology to express something of the frustrated experience of contemporary existence, inevitably taking in politics in the process. Steve Ely’s poem The Visions of Vicki Weaver concerns the white separatist of his title who was shot dead by FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi in July 1992 in the so-called ‘Ruby Ridge’ incident.
In the coming weeks we’ll have poems by Uddipana Goswami and Patric Cunnane as well as essays touching on sound art, Baudrilliard, Che Guevara and the poet and artist Iain Hamilton Findlay. You can find all of the articles in this issue here.
It’s worth saying a little more by way of introduction to the issue. As a theme for a special issue of a magazine you could argue that ‘Art and Politics’ is simultaneously too broad and too narrow – broad because it’s too easy to argue that all art is in some sense political; narrow because a topic of this breadth, which could never possibly be exhausted, can barely be done justice if it is to be played out in only one issue, at one time, in one place. The specifics of time and place become, simultaneously, an obstacle and an imperative. At this time in this place it is all too predictable which topics will be covered; one would expect pieces on Obama, Mumbai, and the Gaza strip. Perhaps also something on the collapse of the banks – if only modern finance were more readily comprehensible and art’s relationship to money less confused. If these topics did appear, then arguably they would appear too soon, or narrow the scope too much; why discuss these specifics and not others equally worthy but less visible to the world’s media? If, on the other hand, these topics did not appear then that seems to show, for a politically themed issue, a remarkable lack of political engagement. There’s no way here to put yourself beyond reproach.
Having outlined the case against ourselves I ought to defend our choice of a theme for this issue; I say ‘ought’ because it is slightly against my inclination to do so. The choice of this topic is, when viewed from a certain angle, undeniably trite and even given the quality of the submissions we have received, the content cannot, when measured against the omnivorous nature of the concept, avoid looking a little incomplete. But, nonetheless, we have chosen this theme for this issue so something ought to be said. As much of a defence as I am inclined to give comes in two parts, both more or less pragmatic.
The first part is that ‘Politics and Art’ serves as a kind of MacGuffin; a point of crystallisation, an excuse to proceed and a distraction from the blankness of the page. It’s the same principle that lies behind the much maligned writing assignments given on creative writing courses and painting workshops around the world – ‘your title is colour’, “…is sand’, ‘…an apology’ etc.; The triteness is manifest, but usefully so – it stands as a challenge to produce something which is not itself trite.
But given the particular ‘MacGuffin’ in question, this perhaps leaves us little better off. Is it reasonable to treat something as portentous as “Art and Politics” only as an occasion for writing? Well, much as our theme is an occasion for writing, it is not only that. Part of the problem with an Art and Politics issue is the notion that the subject can be picked up, dealt with and then dropped. We don’t intend to treat the subject this way. The intersection of art and politics is a theme we want to continue exploring in Geometer. This issue is best thought of as an explicit introduction of a theme already present in the magazine, and which we hope will continue to form a significant part of our content.