Art and Power - a Social Critique of Politicizing the Aesthetics Thoughts on Walter Benjamin and Pierre Bourdieu

Homo Significans (Fr.) - human, creator of signs. Sounding almost like an ancient formula, the phrase coined by Barthes to describe the ultimate subject of his scientific interest could easily be recognized as an archetype of the imperfect human being trying to achieve the creative power of God. This impulse first of all to name, to produce meanings, then to craft, to make has always been one’s prerogative from time immemorial. In this sense we can synthesize that the human’s creative impulse is strong and has ever been connected to art.
And art, argues Bourdieu, is an autonomous product (or at least modern art). It refers to itself, without pointing at its referent. Or in other words - it reaches “the level of the meaning of what is signified”(Panofsky 28). Benjamin turns his sight to the origins of art comparing the original cult practices and the exhibition value and derives the social functions of art as a base of another practice - politics.
The first revolution according to Benjamin is that the “photography freed the hand of the most important artistic functions”(Benjamin 2) only to give the eye the freed position. And “the eye is a product of history reproduced by education”, tells us Bourdieu (2). And the eye is way more easily manipulated - new technology as cinema or photography based on pictorial reproduction caused cultural revolution that can influence the masses. The spectator tends to identify with the characters of art. The new inventions in technology are thought to be the connection between power and art. If we think of it figuratively, we might be able to transport the terms in the famous Richards and Ogdan’s triangle placing power at the top and technology and art at the bottom ends - in this case it appears that power is constructed as mixture of technology serving as demystification of the new art and its new found propaganda forces.
The first thesis postulated in Benjamin’s work is the important shift between “the hand” and “the eye” broadening the perceptive possibilities of our art experience. More precisely in pictorial reproduction the evolution towards “the eye” accelerates enormously the cognitive ability of perception so “it could keep pace with speech” (Benjamin 2). This is clearly visible when it comes to the film - “a film operator shooting a scene in the studio captures the images at the speed of an actor’s speech”(Benjamin 2). The bold words in the quotation reveal the two crucial points in the reproduction of the work of art in the age of technology. In order art to be art it has to be observed. It has to be “known” as such. The act of cognition is moreover connected to “the eye”. Bourdieu declares that perception is a decoding operation connected to that “one can say that the capacity to see (voir) is a function of the knowledge (savoir)” (Bourdieu 2). In Bourdieu’s terms a work of art is encoded, it is a concept of background knowledge and education. As a cipher the work of art is only available to those who are familiar with the deciphering operations - “a work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code, into which it is encoded”.(Bourdieu 2) In other terms art appears as almost a matter for selective few. The nobility of knowledge may be secondary to class or birth origin, but pose on their own criteria for nobility in taste. This outlines the statement that knowledge, which presupposes the act of cognition, empowers certain few to be competent in recognizing the styles, which emphasizes good taste and turns them into cultivated spectators. On the contrary position is “a beholder who lacks the specific code“ and “feels lost in a chaos of sounds and rhythms, colours and lines, without rhyme or reason” (Bourdieu 3).
But what is the outcome? Bourdieu thinks that the main task of art and cultural consumption is “to fulfill a social function of legitimating social differences”(Bourdieu 6). The social function of art, first tightly connected to tradition and ritual and then based on another practice - politics, has always been highlighted in its relation to the masses. Benjamin expresses this diada in the terms of cult an exhibition value of the work of art. Whereas the cult value is strongly linked with ritual and prevents certain accessibility, the exhibition value is adopted by technology, photography for instance, and begins to displace cult value. This argument can be translated once again using “the eye” as a central point. Ritual respectively cult value is basically designed to serve in the human relation with the forces of divinity - from the cave pictures to the sacred statues in temples. And exactly by this occult nature they are somehow veiled, hidden, obscure. In contrast the exhibition value demands display and involves the spectator in “the conscious or unconscious implementation of explicit or implicit schemes of perception and appreciation”(Bourdieu 2). A work of art is no more an act of empathy but an object of the “taste of reflection” - if we borrow Kant’s terms used by Bourdieu. The secondary meaning prevails the “taste of sense” and adds to the fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment the orientation of the expert.
The art in the era of mechanical reproduction, argues Benjamin, can easily be used as a tool of modifying mass taste. Therefore it requires certain power that lay in its ability to create illusions. Benjamin points out that “the film industry is trying hard to spur the interest of the masses through illusion - promoting spectacles and dubious speculations”(10). This is only possible because of the fact that the spectator tends to identify with the characters. Masses refuse to accept everything that is out of the scheme of the ordinary. Every experiment in art causes withdraw in the masses’ interest. Benjamin warns that the movie for example creates a spectator that is absorbed by the work of art. He or she doesn’t apply the schemes knowing or understanding because he/she is provided with the ready-made reduction of the things of art to the things of life. The “absent - minded” spectator can easily be manipulated to identify with the “wrong” types or archetypes - especially when one is deprived of the ability to perform cognitive operation, decoding operation. Bourdieu adds his observation in similar modus of interpretation. He divides intellectuals and other people according to their reaction towards the representation of art - “Intellectuals could be said to believe in the representation - literature, theatre, painting - more than things represented, whereas the people chiefly expect representations and the conventions which govern them to allow them to believe “naively” in the things represented”(Bourdieu 6). Important point in both of the analysis is the fascination of masses, that is almost cult-like, in the illusionary nature of what is projected to be true. Such power of art might be used as a weapon serving political demands.
Benjamin concludes that the technological advance allowed reshuffle of art’s meaning and understanding, also representation, that can be used as a powerful agent of radical and political forces such as Fascism. In my opinion also served as a prophet of the aesthetic revaluation of the consumer society. That is way the social critiques of Benjamin and Bourdieu could be thought as similar in evaluating art and its crucial role in human society. If we return back to the triangle, we may add significant terms such as “taste”, “secondary meaning”, “the eye”, “social differences”, “cult value” and “exhibition value” in order to make attempt in completing the difficult co-relations between art and power, where technology plays the role of the transmitter.





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Works Cited:
Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. 1935
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. 1984. 1 - 7