I recently attended a talk by Martha Rosler, an artist that's been making work since the 70s. I first heard about her work through a class I had taken long ago - her piece The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems had always stuck with me; these were photos of the Bowery that I knew from when I was a child, and the dissonance between those images and my own memories and my experience of the Bowery now always strikes me whenever I'm walking down it to visit my grandmother. I noticed that throughout her work she's used the theme of absence to talk about many subjects, and it gives the work a sense of power that perhaps would have been lacking if it had been dealt with straightforwardly.
Instead of using images of homeless people or people being tortured or war victims, she uses other methods - collaborating with groups of homeless people, using the sound of falling dishes and excruciatingly loud grindcore music as the viewer crosses a space, a video of a toy soldier playing "God Bless America" on a bugle with its mechanical leg exposed. By not using those images, she is able to avoid the superficial shock that the mainstream media uses to numb people into inaction.
Instead of using images of homeless people or people being tortured or war victims, she uses other methods - collaborating with groups of homeless people, using the sound of falling dishes and excruciatingly loud grindcore music as the viewer crosses a space, a video of a toy soldier playing "God Bless America" on a bugle with its mechanical leg exposed. By not using those images, she is able to avoid the superficial shock that the mainstream media uses to numb people into inaction.
I also thought her feelings of ambivalence towards the "art world's"
warm reception of her new photomontages criticizing the war in Iraq was
a good (if unfortunate) example of the commodification of art. The
project was based on photomontages that she had done back in the late
60s as a critique against the Vietnam War. They were not made with the
idea of showing them in galleries, rather they were made to be
published in underground newspapers and publications. The "art world"
at the time largely ignored them and was not seen as art. Now, thirty
years later, galleries wanted to show these new photomontages. On one
hand, although those underground publications no longer exist, her work
still got out to the public through mass and mainstream media by being
in the galleries. But had the work lost its subversive edge now that
that it had been accepted into the gallery? Had it just turned into
another commodity and now seen as part of the establishment?
Someone in the audience asked Rosler if she ever felt pressure to provide an answer to all the questions that she was posing in her work. Her response was quite interesting - in her view, it wasn't the job of the artist to be didactic, and that she hoped that her work was giving space for the viewer to make their own conclusions and solutions. She felt telling someone to do something or believe something was ineffective - just a repetition of a totalitarian mindset, and that it was important for the artist to play the role of critic. I admire Rosler's ability to take all of these subjects, ones that she obviously cares deeply and passionately about, and translate it into art that is affecting and powerful but not preachy. It's an issue that I struggle with on a day to day basis; how can I make work that asks questions, that doesn't just illustrate? How can I make those connections and engage the viewer?
Someone in the audience asked Rosler if she ever felt pressure to provide an answer to all the questions that she was posing in her work. Her response was quite interesting - in her view, it wasn't the job of the artist to be didactic, and that she hoped that her work was giving space for the viewer to make their own conclusions and solutions. She felt telling someone to do something or believe something was ineffective - just a repetition of a totalitarian mindset, and that it was important for the artist to play the role of critic. I admire Rosler's ability to take all of these subjects, ones that she obviously cares deeply and passionately about, and translate it into art that is affecting and powerful but not preachy. It's an issue that I struggle with on a day to day basis; how can I make work that asks questions, that doesn't just illustrate? How can I make those connections and engage the viewer?
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