Does Marxist theory have a separate space for aesthetics?
Marxist theorems and Marxist traditions of literary historiography. Historically it’s clear that aesthetics is a response to affirmations and creative imaginations of human creative values. Most of all those created by the dominant ruling class, which always had the exclusivity of its own. In the 20th century, Marxist aesthetics explicate signified records of creating agitation and resistance against Capitalism and its ideological apparatus. Many post-Marxist and neo-Marxist thinkers like Raymond Williams, William Morris, Fredrich jemptson, and Lukas are also defining the aesthetics realm to Marxism by relating production, alienation, and the division of labour. In India, it is also can see as a division of labour and labourer. In India, it had been seemed their cast condition divide not only the human it’s also divine the humanity from itself. Therefore, contemporary aesthetics always work from the superstructure to create hegemonic domination on the base. Comparatively in India, the superstructure is always dominated by Brahmanical supremacy and they create “false conciseness’’ around the mass culture.
Marxist theorems in the early 19th century in Britain and Russia as well, it was shown the success of the Bolshevik revolutionary model in Soviet Russia. It had a clear agenda or promotion of the ‘class war’ policy which was implicated against the bourgeoisie intelligentsia to promote the proletarian intellectual objectives. It has also enhanced the revolutionary collectivization of progressive writers and artist groups and similar individuals. The RAPP (The Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) aggressively asserted the class conception in literary spheres of Marxist traditions of literature and art as well. It had clarity in the subject matter of realism or more specifically socialist realism that became the official doctrine at the Soviet Writer’s Congress of 1934. With the essential sociological conception of literary traditions, RAPP took up the writings of Plekhanov which were acknowledged by George Lukacs and Mikhail Lifshits, major and first liner theoreticians who developed the aesthetics formed by Marx’s early writings and published them. Looking at RAPP’s reception of Lukacs’ advanced model of Marxist aesthetics it can be understood that the question related to labour politics was addressed with nuance. The discussed tradition of cultural practices and the vision of the USSR to writers were expressed through “engineers of the human soul,” as stated by Stalin in his speech at the Soviet Writer’s Congress of 1934. During that time, the agenda of the value of aesthetics were implicated on popular fronts of the Communist Party of the USSR, and a re-inquiry of the Marxist aesthetics was carried out with a radical approach to question the orthodox thought processes of Marxism from early times. Contemporary to that era, it was argued: “where absolute criteria of value and that ancient Greek art was progressive while medieval art was inherently less, so that realism was the style of advanced artists who identified with the cause of the workers and peasants everywhere.” The artists of that time like Francisco Goya and Damier asserted their works of art as a counter to bourgeoisie dominant ideology and acknowledged their contribution to humanity’s progress toward the utopian endpoint of history.
Parallelly Formalist art history, Queer art history, Feminist art history, and afterward post-colonial art history and the social history of art co-existed, with various overlaps and multi-layered combinations. These categories projected rivalry at several junctions at the same time. Marxist aesthetics and Marxist approach to art history took the role of small yet best side dish in this great smorgasbord and they were usually served only in diluted or adulterated forms. It had always been a matter of challenge to perceive modern and postmodern approaches in art forms within the tenets of Marxist perspectives which became more acute after socialist realism turned into the official aesthetics of Communist movements in 1934. Aesthetic standards of age have always provided for an index of the religious and ethical values of mass culture and they are shaped by the conditions, under which artistic labour has been manipulated by the dominant normative notions, where the modern and postmodern approaches seem to be negligent while addressing the social organizations of ‘labour and labourers.’
Image i
As examine various kinds of art forms like sculpture, painting, installations, drawings, prints, posters, illustrations, anonymous art objects, and conceptual art so on. That art also shows the line of hatred and ingraded inequality among the base and superstructure both. explanate the material process in ‘Marxist aesthetics’ I want to turn the light on the image I[1] image ii[2] to create a juxtaposition in the context of aesthetics and art practices are acknowledged by communist parties in India. Both images are also intentionally created for communist propaganda, but those images are from separate periods and also images belong to different locations and different material execution. In the reference to image I and image ii, it had been clearly showing the practice of Marxist aesthetics also reinterpreted by the means of labour production and trying to address the caste base domination by understanding the division of labourer.
Image ii
The print medium is another powerful tool which related directly to practicing multiplicity and mass distribution, this medium is a significant medium for German expressionists and their influence in the post-war phase visuals and posters influence also Indigenous artists as well. Artists like Chittoprasad Bhattacharya, Zainul Abedin letter Somnath Hore, Haran Das, Ramkingkar Baiz, and letter Somnath Hore and Kamrul Hassan, works are also depicted to explicate the Marxist aesthetics and carving images of peoples from marginalized locations and their deprive identity. Here I want to address the next objective is to find examples of how the Marxist aesthetics submerged with location and how art and aesthetics together extend their limitations to mass audiences with transcend the medium and create a monumental presence for the viewer and creating together visuals and challenging and assert the public space and intervene more closely with daily life visual. It not only takes previous content it’s also subverting texts to create and make an interactive space and serve the idea of Marxist historical materialism and the division of labour and labourer.
image v[5], vi[6], vii[7], viii[8], also gave the demonstration of subversive poor images. e "poor image" argument by "Hito Steyerl", and relocate that idea and explore my work(images) as an alternative representation. The poor image is a copy in motion. Its quality is bad, its resolution is substandard. It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an image distributed for free, squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels Of distribution. The poor image is a rag or a rip; an AVI or a JPEG, in the class society of appearances, ranked and valued according to its resolution. The poor image has been uploaded, downloaded, shared, reformatted, and reedited. It transforms quality into accessibility, exhibition value into cult value, films into clips, and contemplation into distraction. The image is liberated from the vaults of cinemas and archives and thrust into digital uncertainty, at the expense of its substance. The poor image tends towards abstraction. But there is also the Circulation and production of poor images based on cell phone cameras, home computers, and unconventional forms of distribution. Its optical connections— collective editing, file sharing, or grassroots distribution circuits—reveal erratic and coincidental links between producers everywhere, which simultaneously constitute dispersed audiences. The circulation of poor images feeds into both capitalist media assembly lines and alternative audio-visual economies.
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Image v, vi, vii
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Image viii
(Steyerl 2009) (Raymond William 1977) (Morris, william 2006) (Biswas 2016) (Graeme Sullivan 2010) (edword luice-Smith 2019)
Bibliography
Biswas, Monosanta. 2016. banglar motua andolon somaj sonoskriti rajniti. Edited by Archana Das and Subrata Das. Vol. 1. 1 vols. kolkata, West-Bengal: satu prokasoni.
Edward Lucie-Smith. 2019. ART TODAY. 3rd. Edited by Edward Lucie-Smith. Vol. 4. 6 vols. LONDON, LONDON: ART TODAY.
Graeme Sullivan. 2010. Art Practice As Research inquiry in visual arts. Edited by Diane McDaniel. Vol. 2. 3 vols. London, 55 City Road: sage.
Morris, William. 2006. Marxism and the History of Art. Edited by Andrew Hemingway. Vol. 1. 1 vols. Ann Arbor, London: Pluto Press.
Raymond William. 1977. Marxism and Literature. Edited by Terry Eagleton. oxford university press, Delhi: Oxford university press. Accessed reprint on 2016.
Steyerl, Hito. 2009. "In Defence of the poor image." Edited by e-flux. Issue 10 (e-flux) 2 (10): 18. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/.
[1] Title- untitled medium- pigment on an uneven surface, 2021, Bankura, bishnupur ,
[2] Artist- Chittoprasad BhattachariyaTitle- Tevagaga farmers movement, medium- woodcut print on paper, 1956, DAG archive
[3] Artist- Chittoprasad Bhattacharyya, Title- World Peace, medium- woodcut print on paper, 1956, DAG archive
[4] Medium- Pigment on an uneven surface, 2021, Bengal Election campaign, DAG online archive
[5] Image v, medium- litho print on paper, humagarbage online archive, 2020
[6] Image vi, medium- litho print on paper, humagarbage online archive, 2020
[7] Image vii, medium- litho print on paper, humagarbage online archive, 2020
[8] Image viii, medium- litho print on paper, humagarbage online archive, 2020
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