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Aesthetic Functions in Modern Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Philip Rieff
Philip Rieff
Affiliation:
Brandeis University
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Extract

The relations between art and politics have rarely been discussed either in contemporary aesthetics or in political science. Since Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Arts, the analysis of art styles as the sensuous objectifications of cultural attitudes has been worked out in detail. But the same method has not been applied to the sensuous objectifications of political action. The removal of art from social life to the museum has also removed it from among the integral concerns of political science. Accepting the popular dichotomy between art and politics, modern political science has long lost its senseof art as techne, as a practical instrument of communication and coercion. An older political science did indeed consider “art” an instrument of coercion, curbing what Freud liked to call “the rebelliousness and destructive passions” of the masses and binding them to their rulers. Indeed, perhaps Freud alone among modern masters of social science comprehended art as one of the weapons of coercion in the arsenal of culture. “Works of art,” Freud writes, “promote the feelings of identification” and identification is, in the Freudian theory, the modality of authority.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , July 1953 , pp. 478 - 502
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1953

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References

1 Freud, Sigmund, The Future of an Illusion, London, 1928, p. 23.Google Scholar

2 See, for example, Coulton, G. G., Art and the Reformation, Oxford, 1928Google Scholar, esp. ch. xv (“The Poor Man's Bible”).

3 Tolstoy, Leo, “What is Art?” in Tolstoy on Art, translated by Aylmer Maude, London, 1924, p. 173.Google Scholar

4 The development and functions of new model armies will be examined in some detail in another article. Firth's, C. H. classic study, Cromwell's Army (London, 1905)Google Scholar, is only one example of a rich literature relevant to the problem.

5 There is an antinomical possibility. The appearance of different uniform images within a militant society may indicate a breakdown of controls, pointing toward civil war. In middle-class cultures, different style combinations indicate different social classes in a society without legally sanctioned indicators of stratification. In mass cultures, different style combinations indicate polarized powerblocs in a society without traditionally sanctioned images of power.

6 The birthplace of the Age of Discussion, Britain, recognized the danger, prohibiting political uniforms in 1939.

7 See the Soviet movie, “The Fall of Berlin,” Part I, where the actor playing Stalin appears first as a refined country gentleman, pruning his rose bushes—white roses to match his rich white tunic and pants.

8 The distinction between self-selected armed parties and conscripted populations points, of course, to a crucial difference between religious and modern political armed parties. Total mobilization is a phenomenon which first appears in the French Revolution, and is quite antithetical to the ethic of any of the Churches Militant. The sect achieves part of its militancy by uniformity of visual identification. But uniformity of dress is in this case a doctrinal element in a militancy recruited only by selfselection, never by conscription or birth.

9 Edward Bernays, in his pioneer studyon the aesthetics of advertising, reverses the process and has art following business. Cf. also Lasswell's, Harold D. “The Rise of the Propagandist,” in The Analysis of Political Behaviour, London, 1948.Google Scholar

10 A perfect example of business following the most esoteric art styles is the appropriation of surrealism as the dominant style of window-dressing in American upper-class shops and department stores, imitated from French equivalents. Note also billboards and other forms of visual advertising in France.

11 For example, the “committed” movies of Eisenstein, or the novels of Howard Fast or earlier practitioners of proletarian fiction. Picasso experienced the difficulties of “committed” art when his party disapproved of his memorial drawing of Stalin. Cf., Read, Herbert, “The State as Patron,” in University Observer, I, No. 1 (Winter 1947), pp. 3–9.Google Scholar

12 For the reaction of art to science and technology, see, for example, Paul Klee's satirical painting, “The Limits of Reason.” In its esoteric reaction, art treats itself as a mysterious and inaccessible universe, like Klee's sun. There is an autonomous sphere of art which the ladders of science cannot reach. The general aesthetization of the non-aesthetic in modern art (e.g., abstract painting) may be understood as a reaction to the de-aesthetization of the aesthetic (e.g., the reproduction industry). The aesthetization of modernpolitics may be considered a complement of the esoteric character of the decision-making process.

13 Hitler, Adolph, Mein Kampf, New York, 1939, pp. 734–35.Google Scholar Goebbels, in his novel Michael, writes, “Leaders and masses are as little a problem as painter and color.”

14 This is reflected in the tension between Hitler's personal information channels (which came to reflect his own fantasies and thus systematically misinformed him) and the parallel (and more reality-adequate) information channels of the regular army.

15 Freud, Sigmund, The Ego and the Id, London, 1947, p. 56.Google Scholar See also Orwell, George, The Lion and the Unicorn, London, 1941, pp. 20–22Google Scholar: 'One rapid but fairly sure guide to the social atmosphere of a country is the parade-step of its army. A military parade is really a kind of ritual dance, something like a ballet, expressing a certain philosophyof life. The goose-step, for instance, is one of themost horrible sights in the world, far more terrifying than a dive bomber. It is simply an affirmation of naked power; contained in it, quite consciously and intentionally, is the vision of a boot crashing down on a face…Why is the goose-step not usedin England? There are, heavens knows, plenty of armyofficers who would be only too glad to introduce some such thing. It is not used because the people in the street would laugh…In the British army the drill is rigid and complicated…but without definite swagger; the march is merely a formalized walk.”

16 F.D.R., during the war years, exercised similar prerogatives, personally captioning allnews pictures of himself and censoring those he found unsuitable. See an unpublished Ph.D. dissertation: William McKinley Moore, “FDR's Image: A Study in Pictorial Symbols,” University of Wisconsin, 1946.

17 Heiden, Konrad, One Man Against Europe, London, 1939, p. 41.Google Scholar