***  Haus der Kulturen der Welt: Forum1 Archive  ***
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   [Date]: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 07:00:54 PST
   [From]: "Raul Ferrera-Balanquet" <ferrera98@hotmail.com>
     [To]: forum1@hkw.kbx.de
[Subject]: Re: [forum1] Re: discussion about sensation

In a response to Christy"s comment, Ami wrote:

>IMHO If you mix politics and art you get art that is filthy and mediocre 
>like
>most politicians and politics that are simple-minded and 2 dimensional, 
>like
>most art.
>Ami

I do not know what IMHO stands for, but surely, what comes afte it makes me 
wonder Ami's ideology. Art always has been political. Even in the tribes, 
arts represents the ideology of a culture or a group.  Art is comunication. 
It is a language. Therefore, it has an ideological level. Even the abstract 
paintings whose colors dance over the canvas have an ideology:  the ideology 
of the colors and its representation in the culture that have been produced, 
the ideology of the artist and the politic of the art market.

Artists always has been the gate keepers of culture. They do continue the 
traditions or views the needs for changes. In many place of the world, still 
today, the artists are the one who has the permission to prepare the altars 
so the group could comunicate with the spirits. Spiritual belifs, which are 
needed to gain trough liberation, are charged with ideology. Therefore, that 
art is also political.

Westerner idelogy has created alienated artists who believe that their art 
has to be disassociatted from the existencial and experimental realities in 
which they lived.  Even though they think that their art is no political 
when we analizes the symbolic representation of their work we could read the 
ideological implications of such alienated art.

I am not sure if Ami wanted to make a point between propaganda art and 
political art. If that is the case, may be the statements could be viewed in 
another light.

Unfortunatly, I am away from the States doing a residency in Mexico and I am 
not well informed about the Brooklyn museum case. Nevertheless, it doesn't 
sound new to me. Just a few years a go we have the the Mapplethorpe case 
which ended in the cut off of a lot of NEA programs and the one who suffered 
where the underepresented artists. It was too bad because at that time, in 
the State, a lot of cutting edge work was being produced and the art world 
was focusin on the transgressive nature of the works.

After reading Olugbi's posting I am more inform about the art itself.  I a 
now understand how the transgresive nature of the art works has provoked so 
heated argument and that artists of color are involved in the exhibition.

Does any body remember when the major of Chicago, a black man, was painting 
wearing women's underwares, or when an artist created an istallation that in 
order to be access, the public needed to walk over the USA flag? Is this 
issues a recurring them in the sicopatic collective memory of the United 
States?

Raul