Editors' Introduction: Art, Power, and Social Change (2006)

THE FOLLOWING ESSAYS EXPLORE MANY DIMENSIONS OF THE ROLE OF ART IN PROCESSES of social change. Some address of art as a voice of dissent, as a tool for advancing social justice and democracy, as core of a revolutionary strategy, and as a source of memory and future ways of knowing. Other essays warn about art of power, such as government and art world censorship, co-optive ability of capitalism, and blinding force of Western rationalization. We begin with a fascinating exchange between Mikkel Rasmussen and Simeon Hunter about legacy of Situationists, a mid-20th century art movement committed to total revolution. According to Rasmussen, the Situationist International tried to create a territory where art and politics were merged and transformed from specialized activities into a kind of holistic mega-text which historical rationality expressed itself. Situationists were extremely ambitious, impossibly ambitious Rasmussen's view. Unable to free themselves from history, he argues, movement ultimately succumbed to capitalism's counter-revolution. Hunter regards Rasmussen's assessment as overly pessimistic, arguing that the legacy of this movement is still active, still providing a highly useable model for a transformative analysis of and through visual world from which it is derived. of Situationists, suggests Hunter, must be understood level of semantic instead of programmatic. He asserts that contributions of Situationists and art practices they inspired have been overlooked by those who deny poetic voice that may connote [social] change through form. Yet, ironically, focus on form alone, according to Deniz Tekiner, permitted formalist art criticism--which dominated U.S. art world from 1940s through late 1960s--to obscure relationships of art to social contexts and socially critical implications of art. Tekiner's essay explains how formalist art criticism associated with Clement Greenberg functioned symbiotically with art marketers to uphold conservative agendas and to mask progressive content intended by many modern artists [who] construed their transcendental subjects as signifiers of freedom, and their art works as expressions of liberated imagination during stultifying conformism of postwar North America. Tekiner acknowledges that significant transformation of art world since 1960s has resulted a greater diffusion of power and freer expressions of ideational contents of art works. Still, significant obstacles continue to confront dissident artistic voices. According to contributors Connie McNeely and Gordon Shockley, in recent years, conservative politics and market approaches have dominated arts policymaking U.S., with arts viewed and assessed through lens of reactionary values and commercial dynamics that treat them as just one of a list of goods and services. McNeely and Shockley examine impact of excellence versus access debate on arts policy--such as funding decisions by National Endowment for Arts--and ask, What are cultural and political implications of approaching arts terms of access, as opposed to excellence, and vice versa? authors contend that although political rhetoric might posit goals of diversity and democratization, access to arts is held moot without attendant 'cultural capital' for meaningful participation and consumption. While McNeely and Shockley demonstrate of state (or capital) and triumph of market forces regulating arts policy at institutional level United States, two essays this volume explore ways which critical expressions and artistic displays of dissent have been used as democratizing tools parts of Asia. William Farge's essay, The Politics of Culture and Art of Dissent Early Modern Japan, explores legacy of an important critic of Japanese military government, Baba Bunko, who confronted centralized of state apparatus by strategically maneuvering between censorship laws through public presentations of satirical literature. …