A new book by Boris Groys acknowledges the problem and potential of
art's complex relationship to power.
Art has its own power in the world, and is as much a force in the power
play of global politics today as it once was in the arena of cold war
politics. Art, argues the distinguished theoretician Boris Groys, is
hardly a powerless commodity subject to the art market's fiats of
inclusion and exclusion. In Art Power, Groys examines modern and
contemporary art according to its ideological function. Art, Groys
writes, is produced and brought before the public in two ways--as a
commodity and as a tool of political propaganda. In the contemporary art
scene, very little attention is paid to the latter function.
Arguing for the inclusion of politically motivated art in contemporary
art discourse, Groys considers art produced under totalitarianism,
Socialism, and post-Communism. He also considers today's mainstream
Western art--which he finds behaving more and more according the norms
of ideological propaganda: produced and exhibited for the masses at
international exhibitions, biennials, and festivals. Contemporary art,
Groys argues, demonstrates its power by appropriating the iconoclastic
gestures directed against itself--by positioning itself simultaneously
as an image and as a critique of the image. In Art Power, Groys
examines this fundamental appropriation that produces the paradoxical
object of the modern artwork.
