Why Marxists should bother about Art
Thursday, October 28th, 2010Art is an important part of most people’s life. Almost everybody listens to music, watches film and television, buy clothes, furniture and china with a design they like, have pictures or posters on the wall etc. Art in a broad sense also takes up a huge proportion of what most people spend their leisure time and money on.
What appears to decide the choices within this field is the concept of personal taste. But for a Marxist it is important to see further than accepting face value about this apparently non-political concept. If you lift the veil of taste you will find Identity. There is an element of personal taste which is not easy to explain or discuss, but the dominant factor is identity.
Identity is based on values and emotions, and how we perceive ourselves in relation to others. Sense of self, age, gender, race, sexual identity, nationality, ethnicity and above all class are expressed in our identity. Very few if any European middle aged managing directors are fond of graffiti, and not many school students in China like conceptual art installations, although the later is actually more common. Few working class people like Ingmar Bergman films, and not so many from the bourgeoisie at least admit to liking mass produced romance novels or horror films. Still, this is not enough to explain the role of art in society.