Rucha and the Political in Art
September 2004

There has been political art ever since there has been art; there’s really no question over whether art can address political issues. There are plenty of questions though, over whether it “works,” and if so how.

I suppose that for any piece of artwork, there’s something it strives to do. Sometimes it’s simply there; what’s important is that it exists. More often, what it’s trying to do involves eliciting some response from people who experience it (– let’s just say a “viewer” and agree that it’s often more complex than just viewing). That could just be hoping the viewer looks at it and thinks it’s aesthetically pleasing: beautiful, well put together, demonstrating technical skill of some sort... Or it could hope to vaguely refer to a cultural or social issue, in other words, make the viewer start pondering this thing; most contemporary art falls into this category. Or, it could deal with a very specific argument on a very specific issue.

Personally, I think this last category is a dangerous place to get into for an artist. I think art’s strength is more in metaphor than in the direct address. If you want to say something very clear and very specific about a certain issue, political or not, you should probably be researching it and writing a very careful essay, to convincingly argue for your position, and then finding the best outlet to get this essay to the people who most need to read it. This is not how contemporary art functions... the audience is small, and kind of a weird bunch, and they’ll roll their eyes at artwork that’s too didactic, too direct, too much about one-and-only-one thing. It’s almost a disservice to your cause to put it into a contemporary art framework. Almost.

For every rule, there is an exception, especially in a field which is fueled by rulebreaking. So, it is conceivable, that there could be explicitly political art which really works. What art can do is present ideas in new and unexpected ways, which can potentially contribute to the dialogue on the given idea. Now and then, this is just what a political issue needs – a kind of new perspective.

More often though, I think fine art is more suited to a kind of indirect social or political involvement. There is a difference between “political art,” and art which just happens to become political in some way. It’s the difference between art which hopes to do something to you, and art which you might do something to: between having a deliberate message in it, and us viewers finding a halfway-accidental message in it. I’d say my own work falls potentially into the latter category. Ruscha’s as well.

What is Ruscha doing? With his words, and with these awful hotels and motels, there’s this strange feeling... They are insultingly blank; they show or say something, but leave us knowing less about the thing than before. It’s as if they’re saying, “O.K, you wanted to see it? So, here it is, asshole – are you happy now?” But it’s completely anticlimactic: “that’s all? This can’t be right...” we think to ourselves. I think this aspect of Rucha’s work can be read as political in itself, but also ties into some other more obvious social commentaries. In itself, this perplexing blankness, this sort of disappointment, comes out of an intentionally created situation of a subject (a word or two, a crappy building) failing to fit with its presentation. Why the hell is this pointless, obvious, foolish thing front and center in this image we’re looking at – while we’re wearing the “intellectual” hat, no less... It’s similar to situations where some kind of authority figure presents some idea, with lots of fanfare, but it’s really nothing that’s going to help us at all. This seems to happen more and more in recent years. It’s all about the attitude, the presentation; people aren’t even noticing that it’s a gyp.

Ruscha also deals with some issues in a way which is maybe another notch toward “direct.” Certain words and images of his tend to point us in a certain direction: “They called her styrene,” “Is it overcast, radiation fog, or scud?” “Industrial village,” “Hollywood is a verb,” and “despair and disgust,” to name a few. And then there are those gas stations. These buildings, generally a shack, probably cinderblock, made to look “nice” and attention-getting, is really kind of sad, tragic, even. Are we all accomplices in our tendency to accept things for what they try to look like, rather than what they are?

As for the work that I do, there are definitely aspects of it which I hope are potentially socially relevant. I am in fact not interested in being direct, not only because I don’t think it’s art’s strength, but also because it seems that my point is better made as a weird metaphor or reference. For the quasi-psychological issues I often work with, it only makes sense to be a bit obscure. If I want to bring up the ficticiousness in everyday American life, it only makes sense to use fiction. If I want to put forth the idea that nothing serious should be taken seriously, it only makes sense to make some jokes. This is actually very much in line with what I was saying about Ruscha’s work... when things seem “important,” they’re probably just the opposite. By dealing with the social and the cultural in this way, I’d say that Ruscha and I both are saying something political. And perhaps this very indirectness is political in itself; if the current political landscape is so full of hollow, pointless, incomprehensible, but very “serious” gibberish, maybe a different approach is in order.