9.5 Theses on Art and Class. Ben Davis
Consequences and Contradictions
At the end of this long journey, what has been gained by clarifying the class dynamics of contemporary artistic labor?
Among other things, clearly mapping the relation of art and class helps to sharpen our understanding of what continues to make visual art unique and therefore aids our understanding of what makes it interesting. Whatever the twists and turns of art-making in its “post-conceptual,” “post-studio,” “relational” era, visual art still remains rooted in a notion of labor that puts it at a right angle to the way work is experienced in much of the rest of our capitalist world. Visual art still holds the allure of being basically a middle-class field, where personal agency and professional ambition overlap. Such an admission saves you to some degree from the Manichean position of seeing art as either commercial and corrupt or noncommercial and pure (á la Stallabrass).
But there’s something else. A clear idea of class can also give a sense of the real stakes of art, providing a much-needed dose of realism. Even the best art theory can make fantastically overblown claims (Adorno’s notion of art as consciousness’s last tortured stand against capitalism or Hardt’s idea of art as a model for postindustrial “immaterial labor” in general). Art theory, in other words, suffers from an overinflated sense of its own importance. In a society overwhelmingly dominated by corporations and wage labor, accepting that visual art is middle class in nature also means beginning to see the natural limits of what you can promise for it as a critic or expect of it as an artist. That gives you a more realistic starting point for action.
I wrote earlier that the theory of class might provide the missing center of the debate about art. But in some ways, I confess, I think of it as decentering. Very intelligent people used to believe fervently that the heavens revolved around the Earth, a model inherited from a superannuated past and maintained by adding greater and greater layers of useless intellectual refinement as new phenomena were observed. For artists and critics, accepting the middle-class definition of artistic labor might be something like the shift away from the geocentric cosmology. It might allow them to cut through casuistic arguments and provide a much more reliable model for understanding the motion of the “art world” as it sails through the cultural firmament.
What is lost may be the mystified but comforting sense of self-importance that comes with believing that you are at the center of the universe. What is gained in return, however, will be a more scientific understanding of the forces that actually govern that universe—and that is worth the trade.
TWO
9.5 Theses on Art and Class
1.0 Class is an issue of fundamental importance for art.
1.1 Inasmuch as art is part of and not independent of society, and society is marked by class divisions, these will also affect the functioning and character of the sphere of the visual arts.
1.2 Since different classes have different interests and “art” is affected by these different interests, art has different values depending on from which class standpoint it is approached.
1.3 Understanding art means understanding class relations outside the sphere of the visual arts and how they affect that sphere as well as understanding class relations within the sphere of the visual arts itself.
1.4 In general, the idea of the “art world” serves as a way to deflect consideration of both these sets of relations.
1.5 The notion of an “art world” implies a sphere that is separate or set aside from the issues of the non-art world (and so separates it from class issues outside that sphere).
1.6 The notion of an “art world” also visualizes the sphere of the visual arts not as a set of conflicting interests, but as a confluence of professionals with a common interest: “art” (and so denies class relations within that sphere).
1.7 Anxiety about class in the sphere of the visual arts manifests in critiques of the “art market”; however, a critique of the art market is not the same as a critique of class in the sphere of the visual arts. Class is an issue that is more fundamental and determinate than the market.
1.8 The “art market” is approached differently by different classes; discussing the art market in the absence of understanding class interests serves to obscure the actual forces determining art’s situation.
1.9 Since class is a fundamental issue for art, art can’t have any clear idea of its own nature unless it has a clear idea of the interests of different classes.
2.0 Today, the ruling class, which is capitalist, dominates the sphere of the visual arts.
2.1 It is part of the definition of a ruling class that it controls the material resources of society.
2.2 The ruling ideologies of society, which serve to reproduce this material situation, also represent the interests of the ruling class.
2.3 The dominant values given to art, therefore, will be ones that serve the interests of the current ruling class.
2.4 Concretely, within the sphere of the contemporary visual arts, the agents whose interests determine the dominant values of art are: large corporations, including auction houses and corporate collectors; art investors, private collectors, and patrons; and trustees and administrators of large cultural institutions and universities.
2.5 One role for art, therefore, is as a luxury good, whose superior craftsmanship or intellectual prestige indicates superior social status.
2.6 Another role for art is to serve as financial instrument or tradable repository of value.
2.7 Another role for art is as a sign of “giving back” to the community, to whitewash ill-gotten gains.
2.8 Another role for art is as a symbolic escape valve for radical impulses, to serve as a place to isolate and contain social energy that runs counter to the dominant ideology.
2.9 A final role for art is the self-replication of ruling-class ideology about art itself—the dominant values given to art serve not only to enact ruling-class values directly but also to subjugate, within the sphere of the arts, other possible values of art.
3.0 Though ruling-class ideology is ultimately dominant within the sphere of the arts, the predominant character of this sphere is middle class.
3.1 “Middle class” in this context does not indicate income level. It indicates a mode of relating to labor and the means of production. “Middle class” here indicates having an individual, self-directed relationship to production rather than administering and maximizing the profit produced by the labor of others (capitalist class) or selling one’s labor power (working class).
3.2 The position of the professional artist is characteristically middle class in relation to labor: the dream of being an artist is the dream of making a living off the products of one’s own mental or physical labor while being fully able to control and identify with that labor.
3.3 A distinctive characteristic of the visual arts sphere, therefore, is that it is a sphere in which ruling-class ideology dominates, and yet it is allowed to have an unusually middle-class character (in fact, it is by definition middle class—the “art world” is defined as the sphere that trades in individual products of creativity rather than mass-produced creativity).
3.4 In part, the middle-class character of the visual arts relates to 2.5–2.8 above. From a ruling-class perspective, it is beneficial to promote the example of middle-class creative labor for a variety of reasons.
3.5 Nevertheless, the middle-class perspective on the value and role of art is not identical to the ruling-class one; artists have their own way of relating to their labor and consequently their own value for “art.”
3.6 The middle-class value of art is double-sided: on the one hand, “art” is identified as a profession, as a desirable means of support.
3.7 On the other hand, “art” is identified as self-expression, as a manifestation of creative individuality (whether that is expressed through a specific style of