Chapter Six: Alternative Narratives in the Arts
Introduction
All of us need to love and be loved in return. We would rather live in a world of peace and justice than one racked with exploitation, conflict, violence and war. Where global warming threatens planetary disaster. And nuclear weaponry looms. Given the choice, none of us would pass our present conditions on to our children.
In part one, we located the source of our problems in what we believe about ourselves. Chapter Two explored how language shapes what we believe, think, even perceive. We noted that words have no necessary connection with the phenomena to which they supposedly refer. Words are defined by words defined by other words, forming closed chains of signifiers. Besides keeping us out of touch with the Referent, language tends to work against Love because it represents others and the world as objects. And language plays a key role in the everyday microtheatres of power — workplaces, schools, social circles, families, etc. — where indirect pressures more effectively curb our freedom than macrotheatrical displays of force ever could.
With language, we tell ourselves stories about our world and our identity. Narratives that organize around a central or master narrative. A master narrative provides the basic schema for the whole set of cultural systems. It makes sense of our past, present and future; justifies our decisions; defines success; determines priorities; maintains the horizon of our possibilities. The particular master narrative underlying our problems mistakenly tells us that we are separate from one another and the world around us, that our interests as individuals are fully separable.
This narrative of separation has roots in the limitation of our senses. Until we had tools as such nuclear accelerators, we could think it evident that our bodies define an absolute boundary between the I and the not-I. Despite advances in physical and biological sciences that tell us otherwise, this narrative of separation retains its power.
The master narrative of separation conflates individuality with egoism. It posits an identity that relies on comparison and competition, setting us over and against one another. It interprets freedom as the right to take as much as you can get. Success and self-esteem depend on being better than, winning, having more. The ego narrative locks us into corrupt political institutions and failing economic systems by insisting that this is the best that we can do. It prevents us from satisfying our need for Love and our desire for a world of peace and happiness. We respond to its representation of the world by imagining we belong somewhere else, or perhaps nowhere at all.
In Part Two, we observed that the ego narrative is not the only story we tell ourselves about who we are, what matters and why. Chapter Four points to alternative narratives in religious and cultural traditions that have kept alive ideals of sharing, community and kindness toward one another. Spiritual practice, including meditation, prayer and acts of compassion, cultivates a sense of connection and an awareness of the Sacred. We emphasized Martin Buber’s model that would replace the “I-it” attitude toward others and the world with “I-You.” A relationship where the You is not an object, but fully a subject-center as the Self.
In the Chapter Five, we observed that science also suggests a core story in contrast to that of “every man for himself.” Matter only exists because quarks sharing their energy differences created enduring Relationship. And the Universe began. Chemical polymer chains passing molecules back and forth to one another led to metabolic activity — the beginning of Life. Bacteria, solving a planetary crisis by way of self-sacrifice, brought about the nucleated cell — the foundation of our complex, multi-organned bodies.
In this chapter, we consider alternatives to the master narrative in art: the visual arts, music, performance and literature. As with earlier chapters, we must begin by acknowledging certain difficulties.
First of all, talking about the arts can estrange the very people most intimately involved: artists themselves. In a world where microtheatrical power chains us by enticement and manipulation, many artists develop a reflex of side-stepping any words one might use to describe them or their work. None of us like to be labeled, told what to do or how to do it. Least of all artists for whom listening to such talk could mean interference in the mysterious and elusive process of creation.
Equally problematic, history records a sometimes conflictual/sometimes complicit, always complicated relationship between the arts and the master narrative. Although art does offer alternatives and can do so even if the artist did not so intend, artists have certainly served power. We need no more blatant example than the Nazi party employing artists to propagate that unapologetic version of the ego narrative. In less stark moments, culture encourages and the marketplace promotes art that reproduces fundamental tenets of the master narrative. Glorification of war, celebration of wealth and power, representation of women as sex objects, normalization of violence and so forth. Sign system effects can embed such material in work that challenges the status quo, as well as in work that embraces it.
Finally, the sheer volume of artistic production poses a problem. The arts span from the earliest human societies to the post-modern present. Experts dedicate their entire lives to subdivisions within art history, music history and literature. And we must limit our discussion of this vast field to a single chapter. Even to sketch an outline of our topic requires so great a reduction of the subject matter that we necessarily oversimplify and leave out much work that could be considered essential. We offer few of the many possible examples, as we trace the development of counter narrative in this important dimension of human life.
Art Connects
The arts, with creativity and innovation at their core, have developed a multiplicity of ways to counter the master narrative. Artists have proven able to break through the most formidable array of cultural, social, economic and political obstacles. This has sometimes meant courageous and direct confrontation — integrity in the face of beatings, jailings, exile, death threats. However, art can also create alternative narrative without anyone, including the artist, becoming aware of that challenge to the status quo.
Whatever the artist may intend, art works against the master narrative whenever it finds ways to connect Consciousness with the Referent. Artists may twist a sign system’s rules, making sense only if the separation narrative doesn’t. Or open cracks in the sign system that allow us to see more than the ego narrative admits. Or make us aware of the sign system itself, as when painters call attention to paint and the act of painting rather than the subject matter. Or create out-of-sign-system experiences by setting up narrative or melodic expectations and then thwarting them. Artists can undermine the mistaken foundations of the master narrative by challenging our sense of perception, so that we ask, “What am I really seeing? What am I hearing?” Even supremely skillful application of the sign system rules can bring moments of deliverance through sheer beauty. Art also reminds us of another way of relating with one another and our world.
We hardly need to search the archives of poetry, classical music, popular song, dance, theatre and film to know that Love outnumbers other artistic themes. Love longed for, dreamed of — a love greater than the ego narrative imagines. Whether explicitly talked about or not, love nourishes the dedication and sacrifice required to be an artist. It informs artistic creations with a quality that can transcend language. Art actively engages the I-You. Attending a concert, going to the theatre, entering a museum, listening to music, or reading does more than stretch our world by changing our habitual frame of reference. It brings us into relationship with the artists and all who share the moment. Performance art can leave both audience and artists stunned, moved to tears, shouts and wild applause. We go there seeking that glimpse of Referential Love. Art calls to the You.
The arts can reconnect us with the Referent that the master narrative has us forget. Artists delight in the overarching wonder, mystery and beauty of who we are, where we are and who is with us here. On an obvious level, landscape paintings and nature photography attest to our enchantment with the Referent all around us. On a more mysterious level, music can connect us with our own Referential being — whether by touching our hearts or moving us to dance. Art can arouse an awed response to Beauty that overleaps sign system barriers as well as boundaries of time and culture.
In ballet, opera, orchestral performance and theatre, artists strive for a perfection the master narrative would have us believe unattainable. Musicians press the edge of harmonic possibility. Dancers defy the laws of gravity. Actors transport us to other worlds. Feats so challenging that they require a certain innocence from the performers. A concentration that at least momentarily must set aside egoistic thought. The multi-layered cooperation necessitated by such creations suggest that we are at least as hard-wired to work together as to pursue our interests as separate.
Notions of who an artist is can also work against the master narrative. The artist’s persona has developed through the history of the dominant ego culture. In a Medieval world that placed little value on individuality, artists belonged to the social category of workers, artisans whose work remains anonymous. Today, we make some artists celebrities, even superstars. And we see all artists’ work as qualitatively different from the tasks we perform in factories, offices, restaurants and such. We take for granted that the artist must be free. And artists do rely on free thinking, experimentation, doing something differently — avenues the master narrative discourages. As artists venture beyond established borders, they move into a position to say what’s not been said before.
While individuality seems central to an artist’s creativity and originality, art takes root and comes to fruition in the in-between of Relationship. And not just because the meaning of an artist’s work depends upon others and changes with different audiences at different times. Artistic genius derives from inspiration — a calling from the center of one’s being. Which many artists do not locate in a separated self, since they cannot bring themselves to take full credit. Carl Jung theorized that all of humankind participates in a collective unconscious. Artists delving into this shared underground river may surface with connections to the Referent that they themselves do not fully recognize. Entanglement with some kind of timeless and shared psyche could help explain why art holds so much potential for moving us away from the master narrative of separation.
Historical Perspective
Since art comes entwined with history and geography, unfolding its alternative narratives requires some sense of context. We will limit our discussion here to artistic developments in the culture that originated in Europe, spread to the Americas and has come to dominate the world. To be sure, the art of other civilizations has offered a wealth of counter narrative. The artistry of Native American and African peoples, for example, bespeaks an I-You relationship with Nature. And people cast as Other by the Western world have always enriched the dominant culture with their art. In “Western Civilization,” however, the narrative of separation has attained its most overwhelming force and influence. This tradition is therefore the point from which we must bridge.
For similar reasons, we will focus less on the art of the majority population than on art supported by the empowered classes. It was not until the twentieth century that this so-called “high culture” truly opened to the counter narrative energy coming from popular culture and the art of colonized people. Even before that, however, artists created a history of ingenious moves and tradition-building dialogue that formidably challenges the master narrative.
Early Art
The story of the dialectic between art and the master narrative fades into pre-history. The art we know only as archeological evidence suggests that a goddess religion and societies ruled by women preceded the patriarchy of Western civilization. What kind of master narrative such a matriarchy might have had remains in the realm of unanswered questions.
We know more about the context of Egyptian art. Slavery, social hierarchy and theocracy characterize ancient Egypt. With art serving religious and political interests of the state, many scenes and hieroglyphic writings chronicle wars and celebrate power. Yet, the structure and orientation of the pyramids also indicate the importance placed on connection with the larger Universe. Depictions of the heavens and mythologized planets suggest a personal engagement with the stars, a sense of sacred origin and purpose, a world alive with magic. Exquisitely beautiful burial artifacts seem to describe Consciousness — personified as the Pharaoh — journeying through a series of gateways and trials.
Jumping our focus from Egypt to Ancient Greece, we again see military conquest, slavery and class hierarchy. The Greeks, however, develop the power of sign systems and carry the master narrative to a new level. Their ordering of language and refinements of geometry, mathematics and physics bring a new kind of knowledge. In philosophy, Aristotle uses the logic of non-contradiction to create a hierarchy of categories and explain everything. The master narrative takes up this version of reality and sets aside others: Parmenides’ argument that all of being is One; Plato’s utopia where poets rule. All the same, Athens leaves a political legacy that will make democracy seem possible to a later world. Greek literature mentions — and hails — the new gods and mythologies pushing the goddess religions aside. Yet the Greek literary legacy also includes Sappho’s poetry and Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata. Greek tragedians and poets set down enduring human themes. The hero grapples with moral dilemma or perseveres through ordeals and wanderings. Formulaic expressions in Homeric poetry evoke Nature’s wonders. “Winged words” brings together sign system and Referent. Although Greek sculptors prefer an idealized beauty to Referential irregularities, their graceful flowing lines express a love of Nature.
The conquering Romans borrow much from Greek culture and society — including the master narrative that permits social hierarchy, slavery and unlimited property accumulation. Athenian democratic ideals give way to rule by a small group of men from a small number of families. Roman sculptors produce idealized portraits of the emperors and memorialize military exploits. Architects create the coliseum where gladiatorial entertainment celebrates violence. Yet counter narrative peeks through. An annual Saturnalian festival affords a brief performance moment when hierarchies are inverted, slaves freed, everything turned upside down. Ovid leads his readers down pathways of love and fantasy. Cicero writes against the corruption that makes it easy for warrior tribes to overrun Rome.
The Middle Ages
When the first Christian communities appear, their creed represents a powerful alternative with its, “love one another... feed the hungry... shelter the homeless... turn the other cheek.” Early Christians’ communal ownership of property and interpersonal egalitarianism make a convincing performance of commitment to a God of Love.
As the new religion becomes institutionalized, however, it moves further and further from Christ’s ethical teachings and the idea that “God is Love.” Official dogma puts more emphasis on notions of God the Father, a vengeful creator separate from his creation. Social inequality receives theological justification as a divinely ordained arrangement. The Church establishes political hierarchy within and forges strong links with secular powers.
In the centuries following the fall of Rome, violence reigns. Warlords sack one another’s holdings: enslaving, raping and murdering. Those who command the largest forces become the most wealthy — and eventually kings —in the feudal hierarchy of military alliances. Monasteries and convents become a refuge — for people, for piety, for literacy and for art. Christianity does not find it difficult to persuade inhabitants of this world that paradise is somewhere other than here on Earth. The Church separates the spiritual from the material and devalues Nature.
As feudalism and the power of the church give rise to a social and political order, display of wealth takes on increasing importance in the status competition among lords. Precious metals and gemstones are worked into jewelry, chalices, swords and armor. Much Medieval art turns to religion for subject matter. Mosaics, statuary and manuscript paintings depict Biblical passages and versions of the Divine hierarchy. Iconic faces aim to convey spiritual universality. Yet individualized human visages and images of animals and plants find their way into manuscript paintings and religious sculpture. The Canticle of the Sun, a 12th century prayer attributed to Francis of Assisi, sings the wonder of a Nature reconnected with God. Francis enacts a kind of performance art by abandoning wealth and forming a group that preaches a Christianity truer to Christ’s words. Young people enthusiastically join. Overall however, in a period when communities of heretics are massacred by papal armies and individuals burned at the stake, little in the way of directly oppositional art appears.
By now, the growth of cities and increased trade are effecting a transition from the feudal system to a money economy — with industry, banking and a middle class. While secular art begins to appear, architects continue to convey the not-of-this-world interpretation of Christ’s message with church buildings. Slender pillars supporting vaulted ceilings attract the eye upwards and permit stained glass windows to replace stone walls. Although spectacular Gothic cathedrals exemplify the theme of transcendence, their sculptural adornment again includes real faces looking out at us — sometimes with irreverent expressions.
In the early 14th century, Dante takes literary art to new heights in a grand poetry that articulates the theology and cosmology of the Medieval world. Humanity, however, will remember his Divine Comedy for other reasons. The beauty of the writing — in vernacular Italian rather than Church Latin. And more importantly, the expression of one human being’s love for another.
This Late Medieval flowering of art suffers after the mid-14th century, when a plague arrives that wipes out as much as 50% of the European population, an estimated 19 to 38 million people. The Medieval world comes crashing down in pestilence, famine, war and a crisis of authority in the Church.
Renaissance Means Rebirth
Europe comes alive again in the 15th century as population and the economy recover. Mediterranean ports of Italy and the fast sailing ships of Flanders contribute to a slight expansion of the upper classes. More individuals can pursue education, intellectual activities and pleasures including enjoyment of the arts. A “humanism,” largely inspired by 14th century Italian poet Petrarch, reaffirms human dignity and reconnects with the culture of classical antiquity. Italy, with its historical and archeological links to ancient Rome and Greece, opens the Renaissance period.
Enthusiasm for the writings of Cicero and Virgil spurs searches of monastic libraries for lost Roman texts. Greek philosophical fragments, preserved and commented on by Arab scholars, become prized possessions. Painters such as Botticelli depict scenes from classical mythology. Renaissance artists turn to Nature and ask what real trees, real grasses, real flowers, real people’s faces look like. In the Netherlands, Jan Van Eyck reproduces the smallest detail in his paintings. In Italy, painters use mathematical formulae to perfect their representation of natural phenomena.
Leonardo da Vinci devotes himself to observation of plants, animals and human bodies. He investigates mechanics, optics, the behavior of light and the movement of water. He gives his Mona Lisa a face that seems to move. Her smile will have people talking for centuries.
Michelangelo celebrates the beauty of the human body. His eighteen-foot marble sculpture of David stands emblematic of the re-awakening. Commissioned by the pope to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he creates a monument to human capability. And tells a story filled with hope and promise of a Savior. Some twenty years later, Michelangelo returns to the chapel and paints The Last Judgment on the wall at the back of the altar. This time he seems to say, ‘if the Savior came, his message went unheard.’ By then, the extravagance and corruption of the Renaissance papacy is provoking a reaction that will change the Western world.
Reformation
The cultural milieu in which European artists work changes dramatically after the publication of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses in 1517. Many followers of the new Protestantism reject religious art and diminish decoration in every aspect of their lives. On a grander scale, Europe moves from one to multiple versions of Christianity, opening previously unthinkable possibilities of cultural pluralism. The shift brings more than a century of massacres, executions, peasant revolts and wars of religion.
Western Civilization seems completely submerged in a master narrative that demonizes and dehumanizes the Other. While Europeans kill each other over differing religious views, voyages of discovery are carrying enslavement, genocide and pillage to distant shores. Art, however, proves capable of countering even so overwhelming a situation. In Thomas More’s Utopia, a fictive explorer reports finding a happy and prosperous people who share everything they have. They elect a governing council that provides health care, education, sanitation and a degree of religious freedom — all of which sounds impossible at the time.
By the end of the 16th century, the literary arts are flourishing. In Spain, Cervantes’ novel, Don Quixote, makes fun of the old order of European society, while inviting the reader to love the crazy, ridiculous dreamer. In England, William Shakespeare uses language itself to lift us over walls of sign system and master narrative. With wit, insight and unforgettable wording, Shakespeare celebrates nature, love, trust, commitment, selflessness and integrity — and condemns greed, duplicity, jealousy and ruthless ambition.
As the century turns, more people can now read, thanks in part to Protestantism’s encouragement of Bible study. The printing press has made books less expensive and more available. Peddlers carry books even into the countryside, where communities gather around a single hearth to hear someone read. Among the most educated, dialoguing between minds leads to what has been called the Scientific Revolution.
Although the Inquisition can still force Galileo to recant his assertions about heliocentricity, the Universe has become more open to human inquiry, less a story summarized by a single institution. Francis Bacon expounds the scientific method. Descartes argues against believing anything before subjecting it to rigorous methodical examination. Newton introduces a mathematical system to describe the laws of gravity and motions of the planets. While the new science challenges the master narrative’s idea that there is only one story, it depends upon the objectification of Nature.
As 17th-century monarchs consolidate their political power, artists can best make a living by entertaining and glorifying. Architects and artisans build and furnish the palace of Versailles. Some artists do manage to insert counter narrative, however. Molière writes comedies to amuse Louis XIV and his court, but repeatedly makes the point that young people should be permitted to marry for love. In Germany, bolder criticism appears in the novel The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus, by Von Grimmelshausen, where the narrator’s comically exaggerated naïveté covers a scathing critique of the Thirty Year’s War. In the Netherlands, where wealthy merchants wield political power, Rembrandt walks us past greed and corruption to more reverent places in the human heart.
Enlightenment
As the 18th century begins, better instruments, larger orchestras and choruses open the way for musical imagination. In the work of Bach and Handel, composition reaches a peak of elaborate complexity and magnificence. While this music follows sign system rules and accords with the monarchical élan of its time, it also works against the master narrative by touching us with a sense of awe. Antonio Vivaldi makes explicit connections with Nature’s sounds and moods in works such as his Four Seasons.
Now the literary arts enter into a frankly conflictual relationship with the religious, political and social powers of the day. Writers such as Voltaire and Diderot spend time in jail for their work. Calling for reason, education, tolerance and more humane values — in delightful, often humorous ways — Enlightenment literature sweeps Europe and ultimately the world. Refuting narratives of a fallen and corrupt human nature, the Enlightenment asserts that human beings have a natural goodness, an innate sense of justice.
Montesquieu presents this perspective as only reasonable in his Persian Letters, where two fictional outsiders traveling through Europe comment on what they find. In an emblematic moment, one worries that humanity might invent something more lethal than gunpowder; the other responds that unanimous consent would immediately prohibit such weaponry. Voltaire uses the power of laughter to attack the unreasonableness of war, slavery, colonial exploitation and religious intolerance. Diderot and other contributors write the Encyclopedia, a compendium of the latest knowledge that features criticism of the established order alongside descriptions of technological developments. Rousseau maintains that civilization has caused more problems than it solved by bringing human beings out of the “state of nature.” He invites the reader to consider how many horrors would have been avoided if, when the first man fenced land as private property, others would have torn up the stakes and insisted that, “the fruits of the earth belong to everyone and the earth itself to no one.” In Germany, Emmanuel Kant writes an article, “What is Enlightenment?” His answer, “Dare to know... have the courage to use your own understanding.” In England, Mary Wollstonecraft uses Enlightenment reasoning to make the case for recognizing women’s equal rights.
In painting, the straightforward form and classical themes of Jacques-Louis David match Enlightenment sensibilities. In music, Mozart pares away decoration and expresses feelings with mathematical perfection. One of his operas, based on the play, The Marriage of Figaro, questions the social order by depicting a servant of obviously greater personal merit than his master. The unfinished opera Zaide condemns slavery.
By century’s end, the monarchs and aristocrats who so enthusiastically embraced the Enlightenment change their tune, as the new ideas contribute to the outbreak of revolutions. In the “New World,” the British colonies declare themselves independent, with the assertion that “all men are created equal” and have “inalienable rights” such as “liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The writers of the new nation’s constitution draw upon Montesquieu’s ideas for ensuring the future of the democratic government they envision. They make an inspiring example for the Old World, although they disregard the humanity of Native Americans, retain slavery and establish voting rights for property-owning white males only.
In France, the Revolution of 1789 establishes a constitutional monarchy. As the monarchs and aristocrats of Europe gather military forces against the new republic, moderate government gives way to riot-driven popular democracy and the “Terror.” At its most radical, the revolution renames Notre Dame cathedral, “The Temple of Reason.” Artists such as David heroicize revolutionary moments. Neo-classical architecture connects with the Athenian roots of democracy.
The General Napoleon saves the Revolution from its exterior enemies and extends French control across Europe. He raises great hopes, especially among young Europeans, that he will bring democracy to their countries. But bitterly disappoints with dictatorship and brutal imperialism. Nonetheless, Napoleon’s rise from a nondescript social background to a world-transforming role takes on an archetypal significance in Western culture, representing the importance one individual can have in history.
Romanticism
The fall of Napoleon highlights a movement long stirring beneath the surface of the Enlightenment. Rousseau had sown seeds of Romanticism with his love of Nature, defense of religion and exploration of feelings. Focusing on matters of the heart, Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, had also struck chords with educated young people all across Europe. The originators of Romanticism do not so much reject reason as assert the importance of knowledge arising from feelings. “I am certain of nothing,” says John Keats, “except the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of the imagination.”
Beethoven bridges from Mozart’s perfected classism to the emotional power of Romanticism. Chopin brings listeners to tears. Composers such as Tchaikovsky and Verdi combine evocative music with storyline. Always a love story. In the new operas and ballets, performing artists take human capability to astonishing heights as they develop their technical repertoire. Marie Taglioni dances La Sylphide, en pointe. Ballet has come far from its origins in courtly amusements.
In painting, Joseph Turner foregrounds the background — skies, mists, seas, landscapes — on moody canvases that ask what’s missing in ordinary ways of seeing. Edward Hicks counters the ego narrative with abundant clarity, painting more than a hundred versions of the Peaceable Kingdom where the lion lays down with the lamb.
Romantic literature gives the world back its You-ness. Keats, Hopkins, Wordsworth, Emerson and Emily Dickenson emphasize the significance of each detail, every part as inseparable from the whole of Living Nature. Novelists challenge basic tenets of the master narrative by proposing higher goals for humanity than money and power. Women writers — some still hiding behind male-identified pen-names — offer alternatives to the masculine point of view. Jane Austen, George Sand, Mary Shelley, George Eliot, Charlotte and Emily Brontë provide models of altruistic characters and narratives of human metamorphosis. Relationships matter. Love is paramount. Whether written by women or men such as Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas, the stories spun by Romanticism reveal poetic justice. The Universe rewards characters who maintain integrity and serve others; punishes those who take more than they give and refuse redemption.
The era’s tumultuous political history leaves its mark on this artistic moment — and not just in works that incorporate real people and real events. Romanticization of the Medieval period proves useful to conservatives calling for a return to unquestioned authority in religion, politics, society and the family. Yet this movement of the heart conflicts with the old order in many ways, beginning and most obviously with its opposition to arranged marriages. The liberty that was so important to the Revolution becomes Romanticism’s demand for unlimited artistic freedom. The Napoleonic legend of individual significance translates into images of artistic genius at odds with the world. A generation of young people feels dissatisfied with easy comforts in a life without greatness. Some dedicate themselves to the grand project of changing the social and political order.
Individuals and groups such as Charles Fourier, Robert Owen and the Saint-Simonians develop plans for creating a humane and intelligently organized society that will bring happiness to everyone. These early socialists believe that the privileged can and will choose to redistribute their wealth. In many cases, these visionaries themselves come from such families. They form experimental communities throughout Europe and the United States. The experiments do not work however. Karl Marx scornfully dubs these other socialists “utopians” for thinking that anything but force can dissuade the upper classes from taking more than their share. His 1848 Communist Manifesto calls on workers everywhere to unite in a great revolution, assuring them they have nothing to lose but their chains.
Many young Romantics see the quest for social justice as part of on-going efforts to bring democracy to Europe. In 1848, revolutions erupt in France, Germany, Austria and Italy — none of them successful. Strengthened, authoritarian rule will now make outright dissent far more difficult for decades in most European countries.
The tremendous failure of 1848 pushes artists in various directions. After siding with pro-democracy revolutionaries, poet Charles Baudelaire now asserts that art should serve no cause or purpose. Yet his book, Flowers of Evil, counters the master narrative’s morality and shocks with the unconventional sexuality enfolded in its evocative language. Other writers and painters turn toward a more realistic portrayal of the problems they see around them.
The Industrial Revolution begun in 18th century England is transforming life in continental Europe and America. While new technology — such as the steam engine, better machinery, improved methods of mining and smelting — holds the promise of improved lives, its immediate effect reduces many to misery. People move from countryside to city as farming weakens and factory production begins replacing rural cottage industry. Underpaid laborers, with no regulations yet protecting them, struggle to survive in horrendous living conditions.
Charles Dickens, Emile Zola and others carefully detail the suffering of the poor and working classes. Tolstoy shows us upper-class individuals struggling to love and live with integrity in Russia’s pre-industrial society of decadent aristocrats and suspicious serfs. Gustave Courbet shocks the art establishment by painting scenes from peasant life and depicting the ugliness of impoverishment. Courbet, a socialist, will be jailed and exiled for his convictions. Marx makes no exception for such artists, however, when he insists that culture only serves and perpetuates the socio-economic system. The artist, recast in the flames of Romanticism, will disprove so narrow an assessment of culture’s possibilities.
Modern Art
In Paris, 1863, Edouard Manet unveils, Déjeuner sur l'Herbe, a painting that marks a turning point in the history of the arts. On this oversized canvas, four figures engage the viewer in an unusual relationship. At the back of the scene, a woman wrapped in diaphanous cloth and apparently bathing, is raising her head. Two men, dressed in contemporary garb, look suddenly distracted in their conversation. Sitting with them, a female nude commands the foreground by her nakedness. Her face, turned fully toward us, seems to ask, “What are you seeing?” Rejected by the annual official art exhibition, Déjeuner sur l'Herbe spurs a group of young artists including Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Degas to frame new answers to its question.
On one level, the Impressionists’ response involves addressing one another and the viewer by embedding subtextual images and meanings in work that spills over with coincidence. What is that swirling in the smoke of Claude Monet’s pipe? What dancing in that curl of hair? What is in that person’s eye? On that one’s mind? Whose face in those waters? That wallpaper? A playful interactivity pronounces the You.
On another level, the Impressionists rethink and strive to paint what they see. They hear this imperative from the realist, Manet, who declares that he sees no lines in nature and therefore uses color only to define images. The Impressionists take such ideas further. Intrigued by the new technology of photography, they often work outdoors rather than in studios, putting color on canvas quickly. Because what they see is changing. Monet does multiple paintings of the same scene in order to capture the effects of weather and light. Trying to remain true to Nature and to paint just what they see, the Impressionists perforate realism’s real.
The best known Impressionists do not directly challenge the ego mentality. They do not take a stand about pressing issues such as the misery of the lower classes, draconian restrictions on civil and political rights, or even the loss of some 25,000 lives in the crushing of the Paris Commune. Nor do they adopt the Bohemian lifestyle that will soon become a stereotype. A behavioral code that shortens the lives of Baudelaire, Lautrec, Rimbaud and others with its disregard for security, its flouting of Victorian sexual morality and its overuse of alcohol, absinthe and opium.
Yet the Impressionists paint in ways that subvert. By trying to capture a moment in Nature, they grapple with the ever-problematic relationship between sign system and Referent. And remind us that ordinary perception does not provide access to referential phenomena as simply as we assume. Their techniques invite the viewer to respond, not just to the content, but to the paint and the act of painting itself. And any increased awareness of sign systems weakens their power over our minds. Equally important, Impressionism opens the door to Modern Art by making it conceivable for later artists to go further in disrupting processes of representation — and hence the workings of the master narrative.
By the 1880s, Western civilization’s view of itself clashes significantly with actual behavior. Most European countries have at least quasi-democratic political institutions and some form of mass education. Life has even improved slightly for the lower classes, still some 80% of the population. Labor unions have won such reforms as child-labor laws and the sixty-hour work week. To lessen the appeal of communism, a few countries have established rudimentary social welfare systems. In Europe and the United States, the ruling classes see themselves as humane, enlightened, refined and civilized. Yet the contrast between middle-class and working-class living conditions remains stark. And the scramble to colonize the rest of the world has intensified, driven by competition for power, as well as the lure of gold, diamonds, other minerals and resources. With military technology making it easy to conquer non-industrialized people, the colonizers have only each other to fear. European heads of state meet in 1884 to carve up what King Leopold of Belgium calls, “that magnificent African cake.” With military force and betrayal, the United States seizes Native American lands in the push West. In the name of “civilization,” men everywhere carry out acts of brutality and treachery.
Some artists directly oppose these crimes against people designated “Other.” Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, exposes atrocities the author himself witnessed in Africa. Conrad, Mark Twain and Arthur Conan Doyle join the Congo Reform Association founded in 1904. Photographers leave a controversial legacy of images. Few record the harm done as clearly as the well-known U.S. War Department photo of a slave’s whipping scars. Criticized for not showing the mistreatment and desperate living conditions of Native Americans, Edward Curtis chooses instead to emphasize the dignity and beauty of their pre-colonial way of life.
Paul Gauguin’s paintings of Polynesian Islanders communicate a similar message, yet one profoundly enhanced by his non-photographic handling of color and perspective. Gauguin addresses the human condition on the grand scale. Both title and content of one of his most famous works interrogate the foundations of any master narrative: “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?”
Before turning to painting, Vincent Van Gogh anguishes over the poverty he witnesses in London. Gives all he owns to the poor while working as a lay preacher among Belgian mineworkers. After losing that job for taking Christ’s teachings too literally, he paints like a madman — some 800 canvases in the ten years before his suicide. Once Van Gogh encounters Impressionism, his work releases the writhing movement of the Referent that the sign system usually tames and stills.
Teenage poet, Arthur Rimbaud, describes the poetic process as a “rational derangement,” a deliberate making of one’s soul into a “monster.” His poetry strikes other writers of the time as utterly new. For its free verse and for the poet’s genius at sensing the expectations a word or phrase sets up, then turning them into sign-system-shaking surprise. With outrageously non-conformist behavior, Rimbaud enacts the artist’s absolute rebellion against any infringement on freedom — particularly the microtheatrical occupation of the mind that would interfere with the creative process itself.
As the 19th century comes to a close, many artists and intellectuals signal some kind of disenchantment with narratives of enlightened civilization. Nietzsche openly embraces a full-force version of the underlying ego narrative. He calls for “great” men to wield all the power they can get and cease weakening themselves with moral scruples arising from traditions such as Christianity. In contrast, playwright Alfred Jarry rips off the mask without embracing what lies underneath. His King Ubu personifies the exercise of power over others, not as “great” but abusive. Scatological, sexual and deliberately repugnant to middle-class sensibilities, the play stands in definitive opposition to the master narrative of the dominant culture.
The first decades of the 20th century bring electric lights, the radio, telephone, automobile, new architectural materials, a quickened pace of life — at least to the cities. Modern art explodes in a variety of approaches. Painters rapidly explore new techniques and content. Movements branch out, rather than following from one another.
Labeled “savage beasts” by art critics, the Fauve group works with thick, wild brush strokes. Georges Rouault balances attention-getting form with content that speaks compellingly about poverty and, later, the horrors of war. Developing Cubism from Cezanne’s subtle geometrics, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque show the sign system at work simplifying the world. As if it were built of right angles. Cubism insists that everything can be seen from multiple points of view. Picasso, whose career will span seven decades and multiple movements, infuses his Cubism with borrowings from African art — as do the Expressionists.
Believing that feeling cradles meaning, Expressionists use paint to represent states of mind. Edvard Munch leads the way with his famous painting, The Scream. Vasilly Kandinsky structures his pieces as if they were musical compositions. He highlights the un-said with shifting shapes, geometric confetti and chaotic mixes of whirls, lines, spirals. Paul Klee simplifies the message. A single splotch of color within an open border has secrets seeping from a closet.
In 1909, Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes opens in Paris and causes a sensation with stars Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky. This new ballet company engages Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Rouault and others to create original sets. Besides now-traditional works by Tchaikovsky, they dance to music composed for their productions by Debussy, Ravel, Satie and Stravinsky. Ballet revitalizes with new tonalities, dissonances and energies of modernity.
In these same decades, Sigmund Freud makes ego narrative the foundation of a new psychology that would adjust individuals to the world as it is. Freud’s argument that reasoned self-interest, (the ego), must govern the psyche will lead several generations to believe that mental health depends upon a sense of self as separate. Pulling in the opposite direction, Freud’s associate Carl Jung takes the notion of a subconscious towards connection, theorizing that we all share a collective unconscious. The ego idea, however, rules the moment.
Driven by competition, the logic of military buildup and widespread nationalistic fervor, the rulers of Europe declare war in 1914. Expecting no more than a few weeks of fighting, cheering crowds send off the troops as if to a sporting event. Lasting four years, World War I leaves some 10 million people dead. Millions more are maimed and sickened by the insanity of modern warfare: chemical weapons, machine guns, hellish trenches and on and on. The treaty that ends the war perpetuates the enmity with inhumane demands on the economy of Germany, where thousands are already starving to death.
In response to this first World War, some artists generate overtly anti-war narratives. Novelist Erich Maria Remarque recounts the cruel absurdities suffered by ordinary soldiers in All Quiet on the Western Front. Georges Rouault produces variations on a theme combining images of war with moments in the passion of Christ. Max Beckman paints gruesome scenes pointedly devoid of hope for redemption. Many have come to share his belief in an irredeemably depraved human nature.
The Dadaists, a group of artists from all over Europe, express absolute disgust with their culture and society. Their Berlin Manifesto of 1918 announces, “the great rebellion of artistic movements.” While Dadaism declares itself “against everything,” Surrealism branches off and entertains a sense of content. Poets such as André Breton try to draw forth subconscious material by means of automatic writing. Painters such as Joan Miro and René Magritte depict ordinary reality’s unreal as real. Surrealists delve beneath the surface and expose the violence upon which Western civilization’s master narrative depends. Jean Cocteau and Luis Bunuel make dreamlike, often nightmarish, films. The Surrealist movement responds to the growing political crisis in Europe by aligning with the Left. The group expels perhaps the best known Surrealist painter, Salvador Dali, for supporting Fascism in the Spanish Civil War.
In the years between the world wars, totalitarianism threatens to extinguish democracy and its commitments to civil rights. Resorting to force and dictatorship to realize its ideal of equally shared wealth, the Russian revolution is accomplishing the opposite as the ego narrative corrupts behavior throughout its power hierarchy. In Italy, Mussolini plays on middle- and upper-class fears of communism, using electoral politics as well as violent thugs and dirty tricks to seize power. Hitler follows suit in 1930s Germany. General Francisco Franco turns his army against the elected socialist government of Spain and wins the Civil War there with help from Hitler and Mussolini. Even in the longest established democracies, totalitarian ideology thrives. Hundreds of thousands join right-wing groups in France, although the majority elects socialists to govern. In the United States, powerful individuals and corporations give verbal and material support to the extreme right in Europe and at home. Hitler decorates Henry Ford and IBM director Tom Watson for befriending the Nazi regime. Corporations including General Motors and Texaco supply military vehicles and fuel to Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.
Some artists take the strongest possible stand against fascism. Ernest Hemmingway joins other artists fighting for the republic in the Spanish Civil War — and memorializes that experience in his novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. After the Nazi bombing of the city of Guernica, Pablo Picasso turns his genius to portraying the horrific effects. Jacques Lipschitz sculpts his feelings about fascism into a 46-foot Prometheus Strangling the Vulture for the Paris World Fair of 1937.
People colonized and exploited by the dominant culture increasingly add their knowing to the oppositional energy. Mexican painter Diego Rivera develops a distinctive style that powers his portrayal of peasants, workers — and the revolution he envisions. Frida Kahlo paints elements of Mexican folk culture into disturbing expressions of a multiple Otherness. A wave of enthusiasm for African, African-American and African-Brazilan expression sweeps the Parisian art scene and the world. Jazz musicians Josephine Baker and Sidney Bechet have Paris watching, listening and talking. Harlem Renaissance writers including poet Claude McKay and Langston Hughes bring their self-affirmation and their critique of dominant culture into the mix. The Négritude movement, founded by youthful poets Leopold Senghor of Senegal and Aimé Césaire of Martinque, works at decolonizing minds.
Meanwhile, artists continue disrupting sign-system assumptions. In a painstakingly representational style, Magritte’s painting Human Condition has us looking out a window at a landscape, the view mostly blocked by a barely discernable canvas representing that same landscape. The uncategorizable Marc Chagal shows us strangely appealing worlds where things are upside down, animals play musical instruments and the cellist is his cello. In classical music, Béla Bartok takes us Out of Door and into a dream where something’s wrong, but we’re not sure what. Notes fall like un-strung pearls. Modern dance breaks free from traditional constraints as Martha Graham, Katherine Dunham and Alvin Ailey found new companies. James Joyce turns prose writing inside out with his stream of consciousness technique. Poets have their words running in circles, up and down hills, in columns on the page. Such techniques constitute opposition, whether so intended or not. Hitler declares Modern Art degenerate. Stalin, too, will reject it.
Europe goes to war again when Germany invades Poland in September, 1939. By the following July, the Nazis control Denmark, Norway and France. Japan invades China, occupies Indochina and attacks the United States. The tide turns in 1943 after Russia wipes out Hitler’s 300,000 man army in the five-month Battle of Stalingrad. Dependent on Stalin’s help, the Allies will have choice but to let him occupy the Eastern European countries he takes back from the Nazis. By the time the second World War ends in 1945, it has killed as many as 40 million people, almost 20 million of them civilians. The race for weapons of mass destruction produces — and the United States uses — the atomic bomb. The master narrative’s hatred of the Other permits the systematic murder of 6 million Jews. The extermination camps swallow up millions of Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people, dissenters, resistance fighters, even potential leaders such as clergy and intellectuals from the occupied countries. Some 4 million workers, enslaved within Germany, die of overwork and brutal treatment.
In addition to grief, famine and ruins, postwar Europe confronts a profound moral dilemma. In Germany and Italy, majorities have supported Nazism and Fascism. In occupied countries, most people have collaborated. Only a few have risked their lives in guerilla warfare, by writing and publishing resistance literature, or by protecting Jews. Some have gone much further, however, than the small compromises that seemed necessary to get on with their lives. Officials have energetically served the Nazis by torturing people suspected of resistance, rounding up Jews and deporting them to death camps. Ordinary individuals have informed on their neighbors. Or stood by watching as people were taken away. After the war, a frenzy of unofficial reprisals brings killings, beatings and mob violence even to small villages. The Nuremberg trials clarify that “just following orders” does not excuse individual moral and legal responsibility.
In the art world, the moment belongs to those who have resisted. German playwright Bertolt Brecht has spent the war years in exile, attacking Nazism in plays such as The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Thomas Mann, whose earlier novels were targeted for bookburnings, now uses the theme of Doctor Faustus to examine the mentality leading to Nazism. With The Tin Drum, Günter Grass will begin his series of novels exploring the question on everyone’s mind: “How did this happen?” Italian writers, too, emerge from years in jail, exile or hiding. In fictionalized versions of their own experiences, Carlo Levi, Elio Vittorini and Natalia Ginzburg emphasize the harm Fascism did to those already suffering the cruelties of class hierarchy. Ignazio Silone, himself once an informer for Mussolini’s government, later writes all the more powerfully against it. In his novel, Fontamara, Fascists bully and manipulate the poorest peasants, depriving them of their irrigation rights.
In France, a group of writers focuses less on the poor than on the moral predicament of the middle class. Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophical treatise, Being and Nothingness, lays groundwork by arguing that existence precedes essence: first we exist; then we define who we are. Sartre pulls the rug out from under the master narrative by demonstrating that Consciousness constructs the ego — rather than the ego giving us Consciousness. He refutes any notion of human nature that might excuse behavior. We are fully responsible for our actions, he insists, “condemned to be free.” We either respond authentically to our situation, or live in “bad faith” by choosing compromise and conformity to society’s norms. We author the world around us, creating the “reality” we usually think of ourselves as facing. An artist, too, Sartre writes these understandings into literary works such his wartime trilogy, Roads to Freedom; the play, No Exit; and the Spanish Civil War story, The Wall.
Albert Camus rejects the label Existentialist, but writes in a similar vein. His book, The Stranger, portrays deep alienation from an inauthentic culture and society. In short stories, novels and plays, Camus calls upon us to live our lives as if everything depends on our choices — and to choose rebellion against the absurdity of life in this world. In the play, State of Seige, a character named The Plague and his Secretary systematically condemn people to death and intimidate a whole community — until a single individual dares to defy them.
Asserting that one is not born, but becomes a woman, Simone de Beauvoir’s book, The Second Sex, explores how society and culture have made woman the “Other.” Later, De Beauvoir writes memoirs that recount her own struggles to define herself authentically in opposition to microtheatrical pressures of family and social circles. In 1945, however, she focuses on resistance to macrotheatrical power in the wartime novel, The Blood of Others.
While most of these writers prefer a realism that downplays style and foregrounds the message, Eugene Ionesco puts form front and center. He dis-integrates and mocks the sign system in The Bald Soprano and other plays. Ionesco’s penchant for absurdist humor makes for highly effective commentary on recent history. In Rhinoceros, he depicts the rise of Fascism with the metaphor of characters choosing to turn into rhinos.
In 1956, filmmaker Alain Resnais brings together footage from the liberation of the death camps in his documentary, Night and Fog. The gas chambers. The heaps of corpses. The skeletal survivors looking searchingly into our eyes. A narrator asks, “Who is responsible?” And warns against attributing these horrors to some singular aberration rather than our everyday failure to see and hear those suffering around us. As the Cold War accelerates the race for ever more destructive nuclear weapons, Resnais releases, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, with a screen play by the brilliant novelist, Marguerite Duras. This history that cannot and must not be forgotten remains a source of powerful counternarratives in European art.
While Europe rebuilds and struggles to regain its moral footing, a very different cultural climate predominates in the United States. No sense of guilt distorts the collective image of the war hero. Economically and politically strong, the United States easily steps into the role of super-power and main adversary to the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Laborers are earning better wages and enjoying leisure afforded by the forty-hour workweek that labor unions fought for earlier. Steady employment and pay increases bring more and more workers into the middle class.
In the 1950s, product availability and advertising reinforce cultural conformity. Television soon has whole families glued to the screen, enchanted by shows and commercials that model identity and behavior. Men shave their faces and keep their hair cut short, military style. Women strive to obey fashion dictates, including each year’s prescribed length for skirts. The ego narrative, constantly prompting comparison and competition, drives the growth of consumerism. Entrepreneurs consciously strive to equate the purpose of human existence and the meaning of success with conspicuous consumption. Buying the new house, the new car, new appliances, the carat diamond, the latest fashions.
While parents who suffered through Depression and war savor the newfound comforts and stability, many young people vaguely feel that something is amiss. In 1955, teenagers flock to theaters to see James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. The following year, The Wild One portrays motorcycle-riding, black-leather-jacketed young men troubling the quiet life of a small town. When a local girl asks the lead character played by Marlon Brando what he’s rebelling against, he replies, “Whadya got?”
In fact, they’ve got a world with serious problems. In a large section of this great democracy, African Americans are denied the right to vote, enter libraries, sit where they wish on buses, eat at restaurants and so forth. The threat of nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union weighs heavily on peoples’ minds. School children practice “duck-and-cover” in case of an attack. Cold Warriors are trampling democratic ideals in the name of national security. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee effectively makes it a crime to join certain groups or espouse ideas associated with socialism or communism. Artists bear the brunt of this repression. Names including Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Charlie Chaplin and Langston Hughes appear on a “blacklist” that dissuades employers from hiring, drives people into exile, ruins lives and careers. Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible uses the Salem witch trials as a metaphor for the anti-communist hysteria.
It is in this context that a journalist adds the Russian suffix “nik” onto the name “beat” that Jack Kerouac lovingly gave in 1948 to a small group of non-conformists. “Beatniks” certainly do take a critical stance toward the Cold War and the race to produce increasingly destructive nuclear weapons. Their countering of the master narrative runs deeper, too, as they break chains of signification and microtheatrical oppression.
Gathering in New York’s Greenwich Village, on college campuses and in cities coast to coast, the Beat generation turns the insights of Existentialism into poetry, art and lifestyle. They defy the prescribed codes in every way they can imagine. Some men grow beards, women long hair. They might wear sandals. Or adopt the black turtleneck and beret that jazz musicians are wearing. In a society that permits segregation, the Beats gravitate toward African American culture. They steep themselves in the latest “bop” jazz, use its slang, and take up the oppositional attitude known as “cool” — all rooted in black people’s relationship with white culture.
Beat artists plumb the depths of angst and loneliness in a world made alien by the master narrative. Alan Ginsberg’s long poem, Howl, reviles civilization as a devouring monster, celebrates homosexuality and refers to unmentionable body parts as holy. It becomes a cause célèbre when banned. Kerouac evokes freedom unheard-of in the land of the free in his 1952 classic, On the Road.
Alongside the Beats, painters such as Jackson Pollack and Marc Rothko bring abstract expressionism to its peak. Pollock creates windows of chaotic coincidence by dripping, splattering, pouring paint unto the canvas. Color field painters such as Rothko experiment with broad, wide bands of color, sometimes committing an entire canvas to a single tone. Whether showcasing processes or forms, these pathways turn in upon themselves. Mirroring the sign system’s secret: no link to anything outside. In music, John Cage raises questions with new rhythms, new motifs, new sounds.
The early 1950s hold the beginnings of a far more widespread musical phenomenon as well. One that will prove truly earth shaking. With improved technology, radio stations operate with greater broadcasting power and reach ever larger audiences. Thanks to shows such as Dewey Phillips’ Red Hot and Blue, in Memphis, and Alan Freed’s Moondog Rock and Roll Party in Cleveland, white teenagers encounter the electrified guitars and amplified sound of black blues and R & B. Teens everywhere fall in love with this music. When white singers begin covering black songs, rock and roll takes off. Bill Haley and the Comets make a hit with Rock Around the Clock. Black artists Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Fats Domino are selling records to white audiences. Elvis Presley goes over the top. His Heartbreak Hotel, Hound Dog and Don’t Be Cruel sell an unprecedented ten million copies in a single year. Entrepreneurs catalyze the enthusiasm.
Soon rock and roll is blasting from juke boxes, record players and radios all across the country. Teenagers are swivelling their hips and watching American Bandstand. Walls begin to shake and rattle. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles; Gladys Knight and the Pips; Martha and the Vandellas; the Temptations; the Supremes and other Motown acts keep the soul floodgates open and the bodies moving. Since parents typically dislike the music, it feeds an emerging rebellious youth culture.
Rock and roll counters the master narrative in several ways. It connects people with the Referent by engaging our physicality and sexuality, celebrating what mainstream culture has suppressed. The music also carries an oppositional dimension since it comes from those made “Other” by society. Although the Civil Rights movement has begun, 1950s pop lyrics do not typically speak of racial politics. Many black artists take pains to present themselves in ways pleasing to white mainstream culture. Yet the music indirectly points to the problem of race in America — and to a broader recognition of wrongs.
Meanwhile, another strong thread of long-peripheralized pop culture has entered the music weave. The folk music revival arises in part from the journeying of John and Alan Lomax who recorded musicians such as Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter, David “Honeyboy” Edwards, Texas Gladden and Woody Guthrie. In coffee houses and nightclubs of the 1950s and early ’60s, performers such as Pete Seeger begin generating enthusiasm for these traditional work songs, reels, ballads and blues that express the struggles and hopes of the lower classes — black and white. And more recent songs such as Woody Guthrie’s anthem for democracy, This Land is Your Land.
By the early 1960s, more young people than ever are graduating from high school. Compared to their parents’ generation, nearly three times as many — including some children of the working class — are going to college. The more prosperous are augmenting their knowledge of the world through travel. Although owners of media corporations control the news, personal experience and word of mouth are providing another take on current events. African Americans’ confrontation with segregation. The war in Vietnam. And a dictatorial conformity in the land of the free.
With the rock and roll phenomenon speaking primarily to teenagers, folk music attracts the college audience. Many folk songs have political lyrics. Songs from the early days of union organizing. From the civil rights movement. The Kingston Trio; the Clancy Brothers; Ian&Sylvia; Peter, Paul and Mary and others tour campuses. Joan Baez wins hearts with her wondrous voice and appearance on stage in simple shift, sometimes even bare feet. College students hold their own “hootenannies,” where they sit in informal circles, sing and learn songs, accompanied by guitar or ukulele.
Bob Dylan takes what’s happening to a new level with the lyrics he writes and the persona he creates. Early songs such as Masters of War and Oxford Town speak out against specific abuses. Soon his subject matter grows more complicated, however, deconstructing mentalities, mining for new meanings and working the sign system in ways that sap its power at every turn. Dylan has a gift for picking up and re-processing bits of language already “out there” in popular parlance. Putting into words what many are feeling. When called the “voice of a generation,” however, he rejects the label. If he is leading anything, it is a post-existential shift of leadership, art, even genius, from the hands of the few — into everyone’s. Besides, he’s inventing himself as absolutely free, cool, rebellious, never categorizable, always becoming. Dylan refuses to appear on the career-making Ed Sullivan show, parries with news reporters, insults people who are trying to honor him and infuriates folk music purists when he “goes electric.” His act has profound effects on other musicians.
The music cascades as more songwriters and performers address real problems, real dreams — to and with one another. By the mid-1960s, an anti-conformist mood has grown strong enough to affect advertising. Change is in the air. Broadway star Barbra Streisand reveals how much beauty there is outside regimented notions. She pronounces the You in her first top ten hit, People. DJs create programming that fosters the emerging consciousness.
When the Beatles come to the United States, parental objections to their “long” hair add to the appeal of their sound. I Want to Hold your Hand, sells a million copies in ten days. A month later, an unprecedented 73 million people watch the fab four on the Ed Sullivan show. Two months after that, Beatle songs occupy all five of Billboard’s top slots. With their hair, their clothes, their presence and their lyrics, they suggest new notions of masculinity. The unbridled passion of screaming female fans persuades other males to adopt the Beatles’s style. Young men everywhere begin growing their hair longer and wearing “mod” flowered shirts. By 1965, the Beatles are experimenting with musical forms and writing lyrics with greater depth and intellectual content. They, too, question the status quo in Nowhere Man and Think For Yourself.
The Rolling Stones display a more conventional masculinity than the Beatles, but give voice to the ambient alienation and finger the problem of gender construction with (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction. Simon and Garfunkel’s I Am a Rock reminds listeners that we are not islands; while Sounds of Silence tries to get at a truth beneath all the noise. In the hit theme song from the film Alfie, Dionne Warwick asks the question, “What’s it all about?”
“Love, love, love...” answer the Beatles in the world’s first satellite television transmission in 1967. By this time, millions of young people wearing long hair, beads and bell bottoms have turned off their TV sets and tuned into the music. Many come from relatively privileged backgrounds, but question the society that favors them. Some even ask what exactly reality is; how this one came to be; how we alter it. They abandon numbing alcohol for the “mind-expanding” drugs marijuana and LSD. This movement strongly protests the war in Vietnam, racism and, later, environmental destruction. Artists talk back to the master narrative with lines such as Jefferson Airplane’s, “When the truth is found to be lies.” Opposition reaches deepest, however, in insisting on love. Not a naïve love unaware of the world’s enmities, clarifies Marvin Gaye in What’s Goin’ On?. “War is not the answer,” he asserts, “for only love can conquer hate.”
This counter culture strongly emphasizes a positive vision. Tries to rethink everything: identity, cosmology, religion, patriotism. Songs record specifics. “I used to be a woman you know,” Neil Young dares to say. “We are stardust,” sings Joni Mitchell, “billion-year-old carbon.” Buffy Sainte-Marie declares that, “God is alive,” and, “Magic is afoot.” Laura Nyro asserts that “Love is surely Gospel.” The Fifth Dimension has everyone singing the Age of Aquarius, “when harmony and understanding... sympathy and trust abound.” Jimmy Hendricks carries America far out with his rendition ofThe Star-Spangled Banner. John Lennon suggests we Imagine a world of possibilities. People explore alternative spiritual and religious systems. Think about what they’re doing with their lives. Assert that everyone should be artists, or at least live artistically. Try to actualize in communes and collectives the society they envision. Insist on sexual freedom.
In the 1960s and ’70s, African Americans win the right to vote and legal protection of their civil rights. Women gain admission to previously closed occupational and political arenas. The Sixties open wide the door for individualism, pluralism, personal freedom and diversity — more than previously dreamed possible. Hairstyles, clothes, body-art, whole lifestyles unthinkable in the fifties normalize by the end of the century.
Not surprisingly, such transformative activity provokes a tremendous backlash. Many people have had enough tumult: assassinations, riots, demonstrations. Some see no need for change, fear moving too fast or have greater faith in traditional solutions. While laws have moved toward inclusion of minorities and women, individual minds have held fast to old attitudes. The resentment fuels a political swing to the right. By the 1980s, people have been swayed by rhetoric defending the war in Vietnam, opposing affirmative action and celebrating everything the Sixties rejected: greed, violence and exaggerated display of wealth. Anything “Hippy” goes decidedly out of fashion.
Never really unified in the first place, the Sixties movement disintegrates for a multiplicity of reasons. Many object to the very idea of analyzing problems and solutions. Analyses do emerge, but do not go deep enough to eradicate modalities of the master narrative such as racism and sexism. Although Post-modernists such as Foucault and Derrrida have begun writing in the 1960s, the tools they provide do not become widely available until later. Without consciously understanding the power of sign systems, microtheatres and narratives, people unknowingly reproduce the patterns of oppression they are trying to eliminate.
Nonetheless, desire and hope for Peace, Love, Freedom and Happiness remains strong. In an unprecedented global performance moment, the world welcomes the millennium with the sounds of Bob Marley’s, One Love.
The decades surrounding the millennium dramatically accelerate the pace of cultural innovation. Computer technology revolutionizes the production, distribution and consumption of all forms of art, particularly music and literature. Voices of the colonized come to the fore. Woman assumes the role of subject center. Everyone is “hip.” Artists might take any movement of the past as their starting point. Or try to invent something entirely new. Post-modernism broadens the definition of art to include virtually all human activity. In a museum of contemporary art, you might come upon a wall of shelves filled with kitchen utensils, books, souvenirs, rocks, CDs, etc. Or a huge stack of 17 by 22 inch paper with a black border printed on each sheet. And next to the pallet, a sign inviting you to take one home.
Conclusion
Art history maps a journey of the human mind. Art engages, enhances, sometimes changes our storytelling. Given that all narratives are constructed of signs, none inherently rises above others. We can only judge their relative worth on the basis of where they take us. If we continue down the path we are presently traveling, we seal our fate. Earth cannot long sustain a species producing the havoc that our present master narrative tells us is natural. The arts have always offered us alternatives. Narrative threads of beauty, freedom, Love. Proof that we can overleap the sign system and get in touch with the Referent. Hope that we can free ourselves from the grip of a destructive master narrative. And create the loving world we all desire. The Post-modern art scene is happening at the crossroads, where each of us enters into the artistry that creates the future of the Earth.