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Art at War
theoretical. But it can be manifested by the means of art itself—as became a
tradition in the context of modernist art. It seems to me that this kind of
criticism is already taking place in the art world, but I would rather not name
names here because it would distract me from the immediate goal of this
essay, which is to diagnose the contemporary regime of image production and
distribution as it takes place in the contemporary media. I would only like to
point out that the goal of contemporary criticism of representation should be
a twofold one. First, this criticism should be directed against all kinds of
censorship and suppression of images that would prevent us from being confronted
with the reality of war and terror. And this kind of censorship is, of
course, still in existence. This kind of censorship, legitimizing itself as the
defense of “moral values” and “family rights” can, of course, be applied to
the coverage of the wars that takes place today—and demand the sanitization
of their representation in the media. But at the same time we are in need of
criticism that analyzes the use of these images of violence as the new icons of
the political sublime, and that analyzes the symbolic and even commercial
competition for the strongest image.
And it seems to me that the context of art is especially appropriate for
this second kind of criticism. The art world seems to be very small, closed in,
and even irrelevant compared with the power of today’s media markets. But
in reality, the diversity of images circulating in the media is highly limited
compared to the diversity of those circulating in contemporary art. Indeed,
to be effectively propagated and exploited in the commercial mass media,
images need to be easily recognizable to a broad target audience, which
renders the mass media nearly tautological. The variety of images circulating
in the mass media is, therefore, vastly more limited than the range of images
preserved in museums of modern art or produced by contemporary art.
Since Duchamp, modern art has practiced an elevation of “mere things”
to the status of artworks. This upward movement created an illusion that
being an artwork is something higher and better than being simply real, being
a mere thing. But at the same time modern art went through a long period
of self-criticism in the name of reality. The name “art” was used in this context
rather as an accusation, as a denigration. To say something is “mere art” is
an even greater insult than to say it is a mere object. The equalizing power
of modern and contemporary art works both ways—it valorizes and devalorizes
at the same time. And this means: To say of the images produced by