PAVILION

contemporary art, as the ambiguous artpolitical
mediation of the liberalism of
contemporary capitalism, finds its foremost
dialectical expression.
3. Problematic: autonomy and dependence,
individuality and collectivity
I shall restrict my discussion to two main
aspects of the work of art: 1) its constitution
through an increasingly convoluted
dialectic of autonomy and dependence,
and 2) its expression of a dialectic of individuality
and collectivity. The question of
‘the political’ is at issue here in: 1) the
political meanings of autonomy and
dependence; and 2) the way in which the
political contradictions of capitalist individualism
are mediated and expressed
by the increasing nominalism of works of
art - this is the structural libertarianism of
contemporary art, which underlies the
radicalism of its imaginary. 16
(i) The dialectic of autonomy and dependence
The role of the dialectic of autonomy and
dependence in the constitution of the
work of art may be summarized, broadly,
as follows.
i) Modern art is constituted by a dialectic
of autonomous and dependent elements
that is expressive of what Adorno called
art’s ‘double character’ as ‘autonomy and
social fact’. 17
ii) Autonomous art is art in which
autonomous determinations ‘dominate’
dependent ones; dependent art is art in
which heteronomous determinations
‘dominate’ autonomous ones.
iii) Autonomy is an attribute of the work
(albeit ‘transferred’ from the artist): the
exhibition of a self-legislated ‘law of
form’.
iv) Self-legislated form is an illusion: the
illusion of autonomous meaning-production
by the work. (Works of art are thus
autonomous to the extent to which they
produce the illusion of their autonomy. Art
is self-conscious illusion.)
v) Self-legislating form positions the work
in ‘resistance’ to social functionality.
vi) Commodification is that form of social
dependence that is, at once, the condition
of, and a threat to, autonomy. (Art is
a special kind of commodity, the usevalue
of which resides in its uselessness
or lack of social functionality.)
vii) Individual works of art must actively
resist heteronomous determinations of
their meanings if they are to achieve
autonomy.
viii) The historical development of modern
art is a development in the social
forms and dynamics of autonomy and
dependence.
Politics is inscribed within the structure of
this dialectic in three main ways.
First, the political meaning of autonomy is
freedom. The freedom of the work (its illusion
of autonomy and the radicalism of its
imaginary), in the present, may be
viewed as a pre-figuration of a free praxis,
praxis in a free society. As such, it is at
the same time a criticism of the existing
state of unfreedom: the work of art, any
work of art, ‘criticizes society by merely
existing’. 18 Here, the politics of art is a politics
of form - an affirmation of freedom as
self-legislating form.
Second, the political meaning of heteronomy
or dependence as external determination,
necessity or constraint (the reality
principle). Politics is one form of dependence
- either within autonomous art (as a
subordinate aspect) or as a type of
dependent art, political art, which itself
still has a (subordinate) autonomous
aspect. When a political art is taken out of
its practical political context, by historical
change or geographical displacement,
and ceases to function politically, its
autonomous (formal) aspects come to
the fore, and the character of the work
changes. This is what happens when, for
example, works of Soviet Constructivism
and Productivism are displayed within
Western art institutions as part of the history
of the artistic avant-garde. Here, politics
appears as an external condition that
is nonetheless incorporated into the work
as one of its conditions, but remains heteronomous
- i.e. external to the self-legislation
of the law of form. One may
speak here of politics as ‘content’, which
is not form-determining at a structural
level. Rather, it depends upon the use of
established forms. Hence the convergence
of an artistic ‘politics of content’
with academicism and historicism: the
reproduction of established forms.
Third, the political meaning of the dialectical
unity of autonomy and dependence
within the work is as a model of reconciliation.
The unity of the work functions as
a ‘promise of happiness’ by offering a
model of reconciliation, a non-coercive
identity, via the ‘belonging together’ of the
one and the many.
In both the first and the third cases, the
political meaning inherent in art is pre-figurative,
and hence ‘imaginary’. Yet it is
also, thereby, in danger of being affirmative
- affirmative of the society in which
such pre-figuration is possible - and
hence socially functional. This complicates
the critical criteria for the achievement
of autonomy. Subsequent to the
recognition of the socially affirmative
function of autonomous art 19 and the failure
of both the historical avant-garde’s
and institutional critique’s assault upon
the institution of autonomy, there is an
additional critical requirement for the
achievement of autonomy. Under these
conditions, critically autonomous art
requires an element of anti-art - the contradictory
incorporation of an un-integrated,
dependent element, for which collage
is the historical model - in order to mark
(i.e. to render self-conscious) the illusory
character of the autonomy of the artwork
by re-connecting it, indexically, to the
world.
As a paradigm of a dependent element,
politics is one paradigmatic, if paradoxical,
way of rendered art critically
autonomous, that is, of maintaining its
autonomy in a strong, ontological
sense. 20 Another paradigm is the readymade.
In fact, in this critical context, the
concept of the readymade expands to
incorporate, in principle, all ‘readymade’
elements within a work, including, standard
artistic materials such as industrially
manufactured paint. 21 In this respect,
insofar as it reproduces an externally
determined political position, the political
element of an artwork may itself be conceived
within the terms of the anti-art paradigm
of readymade elements. However,
this critical function, internal to
autonomous art, only operates so long as
the anti-art (dependent) element in question
resists incorporation into the art institution’s
conception of art. Once it is incorporated,
the originally anti-art element
will itself become affirmative of ‘art’ - and
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