Dissent at the Fogg
I finally got around to seeing the new exhibit at the Fogg Art Museum, provocatively title DISSENT! The exhibit lives up to its title, presenting a bombastic take on protest art throughout the ages. Works range from ancient woodcuts showing the “Pope as a wolf enticing sheep” to a picture of George W. Bush with the caption “blame Yale.”
I was struck by how activist Harvard appears in the exhibit, full of stenciled red fists raised in solidarity. This seems so different from Harvard I know, which frankly seems quite deferential to power (although some of this may simply be because I’ve been too busy to participate in the politics of my new institution). Perhaps the increased antiwar activity at Harvard in the late 1960s was simple because there was a draft that affected most college students, in a way that doesn’t exist today. It’s surely something more than that though, for there were a host of other movements active on campus: feminism, black power, civil rights, worker rights, etc. It seems to me that students in the past identified psychologically with each other and with oppressed groups. Students today here seem to, on the average, identify with the successful or powerful, and spend a great deal of time thinking of how to take their place.
The exhibit also reminded me that the line between political satire and political kitsch is a fine one, and is context-dependent. For me, works like Auguste Bouquet’s “The Pear and its Pips,” which depicts the king of France as a rotting fruit, are the height of satire. In contrast, the “Inflammatory Essays” of Jenny Holzer seems to be more about striking a revolutionary pose than any real cause. It brings to mind Milan Kundera’s famous definition of kitsch: a tear being shed for the beauty of shedding tears. But I suspect the line between satire and kitsch must change for every generation. The causes that won wrote the history books, and as a result their propaganda comes to be seen as brilliant satire. The Boston Massacre is a great example: the revolutionary press in New England made something damn near a riot into a principled martyrdom. The causes that lose, like communism, are destined to have their propaganda seem vaguely kitschy, self-serving, absurd.
I was struck by how activist Harvard appears in the exhibit, full of stenciled red fists raised in solidarity. This seems so different from Harvard I know, which frankly seems quite deferential to power (although some of this may simply be because I’ve been too busy to participate in the politics of my new institution). Perhaps the increased antiwar activity at Harvard in the late 1960s was simple because there was a draft that affected most college students, in a way that doesn’t exist today. It’s surely something more than that though, for there were a host of other movements active on campus: feminism, black power, civil rights, worker rights, etc. It seems to me that students in the past identified psychologically with each other and with oppressed groups. Students today here seem to, on the average, identify with the successful or powerful, and spend a great deal of time thinking of how to take their place.
The exhibit also reminded me that the line between political satire and political kitsch is a fine one, and is context-dependent. For me, works like Auguste Bouquet’s “The Pear and its Pips,” which depicts the king of France as a rotting fruit, are the height of satire. In contrast, the “Inflammatory Essays” of Jenny Holzer seems to be more about striking a revolutionary pose than any real cause. It brings to mind Milan Kundera’s famous definition of kitsch: a tear being shed for the beauty of shedding tears. But I suspect the line between satire and kitsch must change for every generation. The causes that won wrote the history books, and as a result their propaganda comes to be seen as brilliant satire. The Boston Massacre is a great example: the revolutionary press in New England made something damn near a riot into a principled martyrdom. The causes that lose, like communism, are destined to have their propaganda seem vaguely kitschy, self-serving, absurd.
