Art and Revolution
Art and Revolution
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, November 08, 1986
"IT is not true that we regard only that art as new and revolutionary which speaks of the worker, and it is nonsense to say that poets should inevitably describe a factory chimney or the uprising against capital! . . (but) our age weilds the ax. Our life, cruel, violent, and disturbed to its very bottom, says: "I must have an artist of a single love. Whatever way you take hold of me, whatever tools and instruments created by the development of art you choose, I leave it to you, to your temperament and to your genius. But you must understand me as I am, you must take me as I will become, and there must be no one else besides me.' "
-- Leon Trotsky, 1923
"Leger and Duchamp are (even) now in the United States to aid in the destruction of our standards and traditions."
-- US Congressman George Dondero, 1949
NOT all revolutionary art is Socialist Realism, just as not all revolution is Marxist. They also serve whose art is not founded on the struggle of the proletariat. In art, as in life, appearances can be deceiving.
The subversion of contemporary thought and ideals is subversion of the here and now. To assault convention is the essence of revolutionary struggle in itself. When Socialism becomes the norm, art as revolution must react violently against it. Revolution is convention's undoing, and is therefore relative to existing norm.
Art seeks by nature to free itself, and is therefore founded on relentless change. Art rejects norm as the vilest form of censorship, and thereby rejects dogma. Art at the service of doctrine is no art at all. Art at the service of class struggle is revolutionary only until the objective of that struggle itself is realized. Such an art seeks to eventually render itself inutile, while true art seeks always to renew itself.
The artist at the service of art is at the service of perpetual revolution, in stark contrast to the artist whose objective is eventual obsolescence. The artist in the service of art alone is the true revolutionary for all time. Such an artist is therefore sympathetic to all manner of revolutionary struggle, but only for so long as its immediate objectives are unattainable. The revolutionary cause that emerges triumphant installs itself as the norm, and thereby becomes an object for the artist's attack.
Revolutionary Art's role is to incite rebellion against complacency in any established order. Where struggle and revolution is perpetuated for itself, there also should the artist be.
Art must seek always to subvert intellectual and social order because art is the bare essence of revolution objectified.
Art subverts whatever it produces precisely because what is essential must always remain invisible to the eye.
Art is the agent of change beyond change.
Art is perpetual movement.
Art is revolution. Suffice it to say that the true artist is a dangerous creature.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Art and Revolution” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, November 08, 1986
