Walter Benjamin's much cited essay of 1935 alludes to the democratisation of art, and aspires to its politicisation, as a replacement for what he describes as its ritualistic 'aura'. The world when Benjamin was writing was struggling with two burgeoning doctrines both attempting to save it from the chaos of liberal democracy and, by the nature of doctrines, loyal intellectuals attempted to apply the guiding theories to all aspects of human endeavour. Benjamin was incorporating the theory of art within socialist ideology, as many have done since and even a few before, in an attempt to substantiate the role of art within society. The seminal nature of this essay, even in art education of the 1990s, indicated that his ideas were still held to be current. As a student back then, and practitioner rather than theorist, philosopher or writer, I took the essay for its implications for my practice, and I think this is something that gets overlooked in all the philosophising, analysis and critique.
Zola made the same mistake with the Impressionists fifty years before Benjamin. My father often told me that we "can't see ourselves as others see us", and Zola famously regarded himself more as some kind of early sociologist/ethnologist than as a novelist, though he was well regarded for his beautiful stories. His pre-occupation with the lives of ordinary folk seemed to him to be mirrored in the radical new work of the Impressionists, and he very much championed them for a few years until he really understood where they were coming from - hence the novel L'Oeuvre, passionately disappointed by the selfishness and ambivalence towards political issues of (legend has it) Cezanne.
Artists cannot be unaffected by politics, but few stoop to using it as the motivation for their work. I say 'stoop', as one's political views are generally considered only one facet of a person's make-up, and thus only a part of one's self-expression, and/or any political aspect to an artwork would be considered near the surface of its meaning/s - its strengths are expected to lie somewhat deeper, and certainly to be more 'personal'. Through art we appreciate the nature of individual perspective, existence, uniqueness, and the politics may be highly influential to an artist, it is his/her particular take that emerges into their art works, otherwise it risks being mere propoganda.
In my case this essay was a key part of photography's armoury in the photography v art debate, along with Dada/Surrealism's use of photography in its anti-art stance (though this seemed a back-handed compliment, as many photographers simply longed to be accepted by the 'salon'). Here Benjamin dealt with issues of authenticity and uniqueness upon which art had been largely valued, challenging notions that a hand-made 'one off' accrues some value extra to its uniqueness - its "aura". Much of this debate hinged upon the possibilities of replication; the practical limitations of duplication. In fact, photographers could argue that no two photographic prints were exactly the same and, in line with the earliest signs of the legitimacy of conceptualism, draughtsmanship skills were over-rated - this, in a shamefully desperate attempt to 'big up' photography's aura, and the photographer's status within the mystical temple of high art - sadly lending credence by default to the notion that photographers only did photography because they couldn't draw.
There is no getting away from the simple economic law of scarcity value, and also no avoiding the implications of new technologies. You cannot un-invent 'the bomb', and democratisation, in fact, is a bi-product of the effective re-distribution of wealth - mass-production increasing wealth across a wider spectrum of society, though far from universally, and hardly changing relative wealth. A lot of people just got richer, and with money comes power. the dissolution of absolute power created democracy, which could only happen (and work) when the conditions were right. Marx, for example, saw what was already happening, analysed it and tried to organise it to avoid the pitfalls he foresaw. The good and great intellectuals appeal by proposing control, and the controllability of human affairs - an all-encompassing, unifying theory of 'life, the universe and everything' which will make us feel comfortable and secure in our understanding of ourselves - it's a God thing.
Which brings us back to the 'theory' of art. There is no such (single) theory - just clever people trying to shoe-horn every facet of human existence into their Grand Plan. For communists, art should be for the common good, accessible to all. For Fascists, art should glorify the state (in competition with other states) and therefore remain intensely elitist, but subject (as with communists) to authoritarian control. Theorists and critics essentially review what artists propose, and are notoriously unable to assimilate the avant garde (until it became itself a convention). Art is, by its nature, beyond control or regulation and, historically, is weakened considerably by any attempt to legitimise it, or make it useful - artistic form follows no function and it is one of the mother of invention's most disobedient children.
Language is a consensual code, an index [sic] of commonality, and can only point towards, hint at the whimsicality and irrationality of human existence and - crucially - is only one of many ways of communicating. Even 'carpet-bombing' with words can leave us with a total lack of understanding. Other forms of human expression can complement words, or single-handedly fill in the gaps left by linguistic ambiguity; the the very word 'ambiguous' points to the limitations of its own form of communication. And to be fair, though a picture may be worth 'a thousand words', how many pictures would be worth a book? And something gets lost in translation, naturally.
We were all encouraged to read Walter Benjamin, and Barthes, and Foucault, and Baudrillard (amongst many others) and allow their intellectual fencing to 'inform' our art. The incorporation of the old Art Schools into the modern polytechnics, later universities, under economic rationalisation, with the standardisation of qualification to degree status meant that academics were running the arts courses. To justify a degree in art, an intellectual element had to be incorporated and subsequent generations of artists have become defined, quite significantly, by their ability to parry the flashy swordsmanship of those (mostly) French wordsmiths. To declare the Emperor naked risked a low mark and the loss of the more widely appreciated qualification of a degree, so we all name-dropped and scanned the (one suspects) deliberately obfuscatory musings of our intellecual idols, as if their agendas were in some way related to ours. To further defend the aura [sic] of the degree our work, at the end of the day, had to be able to withstand the rigours of political polemic within the most auspicious debates. We went there to 'learn to draw', to feather the nest of our technical abilities, to equip ourselves to better manifest our particular imaginations, but we came out able to second-guess critiques at the highest level. It is doubtful whether many of our artistic forbears and idols were thus equipped other than by the accident of their birth bestowing a fine general education quite incidentally, but it is also true that the steady increase of affluence throughout the twentieth century has in any case bestowed better education to greater numbers of people in general.
Would it be unfair to compare this basically economical rationalisation of our higher education system, in motivation, to the laudable hints of a rather sickening economic motivation to 9.11 (the collapse of the twin towers in New York), or the much more obvious motives behind the invasion of Iraq? There are no signs today of the kind of political sea change that occurred around 1990 in eastern European countries weary of relatively repressive socialism failing the people, now that unfettered capitalism is revealing its flaws. People today seem to see no alternative to mammon, content to measure their lives by apparent material wealth - justifying the sale of their soul to 'the man' (as we used to say) as if their soul is happy with most weekends and a couple of weeks in the summer as long as they have a better car than the neighbours and can keep up with the latest technological gadgetry.
In this I am well aware of sounding anachronistic, but the decadence of the sixties freed more people than ever before to consider what life is about when we no longer have to perpetually worry about 'mere' subsistence. Conspiracy theories (easily decried as too much dope-smoking) are not even necessary - it is hard to see how any economic system could work if too many people renounce avarice in favour of some kind of 'spiritual enlightenment'. Speaking as someone saddled with artistic proclivities, I fare better in a system which acknowledges values other that monetary, but in the eighties the system found a way to shore itself up and find an acceptable niche for folk like me. Walter Benjamin would doubtless be disappointed at the triumph of (global) capitalism, but in truth art (and artists) have always been dependent upon sources of 'surplus wealth' so I guess I shouldn't complain, and on the face of it the individual has never been more empowered, though I suspect that in the bigger historical picture little has really changed and art is merely an ornament in the drawing room [sic] of civilisation.

Jon Hatfull
March 2009