Art in the ‘post-truth’ era

1. Level 4 Art in the ‘post-truth’ era

2. Preface The Visual Arts programme is dedicated to helping to support you all to become ‘citizens of the world’. We want you to be well-informed, reflective, critical. We want you to be ethically aware, socially responsible and politically active and engaged in shaping the world around you for the good of all. It’s a lofty ambition. But, we’re dedicated to it. We want to examine the world around us and determine if we can change it for the better. The last year the political arena has become dominated by an interested in truth and press freedom. This presentation sets out to explore it further.

3. Part One

4. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting This Xmas I received a present. My son bought me a 1st edition English translation of a novel by the Czech author Milan Kundera: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. It is a book, as its name implies, about the need to remember. Memory and history are not the same thing. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan KunderaFirst published in 1979. English translation first published in 1982 translated from the Czech by Michael Henry Heim.

5. Page One. In February 1948, Communist leader KlementGottwald stepped out on the balcony of a Baroque palace in Prague to address the hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens packed into Old Town Square. It was a crucial moment in Czech history—a fateful moment of the kind that occurs once or twice in a millennium. Gottwald was flanked by his comrades, with Clementis standing next to him. There were snow flurries, it was cold, and Gottwald was bareheaded. The solicitous Clementis took off his own fur cap and set it on Gottwald’s head. The Party propaganda section put out hundreds of thousands of copies of a photograph of that balcony with Gottwald, a fur cap on his head and comrades at his side, speaking to the nation. On that balcony the history of Communist Czechoslovakia was born. Every child knew the photograph from posters, schoolbooks, and museums. Four years later Clementis was charged with treason and hanged. The propaganda section immediately airbrushed him out of history and, obviously, out of all the photographs as well. Ever since, Gottwald has stood on that balcony alone. Where Clementis once stood, there is only bare palace wall. All that remains of Clementis is the cap on Gottwald’s head.

6. Clementis & Gottwald The opening page of Kundera’s novel highlights the way in which a totalitarian state can manipulate the truth. It documents an actual moment in Czech history in 1948. The collective memory of the Czech people ensured that the mis-information was never accepted as a truth. It seems like a long time ago. A throw back to the Cold War. Yet, we live in an era when the truth remains a contested arena.

8. Post-Truth Post-Truth: Relating to, or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion or personal belief. Oxford English Dictionary, 2016

9. Post-Truth Post-truth relates to the pedalling of mis-information and untruths and an appeal to the emotions which is removed and disconnected from the strategies of political policy. It is characterised by the repetition of assertions and claims in the face of the revelation of their untrustworthiness or untruthfulness. The post-truth era is also characterised by the speed by which mis-information can be spread. The internet and social media have been crucial. Post-truth politics makes use of prejudice and conspiracy theories to disseminate its claims.

10. The EU Referendum/Brexit The British/EU referendum in June led the way in bringing the notion of ‘Post-truth’ to the fore. Beyond the ‘sleight-of-hand’ that was emblazoned on the ’battle’ bus lies another much underappreciated and subtle signifier. The bus livery was painted red. It is the colour of the Labour Party, the colour associated with international socialism. In polls the Labour Party is deemed to be much more trusted by the public on the issue of the safety and cohesive integrity of the NHS.

11. The Robes of the Past Karl Marx…in his most subtle essay, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon writes that the new often wears the robes of the past. A conquest borrows the garb of liberation, a right wing reaction dresses itself as a peasants revolt’. Jonathan Jones The Language of Images, The Guardian, 04/01/17

12. Brexit Nonetheless, the Briexiteers led by Michael Gove and Boris Johnson on the one hand and by Nigel Farage on the other prevailed. The UK voted to leave the EU after 45 years of engagement.

13. Be Careful of What You Wish For… Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. H.L. Mencken US journalist and satirist (1880-1956)

14. Part Two

15. US PresidentialElection 2016 The US presidential election consolidated the use of the term in the press and in popular use. Donald J Trump issued a number of statements that were clearly inaccurate or demonstrably untruthful. Trump hinted repeatedly that Barack Obama was not born in the USA as a means of undermining his legitimacy and fuelling a conspiracy movement. Trump’s personality and personal integrity were brought into question.

16. Trump’s campaign was littered with bold electoral promises: ‘We will build a wall…[across the Mexican Border] and we’ll make Mexico pay for it’ And littered with gaffes and revelations that might have been expected to undermine the road to office of a more traditional politician…

17. Trump on Women ‘Trump: Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Bush: Whatever you want. Trump: Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything Trump countered the bad publicity and rebutted accusations of misogyny…

18. Trump on Women ‘Nobody has more respect for women than I do’ ‘Nobody has more respect for women than I do’ ‘Nobody has more respect for women than I do’ ‘Nobody has more respect for women than I do’ ‘Nobody has more respect for women than I do’ Donald J Trump

19. 1984 In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 Orwell imagined a totalitarian regime in which surveillance is total and the state rewrites history and airbrushes the past each and every day. The state seeks to reduce the power of thought by limiting the language. Newspeak, the language of the state repeals words. In restricting the power of words to articulate experience the population can be subjugated. The title is a reversal of the year in which it was written, 1948. The novel was not set in the future but the present.

20. 1984 Three of the key slogans of the state of Oceania in Orwell’s novel are emblazoned throughout the state. War Is Peace Freedom is Slavery Ignorance is Strength The repetition is key. Repeat it often enough and the people may start to believe it.

21. Slogans The simplicity of Trump’s appeal is clear. Keep it simple Speak in short sentences Re-inforce your key points

22. Trump’s Press Office Let me introduce you to Sean Spicer… Following the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the USA, press secretary Sean Spicer held a press conference in which he condemned news coverage of the ceremony. He claimed the inauguration crowd was bigger than any inauguration is history.

23. The Presidential Inauguaration The inauguration crowd on the left was present at the ceremony of Barak Obama. The crowd on the right were present at the ceremony of Donald Trump. Both photograph’s were taken from the same vantage point at the same point during the ceremony. They offer incontrovertible evidence that the crowd a Barak Obama’s inauguration was greater than that of Donald Trump’s.

24. The Argument Sean Spicer presented an altogether different picture at his first press conference. https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2017/jan/21/donald-trump-inauguration-crowd-size-media

25. Alternative Facts Let me introduce you to Kellyanne Conway. Kellyanne Conway is a spokeswoman for Donald Trump, President of the USA. In an interview on national TV Ms Conway… http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/conway-press-secretary-gave-alternative-facts-860142147643

26. The ‘Bowling Green Massacre’ Kellyanne Conway has form when discussing alternative facts. Last month, when discussing the migrant ban she raised the spectre of the Bowling Green Massacre. She told an interviewer: “There were two Iraqis who came here, got radicalized, joined Isis, and then were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green attack on our brave soldiers.” There was no attack, no massacre in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

27. The Sweden Incident Just this last week at a major rally in Florida Donald Trump highlighted a problem in Sweden: ‘We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible’. In fact there was no incident in Sweden on the night Trump identified. Crime figures remain stable in the country – as they have for over 10 years. One news agency noted that ‘ a wooden moose had attracted the unwanted attentions of a live moose’.

28. Fake News In a news conference just days ago Trump appeared to contend that: “we had a very smooth rollout of the travel ban” despite all evidence and announced a new executive order on the topic was coming next week. He assailed all reports on his aides’ ties to Russia as “a ruse” and “fake” while conceding that the cascade of leaks on the subject was real. The Guardian, Ben Jacobs, Friday 17th February

29. Part Three

30. Art & Lies Artists have yet to start to make work explicitly devoted to ‘Post-truth’, but many artists have made work that concerns ‘art and ‘lies. Allison Jackson, a British photographer has been exploring a counter-factual narrative in her work for many years. Now her work has begun to appear even more apposite and relevant. In this work she imagines a formal photograph to introduce the world to the child of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed.

31. One of the most telling stories to emerge recently concerns reports that the Kremlin have compromising pictures of Donald Trump ‘in flagrante’ in a hotel room in Moscow with Russian prostitutes and engaged in a ‘golden shower’ game.

32. Jackson plays on the much reported narcissism of the US president.

33. And his misogyny.

35. Fatescapes In Fatescapes, I remove (using a classic tool of digital work today AdobePhotoshop) the central motifs from historical documentary photographs - andthe main subject of these motifs, human bodies. I use images that have becomeour cultural heritage, constitute the memory of nations, serve as symbols or toolsof propaganda, and exemplify a specific approach to photography as a documentof the historical moment. I explore their purpose and function, and I ask about thefuture of this magic medium, and about human existence..Pavel Maria Smejkal, 2009

39. Art & Lies Many artists and writers have played with the idea of truth and lies. Art as an illusionistic medium is necessarily an abstraction. Plato thought illusionistic representation beyond contempt. Mimesis means to imitate (we derive the word mimicry from the Greek). Plato had little time for mimesis. He thought it a third rate ‘appearance’. Ideas were foremost. Only they could be held to be true.

40. Plato Plato offered a metaphor: There are beds and there are tables in the world. You understand the idea of one form from the idea of the other. If a maker/carpenter makes one then he does so based on an idea of a bed or a table ‘in accordance with the idea’. If a painter chooses to paint a bed or a table he merely depicts an appearance of the object which itself is based upon the idea. It is twice removed from the ideal. It is an ‘indistinct expression of the truth’. .

41. The Allegory of the Cave In his work The Republic Plato describes a dialogue between two thinkers (Gluacon & Socrates). In the story Socrates describes a cave in which a number of prisoners are chained and facing a blank wall. A fire projects the shadows of people who pass it onto the wall. The prisoners can see the shadows but not the fire or the people who pass in front of the fire and who cast the shadows. The prisoners ‘reality’ is merely a shadow of the real. They believe what they are accustomed to believe.

42. Nat Tate, 1928 - 1960 In 1998 the British author William Boyd published a biography on the forgotten American Modernist painter Nat Tate. The book was reviewed in the major periodicals. A week after its publication on the 01st April the work was revealed to be a hoax. Nat Tate never existed. This book was a fiction. Nat Tate, 1998 William Boyd

43. Mark Tansey Tansey’s painting depicts artists at their easels trying to document an explosive event that lasts for just the briefest of moments. The title alludes to the Action Painters of the 1950’s Abstract Expressionist movement and the monochromatic colour makes reference to photography, a media altogether better suited to the task of this particular representation.. Action Painting, 1991 Mark Tansey

44. Komar & Melamid:Most Wanted Russian émigré dissident artists Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid approached a professional marketing company to conduct a survey to discover just what most Americans would prefer to find in a painting. The survey was conducted in 1993. 1001 citizens were polled across the 48 contiguous states. And they painted a picture based on the findings of the survey. Most Wanted: United States, 1993 Komar & Melamid

45. Dexter Dalwood British artist Dexter Dalwood creates paintings that imagine the spaces famous people/celebrities inhabit. He has imagined the interiors/homes of the rock star Prince, the entertainer Liberace, British monarch Queen Elizabeth II and in this work the Greenhouse in which 1990’s Grunge rock star, Kurt Cobain committed suicide. A window box of posies, an inexpensive pool lounger and a set aside Fender guitar lie behind the gridded window offering a vista of Seatte; the bright lights and big city, the trappings of success appear a world away.

46. Paul M Smith Paul M Smith creates ‘fictions’. This photograph could be an image of ‘stag night’ or a very British male celebratory night out. It is a fictionalised image exploring masculinity and rituals, the high jinks and drinking games. It mimics the snapshot as a visual form. Make My Night Paul M Smith

47. Conclusion ‘What is Truth’ It was a question posed by Pontius Pilate at the trail of Jesus Christ and philosophers ever since have been trying to discover if we can ever know ‘the truth’. We expect to find a correspondence between an assertion and the way things are. Postmodernism has little faith in truth. In the arena of politics we expect our politicians to tell the truth and make judgements based upon ‘evidence’.

48. How do we navigate an era in which truth and meaning and authenticity have been evacuated, a world in which people are happy embrace a depthlessness and superficilaity and ignorance as part of the currency of political debate?

49. Notes: Milan Kundera’s novel has undergone a revision too. The 1st English translation published in 1982 and translated by Michael Henry Heim (my copy – my prefered copy) was not authorized by Kundera. A new edition first published in 1996 and translated by Aaron Asher has Kundera’s approval. Order a copy at your local bookseller and this is the copy you will be offered.

50. Notes: ‘But above all Bonaparte (Napoleon III) knows how to pose as…the representative of the lumpen proleatariat, to which he himself, his entourage, his government, and his army belong and whose main objective is to benefit itself and draw California lottery prizes from the state treasury’. Karl Marx The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon