13. You Don't Have to Square That Circle: Ben Davis on Art & Politics

Can art really create political change? What are the conditions that make this possible if and when it happens? What are the social ingredients that make for good art scenes? ...and what the hell was up with the DNC last year? In a sobering interview, Ben Davis, National Art Critic for ArtNet News and self-avowed Marxist, reminds us to be realistic about art's ability to change a world it is only one small part of—but also to rid ourselves of the expectation that in order to be good, art must change the world. WHERE TO READ BEN'S WORK -https://news.artnet.com/about/ben-davis-93 -Davis, Ben. 9.5 Theses on Art and Class. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books, 2013. WORKS CITED -Mayer, Jane. Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Reprint edition. Anchor, 2017. -Thompson, Nato. Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the Twenty-First Century. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2014. -Piketty, Thomas. Capital and Ideology. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, 2020. -Harney, Stefano, and Fred Moten. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. 1st edition. Wivenhoe: Autonomedia, 2013. -English, Darby. Art Historian Darby English on Why the New Black Renaissance Might Actually Represent a Step Backwards. Interview by Folasade Ologundudu, February 21, 2021. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/darby-english-1947080. -Smucker, Jonathan. Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals. AK Press, 2017. -Davis, Ben. “Alice Neel’s Communism Is Essential to Her Art. You Can See It in the ‘Battlefield’ of Her Paintings, and Her Cruel Portrait of Her Son.” Artnet News, April 15, 2021. https://news.artnet.com/opinion/alice-neel-was-a-commie-a-battlefield-of-humanism-1958503. -Althusser, Louis. For Marx. Translated by Ben Brewster. London ; New York: Verso, 2006. MUSIC -Theme music and consultation: Georgina Rossi, www.georginarossi.com -Interlude: Béla Bartók, String Quartet No. 1 in A Minor SPONSOR Capital A is sponsored by Shoestring Press: www.shoestringpressny.com