#dickgaughan

Rejecting art for art's sake

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it. -Bertold Brecht

“Art for art’s sake is a philosophy of the well fed” -Cao Yu

  Dick Gaughan (a wonderful Marxist folksinger from Scotland) uses these two quotations to frame his discussion on the purpose of making art. He’s making the case that you’ve gotta think about why your making music – that you need to centre art-practice in specific values. This is something that we keep coming back to in loosestrife – how is our art practice, both in process and product, something that challenges and resists hegemonic norms? And there’s no overarching answer to this question, it seems. Rather, there’s continued negotiation surrounding what spaces we occupy, how we occupy them, whom we are speaking to, how we’re saying it, how to be good to ourselves and others while makin’ music, and on and on and on…

In this little talk, Gaughan asks us to remember that art doesn’t happen in a vacuum and, because of this, we need to think about whose interests our art serves. From a Marxist perspective, he’s interested in music for working class people from the perspective of working class people (check his discussion of Sting as a progressive songwriter!?). He asks these questions when making songs (I think they’re good ones to ask!):

-What am I trying to say?

-Who am I trying to say it to?

-Why do I want to say it to them?

In centring songwriting on a clear, political purpose, he’s rejecting art for art’s sake. Art has a purpose, for sure, but its purpose needs to be aligned with the ongoing struggle for justice in our communities and selves.