Usable for whom? Reflections on public, political art

Abstract

Drawn from Larne Gogarty’s doctoral dissertation, Usable Pasts: Social Practice and State Formation in American Art offers a concise comparative history of New Deal political theater, dance, and photography juxtaposed with more recent works from the 1990s to 2000s. What results is a wellresearched, albeit limited, exploration of how large-scale, social justice-oriented art has evolved in the United States. Gogarty’s title references a concept that gained traction during the Depression, as politicians and community organizers sought to draw on the past as a galvanizing force to create a cohesive sense of community in a time of widespread hardship. That is to say, the past must be artfully reframed in order to make it “usable” toward other aims, whether that be galvanizing workers to join a labor union post-WWI or gathering community members in an economically divested Southern neighborhood in the early 2000s. While the book doesn’t necessarily make a convincing argument about art’s role in state formation, it does provide an engaging history of public, political art. Early in the book’s introduction, Gogarty defines the range of terminology used to describe artists who work with social relations as a source or medium, often artists who create work with “non-artists” (p. 9) from a particular social group or identity. Gogarty notes, “Some of the labels devised for this work include participatory art, collaborative art, socially engaged art, dialogical art, new genre public art, relational aesthetics, littoral art, collective artistic praxis and social practice” (p. 8). Choosing the term “social practice,” Gogarty explains this selection based on its wide acceptance with few attachments to particular scholars, artists, or curators. As a multidisciplinary, community-engaged artist, I have long held a healthy skepticism of these terms, especially the ways they come in and out of fashion, and their own usable past as a conduit for art market speculators to commodify what would generally be considered community activism with some level of aesthetic appeal. For instance, if the Black Panther