BY MULUGETA GUDETA
As I was recently strolling in one of the downtown areas of Addis Ababa, my eyes caught an unusual slogan or motto that said: “Art for peace” or art should serve to promote peace. From the political perspective, this is a marvelous and timely slogan that calls on people to contribute to the maintenance of peace. This is not a call for arms but a call for fighting for peace by peaceful means or with art as a weapon of peace. Hence is the attractiveness and timeliness of the motto.
This brought to my mind an old simmering debate that was raging between the adherents of art for art’s sake school and those who supported the utilitarian mission of art, which is serving some cause. Nineteen century German philosopher Hegel articulated his idea of the relationship between art and beauty by saying that, it had three parts: “1) ideal beauty as such, or beauty proper, 2) the different forms that beauty takes in history, and 3) the different arts in which beauty is encountered. We will look first at Hegel’s account of ideal beauty as such.”
The direction of the debate shifted at the end of the 19th century when the issue as rather between art for art’s sake and utilitarian art. Hegel was not involved in this debate because he let before modernism came to the art world and made the debate between the supporters of the two trends relevant.
This debate was not only confined to Europe. Even here in our country, there were adherents of one of the two trends back in the 1960s when modernist artists like Gebre Kiristos Desta and Eskinder Bogossian who were both abstract painters that was considered decadent or alien by traditionalists who wanted to uphold the country’s traditional art.
At some point in the history of this country, there was an official slogan calling on artists to put their talent to promote economic development. It was called developmental art or “limatawi kinetibeb” in Amharic. At the time of its issuance the slogan had raised storms of opposing views for two main reasons. It was a kind of socialist realism art philosophy or a distant echo of that. “Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is characterized by the depiction of communist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat.”
First, government should not interfere in what artists do or what motivates their works of art and two, government should not imposed a philosophy on art, namely serving economic development. According to many critics of the time, art and the artist should be left free to choose their purposes and they should not be dictated to serve an official function. In relation to that, there were even sarcastic remarks and even outright ridicule by the strong advocates of art for its own sake.
The philosophy of utilitarian art dates back to the time of socialist realism in the former communist countries where government imposed policies on art establishments as well as artists and virtually forced them to produce works of art that promote class struggle, socialist life, economic productivity and the cult of socialist leaders. Artists who reflected contrary views were harassed, persecuted and even arrested and sent to the Gulag.
The end of this period in the history of socialist realism art came with the end of the Soviet era and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The debate between the two camps may have subsided but it was not completely terminated. Right now there are academics that stand on both sides of the philosophical and artistic barricade. By the same token, the philosophy of limatawi kintibeb has disappeared with the downfall of the last government in Ethiopia.
Art has its philosophy as much as life has a philosophy that is guiding it. As if to stress the point Aristotle said a long time ago that “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Why are we living in the world is as an interesting philosophical question as what purpose art is filling. Art philosophy is not however the same as art criticism. Art criticism is concerned with the evaluation a work of art and increases our understanding of it whereas art philosophy underlines the basic raison or purpose and objective of art. Asking what mission does art serve is not the same as judging a painting by Picasso whether it reflects cubism or surrealism.
The debate between the adherents of the philosophy of art for art’s sake and those who maintain that art should serve a certain purpose is an old one that is not still resolved because both camps have valid reason to maintain their respective positions. According to Wikipedia “Art for art’s sake, the usual English rendering of l’art pour l’art, a French slogan from the latter part of the 19th century, is a phrase that expresses the philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only ‘true’ art, is divorced from any didactic, moral, political, or utilitarian function.
On the other hand, the advocates of useful art or art’s sake that fulfills certain objective or promotes a given moral position often say that there is no art which is devoid of a utilitarian function. According to them art for art’s sake is as nonsense as for food’s sake because you do not eat food just for the benefit of food itself but to alleviate hunger or build the body. The believers in utilitarian art maintain that “Utilitarian art is art that has function as its priority, and yet is still aesthetically pleasing.” For them art can be as useful as it can be beautiful or has high aesthetic value.
Irrespective of the apparently irreconcilable nature of the debate between the two camps and the ongoing arguments artists who are following either of the two philosophies have many times produced impressive works of art. This may be the reason why the debate between the two looked rather friendly unlike in other fields such as political or economic philosophy, where a history of violent quarrels has marked the process.
Modern Ethiopian artists rebuked the views of the traditionalists by saying that the latter could not understand the significance of modern art or that they were ignorant of the growth of artistic styles. According to them a layman who would call Picasso’s art absurd or nonsense only exposes his utter ignorance of the dynamics of art.
Nowadays, Ethiopian artists are producing their works in freedom or as they like and the old debate between the two rival trends in art criticism seems to have dissipated either for lack of art critics or art connoisseurs. It would be safe to say that both art for art’s sake and utilitarian art in the form of abstractionism or realism continue to have a free ride in the country’s art scene.
Both schools of artistic thoughts may be behind fantastic works of art. The late Afewerk Tekle is perhaps the best artist of Ethiopia even though he did his paintings in the realistic style. Both Eskunder Bogossian and Gebre Kiristos Desta continue to enjoy celebrity status despite the fact that both passed away a long time ago. This is a clear proof that both modernism and traditionalism are appealing to the wider public and not to the artistic elites alone.
The enduring influence of both artists could perhaps be explained by the fact that both of them based their works on Ethiopian realities and Ethiopian lives. What made socialist realism art that was widespread during the Derg era was the fact that it was a borrowed idea and something that is alien to Ethiopian lives as the philosophy behind it was.
The defect of socialist realism started with its conception that Ethiopia was a land of the proletariat or industrial workers. Ethiopia was and still is an overwhelmingly land of famers and if you want to celebrate human labor artistically you should start from farmers’ lives. That was why the late Lemma Guya was more appealing to the art loving public than any other artist because he celebrated rural life and the farmers in his works.
Artistic philosophies and fashions may come and go in the art world but what endures is the work that appeals to the life and dreams of human beings and not to a certain class of people. The ideal approach would be to leave art and art works to the appreciation of artists and the art loving public instead of trying this or that style on the artists or force them to produce a certain kind of art dubbed “superior by the art establishment.
One of the late Ethiopian poets and dramatists whose name I would like not to mention was once asked to write poems that could celebrate socialism in Ethiopia. His answer was characteristic and witty: “Respected gentlemen, he said, you cannot dictate an artist or writer to produce this or that kind of work because only the artist knows what to do with art.” This may still be relevant to our time.
The Ethiopian Herald September 10/2022
