| Contemporary activist artists inspire emotional and analytic engagement with social issues by crafting resonant objects, images, or environments that help viewers "contest [the] secret advocacy of the quotidian" (Agger 1992, p.196). Yet, as theorist Grant Kester articulates, activist art "has reached a point at which it can sustain, and benefit from, a response that is supportive of its goals without sacrificing a critical distance " (Kester, 1998a, p. 10, my italics.) In this dissertation, I draw on sociological theories and methods in order to provide four kinds of critical distance about activist art. First, I clarify the activist and artistic aims of three ideal types of activist art: social movement art, new genre public art, and subversive palette art. Second, I focus on three case studies, based on participant observation and interviews with practitioners. A third level of critical draws on the sociology of art to explore the impact of funding and institutional alliances on activist art practices. Fourth, I use social movement and social theories, namely the work of Alberto Melucci and Nancy Fraser, to contextualize a range of activist strategies. I discover a correlation between art world affiliations and the ways in which activist artists negotiate aesthetic aims, social content, and systems of artistic production and distribution in their work. Not surprisingly, the less investment in legitimate art worlds, the greater the amount of activist flexibility. I also discover that legitimate art world institutions in the United States are willing to address injustices of recognition more so than injustices of distribution. I conclude that activist artists benefit from having a sophisticated social analysis; from developing unusual alliances and long term collaborations; from skillfully negotiating with institutions and funders; and from being clear about their own agendas. Methodologically, my research contributes to the development of the sociology of art, illustrating the possibilities of participant observation with artists. In my conclusion, I make links between activist art and recent efforts to make the discipline of sociology more "public."... |
