Capitalist Realism is Corrupting Art

Mark Fisher's idea of Capitalist Realism could mean that art is dying again. What is Capitalist Realism and what are its implications on art and the artist?

[JJMcCullough]

Some of this reminds me of "The Rebel Sell, " which was a book in the early 2000s that made a similar argument about how rebellion and even post-modernism inevitably become commodified and commercialized in a capitalist society.

[tifrap]

When you observe Art as a system of commodification all you will ever see is its relationship to capital. As a strategy it will condemn you to being a trader even if you call yourself an artist.

Art can also be observed as a system of therapeutics, whereby it has little economic value but huge benefit to the individual that practices the processes of art.

This is why children love to draw. For every “valuable” artist there exist millions of people engage in drawing and painting.
The day that you stop thinking about art as a championship sport but start considering it like Yoga will be the end of your anger.

[ToastyFruitcake]

Thank you. Honestly. I'd always thought I would 'fail' as an artist because im just slower to produce things I think are up to my standards in a world where there are countless people that draw exactly the way I do but a million times faster. I'm outcompeted in every way and in my mind would never get picked to work on projects or be commissioned. The pressure of me 'wasting time' pretty much consuming my life. This video is the first thing in a long time that has really inspired any confidence, putting my defeated 'I don't care if i don't get a job in the industry, I just want to make things people enjoy' into a new light of optimism. I had tied my own value to that of my art, thank you for helping me realise what a mistake that was.

[carolynr]

I feel like my drive to create is stunted by capitalism. Instead of just painting or drawing, I get caught up in wondering if someone would buy it or not and if I’m wasting my time and money

[eday]

The conceptualising, filming, editing and effort to bring this to life was so worth it. Excellent and accessible. Solidarity and appreciation from Australia.

[Israfil]

"explaining the value of art is like explaining the value of money" Really good episode here 👍

[ao_qd]

The clip of the monkey smashing bones while the Rosetta Stone flies across the screen is what happens in my head when I try to translate an idea from English to Vietnamese and then to Spanish.

[jillfryer]

Yesterday I just happened to leaf through a book of paintings by 106 painters working 1960-1970 in Australia. I was astounded how brilliant, innovative, switched on to the wider world of art and technically expert they were. Also astounded by the fact that I had never heard of most of them and the more famous few, (say 6) were by no means the best and and at least one high earner's piece was not very good at all compared to the rest. Charisma, notoriety, celebrity are vastly stronger influences on recognition and price than talent, anyway, so it seems. You want riches from your art? You sell yourself too. In whatever package you perceive your market wants.

[caddywampa]

I'd be the last on earth to defend capitalism, but the idea that capital A "Art" is or should be a "pure" manifestation of the artist's inner self, or exploration of ideas and form divorced from the audience and the economic reality in which it is produced- that narrative is a product of modernism, and to my mind, was itself part of the marketing used to sell it. The european and American artists of the late 19th and early 20th century had to sell their work to survive, as every artist had before and after them. For all of recorded human history, going back to the earliest civilizations visual art was a trade used to produce luxury goods and monuments to immortalize the wealthy and powerful. In an era of rapid technological progress, changing social values, wealth shifting from landed aristocrats to industrialists and merchants, and the rise of mass reproduction the artists of the "modernist" era had to change their approach to how they sold their work and services, and the various artistic movements of the era and their manifestos were key to doing that. And even if in the future we manage to move so far beyond capitalism that everyone's needs are met by collectively owned automated systems, and we can all spend our time as we please, I still cannot imagine most art becoming some kind of isolated, purist form, for the simple reason that people crave attention as much as money. An artist cannot help but be influenced, consciously or not, by thoughts of the audience for the work, and what they will find engaging. And well they should - art is after all a means of communication, which requires multiple parties. If the artist doesn't care what the audience thinks of the work, who the audience will be, or whether anyone will even care to look at it, they might as well keep it to themself. Drawing, painting sculpture etc make a good hobby, but if "Art" is what we put in a gallery or on public display, then it becomes communication.
In the contemporary "art" market, it does seem that any notion of quality, skill, or meaning are completely divorced from the economic value of the work. Which, if anything, makes the artist MORE free to say whatever want, however they want, since that is unrelated to what they can sell it for. The creation of the work and its marketing are two utterly separate jobs. If what's being sold is more or less a complicated autograph, and it's the name that sells, the economic value really comes from having a winning personality, and a good sales pitch (or agent).

[colonel__klink]

Interesting that you left one of the biggest ideologies out of progressivism when you described it, the most "progressive" ideology of them all, Socialism in the Marxist legacy. Marxism is inherently Hegelian (which is why figures like Zizek describe themselves as Hegelian and all the greatest Marxist leaders wrote treatises on contradictions.) This means that there is a presupposition of absolute truth, a requirement of "progress", the effort of change to reach a definable and known goal. In essence in the past century we saw a duel between two "progressive" ideologies who thought that they could shape the perfect world. This was the era of the ideology of growth which had replaced the previous era of the ideologies of eternal stagnant harmony. In the 1970s, the left discovered the truth, there is no grand perfect point in time, that doesn't exist and we will never reach it. You can see the effect of this discovery on our culture, the 1970s were a dark decade for art.

What replaced it is a beautiful idea that is easy for the powerful to abuse. In truth post modernism is almost like a Hegelian synthesis result of the two previous systems, entropy and growth (to have growth you have to be growing INTO something. ) Post modernism at it's core argues that because the world is always changing there is no perfect state, no perfect society, no perfect way to do things because once you achieve them the world changes again. In Marxist terms, the contradictions of society will always be with us and you cannot ever conceivably resolve them to finally fix society, you can only sole current contradictions and leave it to the next generation to solve the new contradictions solving these ones created. Or in more simple language, the only ideal society is one that is always evolving and changing, a society always in a process of being reborn, a phoenix society.

Of course without a definable goal it was easy for bankers in particular but also industrial leaders to abuse this in the US. They said naked competition in all levels of society would be the natural mechanism that reforms society as it's needed. Competition not just on the market but within government itself. Competition in all things. What they left out is that there is no such thing as a free market and as someone wins they accrue power to skew the market to win more eventually resulting in monopoly. In other words these people in the 1980s laid the philosophical groundwork to rig society in their favor and shame anyone who complains even though this is not necessarily compelled by the core concepts of post modernism.

[JohhnyBoyNu]

I had heard a friend talking about Capitalist Realist before but hearing you put the ideas together in a video really make it so much more interesting to me. Ill definitely still go read it but the ideas presented are definitely really cool. I like how he seems to call out the commercialization of like the punk movement, how social change movements can become a product which is like hip and cool.

[subcynic]

Fisher's book 'The Weird and The Eerie' is probably his greatest gift to visual artists.

[libertyprime]

Actually this is why I like to buy art from Goodwill or estate sales. I like to get unique art that is well done by people who are rather unknown.

[GNS-S]

Thanks for being thoughtful and original and not regurgitating the same stale bullshit that the rest of youtube is full of

[kathleenl]

I feel like there could have been a better choice of paintings for the price comparison clip, because unless this is some kind of double-switcharoo thing, I immediately raised an eyebrow at the initial prices. There can be factors that are invisible to people who are not knowledgeable in art-market trends, such as who the artist is, who the subject is, when it was made, whether it sparked a trend or reflects a currently marketable trend, but it's easy to see on a surface level that the painting on the left has far more detail, and judging by the texture of the paint, is physically larger as well. Even from a crass consumerism level, it has a more timeless subject matter and you can imagine a not-particularly-art-minded millionaire picking it up to "brighten up their living room" far easier than the one on the right.

Additionally I feel it's misleading to imply that art's assumed "purpose" has ALWAYS been to present some unfiltered self-expression of an artist's soul, when that in itself is an idea younger than capitalism. Most things acknowledged as great works of art throughout history weren't made by self-motivated ascetic hermits expressing themselves, as much as artisans expressing their skills in exchange for, you guessed it, patronage.

It's correct that making of art is an inherently human activity that predates and exists outside of capitalism, but you say it yourself, you could argue that there's no meaning to anything. If the most "true and pure" application of art is the artist's self expression without thought towards external expectations or reception, is that really more meaningful than a parent making a doll for their child? Than a person coming up with a song or a story to entertain their community? Than them painting a tribute to their god on the walls of a cave?

[alessandromezzavilla]

I mean, you do realize though that ever since its beginnings of art and up to romanticism, the artist was an artisan that worked on commission? It is with the romantics (who generally were either rich or downright part of the nobility, and thus had no need for a protector or for jobs on commission) that the idea of the artist as an independent genius, with a privileged relationship to the world emerged. Sure, capitalism twisted the relationship between art and money in its own ways, but it is historically wrong and naive to blame it all on capitalism and think that poets, painters and sculptors from ancient, medieval and modern times were working for the sake of art and with no relationship with money. Maybe the only other pre-romantic instance of the artist viewed as having a privileged, special relationship with the world was the poet for ancient greeks, for it had a sort of religious/prophetic character to its persona. But even then, in ancient greece sculptors and painters were artisans just as much as the guy that was making you shoes. Dante travelled all his life looking for courts to live at after he was banned from Florence (where he was sort of rich) and stripped of his stuff, where he would basically be fed and sheltered in exchange of his work and prestige, not because "he was an artist and people liked his art or something". The specter of poverty and of having to always seek a protector/source of monetary income was always present in the mind of the artist. Besides, one must say that it is with the explosion of capitalism post ww2 that progressively more people had the tools of trying to be artists themselves, marketing their own art and whatnot. This is not to defend capitalism per se, but it indeed is more complex as you seem to make it out to be.

[kodoy]

Great video. The gravitational pull of commodification is hardwired into our brains at this point. Even if we don't intend to sell a piece of art, we are still subconsciously concerned about its sale potential and market reach before we're even sure of what we're making. It'd affect how we're perceived as performers and professionals, after all, and we are ourselves assets with labor value.

We may never truly separate art from product again, but we can definitely fight that pull with awareness. That's where this video comes in too, this is important stuff man and I'm happy about coming across this channel. There's beautiful things to talk about even when it comes to the most souldrained pieces of our age, we can recycle bankrun entertainment and turn it into interesting shit. And we do, constantly. Young ppl are figuring it out. Anticapitalist critique is becoming a serious topic of conversation again. I think art will be fine and so will we

[willsetchell]

Glad I finally watched this and I'm definitely going to check out the book now. I've grappled with these ideas internally for a while, especially after reading a translation of Art Without Capitalism by Francois Hers a few years back. Hers proposed something like an irl paetron before that even existed and while I do think it can help, as you point out, it's still within that value creation framework that will distort the work over time.

The best solution I can see is simple - don't sell work. Exhibit, create, try to get yourself out there but dont actually sell work unless forced to by conditions of exhibition entry and only so you can reach more people. Instead of selling, find a job that allows you to make work - teach, run workshops, do a part time job in a cafe or office or whatever will pay enough to allow you to buy materials and time. We can only rebel from outside of the system, otherwise, like Banksy, the very acts of rebellion will be sold and the point utterly lost.

[thecandlemaker]

It's a big mistake to think that the rebellion represented by British punk rock was not manufactured and sponsored by the very forces it seemed, on the surface level, to rebel against. Punk was born, spent a few years in a comfy little niche it carved for itself, and then it was noticed by the big bosses of the music industry who immediately recognised its financial potential and proceeded to exploit it. The Sex Pistols screamed from the stage how much they hated the system while filling the system's pockets with unprecedented amounts of money. And their target audience wasn't nearly sharp enough to notice the contradiction. The perfect crime.

[erica]

I enjoyed hearing your thoughts on this and thanks for the pdf 😊