Metropolis M — Will the real cultural Marxist please stand up?

KIRAC defended against its admirers

By Thijs Lijster

If every age produces its own form of art criticism, KIRAC’s is surely among those best suited to today’s world, with its fierce, opposing positions. According to Thijs Lijster, the films offer a moralising weather vane that cheerfully swings in several directions. The duo seems above all intent on showing how sick the system is. Taking their latest film, which examines the Van Abbemuseum, as his starting point, Lijster explores the struggle between left and right in the Dutch art world.

KIRAC has been making trouble in Dutch art criticism for several years now. Under that name, short for Keeping It Real Art Critics, artist Stefan Ruitenbeek and his partner, archaeologist Kate Sinha, sometimes assisted by Tarik Sadouma, comment on the art world and especially on all the chatter surrounding it. In short films that are by turns funny, silly, sharp, vulgar and intelligent, they use images to reflect on the psychology and hidden motives of art professionals, or confront them in museums and at art fairs: a kind of John Berger meets Rutger Castricum. The films address all sorts of things, but a recurring thread now seems to be an aversion to “political correctness” and what they see as gratuitous drivel about inclusivity and diversity. That aversion was further fuelled when an invitation from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie was withdrawn following complaints by students.

In their latest film, KIRAC #16: King Philip and the Pied Flycatcher, they confront Charles Esche. This was almost inevitable: for years, Esche has been staging explicitly political, programmatic exhibitions at the Van Abbemuseum. That would seem to make him KIRAC’s ideal target. In King Philip, KIRAC is invited by collector and Van Abbe donor Philip to screen a film and debate Esche at a meeting of the museum’s sponsors’ association. During the meeting, KIRAC shows excerpts from an interview they previously recorded with Esche, followed by commentary from Tarik, who calls Esche a “communist” and “Bolshevik” who does not understand that art is about perception and wants to turn the museum into a kind of community centre. After the film, a discussion about art and engagement erupts with Esche and the funders. It is mainly awkward and not particularly profound. Nevertheless, the film raises interesting questions about the status of left-wing engagement in the Dutch art world.

Cultural Marxism

KIRAC itself is not at all easy to place on the political spectrum. This is primarily because its films are never entirely neatly rounded off, leaving you with more questions than answers. Nor should we overlook their performative element: KIRAC’s members play roles, and aesthetic choices are made in the process. The booming, pointedly ironic voice-over; Ruitenbeek lying in bed like a kind of Édouard Manet Olympia while discussing Bert Kreuk’s Art Flipper (2017) in KIRAC #12; Tarik as the disruptive real-life Twitter troll; and Sinha as the serene oracle providing philosophical and psychological interpretations of everything. It is art criticism as appropriation art and intervention art.

Nevertheless, their films received a warm welcome on right-wing platforms such as GeenStijl and The Post Online. TPO editor-in-chief Bert Brussen even makes a brief appearance in KIRAC #16 with a poor imitation of Hans Teeuwen. That is of course partly down to the media-friendly Sinha, affectionately called “art girl Kate” on GeenStijl, but certainly also to their attacks on the “left-wing art elite”. This is not entirely without danger, because your enemies’ enemies are not necessarily your friends. Martin Koolhoven, who introduced the premiere at De Balie, unwittingly gave away the secret of KIRAC’s success: for someone who knows little about the art world, what could be more enjoyable than having their suspicion confirmed that it is all bullshit, that everyone is corrupt, and that they are a bunch of champagne socialists covering for one another?

Criticism of art as a “left-wing hobby” is almost as old as the historical avant-garde, but in recent years it has become more intense. Accusations directed at the white-wine-sipping elite now even come from Prime Minister Mark Rutte, of the white-wine party VVD. According to Thierry Baudet, all contemporary art is left-wing, as are the universities and the media. The darkest variant of this criticism comes from critics of “cultural Marxism”, a term belonging to a right-wing conspiracy theory that originated in the antisemitic underbelly of the internet but has since been made respectable by more mainstream right-wing opinion-makers. According to this theory, left-wing intellectuals such as Theodor W. Adorno and Antonio Gramsci sought to infiltrate cultural institutions in order to overthrow capitalism from within. This plan is supposedly now complete, since these sectors are entirely controlled by the left.

The kettle

Sigmund Freud tells the anecdote of a man whose neighbour accused him of damaging a kettle he had lent him. The man replied that he had never had the kettle, that he had returned it undamaged, and, moreover, that it had already been broken when the neighbour lent it to him. We can respond to the accusation of cultural Marxism in the Dutch art world with the same kettle logic: 1) there are no Marxists, 2) they are completely harmless, and 3) the critics of cultural Marxism are the real Marxists.

First, the number of Marxists in Dutch cultural institutions is not all that high, or low, depending on your political preference. The view that art should be morally and politically neutral has a long tradition here. We know not only Johan Thorbecke’s principle that politics should not intervene; even for the social democrat Emanuel Boekman, art’s value lay above all in aesthetic experience, and the task of politics was merely to make that experience accessible. In this respect, KIRAC’s position is more mainstream than Esche’s: the vast majority of Dutch museums programme respectable, apolitical exhibitions. There may indeed be relatively more people with left-wing leanings working in the sector, but that is not so strange. The financial sector will have relatively more VVD voters, while the agricultural sector will have more CDA supporters; nobody is calling for that “cartel” to be broken up.

Second, insofar as there are Marxists working in cultural institutions, it must regrettably be said that they are not doing much of a job. While criticism of cultural Marxists swells, we simultaneously see the political landscape and public debate shifting to the right. It would therefore make more sense to reverse the conspiracy theory: as the left’s actual influence diminishes, people find an outlet or a refuge in intellectual circles, at universities and within the art world. Again, this is nothing new: after the failed revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, art was also regarded as a kind of substitute politics. What is strange is the assumption that this would automatically lead to social upheaval. Of course it does not, and we might also ask whether the art world is the appropriate place for it at all. As Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen writes in After the Great Refusal: Essays on Contemporary Art, Its Contradictions and Difficulties (2018): “Contemporary art is no longer merely the research and development department of advanced capitalism. Instead, it is an integral part of an all-encompassing experience economy, on the same level as advertising, fashion, music, television and games.”

This is illustrated as beautifully as it is painfully in KIRAC #16, where we see the socially engaged curator Esche expounding his critical vision of society while surrounded by millionaires who wholeheartedly agree with him. Ultimately, then, the target is not Esche himself but the contradiction within the system in which he operates: while contemporary art preaches world peace or even revolution, it thrives within an art system sustained by big capital. This analysis resembles that of the Slovenian art historian Beti Žerovc, who, in her book When Attitudes Become the Norm (2015), examined the qualifications demanded of curators. On the basis of interviews with several star curators, including Esche, and an analysis of various curatorial training programmes, she concludes that the contemporary curator must, on the one hand, be a networker and entrepreneur who negotiates with collectors, philanthropists, dignitaries, leading artists and policymakers. At the same time, however, the curator must be a dreamer who stands up for the weak and marginalised, and seeks to unleash a revolution by changing people’s hearts and minds. In the words of one curator: “Keep your feet planted firmly on the ground with your head up in the clouds at the same time.”

There is considerable tension between these two demands. The same person who one moment, quoting Slavoj Žižek and Gilles Deleuze, still wants to overthrow the capitalist system, is the next sitting in a meeting with representatives of big capital or showing them around an exclusive preview. KIRAC #16 captures this strikingly. Quite apart from whether this is a form of hypocrisy or pragmatism, Žerovc finds it remarkable that the art world scarcely reflects on this contradiction, or on the institutional and economic conditions within which social engagement takes place. If there is one criticism that can be made of the so-called cultural Marxist, then, it is that he is not Marxist enough: in Marxist jargon, he is concerned only with the superstructure, not the base. The influence of these so-called cultural Marxists is vastly overestimated. The Marxists are not undermining “our” culture; they could not knock the skin off a rice pudding.

Third, it is ironic that the right-wing detractors of cultural Marxism are, in fact, all Gramscians, in the sense that they regard cultural institutions as a battleground for “hegemony”, where they now seek to take power from the supposedly left-wing elite. Baudet once said at a party gathering: “All cultural and social institutions in the Netherlands have been infiltrated to a very great extent by left-wing activists. We must try, very slowly, to get our own people behind all those little desks.” When you read lines like these, you begin to wonder who the real cultural Marxist is here.

Institutions

KIRAC’s criticism is less one-dimensional than this and goes a step further. What happens in KIRAC #16 could be understood as an ideological critique of ideological critique: KIRAC exposes the way in which the system in which the engaged artist or curator works exposes the myth of pure art. To an uncomprehending audience, the commenters on GeenStijl and TPO, this may look like the age-old accusation that “talking left while lining your pockets on the right”, but I think it is subtler. In the interview, Esche stresses that all human relationships involve a transaction, on which Ruitenbeek comments: “If you deny that transaction, you’re pathetic. OK. But what if you regard the transactional as the core, place it above the human or the artistic?” That ultimately seems to be the heart of their criticism: this kind of ideological critique flattens all art.

In that sense, strange as it may sound, KIRAC’s latest film seems to be as much a defence of the art institution as an institutional critique. Institutions are, as the French sociologist Luc Boltanski put it, bodiless beings: entities without bodies, presumed able to consider things from a transhistorical outsider’s perspective. In practice, of course, this is impossible, since these institutions house flesh-and-blood human beings with bodies that are male, female, black or white, and so on. Institutional critique can therefore be salutary, correcting a degree of bias within institutions. But things change when the institution itself is criticised, when “science” as a whole is regarded as left-wing, or people talk of “D66 judges” or a “fake parliament”. Yes, there are vested interests; yes, there are machinations; there is money and corruption. But that does not tell the whole story about art. KIRAC seems, in fact, to be resisting precisely that sentiment. “Where does this distrust of art come from?” Sinha asks herself.

That distrust is probably greater among the fans commenting online than it is in Esche. So the question remains where this critique of institutional critique takes us: back to pure art, or into a black hole? The latter nevertheless seems to be the case on the right-wing platforms, which distrust art institutions and think contemporary art is bullshit anyway. By contrast, KIRAC seems instead to defend art’s “double character”, to speak with Adorno: that art is both a fait social and autonomous.

Does KIRAC’s artistic play with art criticism absolve it of responsibility, or of the need to take a clear position? At the very least, KIRAC prompts thought and self-reflection, which are, after all, the hallmarks of good art and good criticism. In dealing with its right-wing fans, KIRAC may be employing Michael Corleone’s strategy in The Godfather II: “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” But, as I have said, this is not a strategy without danger. Cultural Marxism is a fine term for a right-wing drinks-party conversation, but it does nothing to help the art world move forward.

Thijs Lijster is a cultural philosopher affiliated with the University of Groningen and the University of Antwerp. His publications include the essay collections De grote vlucht inwaarts and Kijken, proeven, denken (De Bezige Bij), and the pamphlet Verenigt U! Arbeid in de 21ste eeuw (Prometheus).

All photographs are stills from KIRAC #16: King Philip and the Pied Flycatcher, which can be watched on youtube.com.