Representation

In their 2018 paper Preference for realistic art predicts support for Brexit sociologists Noah Carl, Lindsay Richard and Anthony Heath presented evidence that research participants who voted Leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum were 15 – 20% more likely to exhibit a preference for ‘realistic’ painting. On the face of things this makes perfect sense; many Brexit voters are ‘small-c’ conservatives, committed to ‘traditional’ conservative values and therefore, one would assume, ‘traditional’ painting. Historically or traditionally, what has been celebrated as ‘Art’ until the 20th century was broadly realistic, figurative or representational art. The development of Western culture has historically been tied into the development of a ‘realist’ art. From the three-point perspective of the enlightenment to the invention of the camera in the industrial revolution, ‘Art History’ (euro- phallo-centric art history) has been, like the society from which it emerges, a slow progression towards more realistic, productive and exploitative modes of capture. As Carol Yinghua Lu and Liu Ding’s text on Socialist Realism and the text ‘Notes on Abstraction and Figuration’ outline, there is no ignoring the link between art and politics. Because of this inexorable tie between exploitation and representation, the exploiters (those with the means of representation) have always been in charge of what and who is represented. The result of this relationship is made grossly clear in artworks such as Rex Whistler’s The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meat, painted in 1927, which surrounds diners in the Tate Britain’s private restaurant and depicts images of enslaved black children. Unless you are Queen Victoria or a Dutch merchant, the idea of acquiring agency through figurative or representational artwork has historically, it seems, been out of the question…
https://www.librarystack.org/representation/?ref=unknown