Romantic Politics and Revolutionary Art

Abstract

This paper looks at avant-garde movements in 20th century art in relation to the romantic desire for a radical transformation of society by aesthetic means. The author argues that the avant-gardes carried forward a romantic project whose roots can be traced back at least as far as Schiller’s letters “On the Aesthetic Education of Mankind,” and that in spite of claims of radically new aesthetic departures, these movements did not fundamentally break with this dimension of romanticism. This is particularly apparent in many of the avant-garde manifestos, which appropriate a sub-genre whose origins are overtly political. In recent decades critics have been on guard against the parallel risks involved in the “aestheticization of politics.” It has widely been observed that power often works by thralldom and that the spectacle was one of fascism’s preferred means of persuasion. The rhetoric of the manifesto is spectacular in its own way, but poses a more difficult case: neither the fact of its association with emancipatory ideals nor a pedigree that derives from the writings of Marx and Engels proved sufficient to defend it against appropriation for authoritarian aims. The reason, I suggest, is that the manifesto took art outside of history; it carried a version of the romantic hope that an artist-class could transform the world where the working class had not. In conclusion, I propose that while the manifesto has long ceased to serve as a viable form for the expression of aesthetic or political views, we have yet to imagine a set of goals that could replace its romantic political hopes.