Idols of the Market: Modern Iconoclasm and the Fundamentalist Spectacle

245 Pages·2009·42.017 MB·English

by  Sven Lütticken

Modern Iconoclasm and the Fundamentalist Spectacle
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
WELCOME TO THE IMAGE WARS
11
Chapter One
MYTHS OF ICONOCLASM
27
Chapter Two
FROM ONE SPECTACLE TO ANOTHER
57
Chapter Three
ATTENDING TO THINGS
(SOME MORE MATERIAL THAN OTHERS)
91
Chapter Four
LIVING WITH ABSTRACTION
125
Chapter Five
VEILED REVELATION
159
Illustrations
189
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PREFACE
This project was first conceived in 2005 as an exhibition; when I took it
up again the following year, it met with massive institutional disinterest. It
then morphed into a book, maintaining an essayistic and interventionist
rather than purely academic-character. This book seeks to surpass the now
dominant representation of iconoclasm as a pathological phenomenon grimly
situated in the past, or in retrograde cultures. Rather than relegate it to his
tory, my aim is to historicize iconoclasm to the point where its potential for
the present situation becomes apparent.
That the study of art is intimately linked to that of religion was driven
home in my student days, when Peter van Dael instructed me in medieval
Christian theories of the image and Carel Blotkamp discussed Mondrian in
the light of theosophy. Now circumstances have forced me to "theologize"
to an unprecedented degree; no doubt I have stumbled from time to time,
but I hope that I make good use of the authors who have guided me through
this field, even when I immodestly beg to differ from them. A kind of ex
panded art history, this project also encroaches on philosophy and critical
theory, creating an interdisciplinary montage that is born of necessity, not
fashion. The most important interdisciplinary dialog here is with artists.
Over the past three years a number of people have supported me in sig
nificant ways, especially by allowing me to test- sometimes in quite rudi
mentary form - ideas and approaches that culminate in this book. In par
ticular I would like to thank Susan Watkins and Tony Wood at New Left
Review, and Andre Rottmann, Mirjam Thoma and Isabelle Graw at Texte
zur Kunst; these publications have offered me something of a refuge in the
world of criticism and theory. Related texts, which have to a greater or
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lesser degree turned up in this book, have also been published in Open
(thanks to its benevolent editor Jorinde Seijdel), in Grey Room (with thanks
in particular to Tom McDonough), and in the reader accompanying the
Dutch presentation at the 2007 Venice Biennale, Citizens and Subjects: The
Netherlands (edited by Maria Hlavajova, Charles Esche and Rosi Braidotti;
Maria Hlavajova also helped me realize the exhibition part of the project
after all, at BAK, Utrecht in late 2008).
Further thanks are due to Perry Anderson, Tom Holert, Andre Rottmann
and Tony Wood for their comments; needless to say, I alone am responsible
for the shortcomings of this book, which was produced under often hectic
circumstances in the spare moments offered by academic and extra-academic
life. Caroline Schneider and Kari Rittenbach at Sternberg Press were crucial
in bringing the book into the light of day; if it debuts slightly later than an
ticipated, the changes in the economic and political landscape since most of
it was written-the end of the Bush Era, world economic meltdown-em
phasize the urgency of its attempts to rethink the dominant conditions of
the decade that is drawing to an end.
Finally, I thank my colleagues and students at the Vrije Universiteit as
well as my family-a blend of Catholic and Protestant influences without
which this atheist would be nothing-for both enduring and inspiring me.
My most profound and virtually idolatrous gratitude is reserved for Binna
Choi, to whom this book is dedicated.
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lntrcxluction
WELCOME TO THE IMAGE WARS
All the merry little elves can go hang themselves
My faith is as cold as can be
Bob Dylan1
It has long been regarded as art's task to criticize the images prcxluced
by the culture industry-whether in the form of direct comments on such
imagery, or by developing an autonomous realm of untainted visuality in
opposition to it. Clement Greenberg's mid-century definition of Modernist
art as an exercise in self-criticism, leading to even more restrictions and an
even "purer" art, to the rejection of illusionism and the triumph of''flatness"
in painting, was aimed against the "kitsch'' of the culture industry. 2 ln the end,
it became obvious that was perfect for the modem apartments of wealthy
collectors or corporate lobbies and offices. If modem art cannot help being
both autonomous and afait social, as Adorno argued, High Modernism's
refusal to address its social context made it, paradoxically, less autono
mous. Artists associated with the neo-avant-garde of the late 1960s and
3
70s tried to remedy this by questioning the position of the institutions of art
and the mass media as pillars of the bourgeois ideology supporting capitalism.
Since then, criticality has been firmly established as the core business of art,
part of the brand that is "advanced art" Today, however, both media images
and ''critical" art itself are increasingly contested by fundamentalist versions
of the monotheistic religions.
OLD AND NEW IDOLS
In one way or another, most recent religious controversies revolve
around images-some of them highly dramatic and violent. They range
from the attack on the World Trade Center, that abstract double icon of
capitalism and American power, to the cartoons published by the Danish
paper Jyllands-Posten. Some of these were tailor-made for escalation, and
it comes as no surprise that they were used by hardliners on both sides to
create the impression of an irreconcilable opposition between "the West"
( or "modernity") and Islam. The Danish caricatures not only represented
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the Prophet, thus breaking a widespread-though by no means universal
Muslim custom, but they caricatured him in ways that sometimes seemed
racist and oddly reminiscent of anti-Semitic caricatures of old, while struc
turally resembling traditional Christian depictions of Muhammad in hell.
(In 2002, an al Qaeda cell in Italy was reported to have planned the bombing
of a church in Bologna, the location of a fifteenth-century fresco depicting
this scene.4 Given that such images are met with outrage, monotheism
)
Islam, in particular-is often regarded as inherently intolerant, its icono
clastic ire presenting a danger to civilized society. Various atheist websites
have posted an image of the 1\vin Towers with the Lennon-inspired cap
tion: IMAGINE NO RELIGION (fig. 0.1).5 But religion is too important to
be left to fundamentalists; indeed, it is too important to be left to believers
alone.
Many of the recent controversies revolve around images that are seen as
both idolatrous and blasphemous-perceived as illicit representations of a
deity or prophet who should not be represented, as well as offensive carica
tures.6 One of the Danish caricatures depicts Muhammad as a sinister-looking
fellow whose turban hides a bomb; that image of Islam as backward and
violent was effectively fortified by the preachers and masses engaged in
violent protests against such caricatures. Certain Sudanese Muslim groups
also actively embraced Western cliches about Islam in the absurd 2007 affair
over an English school teacher, who had allowed her pupils to name the class
teddy bear Muhammad, after one of the boys. She was sentenced to fifteen
days in prison for insulting the prophet by seemingly representing him in
the form of a soft toy. Clearly, one or more political factions were exploit
ing an imaginary offense by a western foreign national to further their po
litical agenda, yet we should not treat the religious "surface" as a mere
passive reflection of the "real" economic and political issues. Like cultural
production in general, religion can develop a dynamic of its own, articulating
political issues as well as interfering in them.
The interdiction of idolatry, of images that may come to be worshiped as
false gods, is the founding act of monotheism. The seemingly secular
''West" is seen by many Muslim fundamentalists as idolatrous, worshiping
the false gods of material wealth and alluring images. It is, as the mid
twentieth century Egyptian radical Sayyd Qutb stated, the new jahiliyya
the term jahiliyya standing for the idolatrous "state of ignorance" of pre-
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