Martha Rosler, Invasion, 2008, photomontage.

GREAT POWER
Martha Rosler
Mitchell Innes & Nash - 534 West 26th St, New York NY
6 September - 11 October 2008

There are a lot of things to dislike in Jerry Saltz' recent jeremiad against Martha Rosler's GREAT POWER in the pages of New York Magazine. First, and most embarrassing coming from a committed formalist like Saltz, is the casual mendacity of: "Four decades later, Rosler turns out not to have changed the look of her own work at all." Even granting that the "look" of Rosler's collages in GREAT POWER does not depart from her sixties-era series Bringing the war home… -- because, you know, that's entirely the point -- we are apparently expected to believe that the last time Saltz has had any exposure to Rosler's work was four decades ago. This simple impossibility, for a critic of Saltz' unique dedication, allows him to emit absurdities along the lines of "The only thing her work says is that fashion designers and women who like to shop caused two wars," before moving quickly past the art he was hired to review and onto more interesting topics.

It is not really my intention here to defend GREAT POWER, it is a difficult, and in many ways an unsatisfying presentation. I suspect this is the point. Regardless, what most certainly cannot be said about it is pretty much anything Saltz' says about it. It is not superficial. It is not a nostalgia trip. It is a pointed and examined deployment of representational strategy by an artist whose career is a noted catalog of such engagements; four decades worth, as it turns out. If it makes sense for anyone anywhere to pose the question of the relationship between the current political and cultural unpleasantness and the vintage variety, it is Rosler. Indeed, what is ultimately so depressing about Saltz' piece it that he is only too happy to miss the point entirely, making that rankest of amateur confusions: conflating his emotional response with his ultimate judgment -- it makes him mad, so it must suck.

But, to paraphrase, Saltz' review is simply stupid. What it points to however, is far more interesting and widespread. There are two passages in particular that I want to examine.

This is the first.

Clearly, there are parallels between the two wars, and activist art is valid. But Rosler lapses into simplistic nostalgia and undermines her older work while basically making pretty war porn.

And the second.

Anyone who thinks any of this is good art, effective activism, or even slightly radical needs to get a grip.

What is the relationship here between activism, radicalism, and good art? Saltz initially allows for the 'validity,' of 'activist art,' setting up, it would seem, the question he later begs quite explicitly: would it be possible for Rosler's work to be effective activism and bad art at the same time? It doesn't occur to the critic to formulate this question outright because he's too busy being aggressively bored, but it's an important consideration. Why does he have to discredit it both as activism and as art? Never mind the easily assumed authority in judging activist strategy! What Saltz seems to be engaging with, in his own resentful, teeth-gritting sort of way, is precisely that Brechtian legacy of which Rosler's career, at times more and less effectively so, is perhaps our clearest example. Brecht's fundamental contribution, it must be remembered, was not a specific piece of writing -- it is the rare artist, theatrical or otherwise, who can name more than three of his plays -– but rather an almost ontological subordination of art to politics. And, reciprocally, that persistently difficult claim, especially for critics, that all art ought to in some way deal with or approach political questions; that, in fact, the two cannot be separated. All art is political, there is only work which realizes this fact, and behaves accordingly, and that which doesn't and risks supporting the (unacceptable, naturally) status quo by its claims to being a-political. It's the old "you're either with us or against us" mentality; no doubt you've heard of it.