i agree that effectiveness is a difficult concept - as every element of the issues we’re bringing up here is - so it can seem like we’re talking at cross-purposes here. but i also feel like there’s two sort of effectiveness that i think kollwitz was aimed at there.

there’s practical effectiveness - the transformation of policy and action via activism or lobbying or bribery or any manor of other means that breaks into the political realm. then there is intellectual effectiveness. did dix stop war? did kollwitz stop war? did goya stop war? did golub stop war? did paul nash or siegfried sassoon or any of the others stop war? not really. but what they were able to do is mediate a kind of expression of experience that created resonance - the emotional and intellectual contexts of identification and reflection. this is a different kind of effectiveness that is not merely about making others think or act as you wish them to but instead strives to reach toward inspiring contemplation of the issues. the effect is that thought, feeling, consideration, and empathy take place. this is what i’m hoping for when i talk about effectiveness. it’s what i feel in kollwitz or goya and in so many others. and yes, we think about this in the context of war, but i feel like this kind of effectiveness is what makes powerful works in general have their power.

for kollwitz that purpose of which she spoke has to have been the picturing the effects of different horrors in the hopes that viewers would respond in humane, thoughtful ways. not that i’m didactically forced into commiseration with the message of the work but that the work draws out contemplation which may or may not bring me to the end the artist desired…

…but then that hits on the nature of propaganda… another can of worms.

(and have used before, I know–but recycling is another social concern, right?)

http://www.markmooregallery.com/exhibitions/2007-10-06_kim-rugg/

This work goes straight at these questions of efficacy, specifically addressing the issue in terms of media’s willingness and ability to confront realities of war, and also implicitly questioning how art can be a force in such circumstances.

They’re not the same thing, but I think that there are some parallels worth considering.

part of me can’t help but feel that trying to talk about the war and about art in a mutual type way isn’t all but a little ridiculous. the war trumps the art. it’s bigger and more scary. but, it’s also this sort of thinking that makes people give up on trying to do or say anything at all. like the issue of ‘permission’ that chris brought up earlier. do we presume to know enough about anything to make work about it? well, hells no, most likely. but, we could say that about most anything. and either we can make a cranky painting or join a blob-like group protest and be polite. i’m not saying one’s better than the other. or that they are mutually exclusive. but, the sense of not being entitled to think or to act with a personal voice can pretty much crush even modest aims.

I remember being a part of two organized protests on the University of Tulsa campus when I was there, at the very outset of the war. We were so polite! We followed all the rules. We got the proper permissions. Professors spoke, bands played. Looking back on those demonstrations, they were so safe! We should’ve been in public spaces, getting in people’s way.

For example look at how the Vietnam war (it almost seems wrong to explore a huge event of human suffering with only two examples) is treated in Maya Ying Lin’s memorial vs. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Loss, grief, horror, futility… are all explored but in very different ways.

I think a lot of time when people make art about war, they want to be O’Brien but are really Lin, understanding who they are should shape the work. The Vietnam piece by Chris Burden comes to mind.

I really like the idea of impact or effectiveness and wish I had something usful to add to handel’s “messiah.”

i think that for me one of the issues that this concern with the global situation dovetailing into our artwork is spotlighting is the matter of effectiveness. when i have concerns i want to make an impact. when i make artworks, it’s because something is affecting me and i need to respond in some sort of proactive way. sometimes this is the sort of constant current of issues and ideas and motivations that i have, while other times it’s more overt socio-political realities that stick in my craw and force me to work out some mode of expression that addresses them, even in the most limited or convoluted way.

the question i always have at times like this is whether my expression and work and ideas and feelings and perspectives amount to any really transformative for anyone or anything other than myself and my own experience of life. i do think that art can really have social and cultural strength, create change and awareness, and stimulate thought. but to what level my works can do this is, well, something i doubt is all that substantive. so there is a sense of hopelessness about it. we’re ramrodded into a war, forced in to practical complicity in it, aware of some of what’s going on and unaware of a lot of the rest, and knowing that while we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on it people are going without clean water, or decent education, or basic medical needs, or, or, or, or… i get forlorn about it. so it comes back to effectiveness. i want my work and my expressions to be effective. i have no answers to this other than to keep on making and being aware and doing my best.

but i think i know what effectiveness looks like. there are a lot of examples. one that sticks out in my mind recently is handel’s “messiah.” i’ve been obsessed with this work for a while - it’s so abstract and simple and varied - so i was doing some reading about it. handel created the piece for an irish charity. the goal was for a performance of the piece to raise money to free people from debtors prison. the very first performance of the work freed 142 men. for decades afterward, “messiah” was used like this. that’s effective. handel had a passion for giving and a social conscience fostered by his own experience of poverty. that’s effective. that’s serving the art and serving people beyond the artist. that’s what i want to do, and it’s what trying to grasp how to deal with war in my work makes me think about.

i think that burtonwood and holmes are great at this intersection of art, cultural complicity, social comment, and effectiveness. check them out here: http://www.burtonwoodandholmes.com/

(i’ve been trying to arrange a show for them at mizzou…