'The personal is political' (Carol Hanisch), but is it (or should either the personal or the political ever be) art?

 

As always the default question before you can begin to ask other kinds of ones is: is there such a thing as art at all? The answer to that is both no and yes. There shouldn't be art but there is. A certain John Roberts refers to, 'art after the end of art' and 'post-art art'. Putting these dilemmas to one side for a moment, I was pondering the Clara situation today, and how challenging it might be to do work here, given the other job of trying to sort out the mother's bungalow, and given all that the building contains. The presumptions that this thing called art, if it does exist, is all about one's personal angst or concerns, or, prevalent in the past decade, that it has something to do with the greater good, improvement, and improving the world, are widespread, but not ones I can easily run with. On the other hand an individual's individuated consciousness is bound to be reflected in the work, and any artefact worth its salt will be at least observant on the landscape, the systems, the politics and characters about it. Amongst other things my mother collected a lot of mugs over the years. One has a recipe on it for how to cook a hare.