On the Very Idea of a “Political” Work of Art*

Abstract

Art can be “political” in a variety of ways. Mobilizing these differences offers correspondingly many ways for artists producing “political art” to understand themselves, and the activity in which they are engaged. To demonstrate this, the present article focuses on a particular work of art (The Battle of Orgreave, 2001), by a particular contemporary artist (Jeremy Deller), seeking to locate it within this broader possibility space. The work consists in a re-enactment, as art, of a bloody confrontation that took place between police and picketing miners during the 1984-5 National Union of Mineworkers’ [NUM] Strike. Deller has said of an earlier work, Acid Brass (1999), comprising the rearrangement for Brass Band of various Acid House anthems from the 1980s: “It was a political work but not, I hope, in a hectoring way. To be called a ‘political artist’ is, for me, a kiss of death, as it suggests a fixed or dogmatic position like that of a politician.” Of The Battle of Orgreave he remarked in the same interview: “I went to a number of historical re-enactments, and they mostly seemed drained of the political and social narratives behind the original events […] I wanted instead to work with re-enactors on a wholly political re-enactment of a battle […] one that had taken place within living memory, that would be re-staged in the place it had happened, involving many of the people who had been there the first time round.” I aim to show that these seemingly contradictory attitudes towards the value of political art, and whether (and if so how) his own art should be considered “political,” can be rendered consistent by distinguishing carefully between a wide variety of ways in which art may be political, and locating Deller’s work within this wider space. I conclude that Deller's work is strongly political: that is, political through and through in virtue of bringing its political content to bear, reflexively, on its own principles of construction.