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writing for godot

Max Nordau, Pussy Riot and Social and Political Change

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Written by Milan Djurasovic   
Saturday, 08 March 2014 16:38

Max Nordau’s book Degeneration stirred up a great uproar when it was published in 1892. With his unsparing and thorough critique of what he thought were damaging and degenerative forces of modernity, Nordau had insulted a wide variety of artists, philosophers, as well as their admirers. Seeing themselves, their work, and their interests as targets of Nordau’s harsh psychological diagnoses, artists and scholars derided (and continue to deride) the author with the same level of vehemence they bemoaned and found distasteful in Degeneration. The medical diagnoses and outright insults in Nordau’s critique of various artists and their work, as well as his unwillingness to find not even a smidgen of value in the aesthetic innovations of the many subjects of his study (Baudelaire, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Tolstoi, Wagner and Ibsen to name a few) were unacceptable to these critics. Furthermore, the contemporary decriers interpret the enduring popularity of the mentioned artists and philosophers as an undisputed defeat of Nordau’s entire assessment of modernity.
Max Nordau’s description of degenerate artists and their debilitating social influence is unquestionably unduly harsh. Additionally, his rigid conservatism and unwillingness to accept any deviation from the traditional styles of music, poetry, and verse was understandably upsetting to those who saw the new artistic and literary forms and ideas such as fragmentation, stream-of-consciousness, inner monologue, moral relativism, pessimism etc., as devices more favorable for the portrayal of the moral and physical disarray, which they thought was the key characteristic of their time. Although these objections are valid, and despite an abundance of other constructive (and often vitriolic) criticism hurled in Nordau’s direction, a number of ideas in the detailed account of the psychological profile of a modern artist expressed in Degeneration (primarily the descriptions of modern art’s elitism, ego-mania and vagueness), is the fragment of this laudably comprehensive, comprehensible, and still very much relevant and needed analysis of modern art’s contribution and failure to effectively address the ills of society that this essay is going to focus on.
Let us begin with elitism. Nordau explains that boredom, fashionable cynicism, and contrived despair of the obsessed champions of the multinational fin de siècle movement at the close of the 19th century did not reach the great majority of the lower and middle classes. According to Nordau, it is only an exclusive minority of wealthy, educated people and fanatics who could develop and zealously pursue the notion that “the century is kind of a living being, born like a beast or a man, passes through all stages of existence, gradually ageing and declining after blooming childhood, joyous youth, and vigorous maturity, to die with the expiration of the hundredth year, after being afflicted in its last decade with all the infirmities of mournful senility.” It is my surmise, not Nordau’s, that to alleviate the anxiety caused by irrational and obsessive thoughts about the approaching doom, a late 19th century fin de siècle Parisian only had to take a walk through an impoverished district and ask its residents what they thought of fin de siècle. While minds of the poor might have been preoccupied with numerous problems, including a similar fear of violence and destruction, it is safe to assume that the object of their fear (unless they suffered from some kind of psychological disorder) was clear and tangible rather than immaterial and nebulous. Exchanging letters with a citizen of China and inquiring them about their fear of annihilation would have been another effective way of discovering that their obsessive dread was not, and should not have been thought of as universal.
If one were to use theories found in Degeneration to write a book on what presently passes off as art, Nordau’s book would no longer be considered a lengthy work of a man motivated by resentment and obsession, but rather a light and impartial read. The vagueness and egoism of modern art and philosophy of the late 19th century that Nordau warned about retain a fresh relevance today by reminding us to reassess responsibilities of an artist. The avant-garde art of our age, from installations to performance art, continues to be infused with the similar vague, non-egalitarian, mystical aura that Nordau wrote about. Its creators and enthusiasts continue to be mostly educated elite who refuse to be coherent even when their work supposedly addresses genuine social and political grievances. This is perhaps the biggest flaw and an underestimated threat that contemporary art poses.
In its pursuit to explore and comment on human condition, art inevitably and frequently crosses paths with social and political events of the period during which it is created. When an artist, whose work has a reputation of being obscure and inaccessible, decides to disseminate ideas and garner support of ordinary people for an urgent social or political cause, which according to the artist is meant to improve our wellbeing, responsibility to express those ideas in a comprehensible manner must outweigh the artist’s aesthetic aims – especially if they happen to be overly obscure. When an art piece is created with a sincere wish for an urgent social or political improvement, especially if it provides commentary on the abuse of human rights, the seriousness of the intention crushes the idea of art being a mere intellectual pastime. Therefore, when a contemporary artist accepts the daunting role of a defender of human rights, he/she must also accept the responsibility to alter, and perhaps even completely abandon the often ambiguous form and lingo used in art circles and galleries.
The recent artwork of Pussy Riot provides us with a suitable example. One of the reasons (it must be emphasized that it is definitely not the only, and not the most important reason) why Pussy Riot’s artwork failed to attract any wider support in Russia, and the reason why it has generated just as much – if not more – animosity, despite the massive media coverage, is because of its attempt to address a sensitive political issue with a vague message and obvious vulgarity. Even if we assume that the motivation of Pussy Riot’s famous performance arose from a sincere political concern, which regretfully continues to be inadequately defined even after an abundance of opportunity to be more clearly articulated during the artist group’s recent appearances on political programs and talk shows, the intended philanthropy of their art disintegrated and dissolved in the nebulousness of their performances. Moreover, while I don’t think that any of the members of Pussy Riot is an ego-maniac, or in Nordau’s words “a mental Robinson Crusoe, who in his imagination lives alone on an island, and is at the same time a weak creature, powerless to govern himself,” I believe that the chief fault of the group is found in what Nordau explains to be the artist’s inability (in the case of Pussy Riot it is perhaps unwillingness rather than inability) to adapt their work to “the conditions in which they live, whether they assert their anti-social inclinations in thought or action, in writing or as criminals.”
As I have mentioned before, adaptation or alteration of one’s art for the sake of clarity is unnecessary if the artwork is displayed in an art gallery in front of people who are scholars or well-versed visitors of institutions of modern art. However, in the case of the Pussy Riot’s “Punk Prayer” piece, whose aim was a call for action against a variety of social and political injustices, the immediate, captive, victimized audience of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior as well as the broader audience, which was to be reach by a subsequent release of a dubbed video, were ordinary Russian citizens. In a country where pensioners account for close to forty percent of the electorate, and with a safe assumption that a majority of them are not familiar with the history of avant-garde art movements, it is not very difficult to recognize why the character of the infamous performance was not the kind of artwork that was going to attract a wider support.
Some of the most notable, subsequent studies in developmental psychology which showed that the projection of one’s inner states onto the entire world, as well as the assumption that one’s often subjective psychological states are familiar and applicable to all people everywhere, are childlike and egocentric would not have been sufficient for Nordau to describe a very long list of artists he diagnosed as ego-maniacs. According to Nordau, an ego-maniac is “an invalid who does not see things as they are, does not understand the world, and cannot take up a right attitude towards it. This is just one out of many examples of insensitivity with which Degeneration is awash. However, if we consider Nordau’s book as groundless merely because we believe that it is rooted in either personal vendetta or projection of his own insecurities onto others, we would be committing the same mistake that William James, American philosopher and psychologist and one of Nordau’s ardent critics, warned about in his book The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. James wrote that “in the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to anyone to try to refute opinions by showing up their author’s neurotic constitution. Opinions here are invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no matter what may be their author’s neurotic constitution.” Therefore, when reading Degeneration it is wise to make any assumptions about Nordau’s motivation and examine the value of what he wrote. If one manages to do that, one is bound to discover plenty of valuable insights which are unfortunately often dressed in insults and frivolous psychological diagnosis. Perhaps the chief value of Nordau’s Degeneration is its reminder that a great deal of artistic achievements of the late 19th century resulted from the pursuit of either very subjective whims of an individual or obsessions of a small group of creative elite; and while their achievements deserve praise for their aesthetic innovations, one cannot dismiss the potential and often real dangerousness these subjective whims, such as the outlandish whims of the occultists or champions of fin de siècle, can create when they call for a reorganization of a society they live in.
Works Cited
James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. Hazelton: An
Electronic Classics Series Publication, 2002. Electronic.
Nordau, Max, Degeneration. London: William Heinemann’s Publications, 1894. Electronic.

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