"interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art" (Susan Sontag)

What is the function of art in capitalistic society? Its interesting to look up synonyms for 'art'. Words like technique and craft are followed by cunning, slyness, guile, deceit. One of my first answers to "What do you want to be when you grow up?" was that I wanted to be a poet. My mother's friends and neighbors used to laugh at me when I said this, they told me there was no career in poetry. I believe that many forms of art are so negatively regarded in capitalistic society because the arts are provocative and they act as an outlet for expression, more so than speech, in my opinion. Just as art is negatively perceived, the idea of body art has been construed negatively in American society; and as art takes a subordinate stance because it cannot be controlled, explained, or regulated, the idea of tattooing fits into the stigma surrounding art in Western culture. It is the reason that tattoos are considered atrocious, poignant and destructive in Western culture.

As a young teen, the realization that individuals were to be confined to their occupations, in such a way that they are completely dependent on them for their survival, fostered the realization of my own imprisonment. I think this ideology is an accurate explanation of the United States capitalist economy, and it gives Marx a sort of prophetic essence. In this picture, society acts as a process of human labor, production, and the attribution of value to commodities; this picture leaves out something vital: art. How can art be quantified under these circumstances? Art to me parallels love, humanity, culture, style, individually and expression. Art illustrates the social atmosphere and documents the society's economic climate through time. So then art is not separate from the financial system from which it arises, it is also a material creation of some value. This changes the function of art as something pure and uncontaminated by capitalism. The artist is doing his/her art for a reason rather than simply for the sake of creating art. It also has an idealistic sense, and through it humanity is idealized. 

"Interpretation must itself be evaluated, within a historical view of human consciousness" ( Susan Songtag, Against Interpretation, 7). Contemplating this I begin to think about the art from non-European cultures, for example Indian or African artists and artwork, and how little they are valued in our culture (as well as other European cultures, I'm sure). I am also sure this is changing more present-day because we are at a new stage in the evolution of societies. But, getting back to my point, in the curricula of the two art history courses which I have taken in college, the Euro-centric perspective that is taken for granted not only equates to the lack of discussion about important art from around the world, (which also takes up a very small section in the textbook), but, additionally, we fail to take into account the significance of other cultures as equally valuable to our own. 

Sontag's point that real art makes us nervous, so we then have to reduce it to its content (interpretation), we then tame it reminds me of people's usual comments or judgements about my tattoos . The first thing they ask ninety five percent of the time is "What do they mean?". Sontag brought me some much needed insight that this is done because the idea of tattoos makes people nervous, and that they have to minimize the aura of my tattoos down to a pool of small ideas of conception of meaning. If I were to really answer the question "What do they mean?", I would have to literally sit down for hours and provide my life narrative. Tattoos to me are the most abstract and subjective form of art, perhaps besides street art, because they are almost* completely individual and personally signified. (I say almost because of course there are styles of tattoos, and tattoos books from which people insist on imitating ideas.) I strongly believe that this is the reason tattoos are taboo in societies that hold European-based ideals or any type of nationalistic identity.  "Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories" (Against Interpretation, 10). 

What is our current method of interpreting art?  Our emphasis on capitalistic ideals shape our conceptions of style and art, as well as art forms: namely tattoos. 

DiMaggio, ( From 1982. "But Who Created the 'Creators'?"), introduces the idea of culture as a nineteenth century commodity created as a way for status groups to dominate through exclusivity. This idea reminds me a lot of the articles we read about fashion and how the elite upper class created style as a means of class differentiation and domination. Once there is a criteria and important aspects of art or society are distinguished from their insignificant counterparts, there exists a representation of the mentality behind the reproduction of art or style as a commodity. In other words, it describes the logic and intention behind social significance and shows us the true tenor of high culture. 

Equality, a dominant American theme, starts to mean something else, something more dark along the lines of the individual becoming a statistic, our needs generalized and a loss of distinction. Humans are seen as goods, or property.  With this change comes the death of the notion that we are unique and powerful beings, the demise of art and human imagination. This explains our social reality of cliches and "invariable types" offered in our industry of culture which created people who are copies of a copy. 

Benjamin, using Marxist theory as a basis, describes the change in the intention behind the replication of art and artifacts due to capitalism which "exploit[s] the proletariat with increasing intensity, but ultimately [creates] conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself (p.1). This piece is interesting because it introduced a new idea to me, the idea of the element of aura in art. After reading this article, while getting tattooed, I asked my tattoo artist, as well as the other artists in the room, if they thought there was a difference between an original work of art and a copy of the work of art. At first my tattoo artist shook his head no, but the others said that there was an obvious difference. When I asked what that difference was, the boss said that when you see an original there is an emotion and that a piece of art that has been around for a long time emanates an accumulation of a meaning. He was describing just what Benjamin is talking about. 

I drew connections between the content of Adorno and Horkheimer's piece and Benjamin's article. Benjamin's theory of the replication of art can be seen as an aspect of the culture industry's replication of 'invariable types'. Just as art loses its aura, individuals lose a quality of individuality and deny the social function of art. To deny the social function of art denies the individuality quality of the human. (Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. (1994). "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception".)

All of the points I've mentioned from these articles, while not referring specifically to tattoos, can be generalized to describe the role of tattoos within capitalistic societies. From the birth of the practice of tattooing in ancient civilizations, tattoos carry a legacy of barbarism because they are regarded as a primitive art form, derived from inferior cultures.