Commondification of Political Art

THE COMMIDIFICATION OF POLITICAL ART

BY MORAYO OGUNBAYO

At any point and time during this endless summer, anyone could scroll through their TikTok ForYou page and see a video of TikTok’s own it-girl, Addison Rae, doing whatever dance or trend was gaining the most traction that day. Her hair would always be perfectly done, her makeup would be professional-grade no matter the occasion and she would always be in the most fashion-forward look possible. During a couple of these videos, Addison could be seen wearing t-shirts featuring colorful stick-type figures or expressively drawn faces in the art style of Keith Haring.

Keith Haring, a pivotal contemporary artist of the 1980s New York scene, has had his art styles and motifs commodified by the modern fashion world, especially by the fast fashion world. Contemporaries of Haring, such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, a renowned graffiti artist who was known to dabble outside of the visual arts, or even the modern artists who paved the way for him, such as Andy Warhol, have experienced this phenomenon tenfold, especially in the last decade. This sensation brings up the age-old question about modern art and its successor contemporary art. Who is it for?

The modern fashion world has experienced its own over-commodification from the fast fashion brands, such as brands like Fashion Nova ripping off any garment worn by Kylie Jenner, however the “vintage” revolution has set the stage for a new one. To create the facade of a vintage piece, brands have been forced to look through old pop-culture icons and art styles, and many have found the late-20th century New York art scene a good place to start. While this has the benefit of introducing young people to media they may have otherwise never experienced, this has the negative effect of stripping these artists of the things their art expressly stood for. For example, much of Haring’s art was about the main crisis affecting the New York art scene at the time, the AIDS epidemic. One of Haring’s most famous pieces, Silence = Death, features his iconically drawn figures with the ACT UP organizations famous taglines, Ignorance = Fear and Silence = Death. His art often showcased his figures engaging in sexual acts to remind people to practice safe sex. Basquiat’s political messaging has also been stripped from his art in modern fashion, which was often about class struggle or anti-colonialism.

“I don’t think any artist makes art purely for capitalism,” Micaela Amateau Amato says.

Micaela Amateau Amato, a professor emerita of art and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Penn State, came up in the New York art world around the same time as Haring and Basquiat. “Conceptual artists wanted to make art that could not be purchased or commodified and was so decommodified it had to be experienced and not taken home. However, in the 70s, things started to shift gears and people realized they had to address a larger public,” Amateau Amato says.

During this time and even moving into the shift, most modern and contemporary artists were deathly afraid of being perceived as sellouts. Art was meant to be about something, whether it be social justice or politics, especially with the backdrop of the Vietnam War.

“I think it would be very hard to be an artist today and not be acutely aware of social justice,” Amateau Amato says.

Much of modern and contemporary art was about awareness as well. One of Keith Haring’s most famous works was a bright red mural adorned with the phrase “Crack is Wack,” pushing back against the crack-cocaine epidemic gripping New York at the time.

“I think Haring, Basquiat and many others in that time wanted to make art for the people, like murals. You know, public art,” Amateau Amato says.

Haring was known to push back against an idea prevalent in the art world at the time, that good art had to be exclusive, and he often sold inexpensive posters with his work throughout the city.

“I could earn more money if I just painted a few things and jacked up the price. My shop is an extension of what I was doing in the subway stations, breaking down the barriers between high and low art,” Haring once said.

While having their art spread around the world after their deaths may be a net positive for modern and contemporary artists, it has had adverse effects for the messages their art was meant to convey. In 2017, the anti-capitalist Basquiat had a painting posthumously sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby’s in New York. Urban Outfitters, a company who has had their share of racist, anti-semetic and homophobic scandals, began selling t-shirts featuring Haring’s designs in 2019.

“It’s funny because a lot of people think that art shouldn’t be about a subject, but about a material. Not about politics, but about amorphous sensations. Spiritual perhaps, or ethereal, but not about concrete issues that need to be addressed in an activist way. But in my point of view it’s all of those things,” Amateau Amato says.