any given historical situation, some forms of creative labor are valued over others; some types of labor are considered more exalted, others less so.
5.4 Which of the various forms of labor are considered truly “artistic” on their own is governed by the present ruling class [2.2], which presides over the dominant relations of production and by this means has influence over both the character of non-artistic “labor” and the value of “art,” as well as the intersections between them.
5.5 However, the general artistic impulse does not simply vanish in the face of its specific historical determinations; insofar as a basic sense of art as creative expression exists, humans also have a certain day-to-day creative investment in their labor, since all labor is the creative transformation of matter or life.
5.6 On the other hand, insofar as the general impulse toward creativity is cramped and thwarted by the demands of a specific historical setup, there exists the impulse to escape these and express freely outside of them.
5.7 Because “art,” in the sense of general creative expression, is a basic impulse, no class has a monopoly on it; however, the organic worldviews of different classes can be closer or farther from expressing the possibilities of its general realization.
5.8 Both ruling- and middle-class worldviews preclude the idea of “art” as general human expression: the ruling class because it defines the value of art according to the interests of a narrow minority; the middle class because its interest involves defining creativity as professional self-expression, which therefore restricts it to creative experts.
5.9 The working-class perspective, then, can be seen to reflect the most organic contemporary conception of generalized creative expression (even if circumstances don’t always allow this conception to be developed or expressed)—“art,” in this light, is at once a subject of labor just like any other [4.8] and opposed to the alienation of the present-day labor process [4.9]. It is therefore implicitly free of any professional determination and common to all (though this aspect, in the present ideological setup, is often channeled into middle-class creative aspirations—which can itself be seen as one of uses of the “art world” for the ruling class [2.8 and, following from this, 2.9]).
6.0 Because art is part of society [1.1] and because no single profession has a monopoly on creative expression [5.0], the values given to art within the sphere of the contemporary visual arts will also be determined in relation to how “creativity” is manifested in other spheres of contemporary society.
6.1 “Art” in common parlance has a double meaning: It designates creative activity in general and represents work that circulates within the specific tradition and set of institutions of the visual arts; thus, something can be “art” (that is, creative) but not be “Art” (that is, not fit within the visual arts sphere), or something can be “Art” (that is, can be easily classifiable within the sphere of the visual arts) but not be “art” (that is, not be particularly creative).
6.2 Contemporary visual art therefore has a paradoxical character: It is a specific creative discipline that arrogates to itself the status of representing “creativity” in general (when someone says that he is professionally an “artist,” he is often both trying to indicate that he works within a certain set of traditions and institutions and implying that his labor has a certain especially creative character).
6.3 This overlap stems from the middle-class character of the contemporary visual arts—the middle-class perspective being precisely the one in which one’s investment in creativity in general overlaps with one’s professional identity.
6.4 However, equally paradoxically, contemporary visual art, as opposed to every other type of creative labor (music, film, acting, graphic design, cake decoration) has no specific medium—that is, no specific form of labor—attached to it; when you say that you are an “artist,” you imply nothing about the specific character of your work (contemporary art, in this way, is a kind of reductio ad absurdum of the idea of creative individuality).
6.5 This lack of definition is in inverse proportion to the extreme hyper-definition of labor in a variety of other contemporary creative industries—video games, film, and television all involve creative labor employed on a massive, impersonal, and very specialized level.
6.6 Because capitalist relations of production are the dominant relations of production and these other “creative industries” are more fully organized around capitalist production, they also have a more central importance to contemporary society—they are at the center of innovation, investment, and public attention on a level with which the sphere of the visual arts cannot by itself compete.
6.7 Nevertheless, while it cannot compete with these industries, contemporary art takes on its significance in relation to them—while they represent creativity tailored to capitalist specifications, the sphere of the visual arts generates its cachet precisely as the sphere in which individual quality and intellectual independence are preserved (in much the same way that politicians avoid talking about the working class by talking endlessly about the importance of the middle class, an exaggerated intellectual significance is given to the importance of the middle-class “art world” to escape the reality of the extent to which contemporary creativity is dominated by impersonal industry).
6.8 The visual arts, in relation to visual culture or culture in general, thus finds itself with few stable paths. It can attempt to merge with these other, fully capitalist creative spheres, but only as a junior partner—it does so at the cost of giving up its reason for existing as a separate, privileged sphere at all, which is that it represents autonomous creativity not directed by the pure profit motive.
6.9 On the other hand, contemporary visual art also faces a dilemma if it does not engage with other, more dominant creative industries; in that case, its audience becomes narrowed to only the very rich and those who have the privilege to have been educated in its traditions, which makes clear the narrow horizon, and, consequently, lack of freedom within which this supposedly free form of expression maneuvers.
7.0 Art criticism, to be relevant, should be based on an analysis of the actual situation of art and the different values at play, which are related to different classes [this point simply draws the conclusion, for criticism, of 1.9].
7.1 Art criticism is itself a middle-class discipline, based on norms of individual intellectual expression; since relevant art criticism involves analysis of the actual class situation of art, it involves transcending purely subjective, individual, professional opinion.
7.2 However, transcending purely “subjective” criticism does not imply the false “objectivity” of art criticism that imposes a philosophical or political program on art; this sort of scholastic criticism equally implies a middle-class perspective (often one based in the academy), insofar as it advances a purely abstract, intellectual program and fails to address the actual social situation of the visual arts (for example, simply insisting that art “be political” without seriously analyzing for whom or to what ends “political art” is directed actually reinforces the framework of individualistic, professional expression).
7.3 Acknowledging that contemporary art has a middle-class character is not the same as denouncing the sphere of the visual arts for “petit-bourgeois decadence”; one must judge art in terms of the contradictory values given to it by competing class interests, which in part means recognizing the sphere of the visual arts as a significant repository of legitimate hopes for self-expression. Insofar as contemporary society thwarts or distorts self-expression, the urge to follow one’s own creative path can itself be a political impulse.
7.4 However, the middle-class character of the visual arts does mean that this sphere is faced with certain dilemmas [see, for instance, 3.8, 3.9, 6.8, 6.9] that cannot be resolved within that sphere itself
