I really liked the way D’Alleva began Look Again! with a discussion on the definition of a theory. I thought her definition of theory, “a basis for action and an explanation of how something works” was very interesting. I’ve always thought of theory as a way of understanding something, but D’Alleva takes it one step further by including action in her definition; theory is not just stagnant, but rather, it is dynamic . She then applies this definition of theory to the remaining chapters where she discusses different theories of art from Formalism to Postcolonial theory.
The section of Marx and Engels was very interesting. I am currently reading Marx and Engels in my American Studies seminar, which is titled Theories and Culture. In class on Tuesday we all struggled to understand Marx’s The German Ideology and his definition of materialism. We discussed how Marx believes that human culture is determined by economic relations not cultural relations (or at least economic relations heavily influence culture relations.) Thus, I thought it was interesting that D’Alleva discussed art in terms of Marx and Engels since I associate art more with culture than the economy. However, as I know from my Economy of Art class, with the growing art market today, more and more art is being produced for economic gains instead of artistic expression. In fact, D’Alleva quotes Marx saying, “art is not something produced by geniuses but rather is simply another form of economic production.” This concept makes me think of artists like Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst who run multi million dollar art factories. The very nature of the word factory to describe their art production illustrates the commodification of art by Koons and Hirst and the economic impetus behind their production. Thus, although I initially never thought about analyzing art through a Marxist lens, Marxist theory really does apply to the art world today.