Abstract Expressionism as Ideology

This week Elkins sets the stage for us introducing issues that problematize the study of modernism as an art historical classification. When does modernism begin? Whose theory or to which school of thought do you ascribe? He shows that the theories can be seen as incompatible with one likely to subsume all others. T. J. Clark then presents a meta-framework as a fresh way of understanding Abstract Expressionism using” vulgarity” as an organizing concept around which to create a discourse.
The problem with the term vulgarity, as he points out, is that like a semiotic sign, it is a container filled with the aspirations of a class (the petty bourgeoisie speaking for the bourgeoisie). He attacks formalist analyses of Ab Ex (boring) and semiotic ones as well (a fairy tale frozen in the triumph of its prearranged moments of vision). He proceeds to describe Ab Ex as “art practice as class ideology”. To Clark, America is a world fiction and the bourgeois (the class with hereditary power to effect economic decisions that affect them) and the petty bourgeois (those who don’t have this power but who identify with the interests of those who do) are constructions within that fiction. They are a part of ideology.
I find intriguing his idea that the purpose of Ab Ex painting was to expose banality and vulgarity, NOT to transcend it in order to find some universal uplifting truth. But we are so far removed from the moment of their creation and the social and political context in which they were created that we see the transcendent in them instead. Their original purpose is lost on us and this is one of the things Clark wants to make us aware of.
It is interesting to me that the USIA used Abstract Expressionism and its artists as propaganda tools following WWII. Part of the Cold War ideology was to show the superiority of the American way of life capable of producing such individual artistic geniuses (white males were emphasized) capable of creating a new art form.
The Communist Chinese government also tried to use its contemporary Chinese avantgarde artists in this way. Ideology, Greenberg’s concept of the moving avantgarde, and Elkin’s discussion of the effect of Greenberg on those who might not be aware of who he is, is illustrated in an example of a work by Xu Bing. The artist painted English words on a male pig and Chinese characters on a female pig then invited people to watch them copulating in a pen filled with books. His point was nature does not care about culture. The actual result though was something different. People complained that Xu Bing was trying to show the superiority of the West and the inferiority of China by painting English words on the dominant male pig. He also concluded that culture had removed us from nature to the point that people were so embarrassed by the actions of the pigs that they couldn’t watch. This work was not sanctioned by the government who would move to shut down the performances as soon as they could. But the avantgarde, of which Xu Bing was a part, stayed one step ahead of the government, changing venues, and creating works that were shocking and critical of government ideology. When Chinese avantgarde artists became successful in the West, the Chinese government tried to use this to show the superiority of their system.