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Review
Ben Davis writes with a sparkling wit and clarity that carries the reader through this fascinating book. It is a book centred on art from an insider’s point of view. One might compare this work with that of David Graeber for its engagement with the ideas of Marx. Though they would be entirely at odds on the question of anarchist action (Davis spends significant space critiquing the Occupy movement, of which Graeber was a member), in terms of style and overall goals, we see a clear companionship.
Art in the After-Culture is presented as a series of essays, bookended with intentionally exaggerated speculative fiction about the destruction of the art world as we know it, focused on the museum in a future era approaching the end of capitalism. This is the imagined site of the titular ‘after-culture’, producing art in the time of Post-capitalism. The essays that form the substance of the book, however, present a diverse view of the present moment, addressing several other popular topics. These are always examined through the effects on and of art, with hot-button issues such as cultural appropriation, the dynamics of social media, conspiracy theory proliferation, and climate disaster.
The focus on the museum brings us into the contemporary concerns of Fine Art. This device allows a greater commentary on the changing role and dynamics of this ‘high’ art world now and, as he speculates, in the coming years. Davis traces the changing role of museums through technology-enabled immersive experiences. These, he suggests, compete with other attention markets and, in bringing the museum ‘down’ to the masses, disrupt their social function in distinguishing class sensibilities. The museum becomes just another theme park with attractions focused on novelty and unrooted in historical and artistic concerns.
Adam Stoneman, a friend and colleague, comments in a Tribute Magazine piece that “[t]he immersive precludes the discursive by collapsing the distance needed for critique.” Davis identifies as much, showing how engagement with artworks in this new era of the interactive museum is frustrated by the obscuring application of technology. We might extend this more broadly to the application of information technology in general, which has a tendency towards occlusion and reification. Again, there is a synchronicity, perhaps even a borrowing, from Graeber in his The Utopia of Rules.
Of particular interest are Davis’s comments on AI in art. He writes with insight that “[i]t is urgent that the conversation move from whether [AI] will create ‘art’ to what kind of art it will create and how it does or does not fit with what we want art to be.” Davis identifies novelty as central to both the technology and function of AI image generation and is correct to focus on the social and political meaning of art, not simply on aesthetics. Critically, he realises that capitalism favours the ‘good enough’ in everyday media art. As Davis puts it, “capitalism automates the imagination,” an observation never more relevant than in the present moment relating to generative AI. I disagree, however, with the status Davis attributes to the generated AI image as artistically over-impressive. When he writes, “[w]e’ll feel … sorrow that [AI has] so far outstripped the reach of our talents”, this strikes me as a hasty dismay.
As he proceeds throughout the text, one of Davis’s main concerns is the self-defeating strategies of modern Leftists. He critiques this on many fronts, especially public conversation facilitated by social media. His objections recall those of Mark Fisher in his essay Exiting the Vampire Castle or Canceling Comedians While the World Burns by Ben Burgis. For these authors, solidarity must be central to an effective Left project, and cultural issues often serve to divide. To this, he dissects fragmentary social justice efforts and cultural appropriation. Davis is patient in teasing out the influences on the current moment through a “cultural materialist analysis,” resisting the reactionary. Always in the text, the all-important question is central: how is this in the interest of capital?