Mulling over the role of the artist in contemporary society, the nature of art in highly commodified mass culture, the implication of gender roles in a nihilistic universe, and the beauty of Martha Rosler's photographs in which she consolidates all of the above.
“[The unqualified antipathy to mass culture] is also linked to a privileging of the Artist as maker of these meanings, as socially or spiritually empowered to adjudicate on abiding human values. This notion of the Artist as specially endowed persists in and, indeed, has been very much attached to the view of the artist as outsider, heroine on the margins, or guerrilla in the cultural ghetto. The idea is still that the future of significant culture lies in the hands of the embattled few.
This exclusive mission is, however, only an elitist or utopian fantasy. Marginality guarantees nothing. Culture is not expressive of an experience to be had on the margins or anywhere else; and, contrary to what is suggested, belligerent independence is not the artist’s natural or necessary state. What is rather the case is that formations which represent themselves as heroically isolated - that is, avant-gardes - have only emerged under special historical conditions.”