Conclusion: Digital Realist Montage

This paper has sought to consider the philosophical term of critical realism, explore how it has been applied within the realm of art and attempt to develop a contemporary application of it through the use of montage. In this conclusion I want to very briefly summarise the key points that have been made throughout this paper.

In Part One of this paper I identified the term 'critical realism' as an inherently unstable philosophical concept which ultimately aims to provide an understanding that there exists a reality below that of surface appearances. By exploring the various components of realism I have identified Bhaskar's term of critical realism as forming the basic orientation for this paper.

I have tried to make it clear that realism is not a fixed theory which applies a uniform interpretation to any given phenomena in order to understand it but, rather, that realism is a unstable category which is (like all social phenomena) in constant transformation and simultaneously in contradiction. As Roberts points out

we need to be clear that realism as a historical category and philosophical method is not a form of monism; realism is not an unstratified theory of fixed things and fixed relations. On the contrary, realism's assessment and recovery of the world is based on the socially produced and self-qualifying nature of signification, in which things and their relations and their representations are in dynamic movement.160

The importance of the dialectic was outlined here, identifying that contradictions are at the very heart of all things and it is this which allows critical realists to identify the dynamics inherent in reality. Realism therefore is not a fixed description of reality but more an orientation which allows the possibility of developing a graspable (and therefore transformational) notion of reality. It is here that I have also emphasised the importance of continuing to develop critical realism in order to resist the relativism represented by various postmodernist positions which sees any attempt to 'reclaim the real' as both naive and untenable.

It is clear that we cannot get to the real by merely reading off the surface appearances of reality. As Lovell describes:

appearance and essence diverge. It is in the collective class interests of the bourgeoisie to take these appearances at full face value, while it is in the interests of the proletariat to penetrate to the essential reality.161

Therefore if we are to talk about what the world is really like and how we can engage with it through art, a clear understanding of what reality is will be needed. Critical realism provides us with such a basis.

In discussing the technique of montage in the light of specific practices and theoretical developments during the inter-war period we have seen that trying to create a realist effect in art is bound-up with problems and contradictions. This is because, as both Roberts and Lukács pointed out, any realist art will necessarily contain within itself the contradictions of the conditions which it purports to reveal.

The central issues for a critical realist art practice is not only the consideration of the theories of knowledge which informs the work, but the temporal use of a particular technique and how this is organised (or inserted) to create the realist effect.

The three montagist examples discussed in part two served to show how diverse this may be in practice. Heartfield's interventionist approach was dependant upon both his relationship with the German Communist Party and the existence of established cultural institutions of the worker movement. Eisenstein, operating in very different conditions, approached realism from a position where the contradictions of bourgeois culture had been eradicated. Initially reflecting the Soviet Union's close register with a dialectical understanding of reality, we could also observe how his films later became open to co-option by the Stalinist counter-revolution. When seen in this context Eisenstein's realist capacity was lost as the ideological reality shifted. Léger's realism comes from a very different position to that of Heartfield and Eisenstein, reflecting not only the modernist perspective he held but also the isolated conditions for any independent critical practice during that period.

In assessing these practices and the theoretical exchanges between Brecht, Benjamin and Lukács, the foundations for a contemporary conception of a critically realist montage practice were laid. In extracting what I consider to be some of the most relevant aspects of Benjamin's and Brecht's ideas, I moved on in part three to outline what this might be.

By acknowledging the very different conditions of this period to those discussed above I have assessed how montage might still be used, despite its pervasiveness in popular culture, in producing a critically realist art practice. In identifying the conditions of late C20th capitalism the aim has been to develop a realist approach to art which will meet and engage with these new conditions. As Jameson points out,

under these circumstances, the function of a new realism would be clear; to resist the power of reification in consumer society and to reinvent that category of totality which, systematically undermined by existing fragmentation on all levels of and social organisation today, can alone project structural relations between classes as well as class struggles in other countries, in what has increasingly become a world system.162

It is this notion of realism that has shaped the montagist work which constitutes the practical aspect of this project. By utilising the most contemporary form, ( that of digital montage), I have tried to make work which is in keeping with a Brechtian and Benjaminian notion of popular form and engagement to create a contemporary realist effect.

As a final point, it needs to be re-stated that there are as many ways of revealing the real as there are of 'covering it up'. It is the premise of this paper to suggest that when it comes to attempts to 'reveal the real' through art, it may well be through a renewed practice of montage which provides an effective way of doing so.

Footnotes

160 Roberts, J, 1997, p 8

161 Lovell, T, 1980, p 70

162 Jameson, F, 1992, p 212