From Marx to Counterculture: The Marxian Vision of Art(ist) and Véquaud's Maithil Village Communitarian Utopia: A Renewed Romanticism?

Résumé En

The Marxian vision of art differs greatly from socialist realism and even from the neo- (if not post-)Marxist philosophy of critical theorists like Adorno and the Frankfurt School. Counter to the Biedermeier uprightness, Marx will give to the art a real social content. The artist’s work is elevated to an ideal labor organization and opposed to the worker’s alienation resulting from mechanization and the division of labor. If a society based on the model of artistic work remains a utopia, Marx seems to be seeking to renew the ancient model of the medieval craftsman. The latter is free, masters his trade, skills and techniques, and succeeds in his work as an artists. If this notion is very different from the idea based on the socialist realism, it meets, on the other hand, characteristics of the counterculture – as the refusal of the work as socially imposed – even if “Flower Children” and other agents of the counter-culture rarely recognize themselves in a Marxian vision of art. It is the case of Yves Véquaud, following on the heels of the counter-culture, while not assuming any clear political commitment. Inspired by a counter-bourgeois hippie Bohemia, he extols in his writings some heroïzed figure of painters, with neo-tantric elements, embodied in the bucolic communitarian Maithil village utopia, through which the Sehnsucht of lost paradise occurs. Would Véquaud, within his artistic vision, be a Marxian without being aware of it? However, his depiction of the bucolic Maithil village and its myriad of women-artists seems (incidentally?) be inspired by the Marxian utopia of a society based on the model of artistic work. The common feature between the counter-culture and the Marxian notion of art lies most certainly in the ‘revolutionary and/or utopian romanticism’ defined by Löwry & Sayre.