Contradictory images

Martha Rosler-- Positions in the Life World

This exhibition brings together 30 years of projects interrogating ideology and spurring on social activism. Many of the pieces are working agit-prop never intended for the museum but circulated through left wing papers, magazines, anti-war journals and poster campaigns.
Much art self consciously pretends to resist commodification by being conceptual or practically unsaleable, but Rosler's work never bothered with the question of being art in the first place. This is its strength; in her urgency to communicate Rosler resorts to a 'by any means necessary' aesthetic, and the show is an exhilarating arsenal of billboard posters, photo-pieces, novels serialised on postcards, real plants growing in soil (a B52 in Babies' Tears) and hilarious anti-TV video productions that satirise and denounce capitalism and all its effects.
The early photomontages Bringing the War Home-- House Beautiful (1967-72) take a scalpel to illusions of the American dream to reveal the devastating consequences of US imperialism abroad. Rosler seamlessly splices maimed and dead Vietnamese into affluent US homes to expose the material connection between the two realities that bourgeois ideology seeks to deny.
In Giacometti (1969) modern art treasures adorn an elegant sitting room. Outside the window lies a war ravaged wasteland strewn with dismembered bodies. For Rosler, critical art in the embrace of the ruling class serves to mask the connections between powerful art patrons and the society it seeks to critique. Sartre described Giacometti's sculptures movingly as 'the fleshless martyrs of Buchenwald'. The Giacometti figure here is displayed as decoration in the splendid home of a rich collector in aestheticised isolation from the ravaged flesh of the Vietnamese martyrs on the other side of the window.
The Restoration of High Culture in Chile (1978) and Chile on the Road to Nafta (1997) are an ensemble of story, album covers, music and video. The story describes the restoration of the interests of the wealthy elite, told from the point of view of a classical singer from a wealthy family, gratified that the high culture of the international bourgeoisie is reinstated in the capital's concert hall, banishing the popular music of the Chilean workers and peasants. An adjacent story tells how Pinochet's men rounded up thousands, popular left wing Chilean musician Victor Jara amongst them, in the Santiago stadium. The musician began to sing in defiance, rousing the others. They cut off his fingers and killed him. An album cover of Victor Jara shows him smiling, his chin resting on his hands. On the video monitor we travel through the Chilean countryside, to the turgid strains of the Chilean National Police Band playing 'Star Wars'. What appears on the horizon as a vision of a giant upturned clenched fist metamorphoses as we drive towards it into a billboard of a hand clutching a can of Coke. For restoration of high culture read murder of working class culture in the interests of global capital.
Not content with merely unmasking the lies perpetrated by the rulers of the world, the whole point in all this is to change the world-- which rather renders the question of whether Martha Rosler's work is art or not, completely irrelevant.
Alison Jones Martha Rosler is at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, until 30 January

Scotland's glory?

National museums fundamentally present the myth of the nation-state-- emphasising the unity of 'the people'. This national myth gives an underlying coherence to the random artefacts, representations and reconstructions that museums normally display. Where does the new National Museum of Scotland fit into this picture?
On the positive side, the museum is architecturally interesting, although close up one becomes aware of how over-decorative it is, in the now traditional postmodern manner. Inside it is well designed, and avoids the quasi-religious atmosphere that pervades many museums. The best exhibits demonstrate some genuine inventiveness. In one, early artefacts, instead of being simply presented in display cabinets, are held by bronze figurative sculptures made by Eduard Paolozzi, one of the greatest modern Scottish artists. Anyone wanting to get some sense of the scale of Scottish capitalist expansion could do worse than to visit the section on 'Scotland Transformed'. Yet there is, inevitably, a downside.
Commissioned under the Tory government in 1989, the project was always going to have a difficult time straddling the extremes of Unionist denigration of the Scottish past (where nothing of importance happens before the Union of 1707) and nationalist fantasy (where everything is part of an ongoing struggle for liberation against 'the English'). Has it succeeded?
In fact, despite nationalist outrage at the absence of exhibits on William Wallace, the museum presents a view of Scottish history which embodies both British Unionism (at the level of the state) and Scottish nationalism (in the notion of 'the Scottish people' which underpins it). This leads to problems.
The curators have done their best to avoid anything that suggests the divisions which have marked, and still mark, Scottish society. Historically, this is less of an issue. The 17th century Covenanters are devoted some space, although nothing to suggest why they waged a guerrilla war against the absolutist state in Scotland. The Jacobites receive more attention, but the commentary simply repeats the orthodox myths of Scottish history: 'Jacobite strength was strongest in the Highlands.' There is now a substantial body of historical work which demonstrates that this was not the case.
The absence of conflict becomes most glaring as we near the modern period. There are some references to the Highland Crofters' struggle for land at the end of the 19th century, but of the great class conflicts which have shaken Scottish life from the Great Unrest on virtually nothing. And this is no accident. For to show these aspects of Scottish life would completely undermine the notion that the Scots are one 'people' with a common history.
In the period for which nationalism became a major issue, there is nothing. Four of the seven floors are devoted to the period after 1707, and the aspects of Scotland which are presented are those which point most to the triumphs of the Union. Yet there is nothing to suggest why these have faded, or what the implications of this have been for Scotland.
The paralysis that seems to have gripped the organisers as they neared the present day reaches its climax in the exhibition on the 20th century. This consists of nothing more than a selection of artefacts chosen by 30 individuals, some famous, some 'ordinary'. But what does a Swedish Saab convertible (chosen by Kirsty Wark) or a Fender Stratocaster (chosen by Tony Blair) have to do with Scotland, exactly? This represents an attempt to avoid presenting any of the contentious contemporary issues of class, nation or religion which the Scots currently face.
The museum represents a missed opportunity, although the material on display is interesting enough to make it worth paying the £3 entrance fee.
Neil Davidson
The National Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh is open all week