Summit

This scene shows a derelict weaving mill, formerly Fothergill and Harvey, formed in 1847.  The mill adjoins the Rochdale Canal and is close to the railway, which emerges here from the Summit Tunnel.

A first listen today to David Crosby's 2014 album "Croz" on which my favourite track, Time I Have, may be the only song to use the expression "cognitive dissonance."

More hard-going today with the art studies, reading a complicated  account of "the social history of art: models and concepts."  I took two points from it.

First, the idea of "aesthetic autonomy" which is said to be the capacity to experience pleasure without interest. Behind much of the modernist movement in the 20th century was a belief that works of art could be enjoyed purely as "what they are" without any specific representative subject or objective meaning.  At least, I think that's what it means.

Secondly, a question: can cultural solidarity or artistic identification with the struggles of the oppressed and exploited classes amount to acts of political support for revolutionary or oppositional movements?  Marxist theoreticians say they cannot,  But that causes a problem for them. Very few, if any, artists and intellectuals had emerged from the conditions of proletarian existence. Does that give their work less political significance? Does that matter?  Does it affect the judgement of their works of art?

This is illustrated by a photograph by an American-born, revolutionary communist photographer based in Mexico - Tina Modotti.  Her Workers' Demonstration, Mexico City (1926) shows a frame filled with the hats of workers attending a political demonstration.  None of their faces are visible. They seem to be moving towards something, as a single mass of people.

Is the photograph inherently "political?" If we did not know the photographer's political background and if the title were, say, "Going to the Football" would it feel as powerful and socially significant?  Can it just be seen as an interesting framing of several dozen hats of similar size and shape?