Art and politics: A reappraisal

In his highly influential book Thinking Photography (1982) Victor Burgin famously warns artists not to succumb to the romantic myth of inspiration and originality. He argues that as all artistic “creation” necessarily depends on pre-established codes and norms, naïve intuition is an insufficient basis for the creative process. Drawing on Walter Benjamin¹s essay “The Author as Producer”, he insists that artistic representations should always include a reflective stance with regard to their own conditions of production. In retrospect this can be seen as one of the most consistent basic premises of his work.