Art Must Reckon with Reality, Argues Marcello Faletra

In an essay published in Artribune Magazine #68, critic Marcello Faletra argues that contemporary art must abandon its negotiated status and become a dissident communal body. Drawing on Diderot's distinction between idealist realism and pagan materialism, Faletra criticizes artists who learn compassion and drama in museums rather than on the streets. He cites Francis Alÿs, Jeremy Deller, and Adrian Paci as examples of artists who engage with the real. Faletra invokes critic Teresa Macrì's call for art to reinterpret the world as a dissident communal body, suppressing the aesthetic framing of social problems to uncover underlying lies and violence. He links the depoliticization of art to the neoliberal mantra of Margaret Thatcher's 'There is no alternative,' advocating for art as a communal body in the sense of Édouard Glissant and Jean-Jacques Lebel, where the body becomes a device for connection and resistance. Faletra references Aimé Césaire on Lautréamont, who looked straight into the iron man of capitalist society to grasp the monster. The essay concludes with the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition, where workers staged a counter-exhibition showing the true cost of capitalism—torn overalls, blood-stained clothes, exhausted bodies, child labor—contrasting the spectacle of pain with real misery. Faletra warns against artists exploiting others' pain for success, equating it to capitalist exploitation.