Dominique Baqué's Polemic on Political Art's Impotence

In her essay 'Pour un nouvel art politique. De l'art contemporain au documentaire' (Flammarion), Dominique Baqué argues that contemporary political art is largely impotent, naive, and infraconceptual. She claims that artists who claim political agency are deluded, and that the most effective political art is found in documentary practices that adopt a distanced, descriptive approach. Baqué praises documentarians like Raymond Depardon, Nicolas Philibert, Christophe de Ponfilly, and Claude Lanzmann for their anti-heroic, slow, and subject-centered methods. She criticizes relational aesthetics, humanitarian art, and artists like Rirkrit Tiravanija (dismissed as a follower) while showing some leniency toward Krzysztof Wodiczko. The essay also points to the institutional co-optation of documentary in exhibitions, citing Chantal Akerman's 'De l'autre côté' at Documenta 11 (2002) as an example where the work's political message was undermined by its presentation. Baqué calls for a return to ethics in art, denouncing the spectacle and manipulation prevalent in contemporary art. The review by Paul Ardenne highlights the essay's lucidity and moral stance, though it notes the lack of attention to the techno culture revolution and the retrospective efficiency of artists like Robert Filliou.