Or the pontification of nothing in particular. Spreading through the galleries like a tiny, efficient and simple little virus.
It is the perfect allegory of our times: selfish, not that rigorous, and less informed than the preceding generation. It doesn’t require much thought. It abuses, distorts, and reduces the concept of metaphor. Better described as “TVesque.” Yuppies love it, and it's perfect for coctail parties!
Just like junk food, it will give you a quick jolt of the throat, but leave you with an empty stomach. Just like the tiny, efficient and simple little virus it is, it has already crossed the oceans, feeding on greed (and need), and it is starting to affect major organs.
Not easily recognized.
Or is it?…
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Today I completed the cycle of my first bid for a public commission,
and I came out of it with mixed feelings. Needless to say that after all the pontificating I do on public art and why it is so bad lately, I jumped on the opportunity to submit.
They called me and asked me to submit a proposal in 30 DAYS! Complete with itemized budget and everything! On top of it the amount of money was a joke for that size of building. If $33,000 is one percent, then they were constructing a 50,000 square foot, two-story building, with full glass facing, in downtown New Haven for one heck of a bargain! But since I would be a fool to turn down such an opportunity I agreed to submit. I went to the firm working on the project, and the architect was on vacation! None of the people that received me cared much about the project, nor did they seem to know much about it. I went with an architect (my brother) to the meeting, and according to him they were not very professional, and there were enough mistakes in the CAD files to gain them penalties from the contractors until they would have to settle down with building a very nice shack! (Of course I’m exaggerating).
When I looked at the plan, practically every square inch of the building was spoken for, so my first reaction was “so what the hell do they need me for?!”, but I took the blueprints and got to work.
Imagine my excitement when I realized that the school was in a Puerto Rican neighborhood! I guess that’s what the pencil neck I spoke to at the firm meant by saying it was in “not such a great neighborhood.” Now I really wanted to try my best to make it work. Since the space was so huge, but the budget so small, I thought the best way to have an impact on the space was to work with the same materials that were already at play in the courtyard of the building, so that budgets could be combined. I would be improving on some of the things that would have been merely utilitarian and turning them into something more, which would be a great opportunity to prove some of my points about how public art should engage people, and I don’t mean in a “push this button” type of way.
Some of the people in the panel seemed impressed by the concept, and by my interest in making something that those kids could use and feel proud of. Others just wanted to find somebody that would just show up at the end of the day with their little trinket, and hang it somewhere out of the way. Never mind ‘problem solving,’ ‘going the extra mile,’ or ‘developing new ideas.’
I came up with these beautiful patterns to be rendered on the rubberized playmats that they were to put on the floor. Apparently, having the audacity to work off the building’s inherent geometry was taken somewhat personally by the architect. I thought that he might even take it as a compliment! Boy was I wrong! Let me just say that at one point I heard the words “You took my courtyard and you…” but he stopped himself from making all of us innocent debutants blush. The best part was having the African-American construction manager stand up for my design, and tell him that not only was it feasible, it was a very sensitive way of approaching the problem! So when feasibility was settled, he turned his guns on my very controversial subject matter: flowers. LOL!
Yes folks, it is a sad day in history.
When I told him they actually came out of his geometry, he seemed to get even more upset.
Was that wrong? ;-)
I don’t know, maybe he was too macho for flowers, which are only half-male.
Now, don’t get me wrong, this was a very educated and perceptive man. When I finished my slide presentation he actually knew exactly where I was coming from, and he even explained the project in a favorable light when he said to everybody to “look at it in terms of a concept” rather than a finalized piece ready to be mounted. He knew I wanted to work with them, and to further develop this thing until it worked for everybody while still being faithful to the idea, but the sad part is this:
People work their asses off, and pay taxes to get schools for their children and to improve their living environment. They know the difference between bread and roses, and they want both. I think that's fair enough. Then a small group of people decide how, when, and where these buildings (which they will never use, or set foot in afterwards) get built. Later as a sort of afterthought, they think “Oh, I maybe we should throw some art in it, or something.” This is the same population that expects plenty of accouterments and embellishment out of their environment (or should I say “accruements?”). So, they call another group of mostly-Caucassian people to come and meekly hang their little “pet project” on one of their walls, take some pocket money for their troubles, and thank them for being able to even get that far (and when I say “pet projects” I do not mean “pet projects” in the artist’s eyes. Most of us care very much about what we do, enough to live with being under-paid, and under-appreciated by society).
Would you believe that I was the only Artist to actually visit the site, and talk to the neighbors?
Actually, I later found out I was the only one to even THINK about doing that. Shouldn’t that be an automatic impulse? “Gee let me see how these people feel about stuff…. After all they are going to be the ones stuck with my vision for the next 50 years.” Is it any surprise when kids come and spray paint the hell out of these places? Probably you are thinking “self-destructive behavior.” True, I don’t endorse it in any way, but do they even see it as SELF-destruction, or are they just reacting to what they see as handouts? How many more concentration camps do we have to build until our sensibilities have been reduced to a dull “cement gray”? Or should I say to a dull “box white”?
I was disappointed to see that from the two artists in the review panel only ONE asked A question. It was so memorable and insightful that I have to quote it for you. Ready? Here it goes:
“Is that resin?”
The people that were actually asking the important questions were the ones that we might tend to think of as “bureaucrats,” and the architect.
The most important word I learnt during my MFA career was “stultified.”
Public art and gallery art used to be two different things because they have two different purposes. It seems that now people can only SEE gallery art. If you have any sort of public agenda you have to be ready to explain what should already be obvious.
Public art is for the masses, but that doesn’t mean you dumb it down, as some people would have you believe, on the contrary it needs to have meaning and a strong sense of purpose. But the artist needs to think generously, and in a detached way, so that enough room is left for the public to complete the piece and give it personal meaning. Gallery art, on the other hand, only needs to enchant ONE person: the buyer. When you magnify one of these pieces, and put it in the middle of a square, in what amounts to an oppression of taste (or the lack of it), don’t complaint about people just walking by it. I am not saying that you have to please everybody, but if you are making a fetish piece that only you care about, or a dull pontification of nothing in particular, then why get into public, or monumental, pieces?
I still haven’t heard any results, so this is not about “sour grapes.” For all I know, an invitation letter may be on its way to my address. My meeting actually was the longest of the three, and I was very glad to see that my work was not so “ready made,” both in form and content, but that it actually required some work and development IN CONJUCTION with the architecture. That part of the experience was quite invigorating and encouraging. Had it been some sort of easy-pass, I may have had some serious doubts about my work. My only problems are with (1) the expectation of people for public art to be just a big version of white-box northern hemisphere intellectualistic (as opposed to intellectual) concerns, and (2) the lack of consideration for the population that the art is supposed to be serving. Yes, I said SERVING. If you are making public art without the word generosity ever crossing your mind, Heaven help us….
They called me and asked me to submit a proposal in 30 DAYS! Complete with itemized budget and everything! On top of it the amount of money was a joke for that size of building. If $33,000 is one percent, then they were constructing a 50,000 square foot, two-story building, with full glass facing, in downtown New Haven for one heck of a bargain! But since I would be a fool to turn down such an opportunity I agreed to submit. I went to the firm working on the project, and the architect was on vacation! None of the people that received me cared much about the project, nor did they seem to know much about it. I went with an architect (my brother) to the meeting, and according to him they were not very professional, and there were enough mistakes in the CAD files to gain them penalties from the contractors until they would have to settle down with building a very nice shack! (Of course I’m exaggerating).
When I looked at the plan, practically every square inch of the building was spoken for, so my first reaction was “so what the hell do they need me for?!”, but I took the blueprints and got to work.
Imagine my excitement when I realized that the school was in a Puerto Rican neighborhood! I guess that’s what the pencil neck I spoke to at the firm meant by saying it was in “not such a great neighborhood.” Now I really wanted to try my best to make it work. Since the space was so huge, but the budget so small, I thought the best way to have an impact on the space was to work with the same materials that were already at play in the courtyard of the building, so that budgets could be combined. I would be improving on some of the things that would have been merely utilitarian and turning them into something more, which would be a great opportunity to prove some of my points about how public art should engage people, and I don’t mean in a “push this button” type of way.
Some of the people in the panel seemed impressed by the concept, and by my interest in making something that those kids could use and feel proud of. Others just wanted to find somebody that would just show up at the end of the day with their little trinket, and hang it somewhere out of the way. Never mind ‘problem solving,’ ‘going the extra mile,’ or ‘developing new ideas.’
I came up with these beautiful patterns to be rendered on the rubberized playmats that they were to put on the floor. Apparently, having the audacity to work off the building’s inherent geometry was taken somewhat personally by the architect. I thought that he might even take it as a compliment! Boy was I wrong! Let me just say that at one point I heard the words “You took my courtyard and you…” but he stopped himself from making all of us innocent debutants blush. The best part was having the African-American construction manager stand up for my design, and tell him that not only was it feasible, it was a very sensitive way of approaching the problem! So when feasibility was settled, he turned his guns on my very controversial subject matter: flowers. LOL!
Yes folks, it is a sad day in history.
When I told him they actually came out of his geometry, he seemed to get even more upset.
Was that wrong? ;-)
I don’t know, maybe he was too macho for flowers, which are only half-male.
Now, don’t get me wrong, this was a very educated and perceptive man. When I finished my slide presentation he actually knew exactly where I was coming from, and he even explained the project in a favorable light when he said to everybody to “look at it in terms of a concept” rather than a finalized piece ready to be mounted. He knew I wanted to work with them, and to further develop this thing until it worked for everybody while still being faithful to the idea, but the sad part is this:
People work their asses off, and pay taxes to get schools for their children and to improve their living environment. They know the difference between bread and roses, and they want both. I think that's fair enough. Then a small group of people decide how, when, and where these buildings (which they will never use, or set foot in afterwards) get built. Later as a sort of afterthought, they think “Oh, I maybe we should throw some art in it, or something.” This is the same population that expects plenty of accouterments and embellishment out of their environment (or should I say “accruements?”). So, they call another group of mostly-Caucassian people to come and meekly hang their little “pet project” on one of their walls, take some pocket money for their troubles, and thank them for being able to even get that far (and when I say “pet projects” I do not mean “pet projects” in the artist’s eyes. Most of us care very much about what we do, enough to live with being under-paid, and under-appreciated by society).
Would you believe that I was the only Artist to actually visit the site, and talk to the neighbors?
Actually, I later found out I was the only one to even THINK about doing that. Shouldn’t that be an automatic impulse? “Gee let me see how these people feel about stuff…. After all they are going to be the ones stuck with my vision for the next 50 years.” Is it any surprise when kids come and spray paint the hell out of these places? Probably you are thinking “self-destructive behavior.” True, I don’t endorse it in any way, but do they even see it as SELF-destruction, or are they just reacting to what they see as handouts? How many more concentration camps do we have to build until our sensibilities have been reduced to a dull “cement gray”? Or should I say to a dull “box white”?
I was disappointed to see that from the two artists in the review panel only ONE asked A question. It was so memorable and insightful that I have to quote it for you. Ready? Here it goes:
“Is that resin?”
The people that were actually asking the important questions were the ones that we might tend to think of as “bureaucrats,” and the architect.
The most important word I learnt during my MFA career was “stultified.”
Public art and gallery art used to be two different things because they have two different purposes. It seems that now people can only SEE gallery art. If you have any sort of public agenda you have to be ready to explain what should already be obvious.
Public art is for the masses, but that doesn’t mean you dumb it down, as some people would have you believe, on the contrary it needs to have meaning and a strong sense of purpose. But the artist needs to think generously, and in a detached way, so that enough room is left for the public to complete the piece and give it personal meaning. Gallery art, on the other hand, only needs to enchant ONE person: the buyer. When you magnify one of these pieces, and put it in the middle of a square, in what amounts to an oppression of taste (or the lack of it), don’t complaint about people just walking by it. I am not saying that you have to please everybody, but if you are making a fetish piece that only you care about, or a dull pontification of nothing in particular, then why get into public, or monumental, pieces?
I still haven’t heard any results, so this is not about “sour grapes.” For all I know, an invitation letter may be on its way to my address. My meeting actually was the longest of the three, and I was very glad to see that my work was not so “ready made,” both in form and content, but that it actually required some work and development IN CONJUCTION with the architecture. That part of the experience was quite invigorating and encouraging. Had it been some sort of easy-pass, I may have had some serious doubts about my work. My only problems are with (1) the expectation of people for public art to be just a big version of white-box northern hemisphere intellectualistic (as opposed to intellectual) concerns, and (2) the lack of consideration for the population that the art is supposed to be serving. Yes, I said SERVING. If you are making public art without the word generosity ever crossing your mind, Heaven help us….
Thursday, November 04, 2004
About the Election
So I suppose, I should take a break and address the dreaded election results, since they will most likely AFFECT all artists (pun intended). I will do so, but with the following qualifier: DIEBOLD.
Could the names of the people involved in this disgraceful (mis)administration get more Orwellian?
Ahh…Since we will probably never know the real numbers in Florida let’s work from the premise that the Sunshine State wasn’t involved in the national consensus. Am I ignoring reality? Most likely I am ignoring a lie; something which I have never heard anybody complaint about. You can read Greg Palast's excellent article on this issue complete with Harvard University's US Civil Rights project at:
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=392&row=0
So let’s look at what everybody seems to be the most concerned about: the Red and Blue States. Somebody just told me the other day that we shouldn’t be so shocked, because “just look at the map and all those red states in the middle. We’re just two bands on each coast.”
There’s just one small problem with that observation: LAND DOESN’T VOTE: PEOPLE DO.
A reminder about how the Electoral College is composed: “The number of delegates shall be equal to the number of representatives that each state has in congress.”
So far it sounds fair enough, right? Wrong. Go to that same red and blue map and do something for me: Look at the size of Hawaii and look at the size of Alaska. You could very easily fit Hawaii inside Bristol Bay, yet Hawaii has 4 electoral votes and Alaska has 3! Before you say “Hey, that’s not fair Alaska is much bigger and it only has three.” You have to consider the fact that congress is supposed to be a REPRESENTATIVE democracy, and if Alaska only has 626,932 inhabitants and Hawaii has 1,211,537 inhabitants, then Hawaii’s representation in congress should be twice that of Alaska, yet they are only off by ONE representative. The ‘2 senators per state rule’ was designed to give each STATE equal representation in the upper legislative branch because States in reality are almost autonomous territories which are federated for their common good, but by attaching the Electoral College to it, big landowners effectively trump the power of city dwellers (many of which may not even own land, but who power industry through sheer numbers).
So now that we have settled the matter of democracy being leashed to the post of capitalist interests, let’s address the matter of why the Chimperor is able to fool so many bipeds. You have to go back to the philosophers of the industrial era. In particular the ones hailing from the Weimar Republic and the dichotomy of thought prevalent in pre-WWII Europe.
People like Walter Benjamin and Theodore Adorno lost the battle of influence over Academia because of the rise of fascism in Germany. At the same time, their respective nemeses, Nietzsche and Heidegger, won the same battle THANKS to the rise of fascism. Fascism drew most of their fervor and thought from the anti-conceptualists and anti-rationalists working in Germany during and before the 1920s (Heidegger was even a card-carrying member of the Nazi party for 12 years. Bet you didn't know that did you?). After allied forces dismantled the Nazi movement many of these nice fellows continued to exert great influence on Western academia, now scared out of their pants by the Warsaw pact. Just try Googling "Operation Paperclip." The problem was that in separating their “bad politics” from their “good philosophies” later philosophers allowed the same anti-rationalist thought that gave us such a lovely movement to fester in the Western mind for far too long, and now this monster is coming back to bite us.
Allow me to explain. According to the Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida and this school which has exerted enormous influence over all of OUR minds (whether we realize it or not) the noble search for thought is one of searching for some sort of “authentic thought," a thought which comes before we conceptualize things into "car," "blue," "mother," etc. Intuition is seen as a guide to this “now-lost primordial thought process,” and should be trusted above rational thought, which depends on formed, or agreed upon concepts and charged words. like "car," "blue," "mother," etc. In essence, they negate the whole history of Western thought. History and science are suspect, and even Derridas said that he was not interested in the "personal biographies of philosophers" and that "their thought legacy could operate removed from their personal lives." This thought pattern is rooted in the land, or soil, and it's "true" or "authentic" occupant: the volk. It lends itself to powerful figures, pomp, ritual, romanticism, and elitist tendencies (the elitists being the ones who live the most “authentically” because of their disinterest on the mundane).
Rationalist thought, on the other hand, tends to lean towards concrete (as opposed to abstract) thoughts, which are viewable here and now, and which facilitate systematic thoughts and processes. According to Benjamin “that which is unutterable is false.” Things are what they are. Mystery elicits suspicion, “real” experiences are those of the mundane and the everyday, and all interactions are analyzed within this empiric context. Progress is palpable, and the show of it would most likely have a material expression. Empirical and objetctive methods are seen as substantially "truer." This pattern lent itself more readily to councils, politbureaus, and the desire to adjust nature, but mostly society, to what is perceived as good. In the words of John Berger “mystification is to explain away what would otherwise be evident.” Religion is immediately trumped by this thought process, because it can’t really show much in terms of progress. Science is supposed to lead the way, and technology should be used for the benefit of humanity. Is it any surprise that during the modern period the West gravitated towards abstract art, while Eastern Europe chose realist art?
I find myself agreeing with many aspects from both sides, although I have to admit that Nietzsche leaves a really sour taste in my mouth, and I just can not disagree with many socialist critiques of Heideggerian thought.
How does this relate to the election? And more specifically how does this relate to man-or-monkey and his cult followers? Well my dears, it is Nietzsche’s fault, it is Heidegger’s fault, it is Derrida’s fault, and most importantly it is OUR fault, because us “city-dwellers” are hard wired into anti-rationalist thought, by way of these fellows. How many times have you heard Nietzsche’s name dropped on a critique? They may not necessarily quote him, they’ll just mindlessly drop his name to look smart, or to justify certain aspects of their art without realizing that they are enshrining a man whose thought process itself was hard wired for fascism. Derridas, himself a secular Jew who experienced great anti-semitism from the French goverment in Algeria, went to great lenghts to dismiss Heidegger's Nazism as a "flirtation," and this is the same type of apologetical discourse that Hanah Arendt indulged in.
As artists, and "liberals," we come from the Walter Benjamin side of the fence, but as existentialists we readily buy into Heidegger and Nietzsche without thinking about it, and where do rural people go for their education? To the city. So even though our communal living gives us a palpability of the necessity of tolerance and cooperation (a socialist tendency), our tastes and musings are more Nietzschean and inward looking, sending us in inward searches that can even manifest itself in indulgence and excess, due to the flow of goods that come in and out of our shores, ports and stations. To the rural dweller who may come to the city to learn a trade for a short period and then go back to the land, his inward search manifests itself in the volk. He will have a bigger tendency (and more opportunitty) to root himself in the soil, in intuition, in ritual, and ultimately in the totalitarian tendencies that claim to order time and space for us. On top of that, the American country side is not densely populated, so there is not much need for tolerance. Nobody will bother the rural dweller much, and most people will prefer to conform with local custom, rather than being singled out by a large portion of their few neighbors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but how does this even relate to the election? OK. Here it goes:
Only in a Niezschean society can a world leader say that he just has a "hunch" about another country having weapons of mass destruction, or that a god is giving him messages, and get away with it. In an EMPIRICAL, RATIONAL, society that would be unacceptable. May I remind you that most of the press that has been accepting and encouraging this type of behaviour resides in the so-called Blue States?
So, the vote you saw, my friends, was a rebuke against RATIONAL THOUGHT, which (in their intuition-based world) is not rooted in the land, is irreverent towards power figures, and fails to conform to their world view. But most of the fault lies with us, because when we regurgitate these ‘volkish’ tendencies without stopping to think about their context, meaning, and history, we are hard wiring them, AND OURSELVES, for this search of the so-called “true form” which is unhindered by the distractions of technology, progress, un-rooted people’s (i.e. immigrants) tendencies, etc. This form of "authentic" existence allegedly predates rational thought.
The problem with this view is that, as developmental psychologist Jean Piaget already showed, children go through a pre-cognitive stage in which the axioms of our common-sense view of the world have yet to emerge. Truths that we take for granted because of their supposed “immediacy” are actually acquired over a protracted period, the result of a process of interaction between the child and the world around him. Those who identify the common-sense view of the world with “primordial truth” are guilty of ignoring an even more primitive form of perception: learning. Simultaneously, they are turning their backs on the higher forms of mathematical relations to which common sense must give way in interpreting the natural world.
The division in the United States is not the one they would have you believe. It is not so much one of thought (we are both infected by these tendencies), it is one of habit.
Urban habits trump certain aspects of Nietzschean philosophy (even Nietzsche himself mistrusted modern living) because of the need to coexhist in a limited space. But in the countryside, these tendencies can run unchecked quite easily. If you don’t believe me, compare the vote in Franklin and Cuyahoga counties with that of the rest of the state of Ohio, or that of Miami with the rest of Florida. This is not about conservative or liberal, the truth is most North Americans are far from liberal. It is about our own creations coming back to bite us in the ass. Derridas is said to be the most influential thinker of our time. But when people say that like its a positive thing, they don't stop to think that he worshiped Heidegger! And Heidegger was a Nazi!
THE SHORT-TERM SOLUTION:
Secession. There is no reason why three nations can’t live symbiotically in what really is more of a continent than a country (and let’s not even get into the Imperial aspect of it). They need us for commerce and culture, and we need them for bread and raw materials. The federalist system is starting to hurt the people that it is supposed to benefit just because of the schizophrenic tendencies of the founding fathers which were landlords who happened to find themselves with the sudden possession of what were essentially European trading outposts on the East Coast of the North American continent. The problem with this is that secession would not happen without a stagering, and senseless, loss of life. So, there is
THE LONG-TERM SOLUTION:
Reject Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derridas and the whole bunch of them AS FAR AS SOCIAL APPLICATION goes. Post-modernist thought can help create great gurus, artists, and mystics, but they make awful citizens. In the same manner Benjamin, Adorno, and the rest of them can help create good communities, but they short change you in terms of introspection and spirituality. You can’t seriously believe that either school was perfect, can you? So let's discuss them, and more importantly TEACH them, in terms of METHODS and TOOLS with LIMITED (yet useful) applications. The Judeo-Christian tendency to unify everything, and to adhere to schools of thought with the fervor that befits a religion keeps us embracing and rejecting knowledge in a succession of enshrinings and cruciFICTIONS that could be compared to hugging a cactus because it has water inside, or throwing out the baby with the bathwater. So let's pick and chose a little, shall we? Wisely of course...
Could the names of the people involved in this disgraceful (mis)administration get more Orwellian?
Ahh…Since we will probably never know the real numbers in Florida let’s work from the premise that the Sunshine State wasn’t involved in the national consensus. Am I ignoring reality? Most likely I am ignoring a lie; something which I have never heard anybody complaint about. You can read Greg Palast's excellent article on this issue complete with Harvard University's US Civil Rights project at:
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=392&row=0
So let’s look at what everybody seems to be the most concerned about: the Red and Blue States. Somebody just told me the other day that we shouldn’t be so shocked, because “just look at the map and all those red states in the middle. We’re just two bands on each coast.”
There’s just one small problem with that observation: LAND DOESN’T VOTE: PEOPLE DO.
A reminder about how the Electoral College is composed: “The number of delegates shall be equal to the number of representatives that each state has in congress.”
So far it sounds fair enough, right? Wrong. Go to that same red and blue map and do something for me: Look at the size of Hawaii and look at the size of Alaska. You could very easily fit Hawaii inside Bristol Bay, yet Hawaii has 4 electoral votes and Alaska has 3! Before you say “Hey, that’s not fair Alaska is much bigger and it only has three.” You have to consider the fact that congress is supposed to be a REPRESENTATIVE democracy, and if Alaska only has 626,932 inhabitants and Hawaii has 1,211,537 inhabitants, then Hawaii’s representation in congress should be twice that of Alaska, yet they are only off by ONE representative. The ‘2 senators per state rule’ was designed to give each STATE equal representation in the upper legislative branch because States in reality are almost autonomous territories which are federated for their common good, but by attaching the Electoral College to it, big landowners effectively trump the power of city dwellers (many of which may not even own land, but who power industry through sheer numbers).
So now that we have settled the matter of democracy being leashed to the post of capitalist interests, let’s address the matter of why the Chimperor is able to fool so many bipeds. You have to go back to the philosophers of the industrial era. In particular the ones hailing from the Weimar Republic and the dichotomy of thought prevalent in pre-WWII Europe.
People like Walter Benjamin and Theodore Adorno lost the battle of influence over Academia because of the rise of fascism in Germany. At the same time, their respective nemeses, Nietzsche and Heidegger, won the same battle THANKS to the rise of fascism. Fascism drew most of their fervor and thought from the anti-conceptualists and anti-rationalists working in Germany during and before the 1920s (Heidegger was even a card-carrying member of the Nazi party for 12 years. Bet you didn't know that did you?). After allied forces dismantled the Nazi movement many of these nice fellows continued to exert great influence on Western academia, now scared out of their pants by the Warsaw pact. Just try Googling "Operation Paperclip." The problem was that in separating their “bad politics” from their “good philosophies” later philosophers allowed the same anti-rationalist thought that gave us such a lovely movement to fester in the Western mind for far too long, and now this monster is coming back to bite us.
Allow me to explain. According to the Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida and this school which has exerted enormous influence over all of OUR minds (whether we realize it or not) the noble search for thought is one of searching for some sort of “authentic thought," a thought which comes before we conceptualize things into "car," "blue," "mother," etc. Intuition is seen as a guide to this “now-lost primordial thought process,” and should be trusted above rational thought, which depends on formed, or agreed upon concepts and charged words. like "car," "blue," "mother," etc. In essence, they negate the whole history of Western thought. History and science are suspect, and even Derridas said that he was not interested in the "personal biographies of philosophers" and that "their thought legacy could operate removed from their personal lives." This thought pattern is rooted in the land, or soil, and it's "true" or "authentic" occupant: the volk. It lends itself to powerful figures, pomp, ritual, romanticism, and elitist tendencies (the elitists being the ones who live the most “authentically” because of their disinterest on the mundane).
Rationalist thought, on the other hand, tends to lean towards concrete (as opposed to abstract) thoughts, which are viewable here and now, and which facilitate systematic thoughts and processes. According to Benjamin “that which is unutterable is false.” Things are what they are. Mystery elicits suspicion, “real” experiences are those of the mundane and the everyday, and all interactions are analyzed within this empiric context. Progress is palpable, and the show of it would most likely have a material expression. Empirical and objetctive methods are seen as substantially "truer." This pattern lent itself more readily to councils, politbureaus, and the desire to adjust nature, but mostly society, to what is perceived as good. In the words of John Berger “mystification is to explain away what would otherwise be evident.” Religion is immediately trumped by this thought process, because it can’t really show much in terms of progress. Science is supposed to lead the way, and technology should be used for the benefit of humanity. Is it any surprise that during the modern period the West gravitated towards abstract art, while Eastern Europe chose realist art?
I find myself agreeing with many aspects from both sides, although I have to admit that Nietzsche leaves a really sour taste in my mouth, and I just can not disagree with many socialist critiques of Heideggerian thought.
How does this relate to the election? And more specifically how does this relate to man-or-monkey and his cult followers? Well my dears, it is Nietzsche’s fault, it is Heidegger’s fault, it is Derrida’s fault, and most importantly it is OUR fault, because us “city-dwellers” are hard wired into anti-rationalist thought, by way of these fellows. How many times have you heard Nietzsche’s name dropped on a critique? They may not necessarily quote him, they’ll just mindlessly drop his name to look smart, or to justify certain aspects of their art without realizing that they are enshrining a man whose thought process itself was hard wired for fascism. Derridas, himself a secular Jew who experienced great anti-semitism from the French goverment in Algeria, went to great lenghts to dismiss Heidegger's Nazism as a "flirtation," and this is the same type of apologetical discourse that Hanah Arendt indulged in.
As artists, and "liberals," we come from the Walter Benjamin side of the fence, but as existentialists we readily buy into Heidegger and Nietzsche without thinking about it, and where do rural people go for their education? To the city. So even though our communal living gives us a palpability of the necessity of tolerance and cooperation (a socialist tendency), our tastes and musings are more Nietzschean and inward looking, sending us in inward searches that can even manifest itself in indulgence and excess, due to the flow of goods that come in and out of our shores, ports and stations. To the rural dweller who may come to the city to learn a trade for a short period and then go back to the land, his inward search manifests itself in the volk. He will have a bigger tendency (and more opportunitty) to root himself in the soil, in intuition, in ritual, and ultimately in the totalitarian tendencies that claim to order time and space for us. On top of that, the American country side is not densely populated, so there is not much need for tolerance. Nobody will bother the rural dweller much, and most people will prefer to conform with local custom, rather than being singled out by a large portion of their few neighbors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but how does this even relate to the election? OK. Here it goes:
Only in a Niezschean society can a world leader say that he just has a "hunch" about another country having weapons of mass destruction, or that a god is giving him messages, and get away with it. In an EMPIRICAL, RATIONAL, society that would be unacceptable. May I remind you that most of the press that has been accepting and encouraging this type of behaviour resides in the so-called Blue States?
So, the vote you saw, my friends, was a rebuke against RATIONAL THOUGHT, which (in their intuition-based world) is not rooted in the land, is irreverent towards power figures, and fails to conform to their world view. But most of the fault lies with us, because when we regurgitate these ‘volkish’ tendencies without stopping to think about their context, meaning, and history, we are hard wiring them, AND OURSELVES, for this search of the so-called “true form” which is unhindered by the distractions of technology, progress, un-rooted people’s (i.e. immigrants) tendencies, etc. This form of "authentic" existence allegedly predates rational thought.
The problem with this view is that, as developmental psychologist Jean Piaget already showed, children go through a pre-cognitive stage in which the axioms of our common-sense view of the world have yet to emerge. Truths that we take for granted because of their supposed “immediacy” are actually acquired over a protracted period, the result of a process of interaction between the child and the world around him. Those who identify the common-sense view of the world with “primordial truth” are guilty of ignoring an even more primitive form of perception: learning. Simultaneously, they are turning their backs on the higher forms of mathematical relations to which common sense must give way in interpreting the natural world.
The division in the United States is not the one they would have you believe. It is not so much one of thought (we are both infected by these tendencies), it is one of habit.
Urban habits trump certain aspects of Nietzschean philosophy (even Nietzsche himself mistrusted modern living) because of the need to coexhist in a limited space. But in the countryside, these tendencies can run unchecked quite easily. If you don’t believe me, compare the vote in Franklin and Cuyahoga counties with that of the rest of the state of Ohio, or that of Miami with the rest of Florida. This is not about conservative or liberal, the truth is most North Americans are far from liberal. It is about our own creations coming back to bite us in the ass. Derridas is said to be the most influential thinker of our time. But when people say that like its a positive thing, they don't stop to think that he worshiped Heidegger! And Heidegger was a Nazi!
THE SHORT-TERM SOLUTION:
Secession. There is no reason why three nations can’t live symbiotically in what really is more of a continent than a country (and let’s not even get into the Imperial aspect of it). They need us for commerce and culture, and we need them for bread and raw materials. The federalist system is starting to hurt the people that it is supposed to benefit just because of the schizophrenic tendencies of the founding fathers which were landlords who happened to find themselves with the sudden possession of what were essentially European trading outposts on the East Coast of the North American continent. The problem with this is that secession would not happen without a stagering, and senseless, loss of life. So, there is
THE LONG-TERM SOLUTION:
Reject Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derridas and the whole bunch of them AS FAR AS SOCIAL APPLICATION goes. Post-modernist thought can help create great gurus, artists, and mystics, but they make awful citizens. In the same manner Benjamin, Adorno, and the rest of them can help create good communities, but they short change you in terms of introspection and spirituality. You can’t seriously believe that either school was perfect, can you? So let's discuss them, and more importantly TEACH them, in terms of METHODS and TOOLS with LIMITED (yet useful) applications. The Judeo-Christian tendency to unify everything, and to adhere to schools of thought with the fervor that befits a religion keeps us embracing and rejecting knowledge in a succession of enshrinings and cruciFICTIONS that could be compared to hugging a cactus because it has water inside, or throwing out the baby with the bathwater. So let's pick and chose a little, shall we? Wisely of course...
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Zulu's Indian music obsession
This is a repost from a BBC article. It's quite a remarkable story and I hope you go check it out....
Carnatic music normally takes years of patience and dedication to learn
Few would have thought that the Zulus of South Africa would have much interest in southern Indian classical music.
But South African Patrick Ngcobo has proved that ethnicity and language are no barriers when it comes to learning about music far from home.
When he decided to learn southern Indian classical music, better known as Carnatic music, his African friends in Durban ridiculed him, and his Indian neighbours were sceptical.
For them, it was abnormal for a person from the warrior Zulu tribe in Natal province to take up Carnatic music.
Ignoring insults and sniping remarks, Patrick single-mindedly persisted.
Today, the 34-year-old sings in seven Indian languages....
For the full article go to:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3784767.stm
Carnatic music normally takes years of patience and dedication to learn
Few would have thought that the Zulus of South Africa would have much interest in southern Indian classical music.
But South African Patrick Ngcobo has proved that ethnicity and language are no barriers when it comes to learning about music far from home.
When he decided to learn southern Indian classical music, better known as Carnatic music, his African friends in Durban ridiculed him, and his Indian neighbours were sceptical.
For them, it was abnormal for a person from the warrior Zulu tribe in Natal province to take up Carnatic music.
Ignoring insults and sniping remarks, Patrick single-mindedly persisted.
Today, the 34-year-old sings in seven Indian languages....
For the full article go to:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3784767.stm
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Impermanence is the new Obsession....
Yesterday for the umpteenth time I heard yet another artist’s work described as having to do with “impermanence.” Ever since Westerners discovered the term they have been abusing and misusing it to great lengths.
Granted. ‘Impermanence’ IS an English word, but there is little doubt that when used in the artistic context, art writers are trying to allude to the Pāli word 'anicca' (pronounced: anichcha).
According to Rev. Nyanaponika’s Buddhist Dictionary, anicca is the “constant arising and passing away of all phenomena.” Within this context basically EVERYTHING is anicca, which is the intention of the word in the first place! It lets us know that there is not one permanent thing within, or without us. When Westerners use this word they tend to think in the literal sense of the word, which only alludes to a “final” or “eventually complete” dissolution, but according to Buddhism, even that view is erroneous, because if nothing is permanent how can dissolution be “final” or “forever.”
Why do I even care about all this? Because I have been treating this subject in my work for the last twelve years.
Fine. Maybe I’m just taking part in a pervading generational concern. Maybe. Who knows? But the question is: are the artists being described by this new catch phrase really addressing these issues, or are they just being compartmentalized like it happens so often in the art world?
I remember, in the late 90’s, when I finished undergraduate and started graduate school, how the adjective of the moment was “obsessive.” Everything was obsessive! Obsessive this, obsessive that.... “Oooh, her work is SOO… obsessive!” (Where's the puke emoticon on this thing?!).
Any motif that got repeated more than twice made the work “obsessive.” They even tried to pin this label on me during a few critiques, even though I despised the concept of obsession as laudable in itself, and my work dealt mainly with detachment and, yes, impermanence...
I even remember being told that the “impermanence” of my work was a hindrance to its marketability because nobody would want to buy something that they would stop having after a while. But now, impermanence is the toast of the party!
Here is a list of artists recently labeled as doing art about impermanence (the ones with an asterisk next to them* had the honor of being previously labeled obsessive):
Rachel Whiteread*, Doho Suh*, Lee Bontecue*, Rirkrit Trivaniya, Andy Goldsworthy *, Cai Guo-Qiang, Hans Holbein* (for heaven’s sake, Hans Holbein!), Stephen Shore, Nikki Lee*, Frank Stella, Nigel Hall, Tom Friedman, Dieter Roth*, Sara Tze*, Yayoi Kusama*, Wolfgang Tillmans, and the list goes on, and on...
This may not be the fault of the artists (although now many artists are tripping all over themselves to fit into this new fashionable category), and many of the above mentioned artists do deal with the subject of impermanence (although decay would be a more suitable word for many of them), my problem is with how critics simply sling the word around, just like they did with “obsession,” or whatever else was there before. This are the same type of people that bring us the Death of Painting every 10 years, or so! LOL
Now, decay and dissolution are impermanent themselves, so a work that simply disappears, is only pointing to another permanent concept: that of loss. To think that something is gone, or disappeared, is just as off the mark in addressing impermanence as thinking that it will be there forever. They are just two extremes of the same thing: the hedonistic vs. the nihilist. The whole point about impermanence is that just like you can’t get something out of nothing, you can’t get NOTHING out of SOMETHING! And that, in fact, there is no actual THING appearing, or disappearing, in the first place. There are only ever-changing, conditionaly-arising events.
“Oh, but Boti, you’re being too harsh, maybe these people are not trying to do Buddhist art!”
That’s all fine and dandy. Again, my beef is with the writers. The rise of this writing trend does follow the rise of Western Buddhism into the mainstream, so, surely, some parallels do apply, but more importantly, maybe, just maybe, we should stop trying to place art within snappy little sound bites to be (ab)used at cocktail parties, and maybe, just maybe, we should start trying to E X P E R I E N C E art with all six senses first, and then, when trying to explain our experience, maybe we’ll understand the meaning of the work.
It’s not a test people! And you are not expected to have an answer to everything! Words are traps, and they are only good for pointing at things. Somebody told me once (and with a highly didactic tone too!) when addressing the smell component in one of my pieces, “Well, that’s why they are called the VISUAL Arts, after all.” To which I replied, “Well... that’s just in English. Most other languages use words like Plastic Arts, or Beautiful Arts."
Beauty, what a concept…..
Granted. ‘Impermanence’ IS an English word, but there is little doubt that when used in the artistic context, art writers are trying to allude to the Pāli word 'anicca' (pronounced: anichcha).
According to Rev. Nyanaponika’s Buddhist Dictionary, anicca is the “constant arising and passing away of all phenomena.” Within this context basically EVERYTHING is anicca, which is the intention of the word in the first place! It lets us know that there is not one permanent thing within, or without us. When Westerners use this word they tend to think in the literal sense of the word, which only alludes to a “final” or “eventually complete” dissolution, but according to Buddhism, even that view is erroneous, because if nothing is permanent how can dissolution be “final” or “forever.”
Why do I even care about all this? Because I have been treating this subject in my work for the last twelve years.
Fine. Maybe I’m just taking part in a pervading generational concern. Maybe. Who knows? But the question is: are the artists being described by this new catch phrase really addressing these issues, or are they just being compartmentalized like it happens so often in the art world?
I remember, in the late 90’s, when I finished undergraduate and started graduate school, how the adjective of the moment was “obsessive.” Everything was obsessive! Obsessive this, obsessive that.... “Oooh, her work is SOO… obsessive!” (Where's the puke emoticon on this thing?!).
Any motif that got repeated more than twice made the work “obsessive.” They even tried to pin this label on me during a few critiques, even though I despised the concept of obsession as laudable in itself, and my work dealt mainly with detachment and, yes, impermanence...
I even remember being told that the “impermanence” of my work was a hindrance to its marketability because nobody would want to buy something that they would stop having after a while. But now, impermanence is the toast of the party!
Here is a list of artists recently labeled as doing art about impermanence (the ones with an asterisk next to them* had the honor of being previously labeled obsessive):
Rachel Whiteread*, Doho Suh*, Lee Bontecue*, Rirkrit Trivaniya, Andy Goldsworthy *, Cai Guo-Qiang, Hans Holbein* (for heaven’s sake, Hans Holbein!), Stephen Shore, Nikki Lee*, Frank Stella, Nigel Hall, Tom Friedman, Dieter Roth*, Sara Tze*, Yayoi Kusama*, Wolfgang Tillmans, and the list goes on, and on...
This may not be the fault of the artists (although now many artists are tripping all over themselves to fit into this new fashionable category), and many of the above mentioned artists do deal with the subject of impermanence (although decay would be a more suitable word for many of them), my problem is with how critics simply sling the word around, just like they did with “obsession,” or whatever else was there before. This are the same type of people that bring us the Death of Painting every 10 years, or so! LOL
Now, decay and dissolution are impermanent themselves, so a work that simply disappears, is only pointing to another permanent concept: that of loss. To think that something is gone, or disappeared, is just as off the mark in addressing impermanence as thinking that it will be there forever. They are just two extremes of the same thing: the hedonistic vs. the nihilist. The whole point about impermanence is that just like you can’t get something out of nothing, you can’t get NOTHING out of SOMETHING! And that, in fact, there is no actual THING appearing, or disappearing, in the first place. There are only ever-changing, conditionaly-arising events.
“Oh, but Boti, you’re being too harsh, maybe these people are not trying to do Buddhist art!”
That’s all fine and dandy. Again, my beef is with the writers. The rise of this writing trend does follow the rise of Western Buddhism into the mainstream, so, surely, some parallels do apply, but more importantly, maybe, just maybe, we should stop trying to place art within snappy little sound bites to be (ab)used at cocktail parties, and maybe, just maybe, we should start trying to E X P E R I E N C E art with all six senses first, and then, when trying to explain our experience, maybe we’ll understand the meaning of the work.
It’s not a test people! And you are not expected to have an answer to everything! Words are traps, and they are only good for pointing at things. Somebody told me once (and with a highly didactic tone too!) when addressing the smell component in one of my pieces, “Well, that’s why they are called the VISUAL Arts, after all.” To which I replied, “Well... that’s just in English. Most other languages use words like Plastic Arts, or Beautiful Arts."
Beauty, what a concept…..
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
The Lean Years
The other day I was talking to a colleague about “the lean years” in art making. You know; you’re out of school, not yet where you want to be in terms of exposure, or business, and you start wondering whether you are on the right path. You see your schoolmate’s careers taking off, and feel a pinch of envy, or anguish, and maybe you feel like you are out of the loop, because you are holding a day job, and aren’t working on your art as much.
Needless to say that today’s version of art patronage is a joke compared to what it used to be, and that the stigma on art-collectives and unions is far from gone, making kindred spirits less inclined to pursue common projects. So for those of you who have not secured your Sugar Daddies/Mommas yet, I will try to offer some detached advice which is easier to say than to follow...
#1 Never ask yourself the “Did I make the right decision?” question unless you are doing art at that very moment! If you are on the right (or wrong) path you will know right there and then.
#2 As humans, we can’t help feelings of envy from arising, but we can turn them into positive energy. There are many implications to our colleagues making it in the art world. If they were friendly to you, then you can feel happy for them. If they weren’t, then it means that “if that looser can make it, then mine should be coming pretty soon...” No, but seriously, these things can be taken as an indication that people at your level are finding their niche, so there is no reason why you shouldn’t.
#3 If you feel like you are out of the loop, then get back in it! It only takes one hour to flip through the art journals in your local bookstore once a month. In New York, you have even more possibilities, escape from work every now and then and go to a gallery. There are bookstores like St. Mark’s where you can go at night to read. Even if you hate the work being shown out there, at least know what’s being shown out there. Every skilled profession has a whole culture of journals and things to keep its practitioners informed and you, as an artist, are no exception. So you have to go see the work, and inform yourself.
#4 Disconnect your TV! Or better yet, give it away. You are in NY, you lazy, bum! Go to the movies, go to a park, or at least walk and rent something good on video! Without the idiot box you’d be surprised how much time you will find to work, or take in other art forms. Of course if you thrive on pop culture or make video art then keep the TV, but maybe give yourself a regime of x number of hours to work, or just play it in the background while you work.
#5 Make your day job work for you. Go for things that will either feed your technological knowledge, or teach you how to run an operation. Did I mention free Xeroxes? Lots of computer-scanner access? Web searching? Try service, do something that feels good. At least we got an education, some people would kill to have the choice to study whatever they wanted in their hearts.
#6 Just because you aren’t creating objects doesn’t mean you have to stop practicing. Keep a sort of journal with possible projects as they pop in your mind. Maybe later you will have a surplus of time, and a deficit of ideas, and you can refer back to these ideas and pursue them.
One teacher asked me once “If you didn’t have access to the materials that you are using now what would your art look like?”
Exactly….
Your art is the expression of something that is within you. Try to find out what those concerns and relationships are, and learn to apply them to different things in your life. Most importantly, try to recognize them in other people’s actions as well.
#7 Research, research, research. We could all use better skills, or more information on grants, residencies and the like. There are some links on this blog, and please e-mail me any others that you have. Share this information with your colleagues, so that you establish a dialogue and they can return in kind.
Needless to say that today’s version of art patronage is a joke compared to what it used to be, and that the stigma on art-collectives and unions is far from gone, making kindred spirits less inclined to pursue common projects. So for those of you who have not secured your Sugar Daddies/Mommas yet, I will try to offer some detached advice which is easier to say than to follow...
#1 Never ask yourself the “Did I make the right decision?” question unless you are doing art at that very moment! If you are on the right (or wrong) path you will know right there and then.
#2 As humans, we can’t help feelings of envy from arising, but we can turn them into positive energy. There are many implications to our colleagues making it in the art world. If they were friendly to you, then you can feel happy for them. If they weren’t, then it means that “if that looser can make it, then mine should be coming pretty soon...” No, but seriously, these things can be taken as an indication that people at your level are finding their niche, so there is no reason why you shouldn’t.
#3 If you feel like you are out of the loop, then get back in it! It only takes one hour to flip through the art journals in your local bookstore once a month. In New York, you have even more possibilities, escape from work every now and then and go to a gallery. There are bookstores like St. Mark’s where you can go at night to read. Even if you hate the work being shown out there, at least know what’s being shown out there. Every skilled profession has a whole culture of journals and things to keep its practitioners informed and you, as an artist, are no exception. So you have to go see the work, and inform yourself.
#4 Disconnect your TV! Or better yet, give it away. You are in NY, you lazy, bum! Go to the movies, go to a park, or at least walk and rent something good on video! Without the idiot box you’d be surprised how much time you will find to work, or take in other art forms. Of course if you thrive on pop culture or make video art then keep the TV, but maybe give yourself a regime of x number of hours to work, or just play it in the background while you work.
#5 Make your day job work for you. Go for things that will either feed your technological knowledge, or teach you how to run an operation. Did I mention free Xeroxes? Lots of computer-scanner access? Web searching? Try service, do something that feels good. At least we got an education, some people would kill to have the choice to study whatever they wanted in their hearts.
#6 Just because you aren’t creating objects doesn’t mean you have to stop practicing. Keep a sort of journal with possible projects as they pop in your mind. Maybe later you will have a surplus of time, and a deficit of ideas, and you can refer back to these ideas and pursue them.
One teacher asked me once “If you didn’t have access to the materials that you are using now what would your art look like?”
Exactly….
Your art is the expression of something that is within you. Try to find out what those concerns and relationships are, and learn to apply them to different things in your life. Most importantly, try to recognize them in other people’s actions as well.
#7 Research, research, research. We could all use better skills, or more information on grants, residencies and the like. There are some links on this blog, and please e-mail me any others that you have. Share this information with your colleagues, so that you establish a dialogue and they can return in kind.
Monday, May 17, 2004
Today I was listening to a Pop Art discussion on WPS1....
Today I was listening to a Pop Art discussion on WPS1 Art Radio. It must have been from the 70’s or 80’s, I couldn’t tell because there were no discernible date references. I caught the last three speakers --all art critics. The first one seemed to be defending, or advocating, the qualities of Pop Art, but the last two caught my ear the most.
Neither was condemning the movement, but they both had a bone to pick with Pop Art for seemingly antithetical reasons. One said that while talking to Lichtenstein he told the artist that he didn’t like his cartoon paintings because (and I am greatly summarizing here) the subject matter was "so strong that he could not see the painting, or its qualities as an object." The other one used as his case study the Campbell’s Soup paintings by Andy Warhol, and said that his problem with them was that the subject matter was so banal and timid, that they might as well not have any subject matter at all. That such choice showed a lack of passion and a sort of “running for cover under the roof of graphic design” [my own words, it’s hard to recall word by word what he said].
Although I think both those artists were good and skillful, specially Warhol; I tend to agree a lot with the points mentioned by the last critic who went on to talk about the old Western habit of making a tyranny out of every movement. What I don’t agree on with any of them is on the premise of having to choose between form OR subject matter, (the Greenbergian tyranny of minimalism), and on the belief that somehow subject matter takes away from the concerns of the craft and the search for new ways of expression. If post-modernism has shown us anything is that the search for new media has arisen FROM the need to express new ideas. If you doubt this, look at all the artists that were the greatest defenders of “art for art’s sake.” How many new media did they come up with? With the exception of Duchamp and Picasso they were all highly romantic artists working on 19th century methods even as new discoveries in industry were bypassing them at lightning speed. Even the Futurists chose canvas and bronze as their mediums! Paradoxical indeed...
Luckily, our generation is leaving Herr Greenberg behind more and more, even if they circumspectly shy away from denouncing his beliefs. But even as artists increasingly embrace a complexity in subject matter, many will nod in approval when somebody starts pontificating on the virtues of “Art about Art.” Hmmm... is the same meekness behind our current political quagmire? :-)
Anyway, the truth is that an art about art will limit your palette quicker than anything else, because the things you are talking about are contained within the medium itself! In other words, if there is nothing to express outside of yourself, or the items in your toolbox, it is very rare that you will find the need for new ways of expression (and therefore growth), or engage in the play of meanings and ambivalence (whether in media or subject matter) present in many of the art that today continues to move us. You will just engage in an exercise in banality in which you are rearranging the same materials, or ideas, over and over; more like a decorator, and not like a propagandist, which we all are.
By this I’m not saying that you should drop what you’re doing, and start doing Bolshevik or neo-classicist posters, but that we should stop mindlessly repeating this minimalist mantra that subject matter eats away at objectivity. We should all hope that the objects we produce are AS COMPLEX as the subject matter that propels them!
I have not seen one single purist movement that was known for its creativity. Not in literature, not in religion, not in government. Usually such movements tend to be destructive because they are based on exclusivity, are too often guided by some sort of tunnel vision, and have no use for tolerance, adaptation, or practicality.
So embrace your subject matter, and most importantly, EXPLORE IT to its fullest, both in content AND form. Weave a beautifully simple and/or tangled web, but weave it well, and artfully, because nothing is unconditioned, and art will give you ideas about life, but life will give you ideas about art.
Neither was condemning the movement, but they both had a bone to pick with Pop Art for seemingly antithetical reasons. One said that while talking to Lichtenstein he told the artist that he didn’t like his cartoon paintings because (and I am greatly summarizing here) the subject matter was "so strong that he could not see the painting, or its qualities as an object." The other one used as his case study the Campbell’s Soup paintings by Andy Warhol, and said that his problem with them was that the subject matter was so banal and timid, that they might as well not have any subject matter at all. That such choice showed a lack of passion and a sort of “running for cover under the roof of graphic design” [my own words, it’s hard to recall word by word what he said].
Although I think both those artists were good and skillful, specially Warhol; I tend to agree a lot with the points mentioned by the last critic who went on to talk about the old Western habit of making a tyranny out of every movement. What I don’t agree on with any of them is on the premise of having to choose between form OR subject matter, (the Greenbergian tyranny of minimalism), and on the belief that somehow subject matter takes away from the concerns of the craft and the search for new ways of expression. If post-modernism has shown us anything is that the search for new media has arisen FROM the need to express new ideas. If you doubt this, look at all the artists that were the greatest defenders of “art for art’s sake.” How many new media did they come up with? With the exception of Duchamp and Picasso they were all highly romantic artists working on 19th century methods even as new discoveries in industry were bypassing them at lightning speed. Even the Futurists chose canvas and bronze as their mediums! Paradoxical indeed...
Luckily, our generation is leaving Herr Greenberg behind more and more, even if they circumspectly shy away from denouncing his beliefs. But even as artists increasingly embrace a complexity in subject matter, many will nod in approval when somebody starts pontificating on the virtues of “Art about Art.” Hmmm... is the same meekness behind our current political quagmire? :-)
Anyway, the truth is that an art about art will limit your palette quicker than anything else, because the things you are talking about are contained within the medium itself! In other words, if there is nothing to express outside of yourself, or the items in your toolbox, it is very rare that you will find the need for new ways of expression (and therefore growth), or engage in the play of meanings and ambivalence (whether in media or subject matter) present in many of the art that today continues to move us. You will just engage in an exercise in banality in which you are rearranging the same materials, or ideas, over and over; more like a decorator, and not like a propagandist, which we all are.
By this I’m not saying that you should drop what you’re doing, and start doing Bolshevik or neo-classicist posters, but that we should stop mindlessly repeating this minimalist mantra that subject matter eats away at objectivity. We should all hope that the objects we produce are AS COMPLEX as the subject matter that propels them!
I have not seen one single purist movement that was known for its creativity. Not in literature, not in religion, not in government. Usually such movements tend to be destructive because they are based on exclusivity, are too often guided by some sort of tunnel vision, and have no use for tolerance, adaptation, or practicality.
So embrace your subject matter, and most importantly, EXPLORE IT to its fullest, both in content AND form. Weave a beautifully simple and/or tangled web, but weave it well, and artfully, because nothing is unconditioned, and art will give you ideas about life, but life will give you ideas about art.
Monday, April 12, 2004
No hay mas ruta que la nuestra
The following is a translation of the final chapter of “How to Paint a Mural” by David Alfaro Siqueiros. I feel it is a good way to open this blog, and the fact that this book is not available in English says a lot about the social standing of artists today, and also confirms what Mr. Siqueiros talks about in this text.
I don’t agree with everything, but I do agree with a lot of it, specially with his take on social issues. Some of it will seem dated (it was written in 1951), and it would be interesting to see what his take would be on the torrent of technology that artists have adopted today.....
Anything in [brackets] is my own text added to clarify some areas. Even in Spanish, the text is a little dense, and I made no attempt to simplify it, because I don’t want to start hacking away at somebody else’s work.
Here it goes :
Chapter XVIII
Final Note:
Style constitutes the last extreme, the wrapping, the physiognomy of a work of art.
Function creates an organ. The style of a mural –like the style of any other painting done during a notable period in the history of art—should not renderred a priori. Such is, perhaps, the fundamental defect of all contemporary [now modern] painting. The first thing that a contemporary painter considers is what style he will give to his oeuvre. Of course he looks for an autonomous style that will have nothing to do with that of other painters, an original style, etc. The contemporary painter currently suffers from a syndrome of originality-by-any-means as the fundamental base of creative endeavor, and by doing so, he has only gained (as paradoxical as it may seem) to distance himself further from his own personality by running away from kindred influences. El Greco –as I have said in many occasions—did not try to hide Tintoretto’s direct influence up to the last moment of his life, and there is hardly a more original painter than El Greco. Naturally, this extraordinary Greek, trunk of the Spanish school of painting, contributed his own genius to the influence of his master, and therefore, enriched baroque conception.
Style should be a consequence of the social function of the mural, of the modern technique that a progressive, contemporary mural demands. By technique, I am referring to materials, principles, and scientific methods available to the painter in his era. And when I say that style should be the consequence social function, we indicate that it will not be solely the product of the artist as creator, but the product of the creative team and the corresponding audience.
Everybody seems to be talking about the necessity for a new realism, the formal vehicle of a new humanism in art, but it is almost generic and futile to try to formulate definitions regarding the style of this new realism. Would medieval Christians have been able to fix, or even anticipate the style, or styles, that would belong ultimately to Christian art? In reality it took Christianity twelve centuries (from the classical period) to find its own form. It was not until the Byzantine, Gothic, and pre-Renaissance periods that the so-called properly Christian form appeared. We will not have to wait twelve centuries, but our habits, tastes, and routines are not going to change overnight, because not only are we carrying the weight of the past cultures, we also have the baggage of 400 years of a minor (or lower) art, an art produced mainly for the homes of a minority (at least in the industrialized world). We can not shake off these remnants so easily.
So, what is the future of the visual arts?
To know that, we have to know the past well, and we have to document the present without any false illusions.
We have, first of all, three European examples. Greece as a case study for antiquity, or pre-Christianity. What is today called Italy can serve as the example for the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, or, in other words, Christianity and the Reform. And, lastly, we have France as the case study for the present era, or the end of traditional liberalism and the beginnings of democracy.
CASE STUDY #1: GREECE AND ANTIQUITY
MARKET: The theocratic state and a reduced slave-holding aristocracy.
SOCIAL PRODUCTION TENDENCIES: Public art, or official art, as fundamental; private art as complementary.
SUBJECT MATTER: The subject matter of the official theocratic state, the one that implied by their corresponding mythologies.
PROFESSIONAL DOCTRINE: That which required by the proselytizing function of the subject matter; clarity eloquence, figurative art with realistic intention. Polychromality, of course, for architecture and sculpture alike (the so called white Greek marble is a modern misconception).
MATERIAL AND PHYSICAL TECHNOLOGY: That which corresponded to the primary industrial development of that era, it showed more creativity during the flowering periods and more banality and archaicness during the descending periods.
PROFESSIONAL TECHNOLOGY: That which corresponded to the proselytizing nature of the artwork’s function and the generic nature of available materials and tools.
FORMS OF PRODUTION AND PEDAGOGY: The collective shop/factory, where training occurred during its daily production processes sustained by the official demand.
CASE STUDY #2: ITALY AND THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE
MARKET: The religious state, during the pre-Renaissance, and the religious state and a new rising aristocracy during the Renaissance.
SOCIAL PRODUCTION TENDENCIES: Public art, or official art, as fundamental; private art as complementary. Like in antiquity.
SUBJECT MATTER: That of the official religious state and its proselytizing Christian dogmatism during the Middle Ages. During the Renaissance and the Reform we see the addition of the ascendancy of neo-classicism and neo-paganism.
PROFESSIONAL DOCTRINE: That which was determined by the proselytizing religious function; clarity, eloquence, figurative art with realistic intentions. Christian dogma, through exalted expressions; art aimed at ultra realism. Like in antiquity.
MATERIAL AND PHYSICAL TECHNOLOGY: That which corresponded to the embryonic industrial and technical development of its era, again showing more creativity during the flowering periods and more banality and archaicness during the descending periods. The fresco, tempera and encaustics were perfected and enriched and oil painting was developed.
PROFESSIONAL TECHNOLOGY: That which freed itself from its elitist function and the generic nature of its new material technology and tools.
FORMS OF PRODUTION AND PEDAGOGY: The collective shop/factory, where training occurred during its daily production processes sustained by the official demand. As in antiquity.
CONSECUENT FORMS OF MULTIPLYING AND DIVULGING THE ARTISTIC PRODUCT: Mass production, for the popularization of mayor works, by means of newly developed printing methods. Like the different types of engraving and lithography. Public art, the official art, enriched itself immeasurably with the technical contribution of the printing press.
CASE STUDY #3: MODERN FRANCE AS THE EXAMPLE OF OUR CONTEMPORARY ERA
MARKET: The private collector, and an ever reducing --and increasingly bureaucratic-- new State demand. This represents the greatest reversal in history of the socio-economic base of the art world.
SOCIAL PRODUCTION TENDENCIES: Private art as fundamental; public art, or official art, as complementary, or more precisely, as circumstantial, in complete opposition to Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Ideological functionality as a proselytizing agent ceases to be, and, consequently, estheticism is born, or “art for art’s sake.”
SUBJECT MATTER: Complacency, lack of transcendence, preciousness, etc., increasingly more accented: something which the lack of ideological momentum will consequently impose on art. The suppression of the heroic and trascendental, of the ideological and eloquent, of the social and educational, in favor of things which better correspond to the physical domesticity of the artistic product and the nature of its market.
PROFESSIONAL DOCTRINE: Individualist nihilism; as many theoretical formulations as there are artists. For the “moderns,” as well as for the “academics,” the tendency is towards “museumism” and folklore, that is, unrelenting retrospection disguised as a modern creative invention. This is, in actuality, a complete lack of comprehension of all the new, and very real, life sensations created with the advent of modern mechanics. What is simply instinctual is presented under a false scientific guise. To sum it up, it is a false modernity, or a modernity that is purely chronological.
MATERIAL AND PHYSICAL TECHNOLOGY: An archaizing tendency runs in direct counter-current with the superlative technical developments of the corresponding era (late 19th to 20th c.), and there is an absolute conformity with the embryonic technology of the past, and a careless disregard for the chemical revolution occurring in the field of plastics, and the overwhelming array of mechanical instruments, there does not seem to be a notable perfecting of traditional mediums, or even a significant contribution to the previous material technologies. Basically a complete anachronism permeates the practice of the “moderns,” as well as that of the “academics.”
PROFESSIONAL TECHNOLOGY: Technical intellectualism, sensuality, mysticism, etc., epidermic classicism. That is, a trend towards a superficial use of the style and mannerisms of the classical, while leaving generic forms intact, even though these are the fundamental forms of any corpus (without public form there is no classicism). The dictum is “plastic pleasure for its own sake.” I have named this: “epicurean estheticism,” since its drive lacks all social, or human, purpose in a democratic, or majoritarian, sense. This deep-rooted anachronism in material technology is reciprocated by an equally deep-rooted primitivism in professional technology: this is the epidermic version of the styles, or manners, of the Etruscans, of romantic lithographs, of popular art, of partial and superficial “constructivist” searches of merely snobbish airs. In the best of cases this amounts to mere intellectualist speculation, or to “chic” technology.
FORMS OF PRODUTION AND PEDAGOGY: The solitary “atelier,” that is; the production, in the mist of individual intimacy, of a product destined to individual/intimate appreciation. Domestic production, more and more, for the domestic market, but of course, with experimental pretensions. Pedagogy is of a routinary and scholarly nature within academia, and autodidactic within pseudo-modernism. Either case is equally catastrophic for the apprentice.
CONSECUENT FORMS OF MULTIPLYING AND DIVULGING THE ARTISTIC PRODUCT: Lithography and the diverse printing forms of yesteryear, now old and even more affected by their exposed limitations, are still being imposed by a mystic aestheticism that dominates the private market. Archaic mysticism combined with a complete lack of interest for new and extraordinary mechanical reproduction methods, since these are in aesthetic and social disagreement with the buyer. Select galleries, expensive monographs, distinguished magazines, and the like represent the maximum social shrinkage of art’s services in deference to the vanity of the collector and the speculative benefit of the art dealer.
CONCLUSION: The end of the Renaissance brought about the dawn of a decline in the SOCIAL aspects of the arts. This tendency has not stopped in regards to representative, or allegorical, art. Two movements have tried to stop this decline: the first one –class oriented—came about with the French Revolution (from David to Ingres). The second one --also class oriented-- pretended to “recuperate the fundamental values lost with the Renaissance,” and it came about during the 20th century (from Cezanne to Picasso). These attempts were only superficial. They made no effort to actualize the social and material forms of production, and naturally, fell short of their (mainly theoretic) goal, and gave us, at best, a few cases of brilliance with varying degrees of decorative invention. Would anybody really be able to refute this historical reality? Are these trends the product of inevitable social tendencies? I think that the first question is irrefutable. As far as the second one, the answer to it would require a very specialized and deep analysis.
AND IN AMERICA? [The continent]
--American antiquity can, in all the essential aspects of our discussion, be said to equate ancient Greece.
--The same can be said about the Spanish colony in America and the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Europe.
--We can not, however, say the same when we compare Latin America and France in this era [1951]. France’s art expresses an acute intellectual colonialism. Failed decadent and revolutionary y forms, now at the service of elitism and centered on Paris, seem acutely affected as a whole. They belie the pathetic horrors of lacking a vision.
--But there is an exception, although yet in its infancy, and that is the modern Mexican pictorial movement: our movement. This is a pro-classicist movement, like the one from David to Ingres, or Cezanne to Picasso, but which has taken a better route, the objective route, that of a new actualism, the theoretic desideratum of the modern artist. It is a re-appropiation of the public forms lost after the 16th century, but within the social and technological conditions of the democratic world. Furthermore, this movement hasn’t just stayed in the realm of discussion. In the last twenty-five years it has been sowing the seeds of a true and sustainable practice. Without a doubt, the only true universal route into the future.
Wow, and it only took me five months, for my second posting! ;-)
I don’t agree with everything, but I do agree with a lot of it, specially with his take on social issues. Some of it will seem dated (it was written in 1951), and it would be interesting to see what his take would be on the torrent of technology that artists have adopted today.....
Anything in [brackets] is my own text added to clarify some areas. Even in Spanish, the text is a little dense, and I made no attempt to simplify it, because I don’t want to start hacking away at somebody else’s work.
Here it goes :
Chapter XVIII
Final Note:
Style constitutes the last extreme, the wrapping, the physiognomy of a work of art.
Function creates an organ. The style of a mural –like the style of any other painting done during a notable period in the history of art—should not renderred a priori. Such is, perhaps, the fundamental defect of all contemporary [now modern] painting. The first thing that a contemporary painter considers is what style he will give to his oeuvre. Of course he looks for an autonomous style that will have nothing to do with that of other painters, an original style, etc. The contemporary painter currently suffers from a syndrome of originality-by-any-means as the fundamental base of creative endeavor, and by doing so, he has only gained (as paradoxical as it may seem) to distance himself further from his own personality by running away from kindred influences. El Greco –as I have said in many occasions—did not try to hide Tintoretto’s direct influence up to the last moment of his life, and there is hardly a more original painter than El Greco. Naturally, this extraordinary Greek, trunk of the Spanish school of painting, contributed his own genius to the influence of his master, and therefore, enriched baroque conception.
Style should be a consequence of the social function of the mural, of the modern technique that a progressive, contemporary mural demands. By technique, I am referring to materials, principles, and scientific methods available to the painter in his era. And when I say that style should be the consequence social function, we indicate that it will not be solely the product of the artist as creator, but the product of the creative team and the corresponding audience.
Everybody seems to be talking about the necessity for a new realism, the formal vehicle of a new humanism in art, but it is almost generic and futile to try to formulate definitions regarding the style of this new realism. Would medieval Christians have been able to fix, or even anticipate the style, or styles, that would belong ultimately to Christian art? In reality it took Christianity twelve centuries (from the classical period) to find its own form. It was not until the Byzantine, Gothic, and pre-Renaissance periods that the so-called properly Christian form appeared. We will not have to wait twelve centuries, but our habits, tastes, and routines are not going to change overnight, because not only are we carrying the weight of the past cultures, we also have the baggage of 400 years of a minor (or lower) art, an art produced mainly for the homes of a minority (at least in the industrialized world). We can not shake off these remnants so easily.
So, what is the future of the visual arts?
To know that, we have to know the past well, and we have to document the present without any false illusions.
We have, first of all, three European examples. Greece as a case study for antiquity, or pre-Christianity. What is today called Italy can serve as the example for the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, or, in other words, Christianity and the Reform. And, lastly, we have France as the case study for the present era, or the end of traditional liberalism and the beginnings of democracy.
CASE STUDY #1: GREECE AND ANTIQUITY
MARKET: The theocratic state and a reduced slave-holding aristocracy.
SOCIAL PRODUCTION TENDENCIES: Public art, or official art, as fundamental; private art as complementary.
SUBJECT MATTER: The subject matter of the official theocratic state, the one that implied by their corresponding mythologies.
PROFESSIONAL DOCTRINE: That which required by the proselytizing function of the subject matter; clarity eloquence, figurative art with realistic intention. Polychromality, of course, for architecture and sculpture alike (the so called white Greek marble is a modern misconception).
MATERIAL AND PHYSICAL TECHNOLOGY: That which corresponded to the primary industrial development of that era, it showed more creativity during the flowering periods and more banality and archaicness during the descending periods.
PROFESSIONAL TECHNOLOGY: That which corresponded to the proselytizing nature of the artwork’s function and the generic nature of available materials and tools.
FORMS OF PRODUTION AND PEDAGOGY: The collective shop/factory, where training occurred during its daily production processes sustained by the official demand.
CASE STUDY #2: ITALY AND THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE
MARKET: The religious state, during the pre-Renaissance, and the religious state and a new rising aristocracy during the Renaissance.
SOCIAL PRODUCTION TENDENCIES: Public art, or official art, as fundamental; private art as complementary. Like in antiquity.
SUBJECT MATTER: That of the official religious state and its proselytizing Christian dogmatism during the Middle Ages. During the Renaissance and the Reform we see the addition of the ascendancy of neo-classicism and neo-paganism.
PROFESSIONAL DOCTRINE: That which was determined by the proselytizing religious function; clarity, eloquence, figurative art with realistic intentions. Christian dogma, through exalted expressions; art aimed at ultra realism. Like in antiquity.
MATERIAL AND PHYSICAL TECHNOLOGY: That which corresponded to the embryonic industrial and technical development of its era, again showing more creativity during the flowering periods and more banality and archaicness during the descending periods. The fresco, tempera and encaustics were perfected and enriched and oil painting was developed.
PROFESSIONAL TECHNOLOGY: That which freed itself from its elitist function and the generic nature of its new material technology and tools.
FORMS OF PRODUTION AND PEDAGOGY: The collective shop/factory, where training occurred during its daily production processes sustained by the official demand. As in antiquity.
CONSECUENT FORMS OF MULTIPLYING AND DIVULGING THE ARTISTIC PRODUCT: Mass production, for the popularization of mayor works, by means of newly developed printing methods. Like the different types of engraving and lithography. Public art, the official art, enriched itself immeasurably with the technical contribution of the printing press.
CASE STUDY #3: MODERN FRANCE AS THE EXAMPLE OF OUR CONTEMPORARY ERA
MARKET: The private collector, and an ever reducing --and increasingly bureaucratic-- new State demand. This represents the greatest reversal in history of the socio-economic base of the art world.
SOCIAL PRODUCTION TENDENCIES: Private art as fundamental; public art, or official art, as complementary, or more precisely, as circumstantial, in complete opposition to Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Ideological functionality as a proselytizing agent ceases to be, and, consequently, estheticism is born, or “art for art’s sake.”
SUBJECT MATTER: Complacency, lack of transcendence, preciousness, etc., increasingly more accented: something which the lack of ideological momentum will consequently impose on art. The suppression of the heroic and trascendental, of the ideological and eloquent, of the social and educational, in favor of things which better correspond to the physical domesticity of the artistic product and the nature of its market.
PROFESSIONAL DOCTRINE: Individualist nihilism; as many theoretical formulations as there are artists. For the “moderns,” as well as for the “academics,” the tendency is towards “museumism” and folklore, that is, unrelenting retrospection disguised as a modern creative invention. This is, in actuality, a complete lack of comprehension of all the new, and very real, life sensations created with the advent of modern mechanics. What is simply instinctual is presented under a false scientific guise. To sum it up, it is a false modernity, or a modernity that is purely chronological.
MATERIAL AND PHYSICAL TECHNOLOGY: An archaizing tendency runs in direct counter-current with the superlative technical developments of the corresponding era (late 19th to 20th c.), and there is an absolute conformity with the embryonic technology of the past, and a careless disregard for the chemical revolution occurring in the field of plastics, and the overwhelming array of mechanical instruments, there does not seem to be a notable perfecting of traditional mediums, or even a significant contribution to the previous material technologies. Basically a complete anachronism permeates the practice of the “moderns,” as well as that of the “academics.”
PROFESSIONAL TECHNOLOGY: Technical intellectualism, sensuality, mysticism, etc., epidermic classicism. That is, a trend towards a superficial use of the style and mannerisms of the classical, while leaving generic forms intact, even though these are the fundamental forms of any corpus (without public form there is no classicism). The dictum is “plastic pleasure for its own sake.” I have named this: “epicurean estheticism,” since its drive lacks all social, or human, purpose in a democratic, or majoritarian, sense. This deep-rooted anachronism in material technology is reciprocated by an equally deep-rooted primitivism in professional technology: this is the epidermic version of the styles, or manners, of the Etruscans, of romantic lithographs, of popular art, of partial and superficial “constructivist” searches of merely snobbish airs. In the best of cases this amounts to mere intellectualist speculation, or to “chic” technology.
FORMS OF PRODUTION AND PEDAGOGY: The solitary “atelier,” that is; the production, in the mist of individual intimacy, of a product destined to individual/intimate appreciation. Domestic production, more and more, for the domestic market, but of course, with experimental pretensions. Pedagogy is of a routinary and scholarly nature within academia, and autodidactic within pseudo-modernism. Either case is equally catastrophic for the apprentice.
CONSECUENT FORMS OF MULTIPLYING AND DIVULGING THE ARTISTIC PRODUCT: Lithography and the diverse printing forms of yesteryear, now old and even more affected by their exposed limitations, are still being imposed by a mystic aestheticism that dominates the private market. Archaic mysticism combined with a complete lack of interest for new and extraordinary mechanical reproduction methods, since these are in aesthetic and social disagreement with the buyer. Select galleries, expensive monographs, distinguished magazines, and the like represent the maximum social shrinkage of art’s services in deference to the vanity of the collector and the speculative benefit of the art dealer.
CONCLUSION: The end of the Renaissance brought about the dawn of a decline in the SOCIAL aspects of the arts. This tendency has not stopped in regards to representative, or allegorical, art. Two movements have tried to stop this decline: the first one –class oriented—came about with the French Revolution (from David to Ingres). The second one --also class oriented-- pretended to “recuperate the fundamental values lost with the Renaissance,” and it came about during the 20th century (from Cezanne to Picasso). These attempts were only superficial. They made no effort to actualize the social and material forms of production, and naturally, fell short of their (mainly theoretic) goal, and gave us, at best, a few cases of brilliance with varying degrees of decorative invention. Would anybody really be able to refute this historical reality? Are these trends the product of inevitable social tendencies? I think that the first question is irrefutable. As far as the second one, the answer to it would require a very specialized and deep analysis.
AND IN AMERICA? [The continent]
--American antiquity can, in all the essential aspects of our discussion, be said to equate ancient Greece.
--The same can be said about the Spanish colony in America and the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Europe.
--We can not, however, say the same when we compare Latin America and France in this era [1951]. France’s art expresses an acute intellectual colonialism. Failed decadent and revolutionary y forms, now at the service of elitism and centered on Paris, seem acutely affected as a whole. They belie the pathetic horrors of lacking a vision.
--But there is an exception, although yet in its infancy, and that is the modern Mexican pictorial movement: our movement. This is a pro-classicist movement, like the one from David to Ingres, or Cezanne to Picasso, but which has taken a better route, the objective route, that of a new actualism, the theoretic desideratum of the modern artist. It is a re-appropiation of the public forms lost after the 16th century, but within the social and technological conditions of the democratic world. Furthermore, this movement hasn’t just stayed in the realm of discussion. In the last twenty-five years it has been sowing the seeds of a true and sustainable practice. Without a doubt, the only true universal route into the future.
Wow, and it only took me five months, for my second posting! ;-)
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