-
Many deal with art in the world. And many of these paint, sculpt, draw
and make installations, using all sorts of media. Few, in truth, aim for
or obtain appreciable results. Intellectual ability, conceptual lucidity,
expressive command, expository clarity, acceptable basic knowledge of
the history of art and originality are prerogatives very few have – they
may be convinced, or believe, or hope they do, after having outlined
marks on a canvas, or made objects or videographic images, in short
after having composed a work of art. Cultural “massification” (now
called globalization), which has indeed brought benefits, has also led
to an impoverishing of culture itself. However, the dissemination of
culture, which invests ever greater numbers of mediatic channels, has
not succeeded in teaching large numbers of people how to evaluate and
discern. The massifying effect has had a negative impact on the ability
of individuals to evaluate the worth of a work of art qua intrinsic
value, or even to evaluate a different relationship to art, whether it
be ancient, modern or contemporary. How many of us are really convinced
and fully understand that the use of a work of art may not only give
pleasure and be pleasurable, but above all promote a broadening of
cognitive horizons and personal spiritual growth? Very few, I think.
Mass culture has effected what could only be termed an example of social
blackmail on man: it has coercively imposed on the majority what is
deemed most useful for the system, at the same time limiting the
individual’s various choices – and therefore his or her possibility of
action.
Those who love art because they feel the need to produce it very often
limit themselves to this and do not hone their ability through study,
reading, debate and, this must be said clearly, they are almost always
the root cause of the poor quality of publications on contemporary art
that they would like us to consider art simply because it has been
reviewed or written about by a famous critic, author or publisher. Do
they think the general public are stupid, and that they will devour
whatever they’re given as long as they’ve been provided with the right
prestigious references? In part, that’s what it would seem like: yes,
the meagre, elitist art public seems incapable of imposing their own
taste through declared approval, or buying works or art books. This, in
fact, is almost always toned down by models that are not always freely
chosen but imposed from above, and then assumed by those “below” who
want points of reference that offer guarantees in terms of validity,
even though this is often a mere fiction. In other words, the
referential mechanisms of unmerited legitimacy works extremely well with
the art public who, having supinely accepted the present as the
pre-existing, seem disposed to continue their consumption of everything
that is labeled “good” only because it comes from, or is gilded, by
this “higher realm”. The mistaken models towards which the art public’s
“taste” has been channeled really seem to make us believe that art is
dead, as some of its assassins maintain through their inability to
produce art of any value.
Some critics even maintain that everything has already been done, that
nothing of any interest could ever exist again. They are suspicious of
and revile art that is able to induce pleasure or convey messages, that
has meaning; in truth, only because they have nothing to say and do not
want others to eradicate this nothing. Why, though, if this is what they
want, do they continue to publish? Isn’t it contradictory for them to
want to extenuate death, to perpetuate mourning? Why did they start
dealing with art? Why on earth do they continue to deal with art,
considering their premises? Perhaps they only want to enhance their own
prestige, their academic careers, and this is how they are able to do
it... Have these poets ever posed themselves the problem of the
consumption of art, or wondered if what they write might ever reach a
public made up not just of people who make art, or want to make art, or
study it?
Officially, or “semi-officially”, and carefully evaluating the latest
poetic production and the generalized attitude of these seigneurs de
l’art (who are, with due exceptions, generals without troops), you are
overwhelmed by their inability, or even worse their unwillingness, to
examine or even face the problem of the dissemination-popularization of
the artistic product among a vast public. It seems that this doesn’t
interest them much at all, for they are by no means committed to
formulating hypotheses about this work or coming up with strategies or
solutions.
-
What’s more, if they are quizzed on the argument they reply
evasively or by deploying commonplaces: art is apparently necessarily
difficult, and therefore unable to galvanize larger numbers of consumers.
Nor do they even dream of considering their own enormous
responsibilities vis-à-vis the entire situation, or of attempting to
invert this negative trend, which is death-inducing and
counterproductive, most evidently for themselves as well as art in and
of itself and contemporary and future artists. Obviously, the situation
is certainly not a positive one, but it shouldn’t lead artists, critics
and art lovers to assume that everything is destined to remain as it is
now or that it will get worse. Only if each one of us, individually and
through an act of personal will, decides to set as their main aim that
of bucking the trend and begin to feel hopeful and think of a new
collocation of art within the social, able to invade places within our
daily life in the same way that news programs, soap operas and goods
in general have, even by using the same type of invasiveness they have
used, then art may well begin to regain some of the ground it has lost.
A call to a sort of positive violence means nothing other than simply
claiming our right to and for our own Reason. Egotistical and
career-fuelled individualism should be banished, just as feeling sorry
for ourselves should. What we should always bear in mind is that artists
are always harbingers of values, and artists are always their tireless
defenders in the face of indifference, generalized hostility and
incomprehension, enemies that should always be fought off with
stubbornness and determination, refusing to be bowed under by them and
attacking them unexpectedly and suddenly on all fronts; because truth,
which is beauty in a work of art, not only can but ought to reign
supreme on this earth.
|
Not fighting for this presupposes passively accepting the widespread
dissemination of the new forms of barbarity that are typifying our
times. Art has to attack conformist society like a powerful acid, not by
backing what or who profess, either thanks to the resonance or fame they
bring to bear, or those whom we might be led to believe detain art and
have the ability to evaluate it and, in fact, impose it, but by backing
art itself. Art itself must claim this victory in its relationship with
the public, a public that is able to grow and that is therefore neither
elitist nor factious. A spontaneous art that is not channeled in specific directions and not subjected to the yoke
of all-encompassing mediocrity, not procrastinated by the current
plethora of artistic pseudo-production, in its turn legitimated by a
system that has been degraded to the point of convulsive delirium: an
uncertain, weak system, incapable of holding itself aloft from the
by-now repetitive motifs of compromise, corruption, nepotism and
militancy.
Many talented artists who have the right to deserve attention and
publication are, on the contrary, forced to endure ostracism and a
priori exclusion from the haughty, self-referential world of art
publishing (which has become a sort of kasbah!). The same people are
indifferent to their fate, intent as they are on looking after their own
personal career interests, and the publishers themselves are almost
totally uninterested for reasons, they maintain, that are purely
economic or because they are unwilling to promote a product that would
otherwise be publicized and launched before another product that, albeit
mediocre, has already proven its worth and is easier to market. What’s
more, there are artists who have been accorded privileges even though
they don’t deserve them, and who hope to maintain them while trusting
that no other artist will be discovered, published or made famous. It’s
a hard life, therefore, for neo-artists in this cynical context.
Each individual is free to express his or her own ideas, according the
constitutions of democratic countries, but these constitutions do not
specify how this right can be guaranteed to the weaker categories who
have no direct links with the powerful or who are not economically
independent. Who knows, perhaps people think that only people who are
able to say something have the right to say it, or that fate will set
everything right in the end. In truth, this is the truth: we are told
that we have rights and we take this for granted, but these rights are
not guaranteed in any way. Often democracy is also applied as a perverse
form of government: the supremacy of a dominant majority over an
oppressed minority or minorities. What’s more, political subjects now
seem to come to life or consolidate their position exclusively in order
to see to petty economic interests. Cultural positions seem to end up
being included only as side-dishes to be brandished as a secondary or
fragile apparatus of faded references that are reduced to clichés during
the spectacular and by no means essential political skirmishes between
factions representing purely economic interests that reduce the dignity
of individuals to their mere social cost, their more or less marked
autonomous ability to meet their own existential needs. Art, seen as an
elevation of conscience by researchers and the creative act of the
individual, to the collective of organized society is a craft that must
be, for its acceptance, highly civilized, that is a permanence within
individuals of an intricate network of values and of values that are
attributed to the things in the world. And unfortunately it does not
seem that today’s society is moving towards those conditions that enable
the dissemination of these values or that society has assumed the tenets
of humanizing its subjects.
Who, nowadays, is dedicating hours of television programming to the
mutation, through contemporary art, of the spirit of men who belong to a
specific social context or, what’s more, to the same population? Who is
really protecting artists who deserve to be publicized and sustained in
the name of social usefulness and intrinsic value, independently of
whether or not their works can be translated into economic worth? Who is
protecting the profoundly ethical reasons informing the existence and
production within history of new works of art, not by referring to a
discriminatory and unfounded criterion which is assumed by a mercenary
logic, the only universally and imperiously overarching logic in today’s
Western systems? I’m afraid that the only answer to these questions is “nobody”.
But who should answer these questions? Who should and could really
guarantee, for art and for artists, better conditions and prospects for
their very existence and life? Perhaps the institutions themselves, at
this point. The fact is that such enormous issues investing the
conscience of our collective society must be dealt with on a large scale.
The attempt to develop cultural projects of serious renewal end up
conflicting with an infinite series of problems, not the least of which
is general apathy. Apart from a subjection to and an ensuing cooptation
with the dominant cultural elites, there seem to be very few options
available.
Some might ask, at this point, and after this devastating analysis of
contemporary art, whether it really is worth continuing with cultural
operations, whether producing art and bringing together, as is the case
in this volume, 100 survivors of artistic creation has any meaning. The
answer is yes, because apart from the see-sawing sense of frustration
and defeat that often results from accepting such an onerous task or a
mission for which we feel destined, legitimating a role that someone has
chosen as a sincere calling will always be an onerous task – and most
certainly an essential, noble and necessary one. And this is so because
the germs of cultural renewal will always have a reason to exist only
within and through the communal and constant efforts of those we call
enlightened spirits.
©World
Of Art magazine
|