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Sunday, November 21, 2010

The World's Top Selling Contemporary Artists

According to the 2008 annual Artprice survey of the global art market, a report which lists the 500 top-selling contemporary artists, based on results from 2,900 auctions between July 2007 and June 2008, artists from Asia - particularly China - are beginning to dominate. For instance, out of the the world's top 20 best-selling modern artists, 13 are Asian, of whom 11 are Chinese. Among the world's most highly sought-after artists are Zhang Xiaogang, Zeng Fanzhi and Yue Minjun. Some experts in avant-garde art see this as a clear indication that within 10 years Asian art will account for a majority of auction sales around the globe.

The Top 10

Out of the top 10 money-making artists the first four are Western: Jeff Koons (b.1955), the celebrated American self-taught sculptor and mixed-media neo-pop artist; Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88), the Afro-Caribbean-American painter and ex-graffiti artist; Damien Hirst (b.1965), the British sculptor, mixed media artist noted for his dead shark (The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living) and diamond encrusted skull (For the Love of God); Richard Prince (b.1949), the American painter and photographer. But the rest are Asian.

Here is the list of the top 20 most popular artists based on auction records from July 2007 to July 2008, as compiled by Artprice.

1. Jeff Koons (b.1955)

Type of art: sculpture, mixed-media
Nationality: American
Sales at auction (07-08): £69.4 million

2. Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88)

Type of art: Painting (graffiti art)
Nationality: American
Sales at auction (07-08): £54.3 million

3. Damien Hirst (b.1965)

Type of art: Sculpture, mixed-media, installation art, winner of Turner Prize.
Leader of Young British Artists, heavily promoted by Charles Saatchi.
Nationality: British
Sales at auction (07-08): £45.8 million.
Note: The survey excludes Hirst's Sept 2008 auction of £100 million.

4. Richard Prince (b.1949)

Type of art: painting, fine art photography
Nationality: American
Sales at auction (07-08): £33 million

5. Zhang Xiaogang (b.1958)

Type of art: Surrealism works, portraiture
Nationality: Chinese (Yunnan)
Sales at auction (07-08): £32.3 million
[Note: Xiaogang was a key exhibitor at the importantexhibition of new Chinese art at the Saatchi Gallery, in 2008]

6. Zeng Fanzhi (b.1964)

Type of art: Figure painting, portraits
Nationality: Chinese (Wuhan)
Sales at auction (07-08): £27.8 million

7. Yue Minjun (b.1962)

Type of art: Expressionist figurative paintings
Nationality: Chinese (Heilongjiang)
Sales at auction (07-08): £27.5 million

8. Takashi Murakami (b.1962)

Type of art: Sculpture, painting, installation
Nationality: Japanese
Sales at auction (07-08): £15.5 million

9. Wang Guangyi (b.1957)

Type of art: Mixed-media, painting
Nationality: Chinese (Heilongjiang)
Sales at auction (07-08): £11.7 million

10. Liu Xiaodong (b.1963)

Type of art: Painting, fine art photography
Nationality: Chinese (Liaoning)
Sales at auction (07-08): £10.5 million

11. Cai Guo-Qiang (b.1957)

Type of artwork: Performance art (explosive events)
Nationality: Chinese
Sales at auction (07-08): £10.1 million

12. Yan Pei-Ming (b.1960)

Type of art: Portraitist
Nationality: Chinese (Shanghai)
Sales at auction (07-08): £9.9 million

13. Chen Yifei (b.1946)

Type of art: Painting
Nationality: Chinese (Zhejing)
Sales at auction (07-08): £9.7 million

14. Fang Lijun (b.1963)

Type of art: Painting
Nationality: Chinese (Hebei)
Sales at auction (07-08): £9.6 million

15. Liu Ye (b.1964)

Type of art: Avant-garde artist
Nationality: Chinese
Sales at auction (07-08): £8.8 million

17. Zhou Chunya (b.1955)

Type of art: Portrait paintings
Nationality: Chinese (Sichuan)
Sales at auction (07-08): £8.3 million

18. Anish Kapoor (b.1954)

Type of art: Abstract art, sculpture, one of Turner Prize Winners.
Nationality: British (born in India)
Sales at auction (07-08): £6.7 million

19. Peter Doig (b.1959)

Type of art: Contemporary landscape pictures
Nationality: British
Sales at auction (07-08): £6.7 million

20. Rudolf Stingel (b.1956)

Type of art: Installation and conceptual art
Nationality: German
Sales at auction (07-08): £6.5 million

Friday, November 19, 2010

Jung's 1932 Article on Picasso


"As a psychiatrist, I almost feel like apologising to the reader for becoming involved in the excitement over Picasso. Had it not been suggested to me from an authoritative quarter, I should probably never have taken up my pen on the subject. It is not that this painter and his strange art seem to me too slight a theme - I have, after all, seriously concerned myself with his literary brother, James Joyce. On the contrary, his problem has my undivided interest, only it appears too wide, too difficult, and too involved for me to hope that I could come anywhere near to covering it fully in a short article. If I venture to voice an opinion on the subject at all, it is with the express reservation that I have nothing to say on the question of Picasso's 'art' but only on its psychology. I shall therefore leave the aesthetic problem to the art critics, and shall restrict myself to the psychology underlying this kind of artistic creativeness.

For almost twenty years, I have occupied myself with the psychology of the pictorial representation of psychic processes, and I am therefore in a position to look at Picasso's pictures from a professional point of view. On the basis of my experience, I can assure the reader that Picasso's psychic problems, so far as they find expression in his work, are strictly analogous to those of my patients. Unfortunately, I cannot offer proof on this point, as the comparative material is known only to a few specialists. My further observations will therefore appear unsupported, and require the reader's good will and imagination.

Non-objective art draws its contents essentially from 'inside.' This 'inside' cannot correspond to consciousness, since consciousness contains images of objects as they are generally seen, and whose appearance must therefore necessarily conform to general expectations. Picasso's object, however, appears different from what is generally expected - so different that it no longer seems to refer to any object of outer experience at all. Taken chronologically, his works show a growing tendency to withdraw from the empirical objects, and an increase in those elements which do not correspond to any outer experience but come from an 'inside' situated behind consciousness - or at least behind that consciousness which, like a universal organ of perception set over and above the five senses, is orientated towards the outer world. Behind consciousness there lies not the absolute void but the unconscious psyche, which affects consciousness from behind and from inside, just as much as the outer world affects it from in front and from outside. Hence those pictorial elements which do not correspond to any 'outside' must originate from 'inside.'

As this 'inside' is invisible and cannot be imagined, even though it can affect consciousness in the most pronounced manner, I induce those of my patients who suffer mainly from the effects of this 'inside' to set them down in pictorial form as best they can. The aim of this method of expression is to make the unconscious contents accessible and so bring them closer to the patient's understanding. The therapeutic effect of this is to prevent a dangerous splitting-off of the unconscious processes from consciousness. In contrast to objective or 'conscious' representations, all pictorial representations of processes and effects in the psychic background are symbolic. They point, in a rough and approximate way, to a meaning that for the time being is unknown. It is, accordingly, altogether impossible to determine anything with any degree of certainty in a single, isolated instance. One only has the feeling of strangeness and of a confusing, incomprehensible jumble. One does not know what is actually meant or what is being represented. The possibility of understanding comes only from a comparative study of many such pictures. Because of their lack of artistic imagination, the pictures of patients are generally clearer and simpler, and therefore easier to understand, than those of modern artists. 

Among patients, two groups may be distinguished: the neurotics and the schizophrenics. The first group produces pictures of a synthetic character, with a pervasive and unified feeling. When they are completely abstract, and therefore lacking the element of feeling, they are at least definitely symmetrical or convey an unmistakable meaning. The second group, on the other hand, produces pictures which immediately reveal their alienation from feeling. At any rate they communicate no unified, harmonious feeling-tone but, rather, contradictory feelings or even a complete lack of feeling. From a purely formal point of view, the main characteristic is one of fragmentation, which expresses itself in the so called 'lines of fracture' - that is, a series of psychic 'faults' (in the geological sense) which run right through the picture. The picture leaves one cold, or disturbs one by its paradoxical, unfeeling, and grotesque unconcern for the beholder. This is the group to which Picasso belongs*.

In spite of the obvious differences between the two groups, their productions have one thing in common: their symbolic content. In both cases the meaning is an implied one, but the neurotic searches for the meaning and for the feeling that corresponds to it, and takes pains to communicate it to the beholder. The schizophrenic hardly ever shows any such inclination; rather, it seems as though he were the victim or this meaning. It is as though he had been overwhelmed and swallowed up by it, and had been dissolved into all those elements which the neurotic at least tries to master. What I said about Joyce holds good for schizophrenic forms of expression too: nothing comes to meet the beholder, everything turns away from him; even an occasional touch of beauty seems only like an inexcusable delay in withdrawal. It is the ugly, the sick, the grotesque, the incomprehensible, the banal that are sought out - not for the purpose of expressing anything, but only in order to obscure; an obscurity, however, which has nothing to conceal, but spreads like a cold fog over desolate moors; the whole thing quite pointless, like a spectacle that can do without a spectator.

With the first group, one can divine what they are trying to express; with the second, what they are unable to express. In both cases, the content is full of secret meaning. A series of images of either kind, whether in drawn or written form, begins as a rule w with the symbol of the Nekyia - the journey to Hades, the descent into the unconscious, and the leave-taking from the upper world. What happens afterwards, though it may still be expressed in the forms and figures of the day-world, gives intimations of a hidden meaning and is therefore symbolic in character. Thus Picasso starts with the still objective pictures of the Blue Period - the blue of night, of moonlight and water, the Tuat-blue of the Egyptian underworld. He dies, and his soul rides on horseback into the beyond. The day-life clings to him, and a woman with a child steps up to him warningly. As the day is woman to him, so is the night; psychologically speaking, they are the light and the dark soul (anima). The dark one sits waiting, expecting him in the blue twilight, and stirring up morbid presentiments. With the change of colour, we enter the underworld. The world of objects is deathstruck, as the horrifying masterpiece of the syphilitic, tubercular, adolescent prostitute makes plain. The motif of the prostitute begins with the entry into the beyond, where he, as a departed soul, encounters a number of others of his kind. When I say 'he,' I mean that personality in Picasso which suffers the underworld fate - the man in him who does not turn towards the day-world, but is fatefully drawn into the dark; who follows not the accepted ideals of goodness and beauty, but the demoniacal attraction of ugliness and evil. It is these antichristian and Luciferian forces that well up in modern man and engender an all-pervading sense of doom, veiling the bright world of day with the mists of Hades, infecting it with deadly decay, and finally, like an earthquake, dissolving it into fragments, fractures, discarded remnants, debris, shreds, and disorganised units. Picasso and his exhibition are a sign of the times, just as much as the twenty-eight thousand people who came to look at his pictures. 

When such a fate befalls a man who belongs to the neurotic, he usually encounters the unconscious in the form of the 'Dark One,' a Kundry of horribly grotesque, primeval ugliness or else of infernal beauty. In Faust's metamorphosis, Gretchen, Helen, Mary, and the abstract 'Eternal Feminine' correspond to the four female figures of the Gnostic underworld, Eve, Helen, Mary, and Sophia. And just as Faust is embroiled in murderous happenings and reappears in changed form, so Picasso changes shape and reappears in the underworld form of the tragic Harlequin - a motif that runs through numerous paintings. It may be remarked in passing that Harlequin is an ancient chthonic god.

The descent into ancient times has been associated ever since Homer's day with the Nekyia. Faust turns back to the crazy primitive world of the witches' sabbath and to a chimerical vision of classical antiquity. Picasso conjures up crude, earthy shapes, grotesque and primitive, and resurrects the soullessness of ancient Pompeii in a cold, glittering light - even Giulio Romano could not have done worse! Seldom or never have I had a patient who did not go back to neolithic art forms or revel in evocations of Dionysian orgies. Harlequin wanders like Faust through all these forms, though sometimes nothing betrays his presence but his wine, his lute, or the bright lozenges of his jester's costume. And what does he learn on his wild journey through man's millennial history? What quintessence will he distil from this accumulation of rubbish and decay, from these half-born or aborted possibilities of form and colour? What symbol will appear as the final cause and meaning of all this. In view of the dazzling versatility of Picasso, one hardly dares to hazard a guess, so for the present I l would rather speak of what I have found in my patients' material. The Nekyia is no aimless and purely destructive fall into the abyss, but a meaningful katabasis eis antron, a descent into the cave of initiation and secret knowledge. The journey through the psychic history of mankind has as its object the restoration of the whole man, by awakening the memories in the blood. The descent to the Mothers enabled Faust to raise up the sinfully whole human being - Paris united with Helen - that homo totus who was forgotten when contemporary man lost himself in one-sidedness. It is he who at all times of upheaval has caused the tremor of the upper world, and always will. This man stands opposed to the man of the present, because he is the one who ever is as he was, whereas the other is what he is only for the moment. With my patients, accordingly, the katabasis and katalysis are followed by a recognition of the bipolarity of human nature and of the necessity of conflicting pairs of opposites. After the symbols of madness experienced during the period of disintegration there follow images which represent the coming together of the opposites: light/dark, above/below, white/black, male/female, etc. In Picasso's latest paintings, the motif of the union of opposites is seen very clearly in their direct juxtaposition. One painting (although traversed by numerous lines of fracture) even contains the conjunction of the light and dark anima. The strident, uncompromising, even brutal colours of the latest period reflect the tendency of the unconscious to master the conflict by violence (colour = feeling). This state of things in the psychic development of a patient is neither the end nor the goal. It represents only a broadening of his outlook, which now embraces the whole of man's moral, bestial, and spiritual nature without as yet shaping it into a living unity. Picasso's drame interieur has developed up to this last point before the denouement. As to the future Picasso, I would rather not try my hand at prophecy, for this inner adventure is a hazardous affair and can lead at any moment to a standstill or to a catastrophic bursting asunder of the conjoined opposites. Harlequin is a tragically ambiguous figure, even though - as the initiated may discern - he already bears on his costume the symbols of the next stage of development. He is indeed the hero who must pass through the perils of Hades, but will he succeed? That is a question I cannot answer. Harlequin gives me the creeps - he is too reminiscent of that 'motley fellow, like a buffoon' in Zarathustra, who jumped over the unsuspecting rope-dancer (another Pagliacci) and thereby brought about his death. Zarathustra then spoke the words that were to prove so horrifyingly true of Nietzsche himself: 'Your soul will be dead even sooner than your body: fear nothing more l' Who the buffoon is, is made plain as he cries out to the rope-dancer, his weaker alter ego: 'To one better than yourself you bar the way' He is the greater personality who bursts the shell, and this shell is sometimes - the brain."

*(Jung added the following note in a 1934 version.)

"By this I do not mean that anyone who belongs to these two groups suffers from either neurosis or schizophrenia. Such a classification merely means that in the one case a psychic disturbance will probably result in ordinary neurotic symptoms, while in the other it will produce schizoid symptoms. In the case under discussion, the designation 'schizophrenic' does not, therefore, signify a diagnosis of the mental illness schizophrenia, but merely refers to a disposition or habitus on the basis of which a serious psychological disturbance could produce schizophrenia. Hence I regard neither Picasso nor Joyce as psychotics, but count them among a large number of people whose habitus it is to react to a profound psychic disturbance not with an ordinary psychoneurosis but with a schizoid syndrome. As the above statement has given rise to some misunderstanding, I have considered it necessary to add this psychiatric explanation."

Friday, October 1, 2010


 Center of Contemporary Art - Tbilisi 

თანამედროვე ხელოვნების ცენტრი - თბილისი


WALTER BENJAMIN “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936)

[... ] Around 1900 technical reproduction had reached a standard that not only permitted it to
reproduce all transmitted works of art and thus to cause the must profound change in their impact
upon the public; it also had captured a place of its own among the artistic processes. For the
study of this standard nothing is more revealing than the nature of the repercussions that these
two different manifestations—the reproduction of works of art and the art of the film have had
on art in its traditional form.
Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its
presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This
unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout
the time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in physical
condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownership. The traces of the
first can be revealed only by chemical or physical analyses which it is impossible to perform
on a reproduction; changes of ownership are subject to a tradition which must be traced from
the situation of the original.
The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity.
Chemical analyses of the patina of a bronze can help to establish this, as does file proof that
a given manuscript of the Middle Ages stems from an archive of the fifteenth century. The
whole sphere of authenticity is outside technical—and, of course, not only technical—
reproducibility. Confronted with its manual reproduction, which was usually branded as a
forgery, the original preserved all its authority; not so vis-à-vis technical reproduction. The
reason is twofold. First, process reproduction is more independent of the original than
manual reproduction. […] Secondly, technical reproduction can put the copy of the original
into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself. Above all, it enables the
original to meet the beholder halfway, be it in the form of a photograph or a phonograph
record. […]
The situations into which the product of mechanical reproduction can be brought may
not touch the actual work of art, vet the quality of its presence is always depreciated. This
holds not only for the art work but also, for instance, for a landscape which passes in review
before the spectator in a movie. In the case of the art object, a most sensitive nucleus—
namely, its authenticity—is interfered with whereas no natural object is vulnerable on that
score. The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning,
ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced.
Since the historical testimony rests on the authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardized by
reproduction when substantive duration ceases to matter. And what is really jeopardized
when the historical testimony is affected is the authority of the object.
One might subsume the eliminated element in the term “aura” and go on to say that
which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a
symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might
generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the
domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a
unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his
own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a
tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and
Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
renewal of mankind. Both processes are intimately connected with the contemporary mass
movements. Their most powerful agent is the film. Its social significance, particularly in its
most positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect, that is, the
liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage . […]
* * *
IV
The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of
tradition. [...] Originally the contextual integration of art in tradition found its expression in
the cult. We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual—first the
magical, then the religious kind. It is significant that the existence of the work of art with
reference to its aura is neve r entirely separated from its ritual function. In other words, the
unique value of the “authentic” work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original
use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual
even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty. The secular cult of beauty, developed
during the Renaissance and prevailing for three centuries, clearly showed that ritualistic basis
in its decline and the first deep crisis which befell it. With the advent of the first truly
revolutionary means of reproduction, photography, simultaneously with the rise of socialism,
art sensed the approaching crisis which has become evident a century later. At the time, art
reacted with the doctrine of l’art pour l’art, that is, with a theology of art. This gave rise to
what might be called a negative theology in the form of the idea of “pure” art, which not only
denied any social function of art but also any categorizing by subject matter....
An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these
relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history,
mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on
ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art
designed for reproducibility. From a pho tographic negative, for example, one can make any
number of prints; to ask for the “authentic” print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion
of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is
reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice—politics.
* * *
VII
The nineteenth-century dispute as to the artistic value of painting versus photography
today seems devious and confused. This does not diminish its importance, however; if
anything, it underlines it. The dispute was in fact the symptom of a historical transformation
the universal impact of which was not realized by either of the rivals. When the age of
mechanical reproduction separated art from its basis in cult, the semblance of its autonomy
disappeared forever. The resulting change in the function of art transcended the perspective
of the century; for a long time it even escaped that of the twentieth century, which
experienced the development of the film.
* * *
Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
XI
The shooting of a film, especially of a sound film, affords a spectacle unimaginable anywhere
at any time before this. […] In the theater one is well aware of the place from which the play
cannot immediately be detected as illusionary. There is no such place for the movie scene
that is being shot. Its illusionary nature is that of the second degree, the result of cutting. That
is to say, in the studio the mechanical equipment has penetrated so deeply into reality that its
pure aspect freed from the foreign substance of equipment is the result of a special
procedure, namely, the shooting by the specially adjusted camera and the mounting of the
shot together with other similar ones. The equipment- free aspect of reality here has become
the height of artifice; the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of
technology.
Even more revealing is the comparison of these circumstances, which differ so much
from those of the theater, with the situation in painting. Here the question is: How does the
cameraman compare with the painter? To answer this we take recourse to an analogy with a
surgical operation. The surgeon represents the polar opposite of the magician. The magician
heals a sick person by the laying on of hands; the surgeon cuts into the patient's body. The
magician maintains the natural distance between the patient and himself, though he reduces it
very slightly by the laying on of hands, he greatly increases it by virtue of his authority. The
surgeon does exactly the reverse; he greatly diminishes the distance between himself and the
patient by penetrating into the patient's body, and increases it but little by the caution with
which his hand moves among the organs. In short, in contrast to the magician—who is still
hidden in the medical practitioner—the surgeon at the decisive moment abstains from facing
the patient man to man; rather, it is through the operation that he penetrates into him.
Magician and surgeon compare to painter and cameraman. The painter maintains in
his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web. There
is a tremendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one,
that of the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law.
Thus, for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more
significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the thoroughgoing
permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all
equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art.
XII
Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art. The
reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the progressive reaction toward a
Chaplin movie. The progressive reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of
visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert. Such fusion is of great
social significance. The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the
sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is
uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion. With regard to the screen,
the critical and the receptive attitudes of the public coincide. The decisive reason for this is
that individual reactions are predetermined by the mass audience response they are about to
produce, and this is nowhere more pronounced than in the film. The moment these responses
become manifest the\ control each other. Again, the comparison with painting is fruitful. A
painting has always had an excellent chance to be viewed by one person or by a few. The
simultaneous contemplation of paintings by a large public, such as developed in the
Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
nineteenth century, is an early symptom of the crisis of painting, a crisis which was by no
means occasioned exclusively by photography but rather in a relatively independent manner
by the appeal of art works to the masses.
Painting simply is in no position to present an object for simultaneous collective
experience, as it was possible for architecture at all times, for the epic poem in the past, and
for the movie today. Although this circumstance in itself should not lead one to conclusions
about the social role of painting, it does constitute a serious threat as soon as painting, under
special conditions and, as it were, against its nature, is confronted directly by the masses. In
the churches and monasteries of the Middle Ages and at the princely courts up to the end of
the eighteenth century, a collective reception of paintings did not occur simultaneous]y, but
by graduated and hierarchized mediation. The change that has come about is an expression of
the particular conflict in which painting was implicated by the mechanical reproducibility of
paintings. Although paintings began to be publicly exhibited in galleries and salons, there
was no way for the masses to organize and control themselves in their reception. Thus the
same public which responds in a progressive manner toward a grotesque film is bound to
respond in a reactionary manner to surrealism.
* * *
XIV
One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be
fully satisfied only later. The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a
certain art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a changed
technical standard, that is to say, in a new art form. The extravagances and crudities of art
which thus appear, particularly in the so-called decadent epochs, actually arise from the
nucleus of its richest historical energies. In recent years, such barbarisms were abundant in
Dadaism. It is only now that its impulse becomes discernible: Dadaism attempted to create
by pictorial—and literary—means the effects which the public today seeks in the film.
Every fundamentally new, pioneering creation of demands will carry beyond its goal.
Dadaism did so to the extent that it sacrificed the market values which are so characteristic of
the film in favor of higher ambitions though of course it was not conscious of such intentions
as here described. The Dadaists attached much less importance to the sales value of' their
work than to its uselessness for contemplative immersion. The studied degradation of their
material was not the least of their means to achieve this uselessness. Their poems are “word
salad” containing obscenities and every imaginable waste product of language. The same is
true of their paintings, on which they mounted buttons and tickets. What they intended and
achieved was a relentless destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as
reproductions with the very means of production. Before a painting of Arp's or a poem by
August Stratum it is impossible to take time for contemplation and evaluation as one would
before a canvas of Derain's or a poem by Rilke. In the decline of middle-class society,
contemplation became a school for asocial behavior it was countered by distraction as a
variant of social conduct. Dadaistic activities actually assured a rather vehement distraction
by making works of art the center of scandal. One requirement was foremost: to outrage the
public.
From an alluring appearance or persuasive structure of sound the work of art of the
Dadaists became an instrument of ballistics. It hit the spectator like a bullet, it happened to
Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
him, thus acquiring a tactile quality. It promoted a demand for the film, the distracting
element of which is also primarily tactile, being based on changes of place and focus which
periodically assail the spectator. Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the
canvas of a painting. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the
spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so.
No sooner has his eve grasped a scene than it is already changed. It cannot be arrested.
Duhamel, who detests the film and knows nothing of its significance, though something of its
structure, notes this circumstance as follows: “I can no longer think what I want to think. My
thoughts have been replaced by moving images.” The spectator's process of association in
view- of these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change. This constitutes
the shock effect of the film, which, like all shocks, should be cushioned by heightened
presence of mind. By means of its technical structure, the film has taken the physical shock
effect out of the wrappers in which Dadaism had, as it were, kept it inside the moral shock
effect.
XV
The mass is a matrix from which all traditional behavior toward works of art issues today in
a new form. Quantity has been transmuted into quality. The greatly increased mass of
participants has produced a change in the mode of participation. The fact that the new mode
of participation first appeared in a disreputable form must not confuse the spectator. Yet
some people have launched spirited attacks against precisely this superficial aspect. Among
these, Duhamel has expressed himself in the most radical manner. What he objects to most is
the kind of participation which the movie elicits from the masses. Duhamel calls the movie
“a pastime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are
consumed by their worries . . . , a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes
no intelligence . . . , which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the
ridiculous one of someday becoming a "star" in Los Angeles.” Clearly, this is at bottom the
same ancient lament that the masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration
from the spectator. That is a commonplace. The question remains whether it provides a
platform for the analysis of the film. A closer look is needed here. Distraction and
concentration form polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates
before a work of art is absorbed by it. He enters into this work of art the way legend tells of
the Chinese painter when he viewed his finished painting. In contrast, the distracted mass
absorbs the work of art. This is most obvious with regard to buildings. Architecture has
always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by
a collectivity in a state of distraction. The laws of its reception are most instructive.
Buildings have been man's companions since primeval times. Many art forms have
developed and perished. Tragedy begins with the Greeks, is extinguished with them, and
after centuries its `rules' only are revived. The epic poem, which had its origin in the youth of
nations, expires in Europe at the end of the Renaissance. Panel painting is a creation of the
Middle Ages, and nothing guarantees its uninterrupted existence. But the human need for
shelter is lasting. Architecture has never been idle. Its history is more ancient than that of any
other art, and its claim to being a living force has significance in every attempt to
comprehend the relationship of the masses to art. Buildings are appropriated in a twofold
manner: by use and by perception—or rather, by touch and sight. Such appropriation cannot
be understood in terms of the attentive concentration of a tourist before a famous building.
Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
On the tactile side there is no counterpart to contemplation on the optical side. Tactile
appropriation is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit. As regards architecture,
habit determines to a large extent even optical reception. The latter, too, occurs much less
through rapt attention than by noticing the object in incidental fashion. This mode of
appropriation, developed with reference to architecture, in certain circumstances acquires
canonical value. For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning
points of history cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplation, alone. They
are mastered gradually by habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation.
The distracted person, too, can form habits. More, the ability to master certain tasks in
a state of distraction proves that their solution has become a matter of habit. Distraction as
provided by art presents a covert control of the extent to which new tasks have become
soluble by apperception. Since, moreover, individuals are tempted to avoid such tasks, art
will tackle the most difficult and most important ones where it is able to mobilize the masses.
Today it does so in the film. Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing
noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds
in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of
reception halfway. The film snakes the cult value recede into the background not only by
putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this
position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one.
EPILOGUE
The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are
two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian
masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism
sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express
themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them
an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of
aesthetics into political life. The violation of the masses, whom Fascism, with its Fuhrer cult,
forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into
the production of ritual values.
All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war. War and war only
can set a goal for mass movements on the largest scale while respecting the traditional
property system. This is the political formula for the situation. The technological formula
may be stated as follows: Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today's technical
resources while maintaining the property system. [. ..]
[... ] The destructiveness of war furnishes proof that society has not been mature
enough to incorporate technology as its organ, that technology has not been sufficiently
developed to cope with the elemental forces of society. The horrible features of imperialistic
warfare are attributable to the discrepancy between the tremendous means of production and
their inadequate utilization in the process of production—in other words, to unemployment
and the lack of markets. Imperialistic war is a rebellion of technology which collects, in the
form of “human material,” the claims to which society has denied its natural material. Instead
of draining rivers, society directs a human stream into a bed of trenches, instead of dropping
seeds from airplanes, it drops incendiary bombs over cities; and through gas warfare the aura
is abolished in a new way.
Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
“Fiat ars—pereat mundus,” [Let art be created though the world be perished] says
Fascism, and as Marinetti admits, expects war to supply the artistic gratification of a sense
perception that has been changed by technology. This is evidently the consummation of l'art
pour l’art. Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian
gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience
its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics
which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

არტისტერიუმი 2010


 
გოეთეს ინსტიტუტი საქართველოს კულტურისა და ძეგლთა დაცვის სამინისტროსთან თანამშრომლობით ატარებს თანამედროვე ხელოვნების საერთაშორისო სიმპოზიუმს – TRANSRELATION. პროექტი ხორციელდება აღმოსავლეთ ევროპისა და შუა აზიის ქვეყნების გოეთეს ინსტიტუტების პროექტის ფარგლებში "კულტურის სფეროში მოღვაწე მენეჯერების კომპეტენციის ცენრტი". ორდღიანი სიმპოზიუმის მსვლელობისას, ასევე ვორქშოპისა და შემაჯამებელი დისკუსიის დროს, ხელოვანები და კურატორები გერმანიიდან, შევეიცარიიდან, ჰოლანდიიდან და საქართველოდან იმსჯელებენ თანამედროვე ხელოვნების აქტუალურ საკითხებზე. განხილული იქნება შემდეგი თემები: საერთაშორისო გამოფენის/ბიენალეს მნიშვნელობა არტცენტრის განვითარებისა და ინტერნაციონალიზაციისათვის XXI საუკუნეში; სჭირდება თუ არა ბიენალე თბილისს; სხვადასხვა ტიპის ინიციატივების როლი სახელოვნებო სივრცეების ჩამოყალიბების პროცესში.

ორშაბათი, 04.10.2010 10:00–18:00  

საქართველოს კულტურისა და ძეგლთა დაცვის სამინისტრო
სანაპიროს ქ. 4

სამშაბათი, 05.10.2010 09:30–18:00 

გოეთეს ინსტიტუტი, ზანდუკელის 16
(ორივე დღეს დასწრება მხოლოდ მოწვევით)

ხელოვნება ეზოში – არტისტერიუმის წვეულება ეზოში 

2010 წლის არტისტერიუმის მონაწილეებს, სტუმრებსა და მეგობრებს ვეპატიჟებით გოეთეს ინსტიტუტის ეზოში დიდ წვეულებაზე. ამ საღამოს მთავარი ღირშესანიშნაობა იქნება ინგმეი დუანის პერფორმანსი FLYING LUGGAGE - VISION 4. ასევე დარიგდება ჟურნალი "არტლუპი", რომელიც გასულ წელს ერთობრივად გამოსცეს გოეთეს ინსტიტუტმა და არტისტერიუმმა.

სამშაბათი, 05.10.2010, 18:30 საათიდან  

ინგმეი დუანი საქართველოში – პერფორმანსები და ვორქშოპი

გერმანელ–ჩინელი ხელოვანი ინგმეი დუანი და ქართველი ხელოვანების ჯგუფი "ბულიონი" თანამედროვე ხელოვნების საერთაშორისო გამოფენის "არტისტერიუმი 3"–ის გახსნაზე წარმოადგენენ პერფორმანისის პროგრამას FAIRY TALE MEETS REALITY. ხოლო 5 ოქტომბერს ხელოვანი გოეთეს ინსტიტუტში წარმოადგენს თავის პერფორმანსს FLYING LUGGAGE - VISION 4. ინგმეი დუანი გამოცდილი პერფორმანისის ხელოვანია, რომელიც აბრამოვიჩსა და შლინგელსიფთან სწავლობდა და 30 ქვეზანაში მოღვაწეობდა.

ის 7/8 ოქტომბერს 10:00–16:00 თბილისის სამხატვრო აკადემიაში სტუდენტებისათვის ჩაატარებს ვორკშოპს. 

ინგმეი დუანის პერფორმანსები:

შაბათი, 02.10.2010, 19:30 საქართველოს ეროვნული მუზეუმი/ თბილისის ისტორიის მუზეუმი (ქარვასლა), სიონის ქ.8

სამშაბათი, 05.10.2010, 19:00 გოეთეს ინსტიტუტი, ზანდუკელის 16

Fest i Nova 2010 Program International Festival of Contemporary Art - Fest i Nova 2010 www.


Festival Programme:

September 30th

Opening of Fest i Nova 2010
19:00-21:00
- Official opening of Fest i Nova 2010 Exhibition Pavilion
- Presentation of Austrian-Georgian project “About the Definition of Sculpture” Authors of the project: Gogi Okropiridze (Kulturschmiede), Catrin Bolt
- Cocktail

October 1st

17:00-20:00
- Opening of art object “Sunday Market” by Tinatin Chkhikvishvili (Georgia)
- Opening of sculpture ”Man and Woman” by Tamar Kvesitadze (Georgia)
- Installation “Special Mass” from project “Mentality Flower” by Giorgi Dolidze (Georgia)
- Art object “Good Rider” or “Christina in Georgia” – Denis Gonobolin (Georgia)
- Video Installation “FRAGILE” – II part from trilogy "Creations and Creative Destructions“, Konstantine Mindadze (The Netherlands)

October 2nd

17:00-20:00
- Modern Lithuanian poetry “In Search for Freedom in Soviet Times” presented by Jurate Landsbergyte (Lithuania)
- Lecture, exhibition and film about M.K. Ciurlionis’s (1875-1911) visit to Caucasus – Jurate Landsbergyte (Lithuania)
- Landscape installation “ME” from series “Illustrated Mind” – by Lika Dadiani (Georgia)
- Artists’ Talk in café Garikula

October 3rd

18:00-20:00
- Presentation of multidisciplinary project “4th Dimension” (Georgia)
- Installation “Mesh”; Master class by Vasil Macharadze (Georgia)
- Sampling of Georgian Wine in “Bolgarski Wine Cellar of 19th c.

October 1st-3rd

14:00-18:00
- „Desert Walker” Atmosphere 41° by Amanda Steggell (Norway) Exhibition, performance and lecture on experimental geography
International Festival of Contemporary Art - Fest i Nova 2010
www.FestiNova.com Hosted by Art Villa GARIKULA

October 4th-5th

18:00-20:00
- Photo exhibition and performance “Freezelight” by Anton Balanchivadze (Georgia) and Anton Sokolov (Russia)
- Concert of electronic music – David Badridze (Georgia)

October 6th

17:00-18:00
- Presentation of Project “Aket-Ikit Batumi” by Jean Dupuy (France) and Guela Tsouladze (France)
- Degustation of Georgian Wine in Bolgarski Wine Cellar (19th c.)

October 7-9th

14:00-20:00
- American Pavilion (two part exhibition-presentaion) The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Information (USA) presents
- Exhibition (prints on fabric, architectural model, 3D photo, video)
- 3D film screening followed by concert. Authors of the project: Nanuka Tchitchua and Wade Ivy
- Degustation of Georgian wine in “Bolgarski Wine Cellar” 19th c.

October 8th

14:00-18:00
- Visit of 3rd Tbilisi International Contemporary Art Exhibition and Art Events “Artisterium” to Art Villa Garikula

October 9th

16:00
- Opening of photo exhibition of ProCredit Bank’s project ProArt
- Cocktail

October 10th

12:00-19:00
- Conceptual show (art object, installation, digital media mix, photo collage) Thinking about Paradise , Author of the project – Khatuna Mzarelua (Georgia)
- Meeting with the artists in Garikula Café

October 11th

17:00-20:00
- Presenting Shida Kartli artists and youth on Fest i Nova 2010
- Concert by youth Rock Band “Lost in Time” from Kaspi
International Festival of Contemporary Art - Fest i Nova 2010
www.FestiNova.com Hosted by Art Villa GARIKULA

October 12th

18:00-20:00
- Screening of Film Willow - by Elena Hall (Ukraine)
- Screening of films by Jaap De Ruig (The Netherlands)

October 13th

- Liquid Art 2010 – International Art Project. Curator – Gogi Totibadze (Russia)
- Closing of the festival – Conference on “Development Strategies of Art Villa Garikula”
Participants of “Fest i Nova” pavilion exhibition:
Shalva Khakhanashvili (France) – Photo Exhibition „Streets of Paris” 2009; Tamar Kvesitadze (Georgia) Sculpture “Man and Woman”; Eka Sharashidze (Germany) Photo collage; Nino Moseshvili (Georgia) Painting; Nino Morbedadze (Georgia) – Graphic Art; Gogi Totibadze (Russia) – painting, Konstantin Totibadze (Russia) – painting; Maia Baratashvili (Georgia) painting; Adrineh Gregorian (Armenia) Graphic Art; Elena Koehler (Georgia) – painting; Kako Topuria (France) Composition; Michael Shengelia (Georgia) – Sculpture; Givi Nonikashvili (Georgia) Painting; Nino Chitaishvili (Georgia) Painting; Elshan Ibrahimov (Azerbaijan) – multimedia art; Lia Bagrationi (Georgia) Sculpture; Nato Shushania (Georgia) – Short film; Ana Laghidze (Georgia) Painting; Giorgi Tsagareli (Georgia) – composition; Tamar Kutschava (Georgia) Sculpture; Keti Davlianidze (Georgia) Installation; Sofo Kuprashvili (Georgia) Painting
Participants of projects:
1. “About the Definition of Sculpture”: Wachtang Bugadze, Nino Chilashvili, Nino Sekhniashvili, Kote Sulaberidze, Kote Jincharadze, Kote Sulaberidze, Wato Tsereteli, Marita Fraser, Julie Hayward, Anne Juren, Alex Lawer, Sonia Leimer, Roland Rauschmeier
2. “American Pavillion”: Gregg Fleishman, Masharius Miryalis, Vincent Goudreau & Javier Martinez, Sara Velas, Aurelia Shrenker.
3. “4th Dimension”: Roko Iremashvili, David Gabunia, Natuka Kakhidze, Shalva Tskhovrebadze, Guram Kvartskhalaia.
4. “Thinking about Paradise” – participants: Nanuka Tchitchua, Oleg Timchenko, Alicja Rogalska, Denis Gonobolin, Gvantsa Katsiashvili, Lela Katsiashvili, « Voyages de Medea » FR-Georgia, Anastasia Busse.

Tbilisi International Festival of Theatre

Tbilisi, Georgia

Georgian SHOW CASE

9-12 October, 2009

Shota Rustaveli State Drama Theatre
Maks Frish

BIDERMAN AND THE FIRE TEASERS

Directed by Robert Sturua
Tbilisi
Premiere
World known Shota Rustaveli State Drama Theatre was founded in 1879 as an “Artist’s Society”. Famous for its brilliant history, famous actors and stage directors cast, the theater is always a center of innovations and gives a tone to Georgian theater in general.
For the Show Case, the theater presents a premiere of internationally acclaimed Robert Sturua.
Marjanishvili State Drama Theatre
Levan Tsuladze, After Anton Chekhov short story “The LADY WITH A DOG”

LADY WITH A DOG

Directed by levan Tsuladze
Tbilisi
Duration of the play – 1 hour and40 minutes, with one intermission
Marjanishvili State Drama theatre was founded by a great theatre director and reformer of the Georgian theatre Kote Marjanishvili 80 years ago. Since than, the theater played crucial role in Georgian culture and performed world-wide. Famous actors and stage directors, great stage designers and musicians, high artistic quality and full houses - this is a history of the theater.
For Georgian Show-case the theater presents a performance “LADY WITH A DOG”, staged by leader of new generation of theater Levan Tsuladze, whose brilliant performances from the Basement Theatre is well known to international audience.
Konstantine Gamsaxurdia Sukhumi State Drama Theatre
Guram Odisharia

THE SEA WICH IS FAR

Directed by Temur Chkheidze
Sokhumi
Duration of the play – 80 minutes
Sokhumi Theatre celebrates its 120-anniversary. During the long history and traditions, theater has played a key role in the history of Georgian culture.
Following the tragic events occurred in Abkhazia in 90-ies, the company of the Georgia Theatre together with thousands Georgians had to leave Sokhumi.
With a brilliant cast of actors and refined stage direction of famous Georgian stage director Temur Ckheidze, who is currently artistic director of Bolshoi Drama Theatre in St. Petersburg, the theater presents a modern Georgian drama on war that ruines the lives of people.
Fingers Theatre

THE WALL

Directed by Beso Kupreishvili
Tbilisi
Duration of the play – 50 minutes
Following to successful completion of several sketches by director Beso Kupreishvili in Batumi in Children's Art Studio , the idea of founding the “Finger’s Theatre” was established. On June 7, 1991 in "Actor's House" adult theatre-studio "99+2" was presented with performance "Extravaganza". The performance was presented with new, unique way and established closer contact with the audience by means of costumed fingers, which had an impressive influence on the spectators with its creativity. That is the reason theatre-studio was called as "Fingers Theatre".
Since 2007 till present the performances and the rehearsals of "FINGERS THEATRE" take place in "MARJANISHVILI STATE DRAMA THEATRE".
Rustavi Municipal Theatre

DARISPANS’S TROUBLE

Directed by Gocha kapanadze
Rustavi
Duration of the play – 80 minutes
In 1967 group of actors leaded by stage director Giga Lortkipanidze moved from Marjanishvili State Drama Theater to Rustavi, an industrial city close to Tbilisi and established new theatre there. For several years the young group was working there. Since 2004 Rustavi Theatre became as a Rustavi Municipal Theater with rich repertoire and a cast of very talented actors.
Since 2009 the theater is ledad by Gocha Kapanadze - a very talented and distibguished stage director and actor.
The theater presents a play of Georgian Drama Classics in a very interesting and expressive way.
Vaso Abashidze State Music and Comedy Theatre
William Shakespeare

MACBETH

Directed by David Doiashvili
Tbilisi
Premiere
The history of this theater dates back to the 20-ies of 20th century as a theater of workers. The unprofessional group of theater goers who were performing in their free time, steo by steo developed into a professional theater company and in 1935 became state subsidized . Since 2005 the theater is leaded by a very talented young stage director David Doiashvili , who renewed the cast and almost revived the theater with success.
For Georgian Show Case, the theater presents a premiere of MACBETH.
Alexander Griboedov State Russian Theatre
Fyodor Dostoevski DOSTOEVSKI.RU
Directed by Avtandil Varsimashvili
Tbilisi
Duration of the play – 1hour, 40 minutes
The Theater was established in 1932 and since than plays a very important role in Tbilisi Culture.
Since 2002 the theater is leaded by Avto Varsimashvili – stage and film director , whos works are always challenging , innovative. He revived the life of Griboedov Theatre and made it far more dynamic, than it was.
A very interesting DOSTOEVSKI. RU will be one of the highlights of the Show Case.
Royal District Theatre
David Gabunia

THE CHILDREN OF OTHERS

Directed by David Tavadze
Tbilisi
Duration of the play – 70 minutes
“ArdiFest” - one of the most successful projects of Royal District Theater revealed several very young play writers, stage directors, actors. The Royal District has suggested to one of the winners of the Festival play writer David Gabunia to write a play. “The CHILDREN OF OTHERS” is a result of the “Ardi - Fest “, a start of interesting collaboration between the theater, young actors and play writer.
The CHILDREN OF OTHERS presents a unique world, governed by goddess of maternity. In this world, children are born in parts. These parts are carried by men and women equally. In this world the sexes reached complete harmony!
The actors perform in the limited area of the stage in the center - “productivity temple”. The young group of play writer, stage director and actors suggest experiment - full of movement elements, in different theater genres and literature quotation.
Royal District Theatre
Yukio Mishima

MY FRIEND HITLER

Directed by David Mgebrishvili
Tbilisi
Duration of the play – 2 hours, 30 minutes. Two intermissions.
The Independent theater “ROYAL DISTRICT THEATER” was founded in 1997 by a famous actress Iza Gigoshvili. Located in an old Tbilisi center, in a unique building, this theater leads a very interesting work, specially with young generation.
“My Friends, Hitler” - is a very special performance with brilliant cast of actors.
Georgian State Pantomime Theatre
Vaja-Pshavela

HOST AND GUEST

Directed by Amiran Shalikashvili
Tbilisi
Duration of the play: 55 minutes
Georgian Pantomime Theatre was established by Amiran Shalikashvili in 1976. It was first professional theatre all over the soviet territory that time. The Theater has a unique history of international success all over Europe and world.
For the Show Case, this famous theater presents a performance, based on great Georgian Poet Vaja -Pshavela Poem.
Liberty Theatre
Bertolt Brechht

THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE

Directed by Avtandil Varsimashvili
Tbilisi
Duration of the play – 4 hours, 30 minutes with two intermissions
One of the most popular independent theaters in Tbilisi the LIberty Theater was founded in 2001 by stage director Avto Varsimashvili. With a very rich repertoire of Georgian and foreign authors, the theater, despite its short history, became one of the distinguished center’s of Tbilisi culture.
The latest work of theater The CAUCASIAN CHALK CENTER is one of the most interesting presentations of this famous play by Brecht.
Hand’s Shadow Theatre “BUDRUGANA”

TSA LAJVARDI (SKY HAVEN)

Author and Stage Director Gela Kandelaki
Tbilisi
Duration of the play – 60 minutes
Stage Director Gela Kandelaki has established the Shadow Theatre in 1982, the basic means of expression of the theater is Shadows and sound. The repertoire of theater is very rich. This unique theater presents SKY HEVAN for Georgian Show Case.

თანამედროვე ხელოვნების საერთაშორისო სიმპოზიუმი

Monday, October 4 at 10:00am - October 5 at 5:00pm
Location 4 ოქტომებრი - კულტურის და ძეგლთა დაცვის სამინისტრო, სანაპიროს ქ. #4 ; 5ოქტომბერი - გოეთეს ინსტიტუტი, ზ
თბილისში, 4 და 5 ოქტომბერს მოეწყობა თანამედროვე ხელოვნების საერთაშორისო სიმპოზიუმი, რომელშიც მონაწილეობას მიიღებენ თანმედროვე ხელოვნების საერთაშორისო კურატორები, არტკრიტიკოსები, ხელოვნების ისტორიკოსები და ხელოვანები 8 ქვეყნიდან.
ორდღიანი სიმპოზიუმის მსვლელობისას, ასევე ვორქშოფისა და შემაჯამებელი დისკუსიის დროს, იმსჯელებენ თანამედროვე ხელოვნების აქტუალურ საკითხებზე, ხოლო მომხსენებლები თავიანთ პრეზენტაციებში წარმოადგენენ სხვადასხვა ქვეყნის გამოცდილებას.
სიმპოზიუმის მთავარი თემებია:
• სჭირდება თუ არა ბიენალე თბილისს;
• საერთაშორისო გამოფენის / ბიენალეს მნიშვნელობა არტსცენის
განვითარებისა და ინტერნაციონალიზაციისთვის XXI საუკუნეში;
• სხვადასხვა ტიპის ინიციატივების როლი სახელოვნებო სივრცეების
ჩამოყალიბების პროცესში.

მონაწილეები:
1. მარიეკე ვან ჰალი – Biennial Foundation-ის დამფუძნებელი დირექტორი, ჰოლანდია
2. ბარბარა ვანდერლინდენი – კურატორი, არტკრიტიკოსი, ბრიუსელის ბიენალეს და Alice Society-ის დამფუძნებელი დირექტორი, ბელგია
3. ჰელენ ჰირში – ხელოვნების მუზეუმის დირექტორი, თუნი, შვეიცარია
4. კლაუდია იოლესი – Kunstbulletin -ის მთავარი რედაქტორი, შვეიცარია
5. სამუელ ჰერცოგი – Neue Zürcher Zeitung-ის კულტურის რედაქტორი, შვეიცარია
6. ანა ლუიზე კრათცში – ლაიფციგის საერთაშორისო არტპროგორამის დამაარსებელი და დირექტორი, გერმანია
7. იელ დენონი – ისრაელის დიგიტალური ხელოვნების ცენტრის დირექტორი და მთავარი კურატორი, ისრაელი
8. მკრტიჩ ტონოიანი – ხელოვანი, არასამთავრობო ორგანიზაცია აკოს-ის პრეზიდენტი, სომხეთი
9. დილარა ვაგაბოვა – კურატორი, არტკრიტიკოსი, აზერბაიჯანი
10. მაკო ჭოღოშვილი – საქართველოს კულტურისა და ძეგლთა დაცვის მინისტრის მოადგილე
11. გია ბუღაძე – თბილისის სახელმწიფო სამხატვრო აკადემიის რექტორი
12. მაგდა გურული – „არტისტერიუმის“ კურატორი
13. ხათუნა ხაბულიანი – არტკრიტიკოსი
14. ვატო წერეთელი – თბილისის თანამედროვე ხელოვნების ცეტრის დირექტორი
15. ნინი ფალავანდიშვილი – GeoAIR -ის კურატორი
16. ნინო ჭოღოშვილი – ხელოვნებათმცოდნე, კურატორი, კულტურისა და მენეჯმენტის ლაბორატორიის დამაარსებელი.
პროექტის ავტორი და კურატორი: ნინო ჭოღოშვილი კოორდინატორები: თამუნა გურჩიანი, მაია ქოიავა-ყიფიანი
კოორდინატორი საქართველოს გოეთეს ინსტიტუტიდან: ელენე ჩეჩელაშვილი

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? 

by Linda Nochlin


"Why have there been no great women artists?" The question tolls reproachfully in the background of most discussions of the so-called woman problem. But like so many other so-called questions involved in the feminist "controversy," it falsifies the nature of the issue at the same time that it insidiously supplies its own answer: "There are no great women artists because women are incapable of greatness." 

The assumptions behind such a question are varied in range and sophistication, running anywhere from "scientifically proven" demonstrations of the inability of human beings with wombs rather than penises to create anything significant, to relatively open minded wonderment that women, despite so many years of near equality and after all, a lot of men have had their disadvantages too have still not achieved anything of exceptional significance in the visual arts. 

The feminist's first reaction is to swallow the bait, hook, line and sinker, and to attempt to answer the question as it is put: that is, to dig up examples of worthy or insufficiently appreciated women artists throughout history; to rehabilitate rather modest, if interesting and productive careers; to "rediscover" forgotten flower painters or David followers and make out a case for them; to demonstrate that Berthe Morisot was really less dependent upon Manet than one had been led to think-in other words, to engage in the normal activity of the specialist scholar who makes a case for the importance of his very own neglected or minor master. Such attempts, whether undertaken from a feminist point of view, like the ambitious article on women artists which appeared in the 1858 Westminster Review, or more recent scholarly studies on such artists as Angelica Kauffmann and Artemisia Gentileschi, are certainly worth the effort, both in adding to our knowledge of women's achievement and of art history generally. But they do nothing to question the assumptions lying behind the question "Why have there been no great women artists?" On the contrary, by attempting to answer it, they tacitly reinforce its negative implications. 

Another attempt to answer the question involves shifting the ground slightly and asserting, as some contemporary feminists do, that there is a different kind of "greatness" for women's art than for men's, thereby postulating the existence of a distinctive and recognizable feminine style, different both in its formal and its expressive qualities and based on the special character of women's situation and experience. 

This, on the surface of it, seems reasonable enough: in general, women's experience and situation in society, and hence as artists, is different from men's, and certainly the art produced by a group of consciously united and purposefully articulate women intent on bodying forth a group consciousness of feminine experience might indeed be stylistically identifiable as feminist, if not feminine, art. Unfortunately, though this remains within the realm of possibility it has so far not occurred. While the members of the Danube School, the followers of Caravaggio, the painters gathered around Gauguin at Pont-Aven, the Blue Rider, or the Cubists may be recognized by certain clearly defined stylistic or expressive qualities, no such common qualities of "femininity" would seem to link the styles of women artists generally, any more than such qualities can be said to link women writers, a case brilliantly argued, against the most devastating, and mutually contradictory, masculine critical cliches, by Mary Ellmann in her Thinking about Women. No subtle essence of femininity would seem to link the work of Artemesia Gentileschi, Mine Vigee-Lebrun, Angelica Kauffmann, Rosa Bonheur, Berthe Morlsot, Suzanne Valadon, Kathe Kollwitz, Barbara Hepworth, Georgia O'Keeffe, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Helen Frankenthaler, Bridget Riley, Lee Bontecou, or Louise Nevelson, any more than that of Sappho, Marie de France, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, George Sand, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Anais Nin, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, and Susan Sontag. In every instance, women artists and writers would seem to be closer to other artists and writers of their own period and outlook than they are to each other. 

Women artists are more inward-looking, more delicate and nuanced in their treatment of their medium, it may be asserted. But which of the women artists cited above is more inward-turning than Redon, more subtle and nuanced in the handling of pigment than Corot? Is Fragonard more or less feminine than Mme. Vigee-Lebrun? Or is it not more a question of the whole Rococo style of eighteenth-century France being "feminine," if judged in terms of a binary scale of "masculinity" versus "femininity"? Certainly, if daintiness, delicacy, and preciousness are to be counted as earmarks Of a feminine style, there is nothing fragile about Rosa Bonheur's Horse Fair, nor dainty and introverted about Helen Frankenthaler's giant canvases. If women have turned to scenes of domestic life, or of children, so did Jan Steen, Chardin, and the Impressionists Renoir and Monet as well as Morisot and Cassatt. In any case, the mere choice of a certain realm of subject matter, or the restriction to certain subjects, is not to be equated with a style, much less with some sort of quintessentially feminine style. 

The problem lies not so much with some feminists' concept of what femininity is, but rather with their misconception-shared with the public at large-of what art is: with the naive idea that art is the direct, personal expression of individual emotional experience, a translation of personal life into visual terms. Art is almost never that, great art never is. The making of art involves a self-consistent language of form, more or less dependent upon, or free from, given temporally defined conventions, schemata, or systems of notation, which have to be learned or worked out, either through teaching, apprenticeship, or a long period of individual experimentation. The language of art is, more materially, embodied in paint and line on canvas or paper, in stone or clay or plastic or metal it is neither a sob story nor a confidential whisper. 

The fact of the matter is that there have been no supremely great women artists, as far as we know, although there have been many interesting and very good ones who remain insufficiently investigated or appreciated; nor have there been any great Lithuanian jazz pianists, nor Eskimo tennis players, no matter how much we might wish there had been. That this should be the case is regrettable, but no amount of manipulating the historical or critical evidence will alter the situation; nor will accusations of male-chauvinist distortion of history. There are no women equivalents for Michelangelo or Rembrandt, Delacroix or Cezanne, Picasso or Matisse, or even, in very recent times, for de Kooning or Warhol, any more than there are black American equivalents for the same. If there actually were large numbers of "hidden" great women artists, or if there really, should be different standards for women's art as opposed to men's--and one can't have it both ways--then what are feminists fighting for? If women have in fact achieved the same status as men in the arts, then the status quo is fine as it is. 

But in actuality, as we all know, things as they are and as they have been, in the arts as in a hundred other areas, are stultifying, oppressive, and discouraging to all those, women among them, who did not have the good fortune to be born white, preferably middle class and, above all, male. The fault lies not in our stars, our hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions and our education-education understood to include everything that happens to us from the moment we enter this world of meaningful symbols, signs, and signals. The miracle is, in fact, that given the overwhelming odds against women, or blacks, that so many of both have managed to achieve so much sheer excellence, in those bailiwicks of white masculine prerogative like science, politics, or the arts. 

It is when one really starts thinking about the implications of "Why have there been no great women artists?" that one begins to realize to what extent our consciousness of how things are in the world has been conditioned-and often falsified-by the way the most important questions are posed. We tend to take it for granted that there really is an East Asian Problem, a Poverty Problem, a Black Problem and a Woman Problem. But first we must ask ourselves who is formulating these "questions," and then, what purposes such formulations may serve. (We may, of course, refresh our memories with the connotations of the Nazis' "Jewish Problem.") Indeed, in our time of instant communication, "problems" are rapidly formulated to rationalize the bad conscience of those with power: thus the problem posed by Americans in Vietnam and Cambodia is referred to by Americans as the "East Asian Problem," whereas East Asians may view it, more realistically, as the "American Problem"; the so-called Poverty Problem might more directly be viewed as the "Wealth Problem" by denizens of urban ghettos or rural wastelands; the same irony twists the White Problem into its opposite, a Black Problem; and the same inverse logic turns up in the formulation of our own present state of affairs as the "Woman Problem." 

Now the "Woman Problem," like all human problems, so-called (and the very idea of calling anything to do with human beings a "problem" is, of course, a fairly recent one) is not amenable to "solution" at all, since what human problems involve is reinterpretation of the nature of the situation, or a radical alteration of stance or program on the part of the "problems " themselves. Thus women and their situation in the arts, as in other realms of endeavor, are not a "problem" to be viewed through the eyes of the dominant male power elite. Instead, women must conceive of themselves as potentially, if not actually, equal subjects, and must be willing to look the facts of their situation full in the face, without self-pity, or cop-outs; at the same time they must view their situation with that high degree of emotional and intellectual commitment necessary to create a world in which equal achievement will be not only made possible but actively encouraged by social institutions. 

It is certainly not realistic to hope that a majority of men, in the arts or in any other field, will soon see the light and find that it is in their own self-interest to grant complete equality to women, as some feminists optimistically assert, or to maintain that men themselves will soon realize that they are diminished by denying themselves access to traditionally "feminine" realms and emotional reactions. After all, there are few areas that are really "denied" to men, if the level of operations demanded be transcendent, responsible, or rewarding enough: men who have a need for "feminine" involvement with babies or children gain status as pediatricians or child psychologists, with a nurse (female) to do the more routine work; those who feel the urge for kitchen creativity may gain fame as master chefs; and, of course, men who yearn to fulfill themselves through what are often termed "feminine" artistic interests can find themselves as painters or sculptors, rather than as volunteer museum aides or part-time ceramists, as their female counterparts so often end up doing; as far as scholarship is concerned, how many men would be willing to change their jobs as teachers and researchers for those of unpaid, part-time research assistants and typists as well as full-time nannies and domestic workers? 

Those who have privileges inevitably hold on to them, and hold tight, no matter how marginal the advantage involved, until compelled to bow to superior power of one sort or another. 

Thus the question of women's equality--in art as in any other realm--devolves not upon the relative benevolence or ill-will of individual men, nor the self-confidence or abjectness of individual women, but rather on the very nature of our institutional structures themselves and the view of reality which they impose on the human beings who are part of them. As John Stuart Mill pointed out more than a century ago: "Everything which is usual appears natural. The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural."' Most men, despite lip service to equality, are reluctant to give up this "natural" order of things in which their advantages are so great; for women, the case is further complicated by the fact that, as Mill astutely pointed out, unlike other oppressed groups or castes, men demand of them not only submission but unqualified affection as well; thus women are often weakened by the internalized demands of the male-dominated society itself, as well as by a plethora of material goods and comforts: the middle-class woman has a great deal more to lose than her chains. 

The question "Why have there been no great women artists?" is simply the top tenth of an iceberg of misinterpretation and misconception; beneath lies a vast dark bulk of shaky idees recues about the nature of art and its situational concomitants, about the nature of human abilities in general and of human excellence in particular, and the role that the social order plays in all of this. While the "woman problem" as such may be a pseudo-issue, the misconceptions involved in the question "Why have there been no great women artists?" points to major areas of intellectual obfuscation beyond the specific political and ideological issues involved in the subjection of women. Basic to the question are many naive, distorted, uncritical assumptions about the making of art in general, as well as the making of great art. These assumptions, conscious or unconscious, link together such unlikely superstars as Michelangelo and van Gogh, Raphael and Jackson Pollock under the rubric of "Great"-an honorific attested to by the number of scholarly monographs devoted to the artist in question-and the Great Artist is, of course, conceived of as one who has "Genius"; Genius, in turn, is thought of as an atemporal and mysterious power somehow embedded in the person of the Great Artist.' Such ideas are related to unquestioned, often unconscious, meta-historical premises that make Hippolyte Taine's race-milieu-moment formulation of the dimensions of historical thought seem a model of sophistication. But these assumptions are intrinsic to a great deal of art-historical writing. It is no accident that the crucial question of the conditions generally productive of great art has so rarely been investigated, or that attempts to investigate such general problems have, until fairly recently, been dismissed as unscholarly, too broad, or the province of some other discipline, like sociology. To encourage a dispassionate, impersonal, sociological, and institutionally oriented approach would reveal the entire romantic, elitist, individual-glorifying, and monograph-producing substructure upon which the profession of art history is based, and which has only recently been called into question by a group of younger dissidents. 

Underlying the question about woman as artist, then, we find the myth of the Great Artist-subject of a hundred monographs, unique, godlike-bearing within his person since birth a mysterious essence, rather like the golden nugget in Mrs. Grass's chicken soup, called Genius or Talent, which, like murder, must always out, no matter how unlikely or unpromising the circumstances. 

The magical aura surrounding the representational arts and their creators has, of course, given birth to myths since the earliest times. Interestingly enough, the same magical abilities attributed by Pliny to the Greek sculptor Lysippos in antiquity--the mysterious inner call in early youth, the lack of any teacher but Nature herself--is repeated as late as the nineteenth century by Max Buchon in his biography of Courbet. The supernatural powers of the artist as imitator, his control of strong, possibly dangerous powers, have functioned historically to set him off from others as a godlike creator, one who creates Being out of nothing. The fairy tale of the discovery by an older artist or discerning patron of the Boy Wonder, usually in the guise of a lowly shepherd boy, has been a stock-in-trade of artistic mythology ever since Vasari immortalized the young Giotto, discovered by the great Cimabue while the lad was guarding his flocks, drawing sheep on a stone; Cimabue, overcome with admiration for the realism of the drawing, immediately invited the humble youth to be his pupil. Through some mysterious coincidence, later artists including Beccafumi, Andrea Sansovino, Andrea del Castagno, Mantegna, Zurbardn, and Goya were all discovered in similar pastoral circumstances. Even when the young Great Artist was not fortunate enough to come equipped with a flock of sheep, his talent always seems to have manifested itself very early, and independent of any external encouragement: Filippo Lippi and Poussin, Courbet and Monet are all reported to have drawn caricatures in the margins of their schoolbooks instead of studying the required subjects-we never, of course, hear about the youths who neglected their studies and scribbled in the margins of their notebooks without ever becoming anything more elevated than department-store clerks or shoe salesmen. The great Michelangelo himself, according to his biographer and pupil, Vasari, did more drawing than studying as a child. So pronounced was his talent, reports Vasari, that when his master, Ghirlandalo, absented himself momentarily from his work in Santa Maria Novella, and the young art student took the opportunity to draw "the scaffolding, trestles, pots of paint, brushes and the apprentices at their tasks" in this brief absence, he did it so skillfully that upon his return the master exclaimed: "This boy knows more than I do." 

As is so often the case, such stories, which probably have some truth in them, tend both to reflect and perpetuate the attitudes they subsume. Even when based on fact, these myths about the early manifestations of genius are misleading. It is no doubt true, for example, that the young Picasso passed all the examinations for entrance to the Barcelona, and later to the Madrid, Academy of Art at the age of fifteen in but a single day, a feat of such difficulty that most candidates required a month of preparation. But one would like to find out more about similar precocious qualifiers for art academies who then went on to achieve nothing but mediocrity or failure--in whom, of course, art historians are uninterested--or to study in greater detail the role played by Picasso's art-professor father in the pictorial precocity of his son. What if Picasso had been born a girl? Would Senor Ruiz have paid as much attention or stimulated as much ambition for achievement in a little Pablita? 

What is stressed in all these stories is the apparently miraculous, nondetermined, and asocial nature of artistic achievement; this semireligious conception of the artist's role is elevated to hagiography in the nineteenth century, when art historians, critics, and, not least, some of the artists themselves tended to elevate the making of art into a substitute religion, the last bulwark of higher values in a materialistic world. The artist, in the nineteenth-century Saints' Legend, struggles against the most determined parental and social opposition, suffering the slings and arrows of social opprobrium like any Christian martyr, and ultimately succeeds against all odds generally, alas, after his death-because from deep within himself radiates that mysterious, holy effulgence: Genius. Here we have the mad van Gogh, spinning out sunflowers despite epileptic seizures and near-starvation; Cezanne, braving paternal rejection and public scorn in order to revolutionize painting; Gauguin throwing away respectability and financial security with a single existential gesture to pursue his calling in the tropics; or Toulouse-Lautrec, dwarfed, crippled, and alcoholic, sacrificing his aristocratic birthright in favor of the squalid surroundings that provided him with inspiration. 

Now no serious contemporary art historian takes such obvious fairy tales at their face value. Yet it is this sort of mythology about artistic achievement and its concomitants which forms the unconscious or unquestioned assumptions of scholars, no matter how many crumbs are thrown to social influences, ideas of the times, economic crises, and so on. Behind the most sophisticated investigations of great artists-more specifically, the art-historical monograph, which accepts the notion of the great artist as primary, and the social and institutional structures within which he lived and worked as mere secondary "influences" or "background"-lurks the golden-nugget theory of genius and the free-enterprise conception of individual achievement. On this basis, women's lack of major achievement in art may be formulated as a syllogism: If women had the golden nugget of artistic genius then it would reveal itself. But it has never revealed itself. O.E.D. Women do not have the golden nugget theory of artistic genius. If Giotto, the obscure shepherd boy, and van Gogh with his fits could make it, why not women? 

Yet as soon as one leaves behind the world of fairy tale and self-fulfilling prophecy and, instead, casts a dispassionate eye on the actual situations in which important art production has existed, in the total range of its social and institutional structures throughout history, one finds that t he very questions which are fruitful or relevant for the historian to ask shape up rather differently. One would like to ask, for instance, from what social classes artists were most likely to come at different periods of art history, from what castes and subgroup. What proportion of painters and sculptors, or more specifically, of major painters and sculptors, came from families in which their fathers or other close relatives were painters and sculptors or engaged in related professions? As Nikolaus Pevsner points out in his discussion of the French Academy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the transmission of the artistic profession from father to son was considered a matter of course (as it was with the Coypels, the Coustous, the Van Loos, etc.); indeed, sons of academicians were exempted from the customary fees for lessons. Despite the noteworthy and dramatically satisfying cases of the great father-rejecting revoltes~s of the nineteenth century, one might be forced to admit that a large proportion of artists, great and not-so-great, in the days when it was normal for sons to follow in their fathers' footsteps, had artist fathers. In the rank of major artists, the names of Holbein and Durer, Raphael and Bernim, immediately spring to mind; even in our own times, one can cite the names of Picasso, Calder, Giacometti, and Wyeth as members of artist-families. 

As far as the relationship of artistic occupation and social class is concerned, an interesting paradigm for the question "Why have there been no great women artists?" might well be provided by trying to answer the question "Why have there been no great artists from the aristocracy?" One can scarcely think, before the anti traditional nineteenth century at least, of any artist who sprang from the ranks of any more elevated class than the upper bourgeoisie; even in the nineteenth century, Degas came from the lower nobility more like the haute bourgeoisie, in fact-and only Toulouse-Lautrec, metamorphosed into the ranks of the marginal by accidental deformity, could be said to have come from the loftier reaches of the upper classes. While the aristocracy has always provided the lion's share of the patronage and the audience for art-as, indeed, the aristocracy of wealth does even in our more democratic days-it has contributed little beyond amateurish efforts to the creation of art itself, despite the fact that aristocrats (like many women) have had more than their share of educational advantages, plenty of leisure and, indeed, like women, were often encouraged to dabble in the arts and even develop into respectable amateurs, like Napoleon III's cousin, the Princess Mathilde, who exhibited at the official Salons, or Queen Victoria, who, with Prince Albert, studied art with no less a figure than Landseer himself. Could it be that the little golden nugget-genius-is missing from the aristocratic makeup in the same way that it is from the feminine psyche? Or rather, is it not that the kinds of demands and expectations placed before both aristocrats and women-the amount of time necessarily devoted to social functions, the very kinds of activities demanded-simply made total devotion to professional art production out of the question, indeed unthinkable, both for upper-class males and for women generally, rather than its being a question of genius and talent? 

When the right questions are asked about the conditions for producing art, of which the production of great art is a subtopic, there will no doubt have to be some discussion of the situational concomitants of intelligence and talent generally, not merely of artistic genius. Piaget and others have stressed in their genetic epistemology that in the development of reason and in the unfolding of imagination in young children, intelligence or, by implication, what we choose to call genius-is a dynamic activity rather than a static essence, and an activity of a subject in a situation. As further investigations in the field of child development imply, these abilities, or this intelligence, are built up minutely, step by step, from infancy onward, and the patterns of adaptation-accommodation may be established so early within the subject-in-an-environment that they may indeed appear to be innate to the unsophisticated observer. Such investigations imply that, even aside from meta-historical reasons, scholars will have to abandon the notion, consciously articulated or not, of individual genius as innate, and as primary to the creation of art.' 

The question "Why have there been no great women artists?" has led us to the conclusion, so far, that art is not a free, autonomous activity of a super-endowed individual, "Influenced" by previous artists, and, more vaguely and superficially, by "social forces," but rather, that the total situation of art making, both in terms of the development of the art maker and in the nature and quality of the work of art itself, occur in a social situation, are integral elements of this social structure, and are mediated and determined by specific and definable social institutions, be they art academies, systems of patronage, mythologies of the divine creator, artist as he-man or social outcast. 

Extract from Women, Art and Power and Other Essays, Westview Press, 1988 by Linda Nochlin, pp.147-158

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Clement Greenberg (1909-1994)

"Modernist Painting" 1961  


 

1) Modernism: almost all that is truly alive in our culture
a) it is Western civilization's questioning of its own foundations
b) the West has gone the furthest in this
c) Modernism is the intensification of this self-critical tendency 
d) it starts with Kant who was the first to criticize the means of criticism
e) Modernism's essence: use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself - to enrich it in its area of competence (as Kant used logic to establish the limits of logic, leaving it more secure)
f) The Enlightenment criticized from the outside, Modernism from the inside.
g) this criticism appeared first in philosophy, and in other fields in the 19th century
h) a more rational justification for every formal social activity
i) religion could not do this [and would hence be assimilated to therapy]
2) at first [in the 19th century?] it seemed art would be assimilated to entertainment [and entertainment to therapy]
a) there was a need for the arts to demonstrate that the kind of experience they provided was valuable in its own right and not to be had elsewhere
b) to find what is unique to art in general, and what is unique to the particular art
c) need for each art to determine through operations peculiar to itself the effects peculiar to itself
d) this would narrow its area of competence, but make the area more secure
e) the unique area of competence of each art coincides with all that is unique to its medium  
f) self-criticism involved eliminating the effects that might be borrowed from another medium
g) each art needed to be rendered "pure" [see addendum]: this would guarantee quality, independence and self-definition
h) realistic, illusionistic art, had lied about the medium: the Old Masters saw flat surface, shape of support, properties of pigment as negative factors
i) modernism used art to call attention to art: saw these factors as positive
j) Manet: first Modernist paintings: declared the surfaces
k) then the Impressionists [no underpainting or glazing] colors made of real paint
l) Cézanne: sacrificed verisimilitude to fit the design into the rectangular canvas
3) stressing of the flatness of the support remained the most fundamental process
a) that alone was unique to pictorial art, color for example was shared with theater
b) even the Old Masters had sensed the need to preserve the integrity of the picture plane, the enduring presence of flatness
i) the dialectical tension was essential to their art and to success of all pictorial art [Greenberg's answer to the question what makes good art good]  
c) in the Modernists, one is made aware of the flatness first
d) [actually] being aware of the painting as a [flat] picture first is the best way of seeing any painting
e) Modernism has abandoned the kind of space that recognizable objects can inhabit
f) abstractness is not absolutely necessary for Modernism's self-criticism, vs. Kandinsky and Mondrian
g) what abates uniqueness in the pictorial world are the associations of the things represented and the barest suggestion of a recognizable entity is enough to call up associations of a three-D space, and will then alienate painting's independence
h) painting has to divest itself of everything sculptural: made itself abstract
4) this resistance to the sculptural continues tradition
a) sculpture taught Western painting how to shade, model, and give the illusion of deep space
b) the first effort to dispel the sculptural, starting in Venice, emphasized color
c) even for David, who sought to rescue sculptural painting from color, his best pictures' strength lay in color
d) and Ingres, his student, produced the least sculptural paintings
e) Manet and the Impressionists stressed purely optical experience vs. optical modified by tactile
f) Cézanne and the Cubists reacted against the Impressionists in the name of the sculptural, and yet ended in the flattest kind of painting yet
5) the other norms of painting: enclosing shape, finish, paint texture, value, color contrast were tested and retested
a) risks were taken not only for the sake of new expression but to exhibit the norms more clearly as norms
b) they were tested for their indispensability: which led to the radical simplifications and complications of the very latest [1961] abstract art [e.g. Pollock]  
6) the more closely and essentially the norms become defined the less apt they are to permit liberties
a) the essential norms are the limiting conditions for experiencing a marked surface as a picture
b) they can be pushed back indefinitely before the picture becomes an arbitrary object
c) but pushing back further requires more explicit observation of such norms
i) Mondrian: the lines echo the enclosing space self-evidently and impose that shape as a regulating norm with a new force
ii) his work becomes almost too disciplined, and we discover that it is more traditional in color and in subservience to frame than late Monet
7) the flatness of Modernism can never be utter flatness: it permits optical illusion
a) the first mark on the canvas destroys the visual flatness
b) Mondrian still suggests a kind of illusion of a kind of third dimension, a strictly optical third dimension: you cannot walk in it
8) Kantian self-criticism finds its perfect expression in science: and when it was applied to art, art came closer in spirit to science
a) visual art should confine itself to what is given in visual experience: this is justified in scientific consistency, as a problem in physiology is solved in terms of physiology
b) in Modernist art a literary theme must be translated into strictly optical two-d
c) however the only consistency which counts in art is aesthetic consistency, which produces aesthetic quality
d) the convergence of art and science shows they belong to the same historical and cultural tendency
9) the self-criticism of Modernist art has been spontaneous and subliminal: a question of practice, not theory
a) despite appearances, Modernists have no more interest in programs or fixed ideas than earlier artists
b) [yet] certain refusals etc. are necessary for a stronger more expressive art
c) [still] the immediate aims of Modernist artists are individual, and the truth and success of their work is individual before anything else
d) Modernist art does not succeed as art by way of demonstration [proof]  
e) rather, it needed decades of individual achievement to reveal its self-critical tendency
f) indeed, no artist could work successfully in conscious awareness of this tendency: art to this extent gets carried on as before
10) Modernism has never meant a break with the past: it means continuation even if it unravels the preceding tradition
a) it is understood in terms of this continuity
b) Paleolithic painters could disregard the norm of the frame
c) but the making of pictures, and not mere images, means deliberate choice and creation of limits
d) the limitations of art have to be made altogether human limits [?]
11) Modern art converts all theoretical possibilities into empirical ones: it tests theories of art for relevance to actual practice and experience of art: in this, and this alone, it is subversive
a) factors thought to be essential to art have been shown to be dispensable
b) however this demonstration leaves most of our old value judgments intact: it revives our valuation of some artists (Uccello etc.) but does not lesson the value of others (the Grand Masters: e.g. Rembrandt).  
c) but the past appreciated these for the wrong reasons
12) Art criticism lags behind Modernist art
a) most things written about art belong to journalism not criticism
b) some journalistic critics have a millennial complex: a new phase of Modernism is hailed as the start of a new epoch of art, making a decisive break with the past
c) but each time the expectation is disappointed
13) Without the past of art, and without the need and compulsion to maintain past standards of excellence, Modernist art would be impossible

Postscript (1978) by Clement Greenberg from http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/modernism.html

The above appeared first in 1960 as a pamphlet in a series published by the Voice of America. It had been broadcast over that agency's radio in the spring of the same year. With some minor verbal changes it was reprinted in the spring 1965 number of Art and Literature in Paris, and then in Gregory Battcock's anthology The New Art (1966).

“I want to take this chance to correct an error, one of interpretation and not of fact. Many readers, though by no means all, seem to have taken the 'rationale' of Modernist art outlined here as representing a position adopted by the writer himself that is, that what he describes he also advocates. This may be a fault of the writing or the rhetoric. Nevertheless, a close reading of what he writes will find nothing at all to indicate that he subscribes to, believes in, the things that he adumbrates. (The quotation marks around pure and purity should have been enough to show that.) The writer is trying to account in part for how most of the very best art of the last hundred-odd years came about, but he's not implying that that's how it had to come about, much less that that's how the best art still has to come about. 'Pure' art was a useful illusion, but this doesn't make it any the less an illusion. Nor does the possibility of its continuing usefulness make it any the less an illusion. There have been some further constructions of what I wrote that go over into preposterousness: That I regard flatness and the inclosing of flatness not just as the limiting conditions of pictorial art, but as criteria of aesthetic quality in pictorial art; that the further a work advances the self-definition of an art, the better that work is bound to be. The philosopher or art historian who can envision me -- or anyone at all -- arriving at aesthetic judgments in this way reads shockingly more into himself or herself than into my article.”