Chapter 5. About the arts
5.3.2.2. China.
China and the countries in the TriContinentArea ("Middle-East: in Western European parlance) experienced a radically different transition from tribal societies to empire. In one word the countries in the TriContinentArea, as well as those that later adopted one of their worldview like Europe and its colonially forced geographic extensions for example, experienced a rupture with their tribal and animist past. China on the other hand experienced continuity. I exposed the reason for this radical divergence in “4.7.2. About the emergence and development of China's institutions of governance".
Rupture means that empires discard anything relating to tribes and develop a new governance structure and a new worldview from scratch. Continuity means that empires grew organically by adopting animism and by growing it further with add-ons.
This rupture versus continuity principle implies two radically different paths for the arts in Europe versus China.
A. Who are the artists?
We have seen that in Europe religion hired specialized image maker craftsmen to illustrate the creed and that it recognized them a very low social position. In China the men of knowledge remain in charge of crafting the images in the early imperial stage of the sage-emperors from 3000 to 200 BC. Only later will specialized and professional image makers be hired to illustrate the new emerging needs of the court and of the nobility & the rich.
I developed my ideas about the process of knowledge formation and the evolution of China's societal governance in "4.7.2. About the emergence and development of China's institutions of governance. 1. The Worldview and cultural context". Chinese arts evolved within that particular context.
In summary, with the Tianxia unification (1) under the sage-Sovereigns the tribal men of knowledge remained in charge of the arts. Their practice integrated 2 dimensions:
This rupture versus continuity principle implies two radically different paths for the arts in Europe versus China.
A. Who are the artists?
We have seen that in Europe religion hired specialized image maker craftsmen to illustrate the creed and that it recognized them a very low social position. In China the men of knowledge remain in charge of crafting the images in the early imperial stage of the sage-emperors from 3000 to 200 BC. Only later will specialized and professional image makers be hired to illustrate the new emerging needs of the court and of the nobility & the rich.
I developed my ideas about the process of knowledge formation and the evolution of China's societal governance in "4.7.2. About the emergence and development of China's institutions of governance. 1. The Worldview and cultural context". Chinese arts evolved within that particular context.
In summary, with the Tianxia unification (1) under the sage-Sovereigns the tribal men of knowledge remained in charge of the arts. Their practice integrated 2 dimensions:
- during their retreats the men of knowledge practiced a form of art (visual, music, dance) that was like a research about the essence of reality meant to help them, as well as their apprentices, to gain a deeper and better understanding of their visions. They generally realized this by communicating with the spirit of the universe under the effect of hallucinogens.
- during the tribal festivities the shaman practiced a form of art that was like a communication of the vision of reality they had gained during their retreats. This was an effort at communication with their fellow tribesmen through visual signs. The abstractions reflected in those visual signs later eventually migrated into spoken and written language.
- communicate with the spirits
- transmit meaning and feelings in the minds of their fellow tribesmen.
What remains visible today of those artistic expressions are nearly exclusively the expressions realized during the shamanic retreats. Evidently very few of those works, dating ten to tens of thousands years, have been preserved for us to see in Late-Modernity. Among the best known are the cave paintings. But paleolithic cave paintings are unknown of in traditional China. The nearest paleolithic Cave Paintings are located in Khoit Tsenkher in Mongolia. If Cave paintings are unknown of in China many sites are known for their paleolithic rock carvings. It is my contention that some of these sites were shamanic retreats in the same way as were the caves where paintings have been found. These sites were not habited. They were mountainous and arid areas located at a distance from tribal passageways or agricultural villages that offered the men of knowledge the necessary privacy from their fellow tribesmen.
Everywhere on earth such retreats by the men of knowledge from their tribes consolidated such notion of the whole known territory (all under heaven). They were also seen as an opportunity to focus on knowledge which means that they were unifying the belief systems within the territory and simultaneously they were an opportunity to participate in the rituals to venerate the knowledge of the sage men of knowledge.
So during Late tribal societies and their transition to Early-Kingdoms the men of knowledge started developing a knowledge about:
Everywhere on earth such retreats by the men of knowledge from their tribes consolidated such notion of the whole known territory (all under heaven). They were also seen as an opportunity to focus on knowledge which means that they were unifying the belief systems within the territory and simultaneously they were an opportunity to participate in the rituals to venerate the knowledge of the sage men of knowledge.
So during Late tribal societies and their transition to Early-Kingdoms the men of knowledge started developing a knowledge about:
- people in the known territory (all under heaven)
- belief (in the sense of worldview)
- the sage among the men of knowledge gained the respect of all in the territory and so gradually came to symbolize the unity of 'all under heaven
The further the territory was expanding the further the ideaof "all under heaven" in the worldview had to be accentuated in order to solidify the sense of cultural unity within a growing territory. One has always to remember the context of that period. Transportation was limited to walking and a day of walking meant moving 100 km (60 miles) at the most. So a problem rapidly emerged. How to foster the cultural unity of a territory that expanded over hundreds of kilometers?The ancient books indicate that this was realized through the sharingby all within the territory of the symbolism represented by the sage. That era is referred to as the “Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors” in the ancient classic books.
The Chinese mythology about the creation of the world gives Pangu as the creator who separated the earth from the heaven. After that “three great rivers successively governed the world” (2) which are the 3 Sovereigns. The ancient classic books mention slightly different variations of who classifies as the 3 sovereigns. Here under is a classification that is based on my own interpretation of the various sources:
The Chinese mythology about the creation of the world gives Pangu as the creator who separated the earth from the heaven. After that “three great rivers successively governed the world” (2) which are the 3 Sovereigns. The ancient classic books mention slightly different variations of who classifies as the 3 sovereigns. Here under is a classification that is based on my own interpretation of the various sources:
- Fu Xi = the heavenly sovereign. This line of Sovereigns ruled for 18,000 years according to the ancient classic books. The facts show that before the emergence of tribes, along millions of years, patriarchal clans formed the model of human societal organization. This model must have been known to the authors of the ancient classics who could observe it in remote areas that had still not been touched by tribal life. So the myth spread of a heavenly sovereign, akin to the shamanic expression spirit of the universe, who reigned during the era of the patriarchal clans which was thought to have been very long. The 18,000 years has to be considered not as a real timespan but more like the expression of a very long timespan. In reality that era lasted millions of years so its timespan was very long indeed.
- Nuwa = the earthly sovereigns. This line of Sovereigns ruled also for 18,000 years according to the ancient classic books. Women assumed the central role in tribes and Nuwa is the symbol of Chinese matriarchy. That model started some tens of thousands of years after the human brain had reached its present size around 200-250,000 years ago. Anthropologists, and other researchers of human early history disagree as to when the tribal societal model really emerged and their opinions vary wildly from some 150,000 to some 50-60,000 years ago. It is my contention that tribes emerged rather early.
- Shennong = the human sovereigns = the Flame Emperors. The ancient classics mention that the whole line of human sovereigns spread over 45,000 years. They are also said to have lasted the reign of some 10 sovereigns. Professor Wu, K. C. estimates the length of their reign at some 500 years (3).
I think that putting figures on the length of the flames’ reign is nothing more than guesswork. I argued in “4.7.2. The context. B. Worldview and cultural context that the 'soul-twin men of knowledge' who succeeded with the help of their spirit-twins to reach a universal consciousness were considered by their fellow men of knowledge as the true sages among them and were called soul-flames or flames.
The flames are thus being presented by the classics as having managed the transition from tribal societies to empire. This is astounding to say the least and what is even more astounding is that nobody has ever connected the shamanic concept of flames with the concept of transition from tribes to empires. What is particularly significant, in my own judgment, is that the sage-flames are presented in the classics as having initiated the centralization and that Shennon was eventually vanquished by Huangdi who is presented as the first emperor. The 5th emperor following the flames also instituted the mechanism of reproduction of China’s Early empire through dynastic rule.
We also learn that the succession from one sage-flame emperor to the next was realized by the abdicating of the sovereign and the passing of his charge to a successor chosen among the most competent men of knowledge of the time. The books are not clear as to how the choice was made. Seen that the retreats of the men of knowledge played such a central role in the process of cultural unification it is most probable that the choice was made at the unanimity by the participants to the retreats.
In this understanding the initiator of patriarchy must have been Huangdi who is presented as vanquishing Shennon and the flames who were in line with Nuwa’s matriarchal societal organization.
But who was Huangdi?
If he vanquished a line of flames he was not a flame himself. But who was he then? The classics refer to the flame emperors and their 5 successors as sages and masters of the knowledge of their time. So Huangdi was a man of knowledge who had not attained the status of flame and who triumphed most probably for the simple reason that no shaman had attained sage-hood or the status of flame when Shennon had reached old age.
In terms of the arts what is important to remember is that during the entire transition from tribes to empire the flame sovereigns and their 5 successors participated with the other men of knowledge in:
If he vanquished a line of flames he was not a flame himself. But who was he then? The classics refer to the flame emperors and their 5 successors as sages and masters of the knowledge of their time. So Huangdi was a man of knowledge who had not attained the status of flame and who triumphed most probably for the simple reason that no shaman had attained sage-hood or the status of flame when Shennon had reached old age.
In terms of the arts what is important to remember is that during the entire transition from tribes to empire the flame sovereigns and their 5 successors participated with the other men of knowledge in:
- the formation of new knowledge by practicing “artistic research” about the essence of reality during their retreats
- the communication, of the vision of reality they had gained during their retreats, to their fellow tribesmen and later to the villagers through the creation of arts works during the tribal feasts (visual, music and dance)
And in between feasts the recitation of the memory of those artworks was solidifying a united cultural vision in the minds of the tribesmen and later the villagers and cities. Numerous products of such recitations reached us in the form of excavated pottery.
This model of the men of knowledge as a shaman and an artist will change drastically with the dynastic transmission of power that was initiated around 2,000 BC.
B. Specialization of the functions of the shaman
Things changed sometime after the emergence of the Xia dynasty, founded by Yu the Great, around 2,000 BC who fell for the cult of individualism and the glorification of the ego and transmitted his charge to his son. This was the start of the transmission of power through family line which suggests that an institutionalization took place of the inequality that had started to appear already at the end of the Yangshao culture between 4000 and 3000 BC.
This was for sure a radical departure from the animism of the past tens of thousands of years and it initiated a conflict between the newly venerated ego and the self. The shamanic tradition had always encouraged the cultivation of the self while totally rejecting the ego. By glorifying the ego China’s power societies made the self a sure loser and with this loss the communication with the spirit of the universe was in trouble thus creating an opening for the earthly spirits (ancestors and totemic animals or plants).
The sages, men of power and emperors, knew about this conflict and turned the contradiction around by advising a specialization of the different fields that had traditionally been among the functions of the men of knowledge or shaman:
This model of the men of knowledge as a shaman and an artist will change drastically with the dynastic transmission of power that was initiated around 2,000 BC.
B. Specialization of the functions of the shaman
Things changed sometime after the emergence of the Xia dynasty, founded by Yu the Great, around 2,000 BC who fell for the cult of individualism and the glorification of the ego and transmitted his charge to his son. This was the start of the transmission of power through family line which suggests that an institutionalization took place of the inequality that had started to appear already at the end of the Yangshao culture between 4000 and 3000 BC.
This was for sure a radical departure from the animism of the past tens of thousands of years and it initiated a conflict between the newly venerated ego and the self. The shamanic tradition had always encouraged the cultivation of the self while totally rejecting the ego. By glorifying the ego China’s power societies made the self a sure loser and with this loss the communication with the spirit of the universe was in trouble thus creating an opening for the earthly spirits (ancestors and totemic animals or plants).
The sages, men of power and emperors, knew about this conflict and turned the contradiction around by advising a specialization of the different fields that had traditionally been among the functions of the men of knowledge or shaman:
- the traditional retreats of the shaman passed under their direct control and were institutionalized as something of the order of a council of ministers in charge of the politics of the empire. The ministers, in this hypothesis were the men of knowledge participating in the retreats...
- knowledge formation as well as knowledge acquisition were assigned to the men of knowledge most near of the emperor. Later the function was assigned to scholars, who succeeded a series of exams, and so emerged the rationale for teaching and the practice of the High Arts. The scholars became specialized men of knowledge in charge of all matters pertaining to the working of society and used the arts as a means to refine their knowledge base and eventually to form new knowledge to be added to the knowledge base.
Later Confucius and his followers codified the functioning of the state bureaucracy and the formation of the worldview as well as its sharing to all citizens of the empire. This is when the arts got the intellectual justification for their later restructuring under the Xin and its successor dynasties. The Confucian teaching program included the study of the “5 classics” (Yi Ching, book of poetry, book of documents, book of rites, Annals of Spring and Autumn) and the “Six Arts” (ritual, music, archery, chariot-riding, calligraphy, and computation). - the health aspect of the shaman’s traditional activities was given to the newly conceived category of the men of medicine. TCM had initially been formalized, according to the classic books, under the flame emperors and Huangdi.
- the divination of the future was absorbed in the machinery of power and was soon made a special office of the imperial bureaucracy.
- the communication with the spirit of the universe was put in charge of the wu-shaman who also was put in charge of communicating with the earthly spirit (ancestors and totemic animals-plants). While the Wu-shaman was perceived as fulfilling important functions his powers were feared by the men of power, as well as the common man, so they lived on the margins of society.
The communication of the Wu with the spirits gave them powers that were feared by the sages-men of power who I reality had transformed into scholars-men of power. So, over the next thousands of years, the ancient books show that the men of power avoided coming in direct contact with the Wu and they also feared his communication with their ancestors. In other words the memory of the tradition renders the Wu necessary but he is also feared and this explains how the most important function of the traditional animist men of knowledge is being marginalized in China’s power societies. Depending on one’s views, about the spirit of the universe, Animism+ has been:
- or seriously handicapped
- or reformed in a positive way
There should nevertheless be no doubt about one handicap that specialization bestowed on the knowledge of animism+. It took the spiritual (the subconscious) out of the traditional shamanic fields that henceforth were being the preserve of specialists who had to submit to the men of power. This is how the cultivation of wisdom in the mind under religious Taoism cook have taken such a back seat to the cultivation of the body. Men of medicine and scholars thought that “firing the stove” and “fine tuning the body” (4) would procure them eternal life and this belief in eternal life became proof in their minds of their wisdom. In reality the transformation of knowledge under dynastic rule gave way to a cult of power:
- power of man over woman
- power of the body over the mind
- power of the patriarch’s immortality over the mortality of the common man, etc...
All these taoist expressions relate to the focus by the patriarchs (men of power) on reaching immortality. These expressions give us a feel of how radically Chinese society had been transformed after the animist sages, acting as symbols of a unifying and expanding Tian Xia, started to transfer their charge within their blood line. The result was:
- men now dominated women: Such a domination of yang over yin is an unmistakable indication that an imbalance is plaguing the polarity-play yin and yang. Women were then claimed the enemy by the patriarchs who searched to increased their treasure of Qi in order to reach immortality and this was thought to be realized by stealing the yang in the yin that women produced abundantly during intercourse.
- the power of a small minority imposed itself over the majority: Taxation of the peasantry’s productions was not sufficient the patriarchs in power also arrogated the right to sift the countryside for the most beautiful women. Sexual relations with multiple “partners” were indeed thought to maximize the quantity of stolen yang from women’s yin.
- the production of ever more elaborate Taoist exercises meant to fine tune the body in order to reach immortality soon distracted the mind from the knowledge accumulated earlier and so Taoism transformed from a philosophic system founded in animism into a religious cult.
C. Unification through centralization and standardization
The specialization of the knowledge tasks introduced by the dynastic system of power transmission remained largely intact till the fall of the empire in 1911.
Between 230 and 221 BC Qin Shi Huang broke the confederate union of kingdoms by conquering them and ripping apart their power structure. For the first time the Chinese territory was being unified solely under central power. Qin Shi Huang also standardized the written and spoken language, the money and the weight and measures and so the most important forms impacting peoples daily lives were suddenly unified by force.
The unified and centralized empire also evolved a specialized art system:
- high art by the scholars: Powerful, rich, educated people preferred literati paintings over any other category. The way they understood it is that these paintings revealed not only the inner character of the painter but also communicated a sensitivity towards human life conditions by depicting the Tao at work within reality. Literati painting initially consisted solely in calligraphy which was considered to be the highest form of painting. Calligraphy was mostly about writing poetry. This explains why painting and poetry have always been intimately related in China. Motion and dynamic movements suggestive of change were characteristic of calligraphy and this will later also apply to Xieyi painting.
- professional image makers working for the court: They were artisans selected among the best image makers working for the nobility who were attached to the court. These artisans were in charge of realizing paintings for the purpose of decorating palaces by inspiring themselves from the works of the scholars. These paintings took the form of wall paintings, screens or movable walls, and scrolls. They had a political goal which was to enhance the emperor’s stature by illustrating the effectiveness of his rule by representing heaven sent omens that would be understood as confirming the emperor’s virtue which under Confucian cannons was considered a moral necessity to justify the mandate of heaven. This function can be compared to the function of Early-Modern painting which was meant to reinforce the belief of the new rich long distance traders in their new value system. Imperial court image making was to impress the mandate of Heaven inside the minds of the men of power and first and foremost in the mind of the emperor who convinced himself that his reign was virtuous.
- professional image makers working for the nobility and the rich. These were “independent” painters offering their services to the nobility and the rich. Their paintings were realized in the same fashion as court paintings. They were for decoration purposes and they were inspired by court paintings and by the works of scholars.
- Buddhist and Taoist painting and sculpture was practiced by monk painters and sculptors who attempted to express enlightenment through the representation of the creed.
Chinese are largely immune to metaphysical speculation. They have no need for such speculation seen that the pragmatism imprinted in their traditional animist culture is reflected in most aspects of their daily lives: the yin-yang working of reality, food, medicine, social interactions,… And there is no doubt that this animistic culture is reflected also in their art. This reflection is the function of Xieyi painting.
D. Evolution of Chinese art under empire
Early animist painting was ornamental it consisted of patterns or abstract designs rather than representations. The earliest forms of painting are seen on pottery which was painted with spirals, zigzags, dots, or animals. Artists only began to represent the world around them with the Warring States period (475-221 BC).
At the image of Chinese society as a whole painting evolved slowly by absorbing new subjects of representation: landscapes in the 4th century, birds and flowers in the 9th century. Figure painting was already popular in the Neolithic era, first on pottery, then on tiles, and tomb walls. Li Kung-lin developed an original figure painting style in the 11th century the Pai Miao style or pure line drawing. It was said that his style merged painting with calligraphy. Pai Miao has been a favorite style of painting in China ever since.
During the Tang dynasty (618–907) a painter named Wang Wei invented Xieyi or ink and wash painting. It was realized with the same tools as calligraphy. So the scholar practiced Xieyi, calligraphy and poetry very much as one way of expression to the point that poetry was calligraphed on Xieyi paintings. Xieyi emphasized spiritual qualities and the painting’s ability to reveal the inner harmony of nature as perceived by Taoist philosophy. The Xieyi painter is a philosopher, a seer, who tries to discover the true hidden nature, or the Tao, of the object he represents.
5.3.3. The arts under Modernity.
Modernity is a worldview that the whole of humanity willingly or unwillingly is sharing today. Past worldviews have not been eradicated. They survive in the form of religions, philosophies and ways of life. Modernity has simply been imposed on top of these traditional ways of thinking and doing. This means that the penetration of the values of Modernity differentiates from one society to another. In other words our present reality is one of co-existence between Western Late-Modernity and traditional worldviews that willy nilly integrated the reason at work within capital. Such a reality is highly unstable for the good reason that traditions are threatened by the reason of capital which provokes the opposition from the most conservative quarters and so societies assist at the dissolution of their cohesion.
5.3.3.1. a rapid sketch
Along Early-Modernity (a European phenomenon) the combination of individualism and the sanctification of the arts gave a new impetus to the image craft. Images started to relate to the individuality of the new rich:
D. Evolution of Chinese art under empire
Early animist painting was ornamental it consisted of patterns or abstract designs rather than representations. The earliest forms of painting are seen on pottery which was painted with spirals, zigzags, dots, or animals. Artists only began to represent the world around them with the Warring States period (475-221 BC).
At the image of Chinese society as a whole painting evolved slowly by absorbing new subjects of representation: landscapes in the 4th century, birds and flowers in the 9th century. Figure painting was already popular in the Neolithic era, first on pottery, then on tiles, and tomb walls. Li Kung-lin developed an original figure painting style in the 11th century the Pai Miao style or pure line drawing. It was said that his style merged painting with calligraphy. Pai Miao has been a favorite style of painting in China ever since.
During the Tang dynasty (618–907) a painter named Wang Wei invented Xieyi or ink and wash painting. It was realized with the same tools as calligraphy. So the scholar practiced Xieyi, calligraphy and poetry very much as one way of expression to the point that poetry was calligraphed on Xieyi paintings. Xieyi emphasized spiritual qualities and the painting’s ability to reveal the inner harmony of nature as perceived by Taoist philosophy. The Xieyi painter is a philosopher, a seer, who tries to discover the true hidden nature, or the Tao, of the object he represents.
5.3.3. The arts under Modernity.
Modernity is a worldview that the whole of humanity willingly or unwillingly is sharing today. Past worldviews have not been eradicated. They survive in the form of religions, philosophies and ways of life. Modernity has simply been imposed on top of these traditional ways of thinking and doing. This means that the penetration of the values of Modernity differentiates from one society to another. In other words our present reality is one of co-existence between Western Late-Modernity and traditional worldviews that willy nilly integrated the reason at work within capital. Such a reality is highly unstable for the good reason that traditions are threatened by the reason of capital which provokes the opposition from the most conservative quarters and so societies assist at the dissolution of their cohesion.
5.3.3.1. a rapid sketch
Along Early-Modernity (a European phenomenon) the combination of individualism and the sanctification of the arts gave a new impetus to the image craft. Images started to relate to the individuality of the new rich:
- the landscapes around their manors
- the portraits of those living in the manor
- the stills of things on their tables
Starting with the Renaissance, out of the occasional remnant of religious times, these 3 categories of images established themselves as the obliged subjects of the content of visual high art. Individualism, materialism, private property, the glorification of material possessions were the obliged content of visual art works that had to justify in the eyes of all the differentiation between the winners at the capital game and the others. Let’s remember that in this particular case winning meant adhering to the reason at work within capital.
The form of the works’ content was vastly influenced during the Renaissance by the rediscovery and reading by the monks of the Greek Classics. Visual perspective imposed itself in landscapes while numbers and the Golden Mean imposed themselves as the canons of portraiture.
Things started to change again with the waning of the cycle of early modernity and the emergence of high modernity in the 19th century.
High Modernity was the consecration of:
The form of the works’ content was vastly influenced during the Renaissance by the rediscovery and reading by the monks of the Greek Classics. Visual perspective imposed itself in landscapes while numbers and the Golden Mean imposed themselves as the canons of portraiture.
Things started to change again with the waning of the cycle of early modernity and the emergence of high modernity in the 19th century.
High Modernity was the consecration of:
- the scientific method and the discovery of functional truths about reality that means functionally useful truths that could generate surpluses for the capital holders
- the investment of capital in generating such functional truths in order to propose offers on the market at the attention of a demand from society (existing demand or demand to be created from scratch)
Those general principles were not, and are still not, visible to the naked eye. What was visible, and is still visible today, are the changes in daily life provoked by the introduction of always newer offers on the market. What was not visible, and is still not clearly visible today for many, are the consequences such offers are inflicting upon the principle of life. So the people of the nineteenth century, and first and foremost the most sensitive among them the artists, saw their lives change to the rhythm of the introduction of new offers. Cotton socks were so cheap that everybody, or mostly everybody, could now wear socks. This was a great change indeed but it did not impact the way people perceived reality. The train, the telegraph, electric lightning, electric motors and other offers were another matter altogether.
The notion of distances for example must have taken a beating. Forever people had traveled on foot or on the back of an ox, a donkey, or a horse. The speed was slow and the eyes had grown accustomed to see things at such speeds. But with the advent of trains the eyes lost their traditional bearings. Things appeared different more furtive, or should we dare say, more impressionistic perhaps? The advent of the telegraph was even more troubling. Words, sentences, messages could now be sent or received at great distances without the need to move. This does not seem impressive in our contemporary eyes but for nineteenth century people this must have had a lot bigger impact than the Internet is having on us and on our societies nowadays. The cultural shock was considerable.
Now think about the impact that the introduction of electricity, electric lights and electric motors must have had. A force coming from nowhere for the eyes to see must have appeared like magic or for the better educated science was creating the magic. But only very few scientists really understood the principles at work behind that magic. For the first time in history a human production was powered by something that was not accessible directly to the eyes. The eyes were failing man so, for visual artists, an explanation of reality had to be found at that causal level that was inaccessible to the eyes and herein in essence lays the root of Modernism.
The new paradigm of reality that imposed itself in the second part of the 19th century is that, what the eyes can not see, the mind can eventually understand. Science, mathematics, physics attracted artists and so they started to befriend scientists.
Picasso was a friend of the mathematician Poincaré and from his very limited understanding, of the scientific discussions he witnessed his friend engaging in, he devised cubism. At first glance cubism is an esoteric system to depict reality, draped in the colors of science, but its relationship to science was not withstanding close scrutiny. Picasso has been stuck indeed repeating the same tricks during the rest of his life; 20-25 paintings per year that look similar but totally empty of any sensical content. That’s how cubism was being criticized by the other members of the Avant-Garde for being nothing else than a trick.
The Surrealists, interested in the unconscious befriended the psychoanalysts Freud and Jung and devised automatism. Breton wrote a surrealist manifesto that got some traction with critics and other artists and for some time the movement amplified but it fell prey to what Masson later called the “absurdity of whatever” at the hands of the likes of Dali and Magritte who nevertheless remain the best known representatives of surrealism to this very day but are its least interesting representatives.
Duchamp tried his hands at cubism but found that it was a farce based on a repetitive trick. He then got some success with futurism but he found that it was no more than an impressionism of movement and so he quit that fashion to go flirt with the dadaists. In pure Dada fashion, with the intention to ridicule the critics and the art world he installed a toilet seat that he called a “Ready-Made”, in an exhibition in NYC, but to his surprise the critics in their naiveté jumped on the “Ready-Made” with high praise. Duchamp felt cornered and soon decided to abandon painting altogether to spend his time playing chess. The 20th century had just lost one of its most creative artists.
In Germany and in the Eastern corners of Europe the expressionists depicted what they fell was the harshness and Kafkaesque condition of their societies. Germany was coming out of the first world punished by France and Britain with unpayable reparations for its loss in the 1st world war that dragged its economy into shambles. This was a fertile ground for revanchist nationalism to sprout and Nazism was sticking its head out of the commotion! Soon artists, musicians and intellectuals were suffocating under its cloak and many of them felt that they had to leave the country.
Kandinsky is one of the rare artist who left us something interesting to think about; something that remains intellectually refreshing to this very day (5).
The second world war gave way to a stark differentiation between what was going on in New York City and the rest of the world. In short:
The notion of distances for example must have taken a beating. Forever people had traveled on foot or on the back of an ox, a donkey, or a horse. The speed was slow and the eyes had grown accustomed to see things at such speeds. But with the advent of trains the eyes lost their traditional bearings. Things appeared different more furtive, or should we dare say, more impressionistic perhaps? The advent of the telegraph was even more troubling. Words, sentences, messages could now be sent or received at great distances without the need to move. This does not seem impressive in our contemporary eyes but for nineteenth century people this must have had a lot bigger impact than the Internet is having on us and on our societies nowadays. The cultural shock was considerable.
Now think about the impact that the introduction of electricity, electric lights and electric motors must have had. A force coming from nowhere for the eyes to see must have appeared like magic or for the better educated science was creating the magic. But only very few scientists really understood the principles at work behind that magic. For the first time in history a human production was powered by something that was not accessible directly to the eyes. The eyes were failing man so, for visual artists, an explanation of reality had to be found at that causal level that was inaccessible to the eyes and herein in essence lays the root of Modernism.
The new paradigm of reality that imposed itself in the second part of the 19th century is that, what the eyes can not see, the mind can eventually understand. Science, mathematics, physics attracted artists and so they started to befriend scientists.
Picasso was a friend of the mathematician Poincaré and from his very limited understanding, of the scientific discussions he witnessed his friend engaging in, he devised cubism. At first glance cubism is an esoteric system to depict reality, draped in the colors of science, but its relationship to science was not withstanding close scrutiny. Picasso has been stuck indeed repeating the same tricks during the rest of his life; 20-25 paintings per year that look similar but totally empty of any sensical content. That’s how cubism was being criticized by the other members of the Avant-Garde for being nothing else than a trick.
The Surrealists, interested in the unconscious befriended the psychoanalysts Freud and Jung and devised automatism. Breton wrote a surrealist manifesto that got some traction with critics and other artists and for some time the movement amplified but it fell prey to what Masson later called the “absurdity of whatever” at the hands of the likes of Dali and Magritte who nevertheless remain the best known representatives of surrealism to this very day but are its least interesting representatives.
Duchamp tried his hands at cubism but found that it was a farce based on a repetitive trick. He then got some success with futurism but he found that it was no more than an impressionism of movement and so he quit that fashion to go flirt with the dadaists. In pure Dada fashion, with the intention to ridicule the critics and the art world he installed a toilet seat that he called a “Ready-Made”, in an exhibition in NYC, but to his surprise the critics in their naiveté jumped on the “Ready-Made” with high praise. Duchamp felt cornered and soon decided to abandon painting altogether to spend his time playing chess. The 20th century had just lost one of its most creative artists.
In Germany and in the Eastern corners of Europe the expressionists depicted what they fell was the harshness and Kafkaesque condition of their societies. Germany was coming out of the first world punished by France and Britain with unpayable reparations for its loss in the 1st world war that dragged its economy into shambles. This was a fertile ground for revanchist nationalism to sprout and Nazism was sticking its head out of the commotion! Soon artists, musicians and intellectuals were suffocating under its cloak and many of them felt that they had to leave the country.
Kandinsky is one of the rare artist who left us something interesting to think about; something that remains intellectually refreshing to this very day (5).
The second world war gave way to a stark differentiation between what was going on in New York City and the rest of the world. In short:
- spearheaded by political ideology and a daring vision of foreign relations finance took over the art market in NYC and imposed its lenses on what kind of artistic productions would make it to the market (don’t panic I’ll come back on this a little further).
- artworks transformed into luxury commodities and to pass the test it was absolutely required that form took precedence over content. In other words content had to be sterilized in order to be acceptable in the eyes of financial speculators who had no clue as to what art was all about.
This was a total departure from what art had always been considered to be. Compare this to what Kandinsky says in perhaps the most succinct but most prescient definition ever given: “The irresistible urge to reveal the purely compositional -to unveil the future laws of our great epoch- is the power which forces artists to strive toward one goal in different ways. ...the form is the outer expression of the inner content. Therefore, one should not make a deity of form” (5). - having been spared any damage within its borders during the 2nd world war and having been financing its war effort and its lending program to the European allied countries through money creation the US was in the rare position of starting the after-war with lots of capital to invest while also attracting as a magnet the biggest European capital holders, speculators, intellectuals and artists.
Looking at this period from the distance of time the result in artistic terms of that combination of financial speculation and art leaves no place for doubt.
Formalism has indeed been the rule and one has to wait till the eighties for a new cycle to emerge with the re-appropriation of content at the hands of the conceptualists and other postmoderns. But that return to content was more like another extreme separation from what art is all about. Content was now posited as an intellectualist formal exercise totally detached from the real world.
While New York had imposed itself as the world center of finance and art European artists were simply ignored by that market. Seen from the perspective of those at the helm of the art market it was as if nothing was happening out of New York.
But European artists had been busy doing really serious stuff, on the margins of the art market, that would transform their societies in the years ahead. In their dreams of the future the artists of Cobra and existentialist writers in Paris left no place for life as it had been in the past. The barbarity inflicted on the populations of Europe during the 2nd world war had been so traumatic for those who had a brain that the idea of a repetition of such a barbarity in the future was simply intolerable. The artists were at the forefront of that battle against barbarity insisting that a new societal way had to be found that would guarantee the impossibility of something that atrocious to ever repeat.
What ensued was a process that drove European nations on the uncertain path of incrementally building an economic and political union akin to a United states of Europe. But from the start the process of building this union has been hijacked by the US which did not want Europe to possibly become a competitor in power projection. The unification was thus conceived as a union that would remain captive of US force. In other words, under the cloak of complexity, Europe was not allowed to develop as a federation of states as the US had done after its revolution but was kept on a con-federal path that assured trouble would ensue as soon as the context became a little rough and uncertainty unfolded. This is what we unfortunately observe today.
Today's debt crisis of the countries on Europe’s Southern flank is such a moment of uncertainty in the incremental build-up. And the flow of immigrants seeking refuge from Western policies that threw their countries into chaos is compounding the uncertainty. Europe’s past experience shows that all advances of the unification dream have been realized under the urgency of a solution to a crisis in last minute deals. But we are no longer in times of continuity. The great game of world power has started for the redistribution of the cards on the level playing field of the world and in its confederal form Europe is ill equipped to play at that game.
In one word the rest of the world has had enough of Western hegemony and, for the first time in the history of Modernity, some non Western countries have accumulated the capital as well as the military means to counter Western dominance. In the meantime Europe has been cornered as vassal of the US master and its hands are cuffed. As long as Europe agrees to be handcuffed the present debt trap, that has been compounded by the refugee problem, appears simply unsolvable.
Europe has a way out of this quagmire. It can join China and Russia to build up an Eurasian area of co-prosperity. Europe and Russia have the technology and China has the capital and the factories. Only trouble Uncle Sam does not want to hear anything about that Eurasia thing.
The artists of Cobra had been right but their vision was unfortunately recuperated and denatured by US power. The question that arises now is can European countries go back to their institutional forms as before the second world war? Yes they can. But it would mean the rapid fall of Europe out of the economy-world. Now this could perhaps not be a problem after all because as I explained, in “Book 1. 01, 02“, the present context of the great convergence will soon enough impose localism or communalism as an urgent economic and political necessity.
Hundertwasser stands tall for generating a real popular awakening to ecology that today is flourishing among the European continental public. Hundertwasser acted as the conscious mind of Europe informing about the dangers of unbridled capitalism. US artists missed out on this and their society now bears the consequences of their absence but this was somehow to be expected since the art world, based in NYC, had been shunning Hundertwasser all along and had also been doing all that is necessary to strangle any US artist who could have sticked his head above the consumerist commotion.
Whatever Late-Modernity’s contextual differences there is no way to miss the artistic differentiation that was carved out between Europe and the US after the 2nd world war. The market and the money settled in the US and imposed a kind of artistic sterilization that detached art from anything relating to life and society. Art identified with form shunned the idea of substance and its productions transformed into luxurious commodities for interior decoration at the attention of financial speculators.
In the meantime nations were left craving for answers to their problems.
5.3.3.2. No valid artistic answers
If intellectuals and thinkers had understood what had happened to the US art market starting just after the second world war their analysis would have been prophetic of the economic direction the country would engage in along the following decades. But intellectuals were nowhere near the action. They were entertaining themselves at their favorite pastime which is empty talk. Even the Club of Rome’s 1972 report The Limits to Growthwas not sized upon but was criticized by all quarters. Observing today that the predictions of this report have come true is nevertheless no consolation to its authors nor to those who were receptive to its ideas.
Financialization started in the art market just after the 2nd World War. It was the discovery of making money from a money play on the scale of the entire economic sector of the arts. Financiers discovered that the financial control of a whole economic sector (financialization) gave them the latitude to generate unlimited and risk free surpluses. Compared with what they had done till then (direct investments in real productions) financialization appeared as a boon and so all their efforts would henceforth concentrate in devising strategies to financialize the whole economy.
Such a strategy was put up for adoption in the seventies when US financial leaders decided that the time had come to multiply the volume of their activities. That's how the ideas of globalization and financialization were proposed for adoption by the elites of all nations on earth through international associations like the Trilateral Commission.
The world would soon be swept under a campaign falling like an avalanche on an unsuspecting public in all the nations on earth. That campaign addressed:
But European artists had been busy doing really serious stuff, on the margins of the art market, that would transform their societies in the years ahead. In their dreams of the future the artists of Cobra and existentialist writers in Paris left no place for life as it had been in the past. The barbarity inflicted on the populations of Europe during the 2nd world war had been so traumatic for those who had a brain that the idea of a repetition of such a barbarity in the future was simply intolerable. The artists were at the forefront of that battle against barbarity insisting that a new societal way had to be found that would guarantee the impossibility of something that atrocious to ever repeat.
What ensued was a process that drove European nations on the uncertain path of incrementally building an economic and political union akin to a United states of Europe. But from the start the process of building this union has been hijacked by the US which did not want Europe to possibly become a competitor in power projection. The unification was thus conceived as a union that would remain captive of US force. In other words, under the cloak of complexity, Europe was not allowed to develop as a federation of states as the US had done after its revolution but was kept on a con-federal path that assured trouble would ensue as soon as the context became a little rough and uncertainty unfolded. This is what we unfortunately observe today.
Today's debt crisis of the countries on Europe’s Southern flank is such a moment of uncertainty in the incremental build-up. And the flow of immigrants seeking refuge from Western policies that threw their countries into chaos is compounding the uncertainty. Europe’s past experience shows that all advances of the unification dream have been realized under the urgency of a solution to a crisis in last minute deals. But we are no longer in times of continuity. The great game of world power has started for the redistribution of the cards on the level playing field of the world and in its confederal form Europe is ill equipped to play at that game.
In one word the rest of the world has had enough of Western hegemony and, for the first time in the history of Modernity, some non Western countries have accumulated the capital as well as the military means to counter Western dominance. In the meantime Europe has been cornered as vassal of the US master and its hands are cuffed. As long as Europe agrees to be handcuffed the present debt trap, that has been compounded by the refugee problem, appears simply unsolvable.
Europe has a way out of this quagmire. It can join China and Russia to build up an Eurasian area of co-prosperity. Europe and Russia have the technology and China has the capital and the factories. Only trouble Uncle Sam does not want to hear anything about that Eurasia thing.
The artists of Cobra had been right but their vision was unfortunately recuperated and denatured by US power. The question that arises now is can European countries go back to their institutional forms as before the second world war? Yes they can. But it would mean the rapid fall of Europe out of the economy-world. Now this could perhaps not be a problem after all because as I explained, in “Book 1. 01, 02“, the present context of the great convergence will soon enough impose localism or communalism as an urgent economic and political necessity.
Hundertwasser stands tall for generating a real popular awakening to ecology that today is flourishing among the European continental public. Hundertwasser acted as the conscious mind of Europe informing about the dangers of unbridled capitalism. US artists missed out on this and their society now bears the consequences of their absence but this was somehow to be expected since the art world, based in NYC, had been shunning Hundertwasser all along and had also been doing all that is necessary to strangle any US artist who could have sticked his head above the consumerist commotion.
Whatever Late-Modernity’s contextual differences there is no way to miss the artistic differentiation that was carved out between Europe and the US after the 2nd world war. The market and the money settled in the US and imposed a kind of artistic sterilization that detached art from anything relating to life and society. Art identified with form shunned the idea of substance and its productions transformed into luxurious commodities for interior decoration at the attention of financial speculators.
In the meantime nations were left craving for answers to their problems.
5.3.3.2. No valid artistic answers
If intellectuals and thinkers had understood what had happened to the US art market starting just after the second world war their analysis would have been prophetic of the economic direction the country would engage in along the following decades. But intellectuals were nowhere near the action. They were entertaining themselves at their favorite pastime which is empty talk. Even the Club of Rome’s 1972 report The Limits to Growthwas not sized upon but was criticized by all quarters. Observing today that the predictions of this report have come true is nevertheless no consolation to its authors nor to those who were receptive to its ideas.
Financialization started in the art market just after the 2nd World War. It was the discovery of making money from a money play on the scale of the entire economic sector of the arts. Financiers discovered that the financial control of a whole economic sector (financialization) gave them the latitude to generate unlimited and risk free surpluses. Compared with what they had done till then (direct investments in real productions) financialization appeared as a boon and so all their efforts would henceforth concentrate in devising strategies to financialize the whole economy.
Such a strategy was put up for adoption in the seventies when US financial leaders decided that the time had come to multiply the volume of their activities. That's how the ideas of globalization and financialization were proposed for adoption by the elites of all nations on earth through international associations like the Trilateral Commission.
The world would soon be swept under a campaign falling like an avalanche on an unsuspecting public in all the nations on earth. That campaign addressed:
- an institutional and legal build-up: WTO with the adoption of thousands of pages of rules written down in total secrecy by the lobbyists of Western multinationals that wanted an acceleration of their global expansion.
- the financing of a technological boom that would supply the necessary communication tools for an expansion of activities to the whole world. When that boom came to crash in 2000 its effects were renewed in the real estate boom that ended kind of tragically in 2007-2008.
- an ideological campaign promoting the privatization of the commons and loathing any state activity at the exception of power institutions: police, defense and so on. That's when Keynesian economics, social policies of redistribution, health and old age protection policies were put under the ideological hammer of rejection.
- the ramming through by the Trilateral Commission of the support of the national elites in all countries on earth for that program.
All along that path of financialization and globalization the art world was put further under pressure to subscribe to the tenets of New York's art market. The market imposed that form should take precedence over substance in order for speculators and other members of the 1% clique to speculate on anesthetized luxurious commodities for interior decoration.
Those who don't subscribe to that art-creed are simply ignored and left to fend for themselves on the margins of the market where they experience huge difficulties in finding a remuneration for their work that in normal circumstances would ensure the subsistence of their families. And whatever they do on the margins of the market they are ignored by the whole art market bureaucracy: critics, curators, etc...
The hegemony of the market is nearly total. But the fact is that it is not complete. Our period is rich in people trying their hands at creating visual signs and while only a handful make big bugs, many have to endure scarcity and the great majority has to find the means of their subsistence through third activities. Many of those creators have their own space on the web where their works are free to be viewed by all and that's what renders the hegemony of the market incomplete.
There is quality art out there but it is ignored and is thus shadowed. The only way for those artworks of quality to come to the fore is through a popular awakening to what art is all about. But this can only possibly happen after an intellectual understanding of the societal function of art emerges and matures in the minds of artists and intellectuals. My writing is a personal small contribution to such an understanding.
5.3.4. the arts in Late-Modernity
It's diffuse like fog that envelops everything and hides it from our view. We can't point our finger at it but we know that it's there. We just don't know what it is. We are surprised sometimes by a ray of light that illuminates a corner of our reality but we have no time to register it in our consciousness. We are nevertheless under the spell of a fleeting feeling of indescribable beauty there on the margins and for a short time this powers our batteries.
The cultural landscape is shifting everywhere on the cloud but it is difficult to catch its patterns. It’s as if it was an unattainable task for the individual mind to grasp the fluctuations of the societal mood of the day. The cultural landscape is indeed caught up in the spectacle of the commercialization of absolutely everything. Sometimes it makes me wonder when we'll have to pay for the air we breathe. Hey we already pay a higher price for water than for gasoline! Try to make sense of that and then paintings that kids, in their innate wisdom, would trample with rage fetch millions. But where is the art they pretend to sell? It’s as if the talk about the works had suddenly become the metric of value. Reality has been displaced by the narratives of the slaves of capital holders.
Sometimes the financial crisis or is it the great redistribution or climate change or life extinction or resources that are peaking, I'm not sure; notwithstanding their enormity these crisis appear as a ray of hope confirming that things are really going to change whatever spiel capital is playing.
I know I'm not ready for the asylum. Too many share the same kind of feelings. After all who is normal here? Is it us or is it the flock that is running to the slaughterhouse?
I feel that the answer the avant-garde missed to find in the 20th century is now bubbling at the surface, lightly for sure but bubble after bubble, on the web and outside of the artworld, something is emerging that makes sense in my mind and opens the future to many possibilities. In the end only one possibility will materialize as the future we are going to live through. But knowing that the germs of this possibility is right here, amidst that emerging something, this is definitively powering my batteries.
5.3.4.1. Visual art in search of meaning and societal sense
The commodity-fication of fine arts in NYC's art market after the 2nd world war was never a mass market phenomenon and as such it was thus not really a commodity-fication that took place but something more narrow in scope. There was the propaganda effect of pushing works that were out of the accepted norms which would enhance the myth of Western freedom versus the bureaucratic control of the minds in the communist countries and then there was the financial interest of capital holders who were proposed to speculate on a limited range of names.
In retrospect the combination of propaganda and speculation was a wining proposition that consecrated NYC as the world capital of the arts.
How the early selection, of the rare names that were pushed, took place and is still taking place is anyone's guess. What is certain is that the High Arts have been re-routed from their immemorial function and in the process they have lost their meaning and their sense. From serving knowledge to share meaning in the minds of the citizens the arts henceforth exclusively serve capital to generate financial surpluses. In this process High Art literally died!
In parallel with financial speculation the mass market proposed a democratization of the arts. What was meant by this big word is that everyone would henceforward be able to own works of art. Multiples filled the decoration and furniture show rooms and soon after works by third world artists started to compete with multiples.
Over the last fifty years these two trends have also been accompanied by a flow of creations by the people or should I say by the street? Late-Modernity is paradoxically the single most productive period in the whole history of mankind in terms of the quantity of art works churned out. I suppose that if we had the necessary information to make the calculation of all people having been artists in the whole of humanity's history, before Late-Modernity emerged, we would be astounded to discover that the total figure would be smaller than the total number of individuals that have pretended to be artists since then.
There has been a real inflation in the number of people dabbling in the arts primarily since the last 30 years. But while the number of artists is assuredly high nowadays those among them who have made it into the market is assuredly very small. One should guess that the very small number of successful artists have been those that came out on top in a quality selection process. But no this is definitely not what happened. The selection process was not about the quality of the works. Had it been about quality we should be seeing today a vastly different list of names in museums and in auctions. It seems more likely that the selection combined a set of 3 factors that have to reassure capital holders and speculators that their games will not be overwhelmed by a debate of ideas by lunatics on the fringe of consumer society:
Those who don't subscribe to that art-creed are simply ignored and left to fend for themselves on the margins of the market where they experience huge difficulties in finding a remuneration for their work that in normal circumstances would ensure the subsistence of their families. And whatever they do on the margins of the market they are ignored by the whole art market bureaucracy: critics, curators, etc...
The hegemony of the market is nearly total. But the fact is that it is not complete. Our period is rich in people trying their hands at creating visual signs and while only a handful make big bugs, many have to endure scarcity and the great majority has to find the means of their subsistence through third activities. Many of those creators have their own space on the web where their works are free to be viewed by all and that's what renders the hegemony of the market incomplete.
There is quality art out there but it is ignored and is thus shadowed. The only way for those artworks of quality to come to the fore is through a popular awakening to what art is all about. But this can only possibly happen after an intellectual understanding of the societal function of art emerges and matures in the minds of artists and intellectuals. My writing is a personal small contribution to such an understanding.
5.3.4. the arts in Late-Modernity
It's diffuse like fog that envelops everything and hides it from our view. We can't point our finger at it but we know that it's there. We just don't know what it is. We are surprised sometimes by a ray of light that illuminates a corner of our reality but we have no time to register it in our consciousness. We are nevertheless under the spell of a fleeting feeling of indescribable beauty there on the margins and for a short time this powers our batteries.
The cultural landscape is shifting everywhere on the cloud but it is difficult to catch its patterns. It’s as if it was an unattainable task for the individual mind to grasp the fluctuations of the societal mood of the day. The cultural landscape is indeed caught up in the spectacle of the commercialization of absolutely everything. Sometimes it makes me wonder when we'll have to pay for the air we breathe. Hey we already pay a higher price for water than for gasoline! Try to make sense of that and then paintings that kids, in their innate wisdom, would trample with rage fetch millions. But where is the art they pretend to sell? It’s as if the talk about the works had suddenly become the metric of value. Reality has been displaced by the narratives of the slaves of capital holders.
Sometimes the financial crisis or is it the great redistribution or climate change or life extinction or resources that are peaking, I'm not sure; notwithstanding their enormity these crisis appear as a ray of hope confirming that things are really going to change whatever spiel capital is playing.
I know I'm not ready for the asylum. Too many share the same kind of feelings. After all who is normal here? Is it us or is it the flock that is running to the slaughterhouse?
I feel that the answer the avant-garde missed to find in the 20th century is now bubbling at the surface, lightly for sure but bubble after bubble, on the web and outside of the artworld, something is emerging that makes sense in my mind and opens the future to many possibilities. In the end only one possibility will materialize as the future we are going to live through. But knowing that the germs of this possibility is right here, amidst that emerging something, this is definitively powering my batteries.
5.3.4.1. Visual art in search of meaning and societal sense
The commodity-fication of fine arts in NYC's art market after the 2nd world war was never a mass market phenomenon and as such it was thus not really a commodity-fication that took place but something more narrow in scope. There was the propaganda effect of pushing works that were out of the accepted norms which would enhance the myth of Western freedom versus the bureaucratic control of the minds in the communist countries and then there was the financial interest of capital holders who were proposed to speculate on a limited range of names.
In retrospect the combination of propaganda and speculation was a wining proposition that consecrated NYC as the world capital of the arts.
How the early selection, of the rare names that were pushed, took place and is still taking place is anyone's guess. What is certain is that the High Arts have been re-routed from their immemorial function and in the process they have lost their meaning and their sense. From serving knowledge to share meaning in the minds of the citizens the arts henceforth exclusively serve capital to generate financial surpluses. In this process High Art literally died!
In parallel with financial speculation the mass market proposed a democratization of the arts. What was meant by this big word is that everyone would henceforward be able to own works of art. Multiples filled the decoration and furniture show rooms and soon after works by third world artists started to compete with multiples.
Over the last fifty years these two trends have also been accompanied by a flow of creations by the people or should I say by the street? Late-Modernity is paradoxically the single most productive period in the whole history of mankind in terms of the quantity of art works churned out. I suppose that if we had the necessary information to make the calculation of all people having been artists in the whole of humanity's history, before Late-Modernity emerged, we would be astounded to discover that the total figure would be smaller than the total number of individuals that have pretended to be artists since then.
There has been a real inflation in the number of people dabbling in the arts primarily since the last 30 years. But while the number of artists is assuredly high nowadays those among them who have made it into the market is assuredly very small. One should guess that the very small number of successful artists have been those that came out on top in a quality selection process. But no this is definitely not what happened. The selection process was not about the quality of the works. Had it been about quality we should be seeing today a vastly different list of names in museums and in auctions. It seems more likely that the selection combined a set of 3 factors that have to reassure capital holders and speculators that their games will not be overwhelmed by a debate of ideas by lunatics on the fringe of consumer society:
- quantity of works: the available productions at the moment of selection and the quantity of works produced per year must assure a regular flow of merchandise to the market
- the content of the merchandise has to be sanitized so that form dominates content in order to avoid that lunatics frighten market participants with their ideas about the realities of the day
- a chance factor will always place one name on the list while another remains in the shadows or is it more like what the Chinese call “Guenxi” or relationship that favors one over the other?
Whatever is the case the art market and the museums that confirmed the market selection, of the successful names over the last 50 or 60 years, reflect very poorly on the diversity of the art productions realized during that time. It is as if the selected works treated about anything but societally significant matters. Moreover what about what happens out of New York?
- What about the art produced in Western Europe?
- What about the art produced in Eastern Europe?
- What about the art produced in Japan? In the case of Japan an opening of the market to Japanese names has been observed along the last 2 decades. Which could perhaps be explained by the participation of Japanese capital holders in the speculation on the New York art market…
- What about the art produced in Russia?
- What about the art produced in Muslim countries?
- What about the art produced in China?
- What about the art produced in India?
- What about the art produced in Africa?
- What about the art produced in Latin-America?
- And so on…
There is no doubt in my mind that the picture of modern and contemporary art is badly skewed and in no way reflects on anything significant produced societally during that period around the world, nor in Western Countries nor even within the US.
I don't hold my breath that anything will change as long as the music goes and the financial speculators are supplied with the paper money to finance their dance.
But hidden from the art market stunning works are nevertheless being produced. Works that speak by breathing the air of our times and reflect on what is in store for humanity in the future. It is a shame that the creators of such works remain in the shadows. Their works not being recognized by the market those artists live from side jobs and often in dire poverty. If I had to give one sign of a decadent society it would surely be their non recognition of real artworks or real artists. In other words those are societies whose present choices will undeniably be rejected in the future.
The web is barely 20 years old in the form of its worldwide penetration but it has already altered the way we look at things and more particularly things relating to art. Anyone can nowadays publish an image gallery of his works or publish his ideas about what art is all about or discuss with other artists about the same. An art movance has sprung up that before was forced to stay in the shadows and that movance is questioning the relevance of what is going on in the art market, the galleries, museums and auction houses while exposing its own take on what art is all about.
Galleries start to take note and some have even jumped in the fray trying to recuperate this energy at their own benefit. Charles Saatchi's website is a good example of what I'm speaking about. His site already garnered the pages of tens of thousands artists from around the world. Will this movance collaborate with the art market in the future or will it find ways to spread the words and images for all to see while offering its participants a way to remunerate their work? As for today the galleries are still the only game in town in terms of remunerating the artist's work. All the art websites that sprung up these last few years are merely remunerating their owners but not much the artists who create these websites’ pages with images of their works. We are still it seems prisoners of our past ways:
I don't hold my breath that anything will change as long as the music goes and the financial speculators are supplied with the paper money to finance their dance.
But hidden from the art market stunning works are nevertheless being produced. Works that speak by breathing the air of our times and reflect on what is in store for humanity in the future. It is a shame that the creators of such works remain in the shadows. Their works not being recognized by the market those artists live from side jobs and often in dire poverty. If I had to give one sign of a decadent society it would surely be their non recognition of real artworks or real artists. In other words those are societies whose present choices will undeniably be rejected in the future.
The web is barely 20 years old in the form of its worldwide penetration but it has already altered the way we look at things and more particularly things relating to art. Anyone can nowadays publish an image gallery of his works or publish his ideas about what art is all about or discuss with other artists about the same. An art movance has sprung up that before was forced to stay in the shadows and that movance is questioning the relevance of what is going on in the art market, the galleries, museums and auction houses while exposing its own take on what art is all about.
Galleries start to take note and some have even jumped in the fray trying to recuperate this energy at their own benefit. Charles Saatchi's website is a good example of what I'm speaking about. His site already garnered the pages of tens of thousands artists from around the world. Will this movance collaborate with the art market in the future or will it find ways to spread the words and images for all to see while offering its participants a way to remunerate their work? As for today the galleries are still the only game in town in terms of remunerating the artist's work. All the art websites that sprung up these last few years are merely remunerating their owners but not much the artists who create these websites’ pages with images of their works. We are still it seems prisoners of our past ways:
- since the confusion, that followed modernism, took central stage we still have not worked out a viable definition about what art is all about and everyone is still as confused as before which renders it impossible for the large majority of web viewers to make up their minds as to the quality of the artworks they view.
- since most web viewers are part of the 99% who suffer economically under the worldwide restructuring that takes place, even if they had the means to judge the quality of a work, they don't have the financial means to buy works of art at prices that would allow their authors to survive. With the advent of Print On Demand a new avenue seemingly gives everyone a chance to sell or to buy artworks. But the Websites offering POD are the ones making real money while artists are generally left only with the possibility of a meager compensation not allowing them to make a living.
- there is also this undeniable reality that if web viewers who have the money can eventually buy online the work of someone they know this becomes rather difficult with works of artists they don't know. First there is the trust question and then there is the question of the difference between an online viewing and viewing the real thing. So I feel there is a brick and mortar extension to a web gallery that is still missing. Not a gallery taking 50% on the amount of all sales as is the case today but more something as a public space, something akin to the past French “Salon des indépendants” where the works of artists can be viewed and purchased while leaving the artist with the bulk of the income. Such a space I feel should regroup artists according to an accepted and valid understanding about what art is all about.
Unfortunately such an accepted and valid understanding about what art is all about is still not on the horizon. As a thought experiment let’s just imagine what would be the experience for viewers. An intense visual experience would be guaranteed and it would be an experience that projects meaning about the reality that is unfolding nowadays.
5.3.4.2. An Artistic Renaissance
People feel overwhelmed in Late-Modernity. They have been imposed since a few decades to consume financialized pre-packaged cultural and artistic products that don't resonate in their deepest fibers, and calls for an artistic renaissance are reverberating from the walls of one room on the web to the next. There is like a vague malaise floating around, particularly in the fine arts, that unearths fundamental questions reminiscent of the questions that bogged the Avant-Garde around 1900:
5.3.4.2. An Artistic Renaissance
People feel overwhelmed in Late-Modernity. They have been imposed since a few decades to consume financialized pre-packaged cultural and artistic products that don't resonate in their deepest fibers, and calls for an artistic renaissance are reverberating from the walls of one room on the web to the next. There is like a vague malaise floating around, particularly in the fine arts, that unearths fundamental questions reminiscent of the questions that bogged the Avant-Garde around 1900:
- What is art?
- What is the function of art in society?
With the benefit of hindsight it is now evident that the Avant-Garde did not answer those questions in any satisfying way. Their premise was certainly correct even if it was not formulated in a valid analytical way. They basically declared that the old ways had to be discarded. They despised past visions of reality and rejected realism as the first degree image that projects on the retina. They wanted to discover a deeper reality than what the eye can see. But in the end they did not really understand what it was that they rejected nor what it was they were searching for.
Among all the artists composing the Avant-Garde Marcel Duchamp is certainly the one who attained the deepest understanding of what art is all about; at least in his old days. “In fact until the last hundred years all painting had been literary or religious. It had been at the service of the mind. This characteristic was lost little by little during the last century. … Dada was very serviceable as a purgative but there was no thought of anything beyond the physical side of painting. No notion of freedom was taught. No philosophical outlook was introduced. I thought of art on a broader scale. There were discussions at the time about the fourth dimension and of non-Euclidean geometry. But most views of it were amateurish. This is the direction in which art should turn: to an intellectual expression, rather than to an animal expression. I'm sick of the expression 'bête comme un peintre' or 'stupid as a painter' ” (6).
Duchamp was nevertheless not aware of what it was that the literary aspect of painting was after. “This is the direction in which art should turn: to an intellectual expression, rather than to an animal expression.” Yes but an intellectual expression of what? This is the question I tried to answer in “Artsense”, albeit unconvincingly, and it is that same question that I try to frame in a larger context in “From Modernity to After-Modernity”. Going forward it is essential that artists understand what art is all about in order to be able to project meaning in the content of their works. The failure to understand, what art is all about and its function in societies, is the reason why the Avant-Garde erred and finally landed in the whateverland of Absurdistan.
Once we understand what is art and its function in societies, as I have laid out in earlier pages, the scope of the artistic search is radically narrowed. Such an understanding should encourage artists to search, among all the signs of a crumbling modernity, for those first signs of the worldview of After-Modernity that are sprouting here and there in front of our eyes but that, in our total unconsciousness of this happening, our eyes simply don’t see. The input of such a meaning in their content has the potential to reinvigorate works of art thus shaping a new area of artistic and societal sense that should attract observers' eyeballs.
I'm well aware that this is still not a satisfactory answer to the quest of the Avant-Garde for “a deeper reality than what the eye can see”. The worldview of After-Modernity and the first signs of it that are emerging in front of our eyes nowadays are merely abstractions of something tangible that still is escaping our comprehension.
Out of the ideological trappings of religious and early modern works the Avant-Garde also rejected traditional realism that was chasing the reproduction of images that the eye can see. A kind of first degree visual representation that originates in the fact that our human primary sensor is vision. Vision became our primary sensor in order to ensure our survival. The mechanism works something like this: the eyes observe what is in our nearby environment and transmit this info to the brain for synthesis and eventual orders of operation when an action is required to ensure our protection from some outside danger.
Traditional realism is a first degree visual representation in that it takes what the eyes see and reproduces that image on a support for others to see. Immediately a question jumps at us "what's the sense of reproducing what everyone can see?" There is a good reason for that. Because our minds accustomed to register images, over the long haul, they have developed an "inner understanding automatism" about what those images entail for life. By extension that automatism was then put to use by the brain in order to extract meaning from all drafted images reaching the eyes of the observer. This is where societies jumped at the opportunity to strengthen societal cohesion and thus also their own reproducibility. Drafted images convey their meaning to the brains of all who watch them and if all the members of a society watch the same kinds of images then all will be sharing a same meaning about the story of "us". In other words art in its first degree representation of what the eye can see has been put at the service of society in order to glue the minds behind a common story about reality.
It is extremely painful, for art lovers, to accept this idea that art, in its first degree representation of what the eyes can see, was at the service of society in order to glue the minds behind a common story about reality. Art as an instrument of the propaganda of power. Now that surely can't be!
But the fact is that art has been no more than this for thousands of years during the Christian religious phase of Western societal development and then during its early phase of modernity (the 3 obliged subjects of landscapes, portraits and stills relating to the mansions of the new rich merchants to substantiate the validity of their new values of individualism and private property...).
What the Avant-Garde rejected, at the turn of the 20th century, was such a first degree image that served ideologies that they abhorred: Christianity and the reason of capital in its early modern understanding before its operationalization under philosophic rationalism that the Avant-Garde idolized.
But unfortunately the Avant-Garde did not succeed to find:
Among all the artists composing the Avant-Garde Marcel Duchamp is certainly the one who attained the deepest understanding of what art is all about; at least in his old days. “In fact until the last hundred years all painting had been literary or religious. It had been at the service of the mind. This characteristic was lost little by little during the last century. … Dada was very serviceable as a purgative but there was no thought of anything beyond the physical side of painting. No notion of freedom was taught. No philosophical outlook was introduced. I thought of art on a broader scale. There were discussions at the time about the fourth dimension and of non-Euclidean geometry. But most views of it were amateurish. This is the direction in which art should turn: to an intellectual expression, rather than to an animal expression. I'm sick of the expression 'bête comme un peintre' or 'stupid as a painter' ” (6).
Duchamp was nevertheless not aware of what it was that the literary aspect of painting was after. “This is the direction in which art should turn: to an intellectual expression, rather than to an animal expression.” Yes but an intellectual expression of what? This is the question I tried to answer in “Artsense”, albeit unconvincingly, and it is that same question that I try to frame in a larger context in “From Modernity to After-Modernity”. Going forward it is essential that artists understand what art is all about in order to be able to project meaning in the content of their works. The failure to understand, what art is all about and its function in societies, is the reason why the Avant-Garde erred and finally landed in the whateverland of Absurdistan.
Once we understand what is art and its function in societies, as I have laid out in earlier pages, the scope of the artistic search is radically narrowed. Such an understanding should encourage artists to search, among all the signs of a crumbling modernity, for those first signs of the worldview of After-Modernity that are sprouting here and there in front of our eyes but that, in our total unconsciousness of this happening, our eyes simply don’t see. The input of such a meaning in their content has the potential to reinvigorate works of art thus shaping a new area of artistic and societal sense that should attract observers' eyeballs.
I'm well aware that this is still not a satisfactory answer to the quest of the Avant-Garde for “a deeper reality than what the eye can see”. The worldview of After-Modernity and the first signs of it that are emerging in front of our eyes nowadays are merely abstractions of something tangible that still is escaping our comprehension.
Out of the ideological trappings of religious and early modern works the Avant-Garde also rejected traditional realism that was chasing the reproduction of images that the eye can see. A kind of first degree visual representation that originates in the fact that our human primary sensor is vision. Vision became our primary sensor in order to ensure our survival. The mechanism works something like this: the eyes observe what is in our nearby environment and transmit this info to the brain for synthesis and eventual orders of operation when an action is required to ensure our protection from some outside danger.
Traditional realism is a first degree visual representation in that it takes what the eyes see and reproduces that image on a support for others to see. Immediately a question jumps at us "what's the sense of reproducing what everyone can see?" There is a good reason for that. Because our minds accustomed to register images, over the long haul, they have developed an "inner understanding automatism" about what those images entail for life. By extension that automatism was then put to use by the brain in order to extract meaning from all drafted images reaching the eyes of the observer. This is where societies jumped at the opportunity to strengthen societal cohesion and thus also their own reproducibility. Drafted images convey their meaning to the brains of all who watch them and if all the members of a society watch the same kinds of images then all will be sharing a same meaning about the story of "us". In other words art in its first degree representation of what the eye can see has been put at the service of society in order to glue the minds behind a common story about reality.
It is extremely painful, for art lovers, to accept this idea that art, in its first degree representation of what the eyes can see, was at the service of society in order to glue the minds behind a common story about reality. Art as an instrument of the propaganda of power. Now that surely can't be!
But the fact is that art has been no more than this for thousands of years during the Christian religious phase of Western societal development and then during its early phase of modernity (the 3 obliged subjects of landscapes, portraits and stills relating to the mansions of the new rich merchants to substantiate the validity of their new values of individualism and private property...).
What the Avant-Garde rejected, at the turn of the 20th century, was such a first degree image that served ideologies that they abhorred: Christianity and the reason of capital in its early modern understanding before its operationalization under philosophic rationalism that the Avant-Garde idolized.
But unfortunately the Avant-Garde did not succeed to find:
- a deeper meaning of reality than what was offered by the Christian and early modern worldviews
- a valid imaging that went further than the first degree of what the eye can see. The members of the Avant-Garde vaguely sensed that “primitive imaging”, as practiced before the religious area during animism, was onto another plane than the despised first dimension of what the eye can see but they never really understood how that was. To make sense of their intuition we'll have to wait the advent of visualization.
The images resulting from "Visualization" techniques, generally derived from science, are not first degree representations of what the eye can see. They are representations of what can be observed through microscopes or telescopes at the nth degree in that:
- the resulting image after being seen by the eyes is reprojected to the brain for synthesis and that synthesis is then further integrated into the brain's network of synaptic connections.
- such a synthesis and its further integration in the brain's network of synaptic connections ultimately gives way to a superior level of consciousness about the phenomenon that was first observed in 1. Scientists recourse to such images to benefit from the "inner understanding automatism" developed by the brain over the long history in order to grasp the meaning of the abstractions their observations generates. Scientific knowledge is indeed highly abstract and visualization helps getting around the meaning of the abstractions. That's how visualization established itself as one specific field of knowledge.
While visualization was used since times immemorial it only developed into a specialized branch of knowledge in the 1990th and it is thus unknown how artists are going to incorporate the superior level of consciousness attained by scientists in step 3 of the visualization process in their own works during After-Modernity. A detour to the “First Arts” could perhaps foreshadow some of these characteristics.
The same 1, 2, 3 stepping kind of mechanism was indeed at work under animistic knowledge formation:
The same 1, 2, 3 stepping kind of mechanism was indeed at work under animistic knowledge formation:
- it was what the brains of the shaman were inducing from their observations about reality, largely with the help of magic plants, that was being imaged for the eyes of all tribesmen to see.
- the resulting images, at the hands of the shaman, after being seen by the eyes of their tribesmen were being recited by them as decorations on their tools and all their other productions. The result of seeing their own images and seeing how they were adopted by their tribesmen was then being reprojected to the brains of the shaman for synthesis and that synthesis was then further integrated in their brain's network of synaptic connections.
- such a synthesis and its further integration in the shaman brain's network of synaptic connections gave him ultimately access to a superior level of consciousness about the phenomenons that were first observed in 1. This, in short, explains the legendary wisdom of “primitive man” or its pragmatism.
That superior level of consciousness is what the shaman everywhere around the world have passed on to their tribesmen. But what is stunning is the level of similarity in the shamanic stories everywhere around the world and not only in the stories but also in the imagings and abstract symbols crafted around the world during animism. They did not have the web to exchange ideas and coordinate the unification of the animistic worldview around the world. So how did this unification come about?
To start to understand the similarities in ideas, values and imagings from tribe to tribe the whole world over we have to trace the originating moment of the build-up of their knowledge. In one word observation. Or better the observation of a common given:
To start to understand the similarities in ideas, values and imagings from tribe to tribe the whole world over we have to trace the originating moment of the build-up of their knowledge. In one word observation. Or better the observation of a common given:
- the rhythms and patterns of the earth (nature and the natural environment)
- the rhythms and patterns of the cycles of time (solar: day-night and seasonal, moon, etc...)
- the rhythms and patterns of the sky (astrology)
That the observations of shaman from North to South and East to West were largely similar is nothing strange. They were observing the same phenomena, over tens of thousands of years without wearing ideologically tainted glasses and so their conclusions logically ended up being similar. This also explains how the animistic worldview was really a universal worldview that contrasted with future imperial worldviews that were stuck in the justification of power and their particularisms: regionalism and ideology.
I’m convinced that the synthesis and further integration in the scientists' network of synaptic connections, in step 3 of their visualization of phenomena, is giving way to a superior level of consciousness that over time should lead to a unified vision about what reality is all about at the image of the systemic vision of animism. But for this to materialize it will be indispensable that scientists break their bonds of slavery to the capital holders.
But, as artists, how can we possibly switch to such a multi-level degree imaging and the superior level of consciousness that comes with it? That's the real important question of our day and I have the feeling that the answer to that question, after we ultimately find it, shall finally lay to rest the quest initiated by the Avant-Garde at the turn of the twentieth century.
It seems to me that such an answer is what is going to power the history of art during the period that comes after Modernity. But we have to remain humble. In Late-Modernity artists, as the Chinese saying goes, are only starting to try "feeling the stones in the river with their toes" hoping to find a path to the other side. We are indeed in a period of historical transition from Modernity to After-Modernity. In such a transition there is no certainty to be on the right historical path and this can be quite unsettling I admit.
Notes.
1. Tianxia or “all under heaven”. The meaning of all under heaven relates to 3 elements:
I’m convinced that the synthesis and further integration in the scientists' network of synaptic connections, in step 3 of their visualization of phenomena, is giving way to a superior level of consciousness that over time should lead to a unified vision about what reality is all about at the image of the systemic vision of animism. But for this to materialize it will be indispensable that scientists break their bonds of slavery to the capital holders.
But, as artists, how can we possibly switch to such a multi-level degree imaging and the superior level of consciousness that comes with it? That's the real important question of our day and I have the feeling that the answer to that question, after we ultimately find it, shall finally lay to rest the quest initiated by the Avant-Garde at the turn of the twentieth century.
It seems to me that such an answer is what is going to power the history of art during the period that comes after Modernity. But we have to remain humble. In Late-Modernity artists, as the Chinese saying goes, are only starting to try "feeling the stones in the river with their toes" hoping to find a path to the other side. We are indeed in a period of historical transition from Modernity to After-Modernity. In such a transition there is no certainty to be on the right historical path and this can be quite unsettling I admit.
Notes.
1. Tianxia or “all under heaven”. The meaning of all under heaven relates to 3 elements:
- a unified territory
- a unified worldviews
- a sovereign
2. citation in Wikipedia from Paul Carus’ book “Chinese Astrology, Early Chinese Occultism” (1974).
3. Wu, K. C. (1982). The Chinese Heritage. New York: Crown Publishers.
4. See my conversation with the spirit of Kandinsky in “Artsense” pages 201 to 210.
5. Wassily Kandinsky. On the problem of form. 1912.
6. From an interview of Duchamp with James Johnson Sweeney: “Painting at the service of the mind” in “11 Europeans in America”. Bulletin of Modern art; XIII, n# 4-5. 1946.
3. Wu, K. C. (1982). The Chinese Heritage. New York: Crown Publishers.
4. See my conversation with the spirit of Kandinsky in “Artsense” pages 201 to 210.
5. Wassily Kandinsky. On the problem of form. 1912.
6. From an interview of Duchamp with James Johnson Sweeney: “Painting at the service of the mind” in “11 Europeans in America”. Bulletin of Modern art; XIII, n# 4-5. 1946.
No comments:
Post a Comment