Painting (12)

About Postmodernism.

Postmodernism is an old concept used to indicate what follows the modern age but it has been associated with so many different ideas that the concept ended up being foggy and perceived as some kind of metaphysical rareness. I'm using the concept "postmodern" in its narrow sense of "what follows the modern age". Another denomination shall eventually impose itself out of the practice of what comes after modernism but only the future will tell.

1. Preliminaries. (post Painting 10)

2. The context of the new societal paradigm in the forming (post Painting 11)

3. On the road toward a postmodern societal paradigm.

= The result of a worldwide economic rebalancing act.

Four heavily determining factors, about the shaping of our future, are well on their way toward intersecting: "The road of humanity" + "the axioms of civilizations" + "science and technology" + "globalization". The point of intersection of those factors is where our future shall be determined including the future of visual arts that interests us more particularly.

Sketch of the rebalancing act.

West atomization .... competing worldviews .... educational mess + falling work ethics .... downhill economic muddle-through towards economic irrelevance .... coming under the cultural spell	Asia societalation .... shared worldview .... educational excellence + strong work ethics .... uphill economic build-up towards economic dominance .... establishing cultural hegemony

The industrialized countries of the North are engaged in a similar societal pattern that grew out of Europe's liberation of the genie of greed and want for material possessions that took place around the time of the Renaissance and intensified ever after. In short the loss of control of the systems that unified the individuals into common beliefs behind their societies has launched an ever increasing individualism that led Western societies to atomize. But this has taken place in the absence of any collectively accepted values that would later resist the scrutiny of rationality. The consequence has been an ever growing materialism leading individuals to believe in their own centrality. Eurocentrism has made place for indivicentrism and social wilderness became the societal norm. The present religious craze in the US changes nothing to that reality it is indeed a religiosity of form, of individualistic form, and not a religiosity of philosophical substance, in other words a marketing religiosity and not a Jesus religiosity. Furthermore it is a worldview of the past that finds itself more and more at loggerheads with the real world of the rationality of the logic of capital + science and technology + globalization. Western societies are characterized today by the simultaneous presence of all kinds of worldviews competing for the adherence of the individual atoms. ("communities of interest"+"communities of practice"+"communities of purpose" )

Practically the sole unifying element of all Western individual atoms is the "unconscious belief" in the founding building blocks of the Western civilization:
- opposites on a mission to eliminate the other (good versus bad)
- and a starting point / ending point of the principle of reality (god the creator sets reality into motion and each individual capturing god's love is on a mission to reciprocate that love in the hope of being admitted in the promised paradise of eternity).
I describe this in detail in Painting 5: "the axioms of civilization".

In the meantime other societies succeeded to keep a firm control on their cultural unification mechanisms and this factor has a decisive impact, today, on the way those societies are entering the age of capitalistic globalization.

* ........One group of nations among those societies is resisting and refusing to accept the ways of the industrial world. Having succeeded to keep intact their cultural unification mechanisms it's their societies as a whole that resist Western ways. This group is the one that has the most to lose. Their resistance to modern influences is impeaching them to adapt to overwhelming changing realities that impact the whole world. I'm speaking here basically about the Muslim world that represents not far from 25% of the world population. Their non-joining in the rationality of the logic of capital implies a defenseless societal weakness that roots the "back on the wall" weapon of terror.

* .......Another group is composed by those societies that experienced an indigestible cultural shock that left them very sick.

- The states of Black Africa have been erected by Europe's whiteman as physical borders delimiting their national economic interests in colonial Africa. Africans saw their cultures, economies and political systems destroyed by whiteman who then imposed, on them, economies depending on one crop export agriculture, the Christian religion and political systems cloned on the system of the European colonial power. All this resulted in a societal catastrophe without any precedent in human history. The Africans could not resist the destruction of their traditional systems and simultaneously they could also not erase their past and allheartedly adopt the system of their masters. What ensued has been a mishmash of African traditions mixed with imported European ways but those were non-complementary and resulted in a devastating economic and cultural shock that is today destabilizing the demographic structures among Africans: irresistible growth in natality leading to a fast growth in population that is accompanied by an astounding fall in life expectancies.

- The other region that came under a severe cultural shock is composed of the territories forming the old USSR. The fate of Russia illustrates quite well this mechanism of severe non-digestible cultural shock that I'm referring to. After the fall of the communist party around 1990, under the leadership of Yeltsin and the theoretical input of US development economists such as Jeffrey Sacks who proposed a plan for Russia to accede to capitalism in 500 days, the country literally imploded and disintegrated. The economy collapsed and Russian resources came under the control of bureaucrats who transformed in robber barons. The Russian economy finally started to redress its head around 2003 only for the combination of autoritarian policies and the sharp increase in income from abroad due to the price of oil that peaked followed the American adventures in the Middle-East. But in the meantime the cultural shock experienced by Russians in their daily lives was so intense that the total population of Russia started to fall and is projected to fall further:
1992: 148.7 million.
2004: 143.5 million ......(but 1992/2004 includes a net influx of 5,5 million people !)
2015: 134 million .........(projection by the Russian State Statistical Committee)
2050: 85 million .....................................................( " )
2075: 50-55 million. ..............................................( " )
With the help of its vast underground resources it is expected that a highly educated Russia could make a comeback but the fate of Africans is unsure. High natality rates with economic misery and cultural drift all result in the fall of the average life expectancy of Africans. It seems as if Africa had no future and whiteman's acts surely do not bode well but perhaps African resources attracting Chinese investors could unleash Chinese wisdom to save Africa. The future will tell.

*,,,,,., By the time of late modernity another group of nations among those societies that succeeded to keep intact their cultural unification mechanisms voluntarily adapted the rationality of the logic of capital: China, India, Brazil, South Africa,...

A turning point has been reached, in the globalization of the rationality that is derived from the logic of capital, with the initiation of political reforms by Deng Xiao Ping in China. The economic success of China has been built upon the success of its agricultural reforms in the 1980th that relied on the following earlier policies:

- monumental irrigation works had been undertaken from the fifties till the seventies: water reserves in artificial lakes and water canalizations had maximized the growth of crops on a vastly increased acreage.

- the systematic destruction of cultural traditions during the cultural revolution had eliminated the cultural and social barriers towards societal change and entrepreneurialism.

Those were the factors that guaranteed the success of the agricultural reforms and the accumulation of capital in the countryside has then been put into use in industrial endeavors. What is called the "township enterprises" has indeed been financed with agricultural surpluses and those township enterprises have assured a steady stream of very cheap parts and components that State owned and foreign ventures then assembled into finished products ready for export. This historical process is unique to China and can't be reproduced anywhere else.

The historically competitive nature of the relations between India and China drove India to follow the industrial lead of China. But India's conditions are vastly different. The weight of traditions is acting as a barrier to an even development of the countryside: religious strife, caste system, and cultural traditions in general. India could thus not follow China's path of development from capital accumulation in agriculture to industrial development. But it made the wise choice to rely on a highly educated and English speaking minority to attract high intellectual input activities from the West which resulted in a fast increase of exports that in turn spawned pockets of prosperity.


China and India, among themselves, represent nearly half of the world population! There is just no way that the world can ignore half of its population. This is not going to last; the ignored half will simply not allow it to last.
So what are the lessons, one should glean, in term of cultural values that will make a difference between that half of the world population and the 10% of the world population that are living in Western advanced industrial systems?

*...... Atomization versus societalation. (I did not find a better word than societalation)
I describe in detail those axioms on which is built the Chinese civilization in Painting 4: "The axioms of civilizations". These are the foundations upon which Confucius and his followers devised a pragmatic organizational model for the functioning of the Chinese society. Later emperors imposed this system as the knowledge base of China's education system that lasted for the last 2,000 years:
- The basic structure of the Chinese society is the family that regroups 5 levels of relationships: father, eldest son, other children, mother, friends.
- The world outside of those 5 relationships is presented as dangerous and tricky so all relations that one has to entertain with the outside world have to be undertaken under the model of "guenxi" meaning that one should only relate with outsiders who are in relationship with one of your 5 levels of relationship. In other words you don't make business with someone you don't know, or if you have to, you have to take all necessary precautions so as to avoid being ripped off but this somehow also gives you “carte blanche” to cheat someone you enter in relation with and who has no connection with one of your 5 relationship. Cheating in such conditions is not considered as evil it is only a sign of the stupidity of the one who accepts to be cheated.
- The national society is considered as the family of all families and the emperor was considered as the father of all families. In Chinese Confucianism the first value of all individuals is the family and society comes second. In Japanese Confucianism the first value of all individuals is society with the emperor as the god and family relations come second. This explains the stark differences observed in the attitudes of Chinese and Japanese behaviors; Chinese are extremely individualistic at the image of the French and Italians while the Japanese are more collectively driven at the image of the Germans.

Western societies are on a path of atomization since long. The rationality of the logic of capital gave anyone this idea, perception or right to chose what one thinks is rational. Further democratization into free choice of purchase and free choice of political representation led to an accentuation of the individual's perception of the centrality of his person. The atomization of Western societies has advanced to the point that societies have lost control over individual thinking and behavior. In parallel marketization made the freedom to enjoy oneself the center of its publicity campaigns. The result is a societal air of permissivity and of laxism that encourages the individuals to relax, to enjoy and to let go.

The contrast between the Chinese and Western attitudes is radical. Chinese, and this is valid for Indians too, share their societies' traditional visions about the necessary respect for authority and the need to make an effort to accumulate knowledge that, by the way, is not considered as an abstract entity but more as a practical way at knowing the workings of one's society and thus directly rewarding. In China upbringing children has always placed education at the center of all preoccupations. So we are faced with a system where the father has absolute and uncontested authority over the children and the education of his children is the central preoccupation of the father who thus naturally has a high respect for teachers and professors. The individuals are thus accepting the binding rules of society and the societal dynamic is just opposite of the Western atomization.
We should thus be confronted with something as a "Western atomization versus an Asian societalation".

* ........A shared worldview versus competing non-functional models of worldviews:
The individual atoms of Western societies came to believe in their own world centrality but somehow they were at a loss. They can't let go this feeling that they are only particles of the whole they belong to and they are permanently longing for inclusiveness. This thirst is then exploited by a multitude of groups, religious or other, that compete for the inclusion of the atoms in their belief system. Here lies one of the biggest differences between today and a few centuries ago. Then the men of power simply imposed the worldview of the men of knowledge on all while today, the men of power having lost that power, a multitude of "interests" compete for gullible and exploitable followers. For sure the temptation is always present to re-use the old autoritarian ways but the resistance by civil society is great and so our modern men of power are left with the only possibility to manipulate public opinions out of their knowing.
The consequence of the men of power losing their power to impose a common worldview on all has been dramatic. In this adventure, Western societies lost their cohesion; some believing reality is this while others believing reality is that. The competition between so many holders of different worldviews for followers became the central act and it gradually displaced the traditional forms associated with the belief in a common worldview resulting in:

- the loss, of the societal functionality of the visual arts to illustrate the worldview of the men of knowledge of the day at the attention of all, that left wide open the door for the rationality of the logic of capital to impose "whatever" as art.

- the loss of a unified set of images about reality that left the door open to multiple visual approaches and ultimately the choice of "whatever" by financial speculators imposing their preference for a neutral and aseptic cultural environment. This aseptic diversity took root, not only in visual arts, gradually all sectors came to be fair game for the rationality of the logic of capital: housing, interior decoration, textiles and apparel, communication, transportation, ... they succeeded to hoard the water we drink and soon perhaps we'll be obliged to pay for the air we breathe.

- the loss of a unique worldview opened the door to various visions of economic reality that obliged Western societies to come up with a compromise between capital holders and the workforce. This compromise took the form of democracy and minimum social security. But the compromise would be discarded by capital holders once they found available armies of working slaves willing to do the work at only a fraction of what Western workers had succeeded to gain from them earlier. That's when capital unleashed the globalization of its reach.


The globalization move by the capital holders coincided with the move by the Chinese communist party towards reforming its Stalinist industrialization approach and the Chinese communist successes somehow, how to say, paradoxically pushed big capital and Chinese communists leaders in an embrace. I guess that 50 years from now this embrace will be seen by historians as the threshold point when the world toppled over and really was set on the path of unification under the rationality of the logic of capital.

The Chinese are sharing a common worldview since millenniums and what is absolutely stunning is that modern science has been driven recently along the same lines of understanding reality as the Chinese worldview. I bet that this will be seen 100 years from now as one of the most worldchanging events of our human history. I described the difference between the Chinese and the Western worldview in Painting 5: "the axioms of civilizations".

* .......Two diametrically opposed visions about education and work ethics: rote learning and obedience in Asia versus creativity and critical spirit in the West.
For sure the Western ways are better adapted to the economic realities of late modernism I guess that nobody seriously questions that. Very complex societies need more and more individuals who have the problem solvers skills and this implies individuals who are groomed to be critical and creative. But Western societies represent just over 10% of the world population and our economies being more and more intertwined we are becoming ever more dependent upon commodities produced by the 90% who are just entering "early modernity". The rationality of the logic of capital has presented all of us with a "fait accompli" : they knew how all that would work out; delocalizations of blue collar jobs would be accompanied by our white collar hegemony. In other words we would think the products at a very high cost and they would manufacture it at a very low cost. But this kind of logic simply can not work for long. Having taken over manufacturing, the Chinese now want to take over the conception and the marketing. How are we to respond to their challenge ?
Chinese universities are churning out over 350,000 engineers a year; this compares with a paltry 50,000 engineers in the US. The two graduate degrees offered in the United States are the master's degree and the doctoral degree. Check out the evolution of the Doctoral degrees distribution among US and foreign recipients:

Foreign recipients ....................................... 1977................1994................2000
Doctors %............................................................11.....................27 ...................34

Foreign Born Doctorate Degrees
.........................................................................Table 1 (1993).......... Table 2 (2000)
Engineering .............................................................40.3 ..........................61.1
Mathematical ...........................................................31.1 ..........................53.5
Physical ,Chemistry , Astronomy ...........................25.9 ..........................47.7
Economics ...............................................................23.6 ..........................37.5

In 1995, over 50% of those doctor degrees were distributed to students from China, Korea, Taiwan and India. The proportion of students from those countries has been going up since but I did not find anyhere the exact figures. For sure, until 2001, most of those foreign doctoral degree recipients decided to work and live in the US but things are starting to change. The perception of the US policy on one side and on the other side the rapid internal development of China and India are pushing more and more Chinese and Indian doctors back to their homeland.
Those figures about China's internal engineering degrees and US doctoral degrees do invalidate the idea that delocalizations of blue collar jobs would be accompanied by our guaranteed white collar hegemony as the rationality of the logic of capital had presented the rebalancing of work under globalization.

Education fills young brains with knowings produced by the rationality of the logic of capital, as such, it is a unification factor within the societal dynamic. Another unifying factor is language. When you combine the increasing number of Chinese getting university degrees with the fact that Mandarin is the first spoken language on earth you start to understand that Mandarin is establishing itself as the first language used on the internet. This also means that the most used language in terms of transmission and creation of knowings is definitely going to be Mandarin. Time has come for english speakers to learn a second and third language....

The following seem to shape what points on the horizon:

- life conditions in Chinese cities are rapidly reaching the quality of life in American and European cities.

- the maturation of demand on the Chinese market will give China such scale economies that its prices will be over-competitive for some decades to come.

- the qualitative maturation of education in Chinese universities will give rise to first world class endogenous research.

- the Chinese will gradually impose technological applications, on the market, derived from their own scientific endeavors.

This process transforms China into an "economy-world"1 that is bound to dominate the world economy and in this process, that in finale is no more than a question of quantity of money in circulation, Chinese culture and the elements of the Chinese worldview will become hegemonic.
When I write about the process toward the establishment of the hegemony of the Chinese culture I'm thinking about a gradual process that start with the absorption by the Chinese culture of elements of Western culture. For the Chinese the 20th century has basically been a time of observation of the visible characters of Western economic and cultural strength. This has also been a time of introspection and analysis of their own civilization and culture with the aim to isolate the factors that kept China economically backward. Without any doubt, with the help of Marxism, the Chinese adopted the rationality of the logic of capital. They imported not only science, technology and capital but also merchandization. It should nevertheless be pointed out that they kept a firm grip on the founding elements of their own culture: "a market economy with Chinese characteristics" or to say it more bluntly "the surveillance and guidance of the rationality of the logic of capital by Chinese culture".

History has repeatedly shown us that the most active centers of artistic creation follow the power of money:

- following the crusade eye-opener on the luxuries of the Arabs the financial power accumulated by the Italian City-State merchants though "obliged trade" financed the works of the Renaissance masters. (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Titian, Botticelli, Raphael, ...)

- by mid 15th century the wool industry of Flanders establishes the economic power of Bruges. (the Limbourg Brothers who painted “Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry”, Van Eyck who perfected the newly developed technique of oil painting, Memling, Rogier van der Weyden, Dierick Bouts, ...)

- when the last Burgundian Duke was defeated in 1477 Burgundy ceased to exist; Flanders and the rest of the Netherlands passed into the hands of the Holy Roman Empire whose seat of power was in Castilla/Spain and under pression from the Castillan inquisition Bruges lost its protestant rich entrepreneurs and merchants who established themselves further north-East in Antwerp (Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Joachim Patenier, Durer described him as a "good landscape painter" , Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, ...).

- the Spanish inquisition sacked and burned Antwerp around 1570 and again in 1590. The capital holders, artists and intellectuals fled to Amsterdam that transformed into the new economic capital of the Western world till around 1750 and the bankruptcy of the Dutch East India Company
( Rembrandt, Jan Vermeer, Jan Lievens, ...)

- the English East-India Company benefited from the retreat of the Dutch Company from Asia and from newly made-available Dutch capital that found its road to Britain. Great Britain will be the center of the capitalistic economy from around 1750 to 1940 (Thomas Gainsborough , William Turner , Francis Bacon ...) Britain always remained in the shadow of France culturally and more particularly Paris that had transformed into the cultural capital of the European aristocracy.

- the second world war helped the US out of its thirties recession and propulsed the country at the center of economic power. ( Pollock , David Hockney , Mark Rothko , Andy Warhol , Jasper Johns , Edward Ruscha , Keith Haring ) Since the 1980th globalization of capital + the conversion of Communist China to the rationality of the logic of capital are unleashed a whirlwind of changes that are engendering a rebalancing of the economic forces around the world.

- China is projected to become the highest GDP-figure economy on earth sometime between 2030 and 2050. But its GDP per capita will still be largely inferior than the figures in the US, the EU, Japan and many other places which means that China has the potential to grow a lot larger than any other economy. The economic weight of China will be felt around the world this makes no doubt and the names of its artists shall take predominance in the art market; that seems self-evident....

Some will argue that China has many internal problems and that it easily could collapse before transforming into an economic giant. It is true that social eruptions could topple the communist party but we should never forget that more than two millenia of bureaucratic management experience have taught some things about political power to the Chinese that we in the West have all the pain in the world to even start thinking about. But I guess that my point is ultimately that even if the communist party collapsed one day; the Chinese economy would not follow. Industrialization in China is now the fact of the Chinese people who are taking their fate into their own hands.
The State controlled economy shall gradually be limited to a few hundred companies benefiting from massive State capital installments. The stated goal of the Communist party is to create a group of champion companies that can take on the biggest multinationals in vesting the control of whole-world economic sectors.
My bet is that the outcome of this specific strategy shall outline the form of China's coming hegemony and not the internal problems that the country will face and solve.

My next post shall be: The postmodern paradigm.


(1). A concept developed by the historian Fernand Braudel to illustrate how the Renaissance developed "The Mediterranean region" into the center of the world economy and how the characteristics of its "economy-world" status were then taken over by the rest of the world. This concept indicates how an economy that absolutely captures the attention of the world, at a given time. can eventually morph into something as the beating heart of the world economy, as an economy-world. China appears to morph into something as an economy-world: the prices on the raw materials market are today determined by China's demand and the prices of oil are going up in parallel with the increase of the Chinese demand for oil. When the Chinese government speaks all capital holders of the world are listening... For sure China has still not reached the status of an economy-world but it is well on its way to appear as such tomorrow in the eyes of all.

Painting (11)

About Postmodernism.

Postmodernism is an old concept used to indicate what follows the modern age but it has been associated with so many different ideas that the concept ended up being foggy and perceived as some kind of metaphysical rareness. I'm using the concept "postmodern" in its narrow sense of "what follows the modern age". Another denomination shall eventually impose itself out of the practice of what comes after modernism but only the future will tell.

1. Preliminaries. (post Painting 10)

2. The context of the new societal paradigm in the forming

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the way we think and understand, what is reality and our place in it, is rapidly evolving. Our worldview is unifying and shaping into a radically new paradigm. But we still have to face many many more transformations that gradually will give us to see reality from a very different angle than we ever had in the past. This experience will be dramatic and will plunge most of us in a state of deep shock. It just can't be otherwise for the new paradigm that is shaping under our eyes is worldchanging indeed.

1. In term of the form of transformations to come:

We are entering one of the most deep changing human perception phase in our history. What makes me say this?

The changes that our societies are going through are:

• universal: those changes are affecting all societies on earth and each and everyone of us will have to adapt. There is no going back. The mechanic has been launched and can't be stopped. Earlier changes had been local or at best regional. Never in history has humanity in its entirety been driven simultaneously in one unique adventure. Modernism has largely been the story of the growth of rationality in Western Europe and its canon forced expansion to the 4 corners of the earth. With postmodernism Europe and the West will undoubtedly not count any longer as the dominant forces in the shaping of what comes next. Western culture will be losing the hegemony it imposed on the rest of the world. Postmodernism will definitely not be dominated by whiteman's culture but by new entrants in the rational game of the logic of capital: China, India, Brazil, South Africa,... This time around it is the culture of a majority of the world population that will shine light on our reality. The universality of changes to come is worldchanging by itself but it will be reinforced by the following:

• fast speed: those changes are coming at us at the speed of a meteor. Such a fast speed of occurring changes in the field of our economies, our social relations and our cultural values has never been experienced before in the history of the human race. Those of us who have an open mind and their eyes wide open, on the depth of the transformations that can already be observed from year to year, are simply amazed at how it drives our curiosity. If you start to understand the depth of what is going on you just can't stay still any longer you long to know more. What seems already clear is that the speed of transformations is such that everybody is taken by surprise by the new developments. What I mean to say is that trends are now firmly established long before we even think to react and this implies that the dynamic of transformations is following its own path out of our capability to interfere. I know that these words will come as a shock for many but those are not of my own ramblings. Vernor Vinge of the Department of Mathematical Sciences at San Diego State University calls this a "SINGULARITY" and he writes that it is as "A black hole in the Extropian worldview whose gravity is so intense that no light can be shed on what lies beyond it."

• all encompassing: nothing will escape the tsunami and nothing will be the same thereafter. In earlier times transformations touched one or relatively few fields and the interactions between changes from different fields were limited. This time around things look vastly different. The rationality of the logic of capital brought us science and technology that are revolutionizing all aspects of our material life. By helping to disseminate the logic of capital, science and technology is expanding the realm of changes from the industrially advanced societies to the whole world and it thus expands the field of revolutionizing from all aspects of our material life to the cultures and civilizations of this world.

2. In term of the substance of transformations to come:

The process that we are engaged in is a very complex one but what is already clear is that the biggest transformations will result not from one or another particular factor but from the interactions between changes occurring in the following heavy determining factors:

• The shock between individualities and societies. I have written about that particular aspect in my post Painting (4): "the road of humanity".

• The shock occasioned by the rapid introduction of new scientific discoveries and applications.

• The civilizational roads, we all are surfing on, will be put to the task of adapting or perishing at the contact with the dynamic between ["the road of humanity" + "science and technology"] that is materializing very rapidly and in a universal context. I have written extensively about our civilizational roads in my post Painting (5): "The axioms of civilizations" dated February 17th, 2005.
  

Painting (10)

About Postmodernism.

Postmodernism is an old concept used to indicate what follows the modern age but it has been associated with so many different ideas that the concept ended up being foggy and perceived as some kind of metaphysical rareness. I'm using the concept "postmodern" in its narrow sense of "what follows the modern age". Another denomination shall eventually impose itself out of the practice of what comes after modernism but only the future will tell.

1. Preliminaries.

My vision about what comes next in visual arts is grounded in the following premises that I developed in detail earlier:

1.1. About what is art and what is not art.

I expanded at length earlier on the fact that visual art is about the illustration of the worldview of the men of knowledge of the day at the attention of all the members of their society. Human history witnesses 3 distinctive worldviews succeeding one another: animism (primitive arts), the gods (religious art) and the modern age (private ownership, individualism and the rationality of the logic of capital). We are nowadays in the late stages of "late modernism" or in the early stages of "early postmodernism". The postmodern worldview has still not taken form it is only starting to shape and the modern worldview is rapidly waning falling into insignificance..

• This is a time of much uncertainties and partisanship for sure but what is certain is that the visual signs of earlier times do not qualify any longer as art subjects nowadays.

• What constitutes visual art today is the expression in visual signs of the worldview of the postmodern age or to be more accurate the rendering of visual signs about the perception of the men of knowledge relating to the shaping of the postmodern worldview.

It should thus be accepted that portraits, landscapes and depictions of religious stories do not, in the 21^st century, constitute valid subjects of visual art any longer. This does not imply that such works have no place in our societies. I only mean to say that, they can't be considered as works of art any longer, they are crafters' products, sometimes industrial products, at the attention of the interior decoration market. The modern age gave us markets and among them the interior decoration, interior design markets. Those thrived on satisfying one narrow aspect of what has been the traditional function of visual arts throughout our cultural history, the usage functionality versus the more encompassing artistic and societal functionality. In other words visual signs of the worldview of the men of knowledge of the day were incorporated into objects of daily usage like pots and pans in animist times, wall coverings in religious times and interior decoration in modern times. The offers of the "interior decor" mass market let go the artistic and societal functionality and concentrated instead on the possibility to give affordable goods to all citizens that would satisfy the narrow functionality of usage that had been initiated by the aristocracy and the new rich bourgeois since "early modern" times.

1.2. About knowledge, knowings and rationality.

My vision relates to the long haul history. I mean that I look at history from the perspective of the long waves that traversed our societies over long spans of time and for some continue to swirl into the future. My subject is visual art and I posit that art is related to the rendering in visual signs of the worldview of the day or to be more accurate the worldview of the men of knowledge of the day.

Art and worldviews are thus my subjects.

For sure there are an infinity of ways to approach those subjects. One can, for example, take a microscope and plunge into the infinitesimal or a telescope and plunge into the infinite. After much research this approach leads to some conclusions about the workings of the different components of the subjects being studied but it does not give us any clue about the meaning of our subjects into their global environment. Here is the difference between the scientific approach and the philosophic approach. Scientists accumulate knowings in the narrow field of their vertical focus on the constitutive particles, or components, of their subject. Philosophers focus on the horizontal linkages between all subjects and their linkage to vaster constitutive ensembles. Philosophers use the available scientific knowings to gain a better understanding of the inner working of the subjects so as to have a better understanding of the impact their inner working has on the linkage of that subject with the other subjects. Vertically gained knowledge is thus put in good use to gain visibility in the horizontal linkages.

The scientific approach has been derived as an extension of the rationality that seeps out of the logic of capital. The logic of capital is pragmatic and nothing else. It induces the holders of capital (1) to preserve and increase the capital that they invest and over time they develop methods and systems helping them to maximize the preservation and increase of their capital base that's what is called the rationality of the logic of capital. Over time, after centuries of practice of that rationality, capital holders instinctively came to know when an innovation in ideas or techniques would help them to increase their capital base and they automatically invested in the development of such ideas and techniques. It should thus not come as a surprise that capital holders were often the ones who studied a problem and came up with a solution that helped them to generate higher returns for their investments. A better understanding of the impact of ideas and techniques gradually shaped a general attitude of respect for knowledge and the capital holders started to finance institutions that would specialize in the teaching of available knowledge and develop new ideas and techniques. Science as a system to understand reality was born but it was a flawed system for it was subservient to the rationality of the logic of capital. Science was born as a function of that rationality and it is still a slave of the finality that lay at the heart of the logic of capital, it has to serve the preservation and increase of the capital base. Not fulfilling its obligation, as a slave, results in the sanctioning of science through a cut of its financing. Scientists have to eat, as do their families, and they comply with the orders.

But capital forgot or could simply not have thought about the fact that knowledge would eventually develop its own internal logic: "our understanding of what we don't understand" is more and more becoming the motor of our intellectual endeavors. Software developers impulsed the "open source software" trend and today we hear about "open source nano-technology", "open source biotechnologies", and the "commons copyrights movement". Hope is on the way!

Let me reassure you I do not reject the scientific approach, I'm well too aware of the fact that Its knowings are directly enriching the philosophical approach. But it should nevertheless be noted that modern societies cultivated the scientific approach into what appears now more and more as a plague of human intelligence. Time has come for a critical observation, of what knowledge is all about, an observation that should be free of any interference by the logic of capital.

1.3. About the role of the artist.

Starting with Modernity (around 1900) the role of the visual artist was fundamentally altered. In every earlier periods in history the artist's role was to illustrate the given worldview of the men of knowledge and power of the day, the shaman in animist times, the priest in religious times and the bourgeois in early modern times. What I mean to say is that the artist was imposed a message to illustrate that he could not circumvent.

Modernism starts with the rejection of past models of interpretation of reality by some artists following the 1st world war. (Duchamp, Breton, Masson, Miro, ..., Constant, Hundertwasser). Let's not be confused here, from Van Gogh to Picasso the earlier model of interpretation of reality had remained what it was before what I mean to say here is that the first degree image that projects on the retina was what Van Gogh and Picasso tried to render albeit in an evolving style. Form was changing but content remained identical. Starting with Dada and the surrealists artists were after a different content, they did not really care about form. Read Duchamp, Breton, Masson, Miro, Kandinsky and the others there can be no doubt that for them content was the essence of an art work.

But what would content look like, now, that no models of interpretation of reality were imposed, or should I say, no longer accepted? This is the story of visual arts from 1918 till today. Everyone is naturally free to produce his own views. I personally wrote extensively about the culmination of modernism into confusion, into the "whatever" principle that our "all-knowing art bureaucratic word machine" will expand so lavishingly in so many incomprehensible treatises and articles that I confess I don't understand. Let me be clear, I understand the words and the sentences that they write but I don't see where the logic that they express leads us to. After living a decade and a half in China I learned something about pragmatism and the idea that change is our reality. I must say that I just don't see how all the present discourse about reality, about art will resist the tide of globalization and our changing tomorrows.

I personally think that visual artists have no other alternatives but to follow in the footsteps of Duchamp, Kandinsky, Masson and the others who made content the central story of art. Knowledge about "perception", about "worldviews and civilizations" about "societal systems", about "systemic complexity" and about so many other concepts was not available to the artists living in the first part of the 20^th century and their understanding of what "artistic content" was all about could thus only be very limited.

In a1946 interview Duchamp told "... 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. ... I felt that as a painter it was much better to be influenced by a writer than by another painter." There was a good reason why Duchamp preferred to be influenced by a writer than by a painter for as he was saying: "I'm sick of the expression 'bete comme un peintre' -stupid as a painter". Had he gone one step further Duchamp might have understood why painters were seen to be so stupid. Painters had never been given the freedom to come up with their own content, on the contrary, they had always been imposed a message, a script and their role had thus always been limited to the craft of an image technician. Thinking was thus not their strength.

But with the rejection after the first world war of the traditional model of reality as being the first degree image that projects on the retina, a question imposed itself to all: "what are we to represent as content from now on?" Not trained to have a cultural and scientific baggage painters were at a loss. They tried all kinds of approaches but in the end all those approaches floundered and here is where sets in the responsibility of the "all-knowing art bureaucratic word machine" in the ensuing degradation of the visual arts into "whatever" and total confusion. Our "all-knowing art bureaucratic word machine" was being corrupted by the gold of the merchants and speculators who succeeding to making astronomical bucks from Duchamp's "ready-made" and other absurdities. They were ordered by the merchants and speculators to impose the stamp of their societally recognized authority on "whatever" so that substantial benefits could be subtracted from the wallets of innocents.

The 20^th century artists should thus not be blamed for the confusion where visual arts landed in late modernity, the blame should squarely be laid at the feet of our "all-knowing art bureaucratic word machine". Is this machine not composed of high flying intellectuals? If the individuals representing the machine are intellectuals then they should have known better their comments could indeed have avoided the artists falling into such a low. But visual artists have no excuses any longer. When the nature of visual art has been debunked, when its societal functionality has been restored in our understanding, the time has come for the artist community to recognize what art is all about and to search for the constitutive elements of the worldview that is shaping under our eyes in the present.

So where are the men of knowledge in the 21^st century that artists could borrow from to illustrate their worldview? I must recognize that the fog of this late modern confusion is so intense that the knowledge visibility is approximately nil. Are the scientists our men of knowledge? Well if some scientists, taken individually, might satisfy the criteria of knowledge this surely can't be extended to the scientific community as a whole. So where to search for knowledge? I guess that I'm going to disappoint you all. There is no such group in the 21st century that is composed of men recognized as being the holders of the knowledge of our day. So our century is definitely vastly different from all previous centuries. After searching and thinking for decades about this state of affairs the only valid conclusion that I could arrive at was that if knowledge, recognized by all, was not readily available any longer in our times then the only available option was for the artists to participate themselves in the process of knowledge creation that means accumulating knowledge and developing one's own conclusions.

Whow, ... man, what a program. I know, I know but do you have another and better alternative? Was Duchamp not already implying the same conclusion long ago?

(1) Capital: money that is accumulated is sleeping until it is put into use or in consumption or in investment. Money used to consume vanishes while money that is invested transforms into capital.

Painting (9)

Late modernity.

As I wrote, in Painting (6): SOCIETIES STABILIZE AROUND WORLDVIEWS, the turning point between the age of the gods and the modern times has been engendered as a direct consequence of increased trade combining with the newly discovered desire for luxuries, by the aristocracy and then the new rich, that had been stirred at the contact of more advanced societies during the crusades.
"The values and ideas of the aristocracy and the new rich merchants have mutated.
They now search to establish as rights what their newly found material wealth can buy and individual ownership becomes the center of their discourse. Owning a richly decorated mansion gives them the sense of being different from the masses and this newly found perception of a differentiation infuses their minds with the illusion of their particularism, of the importance of their individualities. The aristocracy and the new rich merchants are driving the new fashion of the day and individualism and private ownership will ultimately take center stage in the European social game. "

This shifting of the worldview of the Europeans towards MODERNITY occurred over a few centuries. Three periods characterize that evolution:

- Early modernity: 14th-19th centuries.
- Modernity: 20th century
- Late modernity: 1975-2020 (arbitrary setting only for the purpose of facilitating the visualization of history on the move)

_____________

Late modernity.

The initial interaction of the developed West with the South has been a deluge of very cheap commodities manufactured predominantly by China. There was simply no way for Western economic actors to compete with the Chinese in the sectors where they succeeded to acquire the necessary technology and management experience. When the average cost of one hour work in the West reaches, let's say $US 25, in China it costs $US 0.5 and China has at least 50 years more to benefit from such levels of low assembly-work costs. Its population is over 60% relying on agriculture to survive presently so it has still long to go before agricultural jobs come down to 5-10% of the total work-force the point when the reserve of low paid jobs will have been exhausted.

The impact of this first wave of delocalizations has been met initially with stupor in the West that fast transformed into anger from the remaining blue collar workers, the trade-unionists, the political left and also the traditional right.
When a trend develops out of real problems in Western societies the political class can never be far to propose answers to those problems, it is their life, if they don't do it they are simply not re-elected.
Big capital holders benefited from increasing returns out of this initial wave of delocalizations and disbursed drops of those returns to wage disinformation campaigns affirming that science and technology would always remain a Western advantage. This had the double advantage to assuage those who were at risk to lose their jobs and to let the State in charge of the payment for the solution that they had envisioned.

Science and technology were now the new ideological leitmotiv so they started to figure in all political speeches and also in all Western budgets. This by the way helps to understand why the States in all advanced economies have budget deficits and increasing debts. But soon it became apparent that there had never been a good reason why the Chinese and Indians and Brazilians and others would not be able to use their own brains to compete directly with Western brains. What a foolish and racist argument it had been to dare presuppose whiteman's intellectual superiority when even Doctor degrees in hard sciences at US universities were in majority issued to citizens from the South. But the Foolishness did not abate and a new racially motivated argument found its road to the mouth of whitemen. This time it was said that life conditions and freedoms in the West were so superior to the life conditions and freedoms in the south that those Southerners graduating, mastering and doctoring in the west would unmistakenly want to live and work in the West for ever. There was some smoke in that argument, I concede, but it was forgetting that Southern countries were also developing not only their infrastructure but also the workings of their institutions. Beijing, for example, is building the most advanced communication system and Westerners assisting at the upcoming 2008 Olympics will be given to experience the fastest internet downloads ever seen in commercial use at the time. By 2008 Beijing will be one of the most modern and advanced cities in the world with world architectural icons illustrating the cover of Western magazines. How foolish was it thus to even imagine for one second that Chinese, Indians and other students would eternally wish to live in the States? The return of students originating from the South to their motherland is only a question of time and, supreme irony, they'll carry in their brains the knowledge that they gained in the West!

Here we are, the rationality of the logic of capital has succeeded to set science and technology on the path of a rolling stone towards financial returns. The rolling steep down-hill just can't be stopped, if anything, it has been set in acceleration mode and nothing can do. Reduction of speed and eventual stop of rolling of the science and technology stone can only be expected at the stone's landing at the bottom of the valley but if I know that there is such a valley I don't know where it is nor when we'll be reaching it.
I have nothing against science and technology.
On the contrary I feel confident that the guys in charge will be able to detach themselves from the diktats of the rationality of the logic of capital and bring us some really useful, albeit perhaps "irrational", tools to make our lives better tomorrow.

After 500 years of gestation and incremental growth the logic inherent to capital finally succeeded:

- to impose itself to all the citizens of industrialized nations. This logic has indeed succeeded, in the dying 20th century, to impose its reason, its rationality as being THE exclusive, inevitable and superior truth about reality. Not following the diktats of capital has been described, and is now largely perceived, as being irrational and dangerous for society.

- to impose itself to the whole world as the only true path to economic well-being.

We are being taught that one dollar plus one dollar equals two dollars. But what about this addition eventually having the perverse effect to poison the health of those who are in charge of its operation?
In other words where is the cost of that poisoning being acted ?
I know this is an abstract question so let's reformulate it. What, for example, about a society investing in the car industry? Sure enough shares in the capital of car manufacturers generate returns. But what about the "negativities" engendered by the use of cars in a society? China started manufacturing cars beginning of the 1990th. Much capital has been invested and annual returns go to their owners. But what about the 100,000 people who died in car crashes in 2003 alone? Where are the costs related to the death of those 100,000 people impacting on the figures published by the car industry or for that matter by the State? Nowhere? No, not really, they are added to the GDP figures as part of the activities of the medical sector, of police, insurance, funeral and other activities. But the cost associated with the death of 100,000 people is only part of the problem. What about the pollution generated by the cars that are sold by the car industry? Well they are poisoning the atmosphere and adding to the causes generating climate change, but who cares, after us the deluge is it not? It will not be the deluge but it will be miseries that we inflict upon the generations that follow us who will be the ones who will have to pay the price for our stupidities.
That is what I call the irrationality of the rationality of the logic of capital. Now one should be conscientious that you are presented as a heretic if you dare question that rationality and the logic that supports it as I'm doing here.

Notwithstanding this sad state of affairs let's now set our sight further.
Where is the rationality of the massacres committed during world war 1 and world war 2 in the name of the capital game ? The artists of Cobra were categorical, they were saying loudly after the 2nd world war that this kind of rationality was simply not their cup of tea. This was barbarism in the words of the Dutch painter Constant, nothing less, and in consequence the artists' mission was to search for ways to generate a better tomorrow for all souls on this earth. Constant's words seem somehow to have been heard about by some courageous European policy makers who instigated the build-up of the structures that would eventually unite all the nations of Europe and thus avoiding the children of Europe to endure another barbarian war on its territory between its component faction-nations.

In the meantime, by the end of the 20th century, US capital investments in art purchases were directed towards formalism, towards the form of art. Denying the role of content in painting was now sanctioned with financial value which was an easy way to marginalize those who had something to say for sure while gaining more bucks in the quietude and utter safety of the gray, flat and straight lines found in the patterns of industrially produced goods. I don't want to say that all this has been orchestrated it would be recognizing far more intelligence to the vulture speculators than they really have. The question is not if all that was orchestrated but well if the outcome was worth it?
Where did this lead?
If painting is left a-content then form, for sure, takes center stage but what does society receive from the form of paintings? An artistic acknowledgment of the colors, lines and forms of our present day industrial reality? Yes that is undeniable but may I suggest that this adds nothing to what is already there in our societies. Such a "laissez aller" is simply an abdication of the societal function of visual arts. Ha Ha Ha, how could visual arts add something to our societies will be the question addressed to me by the members of "the all-knowing art bureaucratic word machine". I see already their words in their "art blogs" but most probably they'll ignore what I write until the day a recognized authority starts to refer to my arguments and then we'll see the word machine rushing into action repeating "ad nauseum" what some authorities have written about that question earlier.

To come back to this question of the present societal functionality of visual arts let me say that I do not recall one historic example of a society that succeeded to survive such a large set of problems, so deeply ingrained in its citizens daily ways of life, than what we can observe today. But that is not my argument. All problems have solutions is it not? And these solutions are not given to us by venerating a god or a dictator they are given to us by the men of knowledge of our days who are the ones who think about how to solve our societies' problems.
Solutions exist to any problem. The only question that to me makes sense in our present predicament is "will the populations of our societies, whose daily lives are so profoundly shaped by the commodities and beliefs that are causing the problems that have to be solved, accept to change their ways in time before there is simply no way any longer?" I'm not speaking here only about environmental or climatic deteriorating conditions, they could be determinant for our survival for sure, but I'm thinking about the whole range of problems that humanity is confronted with and more importantly I'm thinking about how all those problems interact among themselves.

So here we are my friends; in a maelstrom.
Don't you think now that visual signs of the emerging worldview of our men of knowledge could be the decisive factor rendering possible the acceptance by all citizens on mother earth of the views of those who have the best knowledge about how to solve our problems which could then lead them "to change their ways in time before there is simply no way any longer ?" This is not a question of publicity nor of propaganda. We nowadays just don't know what is the worldview of our men of knowledge,it is in the forming stage , and furthermore we even don't know who are are our men of knowledge. Are they the scientists? Some scientists could be men of knowledge but scientists as a group surely not. Science breeds knowings, vertical observations inside their their own field of specialty. Knowledge is the combination and interaction of all the available knowings and their confrontation with philosophy. See my anterior posts on the subject for a more elaborate presentation.

How to say? I have often the feeling that the last 35 years, as a modern Don Quichote, I have been fighting against wind-mills. Painting and thinking have been what kept me from falling, as many people I have met along my road, into dementia and non-sense and sure enough Xiaohong often pulled me back when I had one foot over the line. Every artist will understand that creation is followed by doubt. Only imbeciles or ultra self-centered individuals could believe in the fallacy of their absolute genius. As artist we have moments when we find what we do full of interest but we should also acknowledge the doubts that submerge us the moment after. I think that it is this tension between certainty and doubt that is pushing us always further on the road of the unknown on the road of the future .

In this late modern age visibility is minimal. The fog of confusion is everywhere hiding reality and the daily discoveries of new knowings are not helping, it's as if we ate too much of them and had difficulties to digest. Only the time of digestion will bring us quietness.
In my next post I'll try to have a peak inside what comes next hoping the words will accept to lead me there.

Painting (8)

Modernity.

As I wrote, in Painting (6): SOCIETIES STABILIZE AROUND WORLDVIEWS, the turning point between the age of the gods and the modern times has been engendered as a direct consequence of increased trade combining with the newly discovered desire for luxuries, by the aristocracy and then the new rich, that had been stirred at the contact of more advanced societies during the crusades.
"The values and ideas of the aristocracy and the new rich merchants have mutated.
They now search to establish as rights what their newly found material wealth can buy and individual ownership becomes the center of their discourse. Owning a richly decorated mansion gives them the sense of being different from the masses and this newly found perception of a differentiation infuses their minds with the illusion of their particularism, of the importance of their individualities. The aristocracy and the new rich merchants are driving the new fashion of the day and individualism and private ownership will ultimately take center stage in the European social game. "

This shifting of the worldview of the Europeans towards MODERNITY occurred over a few centuries. Three periods characterize that evolution:

- Early modernity: 14th-19th centuries.
- Modernity: 20th century
- Late modernity: 1975-2020 (arbitrary setting only for the purpose of facilitating the visualization of history on the move)

_____________

Modernity

This is basically the story of 20th century industrialized nations that can be summarized in 6 points:
- Double market expansion: more consumers and a wider range of goods.
- First instrument of that expansion = science and technology.
- Second instrument of that expansion = globalization
- Growing irrationalities out of the rationality of the logic of capital.
- Speed of changes + irrationalities unleash a deep cultural shock.
- The search for sense by the visual artists.

During the 20th century different factors intermingle and interact upon one another: economic factors, social factors, political factors and cultural factors. One set of factors is only bringing answers to its own very narrow field and is totally incapable of making sense out of the global systemic reality. Market expansion is about economic realities, science is basically about thinking in a rational manner which is modern culture in action while technology is the application of science to practical uses inside the economy. What I just described here is like a storm (market expansion) putting the waters of the seas into motion (science) that shape relentless waves (technology) that break down against the hard reality of the land. The seas (societal realities) are driven into life one storm after another. Market expansion is followed by a storm of social instability that is followed by a storm of cultural build-up that is followed by the next storm of market expansion.
Societal change is unmistakenly more complex than what I describe here but I think that to approach this complexity in a valid fashion the best way is to use analogies describing simple but well known patterns.

All the ingredients came into place around 1800 that exploded into the mass marketization of cloth and socks. It took nevertheless some time for capital owners to find out that a mass market of cheap stuff could eventually reap for them extremely large returns. After the explosion of textile we'll have to wait over a century for the next boom. The textile revolution muddled through the 19th century expanding geographically (first wave of globalization under the guise of free trade and open borders) and pulling behind it the steel and machinery sectors that first gave trains that broke the barriers of speed and than cars that broke all financial records of mass marketization.

This economic reality of the textile storm through the 19th century has been accompanied by a social reaction that culminated with the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. The principle of social reality exploded in the hands of the class of capital owners that landed in a face to face struggle with its opposite polarity the working class. An incredible quantity of energy has been unleashed at the contact of those polarities. Unfortunately the story of the class wars has always been presented in the medias and then in history books as a kind of pest that was to be avoided at all costs. But, and that is what amazes me most, the clash between those 2 polarities of industrializing societies has in reality been one of the most fertile moments of mankind's history. The drama of modern societies is that the ideologies that were derived out of the steaming actions from both those polarities have come to blind their holders to the deep reality of societal evolution.

What we call democracy today is one of the outcomes of the contact between those 2 polarities. It is no accident of history that the "one person, one vote" principle has started to be legislated after the 1st world war only, just at the time, when it became evident that the future political reality would be democracy or social revolution and "communism". 1917 has acted as an awakener and the 2 polarities made a deal. It would be "one person, one vote". The vote has then been supplemented by policies guaranteeing a minimum of social security to the weaker pole as if to balance the repartition of material goodies. Time passing this system has proven its resilience and its utter flexibility in situations of economic, social and cultural change. But there is more to it. The acceptance of this polar nature of our modern societal system has also solidified the idea of individual freedom that is so central to a mass market consumption society. If there was to be a mass market there was indeed a need for freedom to chose what to buy and political freedom of choice appears thus to have been a natural extension of economic freedom. Let me repeat this unspoken modern reality: the two poles of our industrializing societies need each other. The capital polarity needs the demand engendered by the consumption power of the working class; blue or white collar does not change this basic societal reality that is driven, let us never forget it by the rationality of the logic of capital. The working-class polarity needs the offers brought on the market through the financing by the capital polarity and vice-versa. Take one pole out of the game and there is simply no game any longer to speak about. All this seems so simple but in daily realities this principle is nevertheless mostly forgotten leading to drastic consequences that make up the substance of our news bulletins.

This process, that I here describe of economic realities engendering their own set of social realities, does not stop with its political conclusions.

Along the road of this process the perceptions of the participating individuals are stirred in the same manner as different liquids being stirred into a cocktail by a barman. Chance, randomness but also the will of the individuals is what makes the taste and coloring of their perceptions. The ingredients that are poured in our perception glasses are not only taken from our own free-will. We are born in different social, cultural, geographic and civilizational environments from which we'll each inherit a specific set of perceptions, ideas and values that make us unique. This random uniqueness does nevertheless not forbid us to grow the necessary elements or ingredients that later could unleash our free-will. Yes it takes an effort to build-up those ingredients of free-will and it is easier to speak about the necessity of such an individual effort than to do the right thing and to make the necessary effort. I know this all too well but, how to say, nature perhaps does not want all of us to have a free-will; we would indeed all be weighing on the same arm of the balance of reality and as a consequence we would be creating for ourselves a very messy and imbalanced social, cultural and political reality. We are thus confronted with this basic societal reality that we are all different individuals different atoms, in a very massive reality, who are searching to bond with similar individuals or particles. Whatever we are we'll in any case bond with similars. But we still have the choice to be what we want if we accept to make the necessary effort. What I want to show is that, in finale, we have the means and the freedom to do what it takes to bond with the ones we decide to bond with. Oh la la was that difficult to spit out.

Artists are no strangers to these different layers of reality. The economic and technological realities of the 19th century impacted directly on the perceptions of all and the introduction of speed and long distance communication sort of broke the early modern vision of reality that was given as a representation of space from the perspective of the single-viewpoint of the eyes of the observer. Furthermore the social realities of the times were never absent from artists' minds and the new scientific ideas were seen as a confirmation that reality was changing and that past certainties had to be ranged in the closet. From mid 19th century till the first world war visual artists searched something new in the form of their creations. Brighter colors were being used and different techniques were experimented in their application. Gradually the single-point perspective rendering was abandoned and artists were attracted for a time by the primitive-arts' layering of multi-stories in one creation. Cubism proposed the intellectual exercise of decomposing the reality projecting on the retina in its basic components, triangles, squares and circles, and then to re-assemble those components into a visual approximation of the initial image that had impacted the retina. But one thing is certain: visual artists did not reject the representation of the first degree image projecting on the retina, before the first world war, they simply tried to give different renderings of that first degree image. Coming out of the first world war the idea of rationality had received a deep blow and many perceived rationality as another absurdity. The first degree image that projects on the retina was not trusted any longer to be representing reality and that image as well as all other signs of past certainties were now rejected. Those artists felt that form was unimportant they were concentrating all their efforts at understanding the meaning, the sense, the working of reality and thus the content of art works was now taking center stage in all their debates and writings. In the meantime, the expansion of the market was draining always larger amounts of unused capital to the fringes of the economy where exchanges take the form of speculation. Making an easy buck in the purchase and sale of paintings was becoming like pack-hunting, the same rush of adrenaline and fresh air, the prize was only infinitely larger. In this process the product that was the object of the art market mutated from an art work to a market work for the art speculator. All artistic considerations had vanished in this market game for a level playing field of market operators served by an "all-knowing art bureaucratic word machine" and "whatever" thus eventually became the object of the art market.
But deciding to be an artist does not mean to be able to do "whatever". From the perspective of the creative and of the artist art has a meaning and a specific societal function to fulfill. "Whatever" has thus no place in art but if "whatever" is the only thing that one can do one better try one's hand at the art market where the actors are not concerned by art's societal functionality but by marketing with an eye on a quick buck.

In the past our choice of being an artist would have meant to become a craftsman polishing our skill at illustrating the religious creed or later at rendering three dimensional perspectivist landscapes or ratio determined portraits for the aristocrats or the bourgeoisie. Today art has still the same societal function of illustrating the worldview of the men of knowledge but what has changed is that men of knowledge are very rare nowadays and artists are thus no longer automatically given a worldview to illustrate. Whow what then ? Well if art is to illustrate the worldview of the men of knowledge and if men of knowledge can't be found then the artist's only escape is to participate personally in the creation of today's knowledge. This is undoubtedly a revolution in the artist's role and position that I propose here. But did Marcel Duchamp not say long ago his frustration at being addressed as being dumb as an artist ? Duchamp was one of the most creative of his generation. He tried Cubism but tired of it then created one of the founding paintings of Futurism "Nu descendant un escalier". He could have made a career in futurism, as Picasso made one out of Cubism, but Futurism tired him as much as Cubism. He told that "Futurism was an impressionism of the mechanical world. It was strictly a continuation of the impressionist movement. I was not interested in that. I wanted to get away from the physical aspect of painting. I was much more interested in recreating ideas in painting. ... I was interested to put painting once again at the service of the mind. ... In fact until the last hundred years all painting had been literary or religious: it had all been at the service of the mind. This characteristic was lost little by little during the last century. ... I felt that as a painter it was much better to be influenced by a writer than to be influenced by another painter. This was the direction in which art should turn: to an intellectual expression, rather than to an animal expression. I'm sick of the expression 'bete comme un peintre', stupid as a painter."1
Duchamp was right in thinking that it is not enough to be randomly unique and different from the other individuals to be a painter. "Whatever" was never on his mind he clearly was in search of meaning to reproduce in his paintings but he seems never having been quite able to define what direction his intellectual quest should take. While having understood that painting had always been at the service of the intellect he did not pinpoint what was the nature of the intellectual quest that the artist was after, that he himself was after. Surely enough the concepts of worldview, of culture and of civilization have only taken much of their substance later and this question of the nature of the intellectual quest that the painter is after is undoubtedly easier to apprehend today than it was early or mid 20th century.
All the great painters of the 20th century were running after the same question of the meaning or the vision of reality as if they somehow intuitively were conscientious about the role the artist had to fulfill, their role, as illustrators of that vision.
Picasso devised his Cubist approach as a perception of reality that he gained at the contact of his mathematician friends but he imprisoned himself in that cubist rendering. He never tired of his tricks, as Duchamp, and seems to have fossilized in the easy financial returns that his tricks procured him. The same can be said about many other 20th century painters who did not even come clause to Picasso's initial intuition.
Miro, Kandinsky, Breton, Masson, ... , Constant, the members of Cobra and later Hundertwasser had the same questions and followed the same quest for sense in the visual arts.

Much water has flowed under the bridge of time. Much economic and social change has occurred along the 20th century. Two world wars have helped to destabilize the certainties of the past and, later, liberalism abdicated from the principle of reality finding solace in this easy idea of relativism engendering the illusion of total tolerance and the belief in absolute rights. We Westerners suddenly could afford "too much food on the table" and within one generation we fattened physically and our brains ended up like clogged in the certainties of "whatever".

In the meantime the logic, that is at work inside capital, pulled capital holders where an easy buck could be made with the least of trouble. Surely enough they perceived trouble as coming from those ideas of absolute rights in the West. Those rights gave incomes to all and thus ample demand but they were also menacing the growth of their returns. Formulated in that way we understand that the answer was automatic. "Why not keep supplying that demand and just transfer the productions where there is less trouble and more margins to make from lower costs ?" That's exactly the program that was devised by the "Trilateral" organization during the 1970th and that has been imposed as unique political macro-economic policy remedy on all the governments of the world through the ideology of "la pensée unique" unidimensional market thinking (UMT). Big capital delocalized a big chunk of its investments from the North to the South while Western governments initiated the break-down of all social security policies that had been devised in earlier times. Delocalizing investments had a sweet impact upon returns to capital holders: the market expanded geographically unleashing its tentacles towards the South and simultaneously the costs of its offers in the traditional markets of the North were reducing. Applied for some twenty years now this UMT strategy is having unexpected consequences that, I'm certain, even its promoters could not have imagined. Capital holders have seen their returns go up so their first preoccupation has been satisfied but in the process a sleeping giant has awakened that Napoleon had advised, 200 years earlier, should be left sleeping for fear of being swept out of power if he awoke. Those who initiated the UMT could not have thought that they were devising their unseating but so it appears now is well what is going on. We are assisting at a formidable worldwide rebalancing act of the powers between economic actors. The iron curtain came down with the fall of the communist idea and for a short time Westerners were left dreaming about the end of history. But the awakening of the giant nation whose population is over 20% of the world population gave ideas to another giant nation whose population is also in the area of 20% of the world population and this in turn gave ideas to a series of mid sized nations that among themselves represent another 20% of the world population. The North remains dominant in terms of capital accumulation that makes no doubt but for how long ? Furthermore, are we so sure that, the capital holders from the North will always feel compelled to side with Northern policies in the future ? Asking those questions is sufficient I believe for everyone to sketch his own idea about what is going on. What is evident is that white men's hegemony has reached a threshold from where their influence can only go waning while the vast majority of the people on this earth, by now awakened, are stressing their identities which is the instant just before they start to assert their cultures into influencing the rest of the world.

That's where we are now: in late modernity. More about that within the next few days.


1. Marcel Duchamp, "Painting at the service of the mind", from an interview with James Johnson Sweeney in "Eleven Europeans in America" in the Bulletin of the Museum of Modern art (NY), XIII No. 4-5, 1946. Cited in Herschel B. Chipp "Theories of Modern Art". University of California Press.

Painting (7)

Early Modernity.

As I wrote, in Painting (6) SOCIETIES STABILIZE AROUND WORLDVIEWS, the turning point between the age of the gods and the modern times has been engendered as a direct consequence of increased trade combining with the newly discovered desire for luxuries, by the aristocracy and then the new rich, that had been stirred at the contact of more advanced societies during the crusades.
"The values and ideas of the aristocracy and the new rich merchants have mutated.
They now search to establish as rights what their newly found material wealth can buy and individual ownership becomes the center of their discourse. Owning a richly decorated mansion gives them the sense of being different from the masses and this newly found perception of a differentiation infuses their minds with the illusion of their particularism, of the importance of their individualities. The aristocracy and the new rich merchants are driving the new fashion of the day and individualism and private ownership will ultimately take center stage in the European social and political game. "

This shifting of the worldview of the Europeans towards MODERNITY occurred over a few centuries. Three periods characterize that evolution:

- Early modernity: 14th-19th centuries.
- Modernity: 20th century
- Late modernity: 1975-2020 (arbitrary setting only for the purpose of facilitating the visualization of history on the move)

Early modernity (14th-19th centuries)


1. 14th-15th centuries:

Everything starts with the aristocracy and rich merchants of France, Flanders and the Italian city-states whose desires have been fired, during the crusades, by their envy for the richnesses of Middle-Easterners. This small group will gradually expand geographically towards England, Spain, the German Lander and the Northern countries. Trade will establish an early network of relations from the British Isles, through France, the Italian city-states to the Middle-East and the financial instruments of trade will impulse this network to adopt the logic of capital as the driving understanding between its members.

The clergy will consume the same goods transported through trade but will also acquire new sources of knowledge from the Greek classics and the works published by the Muslim universities. The first areas of activity that will be influenced by this influx of knowledge are the activities of the clergy itself. Clergymen are indeed the only ones who are literate and they'll apply the lessons learned from their reading first and foremost to their own activities :

- Creating the message and enriching the creed: priests philosophers will try to adapt the Christian vision to the new ideas they read about. Thomas d'Aquin, the greatest among them, has linked Aristotelianism with the Christian philosophy inherited from saint Augustine and defends the idea that creed and reason cannot contradict because they both originate from God.

- Diffusing the creed to the flock of followers: painting and sculpture are playing a decisive role as instruments for spreading the Christian worldview and they will thus be the first activities to benefit from newly gained knowledge. The Greek ratios and Muslim scholars' mathematics are going to efface a thousand years of conceptions about time and space. Visual artists will be asked to absorb the lessons recently gained by the clergy in new commands of works to adorn the walls of churches. Gradually artists will produce the forms expressing the spirit of the new age. Giotto is the first to represent a scene from a stationary point of viewing representing an instant of reality, a snapshot, rendered in three dimensions. Piero della Francesca later introduced shades in zones of the image that had been left out of the path of light.

Displayed in sacred objects of veneration (paintings) the spirit of the new age diffuses slowly within whole the social body. A new vision of Space, time, light and the the logic that is inherent to capital is starting to take roots. The church will react and eliminate all deviances from the canon of the creed but it will be overwelmed by the new worldview in the shaping.


2. 16th-19th centuries.

The initial small volume trade in luxuries results in intensifying greed and desires and the will grows to discover new lands to plunder. The logic of capital brings capital holders to pull their means in big stock-companies established for the conquest of new lands that will procure them gold, silver and precious stones. As a result of the discovery of the Americas Europe will be inundated, in the 16th century, under an avalanche of gold and silver transiting through Spain. The newly gained richness of Spain is envied all over Europe. In a first time, English, French and other privateers and pirates will loot the loaded Spanish ships on their way back from the Americas. In a second time, the capital accumulated through piracy will be invested in new stock-companies to undertake the conquest and plunder of ever more lands. Asia is the next on the list that will give economic dominance to the Dutch from 1600 to 1750. Bankrupt the Dutch East-India Company will be succeeded by the English East-India company that will be one of the most potent instruments giving Britain a world empire for the next 150-200 years.

The story of capital is foremost the story of its logic. Accumulation of capital and profit generation is engendering gradual cultural shifts:

- The capital owners want establish the principle of their difference with the mass of the people and this ultimately materializes in the building of mansions and castles that have then to be filled with luxuries. Mirrors, tapestries, paintings, sculptures are the most important commodities to be produced in the 16th and 17th centuries and France will establish its cultural hegemony through its State Manufactures churning out such luxuries at the attention of the European aristocracy.
Until then paintings had been used as illustrations of the Christian creed that became sacred once they made it to the walls of a church. This sacrality of paintings will be hitchhiked by the new rich. They want this sacrality to reflect upon their own. They want their new values and ideas to be immortalized and thus their local landscapes and their portraits, they think rightly I must add, will be perceived as containing something of the sacred character of the paintings hanging on the walls of churches and cathedrals. This is a crucial turning point in Western painting. Till then painting had been a craft exercised by image makers who were poorly paid which shows how little appreciation they were recognized by their society. With the secularization of their works, in the mansions of the new rich, painters at once were recognized a status of exceptionality that continues to this very day.

- Paintings were coming to be seen as sacred displays of the veneration of the spirit of the new age and thus the Greek ratios, Muslim mathematics and astronomy, that painters tried to emulate metaphorically on their canvas, became a central source of inspiration for the early generation of scientists. Physicists as Leibnitz and Newton started experimenting with the rays of light two centuries after Piero della Francesca. In those days science and technology are not a systematic affair as today. Chance and necessity are the most important guides of the thinkers of the day.

By the end of the 18th century the flow of gold and commodities into Europe had taken such proportions that the whole of society was under its spell. At the center of dominance Britain received much gold, from the less advanced colonial territories from America and Africa, that was used to purchase the commodities that Asian nations were rich of. Only gold and silver were accepted as means of payment in Asia for the good reason that Europe had nothing to sell that interested Asians... Along the 18th century the situation was such that Britain had to disburse most of its reserves to pay for its imported goods. Necessity and opportunity combined. Spinning and weaving techniques allowed for very cheap productions in Britain self and political power forbade the Indian cotton weavers to weave cotton locally any longer. The raw material had now to be imported into Britain and cheap mechanically woven British cotton fabric and other cotton commodities as socks were then exported back to India. This mercantile policy, combining with technical advances in the processing of cotton, built the first marches towards mass marketization that would in turn unleash a huge demand for steel, machinery, faster transportation and distance communication.

The story of the 19th century is the story of all those novelties coming together. For the first time in their history, with trains, humans could go faster than the gallop of a horse, for the first time they could communicate at a distance through the telegraph.

All those changes impacted on traditionally slow moving societies and resulted in a deep cultural shock that is best observed in the paintings of Van Gogh and his fellow innovative painters.