An excellent article about what seems to be an excellent exhibition of Middle-Age artistic creations. In one word, it's about a creative explosion in all fields. "So many works in such a short time: the concentration is amazing. All the disciplines are at it. In these works, it is the history of painting which starts. To follow it a little more, it is necessary to go to the exhibition of "Primitive French". Its goal is not exhaustiveness but the commemoration and research. Commemoration because an exhibition of the same name at the Louvre in 1904 was a decisive event: the recognition of a long time scorned period and its revelation with the visitors - among whom Matisse and Derain".
In one of the works, "the bed is scarlet, in a room with tended walls of ultramarine blue and gold. The window with the background is of a perfect geometry. The beams of the ceiling are red and green. What does this invoque? The red Workshop of Matisse. And what does one think in front of the drawings of the metal point on the boxwood shelf of a notebook, is it not Dürer? However these drawings allotted to Jacquemart de Hesdin date from the years 1380".
The article is in french but Google or other search engines can give you an internet translation of sufficiently good quality for you to get what it is all about.
La frenesie creative de l'art au Moyen Age
2004-03-05
Cosmic life imitates art!
Central to my views about the present day evolution of the visual artist's creations is space. It makes absolutely no doubt to me that looking to oneself, to oneselve's world from afar is bound to change our view of the world. Speed of movement, of transportation on earth has been since the 19th century the central shaker of our visual perceptions. Let us forget for a moment the visual art absurdities of the 20th century and try to reconnect with the evolution of painters' visions. We now can envision the radical revolution that space will unleash on us all in terms of our vision of the world. It's not only the brutal acceleration of speed that tortures our vision. From afar we somehow reach a state of plenitude where speed is abolished and discover the mirror in which we are looking at ourselves on earth... This experience has been described by some astronauts in terms of a religious experience. But the recourse to religion is a one way street, a no drive through street where one lands in ideological land.
I firmly believe that visual artists did not go as far as the road of space. We all have been overtaken by the photographic images of and from space. And space in an outwards direction, the cosmos as macrocosm, is but one of the dimensions. What about space in an inwards direction, the microcosm. Both directions somehow converge in the sense that they force us out of our traditional visual certitudes.
The philosophical implications are absolutely staggering and, to put it in soft words, I'm amazed at how our societies have only been mildly shaken as of today. Often I have this odd feeling that scientists' photographs make better art than most visual artists' creations.
"Cosmic life imitates art "
Here are some more links, have a good time with those artists who are been called scientists:
"Dee Breger"
"Ken Musgrave"
"Loes Modderman"
"Tina Carvalho"
"Olympus America Inc., and The Florida State University"
I firmly believe that visual artists did not go as far as the road of space. We all have been overtaken by the photographic images of and from space. And space in an outwards direction, the cosmos as macrocosm, is but one of the dimensions. What about space in an inwards direction, the microcosm. Both directions somehow converge in the sense that they force us out of our traditional visual certitudes.
The philosophical implications are absolutely staggering and, to put it in soft words, I'm amazed at how our societies have only been mildly shaken as of today. Often I have this odd feeling that scientists' photographs make better art than most visual artists' creations.
"Cosmic life imitates art "
Here are some more links, have a good time with those artists who are been called scientists:
"Dee Breger"
"Ken Musgrave"
"Loes Modderman"
"Tina Carvalho"
"Olympus America Inc., and The Florida State University"
2004-03-02
Collectors and art history
A must read. Where should art productions be today if it were not for the "small circle of dealers, scholars and collectors who become interested in unfashionable or unfamiliar art".
" What have dealers ever done for art history?"
" What have dealers ever done for art history?"
2004-03-01
What is art ?
I started this blog one year ago approximately with the ambition to write about art and design. I was , and I must say I remain, very unsatisfied with today's blabla about art in magazines and papers.
My idea is that art (fine art) is a societal answer to the questions and needs of the individuals for sense. Viewed in such a perspective, the artist is someone who is perpetually in searching mode for sense. By sense I mean the philosophical interpretation of reality or to put it otherwise the lightning of the elements that give sense to reality at a given point in time. Our perceptions evolved, very fast those last decades, and thus our questions today are indeed very different from what they were at other times in history.
The following 2 articles by Michelle Marder Kamhi are somehow focusing on the same approach that I personally try to develop. Her conclusions nevertheless are pole apart from mine but that is not of such a huge importance. Another layout is a chance to reflect...
So good reading.
"Debating The Visual Culture "
"Where's the Art in Today's Art Education?"
My idea is that art (fine art) is a societal answer to the questions and needs of the individuals for sense. Viewed in such a perspective, the artist is someone who is perpetually in searching mode for sense. By sense I mean the philosophical interpretation of reality or to put it otherwise the lightning of the elements that give sense to reality at a given point in time. Our perceptions evolved, very fast those last decades, and thus our questions today are indeed very different from what they were at other times in history.
The following 2 articles by Michelle Marder Kamhi are somehow focusing on the same approach that I personally try to develop. Her conclusions nevertheless are pole apart from mine but that is not of such a huge importance. Another layout is a chance to reflect...
So good reading.
"Debating The Visual Culture "
"Where's the Art in Today's Art Education?"
2004-02-26
Classical Music - Too Old? Too Abstract?
"Mainstream classical music is in crisis. To some extent, the crisis is quantifiable. Classical recording is tanking, classical radio is shrinking, and so is media coverage of classical music. The biggest fear is that the audience will disappear, and while conservatives in the business think that won't happen—"So what if the audience is old?" they cry, "it's always been old!"—reports from the National Endowment for the Arts show that even in the past 10 years the classical music audience has gotten older. "
"View from the East: How We Can Save the World "
"View from the East: How We Can Save the World "
2004-02-24
Fine Art Amid the Paper Towels
About art. In the end, in post modern societies, it's all about sales. "Costco applied the same pricing system to art that it did to other goods, marking them up no more than 14 percent above what it pays".
"In Search of Fine Art Amid the Paper Towels"
Times have changed...
Today the works of Rubensses could be found among toilet paper and other commodities! Are art works really becoming commodities? Well in post-modern societies, meaning has been transferred from reason to merchandise. So should we be surprised that art works be sold among toilet paper, toothpaste and candy? But the supreme irony here is that "The artwork is museum quality, matted and framed".
"In Search of Fine Art Amid the Paper Towels"
Times have changed...
Today the works of Rubensses could be found among toilet paper and other commodities! Are art works really becoming commodities? Well in post-modern societies, meaning has been transferred from reason to merchandise. So should we be surprised that art works be sold among toilet paper, toothpaste and candy? But the supreme irony here is that "The artwork is museum quality, matted and framed".
What's going on in our cosmos?
"Anne Kinney, director of NASA's Astronomy and Physics Division, cautioned that final answers on the nature of dark energy will not likely come for a very long time. Science can sometimes be much like art, she said: 'You approach, you don't arrive.' ".
Read here....
"Universe has at least 30 billion years left, scientists say"
Read here....
"Universe has at least 30 billion years left, scientists say"
Genes find their way from pharm crops to ordinary corn
Another interesting news confirming the validity of the conclusions of the latest Pentagon report. The "NEW SCIENTIST" just published this piece about Genetically Modified Foods:
"Crops 'widely contaminated' by genetically modified DNA"
In summary: "Crops engineered to produce industrial chemicals and drugs - so-called "pharm" crops - could already be poisoning ostensibly GM-free crops grown for food, warns the study by the Washington-based Union for Concerned Scientists"
"Crops 'widely contaminated' by genetically modified DNA"
In summary: "Crops engineered to produce industrial chemicals and drugs - so-called "pharm" crops - could already be poisoning ostensibly GM-free crops grown for food, warns the study by the Washington-based Union for Concerned Scientists"
2004-02-23
Chaos
Instructive:
Since decades scientists, artists and others speak and write about the damage done to the sustainability of human life on earth by the logic of capital. They were often labeled extremists.
Today the Pentagon confirms those fears and informs of the coming treads to the USA.
Enjoy the reading... But beware it is not rejoicing news.
"New Pentagon's report on coming chaos"
"Key findings of the Pentagon "
Since decades scientists, artists and others speak and write about the damage done to the sustainability of human life on earth by the logic of capital. They were often labeled extremists.
Today the Pentagon confirms those fears and informs of the coming treads to the USA.
Enjoy the reading... But beware it is not rejoicing news.
"New Pentagon's report on coming chaos"
"Key findings of the Pentagon "
2004-02-13
Could China one day save the West?
Looking at how reality is dscribed from different perspectives....
Here are 2 good articles describing how Chinese view the West and particularly the US. Very interesting reading.
"Why I say China will one day save the West?"
"The evil root of all instability in the world today"
Here are 2 good articles describing how Chinese view the West and particularly the US. Very interesting reading.
"Why I say China will one day save the West?"
"The evil root of all instability in the world today"
2004-02-11
The power of beauty
!!!!!!
Very similar to what I wrote already a few times about in this blog.
"We experience the power of beauty when spiritual value and outward appearance seem inseparable, capturing a sense of what it means to be human in those rare moments of deepest satisfaction".
This commentary is by Elizabeth Sourbut, in the issue of the 14th of February 04 of "New Scientist" about the following book:
"The Secret Power of Beauty: Why happiness is in the eye of the beholder"
By John Armstrong
Publisher: Allen Lane/Penguin
MOST of us would claim to recognise a beautiful person or object when we see it. But we are often unable to explain why we find the object of our gaze so appealing. John Armstrong thinks this is a shame, so in The Secret Power of Beauty he sets out to examine the power that beauty holds over us, and to consider why it's able to touch our emotions. His clear and thoughtful analysis leads the reader confidently through art history and philosophy towards a humane and convincing set of answers.
Drawing on examples from art, architecture, literature and music Armstrong traces two historical approaches. One focuses on the outer, physical appearance of the object and looks for serpentine lines, perfect proportion or the fit between form and function. The other asks what it feels like to find something beautiful and considers the response of the beholder - perhaps spiritual or moral. He argues that the power of beauty lies in a combination of these two. We experience it when spiritual value and outward appearance seem inseparable, capturing a sense of what it means to be human in those rare moments of deepest satisfaction.
An appreciation of beauty deepens our enjoyment of life, and with his elegant and accessible style Armstrong encourages readers to seek beauty in everyday life, not just in high culture. Look around you. Is any of your furniture beautiful, or the view from your window, or the heart of your Valentine?
Elizabeth Sourbut
Very similar to what I wrote already a few times about in this blog.
"We experience the power of beauty when spiritual value and outward appearance seem inseparable, capturing a sense of what it means to be human in those rare moments of deepest satisfaction".
This commentary is by Elizabeth Sourbut, in the issue of the 14th of February 04 of "New Scientist" about the following book:
"The Secret Power of Beauty: Why happiness is in the eye of the beholder"
By John Armstrong
Publisher: Allen Lane/Penguin
MOST of us would claim to recognise a beautiful person or object when we see it. But we are often unable to explain why we find the object of our gaze so appealing. John Armstrong thinks this is a shame, so in The Secret Power of Beauty he sets out to examine the power that beauty holds over us, and to consider why it's able to touch our emotions. His clear and thoughtful analysis leads the reader confidently through art history and philosophy towards a humane and convincing set of answers.
Drawing on examples from art, architecture, literature and music Armstrong traces two historical approaches. One focuses on the outer, physical appearance of the object and looks for serpentine lines, perfect proportion or the fit between form and function. The other asks what it feels like to find something beautiful and considers the response of the beholder - perhaps spiritual or moral. He argues that the power of beauty lies in a combination of these two. We experience it when spiritual value and outward appearance seem inseparable, capturing a sense of what it means to be human in those rare moments of deepest satisfaction.
An appreciation of beauty deepens our enjoyment of life, and with his elegant and accessible style Armstrong encourages readers to seek beauty in everyday life, not just in high culture. Look around you. Is any of your furniture beautiful, or the view from your window, or the heart of your Valentine?
Elizabeth Sourbut
2004-02-08
Thoughts and reality
Western thinkers from the left as well as from the right take the substance of the idees that are foundational to their discourse from the Greek philosophers. These established as their ultimate truth that there is an absolute and general root cause to everything that happens, a root cause that influences even the conception of natural movements. In this model, reality is the result of a cause.
For both the ancient Chinese and the Greek philosophers, change is thought of as the result of the princip of opposites.
But while in the Chinese tradition the opposite princips of YIN and YANG by themselves contain the full explanation for all changes, the Greeks need to add a third term to the opposites (antikeimena).
For the Chinese, reality is THE FLOW FROM YIN TO YANG and vice versa while the Greeks, thinking that opposites distroy each other, had to reject the idea of opposites transforming into their opposites. Thus they needed to come up with a substantiation of the opposites into matter (hupomenei). Hupomenei could than change (metabole). In other words they thought that matter could change into its opposite.
The flow from YIN to YANG is powered by the perpetual burst of power that is unleashed by the differential of energy residing in both of those polarities which makes that change is conceved as spontaneous emergence in autoregulation mode.
In comparison, the Greek metabole is inert so to put movement and change into motion, the Greek philosophers needed to invent an external motor and energy (to kinoun). Change is then the result of an outside cause and causality is thus established as the philosophical model.
The external motor that will cause change is god (ens realissimus) and his energy is love or the thirst for his love. This thirst, and the desire that it induces, is then what allows the Greeks to stop the search for an earlier more originel cause, the relegating process had indeed been internalized as by an act of magic.
The advent of reality for the Chinese is just a spontaneous process of emergence that auto regulates. In this view, there not only is no finality but there is also no good and no bad, reality is only what is.
In the West, reality is seen as the consequence of god's universal love that projects upon all and everything which in return causes all and everything desiring to imitate god's so perceived perfection and love. In this process of perception, of god's perfection and love, lies also the "recognition" and the justification for the authoritarian establishment of those who perceive, god's perfection and love, as the holders of the supreme good. Bad and evil, defined as not bowing to god's perfection and love, are thus becoming the ennemy. History is full of this kind of thinking that led to so many wars. By the way, please check out the words of Georges Bush after 9/11, they seem to be the perfect caricature of what I try to describe here.
From the perspective of whatever side of the cultural divide between east and west, the other's cultural build-up upon such vastly different foundations is bound to be incomprehensible and thus the difficulty of the West and the East to understand each other.
Post-modernism, I think, shall be vastly different from what Western right and left thinkers are making about it. They are privileging the Western internal tendancies to the point of blacking out all that may be going on externally. But it seems to me that what is going on outside of the West is bound to have gradually a decisive impact on the West itself. The awakening I believe shall be rude because there is no doubt that the foundations of our Western civilization are already crumbling. We are nowadays economically so totally dependant on science that the conclusions arrived at by scientists will, there should be no doubt about it, shake our certainties. Their establishing the fundamental truth contained in the foundations of the Chinese civilization is bound to lead to the most fundamental revolution in Western thought since the early days of Western civilization itself. A very readable account of what is going on in the scientific community is given by Mitchell WALDROP in his books "Chaos" and "Complexity".
I believe that the recognition of the princips of spontaneous emergence and auto-regulation are engendering a whole new form of consciousness in the West and post-modernism is the right title, I thinks, to describe the forms that will emerge under this new consciousness.
Post-modernism is an economic rebalancing act. The center of capitalistic power is shifting towards noth-east asia. This process that is already at work should last some 50 more years at least and shall gradually pull in its track the emergence of Chinese culture on the world stage and in the process, I bet that Beijing shall impose itself as the world's premier cultural center. But what does this imply in terms of content in the arts? Well, first and foremost we'll assist at the relegation to the dustbin of history of large swathes of so called Western post-modern productions. It will not be a loss since most of those productions are not more than garbage that collectors' greed only can establish as works of art . Furthermore, it will also establich the primacy of personal visions instead of the vision of schools and that of their their masters. Last but not least, it will establish the primacy of the princip of rich content + technical skills.
For both the ancient Chinese and the Greek philosophers, change is thought of as the result of the princip of opposites.
But while in the Chinese tradition the opposite princips of YIN and YANG by themselves contain the full explanation for all changes, the Greeks need to add a third term to the opposites (antikeimena).
For the Chinese, reality is THE FLOW FROM YIN TO YANG and vice versa while the Greeks, thinking that opposites distroy each other, had to reject the idea of opposites transforming into their opposites. Thus they needed to come up with a substantiation of the opposites into matter (hupomenei). Hupomenei could than change (metabole). In other words they thought that matter could change into its opposite.
The flow from YIN to YANG is powered by the perpetual burst of power that is unleashed by the differential of energy residing in both of those polarities which makes that change is conceved as spontaneous emergence in autoregulation mode.
In comparison, the Greek metabole is inert so to put movement and change into motion, the Greek philosophers needed to invent an external motor and energy (to kinoun). Change is then the result of an outside cause and causality is thus established as the philosophical model.
The external motor that will cause change is god (ens realissimus) and his energy is love or the thirst for his love. This thirst, and the desire that it induces, is then what allows the Greeks to stop the search for an earlier more originel cause, the relegating process had indeed been internalized as by an act of magic.
The advent of reality for the Chinese is just a spontaneous process of emergence that auto regulates. In this view, there not only is no finality but there is also no good and no bad, reality is only what is.
In the West, reality is seen as the consequence of god's universal love that projects upon all and everything which in return causes all and everything desiring to imitate god's so perceived perfection and love. In this process of perception, of god's perfection and love, lies also the "recognition" and the justification for the authoritarian establishment of those who perceive, god's perfection and love, as the holders of the supreme good. Bad and evil, defined as not bowing to god's perfection and love, are thus becoming the ennemy. History is full of this kind of thinking that led to so many wars. By the way, please check out the words of Georges Bush after 9/11, they seem to be the perfect caricature of what I try to describe here.
From the perspective of whatever side of the cultural divide between east and west, the other's cultural build-up upon such vastly different foundations is bound to be incomprehensible and thus the difficulty of the West and the East to understand each other.
Post-modernism, I think, shall be vastly different from what Western right and left thinkers are making about it. They are privileging the Western internal tendancies to the point of blacking out all that may be going on externally. But it seems to me that what is going on outside of the West is bound to have gradually a decisive impact on the West itself. The awakening I believe shall be rude because there is no doubt that the foundations of our Western civilization are already crumbling. We are nowadays economically so totally dependant on science that the conclusions arrived at by scientists will, there should be no doubt about it, shake our certainties. Their establishing the fundamental truth contained in the foundations of the Chinese civilization is bound to lead to the most fundamental revolution in Western thought since the early days of Western civilization itself. A very readable account of what is going on in the scientific community is given by Mitchell WALDROP in his books "Chaos" and "Complexity".
I believe that the recognition of the princips of spontaneous emergence and auto-regulation are engendering a whole new form of consciousness in the West and post-modernism is the right title, I thinks, to describe the forms that will emerge under this new consciousness.
Post-modernism is an economic rebalancing act. The center of capitalistic power is shifting towards noth-east asia. This process that is already at work should last some 50 more years at least and shall gradually pull in its track the emergence of Chinese culture on the world stage and in the process, I bet that Beijing shall impose itself as the world's premier cultural center. But what does this imply in terms of content in the arts? Well, first and foremost we'll assist at the relegation to the dustbin of history of large swathes of so called Western post-modern productions. It will not be a loss since most of those productions are not more than garbage that collectors' greed only can establish as works of art . Furthermore, it will also establich the primacy of personal visions instead of the vision of schools and that of their their masters. Last but not least, it will establish the primacy of the princip of rich content + technical skills.
2004-02-07
Culture, economy, politics and civilization
Last thursday I concluded my post saying: "What drives humanity over the long haul is not its economy, it is unmistakenly it's culture, it's ways of behaving, it's ways of interacting with the other species, the environment and it is evident that we are doing very poorly on that level. We have more goods than at any time in our history but the more our economies enrich, the more our cultures enpoor and in the process humanity's chances of survival are thinning fast. The coming cultural input of China could not be better timed".
I know that this conclusion is poles apart from the views and theories expressed by the recognized authorities from the left as well as from the right in Western countries. But I have the weakness to think that both sides of the Western intelligentsia are wrong, I think that both behave as pure Westerncentrics. They know that there is a world out there that is different from the Western world, another world that has another understanding of realities but that's about all. They generally know nothing about the ideas, the values and the ways of behaving inside that external world that, let's never forget it, represents 90% of the world population. Could it be that 10% of the world population has in its hands the destinity of humanity?
Never, that's pure delusion.
Our future can't be thought of as a simple projection into the future of trends observed today within the Western world.
I concede that it's not a given to build up a global vision out of this kind of Westerncentricism and to try to gain a more global picture of humanity's road. My personal approach is to diversify my sources of information, I read stuff written by people from the US, the EU and China and I compare. I also follow the advances in scientific research and I can guarantee that the knowledge that I gain from modern physics, chemistry, bilology, and so on helps to structure my thoughts by allowing me to adapt my ideas and visions in terms of my conclusions about economics, politics, art, culture and civilization.
The Western approach from the left as well as from the right, to put it bluntly, somehow follows in the footsteps of "The end of History" of Francis Fukuyama. In this model, the end game on humanity's road is a post-modermist stage of evolution that leads to the appearance of a last man that eliminates all other forms of being and behaving from the entire earth. It is not important for me here that the right glorifies such an outcome while the left rejects it. The thing that I find utterly disconcerting is that both right and left come to the same conclusion of an end-game in history, in human evolution.
"Classical modernism belongs in a 'transitional era' poised between 'two distinct worlds', those of the traditional, agricultural and peasant order, and the new machine-based industrialism, where the 'new technological machinery brings with it its own aesthetic shock, in the way it erupts without warning into the older pastoral and feudal landscape. Russia, Italy, and to some extent pre-First World War France provide the key examples.
Late modernism is an essentially US affair and is a product of the Cold War, but in all kinds of complicated ways. It is late not just in the temporal sense, post-Second World War, but also as a belated reprise at once modifying and traducing of some of the canonical features of earlier modernist thinking. On one hand, it keeps faith with the anti-modernity strain of high modernism, a last ditch stand against the depredations of capital as a market society hovers over its descent into the trammels of a fully commercialized postmodernity. On the other, it is distinguished from the heroic moment of its predecessor in its complicity with the end of a whole era of social transformations and indeed of Utopian desires and anticipations. It embodies a retreat from political alternatives to the rule of capital, through its insistence on (a version of) the autonomy of art". (1)
This version of post-modernism presenting itself as the natural extension of modernity should thus reject to the dustbin of history all other possibilities of post-industrial development. And art in this vision becomes a dull merchandise... that has to be a-utopia in order to please a customer base that has been numbed.
One can't but wonder how a healthy thinking process could lead to such a linear projection towards certainty. And how come that this certainty leads to a vision of reality with an ultimate outcome. Is this not a caricature of the foundings of Judeo-Christian thought?
Let's just register for now that it's always a black versus white, good versus bad final outcome that is given as well from the left as from the right.
But let's discover now how this kind of thinking works.
"Rejecting into the blur Kant, Freud and Marx, the modern form of capitalism induces an in-depth replanning of the spirits. Under pleasing and democratic airs, and since it is a question of selling or of buying, any moral, traditional or transcendantal consideration tends to be erased. As the ideologies which preceded it in the 20th century, neoliberalism wants to create a "new man".
(...) THIS PROGRAMMED DEATH of the subject of modernity does not seem to me foreign with the changes that one observes since a good 20 years in capitalism. Neoliberalism, to name by its name this new state of capitalism, is detaching itself from all forms of exchanges which remained by reference to an absolute guarantor or metasocial of the exchanges. To go quickly and to the essence, one could say that one needed gold like standard to guarantee the monetary exchanges, as one needed a guarantor symbolic system (Reason, for example) to allow philosophical speeches. However, one ceases referring to any transcendantal value to practice exchanges. The exchanges are not worth any more as guaranteed by a higher power (transcendantal or moral), but by the fact they put directly in report with the merchandises. In one word, commercial exchanges today desymbolise the world.
(...) Any transcendent figure which came to found the value from now on is rejected, there are only goods which are exchanged at their strict commercial value. Men today are requested to get rid of all these symbolic overload systems that guaranteed their exchanges. The symbolic value system is thus dismantled in the benefit of simple and neutral money value of the goods so that nothing any more, no other consideration (moral, traditional, transcendent...), can make obstacle with its freedom of movement. From this results a desymbolisation of the world. Men should not agree any more to transcendental value systems, they must simply yield to the play of infinite and widened circulation of goods.
(...) THIS RADICAL CHANGE in the play of exchanges involves an anthropological change. Since every symbolic guarantor system of the exchanges between men is liquidated, it is the human condition itself that changes. Our being-with-the-world cannot be the same any more since what is at stake for human life is not the search for an agreement with these transcendantal symbolic value systems playing the role of guarantors, but is related to our capacity to follow an always moving flow of goods in circulation. In one word, it is not the same subject any more who is required here and there.
(...) In the desymbolisation that we live in the present, it is not any more the critical subject proposing a deliberation in the name of the moral requirement of freedom that suits, it is neither the nevrotic subject taken in a compulsive culpability, it is a precarious subject, a-critical and psychotic, who from now on is necessary, a subject open to all commercial transcations and all kinds of identity fluctuations.
(...) Under pleasing and democratic airs, a new ideology, probably as virulent as the terrible ideologies that broke out in the West in the 20th century, is busy imposing itself. It is indeed not impossible that after the hell of Nazism and the terror of Communism a new historical catastrophe is profiling. (...) We are entering a new time: a time of total capitalism that is not interested only in the goods and their capitalization any more, is not satisfied with the social control of the bodies any more, but also aims, under cover of freedom, at an in-depth replanning of the spirits". (2)
"(...) Late-modernist ideology thus envisaged a practice of art from which -content- (Greenberg's term) was to be excised. The relevant form of content was largely narrative in kind and excising it was one way of making history disappear". (3)
I must say that this description fits well with societal evolution in the the US and the EU but for 90% of the people of this earth, this description makes no sense. Furthewrmore, even the West is not one. That this model reflects the working of the big mass of society does not mean that the game is over. The best informed citizens who are also the most active stay on the margins of such a lodel.
So, in this vision, as we have seen higher already, art productions become merchandises that have to be freed of all content. Post-modern man has to be "a precarious subject, a-critical and psychotic, a subject open to all commercial transcations and all kinds of identity fluctuations", for let's not forget that for the left "in the desymbolisation that we live in the present, it is not any more the critical subject proposing a deliberation in the name of the moral requirement of freedom that suits".
For sure one can find exemples of art productions with no content those days. In music Richard Kleiderman I guess, while in visual art John CURRIN, both fit quite well the bill. But It is one thing to name a few artists whose productions are empty of content, it is a totally different feat to conclude from those limited exemples that post-modernism should be "a practice of art from which -content- (Greenberg's term) was to be excised".
My personal view is that our human world has entered a chaotic period of disorder. But as science and the Chinese phylosophy of change are showing, out of disorder comes order.
Post-modernism for now in Western societies is a historical process of merchandization, that seems to be a fact. To continue to grow the market needed indeed an internal expansion of demand and to make such an expansion of demand possible, the market was in need of an hegemonic ideology, in a Gramscian sense (4), in order for such an expansion of demand to become acceptable in the eyes of the populations.
But this has not been the only strategy of big capital. Free trade was the other leg used to try to increase global demand and free trade has been over successfull those last 20 years in the sense that it unleached an unforecasted dynamic of geographic rebalancing of power that, I think, is leading the whole world into chaos. Pain is felt in the South as well as in the North and gigantic restructuring efforts are already under way but one should be aware of the fact that the coming future restructurings will go far, far deeper. It will mostly not be a question of political vision of how societies should evolve, it will be the the world awakening to the princip of reality, awakening to changes that have already taken place. I firmly believe indeed that changes are already taking place faster than our ideas can adapt to and the distance between the reality of changes and our capacity to perceive them is bound to continue to grow. This indicates the depth of the chaos that has been unleashed.
I believe that this expanded post-modernist shock is bound to surpass in importance the European Reanaissance in our history. Many factors lead me to think so but I'll come back on that later on. I want now to dwell on what renders this idea of a final outcome to be absolutely out of sink with what is going on around the world at the start of the 21st century.
Looking at the visual arts productions, I can't miss to see an extreme variety of productions and there are some works of extremely good quality out there that's for sure. This does not mean that the art market has already discovered those present day pearls and their creators. Art merchants and critics have still to stick their heads out the confusion that reigned master in the late 20th century. But let me be very clear. What I discern is a profusion of approaches as we never have seen in all our history.
Looking at what's going on in the scientific world I see the same variety and richness as in the visual arts. I'am particularly trilled at the discoveries made in terms of the sciences of complexity for exemple. The sciences that study the emergence and transformations of life itself. What I see is in reality a convergence of modern scientific knowledge with the ancient Chinese phylosophy of change that is bound to revolutionalize our ways of thinking, our ways of understanding ourselves and our cosmos.
"Questioned on the future of time, the Belgian Nobel Prize of chemistry Ilya Prigogine tries to introduce the idea of uncertainty into the idea of time. This idea of uncertainty will perhaps be the marking fact of 21st century. Ilya Prigogine shows that the reversible laws of Newton relate to only one weak fraction of the world in which we live. (...) Do we measure enough the revolution which these discoveries introduce into the notion of time? Here comes the end of certainties: time does not have a future, but futures. Because nature is from now on unforeseeable: it is history".(5)
The future is the result of what we'll be making out of it. I mean that our inputs are making what we will harvest in the future. But what will be our inputs? Surely not only the inputs of the western world. 10% of the world population will not indefinitedly be at the steering wheel. The remaining 90% are knocking on the doors and making more and more vociferous noises. What I want to show is that the future can't be simply a projection of what is going on today in the West. It's a lot more complex than that and it definitely involves all the world, that means all the other cultures: Indu, Chinese, arabic, ...
(1) Codeword Modernity. Christopher Prendergast. New Left Review/24. 2003/11-12
(2) A l'heure du capitalisme total. Servitude de l'homme libéré. Dany-Robert DUFOUR. Le Monde Diplomatique. Octobre 2003.
(3) Codeword Modernity. Christopher Prendergast. New Left Review/24. 2003/11-12
(4) Gramscian: from Gramsci, the Italian marxist thinker from pre 20th century 2nd world war who coined the concept of hegemony. He was saying that taking the political power would ultimately only succeed if this power was founded upon a culture shared almost unanimously by the population and thus he thought that cultural hegemony was to be built before taking the political power.
(5) Jalons pour une ethique du futur. L'avenir du temps. Le Monde Diplomatique. Jerome BINDE. 03/ 2002
I know that this conclusion is poles apart from the views and theories expressed by the recognized authorities from the left as well as from the right in Western countries. But I have the weakness to think that both sides of the Western intelligentsia are wrong, I think that both behave as pure Westerncentrics. They know that there is a world out there that is different from the Western world, another world that has another understanding of realities but that's about all. They generally know nothing about the ideas, the values and the ways of behaving inside that external world that, let's never forget it, represents 90% of the world population. Could it be that 10% of the world population has in its hands the destinity of humanity?
Never, that's pure delusion.
Our future can't be thought of as a simple projection into the future of trends observed today within the Western world.
I concede that it's not a given to build up a global vision out of this kind of Westerncentricism and to try to gain a more global picture of humanity's road. My personal approach is to diversify my sources of information, I read stuff written by people from the US, the EU and China and I compare. I also follow the advances in scientific research and I can guarantee that the knowledge that I gain from modern physics, chemistry, bilology, and so on helps to structure my thoughts by allowing me to adapt my ideas and visions in terms of my conclusions about economics, politics, art, culture and civilization.
The Western approach from the left as well as from the right, to put it bluntly, somehow follows in the footsteps of "The end of History" of Francis Fukuyama. In this model, the end game on humanity's road is a post-modermist stage of evolution that leads to the appearance of a last man that eliminates all other forms of being and behaving from the entire earth. It is not important for me here that the right glorifies such an outcome while the left rejects it. The thing that I find utterly disconcerting is that both right and left come to the same conclusion of an end-game in history, in human evolution.
"Classical modernism belongs in a 'transitional era' poised between 'two distinct worlds', those of the traditional, agricultural and peasant order, and the new machine-based industrialism, where the 'new technological machinery brings with it its own aesthetic shock, in the way it erupts without warning into the older pastoral and feudal landscape. Russia, Italy, and to some extent pre-First World War France provide the key examples.
Late modernism is an essentially US affair and is a product of the Cold War, but in all kinds of complicated ways. It is late not just in the temporal sense, post-Second World War, but also as a belated reprise at once modifying and traducing of some of the canonical features of earlier modernist thinking. On one hand, it keeps faith with the anti-modernity strain of high modernism, a last ditch stand against the depredations of capital as a market society hovers over its descent into the trammels of a fully commercialized postmodernity. On the other, it is distinguished from the heroic moment of its predecessor in its complicity with the end of a whole era of social transformations and indeed of Utopian desires and anticipations. It embodies a retreat from political alternatives to the rule of capital, through its insistence on (a version of) the autonomy of art". (1)
This version of post-modernism presenting itself as the natural extension of modernity should thus reject to the dustbin of history all other possibilities of post-industrial development. And art in this vision becomes a dull merchandise... that has to be a-utopia in order to please a customer base that has been numbed.
One can't but wonder how a healthy thinking process could lead to such a linear projection towards certainty. And how come that this certainty leads to a vision of reality with an ultimate outcome. Is this not a caricature of the foundings of Judeo-Christian thought?
Let's just register for now that it's always a black versus white, good versus bad final outcome that is given as well from the left as from the right.
But let's discover now how this kind of thinking works.
"Rejecting into the blur Kant, Freud and Marx, the modern form of capitalism induces an in-depth replanning of the spirits. Under pleasing and democratic airs, and since it is a question of selling or of buying, any moral, traditional or transcendantal consideration tends to be erased. As the ideologies which preceded it in the 20th century, neoliberalism wants to create a "new man".
(...) THIS PROGRAMMED DEATH of the subject of modernity does not seem to me foreign with the changes that one observes since a good 20 years in capitalism. Neoliberalism, to name by its name this new state of capitalism, is detaching itself from all forms of exchanges which remained by reference to an absolute guarantor or metasocial of the exchanges. To go quickly and to the essence, one could say that one needed gold like standard to guarantee the monetary exchanges, as one needed a guarantor symbolic system (Reason, for example) to allow philosophical speeches. However, one ceases referring to any transcendantal value to practice exchanges. The exchanges are not worth any more as guaranteed by a higher power (transcendantal or moral), but by the fact they put directly in report with the merchandises. In one word, commercial exchanges today desymbolise the world.
(...) Any transcendent figure which came to found the value from now on is rejected, there are only goods which are exchanged at their strict commercial value. Men today are requested to get rid of all these symbolic overload systems that guaranteed their exchanges. The symbolic value system is thus dismantled in the benefit of simple and neutral money value of the goods so that nothing any more, no other consideration (moral, traditional, transcendent...), can make obstacle with its freedom of movement. From this results a desymbolisation of the world. Men should not agree any more to transcendental value systems, they must simply yield to the play of infinite and widened circulation of goods.
(...) THIS RADICAL CHANGE in the play of exchanges involves an anthropological change. Since every symbolic guarantor system of the exchanges between men is liquidated, it is the human condition itself that changes. Our being-with-the-world cannot be the same any more since what is at stake for human life is not the search for an agreement with these transcendantal symbolic value systems playing the role of guarantors, but is related to our capacity to follow an always moving flow of goods in circulation. In one word, it is not the same subject any more who is required here and there.
(...) In the desymbolisation that we live in the present, it is not any more the critical subject proposing a deliberation in the name of the moral requirement of freedom that suits, it is neither the nevrotic subject taken in a compulsive culpability, it is a precarious subject, a-critical and psychotic, who from now on is necessary, a subject open to all commercial transcations and all kinds of identity fluctuations.
(...) Under pleasing and democratic airs, a new ideology, probably as virulent as the terrible ideologies that broke out in the West in the 20th century, is busy imposing itself. It is indeed not impossible that after the hell of Nazism and the terror of Communism a new historical catastrophe is profiling. (...) We are entering a new time: a time of total capitalism that is not interested only in the goods and their capitalization any more, is not satisfied with the social control of the bodies any more, but also aims, under cover of freedom, at an in-depth replanning of the spirits". (2)
"(...) Late-modernist ideology thus envisaged a practice of art from which -content- (Greenberg's term) was to be excised. The relevant form of content was largely narrative in kind and excising it was one way of making history disappear". (3)
I must say that this description fits well with societal evolution in the the US and the EU but for 90% of the people of this earth, this description makes no sense. Furthewrmore, even the West is not one. That this model reflects the working of the big mass of society does not mean that the game is over. The best informed citizens who are also the most active stay on the margins of such a lodel.
So, in this vision, as we have seen higher already, art productions become merchandises that have to be freed of all content. Post-modern man has to be "a precarious subject, a-critical and psychotic, a subject open to all commercial transcations and all kinds of identity fluctuations", for let's not forget that for the left "in the desymbolisation that we live in the present, it is not any more the critical subject proposing a deliberation in the name of the moral requirement of freedom that suits".
For sure one can find exemples of art productions with no content those days. In music Richard Kleiderman I guess, while in visual art John CURRIN, both fit quite well the bill. But It is one thing to name a few artists whose productions are empty of content, it is a totally different feat to conclude from those limited exemples that post-modernism should be "a practice of art from which -content- (Greenberg's term) was to be excised".
My personal view is that our human world has entered a chaotic period of disorder. But as science and the Chinese phylosophy of change are showing, out of disorder comes order.
Post-modernism for now in Western societies is a historical process of merchandization, that seems to be a fact. To continue to grow the market needed indeed an internal expansion of demand and to make such an expansion of demand possible, the market was in need of an hegemonic ideology, in a Gramscian sense (4), in order for such an expansion of demand to become acceptable in the eyes of the populations.
But this has not been the only strategy of big capital. Free trade was the other leg used to try to increase global demand and free trade has been over successfull those last 20 years in the sense that it unleached an unforecasted dynamic of geographic rebalancing of power that, I think, is leading the whole world into chaos. Pain is felt in the South as well as in the North and gigantic restructuring efforts are already under way but one should be aware of the fact that the coming future restructurings will go far, far deeper. It will mostly not be a question of political vision of how societies should evolve, it will be the the world awakening to the princip of reality, awakening to changes that have already taken place. I firmly believe indeed that changes are already taking place faster than our ideas can adapt to and the distance between the reality of changes and our capacity to perceive them is bound to continue to grow. This indicates the depth of the chaos that has been unleashed.
I believe that this expanded post-modernist shock is bound to surpass in importance the European Reanaissance in our history. Many factors lead me to think so but I'll come back on that later on. I want now to dwell on what renders this idea of a final outcome to be absolutely out of sink with what is going on around the world at the start of the 21st century.
Looking at the visual arts productions, I can't miss to see an extreme variety of productions and there are some works of extremely good quality out there that's for sure. This does not mean that the art market has already discovered those present day pearls and their creators. Art merchants and critics have still to stick their heads out the confusion that reigned master in the late 20th century. But let me be very clear. What I discern is a profusion of approaches as we never have seen in all our history.
Looking at what's going on in the scientific world I see the same variety and richness as in the visual arts. I'am particularly trilled at the discoveries made in terms of the sciences of complexity for exemple. The sciences that study the emergence and transformations of life itself. What I see is in reality a convergence of modern scientific knowledge with the ancient Chinese phylosophy of change that is bound to revolutionalize our ways of thinking, our ways of understanding ourselves and our cosmos.
"Questioned on the future of time, the Belgian Nobel Prize of chemistry Ilya Prigogine tries to introduce the idea of uncertainty into the idea of time. This idea of uncertainty will perhaps be the marking fact of 21st century. Ilya Prigogine shows that the reversible laws of Newton relate to only one weak fraction of the world in which we live. (...) Do we measure enough the revolution which these discoveries introduce into the notion of time? Here comes the end of certainties: time does not have a future, but futures. Because nature is from now on unforeseeable: it is history".(5)
The future is the result of what we'll be making out of it. I mean that our inputs are making what we will harvest in the future. But what will be our inputs? Surely not only the inputs of the western world. 10% of the world population will not indefinitedly be at the steering wheel. The remaining 90% are knocking on the doors and making more and more vociferous noises. What I want to show is that the future can't be simply a projection of what is going on today in the West. It's a lot more complex than that and it definitely involves all the world, that means all the other cultures: Indu, Chinese, arabic, ...
(1) Codeword Modernity. Christopher Prendergast. New Left Review/24. 2003/11-12
(2) A l'heure du capitalisme total. Servitude de l'homme libéré. Dany-Robert DUFOUR. Le Monde Diplomatique. Octobre 2003.
(3) Codeword Modernity. Christopher Prendergast. New Left Review/24. 2003/11-12
(4) Gramscian: from Gramsci, the Italian marxist thinker from pre 20th century 2nd world war who coined the concept of hegemony. He was saying that taking the political power would ultimately only succeed if this power was founded upon a culture shared almost unanimously by the population and thus he thought that cultural hegemony was to be built before taking the political power.
(5) Jalons pour une ethique du futur. L'avenir du temps. Le Monde Diplomatique. Jerome BINDE. 03/ 2002
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