A quote from the essay by said name by Nicolas Bourriad (1998):
"All works of art produce a model of sociability, which transposes reality or might be conveyed in it. So there is a question we are entitled to ask in front of any aesthetic production: 'Does this work permit me to enter into dialogue [ Could I exist, and how, in the space it defines?] A form is more or less democratic. May I simply remind you, for the record, that the forms produced by the art of totalitarian regimes are peremptory and closed in on themselves (particularly through their stress on symmetry).
Otherwise put, they do not give the viewer a chance to complement them."
The "glossary" to the essay (all worth reading)
The whole text
This is just a sample of the crap they make us read in art school. Actually, I love certain parts of this text and wanted to share it with anyone who was interested, but I put up this particular quote because Baurriad is discussing form (shape) in terms of democratic and antidemocratic - which can be extended to MUSIC - as well as the viewer's role - can be extended to DANCING.
9 comments:
This is not to replace TCD's coming post...
I am uncomfortable with the idea that symmetry is totalitarian, as an artist who uses symmetry in his work constantly. But it can be good to be uncomfortable... Anyway, I want to look at this expansively...
some thought fragments:
symmetry (particularly facial/body symmetry) also registers as beauty in the human mind, right?
i'm curious about this claim that the art of totalitarian regimes relies so heavily on symmetry. i'm not particularly doubting it, i guess, but i would certainly like to witness some specific examples. i mean, all that is springing to mind is basically nazi iconography, which i supppose is quite rigid and symmetrical - but so are the icons of most nations, religions, and organizations of any sort...
would harmony be the musical corollary to symmetry? i suppose that would explain certain reactions to stravinsy, schoenberg, etc...certainly schoenberg's agenda was to embrace dissonance to express the horrors of modern life (specifically nazi atrocities)...
but would the author make a similar claim about harmonious music?
i'm still confused by this statement: "Otherwise put, they do not give the viewer a chance to complement them."
can anyone explain?
the line between dance as fascistic ritual and chaotic bacchanalia is shockingly thin.
somehow all this reminded me of a 3 hour long conversation i once had with owen hutchinson and kerry chance about the "religious geometry of food". of course, this was a particularly ethanol-saturated evening, so my memory is more than a little smudgy.
have you ever heard of "Godwin's Law?"...check it.
well shit :P
I'm dangerously blogging right now, as anyone who is keeping up with my late-night irresponsibleness on this blog can clearly see. I'm responding to shit I haven't even really read, but here it goes:
Nazis co-opted their iconography, like total-cool-due pointed out. I don't particularly see nature as totalitarian, in fact it's probably as oposite as it gets, but symetry is all over it.
We see symetry as beauty, and certain musical harmonies, because we've evolved in a particular environment. For all we know, what we find pleasing in music pisses the fuck out of bees, or whales. Did you know that the amount of data in a whale song is equivillant to the iliad? Found that out in Carl Sagan's Cosmos.
The fact that we can see at all is more of a mystery still to us than deciding which forms are opressive and stuff like that. I mean, everything is anything, and the other way around, right?
Ok, here's my rant after a more careful reading:
To start, I have to say that I disagree fundamentally with the post-structuralist view of the world, that "Everything has been done". And that any modernist movement is simply re-shuffling existing pieces on a board..
This is a new perspective of mine, and one that I arrived at with great difficulty.
Yes, computers are very fast machines, but to say that because of that we are still in the machine age and not in a new digital age, and that there are no differences between the two is absurd to me. I used to really buy into the situationists argument about the spectacle, but now I really just think it's a cop-out.
I feel like he makes the assumption that culture is 'real' or a medium in which we exist, rather than a by-product of our biological evolution.
"nevertheless seem dull to minds formed in the mould of cultural Darwinism."
-- Is this to suggest that Darwinism is akin to religion? I'm not sure I understand this correctly. Why does he say it as if there is another mould that one could be formed by? Is he saying that the concept of cultural Darwinism is relative to western scientific thought, and in that sense oppressive? That other cultures don't have to believe in it, and if you don't believe in it, it won't be true? I can't escape the feeling that he views evolution negatively, almost like a creationist argument from theists who don't really get evolution and how it works. Yes, Darwin was a white scientist, from the western world, but his theory went contrary to the modern world-view of his time, just like the theory of gravity when it came about, and the concept that the world is round.
People still don't really comprehend the process of mutation and natural selection, much like people probably had a hard time understanding what curvature on such a huge scale looked like -- and so there remains camps who believe that evolution is just a 'theory'.
I think the absurdity of his argument lies in his belief that art is LESS aristocratic than it used to be. PU-LEASE. What average citizen of the world has any clue what is going on with a piece of contemporary sculpture, no less has an understanding of why it costs a few million dollars. Contemporary art seems COMPLETELY driven by inside jokes, lots of winking and money, money, money.
Yes, a Seurat on your wall said, "Look at me, I'm important" -- but people could see the intrinsic value, because the object was beautiful. The workmanship visible. Average plebs could (and still do) walk through a museum and appreciate the beauty of the rich man's junk. Today, you have to have gone to graduate school to even get what's going on with a piece of art, and you need a codex next to you when reading this guys paper. To me, that's just way more aristocratic all around.
Seriously, why does theory have to be so dense? Am I the only one who is really turned off by the pretentiousness in things like "So the essence of humankind is purely trans-
individual, made up of bonds that link individuals together in social forms which are invariably historical " (as if there is a value in such a wordy recombination of Marx's version: "the human essence is the set of social relations")
Is it the theory that's important here, or just how many words like "agglutination" can be crammed into the text. Darwin is dense -- but readable. And it's one of the most complex and beautiful theories of the universe that we have.
" The form of Gordon Matta-Clark or Dan
Graham's work can not be reduced to the "things" those two artist "produce"
Oh really? WHY?? I rather think they can.
"To paint is to become part
of history through plastic and visual choices."
Yea, but einstein probably wrote his special theory of relativity with a pen, and I really don't think he got caught up considering the "pen-ness" of his work. "Yes, I can see myself riding on a wave of light, and now see the world in an entirely new dimension -- but I'm transferring these thoughts through the historical medium of "writing", onto "paper", and really that changes everything, in fact I should just give up because it's all the same shit really. [puts gun to head, blows his brains out: BANG]"
>>have you ever heard of "Godwin's Law?"...check it.
Amazing. Dude, that's like having a really good monopoly card and then just dropping it on the table, all like "wassup?". You've just been waiting for someone to bring up the Nazi's haven't you?
no...i wish that was a monopoly card i was holding for a while...but actually i stumbled on it in wikipedia after this post was made...but also you can kind of make any law that goes like that....i mean...as time goes on the probability of a thread talkng about ninja turtles approaches one as well..."Gwazda's Law"...it's official.
i have to agree with some of th things you said. for example....i now work as a store where we sell art posters, and some of the posters we sell are more classic, such as van gogh, and some are more contemporary, like mark rothko or something....and most people come across the rothko and i always hear people saying "i dont call that art"...mostly bitchy college girls who dont know anything about art, but i think it makes the point that art is more aristocratic. also when you have people like murakami collaborating with loius vuitton to make thousand dollar handbags for paris hilton i think that makes a point as well.
i also dont see why theory has to be so dense, and i was also recently inspired by carl sagan. if he can make cosmology and astro-physics accessable to the public television viewer, and make it understandable and interesting, why cant art theory do that? that is sort of a long shot, but most theory i read doesnt actually make me WANT to make art, or understand anything about my own art. maybe i can talk about other people's art better....but to me that is art history, not art theory.
India said similar things about working in the MOCA Store -- actually, bitchy girls would come in and say "Do you sell art here?". Or they would see a poster and say, "wait, is this really a [insert artist name]!?"..
I'm glad you said that about Carl Sagan's Cosmos series. That's exactly how I feel. Understanding evolution and astrophysics, he saw as important for everyone. If only an elite few understand, what good does that do..
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