Riding in Cars with Beuys.
(and i've got plenty more bad puns where that came from. How about...The Beuys Next Door, Beuys Don't Cry, or my personal favourite, Beuys! Beuys! Beuys!)
I forget - when I am not enrolled in an institution of learning - that I am complete rubbish when it comes to time management. I am a last-minute-inspiration kinda gal, which is not useful when you have to write something big. I have to resort to ridiculous methods of self-manipulation, which surprisingly are often effective. Like when I set my watch ten minutes fast and even though I know it's ten minutes fast, it still makes me think i'm later than I am. (i'm usually late anyway, but I FEEL more late.)
I'm really missing that pile of CDs that was stolen about half a year ago. Things I want to listen to so bad, that I didn't burn to my laptop before the Great Pilfering of 09 -
Dirty Three - Cinder. I have Ocean Songs and it's lovely but sometimes feels too sweet, Cinder is more earthy. I miss Cinder. Mind you, i could listen to Warren Ellis playing Happy Birthday and still be moved.
At The Drive-In - Vaya. It's a kinda dumb album (EP?) really, but very enjoyable in its tunelessness. I listened to it a lot when i was working late nights at uni in 3rd year, and i want to do that again.
Nick Cave - Murder Ballads. I know there is a song or three on there that would translate well to accordion. I hadn't listened to that album many times before it was yoinked.
I can't think of any others at the moment. I want something new (or old) to listen to. Recommend me?
Ness and I went to see the Bollywood movie 3 Idiots the other night. We got rained on, and the chairs were uncomfortable, and we ate chips and coffee and laughed our heads off. It was brilliant. Also, for a Bollywood movie there were some surprisingly clever plot twists and some downright Jossings. It definitely didn't feel 3 hours long - and there were only two dance numbers! When the lead character made his first appearance, I accidentally yelled out "Err, he's WHITE" whilst the rest of the crowd was gasping because he was Some Famous Bolly Dude. As the movie progressed he was revealed to be not really white (but still whiter than the rest of the cast - what is with Bollywood? They pick out lead actors who are as caucasian-looking as possible, and then get them to soliloquize about the joys of India. Some kind of colonial wish-fulfillment?) and very cute, and basically MacGuyver. Only a better actor than RDA. Not a huge statement, i know. The movie dealt with some predictable Daddy Issues, Whirlwind Romances and Severe Family Expectations, and some less predictable ones of Suicide, Hazing (Suggested ButtSex and Electrified Pee) and Silent Farts.
I have nearly finished reading a book called The Encyclopaedia of Stupidity, which is translated from Dutch (represent!) into rather enjoyably anachronistic English. It is a brilliant read. It is more of an essay than an Encyclopaedia, and some parts are convoluted and weird, and dare i say zany, but as I approach the end I find it has all started tying itself together to create a vaguely coherent argument for the innate stupidity of existence. The tone is neither depressing nor uplifting - more one of well-restrained madness. You get the impression that the author has a wild, high-pitched cackle that he lets loose occasionally and involuntarily whilst he's tapping away at his typewriter.
I have also been reading two books by Donald Kuspit, an art critic who like Suzi Gablik seems to hate pomo everything. I know a lot of people hate post modernism. As I see it, all art movements are inevitable byproducts of their socio-historico-politico-economic context, and if you insist on hating post modernism, then you can't blame the artists, any more than a farmer can blame a dead tree for causing salinity. Kuspit seems to make this distinction clearer than Gablik, who heaps responsibility onto artists to change the world, restore mystical values, etc, etc, ad infinitum. I can think of very few examples where artists have actually changed society. Sometimes society is changing before the artists catch up to it. If an artist IS ahead of their time, they will tend to be ignored for a generation or two and then proclaimed as a prophet when it's all over. Obvious examples of this are Van Gogh, dead and buried before anyone except his friends gave him a glance, and J. S. Bach, considered a fuddy-duddy in his day and dredged up decades later by Mendelssohn.
Usually, though, i think everything happens in close synchronisation, and - only noticable in retrospect, mind - according to a logical succession of events. The groundbreaking artists of the modern era - Manet, Picasso, Duchamp, Cage, Beuys, Warhol - all were deeply entrenched in certain situations which prompted a rebellion or an about-face. They all had a firm belief in a way that you could do art which would better suit the social envionment - whether by bringing art 'up to date' with other cultural goings-on, or by opposing a disagreeable situation. Contemporisation, or rebellion.
Mind you, Duchamp seems like he was a prick who wanted attention through whatever means possible, and as for Warhol, I'm still not entirely sure whether he wasn't a sociopath.
Anyway. It's interesting to read how Donald Kuspit and Suzi Gablik interpret the art of Bueys in particular. Gablik loves the dude. She talks about how his art is healing for the German people, how it absolves wounds left by the wartime atrocities. By boycotting rational science in favour of alchemical magic, Beuys offers people a way to regress to a more primal state where deep psychological healing is possible, away from the chill horrors created by a culture of science, seemingly rational and methodologically justified.
Kuspit reiterates the same sentiments, but he takes it a step or two further, to the detriment of poor Beuys. Kuspit has written a whole book about 'The Cult Of The Avante-Garde Artist', and a key feature of his appraisal is pathological narcissism. The artist, in this case Beuys, fantasises about becoming society's inner voice. "He fantasizes that by articulating through his art the inner tragedy inarticulately felt by everyone...he can liberate society from it." Kuspit argues that art cannot seriously have a healing effect on society for a number of reasons.
- society resists being 'healed' by art because it recognises the whole concept as fundamentally absurd,
- art always aestheticises its subjects, even when it attempts not to, and so suffering becomes idealised rather than alleviated. Beuys used unaesthetic materials (raw fat, newspaper, gauche performances) in an attempt to avoid art's powers of idealisation. But his performances, full of his own vulnerabilities and fears, were just as full of his own narcissism, even if he did not feel it himself. Even if he made his art thinking only of healing his audience, what is really desired by the artist is for the audience to heal him. "In general, the artist is more likely to solve his own narcissistic problems by making art than to solve any of the audience's emotional problems, although it no doubt puts the audience in touch with emotions it did not know it had." If one is left in any doubt as to the ratio of the artist's ego to his desire for social change, one only needs to reflect that he could have become a spiritual healer or medical physician, and yet chose to be an artist...
- The truth (according to Kuspit) is that the artist does not want change at all, and neither does society. All sorts of psycho-wackery is apparently in play here:
"Society celebrates [the artist's] tragic selfhood and their tragic relationship to it[society] in order to deny its own tragedy." - a simple concept, it's the classic example of tragic drama such as MacBeth or Othello, in which we lament (deliciously) the downfall of the heroes and their unwise decisions. We revel and squirm in the nastiness of the villains as they twist and corrupt the heroes. As we accept their tragic demise, we feel vindicated and reassured of our own selves, in complete denial that similar forces may already be at work upon us.
"Society...does not want to be healed by any means, for it thinks it is fundamentally sound. Art is simply a pawn in this frustrating standoff. Society...is immune to artistic transgression. The museum is the symbol of society's conviction in its own invincibility."
I agree with this idea. The art museum has the power to convert objects into neutralised relics, as unthreatening as a taxidermy animal in a natural history museum. Artworks become sacrificial objects for the conscience of society, to ensure its survival. I.e, people can go to the museum to look at them and say "that was made in response to [traumatic event eg Holocaust]". The tragedy of the Holocaust is placed upon the artwork and the avante-garde artist, and so the artist becomes the one who has been sinned against, rather than a participant in the sinning. The artist is a metaphorical sacrificial lamb for the social consciousness - a way for society to deny its ongoing pathological nature.
"Art cannot change tragedy, only allow us to admit it to ourselves. Beuys's personal tragedy was that he did not understand that his avante-garde performance of Germany's tragedy not only failed to heal it, but unwittingly justified Nazi Germany and its criminal behaviour."
Oh, he went there! Kuspit, you've got balls. Admittedly his book was published in 1993, almost a decade after Gablik's book, and another decade again since Beuys was in the limelight.
Kuspit's final word on the matter, and one which would possibly irk our pal Suzi, is that Beuys SHOULD have been funnier. "Comedy alone heals, if healing is possible. Comedy is ultimately more enchanting than tragedy, even for those disenchanted by themselves because of their own tragedy."
This is something that i think i agree with, though reluctantly. I love art (films, music, paintings) that are desperately tragic. But it makes you feel either worse or simply relieved that "that's not me." Convince your audience to laugh at you and your art, however, and foolishness is unveiled. The sky opens. La Boheme makes me cry, but The Magic Flute, in all its childishness, transcends.
i think i just wrote a fair chunk of my tutorial. Thanks, invisible livejournal audience, for staying up til 3.44am with me. Blerg.
I forget - when I am not enrolled in an institution of learning - that I am complete rubbish when it comes to time management. I am a last-minute-inspiration kinda gal, which is not useful when you have to write something big. I have to resort to ridiculous methods of self-manipulation, which surprisingly are often effective. Like when I set my watch ten minutes fast and even though I know it's ten minutes fast, it still makes me think i'm later than I am. (i'm usually late anyway, but I FEEL more late.)
I'm really missing that pile of CDs that was stolen about half a year ago. Things I want to listen to so bad, that I didn't burn to my laptop before the Great Pilfering of 09 -
Dirty Three - Cinder. I have Ocean Songs and it's lovely but sometimes feels too sweet, Cinder is more earthy. I miss Cinder. Mind you, i could listen to Warren Ellis playing Happy Birthday and still be moved.
At The Drive-In - Vaya. It's a kinda dumb album (EP?) really, but very enjoyable in its tunelessness. I listened to it a lot when i was working late nights at uni in 3rd year, and i want to do that again.
Nick Cave - Murder Ballads. I know there is a song or three on there that would translate well to accordion. I hadn't listened to that album many times before it was yoinked.
I can't think of any others at the moment. I want something new (or old) to listen to. Recommend me?
Ness and I went to see the Bollywood movie 3 Idiots the other night. We got rained on, and the chairs were uncomfortable, and we ate chips and coffee and laughed our heads off. It was brilliant. Also, for a Bollywood movie there were some surprisingly clever plot twists and some downright Jossings. It definitely didn't feel 3 hours long - and there were only two dance numbers! When the lead character made his first appearance, I accidentally yelled out "Err, he's WHITE" whilst the rest of the crowd was gasping because he was Some Famous Bolly Dude. As the movie progressed he was revealed to be not really white (but still whiter than the rest of the cast - what is with Bollywood? They pick out lead actors who are as caucasian-looking as possible, and then get them to soliloquize about the joys of India. Some kind of colonial wish-fulfillment?) and very cute, and basically MacGuyver. Only a better actor than RDA. Not a huge statement, i know. The movie dealt with some predictable Daddy Issues, Whirlwind Romances and Severe Family Expectations, and some less predictable ones of Suicide, Hazing (Suggested ButtSex and Electrified Pee) and Silent Farts.
I have nearly finished reading a book called The Encyclopaedia of Stupidity, which is translated from Dutch (represent!) into rather enjoyably anachronistic English. It is a brilliant read. It is more of an essay than an Encyclopaedia, and some parts are convoluted and weird, and dare i say zany, but as I approach the end I find it has all started tying itself together to create a vaguely coherent argument for the innate stupidity of existence. The tone is neither depressing nor uplifting - more one of well-restrained madness. You get the impression that the author has a wild, high-pitched cackle that he lets loose occasionally and involuntarily whilst he's tapping away at his typewriter.
I have also been reading two books by Donald Kuspit, an art critic who like Suzi Gablik seems to hate pomo everything. I know a lot of people hate post modernism. As I see it, all art movements are inevitable byproducts of their socio-historico-politico-economic context, and if you insist on hating post modernism, then you can't blame the artists, any more than a farmer can blame a dead tree for causing salinity. Kuspit seems to make this distinction clearer than Gablik, who heaps responsibility onto artists to change the world, restore mystical values, etc, etc, ad infinitum. I can think of very few examples where artists have actually changed society. Sometimes society is changing before the artists catch up to it. If an artist IS ahead of their time, they will tend to be ignored for a generation or two and then proclaimed as a prophet when it's all over. Obvious examples of this are Van Gogh, dead and buried before anyone except his friends gave him a glance, and J. S. Bach, considered a fuddy-duddy in his day and dredged up decades later by Mendelssohn.
Usually, though, i think everything happens in close synchronisation, and - only noticable in retrospect, mind - according to a logical succession of events. The groundbreaking artists of the modern era - Manet, Picasso, Duchamp, Cage, Beuys, Warhol - all were deeply entrenched in certain situations which prompted a rebellion or an about-face. They all had a firm belief in a way that you could do art which would better suit the social envionment - whether by bringing art 'up to date' with other cultural goings-on, or by opposing a disagreeable situation. Contemporisation, or rebellion.
Mind you, Duchamp seems like he was a prick who wanted attention through whatever means possible, and as for Warhol, I'm still not entirely sure whether he wasn't a sociopath.
Anyway. It's interesting to read how Donald Kuspit and Suzi Gablik interpret the art of Bueys in particular. Gablik loves the dude. She talks about how his art is healing for the German people, how it absolves wounds left by the wartime atrocities. By boycotting rational science in favour of alchemical magic, Beuys offers people a way to regress to a more primal state where deep psychological healing is possible, away from the chill horrors created by a culture of science, seemingly rational and methodologically justified.
Kuspit reiterates the same sentiments, but he takes it a step or two further, to the detriment of poor Beuys. Kuspit has written a whole book about 'The Cult Of The Avante-Garde Artist', and a key feature of his appraisal is pathological narcissism. The artist, in this case Beuys, fantasises about becoming society's inner voice. "He fantasizes that by articulating through his art the inner tragedy inarticulately felt by everyone...he can liberate society from it." Kuspit argues that art cannot seriously have a healing effect on society for a number of reasons.
- society resists being 'healed' by art because it recognises the whole concept as fundamentally absurd,
- art always aestheticises its subjects, even when it attempts not to, and so suffering becomes idealised rather than alleviated. Beuys used unaesthetic materials (raw fat, newspaper, gauche performances) in an attempt to avoid art's powers of idealisation. But his performances, full of his own vulnerabilities and fears, were just as full of his own narcissism, even if he did not feel it himself. Even if he made his art thinking only of healing his audience, what is really desired by the artist is for the audience to heal him. "In general, the artist is more likely to solve his own narcissistic problems by making art than to solve any of the audience's emotional problems, although it no doubt puts the audience in touch with emotions it did not know it had." If one is left in any doubt as to the ratio of the artist's ego to his desire for social change, one only needs to reflect that he could have become a spiritual healer or medical physician, and yet chose to be an artist...
- The truth (according to Kuspit) is that the artist does not want change at all, and neither does society. All sorts of psycho-wackery is apparently in play here:
"Society celebrates [the artist's] tragic selfhood and their tragic relationship to it[society] in order to deny its own tragedy." - a simple concept, it's the classic example of tragic drama such as MacBeth or Othello, in which we lament (deliciously) the downfall of the heroes and their unwise decisions. We revel and squirm in the nastiness of the villains as they twist and corrupt the heroes. As we accept their tragic demise, we feel vindicated and reassured of our own selves, in complete denial that similar forces may already be at work upon us.
"Society...does not want to be healed by any means, for it thinks it is fundamentally sound. Art is simply a pawn in this frustrating standoff. Society...is immune to artistic transgression. The museum is the symbol of society's conviction in its own invincibility."
I agree with this idea. The art museum has the power to convert objects into neutralised relics, as unthreatening as a taxidermy animal in a natural history museum. Artworks become sacrificial objects for the conscience of society, to ensure its survival. I.e, people can go to the museum to look at them and say "that was made in response to [traumatic event eg Holocaust]". The tragedy of the Holocaust is placed upon the artwork and the avante-garde artist, and so the artist becomes the one who has been sinned against, rather than a participant in the sinning. The artist is a metaphorical sacrificial lamb for the social consciousness - a way for society to deny its ongoing pathological nature.
"Art cannot change tragedy, only allow us to admit it to ourselves. Beuys's personal tragedy was that he did not understand that his avante-garde performance of Germany's tragedy not only failed to heal it, but unwittingly justified Nazi Germany and its criminal behaviour."
Oh, he went there! Kuspit, you've got balls. Admittedly his book was published in 1993, almost a decade after Gablik's book, and another decade again since Beuys was in the limelight.
Kuspit's final word on the matter, and one which would possibly irk our pal Suzi, is that Beuys SHOULD have been funnier. "Comedy alone heals, if healing is possible. Comedy is ultimately more enchanting than tragedy, even for those disenchanted by themselves because of their own tragedy."
This is something that i think i agree with, though reluctantly. I love art (films, music, paintings) that are desperately tragic. But it makes you feel either worse or simply relieved that "that's not me." Convince your audience to laugh at you and your art, however, and foolishness is unveiled. The sky opens. La Boheme makes me cry, but The Magic Flute, in all its childishness, transcends.
i think i just wrote a fair chunk of my tutorial. Thanks, invisible livejournal audience, for staying up til 3.44am with me. Blerg.