viernes, 7 de septiembre de 2012
martes, 3 de mayo de 2011
miércoles, 16 de marzo de 2011
domingo, 13 de marzo de 2011
miércoles, 9 de marzo de 2011
miércoles, 3 de marzo de 2010
70 Million by Hold Your Horses !
Video musical con referencias a la historia de la pintura de la banda Hold Your Horses. La canción se llama 70 Million. Enjoy
70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.
lunes, 22 de febrero de 2010
Sophie Jodoin
Pintura y dibujo monocromáticos con la canadiense Sophie Jodoin
"The subjects of my work are often difficult and challenging: little people, the elderly, the wounded. Equally conceptual and representational. I develop drawn series which can take up to two years to realize. Since 2003, each work is exclusively in black and white, on paper and mylar, and done over the course of one day.
Exhibited in very minimal and stark style; the series are shown as large wall installations and are often indivisible. Recently, thematically-similar video components echo and resituate the drawing works. This results in hybrid exhibits: traditional drawing mixed with multimedia. "
martes, 15 de septiembre de 2009
Graça Morais-Centro de Arte Contemporánea.
Siempre resulta interesante saber qué es lo que tiene que decir un artista sobre su obra. En éste caso también resulta interesante saber que el arte Europeo no sólo viene de Francia, España, Gran Bretaña o Alemania, también existe Portugal, y, dentro de este contexto también resulta bueno saber que Portugal no sólo tiene a Paula Rego o Vieira da Silva (sin demeritar el trabajo de éstas dos grandes pintoras). Graça Morais (Vieiro, Trás-Os-Montes, 1948) hace un recorrido a lo largo de su producción, exhibida en el recién inaugurado Centro de Arte Contemporánea, el cual lleva su nombre, en la ciudad de Bragança. Morais, por medio del dibujo y la pintura, lleva a la tela la existencia apartada de las comunidades transmontanas, principalmente las mujeres, quienes encuentran eco en un arte donde no es posible desligar dibujo de pintura y poseedor de un marcado corte expresionista. (P.D. tengo ganas de irme otra vez a Portugal)
lunes, 14 de septiembre de 2009
RESCATE DE LA PINTURA PARTE I
I. ESPEJOS: tendencias
-"El público solo ve los aciertos, los fracasos, que son la inmensa mayoría, quedan escondidos en lo escuro del estudio"-.
Una clara y visible inclinación temática -y hasta técnica-, puede verse como eje común en las obras de algunos pintores jóvenes que, aunque distanciados geográficamente, sus trabajos pictóricos comparten ciertos acercamientos y coincidencias de tipo iconográfico, que se han vuelto una especie de paradigma pictórico. Pero con el paso del tiempo, ese modelo pictórico se ha ido transformando caprichosamente, quizá naturalmente, en una presencia que si al inicio de sus manifestaciones fue prometedora y elocuente, ahora se encuentra asechada por sus propios principios y amenazada por convertirse en una tendencia que podría caer fácilmente en la indiferencia, si la comparamos con el destino terrible de las modas.
En Francia Jerome Lagarrigue, en Estados Unidos Alex Kanevsky, en Inglaterra Jenny Saville; y en México, ese toque de unidad entre estos artistas se ha extendido lentamente hasta llegar a Omar Rodríguez-Graham el cual es uno de los artistas plásticos, que retoma esa corriente de la nueva figuración inglesa propuesta por Jenny Saville, y la manifiesta acertadamente, aunque con la infortuna de padecer de una acentuada influencia de sus colegas, pues sigue casi al pie de la letra, los pasos de pintores que actualmente están inmersos en un proceso de burocratización y repetición de su propia obra: se vuelven pintores que pintan sobre ellos mismos.
Del franco acercamiento con el objeto cotidiano, entendido, procesado y comprendido por la mirada, se da el paso a una distorsión de la imagen a servicio de una idea estética visual, sin sentido dentro de la gramática pictórica, carente de la filosofía imagenológica germinal que les dio origen. Si al inicio en las primeras obras de Kanevsky, las manchas y escurridos pertenecían al terreno articulado e imprescindible de sus razones pictórico-plásticas, ahora son la “pajilla en el ojo”, esa mancha miope que ensucia y oculta la honestidad a la hora de mirar el mundo.
No es el dripping y la mancha arbitraria lo que vuelve interesantes las pinturas de estos artistas. Tampoco lo es el tamaño y sus extrovertidas áreas de color aplicado en el lienzo. Lo importante en la obra de Saville y de Lagarrigue, por ejemplo, es su profunda exploración de la forma, del cuerpo como una materia que sirve de pretexto para hablar de la carnalidad de la pintura, entendida no como una materia pigmentada, sino como un medio elocuente que nos acerca a la esencia de un desnudo, del retrato, a su reflexión pura sin los drippings innecesarios, sin toda esa parafernalia que le confiere esa falsa sensación de “pintura”. No se necesita de la mancha salpicada deliberadamente, se trata de una mancha justificada por su fundamental compromiso con el tejido pictórico, se trata de una mancha acorde con la experiencia empírica y perceptual del ver.
Con Kanevsky sucede que al trabajar en formatos más pequeños, nos resulta menos extravagante, auque sí más serio en su abordaje pictórico. Kanevsky ha mantenido a lo largo de los últimos años, una preocupación por los fenómenos físicos del movimiento, los trazos etéreos de la memoria y la relación saludable entre la fotografía y la pintura, como dos políticos adversarios que hablan del mismo asunto pero desde diferentes posiciones.
Desafortunadamente, la pintura de Alex Kanevsky se intuye extraña. Lo que podemos ver en sus obras a pesar de ser algo más cotidiano, se viste de colores matizados fríamente, colocados a manera de planos que a veces se transforman en un fondo general. En otras palabras, sus figuras siguen siendo parte de ese fondo, de esa bidimensionalidad propia de la fotografía de registro. De pronto se ve en ellas lo mismo, tras lo mismo.
A diferencia de la pintura de Saville y de Lagarrigue, la de Kanevsky se diluye peligrosamente en si misma.
Pero también nos encontramos con un acierto pictórico interesante cuando en sus serie “WAVES” se atreve a captar el instante efímero de la ola marina, sus formas se convierten en gramática y erige obras que no solo se quedan en el campo de la simple contemplación, sino que nos sumergen en una reflexión atinada sobre la memoria, sobre los trazos que quedan reminiscentes en nuestra mente como imágenes congeladas, permanentes.
Son una propuesta de paisaje, pero de un paisaje que se vive íntimamente, paradójico, pues sus pinturas anteriores nos hablaban de ese encierro en sus espacios cerrados, pero que al principio los "abría" con sus construcciones pictóricas, definiendo y destruyendo sus espacios logrados: parecía que nunca paraba de hacer la imagen ideal. Ilustraba esa terrible pero enriquecedora injerencia de lo contingente, como Eduardo Cohen lo expuso, en sus ensayos contenidos en Hacia un Arte Existencial.
En esta etapa Kanevsky resultaba más convincente, pues si algo reflejaba su pintura inicial, era ese compromiso con la “forma germinal”, entendiéndolo a la manera en que Etienne Gilson la expone en su libro Pintura y Realidad. Luego Kanevsky se aleja de esos conceptos para entregarse por completo al servicio de la mancha como un mero adorno, como un léxico que con el paso del tiempo, emborrona sus pinturas verdaderamente y no metafóricamente, cuando sus pinturas construían una filosofía intrigante y adictiva, cuando eran signos con una racionalidad fundamental y que hoy, son solo serializaciones que tienden a la homogeneidad aplastante. Ahora abandonan el terreno de lo simbólico y se vuelven solo manchas, huérfanas de toda coherencia intelectual.
Quizá estas últimas observaciones no han sido comprendidas por Rodríguez-Graham en México. Las pinturas colocadas en la Galería Hilario Galguera son sin duda impresionantes, pero carecen de esa vitalidad inicial que vivía en la materia de las primeras pinturas de Saville. Sus trabajos los observo como un salto evolutivo sin precedente, no por su sorpresiva aparición, sino que emerge de pronto, espontáneamente, carentes de historia, en un momento en el que el arte necesita de contextos formativos, de ubicación, de razones como dice el esteta barcelonés Gerard Vilar. Rodríguez-Graham debe desvincularse de ese eje coincidente con artistas de importante calibre, pues aunque sus carcasas de bovinos son de gran valor pictórico, se perciben como espejismos que no tienen la tangibilidad de sus desnudos -autorretrato incluído- en sillones, a la Lucian Freud.
-"El público solo ve los aciertos, los fracasos, que son la inmensa mayoría, quedan escondidos en lo escuro del estudio"-.
Una clara y visible inclinación temática -y hasta técnica-, puede verse como eje común en las obras de algunos pintores jóvenes que, aunque distanciados geográficamente, sus trabajos pictóricos comparten ciertos acercamientos y coincidencias de tipo iconográfico, que se han vuelto una especie de paradigma pictórico. Pero con el paso del tiempo, ese modelo pictórico se ha ido transformando caprichosamente, quizá naturalmente, en una presencia que si al inicio de sus manifestaciones fue prometedora y elocuente, ahora se encuentra asechada por sus propios principios y amenazada por convertirse en una tendencia que podría caer fácilmente en la indiferencia, si la comparamos con el destino terrible de las modas.
En Francia Jerome Lagarrigue, en Estados Unidos Alex Kanevsky, en Inglaterra Jenny Saville; y en México, ese toque de unidad entre estos artistas se ha extendido lentamente hasta llegar a Omar Rodríguez-Graham el cual es uno de los artistas plásticos, que retoma esa corriente de la nueva figuración inglesa propuesta por Jenny Saville, y la manifiesta acertadamente, aunque con la infortuna de padecer de una acentuada influencia de sus colegas, pues sigue casi al pie de la letra, los pasos de pintores que actualmente están inmersos en un proceso de burocratización y repetición de su propia obra: se vuelven pintores que pintan sobre ellos mismos.
Del franco acercamiento con el objeto cotidiano, entendido, procesado y comprendido por la mirada, se da el paso a una distorsión de la imagen a servicio de una idea estética visual, sin sentido dentro de la gramática pictórica, carente de la filosofía imagenológica germinal que les dio origen. Si al inicio en las primeras obras de Kanevsky, las manchas y escurridos pertenecían al terreno articulado e imprescindible de sus razones pictórico-plásticas, ahora son la “pajilla en el ojo”, esa mancha miope que ensucia y oculta la honestidad a la hora de mirar el mundo.
No es el dripping y la mancha arbitraria lo que vuelve interesantes las pinturas de estos artistas. Tampoco lo es el tamaño y sus extrovertidas áreas de color aplicado en el lienzo. Lo importante en la obra de Saville y de Lagarrigue, por ejemplo, es su profunda exploración de la forma, del cuerpo como una materia que sirve de pretexto para hablar de la carnalidad de la pintura, entendida no como una materia pigmentada, sino como un medio elocuente que nos acerca a la esencia de un desnudo, del retrato, a su reflexión pura sin los drippings innecesarios, sin toda esa parafernalia que le confiere esa falsa sensación de “pintura”. No se necesita de la mancha salpicada deliberadamente, se trata de una mancha justificada por su fundamental compromiso con el tejido pictórico, se trata de una mancha acorde con la experiencia empírica y perceptual del ver.
Con Kanevsky sucede que al trabajar en formatos más pequeños, nos resulta menos extravagante, auque sí más serio en su abordaje pictórico. Kanevsky ha mantenido a lo largo de los últimos años, una preocupación por los fenómenos físicos del movimiento, los trazos etéreos de la memoria y la relación saludable entre la fotografía y la pintura, como dos políticos adversarios que hablan del mismo asunto pero desde diferentes posiciones.
Desafortunadamente, la pintura de Alex Kanevsky se intuye extraña. Lo que podemos ver en sus obras a pesar de ser algo más cotidiano, se viste de colores matizados fríamente, colocados a manera de planos que a veces se transforman en un fondo general. En otras palabras, sus figuras siguen siendo parte de ese fondo, de esa bidimensionalidad propia de la fotografía de registro. De pronto se ve en ellas lo mismo, tras lo mismo.
A diferencia de la pintura de Saville y de Lagarrigue, la de Kanevsky se diluye peligrosamente en si misma.
Pero también nos encontramos con un acierto pictórico interesante cuando en sus serie “WAVES” se atreve a captar el instante efímero de la ola marina, sus formas se convierten en gramática y erige obras que no solo se quedan en el campo de la simple contemplación, sino que nos sumergen en una reflexión atinada sobre la memoria, sobre los trazos que quedan reminiscentes en nuestra mente como imágenes congeladas, permanentes.
Son una propuesta de paisaje, pero de un paisaje que se vive íntimamente, paradójico, pues sus pinturas anteriores nos hablaban de ese encierro en sus espacios cerrados, pero que al principio los "abría" con sus construcciones pictóricas, definiendo y destruyendo sus espacios logrados: parecía que nunca paraba de hacer la imagen ideal. Ilustraba esa terrible pero enriquecedora injerencia de lo contingente, como Eduardo Cohen lo expuso, en sus ensayos contenidos en Hacia un Arte Existencial.
En esta etapa Kanevsky resultaba más convincente, pues si algo reflejaba su pintura inicial, era ese compromiso con la “forma germinal”, entendiéndolo a la manera en que Etienne Gilson la expone en su libro Pintura y Realidad. Luego Kanevsky se aleja de esos conceptos para entregarse por completo al servicio de la mancha como un mero adorno, como un léxico que con el paso del tiempo, emborrona sus pinturas verdaderamente y no metafóricamente, cuando sus pinturas construían una filosofía intrigante y adictiva, cuando eran signos con una racionalidad fundamental y que hoy, son solo serializaciones que tienden a la homogeneidad aplastante. Ahora abandonan el terreno de lo simbólico y se vuelven solo manchas, huérfanas de toda coherencia intelectual.
Quizá estas últimas observaciones no han sido comprendidas por Rodríguez-Graham en México. Las pinturas colocadas en la Galería Hilario Galguera son sin duda impresionantes, pero carecen de esa vitalidad inicial que vivía en la materia de las primeras pinturas de Saville. Sus trabajos los observo como un salto evolutivo sin precedente, no por su sorpresiva aparición, sino que emerge de pronto, espontáneamente, carentes de historia, en un momento en el que el arte necesita de contextos formativos, de ubicación, de razones como dice el esteta barcelonés Gerard Vilar. Rodríguez-Graham debe desvincularse de ese eje coincidente con artistas de importante calibre, pues aunque sus carcasas de bovinos son de gran valor pictórico, se perciben como espejismos que no tienen la tangibilidad de sus desnudos -autorretrato incluído- en sillones, a la Lucian Freud.
También en la pintura de Rodríguez-Graham nos encontramos con fondos planos, fríos y desoladores. La figura se encuentran en un entorno apropiado, pero no adecuadamente digerido por la pintura misma. Parece que su figuración se define sola, al mantener esa relación figura-fondo tan discernible, que paradójicamente, difumina todo el cuadro como le sucede frecuentemente a Kanevsky.
La pintura de Kanevsky, nos habla de un entorno familiar y cercano al artista, aunque todavía no logra ese intimismo pictórico que Lucian Freud consigue casi naturalmente en su pintura, no obstante que Kanevsky evidencia la influencia de Antonio López bien entendida. La analogía con Freud solo puede sostenerse en cuanto al trato con el modelo, en cuanto al tiempo que le lleva concluir sus construcciones pictóricas, -pues Kanevsky admite que algunas de sus obras requieren de meses de trabajo- mas no en la materialidad, que en Kanevsky es casi ectoplásmica, fantasmal e intangible; mientras que en Freud, es gruesa y corpulenta como la piel y la carne que nos expone: irrefutablemente presente.
Rodríguez-Graham propone en sus obras de gran formato, esa particular grandiosidad encarnada en las pinturas de Saville pero, como he dicho antes, se inclina más hacia la paleta fría y desolada del cromatismo de Kanevsky, por lo que me lleva a preguntarme si esa particular elección de colores es indicio de alguna tendencia o sólo una coincidencia de poca relevancia.
La pintura de Kanevsky, nos habla de un entorno familiar y cercano al artista, aunque todavía no logra ese intimismo pictórico que Lucian Freud consigue casi naturalmente en su pintura, no obstante que Kanevsky evidencia la influencia de Antonio López bien entendida. La analogía con Freud solo puede sostenerse en cuanto al trato con el modelo, en cuanto al tiempo que le lleva concluir sus construcciones pictóricas, -pues Kanevsky admite que algunas de sus obras requieren de meses de trabajo- mas no en la materialidad, que en Kanevsky es casi ectoplásmica, fantasmal e intangible; mientras que en Freud, es gruesa y corpulenta como la piel y la carne que nos expone: irrefutablemente presente.
Rodríguez-Graham propone en sus obras de gran formato, esa particular grandiosidad encarnada en las pinturas de Saville pero, como he dicho antes, se inclina más hacia la paleta fría y desolada del cromatismo de Kanevsky, por lo que me lleva a preguntarme si esa particular elección de colores es indicio de alguna tendencia o sólo una coincidencia de poca relevancia.
Debemos recordar que las razones de las pinturas iniciales de Saville eran más cálidas, vivas, concretas y bien definidas: más carne que las últimas que se le conocen “públicamente” y que ahora son manifestación desesperada por lo grotesco sin más sentido, que el de la exhibición sensacional. No son necesarios esos ganchos que pueden orillar al pintor a tomar un callejón sin salida, un dead end. La pintura más importante de Saville es aquella con la que inicia y que prescinde de artificios mórbidos que funcionan como catarata ocular, como un bloque que interfiere en el diálogo espectador-pintura.
A veces me parece que Saville en cierto momento miró en la obra de Alex Kanevsky y su frialdad cromática la atrapó pues en Saville, ese ambiente “refrigerado” se volvió constante, en una obsesión por lo muerto, por aquello que despide a la vida en la realidad física y que en larealidad de la pintura se vuelve otra, tal vez, menos desagradable, pero que se arrodilla ante la impresión precoz: el tema golpea, pero la pintura enmudece. Lo sublime se vuelve contra sí mismo y luego ya es una muletilla, un rasgo innecesario que atrapa el trabajo de estos magníficos pintores sin dejarles más ruta, que seguir obedeciendo los caprichos de un impacto fugaz, de un sobresalto que como en los juegos mecánicos, se recuerda agradable o desagradablemente, pero que permanece en la memoria en la categoría de lo transitorio, más no de lo permanente.
Y es ésta última idea la que puede resultar fatal para cualquier obra de arte y en especial para la pintura, pues mucho de lo que se produce en estos tiempos como producto del arte, día a día se manifiesta más como un acto filosófico que como un acto pictórico. En otros palabras, su manifestación es cada vez más conceptual. La pintura es plasticidad y su cualidad pictórica corpórea es aquella - entre otras más- la que le mantiene viva y libre de afirmaciones que a aseguran su fin, su exterminio y que aseguran su presencia material-física y mejor aún, contenedora de una idea, de un concepto, de una raison d'être.
Los boxeadores de Lagarrigue son un estudio tenaz e interesante. Sus paisajes y sus coliseos son otros acercamientos a una cultura de la lucha, de lo intenso de un acto lúdico salvaje. Su pintura padece de la misma enfermedad del dripping de la que padecen Kanevsky y Saville, pero que todavía no pierde su carácter gramatical. Sus últimas series tratan de bisontes y aunque esas inquietudes sobre el movimiento y fantasmagoría de Kanevsky esta presente, su paleta aún no se enfría ni se pierde en la estética entregada del adorno visual: aún dice algo.
En contraste, la obra de Rodríguez-Graham posee más cuerpo, pero urge que se desvincule de esa tendencia a cubrir con manchas estilizadas, que presumen una maestría que a mi parecer, se encuentra en otro punto de su pintura, en otra latitud de su universo pictórico: el tratamiento de la pintura alejada de ese sensacionalismo que aún le estorba.
Los títulos que bautizan sus obras llaman la atención, pues en mi opinión, son éstos los que contribuyen al peso conceptual y refuerzan el lenguaje poético. El trabajo de este pintor mexicano es admirable en su factura, y afortunadamente en sus obras conocidas más recientes, hay atisbos de una abordaje distinto al de los otros pintores mencionados en este ensayo, cuando nos referimos a las manchas y los bloques de color que como rompecabezas, constituyen una bella imagen de lo grotesco.
Sorprender con artificios no es el camino para demostrar la impresionante manera de manifestar el complejo proceso del pensamiento, en el momento en que éste, se deposita y se manifiesta en la obra pictórica. El triunfo de la pintura debe encausarse a la pintura misma y ensus componentes que le permiten una existencia autónoma, no a (sus) labias megalomaniacas por la “escala aberrante” –término utilizado por Michael Lafferty- por lo grandote y lo monumental.
A veces me parece que Saville en cierto momento miró en la obra de Alex Kanevsky y su frialdad cromática la atrapó pues en Saville, ese ambiente “refrigerado” se volvió constante, en una obsesión por lo muerto, por aquello que despide a la vida en la realidad física y que en larealidad de la pintura se vuelve otra, tal vez, menos desagradable, pero que se arrodilla ante la impresión precoz: el tema golpea, pero la pintura enmudece. Lo sublime se vuelve contra sí mismo y luego ya es una muletilla, un rasgo innecesario que atrapa el trabajo de estos magníficos pintores sin dejarles más ruta, que seguir obedeciendo los caprichos de un impacto fugaz, de un sobresalto que como en los juegos mecánicos, se recuerda agradable o desagradablemente, pero que permanece en la memoria en la categoría de lo transitorio, más no de lo permanente.
Y es ésta última idea la que puede resultar fatal para cualquier obra de arte y en especial para la pintura, pues mucho de lo que se produce en estos tiempos como producto del arte, día a día se manifiesta más como un acto filosófico que como un acto pictórico. En otros palabras, su manifestación es cada vez más conceptual. La pintura es plasticidad y su cualidad pictórica corpórea es aquella - entre otras más- la que le mantiene viva y libre de afirmaciones que a aseguran su fin, su exterminio y que aseguran su presencia material-física y mejor aún, contenedora de una idea, de un concepto, de una raison d'être.
Los boxeadores de Lagarrigue son un estudio tenaz e interesante. Sus paisajes y sus coliseos son otros acercamientos a una cultura de la lucha, de lo intenso de un acto lúdico salvaje. Su pintura padece de la misma enfermedad del dripping de la que padecen Kanevsky y Saville, pero que todavía no pierde su carácter gramatical. Sus últimas series tratan de bisontes y aunque esas inquietudes sobre el movimiento y fantasmagoría de Kanevsky esta presente, su paleta aún no se enfría ni se pierde en la estética entregada del adorno visual: aún dice algo.
En contraste, la obra de Rodríguez-Graham posee más cuerpo, pero urge que se desvincule de esa tendencia a cubrir con manchas estilizadas, que presumen una maestría que a mi parecer, se encuentra en otro punto de su pintura, en otra latitud de su universo pictórico: el tratamiento de la pintura alejada de ese sensacionalismo que aún le estorba.
Los títulos que bautizan sus obras llaman la atención, pues en mi opinión, son éstos los que contribuyen al peso conceptual y refuerzan el lenguaje poético. El trabajo de este pintor mexicano es admirable en su factura, y afortunadamente en sus obras conocidas más recientes, hay atisbos de una abordaje distinto al de los otros pintores mencionados en este ensayo, cuando nos referimos a las manchas y los bloques de color que como rompecabezas, constituyen una bella imagen de lo grotesco.
Sorprender con artificios no es el camino para demostrar la impresionante manera de manifestar el complejo proceso del pensamiento, en el momento en que éste, se deposita y se manifiesta en la obra pictórica. El triunfo de la pintura debe encausarse a la pintura misma y ensus componentes que le permiten una existencia autónoma, no a (sus) labias megalomaniacas por la “escala aberrante” –término utilizado por Michael Lafferty- por lo grandote y lo monumental.
Debo agregar, que como un artista preocupado por los asuntos terribles del mundo, no repruebo la representación grotesca por el simple hecho de no ser un ideal general de belleza, pero insisto en que tales manifestaciones de abyección, suelen ser más abiertas cuando se les dirige por caminos menos predecibles y por lo tanto, no agotan sus posibilidades tan súbitamente, como sucede con la representación de lo obvio.
Todos los pintores que dieron origen a estas líneas, son sin duda alguna, excelentes exponentes y defensores de la pintura actual, pero como pintor no puedo aceptar, que sus magníficas piezas se conviertan sólo en un producto clave en el mercado artístico, que les arrebate su originalidad inicial, su honestidad y les dirijan hacia un vacío en el que se les recordará como un intento iconoclasta, apocado por el mismo peso de (sus) pretensiones grandilocuentes que sofocan y aniquilan a la producción misma de sus obras.
La pintura es un acto de construcción-de-construcción y en estos pintores este punto esencial de la pintura se presenta sin reparo y es por ello que nos sorprende y nos estimula –a los demás pintores- a seguir trabajando en nuestros talleres, con la profunda convicción de que nuestro trabajo, es una actividad digna y enriquecedora para el espíritu humano.
Las reflexiones que aquí expongo, no son más que pensamientos asociados con una preocupación que me atrevo a afirmar, no es común: defender y rescatar a la pintura.
NOTA: este ensayo fue publicado previamente en el blog http://coloressobretela.blogspot.com, ya se cocina una segunda parte.
sábado, 5 de septiembre de 2009
Sorolla Rules!
El Museo del Prado ha anunciado que la exposición Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923), que muestra los 14 paneles Visión de España del artista valenciano y que ya ha recibido a 250.000 visitantes, prorroga su estancia en la pinacoteca durante una semana más, hasta el 13 de septiembre.
La decisión, adoptada a partes iguales por el Museo del Prado y Bancaja -entidad patrocinadora de la exposición-, se suma a la adoptada en su momento por Turismo Madrid, que amplió el horario de apertura hasta las diez de la noche, de martes a sábado, para facilitar la visita a la ambiciosa retrospectiva.
Tras su estancia en Madrid -donde se inauguró el pasado 26 de mayo-, la exposición pondrá rumbo a Valencia, tierra natal de Sorolla y última oportunidad para ver en España obras maestras como Triste herencia, La vuelta de la pesca, Cosiendo la vela o Sol de tarde.
La decisión, adoptada a partes iguales por el Museo del Prado y Bancaja -entidad patrocinadora de la exposición-, se suma a la adoptada en su momento por Turismo Madrid, que amplió el horario de apertura hasta las diez de la noche, de martes a sábado, para facilitar la visita a la ambiciosa retrospectiva.
Tras su estancia en Madrid -donde se inauguró el pasado 26 de mayo-, la exposición pondrá rumbo a Valencia, tierra natal de Sorolla y última oportunidad para ver en España obras maestras como Triste herencia, La vuelta de la pesca, Cosiendo la vela o Sol de tarde.
sábado, 29 de agosto de 2009
Michaël Borremans
Pintor, dibujante y cineasta. Nacido en Bélgica, 1963. Su trabajo se encuentra en galerias y museos de Nueva York y Amberes.
martes, 25 de agosto de 2009
Philip Pearlstein
Pintor estadounidense nacido en Pittsburg en 1924, uno de los pioneros en darle electroshocks y plumas de fénix a la pintura representativa en el apogeo de un hostil modernismo y su preferencia por el expresionismo abstracto, famoso por sus desnudos y aun nuestro contemporáneo.
Un curioso adelanto al arte pop es "Superman" de 1952, obra temprana ejecutada de forma expresionista. También se vería bien en una exposición de arte contemporáneo
Antony Micallef
martes, 21 de julio de 2009
roxy paine
New York-based artist Roxy Paine makes computer-driven machines that mechanically produce paintings and sculptures; he also creates hand-crafted replications of nature that are startlingly realistic. His work toys with assumptions about nature vs. culture and organic vs. artificial; it often confounds the distinction between the man-made and the natural.
His lifelike mushroom sculptures, life-size stainless-steel trees and machine-made art have been exhibited worldwide, including in the original Greater New York show at P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center in 2000, and the Whitney Biennial in 2002.
His lifelike mushroom sculptures, life-size stainless-steel trees and machine-made art have been exhibited worldwide, including in the original Greater New York show at P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center in 2000, and the Whitney Biennial in 2002.
domingo, 21 de junio de 2009
TO SEE A WORLD: ART AND THE I OF THE BEHOLDER
by Ken Wilber
It is not the object expressed, but the depth of the subject expressing it, that most defines art. And this shifts art and art criticism from irony to authenticity--a rather unnerving move, at least to today’s eyes. Can art and art criticism survive the loss of irony, the loss of inauthenticity, as its central source? And if today’s art abandons sardonic surfaces, where will it finally reside?
* * *
We do not live in a pregiven world. One of the more remarkable tenets of the postmodern revolution in philosophy, psychology and sociology is that different worldviews exist--different ways of categorizing, presenting, representing, and organizing our existence. There is not a single, monolithic world with a single, privileged representation, but rather multiple worlds with pluralistic interpretations. Moreover, these worldviews often--indeed, almost always--change from epoch to epoch, and from culture to culture.
This insight need not be taken to extremes--there are plenty of common features in our various interpretations to prevent the world from falling apart. Indeed, scholars have discovered that there are at least some (and often many) universals in languages, in affects, in cognitive structures, and in colour perception, to name a few. But these universal ingredients are woven together and organized in a rich variety of ways, resulting in a tapestry of multiple world views.
Although there are, in theory, an almost infinite number of worldviews, in the course of human history on this planet, there seems to be about a dozen that have had, or are still having, a widespread and significant influence. Investigated by scholars such as Jean Gebser, Gerald Heard, Jurgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, Robert Bellah, Peter Berger, and others, these major worldviews include: sensorimotor, archaic, magic, mythic mental, existential, psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual. (The exact meaning of these terms will become more obvious as we proceed).
It is not a matter of which of these worldviews is right and which is wrong; they are all adequate for their time and place. It is more a matter of simply cataloging, as carefully as possible, the vary general characteristics that define each worldview, and “bracketing” (or setting aside), for the moment, whether or not they are ”true”--we simply describe all of them as if they were true.
The magic-animistic worldview, for example, is marked by a partial overlap of subject and object, so that “inanimate objects” like rocks and rivers are directly felt to be alive or even to possess souls or subjective spirits. The mythic worldview is marked by a plethora of gods and goddesses, not as abstract entities but as deeply felt powers, each having a rather direct hand in the affairs of earthly men and women. The mental worldview--of which the “rational worldview” is the best known subset--is marked by a belief that the subjective realm is fundamentally set apart from the objective realm of nature, and how to relate to these two realms becomes one of the most pressing problems in the this worldview. The existentialist worldview possesses an understanding that multiple perspectives are built into the universe, so that not only are there no privileged perspectives, individuals must carve out for themselves some sort of meaning from that frightening multitude of possibilities. The subtle worldview is marked by an apprehension of subtle forms and transcendental archetypes, primordial patterns of manifestation which are usually felt (and claimed) to be Divine. The causal worldview is marked by the direct realization of a vast unmanifest realm--variously known as emptiness, the Abyss, the Unborn, ayn, the Ursprung--a vast Formlessness from which all manifestation springs. And the nondual represents a radical union of the Formless with the entire world of Form.
Those various worldviews present a truly dizzying array of the many ways that our experiences can be organized and interpreted. Those are by no means the only worldviews nor is the list fixed or predetermined--it is constantly unfolding with new possibilities. But without some sort of worldview, we remain lost in the blooming buzzing confusion of experience, as William James put it.
In other words, all of our individual perceptions are, to some extent, embedded in particular worldviews. Within those worldviews, we still possess abundant freedom of choice; but worldviews generally constrain what we will even consider choosing. We moderns do not, for example, often get out of bed with the thought, “Time to kill the bear.” Each worldview, with its distinctive characteristics, stamps itself all over those born within it, and most individuals do not know, or even suspect, that their perceptions are occurring within the horizons of a given and rather specific worldview. Each worldview, operating for the most part collectively and unconsciously, simply presents the world as if it were the case. Few question the worldview in which they find themselves, just as a fish is unaware it is wet.
Nonetheless--and here the story takes a decidedly fascinating turn--research in both individual psychology and cross-cultural anthropology demonstrates rather convincingly that, under various circumstances, individuals have available to them the entire spectrum of worldviews. The human mind, it appears, comes with all of these worldviews--archaic to magic to mythic to mental to subtle to causal--as potentials in its own makeup, ready to emerge when various factors conspire to allow them to do so, rather like a seed awaiting water, soil, and sun to unfold.
So, even though certain epochs were especially marked by a particular worldview--foraging, by magic; agrarian, by mythic; and industrial, by mental-rational, for example--nonetheless, all of these major modes of interpreting our experience seem to be potentials of the human organism, and any of them can be brought forth in any individual under the right circumstances. To the question “Which worldviews are available to us now?,” the answer appears to be, “All of them.”
Still, at any given time, and in any given culture, most adults tend to inhabit the landscape of one particular worldview. The reason is simple enough: each worldview is, indeed, a person’s world. To lose that world is to experience a type of death-siezure. To surrender a worldview is a psychological earthquake somewhere around 7.00 on the internal Richter scale, and most people avoid this at all costs.
But sometimes, under exceptional circumstances...or in exceptional artists...higher or deeper worldviews break through the crust of our ordinary perceptions, and the world is somehow never quite the same again.
* * *
Artists express worldviews. Paleolithic artists, for example, painted the magical worldspace--objects overlapping each other, little perspectivism, animistic symbols, few constraints of space and time, wholes interchangeable with their parts. Medieval artists painted the mythic worldspace--an entire pantheon of angels, archangels, a God, a Son of that God, the Mother of that God, Moses parting the Red Sea--the themes were the endless possibilities of the mythic worldspace, all depicted, not as symbols, but as realities (precisely because, as we saw, all worldviews present themselves as simply true). With the rise of the very general movement of Modernity in the West--riding as it did on the mental worldview, with its replacement of mythic themes with themes dominated by nature, by realism, by impressionism, by subjective expressionism, and by abstract expressionism. And with the general rise of Postmodernism, we see those trends carried even further into the existential worldspace, where multiple perspectives, at first a source of endless creativity, soon became a paralyzing nightmare of infinite jest, met with infinite irony.
The existential worldview is called “integral-aperspectival” by Gebser--”aperspectival” because it presents multiple perspectives, none of which are privileged; and “integral” because nonetheless some sort of unity, coherence, or meaning has to be fashioned in the midst of multiplicity. In the previous worldview--the mental-rational, which Gebser also called “perspectival”--the single, rational, subject tended to take up a single, fixed interpretation of the world, and this was evidenced in everything from science (Newton) to philosophy (Descartes) to portraiture (Van Eyck) to perspectivism (starting with Renaissance painting, especially Brunelleschi, Alberti, Donatello, Leonardo, Giotto). But with the shift to integral-aperspectival, the subject itself becomes part of the objective scene--the camera becomes part of the movie, the author’s stream of thought becomes part of the novel, the painter’s own operations show up conspicuously on the canvas. Multiple perspectives draw the subject into the world of objects, making it one object among many others, all lost in a dizzying regress of self-reflexivity, from which there is no escape.
Every worldview has its pathological expressions. The rational worldview’s most notorious is “Cartesian dualism”--subject split from object, mind divorced from nature--a dualism against which, it seems, every thinking person of the last three hundred years has vocally declared war. But the postmodern, integral-aperspectival stance in not without its own major aberration, known generally as “aperspectival madness,” the insane view that no view is better than another. Starting with the noble proposition that all of the multiple perspectives are to be treated fairly and impartially (“pluralism and rich diversity”), postmodernism slides, in its extreme forms, into the insidious notion that no perspective whatsoever is better than another, a confusion that results in complete paralysis of will, thought, and action. Madness it is indeed: it claims no view is better than another, except its own view, which is superior in a world where nothing is supposed to be superior at all. And worse: if no view is better than another, then the Nazis and the KKK are on the same moral footing as, say, art critics.
“Aperspectival madness” might fairly well describe much of the last two decades of art, art criticism, lit crit, and cultural studies. Irony is one of the few places you can hide in a world of aperspectival madness--say one thing, mean another, therefore don’t get caught in the embarrassment of taking a stand. (Since, allegedly, no stand is better than another, one simply must not commit--sincerity is death). So skip sincerity, opt for sardonic. Don’t construct, deconstruct; don’t look for depth, just hug the surfaces; avoid content, offer noise--”surfaces, surfaces, surfaces is all they ever found,” as Bret Easton Ellis summarized the scene. No wonder that David
Foster Wallace, in a recent essay that received much attention, lamented the pervasiveness of the art of “trendy, sardonic exhaustion” and “reflexive irony,” art that is “sophisticated and extremely shallow.”
But if we abandon irony and seek to make sincere statements, where do we begin? If we do surrender surfaces and look also for the depths, what exactly does that mean? And where are these “depths” to be found?
Wallace suggests that, instead of “reflexive irony,” art should provide “insights and guides to value.” A fine sentiment, but let us note immediately that specific values exist only in specific worldviews. The mythic worldview, for example, valued duty to rigid social hierarchy, which few moderns find appealing. The mythic worldview also valued male dominance and female subordination, which most enlightened moderns regard as ignorant. All values exist in particular worldviews, and if trendy sardonic exhaustion is actually the exhaustion of the existential worldview, then the only possible conclusion is that we will have to look to other worldviews altogether if we are to escape aperspectival madness and its relentless insincerity.
* * *
The reason that art in the postmodern, existential world had reached something of a cul-de-sac is not that art itself is exhausted, but that the existential worldview is. Just as rational modernity previously exhausted its forms and gave way to aperspectival modernity, so now the postmodern itself is on a morbid death watch, with nothing but infinitely mirrored irony to hold its hand, casting flowers where they will not be missed. The skull of postmodernity grins on the near horizon, and in the meantime, we are between two worldviews, one slowly dying, one not yet born.
Whatever we may think about it--and volumes have been delivered--perhaps the best that can be said of the avant-garde is that it always implicitly understood itself to be riding the crest of the breaking wave of evolving worldviews. The avant-garde was the leading edge, the growing tip of an evolving humanity. It would herald the new, announce the forthcoming. It would first spot, then depict, new ways of seeing, new modes of being, new forms of cognition, new heights or depths of feeling, and in all cases, new modes of perception. It would spot, and depict, the coming worldview, while breaking decisively with the old.
The story is familiar. Jacques Louis David’s art was part of the early rise of modernity (reason and revolution) that violently broke with the remnants of the mythic, aristocratic, rococo past. From neoclassicism to abstract expressionism, each succeeding growing tip became in turn the conventional, accepted norm, only to see its own form challenged by the next avant-garde. Even postmodernism, with its aperspectival madness, which first attempted to deconstruct the avant-garde altogether, intimately depended on it for something to deconstruct; thus, as Donald Kuspit points out in The Cult of the Avant-Garde Artist, a type of “neo-avant-garde” art inevitably dogged postmodernism from the start.
Like huge successive waves crashing ashore, worldviews succeed one another, and the avant-garde, at its best, were the great surfers of these waves. And now that the postmodern wave is washing on the shore of its own demise, what new waves are forthcoming? What new worldviews surge from the ocean of the soul to announce a new perception? Where are we to look for the contents of the sincere artistic statements that will supplant irony and aperspectival madness? Standing on tiptoe, looking through the mist, can the vague outline of the face of tomorrow’s art--and therefore, tomorrow’s world--even be seen?
* * *
What worldviews, from those available, might carry the contours of tomorrow’s art? Of course, some aspects of the coming landscape will be entirely new and original. “Creative advance into novelty,” according to
Whitehead, is the basic feature of the universe. But we also know, from extensive psychological and sociological research that certain basic features of the dozen or so major worldviews, briefly summarized above, are potentials already available to the human organism, and instead of starting entirely from scratch, nature usually reworks what is at hand, before adding the finishing touches of novelty.
We know the worldviews that have been tried, toiled, worked, and exhausted: magic, mythic, mental-rational (modern), and existential-aperspectival (postmodern). The postmodern, of course, will continue its major influence for decades to come, on the way to its final resting place. It is simply that artistic productions, as canaries in the cultural mine shaft, are dropping dead in alarming numbers as the rotting gas of postmodernity first starts wafting down that tunnel. So the art world, more quickly than the sturdier herd mentality, seeks out new horizons; and thus, as we earlier noted, the dead-end of today’s art is really the future endgame of the postmodern worldview in general. So what other horizons are available right now?
Three, at least. We already named them: subtle, causal, and nondual. The phenomenologists of worldviews (those who research and describe the contours of available worldviews) describe these three worldviews as being transrational and transpersonal, and they contrast them with the earlier worldviews, some of which are prerational and prepersonal (archaic, magic, and mythic). and some of which are rational and personal (mental and existential). This gives men and women, as potentials in their own organisms, a spectrum of available worldviews, ranging from prerational to rational to transrational, from prepersonal to personal, from subconscious to self-conscious to superconscious. Supposing that we have exhausted the dizzying rhetorical regress of self-reflexivity, there are only two ways to go: back into subconsciousness, or forward into superconsciousness--back to the infrarational, or beyond to the suprarational.
The distinction is important, because the transrational, transpersonal worldviews are what might be called “spiritual,” yet they bear little relation to the traditional religious worldviews of the magic and mythic spheres. The transrational realms have nothing to do with external gods and goddesses, and everything to do with an interior awareness that plumbs the depths of the psyche. Nothing to do with petitionary prayer and ritual, and everything to do with expanding and clarifying awareness. Nothing to do with dogma and belief. everything to do with cleansing perception. Not everlasting life for the ego, but transcending the ego altogether.
When one exhausts the personal, there is left the transpersonal. THERE IS, RIGHT NOW, SIMPLY NOWHERE ELSE TO GO.
* * *
Not just different values, but different objects, exist in different worldviews. And artists can paint, depict, or express their particular perceptions of the objects in any of these realms, depending on whether or not they are themselves alive to these realms.
The sensorimotor world is familiar enough--those objects that can be seen with the senses: rocks, birds, bowls of fruit, nudes, landscapes. Artists can, and doggedly have, painted those objects, in everything form a glaringly realistic fashion to the softer tones of impressionism. The magical worldview is one of plastic displacement and condensation, the world of dream, full of its own very real objects (when dreaming--when actually in that worldview--it appears absolutely real, as all worldviews do). Artists can paint those objects, as the Surrealists, among others, have demonstrated. The mythic worldview is full of gods and goddesses, angels and elves, disembodied souls, figures kind and cruel, helpful and malevolent. Artists can paint those objects, and, indeed, most artists around the world, from 10,000 BCE to 1500 CE, painted nothing but those objects. The mental worldview is crowded with concepts and ideas, rational perspectivism and abstract forms. Artists not only can represent those contents (conceptual art, abstract art), they can express them as well (abstract expressionism). The existential (aperspectival) worldview involves, among other things, the terror of the isolated subject confronting an alien world bereft of mythic consolations and rational pretensions. Artists in every medium have depicted this state of affairs, often overpoweringly (e.g., Edvard Munch, The Scream). But the aperspectival worldview is also, at its limits, a subject looking at itself as it tries to look at the world. Artists have attempted to depict this self-reflexive regress in a variety of ways, from deconstruction to ironic reflexivity to doubling (including the artist as part of the art)--all a dicey game, all headed eventually for self-strangulation.
Which leaves the transpersonal worldspaces and their contents, themes and perceptions. All of these realms are, indeed, transpersonal, which simply means those realities that include, but go beyond, the personal and individual--wider currents that sweep across the skin-encapsultaed ego and touch other beings, touch the cosmos, touch spirit, touch patterns and places kept secret to those who hug the surfaces and surround themselves with themselves.
That these transpersonal worldspaces are available to us as great, potential houses does not mean they come with all the furniture. We supply that ourselves. We build, create, add, model, fashion, mold, bring forth, and compose, and here artists in every medium have traditionally led the way, the avant-garde in the best and truest sense. So, on the one hand, we might look to the past for those rare occasions where a subculture plugged into the transpersonal realm and brought it forth in art and architecture, poetry and painting, crafts and compositions--the influence of Zen on Japanese aesthetics, for example. But we can look to the past only for hints, because the house of our tomorrow can only be decorated by those standing now on the threshold of the unfolding.
What will these furnishings look like? We are standing now in the open clearing, between two worlds, awaiting exactly that birth. But one thing is certain: it will come from the consciousness of men and women who stand open to the transpersonal in their own case, who bring forth, from the depths of the heart and spirit, those radiant realities that speak to us in unmistakable terms. For one thing we have seen: all of the major worldviews are available as potentials in the human bodymind. The deeper the awareness of individuals, the more worldspaces they can plumb. And that is why ultimately, profoundly, inescapably, it is the depth of the subject that provides the objects of art.
We have seen sensory objects, magic objects, mythic objects, mental objects, and aperspectival objects...and we have seen them all exhaust the play of their own significance. Who will show us now the objects of the transpersonal landscape? Who will open themselves to such depths that they can scale these new heights, and return to tell those of us silently waiting what they have seen? Who can stand so far aside from self and same, ego and shame, hope and fear, that the transpersonal comes pouring through them with such force it rattles the world? Who will paint what reality looks like when the ego is subsumed, when settling into the corpse pose, it dies to its own wonderment and beholds the world anew? Who will paint that rising landscape? Who will show us that?
from ONE TASTE by Ken Wilber. (c) 2000 by Ken Wilber.
By arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc.,
It is not the object expressed, but the depth of the subject expressing it, that most defines art. And this shifts art and art criticism from irony to authenticity--a rather unnerving move, at least to today’s eyes. Can art and art criticism survive the loss of irony, the loss of inauthenticity, as its central source? And if today’s art abandons sardonic surfaces, where will it finally reside?
* * *
We do not live in a pregiven world. One of the more remarkable tenets of the postmodern revolution in philosophy, psychology and sociology is that different worldviews exist--different ways of categorizing, presenting, representing, and organizing our existence. There is not a single, monolithic world with a single, privileged representation, but rather multiple worlds with pluralistic interpretations. Moreover, these worldviews often--indeed, almost always--change from epoch to epoch, and from culture to culture.
This insight need not be taken to extremes--there are plenty of common features in our various interpretations to prevent the world from falling apart. Indeed, scholars have discovered that there are at least some (and often many) universals in languages, in affects, in cognitive structures, and in colour perception, to name a few. But these universal ingredients are woven together and organized in a rich variety of ways, resulting in a tapestry of multiple world views.
Although there are, in theory, an almost infinite number of worldviews, in the course of human history on this planet, there seems to be about a dozen that have had, or are still having, a widespread and significant influence. Investigated by scholars such as Jean Gebser, Gerald Heard, Jurgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, Robert Bellah, Peter Berger, and others, these major worldviews include: sensorimotor, archaic, magic, mythic mental, existential, psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual. (The exact meaning of these terms will become more obvious as we proceed).
It is not a matter of which of these worldviews is right and which is wrong; they are all adequate for their time and place. It is more a matter of simply cataloging, as carefully as possible, the vary general characteristics that define each worldview, and “bracketing” (or setting aside), for the moment, whether or not they are ”true”--we simply describe all of them as if they were true.
The magic-animistic worldview, for example, is marked by a partial overlap of subject and object, so that “inanimate objects” like rocks and rivers are directly felt to be alive or even to possess souls or subjective spirits. The mythic worldview is marked by a plethora of gods and goddesses, not as abstract entities but as deeply felt powers, each having a rather direct hand in the affairs of earthly men and women. The mental worldview--of which the “rational worldview” is the best known subset--is marked by a belief that the subjective realm is fundamentally set apart from the objective realm of nature, and how to relate to these two realms becomes one of the most pressing problems in the this worldview. The existentialist worldview possesses an understanding that multiple perspectives are built into the universe, so that not only are there no privileged perspectives, individuals must carve out for themselves some sort of meaning from that frightening multitude of possibilities. The subtle worldview is marked by an apprehension of subtle forms and transcendental archetypes, primordial patterns of manifestation which are usually felt (and claimed) to be Divine. The causal worldview is marked by the direct realization of a vast unmanifest realm--variously known as emptiness, the Abyss, the Unborn, ayn, the Ursprung--a vast Formlessness from which all manifestation springs. And the nondual represents a radical union of the Formless with the entire world of Form.
Those various worldviews present a truly dizzying array of the many ways that our experiences can be organized and interpreted. Those are by no means the only worldviews nor is the list fixed or predetermined--it is constantly unfolding with new possibilities. But without some sort of worldview, we remain lost in the blooming buzzing confusion of experience, as William James put it.
In other words, all of our individual perceptions are, to some extent, embedded in particular worldviews. Within those worldviews, we still possess abundant freedom of choice; but worldviews generally constrain what we will even consider choosing. We moderns do not, for example, often get out of bed with the thought, “Time to kill the bear.” Each worldview, with its distinctive characteristics, stamps itself all over those born within it, and most individuals do not know, or even suspect, that their perceptions are occurring within the horizons of a given and rather specific worldview. Each worldview, operating for the most part collectively and unconsciously, simply presents the world as if it were the case. Few question the worldview in which they find themselves, just as a fish is unaware it is wet.
Nonetheless--and here the story takes a decidedly fascinating turn--research in both individual psychology and cross-cultural anthropology demonstrates rather convincingly that, under various circumstances, individuals have available to them the entire spectrum of worldviews. The human mind, it appears, comes with all of these worldviews--archaic to magic to mythic to mental to subtle to causal--as potentials in its own makeup, ready to emerge when various factors conspire to allow them to do so, rather like a seed awaiting water, soil, and sun to unfold.
So, even though certain epochs were especially marked by a particular worldview--foraging, by magic; agrarian, by mythic; and industrial, by mental-rational, for example--nonetheless, all of these major modes of interpreting our experience seem to be potentials of the human organism, and any of them can be brought forth in any individual under the right circumstances. To the question “Which worldviews are available to us now?,” the answer appears to be, “All of them.”
Still, at any given time, and in any given culture, most adults tend to inhabit the landscape of one particular worldview. The reason is simple enough: each worldview is, indeed, a person’s world. To lose that world is to experience a type of death-siezure. To surrender a worldview is a psychological earthquake somewhere around 7.00 on the internal Richter scale, and most people avoid this at all costs.
But sometimes, under exceptional circumstances...or in exceptional artists...higher or deeper worldviews break through the crust of our ordinary perceptions, and the world is somehow never quite the same again.
* * *
Artists express worldviews. Paleolithic artists, for example, painted the magical worldspace--objects overlapping each other, little perspectivism, animistic symbols, few constraints of space and time, wholes interchangeable with their parts. Medieval artists painted the mythic worldspace--an entire pantheon of angels, archangels, a God, a Son of that God, the Mother of that God, Moses parting the Red Sea--the themes were the endless possibilities of the mythic worldspace, all depicted, not as symbols, but as realities (precisely because, as we saw, all worldviews present themselves as simply true). With the rise of the very general movement of Modernity in the West--riding as it did on the mental worldview, with its replacement of mythic themes with themes dominated by nature, by realism, by impressionism, by subjective expressionism, and by abstract expressionism. And with the general rise of Postmodernism, we see those trends carried even further into the existential worldspace, where multiple perspectives, at first a source of endless creativity, soon became a paralyzing nightmare of infinite jest, met with infinite irony.
The existential worldview is called “integral-aperspectival” by Gebser--”aperspectival” because it presents multiple perspectives, none of which are privileged; and “integral” because nonetheless some sort of unity, coherence, or meaning has to be fashioned in the midst of multiplicity. In the previous worldview--the mental-rational, which Gebser also called “perspectival”--the single, rational, subject tended to take up a single, fixed interpretation of the world, and this was evidenced in everything from science (Newton) to philosophy (Descartes) to portraiture (Van Eyck) to perspectivism (starting with Renaissance painting, especially Brunelleschi, Alberti, Donatello, Leonardo, Giotto). But with the shift to integral-aperspectival, the subject itself becomes part of the objective scene--the camera becomes part of the movie, the author’s stream of thought becomes part of the novel, the painter’s own operations show up conspicuously on the canvas. Multiple perspectives draw the subject into the world of objects, making it one object among many others, all lost in a dizzying regress of self-reflexivity, from which there is no escape.
Every worldview has its pathological expressions. The rational worldview’s most notorious is “Cartesian dualism”--subject split from object, mind divorced from nature--a dualism against which, it seems, every thinking person of the last three hundred years has vocally declared war. But the postmodern, integral-aperspectival stance in not without its own major aberration, known generally as “aperspectival madness,” the insane view that no view is better than another. Starting with the noble proposition that all of the multiple perspectives are to be treated fairly and impartially (“pluralism and rich diversity”), postmodernism slides, in its extreme forms, into the insidious notion that no perspective whatsoever is better than another, a confusion that results in complete paralysis of will, thought, and action. Madness it is indeed: it claims no view is better than another, except its own view, which is superior in a world where nothing is supposed to be superior at all. And worse: if no view is better than another, then the Nazis and the KKK are on the same moral footing as, say, art critics.
“Aperspectival madness” might fairly well describe much of the last two decades of art, art criticism, lit crit, and cultural studies. Irony is one of the few places you can hide in a world of aperspectival madness--say one thing, mean another, therefore don’t get caught in the embarrassment of taking a stand. (Since, allegedly, no stand is better than another, one simply must not commit--sincerity is death). So skip sincerity, opt for sardonic. Don’t construct, deconstruct; don’t look for depth, just hug the surfaces; avoid content, offer noise--”surfaces, surfaces, surfaces is all they ever found,” as Bret Easton Ellis summarized the scene. No wonder that David
Foster Wallace, in a recent essay that received much attention, lamented the pervasiveness of the art of “trendy, sardonic exhaustion” and “reflexive irony,” art that is “sophisticated and extremely shallow.”
But if we abandon irony and seek to make sincere statements, where do we begin? If we do surrender surfaces and look also for the depths, what exactly does that mean? And where are these “depths” to be found?
Wallace suggests that, instead of “reflexive irony,” art should provide “insights and guides to value.” A fine sentiment, but let us note immediately that specific values exist only in specific worldviews. The mythic worldview, for example, valued duty to rigid social hierarchy, which few moderns find appealing. The mythic worldview also valued male dominance and female subordination, which most enlightened moderns regard as ignorant. All values exist in particular worldviews, and if trendy sardonic exhaustion is actually the exhaustion of the existential worldview, then the only possible conclusion is that we will have to look to other worldviews altogether if we are to escape aperspectival madness and its relentless insincerity.
* * *
The reason that art in the postmodern, existential world had reached something of a cul-de-sac is not that art itself is exhausted, but that the existential worldview is. Just as rational modernity previously exhausted its forms and gave way to aperspectival modernity, so now the postmodern itself is on a morbid death watch, with nothing but infinitely mirrored irony to hold its hand, casting flowers where they will not be missed. The skull of postmodernity grins on the near horizon, and in the meantime, we are between two worldviews, one slowly dying, one not yet born.
Whatever we may think about it--and volumes have been delivered--perhaps the best that can be said of the avant-garde is that it always implicitly understood itself to be riding the crest of the breaking wave of evolving worldviews. The avant-garde was the leading edge, the growing tip of an evolving humanity. It would herald the new, announce the forthcoming. It would first spot, then depict, new ways of seeing, new modes of being, new forms of cognition, new heights or depths of feeling, and in all cases, new modes of perception. It would spot, and depict, the coming worldview, while breaking decisively with the old.
The story is familiar. Jacques Louis David’s art was part of the early rise of modernity (reason and revolution) that violently broke with the remnants of the mythic, aristocratic, rococo past. From neoclassicism to abstract expressionism, each succeeding growing tip became in turn the conventional, accepted norm, only to see its own form challenged by the next avant-garde. Even postmodernism, with its aperspectival madness, which first attempted to deconstruct the avant-garde altogether, intimately depended on it for something to deconstruct; thus, as Donald Kuspit points out in The Cult of the Avant-Garde Artist, a type of “neo-avant-garde” art inevitably dogged postmodernism from the start.
Like huge successive waves crashing ashore, worldviews succeed one another, and the avant-garde, at its best, were the great surfers of these waves. And now that the postmodern wave is washing on the shore of its own demise, what new waves are forthcoming? What new worldviews surge from the ocean of the soul to announce a new perception? Where are we to look for the contents of the sincere artistic statements that will supplant irony and aperspectival madness? Standing on tiptoe, looking through the mist, can the vague outline of the face of tomorrow’s art--and therefore, tomorrow’s world--even be seen?
* * *
What worldviews, from those available, might carry the contours of tomorrow’s art? Of course, some aspects of the coming landscape will be entirely new and original. “Creative advance into novelty,” according to
Whitehead, is the basic feature of the universe. But we also know, from extensive psychological and sociological research that certain basic features of the dozen or so major worldviews, briefly summarized above, are potentials already available to the human organism, and instead of starting entirely from scratch, nature usually reworks what is at hand, before adding the finishing touches of novelty.
We know the worldviews that have been tried, toiled, worked, and exhausted: magic, mythic, mental-rational (modern), and existential-aperspectival (postmodern). The postmodern, of course, will continue its major influence for decades to come, on the way to its final resting place. It is simply that artistic productions, as canaries in the cultural mine shaft, are dropping dead in alarming numbers as the rotting gas of postmodernity first starts wafting down that tunnel. So the art world, more quickly than the sturdier herd mentality, seeks out new horizons; and thus, as we earlier noted, the dead-end of today’s art is really the future endgame of the postmodern worldview in general. So what other horizons are available right now?
Three, at least. We already named them: subtle, causal, and nondual. The phenomenologists of worldviews (those who research and describe the contours of available worldviews) describe these three worldviews as being transrational and transpersonal, and they contrast them with the earlier worldviews, some of which are prerational and prepersonal (archaic, magic, and mythic). and some of which are rational and personal (mental and existential). This gives men and women, as potentials in their own organisms, a spectrum of available worldviews, ranging from prerational to rational to transrational, from prepersonal to personal, from subconscious to self-conscious to superconscious. Supposing that we have exhausted the dizzying rhetorical regress of self-reflexivity, there are only two ways to go: back into subconsciousness, or forward into superconsciousness--back to the infrarational, or beyond to the suprarational.
The distinction is important, because the transrational, transpersonal worldviews are what might be called “spiritual,” yet they bear little relation to the traditional religious worldviews of the magic and mythic spheres. The transrational realms have nothing to do with external gods and goddesses, and everything to do with an interior awareness that plumbs the depths of the psyche. Nothing to do with petitionary prayer and ritual, and everything to do with expanding and clarifying awareness. Nothing to do with dogma and belief. everything to do with cleansing perception. Not everlasting life for the ego, but transcending the ego altogether.
When one exhausts the personal, there is left the transpersonal. THERE IS, RIGHT NOW, SIMPLY NOWHERE ELSE TO GO.
* * *
Not just different values, but different objects, exist in different worldviews. And artists can paint, depict, or express their particular perceptions of the objects in any of these realms, depending on whether or not they are themselves alive to these realms.
The sensorimotor world is familiar enough--those objects that can be seen with the senses: rocks, birds, bowls of fruit, nudes, landscapes. Artists can, and doggedly have, painted those objects, in everything form a glaringly realistic fashion to the softer tones of impressionism. The magical worldview is one of plastic displacement and condensation, the world of dream, full of its own very real objects (when dreaming--when actually in that worldview--it appears absolutely real, as all worldviews do). Artists can paint those objects, as the Surrealists, among others, have demonstrated. The mythic worldview is full of gods and goddesses, angels and elves, disembodied souls, figures kind and cruel, helpful and malevolent. Artists can paint those objects, and, indeed, most artists around the world, from 10,000 BCE to 1500 CE, painted nothing but those objects. The mental worldview is crowded with concepts and ideas, rational perspectivism and abstract forms. Artists not only can represent those contents (conceptual art, abstract art), they can express them as well (abstract expressionism). The existential (aperspectival) worldview involves, among other things, the terror of the isolated subject confronting an alien world bereft of mythic consolations and rational pretensions. Artists in every medium have depicted this state of affairs, often overpoweringly (e.g., Edvard Munch, The Scream). But the aperspectival worldview is also, at its limits, a subject looking at itself as it tries to look at the world. Artists have attempted to depict this self-reflexive regress in a variety of ways, from deconstruction to ironic reflexivity to doubling (including the artist as part of the art)--all a dicey game, all headed eventually for self-strangulation.
Which leaves the transpersonal worldspaces and their contents, themes and perceptions. All of these realms are, indeed, transpersonal, which simply means those realities that include, but go beyond, the personal and individual--wider currents that sweep across the skin-encapsultaed ego and touch other beings, touch the cosmos, touch spirit, touch patterns and places kept secret to those who hug the surfaces and surround themselves with themselves.
That these transpersonal worldspaces are available to us as great, potential houses does not mean they come with all the furniture. We supply that ourselves. We build, create, add, model, fashion, mold, bring forth, and compose, and here artists in every medium have traditionally led the way, the avant-garde in the best and truest sense. So, on the one hand, we might look to the past for those rare occasions where a subculture plugged into the transpersonal realm and brought it forth in art and architecture, poetry and painting, crafts and compositions--the influence of Zen on Japanese aesthetics, for example. But we can look to the past only for hints, because the house of our tomorrow can only be decorated by those standing now on the threshold of the unfolding.
What will these furnishings look like? We are standing now in the open clearing, between two worlds, awaiting exactly that birth. But one thing is certain: it will come from the consciousness of men and women who stand open to the transpersonal in their own case, who bring forth, from the depths of the heart and spirit, those radiant realities that speak to us in unmistakable terms. For one thing we have seen: all of the major worldviews are available as potentials in the human bodymind. The deeper the awareness of individuals, the more worldspaces they can plumb. And that is why ultimately, profoundly, inescapably, it is the depth of the subject that provides the objects of art.
We have seen sensory objects, magic objects, mythic objects, mental objects, and aperspectival objects...and we have seen them all exhaust the play of their own significance. Who will show us now the objects of the transpersonal landscape? Who will open themselves to such depths that they can scale these new heights, and return to tell those of us silently waiting what they have seen? Who can stand so far aside from self and same, ego and shame, hope and fear, that the transpersonal comes pouring through them with such force it rattles the world? Who will paint what reality looks like when the ego is subsumed, when settling into the corpse pose, it dies to its own wonderment and beholds the world anew? Who will paint that rising landscape? Who will show us that?
from ONE TASTE by Ken Wilber. (c) 2000 by Ken Wilber.
By arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc.,
viernes, 19 de junio de 2009
domingo, 14 de junio de 2009
sábado, 30 de mayo de 2009
HANS MEMLING, UN DÍPTICO
Diptych of Maarten Nieuwenhove
1487Oil on oak panel, 52 x 41,5 cm (each)
Memlingmuseum, Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges
jueves, 28 de mayo de 2009
Mythology and Mistery
Hola a todos. Son las 10:20 pm. y estoy pensando que el Miércoles no pudimos hablar acerca de la mitología y el misterio de Sean. De pronto nos dejamos llevar por Paty, que está increíble, pero entramos en cuestiones resbalosos y pegajosos. Me sentí como cuando estás lúcido en el sueño y quieres quedarte, pero inevitablemente te dejas llevar por el siguiente sueño... sí brumoso. La cosa es que no dije lo que estaba pensando en el momento, mas bien me comí mi mango delicioso!
A partir del ejemplo de las máscaras africanas, Scully nos dice que el cuadro o el arte en general ( o por lo menos algunas piezas) pueden funcionar como depositarios de misterio y mitología: de espiritualidad. Esta idea me hizo pensar. Y entonces el cuadro no es espiritual per se, simplemente es un lugar donde metemos nuestro misterio, nuestros símbolos. El objeto no es mitológico---el objeto permite que reflejemos y veamos nuestra mitología, ya sea comprensible para 10 personas o por el universo entero. Con esta idea podemos llevar a este objeto más allá del pintor, el espectador ve este depósito y refleja su propio misterio al ver la mitología del artista..
Bueno ya me hize bolas.
besos
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