Treatise On Art and Indulgence

Photo: Entrance to Tate Modern Art Museum in London, England

Two modern art museums influenced this treatise; Tate Modern Art Museum in London, England and El Museo de la Reina Sofía in Madrid, Spain. They both house amazing art collections curated to explore the many different art forms from the artists who influenced what is currently constituted as modernity (most of the art was made after 1850 After Common Era).

Photo: Photo of a frame from Santiago Sierra's "160 CM Line Tattooed on 4 People"

What is modernity? Is art tied to the time it's created or is it timeless? That is always my initial thought when walking into a modern art museum. It reminds me of how music can almost never be new. If you've never heard Duke Ellington play the piano or Dizzy Gillespie play the trumpet it's new to you, but most would consider that music old, passed this time, and not worth exploring. The music may come from the 1920s or 1940s but it is not trapped in that time, it was not created singularly for that time. It isn't archaic or antiquated, it's of this time it's of every time. Art persists as new as long as their are virgin ears and virgin eyes. There is no art new or modern or of this very moment. Art does not lose its mystique over time, it is inherently ultramodern, it's always ahead of its time.

I visited Tate Modern twice. The first time I took pictures of all the pieces I admired. After three or so hours I promised myself never to take pictures of art in a museum. This testament, this treatise is what it impresses in me how it lives in me and how it affects me emotionally. The second time I went I ingested the art it and let it affect me emotionally and physically. I listened to the signs that read "Enjoy the art, no flash photography." The signs that I proudly ignored my initial visit (so did all of security and most all patrons) I embraced, I guess I just decided to do what I was told. I saw what Bridget Riley's "To a Summer's Day 2" wanted me to. She made me cry, because she controlled my eyes more than I ever could. Those abstract lines pretending to converge on each other... I didn't believe what I saw, or how my sight was being controlled. That is the power of art simply ingested. Blurrily, my eyes connected Salvador Dali's "Metamorphosis of Narcissus" with my own vainglorious self-absorption and how I did not find narcissism as one of my many nemeses.  I felt the agonizing healing in Nan Goldin's "Nan One Month After Being Battered." I ingested, I absorbed the art. Once I stopped trying to make copies of the works I understood why an artist makes art. I understood that all that matters is that I create, and keep creating with genuine feeling and genuine attempts at understanding those feelings.

Photo: Jordan Wolfson's "This is real abuse not a simulation," Tate Modern London, England.

How those feelings are elicited matters. Whilst in England, I saw six Shakespeare plays; The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, The Most Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, The Winter's Tale, and The Tragedy of Othello the Moor of Venice, and one play by John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi. Six of the plays I saw were in one of three theaters, The Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the Swan both in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and Shakespeare's Globe in London, England. Andronicus, watched it on DVD through a projector. Walter Benjamin wrote, "One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind." Filming a stage play like taking a photo of a painting, statue, or piece of art gradually dissolves the essence of the art. The art can still be effective in how it evokes emotion from the purveyor but the energy is degraded with each copy. I did not want to make anymore copies. Watching Titus Andronicus on film was effective in eliciting strong emotions from the people I watched it with and myself. Some of my classmates cringed when Titus' hand was amputated. We all were stunned and moved to tears when Lavinia walked onto the stage, handless, tongueless, her panties at her ankles, blood oozing down her legs. Would the absence of the close up make it that more or less effective? If we were sitting in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and witnessed her mutilated body rows in front of us would we still shutter the same? Does our feeling depend on our seat in the house? Or would we cry all the same? I think we have flooded the theatre.

Photo: Royal Shakespeare Theatre on the River Avon in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England.

 
Photo: Entrance to Museo de la Reina Sofía in Madrid, Spain

Art is not only made to elicit or express raw human emotion it also must have a political and social consciousness.
The Russian Dada Exhibition at the Museo de Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain is a collection of Russian art curated from museums and private collections from all over Europe. The Russian Dada movement was similar to the movements in Europe and the United States in the way it denounced "classical" artistic and social conventions for absurdity and senselessness. The Russian Dada Exhibition and Dadaism in general lead me to believe that when George Orwell wrote in his critical essay Politics and the English Language, "In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia," that engaging with propaganda and politics is wholly illogical. Just as trying to explain how a painting or song makes you feel. Just as creating a painting or composing a song and hoping that anyone will feel anything when met with your art. The anti-communist slant stands out as it was pure anti-propaganda. Which rightfully enjoined it with the other Dadaists in a war of propaganda with the societies in which they lived. Art is propaganda and propaganda is art. No matter who perceives it,  no matter if ordained by some government or if some elitist association makes some grand declaration and hangs the propaganda in a museum or in their homes. Idealism, tyranny, or anarchy are what is truly being exhibited. The only thing hanging is an ideology attempting to persuade the art viewer not only to feel as the artist but but to think as the artist. Propaganda is the artist not creating but becoming a politician attempting to gain votes for their political party, so they can decide thought and control thought and become this tyrant that forces the art viewer to either believe and become a minion of the art's propaganda or admit that they are a mortal enemy to the propaganda, an enemy that must ensure that the propaganda is destroyed.

If "all art is propaganda," can art just happen? Can it be an accident? Does art need a conscious observer? Dumb question. Of course it needs an observer, dumb observation, did anyone observe Emily Dickinson's art? She was and is an incomparable poet and she was ignored in her time because hardly anyone knew she was an artist. She just felt then created. She just created despite her social anxieties which hindered her sharing her art she still felt compelled to create. How is there a greater poet in our language? She prolifically wrote for the only audience she cared for, herself. Art isn't an accident. It's purposely made by the artist and if some outsider wants to call it art, it must have great proponents for its natural cause. The artist creates on purpose because she buys the supplies she puts the words on paper she paints the canvas. She doesn't believe it is an accident. Artists are ordained to create to try to explicate our collective meaningless existence. Art can't happen by accident because existence, no matter how hard the nihilist tries, must be given meaning. And even Dickinson didn't leave those pieces of paper, those envelopes, napkins, absent of her words, she was her audience. Maybe she just created for creation's sake. That's what I believe but the purposeful and arduously written words she wrote had an audience and a purpose beyond any scope she could fathom. Art does need an audience but it doesn't need a large audience. Maybe just an audience of one. Maybe I'm my greatest audience and the only audience I need. Even when I post this on my blog it can be admired by the girth of the internet or be ignored by the billions who traverse those infinite channels those expansive realms that always possess the same value.

Maybe art is luxury, art is a product of leisure and simply a distraction for a mind that needs something to do, a mind that does not have a enough responsibility in society. Maybe art is simply indulgence.