Street Art meet Graffiti in Coburg
Coburg is on the edge of the donut ring of Melbourne’s inner city suburbs and the outer suburbs. For street art it is the high tide mark, the final piece on a midnight mission, the liminal zone where beautiful street art meets ugly graffiti. Coburg is different from it’s more inner neighbour, Brunswick where the aerosol is thick and fast. Coburg is where the inner city pieces run out and only bombing, tagging continues. It is not in the mainstream of Melbourne’s street art or graffiti scene but the …
See http://melbourneartcritic.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/dsc06778.jpg
¿A qué juegas, Eduardo Guerra Ortega?
Lo dice él mismo. Le incomoda hablar de su «obra»; es como si hablara de otro. EGO (pseudónimo del artista compuesto por las siglas de Eduardo Guerra Ortega) no lo pone nada fácil ni al crítico ni a su público. Desde el primer momento, nos vemos enfrentados por la cuestión: ¿qué constituye su obra? La respuesta, fiel a su nombre, promete guerra, y más aún si se tiene en cuenta que le resiste al mismo creador.
Antes de empezar siquiera a analizar su obra, EGO exige que uno tome distancia, para así identificar exactamente cuál es el objeto de estudio. Si ordinariamente colocamos bajo el prisma crítico al objeto, aquí este resulta esquivo o equívoco. Como si del principio de incertidumbre tratase, cuanto más nos acercamos más traidor resulta. Es aconsejable mirar de soslayo, siempre evitando la mirada directa a no ser que su discurso laberíntico te deje perdido, petrificado.
Que no haya distinción entre proceso y objeto, o incluso entre objeto y creador no es particularmente novedoso. Donde más se destaca EGO es en lo que yo calificaría de «metapráctica». Si process art nos abrió el horizonte a que la misma práctica pudiera sustituir el «objeto», ahora se nos pide que nos alejamos un paso más hasta poner nuestro enfoque crítico en la concepción, diseño y gestión de la misma práctica. Al parecer, es satisfactorio no sólo no proceder a un resultado, sino no proceder siquiera, dirigiendo el acto creativo hacia la cuestión de cómo proceder.
Si llegado a este punto el lector se encuentra perplejo, no se desanime. Si le parece que está todo deliberadamente enrevesado, que el artista (o acaso el crítico) se afana en desplegar cortinas de humo y galerías de espejos para ocultar su identidad y la de su obra, estimado lector, dispone usted de dos siglas para resolver el enigma:
_ _ E G O
Acaricias violentas
Melancolía, Lars von Trier, 2011
Confrontada con la próxima colisión de Melancolía con la tierra, la protagonista Justine se entrega desnuda al impacto del planeta que se avecina amenazador. Mientras rechaza consumar su noche de boda se deja tomar por la visión sobrecogedora del astro, la penetración planetaria.
¿Quién no ha soñado con el fin del mundo y con lo que haría en sus últimos momentos? Ese catalizador de la honestidad humana, que revela nuestra naturaleza verdadera, efímera, aparentemente insignificante.
El extremo contraste de escala entre la vida humana y el universo parecerá una preocupación común, si no a todos, al menos a los directores de dos películas recién estrenadas. Tanto Melancolía como El árbol de la vida utiliza imágenes a las que hemos estado hasta ahora más acostumbrados de ver en la divulgación científica.
¿Qué hemos de concluir de esta superposición del melodrama de la vida humana y el dramón galáctico? Se intuye que no son simples renuncias al significado de la existencia humana, sino meditaciones sobre lo infinito, donde hablar de escala pierde cualquier sentido.
Cuando ya se ve inaplazable la colisión de Melancolía con la tierra, Justine es la única que responde a la situación como frente a una oportunidad. Acaso no es el planeta el que se acerca sino Justine quien lo atrae, dado que es sólo frente la destrucción que ésta llega a la plenitud. Y es que el nihilismo da pie a dos logros: si no tienes nada que perder, no temes nada, y tiene todo por ganar. Sería un caso de la ley de atracción mediante la cual Justine nos destruye a todos. No obstante, en realidad no es Justine quien desea esto para nosotros –si al final es un personaje de ficción–, sino el propio director.
En el fondo hay algo que consuela en la idea de nuestra destrucción inminente, la posibilidad de empezar de nuevo, de regeneración. Tumbémonos desnudos al lado de Justine, de Lars, y esperemos deseosos de nuestro fin.
Autocaricatura con neumático y engranaje
Alexander Rodchenko, Autocaricatura con neumático y engranaje, 1922
¡Ja, qué burla! ¡Cómo nos reímos de la absurda propuesta de los constructivistas! Artistas jugando a ingenieros; pasándose por conocedores de técnicas de fácil prestación al progreso material de la nación. ¡Apártense! Reconozcan el ocaso de vuestra fama y arrodíllense ante el nuevo héroe:
el verdadero artista revolucionario: el maestro productivista.
Desde donde nos situamos, resulta difícil comprender las esperanzas mantenidas en el poder liberador de la industria en la Unión Soviética de principios del siglo XX. La situación inhumana de la sociedad industrial, la degradación e instrumentalización del cuerpo nos es conocido de sobremanera. Rodchenko, artista cuyos principios fueron afines al productivismo, parece aquí poner su posición en duda. En una postura imposible, haciendo malabarismos chaplinescos, se hace cuadrar en la cadena de fabricación. Entre engranaje y neumático el cuerpo castigado del artista-obrero forma el eje. A pesar de su apoyo fervoroso de la visión productivista del arte, ¿puede esta obra ser testimonio de pensamiento libre, de una crítica del dogma en alza?
¿Qué piensas Rodchenko? ¿Qué nos querrás decir con esto? ¿Dudabas acaso de haber firmado aquel manifiesto? ¿O debemos entender tu autorretrato como extensión de la creciente tendencia de entonces hacia la fusión de hombre y máquina; hacia el arte y su aplicación utilitario? Irónico sería si fuera en este gesto cómico donde alcanzas tu mayor compenetración con el aparato mecano-político.
Mi querido caricaturista, sé nuestra válvula de escape. Haznos reír.
Constructivists and state-building
Even today in its own country, Russian avant-garde architecture doesn’t receive the recognition it deserves. Undervalued since the 1930s, when Stalin began to redirect state subsidies towards Social Realist painting and Neoclassical projects, architectural masterpieces cited in any western textbook are in serious underrepair. These sites are not recognised as cultural heritage; they receive no funding towards their restoration and are poorly documented and promoted. In the exhibition Construir la revolución, Japanese architect Arata Isozaki tells the story of his stopover in Moscow to see Melnikov House whilst en route to a European engagement. After arriving overland, he dedicates his sole day in Moscow to searching for the building, but can’t find it. There was no signposting on the street, no tourist information booths with helpful maps or suggested itineraries.
Besides an enlightened minority -collector George Costakis a case in point- Russia has forgotten its avant-garde past overshadowed as it is by Monumental Stalinist constructions and Social Realist imagery. The Constructivists are instead the adoptive sons and daughters of the western art canon and altogether neglected by their own.
There is something ironic about this political cold-shouldering considering that Constructivism was the aesthetic predilect of the Revolution and ensuing government under Lenin. What happened for it to fall out of favour? How did its relationship to communism and the governing powers change over time?
From here on I can only offer conjecture:
It is conceivable that there be a brief golden period during which the Constructivists’ artistic impetus was congruent with the political aims of the government; a moment in which the sheer revolutionary fervour in the air meant that artists’ endeavour was, almost magically, in unison with the government agenda. The first incursions (undoubtedly painterly ones, and soon echoed in architecture) were outgrowths of sincere aesthetic investigation and the state, seeing that these new expressions embodied a break with the past, most likely saw an opportunity and gave support. However, if such a progressive policy existed it must have been short-lived.
At least initially, it is unfathomable that Constructivism be the result of a studied government policy in the arts. Having said that, subsidies no doubt grew as the more nebulous artistic meanderings were channeled towards concrete problems in design and manufacture and results obtained in terms of economic production. As this occurred, were artists still acting of their own volition? Were they the originators and willing participants of this instrumentalisation of the arts? To what degree did an artist have to tow the revolutionary party line in order to be employed or receive commissions? And if there was indeed a golden period of Constructivism, when did artistic freedoms begin to be curtailed?
Whatever the nature of avant-garde involvement in building the revolution from 1915 to the late 1920s -whether it be by obligation or desire- the 1930s saw an end to it. Through Lenin’s rule artists and architects had lived from their teaching positions and public commissions which, under Stalin, were denied to them. They fled the Soviet state in favour of Weimar, Berlin, Paris and Holland where they would contribute to the Bauhaus and De Stijl.
Congress of the Constructivists held September 1922, at the Bauhaus in Weimar, where they celebrated an official farewell to Dada. Tristan Tzara traveled from Paris to deliver the funeral oration.
Exhibition: Construir la revolución
A Liubov Popova set design featured in the exhibition. Four czars hang in the centre upside-down with a white X.
Until seeing Construir la revolución: arte y arquitectura en Rusia 1915-1935 I had not fully appreciated constructivism’s contribution to 20th century art. The rise of the Russian avant-garde remained in my mind an independent event influencing western art only much later. And the passage of the art community around the world was for me something to come with the advent air travel and the globalisation of the English language.
Revelation: Marinetti, the founder of futurism, undertook in Russia a hugely successful conference tour and Le Corbusier left a great architectural legacy. More fantastic discoveries: the Russians were more up to speed than the Europeans on early cubist developments thanks to two Russian art dealers hauling 200 paintings by Braque and Picasso back home.
Was all this travel and global cosmopolitanism normal? Who were these people? Were they all speakers of several languages or a universal French? Surely they were a privileged and highly educated few those able to get from Milan to Moscow and then to communicate once there! (It must be a mistake of my generation to believe that globalisation is a recent phenomenon, transcontinental transport and communication the domain of the 21st century. These guys were jetsetters, just without the jet!)
Where: CaixaForum Madrid
When: until September 18, 2011
Call for artists’ submissions
A student’s course through some art schools mirrors art history itself, where they not only learn about periods but how to emulate its style. However, our efforts ought to go into conserving our artistic treasures, not imitating them. The projects of past periods, movements and individuals were specific to their moment in history; they translate poorly to our own time.
Seems pointless, and yet beautiful in its irony.
If we must paint facsimiles, or paint ‘after’ or ‘in the school of’, let’s recognise it as anachronistic and do so as knowing participants in the irony of our actions. Our copy of Manet’s self-portrait is neither self-portrait nor avant-garde. In comparison to the original, it bears radically different relationships with its maker, audience and the historical context to which it is born. Take the following example:
- Paris, 1878. Manet paints self-portrait;
- Beijing, 2000. One hundred art students break the Guinness Record for simultaneously completed paintings with a Manet self-portrait;
- London, 2031. I complete, after ten years of intermittent work, a fresco of the same self-portrait in the mansion of the now decrepit Sir Richard Branson.
Rather than vainly attempting to be Manet in Manet’s epoch (which is the realm of science fiction), let’s capitalise on what new relationships, unique to our era, have opened up. These peculiarities evolve continually as the work ages, and the society around it changes.
If our artistic contributions can’t equal those of the old masters’ to their own time, or that of their legacy to the present day, let’s just put our brushes down. I don’t believe it – never have. But it would seem many do.
Death to the plinth
Shouldn’t he be attacking the plinth? That ruse elevating art above spectator, separating art from life …
We all are priests and artists
In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther instigated the Reformation of the Church in his declaration that all men are priests. Four hundred and fifty years later, fellow German and artist Joseph Beuys makes an analogous assertion declaring every person an artist.
