Thoughts on Things - Art

Alfonso Reyes at the Museo Nacional de Arte
Mexican intellectual Alfonso Reyes Ochoa tremendously impacted Latin American culture of the 20th century. His short story “La Cena” is credited as forefather of the surrealism and magical realism that, through Borges, García Marquez, Cortázar, and points beyond, came to dominate 20th C. Latin American literature.

Philosopher, diplomat, and intellectual, Reyes believed strongly that the new Latin American culture ought be centered in the arts. As a member of the group Ateneo de la Juventud (Anthem of Youth), he sought to forge a coherent Mexican identity by reconciling the colonial mezcla of divergent cultural traditions, from the European philosophers of the Enlightenment to indigenous religious and historical heritages.

Currently showing at the Museo Nacional de Arte, Alfonso Reyes y Los Territorios del Arte (Alfonso Reyes and the Territories of Art), takes an interesting approach to visual art. The show combines Reyes’ writings on art with the works he spoke of.

Both older, European paintings Reyes discoursed on (Rembrandt, El Greco, Goya, Picasso, etc), and younger, Mexican-revolutionary artists who were influenced by the conceptual tenets of Reyes’ thinking (Diego Rivera, Daniel Vázquez Díaz, Antonio Rodríguez Luna etc.) are on display. By drawing direct connections between the written word and visual arts, the show emphasizes the importance of cultural dialogue between artists and thinkers of all stripes.


Conceptual curator Arturo Lopez has implemented a philosophy of his own: bring the connection between writer & artist, audience & art full circle. Through interactive displays, visitors are invited to offer input and ideas. Thus the art that influenced the writer who influenced the artists influences new writers still, emphasizing the continuity and interconnectedness of ideas, influence, and creation.


Alfonso Reyes y Los Territorios del Arte shows at the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City through 14th February, 2010.


Editorial Note: This piece was written to be published while the show was still going, though never appeared online on account the publication going out of business.

Thoughts on Things - Art

Thoughts on Things - Art

Gerardo Cantú and The Last Supper
There’s some sort of intro waiting to be written here about how we define great art. What it means to be great v. what it means to good, and how we separate the two. This intro would contain very certain, borderline rhetorical statements about things that come down to chance, circumstance, dedication, popular taste, opportunity, and vision. Define it how you may; by our vague intuition, Gerardo Cantú’s interpretation of the The Last Supper, currently (editor’s note: as of February 2010) on display in the Biblioteca de Mexico: Jose Vasconcelos, in Baladeras, is great art.

A good deal of the piece’s brilliance lies in its ability to confound. Anyone who’s seen their fare share of Last Supper renderings is pretty much set on what to expect: Jesus, Judas, Mary, a smattering of apostles, some sort of divine sunlight spilling luxuriously through a window. Maybe a dove, maybe some Latin script at the top, maybe a coin purse on Judas’ person somewhere.

Cantú’s Last Supper is a beast of a very different nature. Garish and flat, the piece is stylistically evocative of both El Greco and Julian Schnabel in its emotive contortions and heightened Expressionist colors. There are also shades of Edward Gorey’s macabre creations.

The table at which the collected biblical figures sit looks more like a folding screen or piece of drywall, situated top-to-bottom, rather than the traditional side-to-side set up. Jesus, generally the welcoming, serene center of attention, is an outcast. He hangs from the top of the table, dejected, head in his hands, a picture of absolute isolation. Around him, the apostles guzzle wine and shove food in their mouths, oblivious of their lord’s psychic pain.

That Christ is doubtful and surrounded by his closest allies, all of whom are ignoring him, is a genius reimagining. While there are those who would call the work something akin to heresy (and there are always those crawling out of the woodwork to do just that. I imagine the primary occupation of these people being sitting around scouring the earth for things they might deem heretical), it is a sublime twist that greatly humanizes Christ.

Much like Caravaggio’s earthly renderings of the biblical, Cantú has stripped Jesus of his superhuman serenity and shown him much as he probably was: a man who, in a world of the self-serving, gave himself over to belief in the innate goodness of his fellow men and women.

Knowing that he was doomed to crucifixion, Christ took a long hard look in the metaphorical mirror, in this case other people, and wondered whether or not it was all worth it. Thus the apostles in Cantú’s work represent the vices and apathy of mankind.

Cantú’s painting can be read in another, similarly intriguing light. Let’s look at it this way: Christ is Mexico. We know that Mexico is a predominantly Catholic country. We know that the arrival of Christendom on the shores of Mexico irrevocably altered the course of the nation’s history, is responsible for the mestizo peoples and cultures of the country. We know that Christian imagery figures greatly into the Mexican artist’s search for cultural identity and reconciliation.

If Christ is Mexico, he is lost. He is a man of a violent fate, surrounded by his disciples, but they pay him no mind, consumed instead by their own lusts. It’s no great stretch to assume his apostles are the Spanish, Díaz, the failed aspirations of the revolutionaries, and all of the self-serving, matricidal bureaucrats and politicos who have haunted the histories of Mexico since the Spanish invasion.

Alone and destitute, Mexico walks to its certain death, and though it will rise again (this taking not only Christ’s resurrection as the future fate of Jesus-as-Mexico, but also the basic spiritual belief that death is not an end, but a transformation), though as what and in which conditions, no one knows.

Regardless of the artist’s intended reading or the preferred interpretation of any given viewer, Cantú’s vision of the Last Supper is an evocative, intelligent, probing painting, one which poses more questions than it presumes to answer; as such, it is great art.

Check out Cantu’s Last Supper in the foyer of the Biblioteca Mexico: Jose Vasconcelos.

Images of Cantú's Last Supper have yet to appear online, though a good deal of the artist's work can be found in this booklet. The booklet includes a very good overview of the artist's work a career, though be forewarned that it's in Spanish.

Image Credit: Cantú with one of his paintings, Araceli García

Thoughts on Things - Art

Thoughts on Things - Bullshit

A recent tour of Chapultepec Castle revealed some serious bullshit re: Mexican history and pre-Hispanic culture.

One of the first things our group learned on the exhaustive tour was that, well, despite what everyone might think, actually Spain didn’t conquer Mexico because at the time there was no Spain per se, and certainly not a unified notion of Mexico as a nation, so really all that you had was people fighting people.

While some might take this an effort to work some genuine historical analysis into an otherwise very literal relation of “Mexico’s” post-“Spanish” domination history, in the context of the rest of the tour, it reeked of the feces of a certain bovine animal. Bullshit alarm #1 goes off.

Let’s think about this. There was no Spain, as it were, as the country it is today. Granted, that’s the way it was. And of course there was no Mexico as the unified country known today as Mexico. But there were Spanish peoples, who came to what is now Mexico and perpetrated severe atrocities on people who are the ancestors of who are now Mexicans, thus they too are the Mexican people, if not in name then in blood and culture.

And so by saying that there was no Spain and there was no Mexico puts the idea in the mind of the visitor that it was just groups of people vying for supremacy, and that the European colonial power isn’t precisely to blame. It’s possible that this is done for PC reasons, to avoid offending Spanish visitors and invoking the ire of Mexicans (ire being directed toward the Spanish).

Reasons regardless, this attempt to deflect attention from things like rape and slaughter and slavery, and toward this relatively pointless minutiae about the development of kingdoms and modern-nation states gives a very suspiciously skewed perspective of what was actually going on at the time.

The tour continues, some rather pleasant images and historical nuances are departed upon us, and we come to a display of human skulls with giant holes driven through them. Thus begins the inevitable section in which we deal with violence, warfare, human sacrifice, whatever else you may have had back in the day that puts the weak stomach ill at ease.

Our tour guide tells that pre-Spanish Mexico was far from the wanton bloodshed of a certain Mel Gibson film. In fact (we’re told), human sacrifice didn’t happen that often and was done for a reason. We’re told, think of it like this:

It’s Christmas time and some aliens come down to earth and you invite them in for tea and you’re having this nice snack with these extraterrestrials, discussing a certain episode of M*A*S*H that had been beamed into space, when they see the dead tree in your house. Hold the phone.

The alien leaps to his/her/combination thereof feet. “Dear god! Why have you got a dead tree in your house?! This is a phenomenally grotesque display of arboreal sacrifice!”

And then it’s your job as the host to be like “Well, actually, it’s this annual ritual that we have, where we cut down trees and bring them into our houses and decorate them. It’s actually quite nice.”

“Oh. I see. Well then, forgive my impertinence.”

And thus was explained the human sacrifice of indigenous Mexican cultures: Dismembering and beheading captives, stripping their skulls of flesh, and impaling them in garish rows on fences as a totalitarian scare tactic is essentially the same thing as cutting down a tree and putting some lights on it and having a little gift giving ceremony.

Or, rather, comparing human sacrifice to Christmas trees is a way to imply a certain innocuous quality in the sacrifices, so that pre-Hispanic cultures are not seen as barbaric. Being relatively intelligent, we of course see that what’s going on here is that the castle and its emissaries are attempting to create a cohesive vision of Mexican culture and history for the visiting foreign legions of tourists so that said tourists will go home thinking Wow, Mexico has such a fascinating and rich cultural history and not Man that’s fucked up that they cut people’s heads off and impaled them on sticks.

And yet to assume that guests to this magnificent country are unintelligent enough to be unable to accept a country that is not as multifaceted and contradictory as Mexico is quite frankly insulting. Certainly, there’s no harm in seeing the human sacrifice from the sacrificer’s point of view, and it’s an interesting tidbit about the countries not actually existing per se, but to try to alleviate responsibility for what could be seen as barbaric in an attempt to placate tourists is a dangerous revisionist tactic.

We can only hope that this will be rectified in the future.

Thoughts on Things - Bullshit

Thoughts on Things - Art

This will be a very simple exercise in using art as a conduit to history, society, politics, and culture. By looking at China’s Terracotta Army, we uncover important threads of the development of human society.

The army was uncovered in 1974, in the province of Shaanxi. Some farmers were drilling a well east of Mount Lishan and hit something unexpected. I imagine their conversation as being something like:

“Hey. I hit something.”
“I see that.”
“Stop chewing that straw and help me here.”
“I object that you object to my chewing of straw. It’s good for my digestion.”
“Oh hell. Fine, damnit, chew your straw. Now help me over here.”
“Ok.”
[some digging]
“Shit and shit and more shit! There’s a whole army down here!”
“I guess we should tell Chairman Mao.”
“That’s a great idea. Let’s just walk into his office and let him know. Or would you prefer I send a telegram?”
“You’re so sardonic today.”

Archaeologists soon descended on the scene, and excavations began. What was found was that there were three massive pits of life-sized soldiers underneath an ancient tomb. In an effort to keep the tomb intact, the entire cavalcade has yet to be exhumed, though it’s estimated that there are 8000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses all told.

Research tells us that the army was built at the dictate of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who wished to take armed forces into the afterlife with him, to conquer that territory as he did Earth. If we look at this statement, and at China, we discover something interesting about the Chinese outlook.

(A) The Terra Cotta Army and (B) Qin China

The Chinese characters for China are 中国: literally, Middle Kingdom. Emperor Qin Shi Huang believed that, by conquering China, he hand conquered the entire earth. Simply by looking at the motives for the art’s existence, we learn something incredibly valuable about Chinese culture and their view of the world.

That they think of their land as the center of the earth shows a great reverence for the physical territory of China, and a spirituality (reflected by Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism) that grows from natural, eternal roots.

Now, we look more closely at the man for whom the army was built, Qin Shi Huang. To dig deeper, he was the first Emperor of Qin Dynasty. The Qin Dynasty (221 BCE – 206 BCE), as it turns out, was the first of its kind.

The Qin began as a state, during China’s warring states period. It quickly conquered its rival states and the remains of the Zhou Dynasty. Taking command of the competition, the Qin came to have undisputed control over all of China. Thus, the Qin were the first Dynasty to consolidate Chinese power, and as such, the precursor to the modern nation-state government.

In looking through history, we find that Chinese dynastic rule was not broken until 1912, meaning that China has been a country for over 2000 years. Indeed, China as a single unit, a group of like people living a unified existence, existed at a time when other Empires were either collections of states (Greece), or a central city-state and a series of conquered territories (the Persians, eventually the Romans, the Egyptians, etc).

What did the Qin Dynasty mean to China culturally? As the unifiers of the nation, they created a much larger work force than was previously available. This work force was responsible for various civic projects, the most important of which was the Great Wall, the only man-made object that can been seen from space.

The bureaucratic arm of the Qin standardized weights, measurements, language, and the writing system, and created a national currency; all of these things are integral to a fully operational and unified populace, tenets without which the modern nation-state would be an impossibility.


The Qin standardized Chinese currency and writing.

The Qin were also progressive in their use of the military as a branch of government, rather than the sole means of social control. The armed forces of the Qin used advanced weaponry and tactics to not only maintain control for their emperor and oligarchs, but also combat foreign and domestic enemies.

To the Qin's advantage, the dynasty’s military ignored accepted means of engagement at the time. Rather than waiting for their enemies to gather forces and ride to battle, they simply went out and crushed them at the most opportune moment. Though the Dynasty was short-lived, their marriage of military and bureaucracy would forever alter the course of Asian history.

The dominant philosophy of the Qin Dynasty was that of Legalism. Basically, Legalists believed, as their name implies, in the importance of laws. Their beliefs were simple: The law ought be written down and made public, and all citizens were henceforth subject to it.

Of course the philosophy goes much deeper than this (and of course, as history shows us, Chinese governments over the years have done anything but honor this philosophy), but the concept is integral in our understanding of the formation of unifying empires which went on to lord over much larger territories.

What we can see in this simple exercise is that art is very rarely, if ever, anything but art. It is, rather, an window into history, art, culture, society, and the ongoing trends of human civilization.

Thoughts on Things - Art

Thoughts on Things - Art

Ryoji Ikeda – The Physicality of Sound Though Japanese musicians from Merzbow to Boris to Boredoms are cited as being on the cutting edge of sound, the fusion of sonics and experimentation is far from new to East Asia. Ancient Indian Buddhist texts and koans that found their way through China and into the oeuvre of the Zen patriarchs tell that in finding through focused aural meditation the pitch of the world, we find the pitch of ourselves, and thereby harmony. The application of ancient precepts to the most contemporary of technologies makes the work Japanese aural/visual artist Ryoji Ikeda both cutting edge, and part of a great tradition.

Despite a steady stream of albums and concerts, Ikeda is different from most noise musicians. Rather than focusing simply on the repetitive frequencies of drone or the minutia of abrasive static, Ikeda works with a specific philosophy. Looking from the slightly warped perspective of all progressive artists, the sonic manipulator approaches sound as a physical force, focusing on its causality with human perception. Ikeda expands his focus to incorporate not simply sound and image, but also mathematics, time, and space. By occupying a certain space for a measurable period of time, we are affected by the repetitive mathematical frequencies and distortions of Ikeda’s work to an immeasurable degree. What better equation for art is there than the one that ends in infinity, with an unknown variable?

We know we’re in deep and unique territory when an artist dredges up words as arcane as the Platonic dianoia (the capacity for discursive thinking, in contrast with the immediate apprehension that is characteristic of noesis) to describe his work. Yet Mr. Ikeda’s appropriation of this phrase doubly challenges us. His primary provocation is that we must see, rather than look. Ikeda does not produce art to be glanced at, soused, and left behind (as is the process of noesis). His process hopes that we will see a deeper vision (comprehension maybe more appropriately) that will stimulate reflection. As with all great art, the reflection doesn’t stop at the art itself, but rather is best extrapolated to the world and its philosophical, metaphysical concerns.

The second challenge presented by the artist’s use of Greek philosophical terminology is one directed at our assumptions and general misconceptions of Japanese art. While the art of Japan is alien to our Western sensibilities, many Japanese artists work largely under a Western influence, filtering their work through a Japanese prism. The odd refractions of light presented by this prism confuse the Western eye, though if we stop, think, and see (again, the recurrence of dianoia conceptually), we find that, while the artist himself is Japanese, the art he is creating is an amalgam of cultural notions that is in its ultimate manifestation universal. To this end we need look no further than Ikeda’s employment of a universal knowledge, math, to create a languageless art in which exist only the physical forces of sound, time, and space, all of which are cross-cultural concepts.

Translated into a real space, Ikeda’s audio/visual installations are wrapped in ethereal beauty, though can err to the caustic. Many find his work overwhelmingly bizarre. A frequent complaint is the harshness of his compositions and the recondite visuals. Yet Ikeda’s sounds and visions are not meant to be “enjoyed”, per se, as is a Monet. Neither does it strive to be pleasant; the works are physical forces, to be felt. The artist’s point is not the art, but the art’s impact.

Here we find at first what appears to be a contradiction at first. If the point is the impact, ie the physical force of the work, then really what’s going on is noesis, or, immediate perception through the senses, devoid of intellect, yes? Well, not quite. Though the artist works to affect physically, the physicality of his work is meant to provoke deeper thought. There’s some kind of metaphor at work here that can unravel. The meditative (sometimes deafening) sounds and hypnotic visuals of the work hit the receptor (Goethe’s human antennae is really what we’re talking here) physically, and so we have art with a literal impact. Step two is that the physical impact of sound is meant to give pause, which is to say we stop for a minute and think Well, what the hell was that all about? This gives rise to questions of purpose, which, once followed to the ends of their threads, give rise to thoughts of being, and the intricate depths of ontological discourse. In a sly twist, noesis provokes dianoia .

This brings us full circle. In the Buddhist tradition, enlightenment is found in transcendence, and transcendence through innate understanding of the duality of Being and Emptiness (or, if we prefer Existential definitions, the ominous Being and Nothingness of Sartre). In aural meditation, a pitch of universal harmony is sought. This is found through noesis. In finding this pitch, we find harmony with the deeper nature of Being and Emptiness. The resultant process of the immediately perceptible is one of dianoia. The duality of physical and metaphysical which manifest in every culture is the art’s true point, and thus while we can argue endlessly the inherent Japanese qualities of this work, through the application of Greek philosophy we easily locate the cross-culture pertinence of the art.

In his employment of advanced technology, mind-bending math, and age-old notions of sound’s profound effect, Ikeda is pushing the physical and ideological boundaries of aural art.

Ryoji Ikeda can be felt at the Ars Electronica Center, Linz, AT through the year, the V&M Museum London until 4/11.

Find out more online:
Official Site
Myspace
Forma UK

Thoughts on Things - Art

Thoughts on Things - Art

In (Partial) Defense of Degas
Edgar Degas did himself a tremendous disservice by being as subtle an artist as he was. He also did his admirers a great disservice, for no matter where I mention his name, to whom or in what context, there is always a detractor, always a deluge of impassioned by sadly misdirected feminist critique. Always from the peanut gallery queries as to why you support such blatantly sexist and borderline pedophiliac art. So, in print and in the public forum for you all to chew on, here is my official (partial) defense of Degas, one of my favorite artists.

It makes sense to begin with some background, so let’s do just that. Degas was a contemporary of the Impressionists, though he shirked that label, and with good reason. Though he shared a similar aesthetic sensibility, he was working in a very different vein. We’ve all heard of the Impressionists, and most of us who’ve been to a respectable museum have seen a Monet, but let’s give a little background on these guys.

Impressionism evolved artistically from the Barbizon School and philosophically from both the work of the realists and the post-Marxist, industrial world. The Barbizon School, named after the French town of Barbizon, where the artists would gather to work, was a group of painters who found their inspiration in fresh air. They took to the Fontainebleau Forest to paint directly from nature. This resulted in much more natural-looking work, and marked a distinct shift away from previous, omniscient landscapes. While artist who preceded the Barbizon School polished their works to an unrealistic sheen in studios, the work of the school itself had distinct focal points, as though, when looking at the canvass, we see what a human eye is actually seeing. The strong aesthetic choice of painting directly from nature and the vantage point of the human eye would have a tremendous impact on the Impressionists.

The Realists, also a French school of painting, weren’t realists in style as much as in content. Rather than mining the same vacuous, pastel idiocy of the Rococo artists or the historical grandiosity of the Neoclassicists, the Realists depicted the day-to-day life of the lower echelons of French society. Artists like Courbet and Millet painted scenes of rock breakers (very poor workers whose job it was to actually break big rocks into smaller rocks – a classic painting of Courbet’s that was destroyed by the firebombing of Dresden during WWII), gleaners (also very poor workers, who would glean fields after the harvest), and funerals. Realists monumentalized the working classes and commented on the disparity of modern conditions.




(A) A typical Barbizon painting (B) Monet's view of temporal modernity (C) Courbet's monumental lower-class funeral


Impressionism, then, incorporated these schools and more. The Impressionists were called such because they intended their work to be as the world is seen, rather than, as an omniscient would see the world. The Impressionists were interested not in providing authoritative depictions of any one theme or subject, but rather in giving their own, individual impressions of the way the world was. This approach places great emphasis on subjectivity.

The Impressionist’s saw the modern, post-industrial world of one of great, constant change. They saw the misery of the working classes and the myriad devices in place to maintain that misery. They painted from the perspective of a world composed of endless instances, not a continuous stream of time. Their compositions were influenced by the human eye and the temporal, spontaneous nature of photography.

Degas was an Impressionist in his preoccupation with documenting the instances of the present, though was greatly influenced by the Realists, and their very thorough documentation of the French peoples and their various struggles.

The Dancers
Degas draws a great deal of criticism from both within and beyond the world of art. Mostly, the argument is that well here this guy is painting little girls in ballerina outfits so he’s fetishizing children, women, ballet, and portraying women as weak, interchangeable objects to put on display for the world. For some reason, it doesn’t seem to enter the mind of the criticizer that this may be intended itself as criticism. Let’s look directly at a few works of art and see what we can find.

On first glance, it’s a room full of girls in ballet costumes. There’s an old man with a cane standing by watching as some dance, others practice, and a few get warmed up. The immediate interpretation may err to the pervy: here’s a full grown man painting a bunch of young women in skimpy costumes exposing their lithe bodies being watched by an older man. Closer observation tells a different tale, though.

(A) Dance Class and (B) The Rehearsal, both in the collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art

What we clearly see is a group of women in preparation. They’re getting ready to rehearse, in order to perform. The Impressionists were very much of the belief that Paris of their day was a place of grand performance, one in which simply going out of the house the cities denizens put on a face. What Degas gives us in the dancers is a cynical critique on the rearing of a new generation, all of them posited as performers, prepared to live a life of image and falsity. As further testament to his negative commentary on the conditions of his Paris, we need only look out of the studio’s window. Degas could very well have given us something lovely and pastoral, a scene of rural pageantry to echo the supposed objectification of his girls. Instead, he gives us some smoke stacks and other signs of industrial decay. With this in mind, we understand the Paris beyond the window as one of slums, industry, façade, and decadence. The atmosphere the dancers are in is a false one, a den of preparation behind closed doors. Degas plainly tells us, given contextual clues, that these girls are being groomed for a life of display; they are objectified, but by their society, not the artist.

Degas continues the theme of dancers with a series of paintings of the women during dress rehearsal and performance, on stage. These women are older, and their setting is a more realistic fabrication of actuality. Rather than the bare prep room of childhood, the post-adolescent women are smeared with garish make up and tossed under stage lighting. They pose against sets, watched by suspicious men (directors and choreographers) and full-house audiences. The sets are a false reality; the costumes and make up, a false self. The audience is modern society, glaring in silent judgment. The suspicious men are the forces of manipulation, maneuvering women into “their place”.

In continuing his dancers them, Degas very plainly offers a feminist critique of the machinations of his Paris. Further evidence can be found in a very different series of paintings, in which he created a view of the modern, melancholy woman, alone, forced into competition with fellow women for the objectification and favor of men. The much more apparent criticism of these paintings serve to reiterate our reading of his dancers.

But…
But, well, here’s where the partial comes into the defense. It’s plainly documented that Degas was incredibly conservative and a raging anti-Semite. This isn’t something I intend to defend in anyway. And while it’s easy and art historically valid to read Degas’ work as a critique of the post-industrial world’s treatment of women and objectification of people on grand scale, what kind of alternate readings can we find knowing that the artist was so staunchly conservative?

It’s possible that Degas didn’t at all see Parisian society of his day as bad in that it was dehumanizing or demoralizing but rather in that it was turning France’s regal elegance into mass-produced, smoke-choked garbage. Looking at the first dancer painting in this manner, it’s possible that he sees the girls in their costumes as beautiful and precious, gentle objects forced to exist in harsh conditions. As such, when they grow older, the make up and stage props and costumes are not as much the impositions as an objectifying society as much as they are defense mechanisms the women put on themselves so as to avoid the depressing realities of the day.

So…
Degas is a tricky fellow. He was an artist very much of his time, a great detailer of contemporary life. In fact, he preferred to think of himself as a Realist, rather than an Impressionist. That the Realists were mostly very liberal chroniclers of working class oppression is interesting, given that Degas was as conservative as he was, meaning that probably by contemporary standards he would fall into the bizarre libertarian-esque gray world that is both very liberal (everyone should be free) and very conservative (government should stay the hell out of people’s business). Or it’s possible also that Degas, in being very conservative, was also very liberal. To rephrase: Degas stood opposed to many of societies advancements because they represented changes to traditional modes of life, and yet, in standing opposed to them, he stood opposed to a good deal of industrial society’s oppressive machinations. In being backward, he was progressive. It’s possible that he saw the dancers of Paris, who invested themselves in physically demanding work for the benefit of others, as parallel to the gleaners and stone breakers of more rural settings. But then maybe he just though they were nice to look at and emblematic of the times. Indeed (chin stroking ensues), it’s a very real possibility that the paintings were not fetishized and were not liberal condemnations and were not conservative yearnings for a more simple time but were in fact simply something that he saw, an abstraction of form or representation of life that appealed to his sense of aesthetic and documentation. As you can see, all of this makes his art very trick to read, as much of it can be interpreted either way.

This brings us to a Barthesian place, wherein the author (or, in this case, painter) must be presumed dead (which is easy with Degas because he’s actually dead), and the reader must decide ultimately what the paintings are about. Degas was known to portray deep psychological complexities in his portraits, imbuing the eyes of his subjects with a sense of conflict and loneliness. Perhaps the same is true of Degas; he may have been much like his subjects and in that way much like all of us (as he was, after all, just a guy), a man of conflicting tendencies in a conflicted time who created art out of a spider’s web of intent and belief, rather than a straight, obvious line. Though we’ll never know how we were intended to interpret Degas’ work, hopefully after all this discoursing, one thing’s for sure: he wasn’t painting girls in pretty costumes for purposes of objectification of fetishism.

Thoughts on Things - Art

Thoughts on Things - Art

Roman Architecture

Despite their lasting ideologies, well-known pantheon, and globally dominating military campaigns, Ancient Rome’s greatest gift (endnote 1) to, and influence upon, the make up of contemporary society, was its architecture.

The Roman’s thought in circles; they gave the world both the arch and the dome. By distributing weight over much greater areas was allowed by the columns of the Greek period, the arch and dome allowed for much larger buildings with less fortification. Both of these forms made their way into the Middle East, where they were heavily employed in the construction of mosques. The penultimate example is the Hagia Sophia in Turkey, which has been both a church and a mosque. Indeed, it was the Byzantine Empire (or Eastern Roman Empire), imperial Roman Christians who left Italy for Turkey (Constantinople being named for the Emperor Constantine) which in 532 CE began construction on the Hagia Sophia. The arch made it’s way back into Christendom via the crusades. Its reappearance was pivotal; the redistribution of weight via arches – extended into vaults and buttresses – ushered in the Gothic era in medieval architecture. Modern examples of domes can be seen throughout Washington DC, and of course in every major sports venue.


(A) Rome's Pantheon Dome (B) The Hagia Sophia (C) Gothic arches and flying buttresses all over Notre Dame (D) The Capitol Building, Washington D.C.

In a context more deeply rooted in the structure and advancement of contemporary society, we look to Roman civic infrastructure. Their sewers and aqueducts were integral in maintaining society; the sewers kept cities clean and lessened the chance of an epidemic, while the aqueducts provided fresh drinking and bathing water for hundreds of thousands of citizens. Both innovations were made possible by yet another innovation, the invention of cement.

That we live in a world of poured concrete is an unavoidable fact, and yet the ideological advancements of the Roman architectural wizardry are what really matter. What we see in cement is a portable, durable, mass-produced material that can be easily fit into molds to expedite construction and create utilitarian structures, a material and concept without which contemporary cities wouldn’t be possible (endnote 2) . Yet their civic infrastructure is of even greater importance, for in it we see, for the first time in the history of human society, a government providing for, rather than lording over, its people (endnote 3) . This is the very tenet of modernity, the basis on which most prosperous world governments are formed (China of course excluded because…well, China is a beast of its own nature).


(A) Schematics of Roman Cement (B) Roman aqueduct (C) Roman sewer (D) The poured concrete of Mexico City

In examining Roman architecture, we find that the Rome’s greatest gift to the world was its greatest gift to its own citizens: the gift of civic infrastructure and civil engineering .


Endnotes
1. “Gift” being negligible in this context – more on this later.

2. Things start to get a little heavier here, because though concrete and the concept of mass-produced structures were very influential on the modern city, it wasn’t necessarily a good influence. For proof of this we only need look to the industrial slums of a London or Paris, where we see crap housing erected very quickly and poorly for people who were more or less slaves and lived (ironically, given the context and Roman influence, which may or may not have been intentional, though probably wasn’t) in deplorable (forgive the French) shit holes without proper sewage facilities, and died in droves of disease.

3. Interjecting here again for a little discourse on governments providing for v. making people think they’re providing for so that they step in line to the party’s call (this being all very Debordian and post-Marxist and probably a little far out given the context…however…). So what we really have, rather than a society of selfless old boys who wanted to take care of the citizenry, is the beginning of what we can call for now the Orwellian society, wherein the oligarchs hit upon the fact that it might just be easier to appease people than overtly crush them into oppression (though of course the Romans did this, too, what with their slaves and foreign invasions and basic policy of forcing conquered nations into submission…. then hooking them up with water and bath houses and what not – not too far removed from what, say, a certain agglomeration of states may have done in places that may or may not have been called something like Puerto Rico or Hawaii or even said states that used to be part of a country called something like Mexico). So, to review, the Romans gave pretense of some kind of quasi-egalitarian society (at least there was a senate. But of course the Greeks had democracy as well, though theirs was more obviously an iron-fist, it’s-only-the-really wealthy-already-important-and-powerful-dudes-who-have-a-say-in-this democracy) while actually they were just throwing the dog a bone so it wouldn’t attack them.

This is really psychologically interesting, the deeper ramifications of this, basically that Rome was sort of the first USA (read land of plenty and opportunity, of flourishing arts and vibrant hedonism) and the purveyor of 20th century fascism (as in presenting a façade to “the people” that seems as though the government need convince said people that said government or rulers or what have you is/are the way to go but actually using said propaganda to subtly coerce people into believing, thinking, and behaving how said ruling entity desires said people to believe think and behave).
A very important word in previous parenthetical aside is propaganda. The US and Nazi Germany [and places like Japan and Mexico and basically everywhere else in the known world (and I can’t speak for head hunting tribes or Native Americans or Australian sheep farmers)] are joined by their similar use of propaganda, and, it’s probably safe to say, propaganda, even more than concrete or any other such thing, is the touchstone of the modern nation-state because there would be no such thing as the modern nation state were it not for propaganda. By this what we mean to say is that propaganda defines the modern country in two very distinct and important ways: (A) Governing bodies and media entities of the modern nation-state pump out endless reams of information (be it recorded, written, filmed, etc…) that very specifically define what a nation is, re racial demographics, political, religious, & philosophical ideals, social structures, et al. Were it not these presentations, the country would not be a country as much as a collection of people living under a government. Thus, a country is literally described and understood by its propaganda. (B) The people living in said country have no cohering notion beyond the propaganda. Take for instance by way of example the United States. The American Dream, society of tolerance, cornucopia of success and progress: all of these things, propaganda. The propagandist notion that these people are one people, that they form a single unit, is the reason that the country is a country, is a single unit. Were it not for the idea, there would not be the reality. A confusing and circular situation.

Let’s break this down a little bit and look first at Nazi Germany and then at the US (and here of course we need to throw in a little note to the uppities out there who are thinking well shit man you just lost all of my interest cause you’re saying that the good ol’ US of A is the same thing as them damn hate-mongering Natzis. So, we don’t mean to say that there are direct parallels between the policies and war-mongering tendencies of Nazi Germany and the US – in fact, the US is much more sly, and does its dirty business behind closed doors, and has therefore not yet been besieged by the entire Western world in an effort to stop its tide. Rather, we simply mean that the entities employ propaganda in very similar ways) use propaganda to define what they are as states.

Through literature, posters, and of course the propagandically brilliant films of Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazis presented the image of a very organized, very thorough, very united, and very powerful German nation. Of course, apart from the members of the military and party and some conservative fringes, most of Germany was nothing like this. It was a hedonistic (looking to you, cabaret), culturally and socially vibrant (the German films of the 20’s and 30’s stand as some of the most artistically, intellectually progressive works of cinema ever created, a reputation the very much deserve) bohemia with a collapsed economy and several very deep wounds left over from the First World War. But the country had been so ravaged by that war, the resultant Treaty of Versailles (which effectively screwed Germany so hard there was no way they would be able to live up to its provisions without a miracle or fighting its way out), and the economic collapse (the famous story of this one being that a woman took an entire wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread and someone stole her wheelbarrow but left the money, it was worth so little), that the Germany the Nazis presented (this being long before anyone was talking about the Holocaust) was a Germany the citizenry very much preferred to its current state of affairs (keep in mind here that the Nazis were actually elected; there was no coup, no brutal militaristic take over; enough of the German people wanted them in office that they won it, fair and square). The Nazis elected their propaganda began to go international, and the citizens of the world (many Germans included) began to believe that Germany was something during those Nazi years that it never was.



(A) Nazi spin doctors turning war into a game that the intellectually superior Germans will win (B) Hitler, leading the unified, organized, bright German citizens of tomorrow (C) People magazine, showing us a suspect vision of America (D) It's a Wonderful Life - false images of the American Dream

The US has been, since its inception, all about promise: the promise of citizenship for all the tired, hungry, and huddled masses (thank god this essay isn’t about broken promises), the promise of success, happiness, and your piece of the pie. Now of course the faulty math of this is: a pie has only so many pieces, so the more people that come snatching at it, the less likely any of them are to have a some. But still, with the right propagandic techniques, the US has been able to convince most people of the viability of this. Of course, early on, it was about actual propaganda, about convincing the citizens that this could quite actually be achieved. Novels, early Hollywood films, countless human interest pieces paraded in newspaper, magazines, and eventually on television, all going great lengths to show Americans that this was true, this could be achieved, it was out there for all to have (except of course black people who had formerly been the slaves who built all this crap we supposedly want and then became the disaffected underpaid lynched working class who had basically no rights, and Native Americans, who were entitled to a free college education, a trailer with a full stock of Jack Daniels in some god-forsaken patch of desert no one else wanted, and the right to build a casino, if so desired). What’s incredibly interesting and somewhat bizarre that we see is that as time goes on, as America becomes more prosperous and African Americans are given the right to vote and become in the public eye the integral part of the American fabric they’ve always been (sorry Natives, it’s still just the shitty trailer for you guys), outright propaganda shoveled by forces who wish to propagate the myth of the American Dream kinda vanishes and what takes its place is private enterprise American Dream shit-shovelers like People and US and all the myriad other similar publications and TV shows and radio programs that people actually buy, as in through capitalism it has been proven that even though the US is essentially nothing like what Hollywood et al present it as and what a lot the world think of us as, people actually want to believe that it is. So the US is very different from Nazi Germany in the respect that the Nazis put it out there and people bought it but when they went away it went away, rather than what we see in the US, where the government kinda lets sleeping dogs like and private enterprise picks the whole thing up and runs with it. And it’s possible that the government let it go precisely because private businesses had begun to pick it up and it was realized that the whole thing had taken on a life of its own, it was so ingrained in the public conscious. It didn’t actually need propagation anymore because it was no longer an image, but a deeply ingrained belief.

Now of course this is all incredibly cynical and a bit of conspiracy-theoryish and implying that some kind of incredibly devious closed-door dealings with evil shriveled men cackling and rubbing their finger nails together saying “Yeeeeeessss”. So let us just state for the record that the authors believe a nation with a unifiedly prosperous and contented populace is perfectly plausible, even in a place with the deep-seeded racial and ethnic tensions of the US, it’s just that there are countless barriers, including ironically the judges, police officers, and lawyers of Irish, Italian, Dutch, persecuted English and sometimes even African descent whose ancestors straggled in without a cent who are now deporting Latinos and Latinas in droves.

Before we continue, to briefly summarize, both Nazi Germany and the US have used propaganda to present fallacious notions of what those states were like to the average citizen, i.e. have presented a false totality that has come through that imagery to define those states through and in various eras. And we’re using these two as just example. You can probably prove this just about anywhere with a healthy image proliferation.

Of course we started this whole thing discoursing on Roman architecture, so how in the good lord’s name did we end up here? Let’s talk Roman political sculptures. Pre-Roman art was very largely art for art’s sake. Art that was not created for purely aesthetic reasons was created to appease gods, praise heroes, or serve some other practical function. Egyptian art is monolithic and timeless, created such to remind its viewers of the everlasting qualities of their gods and rulers. Key word here being remind, not convince. Greek sculpture, particularly that of the Hellenistic period, detailed the exploits of heroes, praised their deeds, and reinforced their beauty. Essentially the art of these epochs, as well as those of the Incans, Olmecs, Mayans, and Persians, if we decide to look elsewhere, was intended to reinforce that which was already known.

The Romans were playing a very different game. Roman officials, much like those of the Greeks, had to be elected. Sculptures were often created of the elected officials, and Emperors of Rome, but here’s the kicker: they were in office when the statues were created. These were guys who hadn’t yet earned the fluid, melodramatic, anguished poses of the Greeks or the carved-right-from-the-mountain grandeur of the Egyptians. In carving these effigies of living, serving civil servants, the Romans hit upon something ingenious that they would go on to exploit in terribly genius ways: by endowing whoever it was whose likeness happened to be served up on a sculpture and placed in the public domain, by endowing that figure with the proper physical characteristics and placement in the city, the artists were able to convince the populace that said elected official was working for the people and doing the right thing and was overall the man for them, and therein lies the lynchpin to a psychologically coercive system that, by convincing the citizenry that what they wish to see is what they’re actually seeing, completely controls damn near all its peoples by tricking them, i.e. Hey guys, what’s up? Well, here’s drinking water and sewers and bathhouse and various other public amenities. We’re working for you. Everything good? Cool. We’re just gonna go…like, over here and feed the Christians to lions and enslave a bunch of people and take your daughters and sons for our orgies and various other things like this. We’re cool? Sweet.



(A) Egyptian Pharaoh, hewn straight from the mountain (B) Olmec head, not really feeling the need to prove anything to anyone (C) Hellenistic Dying Gaul, with nice stache (D) Roman political sculpture, indicating to the future

Here we’ll talk aesthetics and manipulation of viewer by artist and art. If we’re creating a political sculpture of someone before said person has actually done anything of note politically, how do we do it in such a manner that will convince the viewer that the subject is worthy of praise? First off, the very notion of someone having a statue does a great deal of convincing. Put yourself in the mind of the viewer, ho-hum strolling about the Roman public forum coming upon a sculpture.

“Oh. Who’s this guy? A politician. Wow. He’s got his own statue. Must be someone very important or heroic.” Now we look up and see that this guy in phenomenally tall. He’s at least eight feet tall and he’s on a pedestal, so he’s actually something like ten or twelve feet towering over us, casting a shadow. “Wow, look how big he is. Man, he’s epic. He’s like a giant. He must be a really great leader.” Now as we take a closer look we see he’s got a book in one hand while the other is held out toward us, sort of aloft, like he’s in the middle of saying something. “He must be very well-learned. Look how big that book is. It’s huge. And he’s read the whole thing. But even though he likes to read he’s actually kinda looking right at me, holding his hand out much in the manner of an offering, sort of saying, ‘Here I am, great leader, extremely damn tall, with this very long and intellectually discoursy-type book I’d like to get to, but instead I offer myself to you, proud citizen. I orate directly to you. Well, I would be if I weren’t so incredibly vertically epic.’ What a guy.” Now in order to actually see his face, we have to step back. So we step back and he’s got very kind eyes and a mouth that really is about to say something but you can tell by the way his eyebrows are positioned that he’s very concerned for our well-being even though he’s incredibly handsome and young. “This is the kind of guy I’ve always wanted as our leader. And would you look at that, he really is leading us.” We start to walk away and we see all of these other very important buildings, these temples and government halls of power and bathhouses where important things go on and we think that if this guy is sitting amidst all of this he must be a part of all of this, must therefore be someone who was born to lead, no question.

We find some interesting points here, as well. The whole point of an elected government, if I’m not mistaken, is not to lead but to serve its people. And yet, by very carefully convincing the constituency that a certain politician has very strong leadership qualities, said constituents begin to believe what they really need is a leader, not a public servant. For evidence on this one look no further than the Obama/McCain presidential race. John McCain was hell bent on convincing us all of his leadership qualities. He made this whole big stink about his military record, his ability to maintain control and leadership under pressure. The spin machine went great lengths to extol his and Palin’s (and really who the fuck did they think they were kidding about Palin? Oh good, you were in control of a state the size of Brazil that like ten people live in with more fucking bears and caribou than citizens. That’s good Sarah. I hear Legoland is looking for a new mayor) very sound and extensive leadership qualities and records, while trying to take Obama down a peg with pithy comments about his role as a community organizer. But here’s where McCain really screwed the whole thing up (aside from ignoring the fact that mostly only geriatric Christian white people were listening to him): in being a community organizer, Obama served the supreme function that we wish every elected official of fulfill: he worked his ass of for basically no money, taking nearly absurd amounts of initiative to do things for sometimes ungrateful people because he believed it was the right thing to do, because that’s what America and serving your country is about. Of course this whole disdain for Obama’s community organizing on the part of the opposition goes great lengths to show an intense intolerance and condescension regarding the plight of Black Americans, which is (in addition to be a really big top and one for a different essay totally) probably some combination of racism, indifference, selfishness, and unwillingness to accept what America actually looks like and is (a.k.a. struggling brown peoples of various ethnicities and nationalities who are actually striving to achieve some simulacra of the American Dream, unlike the good deal of malevolent white pundits who were born into wealth) and the weird bullshit hackneyed belief that well slavery ended like 150 years ago get with the program.



(A) John McCain, powerful military leader (B) Sarah Palin, strong, tough, aiming for the future (C) Obama, community organizing/conscripting nefarious black children to help him conquer the known universe (D) Palin's constituents

Now, back to the Debordian. As industrial and post-industrial societies developed, they began to throw people bones. Cyclical time became essentially embedded in human DNA. The creation of holidays at perfectly measured intervals so that no matter how much a job or school or life is getting us down, we’ve got that break coming up to take a load off. Hand-in-hand with this the cyclical nature of products; seasonal fashions, film release schedules, concert tours, television events and whatever else in that sector, everything doctored, even things like booking doctors appointments months in advance and planning vacations a year before they happen or applying to college ten months before you’re actually going to go, campaigning two years before an election, or most heinously having a five year plan; (semi-colon definitely needed here cause I’ve gotten so ahead of myself I don’t even know what I’m writing anymore) all of this is a very specifically engineered system that keeps us looking forward so that we don’t stop and look around and take measure of the present and say hey wait a minute. Stuff sucks now. Why don’t we do something about it rather than deferring everything to a future that will never come so the mongers of contemporary suckage can continue purveying said suckage without anyone trying to stop it?

4. Stylistically it makes a good deal of sense to align conclusion and conclusion. What we can see here is that by looking at Roman architecture; or, rather, looking behind Roman Architecture, we can quite plainly see that the basis for all of these very Orwellian post-industrial and contemporarily deranged and conspiratorial things in fact are thousands of years old, are trees grown from seeds planted by the ingenious minds of the Roman propagandists, who realized that it’s actually much easier to control people if you throw them a bone and make them think that what they want to see is actually what they are seeing. The Romans very much thought in circles.

Endnotal Subclause: Theory vs. Reality
Something else that very much needs to be addressed here is theory vs. reality. It’s very easy to sit back and look at society and say Well the government sucks and screws people a lot and it’s been happening since basically the dawn of time and rather than actually improving or becoming more rooted in a sense of servitude to the people it’s actually just become a lot more clever and better at controlling people without people knowing their being controlled. Part of the faultiness of this lies in that the governments of the world become a continuous series of malevolent “its” that must be a sentient series of beings rather than whomever happens to be in control of whatever nation/state/city/empire et al at any given time, or implies that there is some kind of behind-the-curtain society of evil-ass people manipulating the world while laying burning pentagrams of candle on cobble-stone vault floors wearing hoods chanting satanic mantras which, let’s admit to ourselves, is complete horseshit. And even if it’s true, the 6 billion+ people in the world could very easily crush the tar out of these bastards if they so desired.

We also ought consider the very real possibility that capitalism and contentment is not actually some evil giant who come down from the hillside to terrorize the people, but actually an evolution of human nature that is exactly what the majority of people in the world want. Now we can be cynical and high-horsy about this all we want, but that won’t make it go away, so what we need to do instead is work within that framework to forge some kind of continually upwardly mobile situation whereby the haves are always reaching a hand down to the have-nots to hoist them up so that as the standard of living in the upper-echelons improves, so does that of the lower classes and dispossessed, as opposed to what we’ve got now, which is basically the better it gets for the upper and middle classes the worse it gets for the bottom.

Obama must be brought up if only for a minute. Whether or not Obama lives up to his near-messianic promise is irrelevant. The point is that he has inspired in people a belief that we can change the world, that we need not sit around and accept the way things are or wallow in some warped collective self-pity. More than his work as a politician or his beliefs as a man, Obama is the promise of a non-fixed class society personified, and a beacon of hope who, though often borderline rhetorical, represents the very opposite of the psychological enslavement discoursed on previously in this piece: he has, and encourages the rest of us, to smash pre-existing paradigms and build from the fragments a more promising and hopeful future which, let us go on the record as saying, is something we whole-heartedly believe in (though not in our cynical moments when we we’ve just read Brave New World and are listening to Radiohead and drinking tea and being generally foppish and pretentious, but still, we’re all aloud a little pouty time).

Thoughts on Things - Art