You wrote
When in 1973 Joseph Beuys wrote:

“Only on condition of a radical widening of definitions will it be possible for art and activities related to art [to] provide evidence that art is now the only evolutionary-revolutionary power. Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build ‘A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART’… EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who – from his state of freedom – the position of freedom that he experiences at first-hand – learns to determine the other positions of the TOTAL ART WORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER.”

Was he right? Or mistranslated?
Was he proposing rather than announcing?"


I think many have held out the hope of this possibility, I recollect Marcuse also espoused this as the only hope for our future. In truth I think it requires such a tremendous shift in consciousness that few will attempt to realise the potential of " EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST". For most of the world daily life is a struggle, and here I refer not to the privileged minority of europeans and the americas, but to the vast majority of the earth's population (which includes the other four legged animals as well I guess:) for whom the concern remains one of daily survival.

I have noticed in recent writings about the current upheavals and soon to be devastating outcome of the decadent economic life of the privileged minority articles such as "The Rules Are Set in Stone For the Rabble" (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21080.htm) which make the case for a "return" to a simpler way of living, but nowhere in this short essay does the word "art" appear. I'm afraid that art in the sense that Beuys refers to is a minority concern. Respect to Beuys but this idea of art is a legacy concept, more germane to the lives of the privileged people is the explosion of "popular art" which started sometime in the middle of the nineteenth century and has now come to dominate our cultural landscape. But again the production of this work (novels, song, music, photography, film and latterly TV, video etc) is still a minority activity - but the consumption of this popular art is massive, it's hallmark is one of consumption not creation.

The work that appears in the International Bienfests shares little intellectually or aesthetically with the concerns of popular art (except perhaps big budgets and the wealth accrued by the "big stars"). However I'm not sure this separation in values was always the case? While some of the so called "high arts" eg. opera, have some real difficulties associated with their appreciation by a lay audience and consequently the appreciative audience is small, with regard to most of the history of artistic production - the great canon of "old artists" (usually dead), there is massive appreciation albeit largely based on craft skills but also a perceived understanding of the philosophical "life"(aesthetic) lived by the artist and described in their art. This "life" is I think what Philip was referring to as [possibly]"missing" from contemporary art. In consequence we have an industry (yes that's what they call it) given to producing cultural artefacts which have little meaning to the majority of even the most privileged observers. Increasingly losing it's audience and in an attempt to retain their economic hegemony the artists and their agents increasingly turn to shock, massiveness and extravagance, in work which is all surface - more like a fairground side show than an art of content and contemplation. Distinguish also the modern artist's mindset from their predecessors, whose mantra "epater les bourgeois" - has today been replaced by "it's the economy stupid" perhaps a society get's the art it deserves?

I would be the first to recognise that it's a difficult line for any artist to walk, having to choose between a commitment to art/craft/history and the contemporary alternative of shock product marketing. The former - what I think Beuys was referring to, a "life aesthetic" is beyond being taught nobody can explain. it, at best it can only be seen in the work of the artists who have gone before us, far easier for the cadre of contemporary artists manque is to service a "cultural industry" ( a pejorative term) of curators, and aesthetically inclined civil servants all funded by large budgets, salaries and pensions. While most of the artists receive scant financial remuneration this beurocratic class of arts administrators carve out a nice living for themselves while creating the new hegemony of modern art.

Today there is too much money involved in this trade for any "avant garde" art movement to create a revolutionary new wave, at best it will be local, but that is good enough for me; as Lao Tzu said - and I paraphrase the sage "when we hear the bell in another village we should ignore it"



Peter Hagerty
arklo.com
Liverpool