suzi gablik_the nature of beauty in contemporary art

7/28/2019 Suzi Gablik_The Nature of Beauty in Contemporary Art

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/suzi-gablikthe-nature-of-beauty-in-contemporary-art 1/7

The Nature of Beauty in Contemporary Art

by Suzi Gablik

A new paradigm of an engaged, participatory and socially relevant art is

emerging.

If you’re out, you’re out - you simply don’t count," the artist Sandro Chia

once declared in an interview in Art in America. Referring to the art

world, he said, "Anything that happens must happen within this system,"

which he went on to describe: "I work for a few months, then I go to a

gallery and show the dealer my work. The work is accepted, the dealer

makes a selection, then an installation. People come and say you’re good

or not so good, then they pay for these paintings and hang them on otherwalls. They give cocktail parties and we all go to restaurants and meet

girls. I think this is the weirdest scene in the world."

Sandro Chia’s description of the art world as a suburb of hell is all too

familiar; it is a world in which artists are defined through showing or not

showing, selling or not selling, and through the goals of money, prestige,

and power that are so crucial to our whole society’s notion of success.

Within the modernist paradigm under which I grew up, art has been

typically understood as a collection of prestigious objects, existing inmuseums and galleries, disconnected from ordinary life and action.

Defined entirely in individualistic terms, the modern artist’s quest was

enacted within the inner sanctum of a studio, behind closed doors. This

mythology of the lone genius, isolated from society, and relieved of social

responsibility, is summed up for me in these comments by the painter

Georg Baselitz: "The artist is not responsible to anyone. His social role is

asocial; his only responsibility consists in an attitude to the work he does.

There is no communication with any public whatsoever... It is the end

product which counts, in my case, the picture."

Recently, when he was asked on the occasion of his Guggenheim

retrospective what role he believes art plays in society, Baselitz replied,

"The same role as a good shoe, nothing more." And he has stated

elsewhere: "The idea of changing or improving the world is alien to me

and seems ludicrous. Society functions, and always has, without the

artist. No artist has ever changed anything for better or worse."

Many of the beliefs about art that our culture subscribes to, that the

problems of art are purely aesthetic and that art will never change the

http://www.ru.org/81gablik.html#author

http://www.ru.org/81gablik.html#author



world, are beliefs that have diminished the capacity of artists for

constructive thought and action. The critic Arthur C. Danto has referred to

this state of affairs as "the disenfranchisement of art", because the hidden

constraints of a morally neutral, art-for-art’s sake philosophy is that it has

led artists to their marginalized condition in society. I first began toquestion this mythology myself when I wrote Has Modernism Failed?, and

since then, many things have happened to change the situation. The

environment is disintegrating, time is running out, and not much is being

done.

Artistic Responsibility

Many artists now see their role as sounding the alarm, and have felt the

need to alter the direction of their art so that it is more socially and

environmentally defined. Such artists incarnate different ideals and adifferent philosophy of life. Performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña

states, for example, "Most of the work I’m doing currently comes, I think,

from the realization that we’re living in a state of emergency. I feel that

more than ever we must step outside the strictly art arena. It is not

enough to make art." In a similar vein, Chicago artist Othello Anderson

states: "Carbon and other pollutants are emitted into the air in such

massive quantities that large areas of forest landscapes are dying from

the effects of acid rain. Recognizing this crisis, as an artist I can no longer

consider making art that is void of moral consciousness, art that carries

no responsibility, art without spiritual content, art that places form above

content, or art that denies the state of the very world in which it exists."

As many artists shift their work arena from the studio to the more public

contexts of political, social, and environmental life, we are all being called,

in our understanding of what art is, to move beyond the mode of

disinterested contemplation to something that is more participatory and

engaged. Such art may not hang on walls; it may not even be found in

museums or beautiful objects, but rather in some visible manifestation of what psychologist James Hillman refers to as "the soul’s desperate

concerns." For such artists, vision is not defined by the disembodied eye,

as we have been trained to believe. Vision is a social practice that is

rooted in the whole of being.

Breaking with the Paradigm of Vision

Writing The Reenchantment of Art represented my own philosophical

"break" with the paradigm of vision and the disembodied eye as the

axiomatic basis for artistic practice.



For instance, I wrote at some length about an art project initiated by a

friend of mine in Santa Fe, Dominique Mazeaud, which she calls "The

Great Cleansing of the Rio Grande River". For several years, armed with

garbage bags donated by the city, Mazeaud and a few friends who

sometimes accompanied her, would meet once a month and ritually cleangarbage out of the river. Part of the work involves keeping a diary,

entitled Riveries, in which she writes about her experiences. Briefly, here

are some extracts:

November 19 My friend Margret drops me off at Delgado promptly at 9:00

am. Because of the snow I was not sure of the conditions I would find but

did not doubt a second that I would put in my day. I find a stone warmed

by the morning sun which makes a perfect site for my beginning prayer.

Yes, I see what I am doing as a way of praying: Picking up a can/Fromthe river/And then another/on and on/It’s like a devotee/Doing countless

rosaries.

December 2 Why in all religions is water such a sacred symbol? How

much longer is it going to take us to see the trouble of our waters? How

many more dead fish floating on the Rhine River? How many kinds of

toxic waste dumpings? When are we going to turn our malady of

separateness around?

March 19 1 can’t get away from you river/In the middle of the night/I feelyou on my back/In my throat, in my heart.

July 20 Two more huge bags I could hardly carry to the cans. I don’t

count any more. I don’t announce my "art for the earth" in the papers

either. All alone in the river, I pray and pick up, pick up and pray. Who

can I really talk to about what I see?... I have also noticed that I stopped

collecting the so-called treasures of the river. It was OK at the beginning,

but today I feel it was buying into the present system of art that’s so

much object-oriented. Is it because I am saying that what I am doing isart that I need to produce something?

Eventually, as the artist’s connection with the river deepens into that of

friend and confidante, and even that of teacher, she reaches a point

where her relationship with the river becomes even more important than

her original ecological incentive to clean it. "For the first time last month,"

she comments, my meditation directed me to go and be with the river

and not do anything. The instructions were clear: "Don’t even take one

garbage bag." Her activity had subtly shifted, until it was no longer a

systematic retrieving of everything in sight, but has become her own



personal dialogue with the river. The river as a living being has something

to say. "I have landed in a new landscape," Mazeaud states, "where I

discover the river is as true an artist as I am."

The hegemony of the eye is very strong in our culture, and to challenge

the commitment to its ocular-centric, or vision-centered aesthetic,

replacing it with a paradigm shift that displaces vision with the very

different influence of listening, is to open oneself up to the complaint that

what is being described here is not art at all, but environmental activism,

or social work. Many individuals who saw their own ideas reflected in my

book’s agenda were enthusiastic and friendly, whereas those who thought

that art should be unencumbered by any moral or social purpose were

resistant and unfriendly, because it seemed to undermine the way they

see their task.When I lectured together with the critic Hilton Kramer a few years ago in

Madison, Wisconsin, he proclaimed, with the force of a typhoon, on the

podium after my talk, that things with no relation to art were now being

legitimized and accepted as art, when, he claimed, art is incapable of

solving any problems except aesthetic ones. Kramer is in the forefront of

those who believe that when art is actively engaged with the world, its

aesthetic quality is necessarily compromised. I, on the other hand,

consider that such art is often intensely aesthetic, because in responding

compassionately to whatever it touches, it is helping to create a more

beautiful world. Artists whose work helps to heal our soulless attitudes

toward the physical world have my full respect and attention because, for

me, beauty is an activity rather than an entity, a consciousness of, and

reverence for, the beauty of the world.

Art and the Return of Soul

I’d like to conclude with some pertinent comments between myself and

Thomas Moore taken from my new book Conversations Before the End of Time.

Suzi: As I understand your sense of the soulful life, it would mean

bringing art back into a more vernacular, everyday world, and taking it

out of the more rarefied sphere of professionalism. You mentioned in the

letter you wrote to me that you are very interested in the role of the arts

in the world today. Do you see art as being an important vehicle for the

return of soul?

Moore: Probably its most important vehicle.



Suzi: Do you want to elaborate on this?

Moore: Yes, there’s so much to say here. First, though, I’d like to pick up

on this point of yours about everyday life. There are a number of ways in

which we could bring the artist back into everyday life, so that we don’t

just have this fringe art world that doesn’t really touch on the values of

the way we live, essentially. One way would be for the artist truly to feel

a sense of conviviality in the society, in being part of that community, so

that there’s a responsibility, and a pleasure, in going into the world and

being part of, say, actually designing the city... We can’t suddenly begin

living a more artful life, which is the avenue to soul, if in the public life

around us, and in everything we see and inhabit, art is invisible.

Suzi: And so, in your thinking, that could be a whole new paradigm for a

socially relevant kind of art—not precisely in the sense that’s being talked

about in the art world now of "political correctness" and social critique,

but rather a kind of art that celebrates and participates robustly in the

life-world.

Moore: Exactly. And here’s another point about soul.., soul enters life

through pleasure. It’s an erotic activity: psyche and eros going together,

rather than principle and responsibility. Responsibility suggests a kind of

outward superego coming in and saying, "You know, this is what you

should be doing." That is not a new paradigm; we’re not moving out of the modernistic world then. We’re just feeling we should do something

different and more responsible.

Suzi: "If we are going to care for the soul," you say in your book, "and if

we know that the soul is nurtured by beauty, then we will have to

understand beauty more deeply and give it a more relevant place in life.

It’s not only pleasure and conviviality, but also beauty that is necessary

for the return of soul..." It’s interesting, don’t you think, that archetypal

psychologists are the ones who seem to be taking the lead for arenaissance of beauty in our lives, even more than artists or

aestheticians?

Art in service of humanity



In my new book, Conversations Before the End of Time, James Hillman

and I discuss the river project of Dominique Mazeaud in a way that is

relevant, I think, to the issues being addressed in my paper.

Suzi: The point is, James, that within the traditionally accepted model of

the artist, based on isolated individualism, it’s very difficult to perceive

any strong connection or direct influence that art could have on the world.

That’s why in my writing I have been drawn to artists who are using their

creativity in ways that can have a more direct effect.

Hillman: We’ve talked about this before, and I think there’s a problem,

about, first of all, why that’s art, and second of all, what’s the difference

between that artist cleaning the river and l’art pour l’art? Because in the

end, her art has no worldly effect. You say yourself that it’s not really

even meant to clean the river; it becomes a devotional ritual. (But for methe real problem is) what gets metaphorized in her work? Doesn’t she

remain in the literal world? And, as such, it’s not art? She’s literally

cleaning the river!

Suzi: But that’s a problem only if you want to define art as a separate

aesthetic realm, divorced from life and quarantined to the museum or art

gallery. And only if you want to insist on the Cartesian split between art

and life, self and world.

Hillman: I certainly don’t define art that way, but I do believe it

transforms the literal to the metaphorical and mythical. Otherwise, the

social comment, politics, advocacy, protest exist on one level only... For

me, art is dedicated to beauty; it’s a way to let beauty into our world by

means of the artist’s gifts and sensibilities... I think beauty needs to come

into it somehow. Ideas of beauty and metaphor are necessary to what I

call art.

Suzi: In another of these conversations, Satish Kumar says that in India,

art was never meant to hang on walls—it’s part of life. He thinks that the

desert of ugliness all around us is connected with concentrating our notion

of beauty in a great body of works of art to be found only in the oases of

museums. In India, art is not separated from the normal flow of life. A lot

of discussion is being instigated by people now who feel that until—or

unless—art can reconnect with life, it’s going to stay marginal, without

any part to play in the larger picture.

Hillman: That’s a very good point, because it shows something crucial to

this civilization: that the work in the river can be put in a different contextaltogether, which is art in the service of... life. Like the way dance was



originally in the service of the tribal community; it wasn’t dance for an

audience on a stage. It was a dance that helped the crops to grow.

Suzi: In our culture, the notion of art being in service to anything is

anathema. Aesthetics doesn’t serve anything but itself and its own ends. I

would like that to change. When Hilton Kramer says that the minute you

try to make art serve anything, you’re in a fascistic mode—well, I don’t

believe that.

Hillman: I’d like to defend the cleaning of the river, for a moment. I’m

going back to what you said a little earlier: it’s the attempt to put art in

the service of something.

Suzi: Yes, that’s where the issue is.

Hillman: Art in the service of something. If we say that it’s life, and if we

think, for instance, of the Balinese village where everything is made to be

functional and useful, for celebrations or ceremonies... you’re still in

service to the gods, somehow. Now we don’t have that—we’ve wiped the

gods out... So the god that art now serves is the god that dominates the

culture, which is the god of commodity, of money. So it is in service, it’s

in service to gods we don’t approve of... Now suppose the question

doesn’t become what art should do, but rather how do we find that which

art should serve? Art is already in service, so we could perhaps change

that to which it is in service?

Suzi: So the question is what could art better serve than the things it has

been serving, like bourgeois capitalism, throughout our lifetimes?

Hillman: Right! And I think the artist in the river is serving a different

god.

Suzi Gablik is an artist, writer and teacher whose books include HasModernism Failed?, The Re-enchantment of Art and Conversations Before

the End of Time. This article is from a symposium on The Nature of

Beauty in Contemporary Art sponsored by the New York Open Center and

the International Society for Consciousness in the Arts in October 1995.

suzi gablik_the nature of beauty in contemporary art

Documents