1 00:00:00,520 --> 00:00:04,200 It's not surprising you know that that this is what she's doing, and you 2 00:00:04,240 --> 00:00:07,960 can understand that in some ways what she was doing in the nineteen seventies and 3 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:12,119 what she was doing back then is what would lead to things like cutting and 4 00:00:12,160 --> 00:00:16,920 self harm in the modern world, because cutting and self harm is also a 5 00:00:17,039 --> 00:00:21,600 desire to participate. It's a desire to re engage the world, right, 6 00:00:21,679 --> 00:00:27,120 to reawaken our engagement with the world. It's just a just a very deluded 7 00:00:27,239 --> 00:00:33,640 and deranged version which enters into this this sato masochistic paradigm that appears at the 8 00:00:33,679 --> 00:00:38,000 beginning of the modern age. Right, It's like all I can understand the 9 00:00:38,039 --> 00:00:42,640 world to be is either a world of power in which I, you know, 10 00:00:42,840 --> 00:00:47,960 inflict pain and violence and torture, or I am the recipient of violence 11 00:00:47,960 --> 00:00:51,799 and pain and torture. And if I can do that to myself, then 12 00:00:52,039 --> 00:00:56,399 I am in like in control of the nihilism that I mean that I'm living 13 00:00:56,439 --> 00:01:11,560 in, of the kind of dark world that I'm engaged with. This is 14 00:01:11,640 --> 00:01:26,040 Jonathan Pechel. Welcome to the Symbolic World. Hello, do all of you 15 00:01:26,200 --> 00:01:30,159 welcome to this symbolic world. Today we're going to talk about art. I 16 00:01:30,239 --> 00:01:36,400 was really surprised to notice how many people watch my video on El Greco and 17 00:01:36,400 --> 00:01:38,640 and you are all. So I thought we will push it a little further 18 00:01:40,040 --> 00:01:45,840 and we'll look at contemporary artists like Marina and Brownvich of Pizza the Gate Fame 19 00:01:46,280 --> 00:01:49,640 and a few other contemporary artists, and we'll look at how much of contemporary 20 00:01:49,680 --> 00:01:55,120 art or some contemporary artists yearning from a participation, look at how they come 21 00:01:55,159 --> 00:02:00,120 close to it and also how they struggle to the breakthrough. And so as 22 00:02:00,159 --> 00:02:02,760 you notice a lot of things that have been going on in this cinemolic world. 23 00:02:02,799 --> 00:02:06,840 We have a new website that you get it signed up to. There's 24 00:02:06,879 --> 00:02:09,479 a new community, a bunch of guests here for people who sign up. 25 00:02:09,479 --> 00:02:15,240 And as you can see, I have behind me the beautiful mosaic that was 26 00:02:15,280 --> 00:02:20,319 made by my caring assistant David and was designed by Heatherer Pollington. And so 27 00:02:20,360 --> 00:02:24,479 I'm surrounded by one of different people really excited to carry on with this syntebolic 28 00:02:24,520 --> 00:02:29,479 world as we reach new levels. So what we're going to look at is 29 00:02:29,520 --> 00:02:36,159 the question of contemporary art and how it moves into extremes and moves towards participation. 30 00:02:36,360 --> 00:02:38,439 But first, what I wanted you to think about is many of the 31 00:02:38,520 --> 00:02:46,560 modern artists were in some ways in the what I call pendulum, a pendulum 32 00:02:46,680 --> 00:02:50,039 of the incarnation, you could call it, where on the one hand, 33 00:02:50,080 --> 00:02:55,199 the art tends to move up towards ideal shapes, towards idealism, towards you 34 00:02:55,240 --> 00:03:00,360 know, and it also tends to move down towards e hither popular or art 35 00:03:00,520 --> 00:03:06,039 or common art or everyday representations. This pendulum happens in any way. Sometimes 36 00:03:06,039 --> 00:03:10,039 it's almost contradictory, but nonetheless the pendulum is there. And so here we're 37 00:03:10,080 --> 00:03:15,360 looking at an artist named Brancuzzi. Many of you will know him. And 38 00:03:15,520 --> 00:03:20,960 what's interesting about these artists is that if you look at what they're doing, 39 00:03:21,039 --> 00:03:24,639 some of it, you know, it's not a problem in itself. And 40 00:03:24,759 --> 00:03:28,560 so brand Cuzzi, one of the things he was described to do with something 41 00:03:28,599 --> 00:03:35,479 like there's still the essence out of the art. So many iconographers artists like 42 00:03:35,560 --> 00:03:40,800 Aiden Hart, who has written much about iconography, has even suggested the possibility 43 00:03:40,840 --> 00:03:46,000 that, you know, there's something akin to icons in some of the modern 44 00:03:46,039 --> 00:03:49,240 movements. But if you look at the way that the face is simplified, 45 00:03:49,479 --> 00:03:52,639 this desire to kind of of find the basic geometry of the face and to 46 00:03:52,719 --> 00:03:58,120 represent it. Is something that Aiden sees happening in icons If you look at 47 00:03:58,199 --> 00:04:03,360 the difference between Roman and art and Christian medieval art or iconographic art, you 48 00:04:03,400 --> 00:04:08,479 get a sense that the iconographic art is more distilled. It doesn't tend to 49 00:04:08,560 --> 00:04:12,280 show a lot of the excesses of the material world. It tends to, 50 00:04:12,919 --> 00:04:17,240 let say, rectify or simplify the forms. Now this wasn't necessarily done with 51 00:04:17,839 --> 00:04:23,639 the same drive as the modern artist that is really trying to almost reduce to 52 00:04:23,839 --> 00:04:28,639 an essence. But nonetheless there is something that you might want to see as 53 00:04:28,720 --> 00:04:33,040 a kin. Now this is true, but it's interesting to think about how 54 00:04:33,319 --> 00:04:38,319 there is a in terms of moving towards an art. Of course, with 55 00:04:38,439 --> 00:04:44,399 participation you have a basic issue which is going to be in some ways the 56 00:04:44,439 --> 00:04:48,800 development of the personal style. And so as Brancuzzi or other artists want to 57 00:04:49,360 --> 00:04:54,839 do this distilling, they also at the same time end up creating things that 58 00:04:54,879 --> 00:05:01,600 are so you know, particular to themselves that they They're personality is impregnated completely 59 00:05:01,680 --> 00:05:09,319 on it, and so it doesn't have a kind of universal appeal communal appeal 60 00:05:09,480 --> 00:05:14,680 that the traditional arts would have like images and icons, they do distill the 61 00:05:14,800 --> 00:05:17,959 forms, but they do that in a way that is also calling to participation 62 00:05:18,079 --> 00:05:23,959 in a community, whereas Brankuzi is creating objects of contemplation, objects of aesthetic 63 00:05:24,040 --> 00:05:29,560 pleasure that would be in people's houses or in buildings, but don't necessarily have 64 00:05:29,680 --> 00:05:33,439 so much of that capacity to participate in a community. Another example is, 65 00:05:33,519 --> 00:05:39,560 of course Kandinsky. Now many people have pointed Kandinsky out to me, saying, 66 00:05:39,879 --> 00:05:43,040 you know, isn't Kandinsky something akin to what you're trying to do? 67 00:05:43,160 --> 00:05:47,000 Right He's trying to find the meaning in colors. Kandinski created this whole theory 68 00:05:47,040 --> 00:05:54,800 of color symbolism where each color represented certain moods, certain states of human existence. 69 00:05:54,839 --> 00:05:59,560 And then he created this almost symbolic language of colors in his paintings, 70 00:05:59,560 --> 00:06:02,079 where he brought all these colors together, you know, contrasting with each other 71 00:06:02,560 --> 00:06:08,120 and uh and and existing together in order to bring about this kind of symbolic 72 00:06:08,519 --> 00:06:13,560 language of color. And so there is something interesting about that once again in 73 00:06:13,600 --> 00:06:17,560 the way that my friend Aiden Hart points out that there's something of that in 74 00:06:17,639 --> 00:06:25,079 color in in icons, where in icons, certain colors has certain certain importance 75 00:06:25,600 --> 00:06:30,600 in certain representations. For example, we represent the veil of the virgin with 76 00:06:30,680 --> 00:06:33,079 a royal color. You know, we use gold, we use white, 77 00:06:33,720 --> 00:06:40,439 we use dark black and darkness to manifest certain characteristics. And so it's not 78 00:06:40,759 --> 00:06:45,800 as typified as in Kandinsky, and it's not as typified as sometimes people want 79 00:06:45,839 --> 00:06:50,160 to think. But there is definitely a basic symbolism of color that exists in 80 00:06:50,600 --> 00:06:56,160 the icons. Now, once again the issue with Kandinsky, and this of 81 00:06:56,199 --> 00:07:00,720 course happens also with people like Pete Montreal. Pete Montreal is a is an 82 00:07:00,759 --> 00:07:05,000 artist who was trying to do something similar. He was a theosophist and so, 83 00:07:05,399 --> 00:07:10,439 you know, a kind of spiritualist in the in the the early sense 84 00:07:10,480 --> 00:07:13,639 that you know, something akin to what a new ager would be today. 85 00:07:14,399 --> 00:07:18,680 Uh. And he tried to create these simple images of proportions, mathematical proportions 86 00:07:18,680 --> 00:07:25,199 and and and uh, primal colors in order to create this kind of spiritual 87 00:07:25,759 --> 00:07:30,680 experience of the painting. Now, one of the issues with with both of 88 00:07:30,720 --> 00:07:35,240 these is that, for example, with Kandinski, you have the problem that 89 00:07:35,360 --> 00:07:43,199 his forms and his colors create a very idiosyncratic language. And so in the 90 00:07:43,279 --> 00:07:48,399 desire to actually create something which would be universal devoid of cultural uh, you 91 00:07:48,439 --> 00:07:53,680 know, cultural hooks, that it's not this or that person, it's not 92 00:07:53,800 --> 00:07:58,360 this or that scene, it's an it's a universal language. What ends up 93 00:07:58,360 --> 00:08:03,120 happening is rather the opposite, is that Kendinski creates a language which is completely 94 00:08:03,199 --> 00:08:09,279 aosyncratic to himself, and that you know, unless you read his book on 95 00:08:09,600 --> 00:08:15,199 color, you would struggle to find any meaning in his paintings. Even in 96 00:08:15,319 --> 00:08:20,240 terms of impressions. The impressions that his paintings create on the viewer are not 97 00:08:20,319 --> 00:08:26,879 really exactly what he would think they are doing with his whole very complex theory 98 00:08:26,920 --> 00:08:31,199 of color. Now, the same happens with Pete Montias. That you know, 99 00:08:31,120 --> 00:08:39,200 although his mathematical proportions they are universal, they are very much once again 100 00:08:39,320 --> 00:08:46,039 void of the capacity to participate. And so these images you look at them, 101 00:08:46,080 --> 00:08:50,799 but what are they doing? What is happening with these images? And 102 00:08:50,240 --> 00:08:56,080 what's important to understand in terms of the pendulum is to understand how in the 103 00:08:56,120 --> 00:09:01,840 early modern age, and this is something which will be real repeeded early Modernism, 104 00:09:01,919 --> 00:09:03,480 not modern age, to say, at the beginning of the twentieth century, 105 00:09:03,639 --> 00:09:09,039 something which will be repeated over and over is that you end up having 106 00:09:09,080 --> 00:09:13,399 movements of artists that represent things that look very similar to each other, but 107 00:09:13,480 --> 00:09:20,879 for app completely opposite reasons. This happened especially in Russia. So in Russia 108 00:09:20,960 --> 00:09:24,320 you had two movements. You had a movement that you could call supremacism. 109 00:09:26,399 --> 00:09:28,440 You see this in Malevich, of course, Malevich, who was kind of 110 00:09:28,480 --> 00:09:35,639 continuing Kandinsky's line of representing these pure mathematical forms, these pure shapes, these 111 00:09:35,679 --> 00:09:43,440 pure colors on canvases in order to create a supreme you know, kind of 112 00:09:43,440 --> 00:09:48,960 platonic experience of the forms in the paintings. And so there was almost like 113 00:09:50,039 --> 00:09:52,399 a spiritualism which is devoid of body. And you see that of course in 114 00:09:52,480 --> 00:09:56,159 Montly as well. You know, it's trying to create these pure patterns, 115 00:09:56,399 --> 00:10:03,279 pure patterns that are that are spiritual, but that don't land, that don't 116 00:10:03,480 --> 00:10:09,240 incarnate in the world the way patterns actually usually incarnate in the world. Right. 117 00:10:09,320 --> 00:10:13,200 You don't perceive mathematical proportions. You perceive them, you know, if 118 00:10:13,240 --> 00:10:16,399 you look at the Golden Mean, for example, you know, the Golden 119 00:10:16,440 --> 00:10:20,559 Mean appears as different proportions, the proportions of the body, the proportions of 120 00:10:20,639 --> 00:10:24,960 buildings, you know, that are participated in you enter into the building, 121 00:10:24,000 --> 00:10:30,919 and the fact that your body is made of certain proportions connects with the proportions 122 00:10:30,960 --> 00:10:33,639 of the church, and so there might be a little bit of that in 123 00:10:33,720 --> 00:10:37,799 the painting, but the painting is something that you stand in front of and 124 00:10:37,879 --> 00:10:45,840 you look at that weird activity of just visual experience is something which is not 125 00:10:46,120 --> 00:10:50,919 integrated with other aspects of reality. So now, what it's interesting about Russian 126 00:10:50,960 --> 00:10:56,799 supremacism is that it gives birth to a movement that is its opposite, which 127 00:10:56,879 --> 00:11:01,679 is called constructivism. And the constructivists are also using these geometric shapes, but 128 00:11:01,759 --> 00:11:07,240 they're using them in an almost reductionist manner, in a Marxist way. So 129 00:11:07,279 --> 00:11:11,200 on the one hand, you have this kind of idealism, this this high 130 00:11:11,360 --> 00:11:20,120 spiritualism in these supremacists, and now this this landed very very practical use in 131 00:11:20,279 --> 00:11:22,879 constructivism. Now you look at this, and you would you might think, 132 00:11:22,120 --> 00:11:26,600 okay, so what's the difference, right, what's the difference between this, 133 00:11:26,279 --> 00:11:31,279 which is constructivism and this, which is supremacism. And that's my point. 134 00:11:31,480 --> 00:11:37,879 My point is that you know, these extremes manifest manifest themselves in a very 135 00:11:37,919 --> 00:11:43,000 surprising way where people on the one hand, someone who wants to create idealistic 136 00:11:43,759 --> 00:11:48,440 spiritual forms, and the other person who wants to create Marxists working class, 137 00:11:48,600 --> 00:11:52,000 you know, Reductionist objects that are made of real things, you know, 138 00:11:52,080 --> 00:11:58,039 that are that are completely material in there for even the reason of their being, 139 00:11:58,360 --> 00:12:01,799 will end up making something similar. And so for the same reason, 140 00:12:01,879 --> 00:12:05,440 what you end up seeing is the constructivists end up using the tools of modernism 141 00:12:05,559 --> 00:12:11,799 and the design tools of simple geometric forms in order to create propaganda, whereas 142 00:12:13,000 --> 00:12:20,159 something like creating propaganda out of a out of abstract geometric forms is something that 143 00:12:20,200 --> 00:12:26,360 the supremacist like Malevich would have found completely abhorrent and the total opposite of what 144 00:12:26,480 --> 00:12:31,559 it is they're trying to do. Now, this of course will continue on 145 00:12:31,919 --> 00:12:37,559 into the modern age, and when you get to the nineteen sixties and seventies, 146 00:12:37,679 --> 00:12:41,639 you have the exact same problem. In the United States and in Europe 147 00:12:41,639 --> 00:12:46,639 as well. You end up having two movements, one which is called conceptual 148 00:12:46,759 --> 00:12:50,720 art and the other which is called minimalism. And what happens is you have 149 00:12:50,879 --> 00:12:56,519 these two extremes, and so conceptual art, you know, this is you 150 00:12:56,559 --> 00:13:00,159 know, this is supposed to be very smart. So Joseph Kosuth know, 151 00:13:00,320 --> 00:13:03,799 he puts a chair in the gallery and then puts a picture of the chair 152 00:13:03,039 --> 00:13:07,960 and then puts a definition of the chair to kind of help you understand that, 153 00:13:07,279 --> 00:13:11,639 you know, how these objects are actually ideas and that the idea is 154 00:13:11,679 --> 00:13:18,480 what is more important than the physical instantiation of the object. And so, 155 00:13:18,919 --> 00:13:24,600 you know, it's super interesting because this is a very very boring thing. 156 00:13:24,799 --> 00:13:30,960 It's a very boring statement, and it's also a cold clinical action that you 157 00:13:31,000 --> 00:13:35,080 know, it's supposed to create, just this reflection on on the relationship between 158 00:13:35,120 --> 00:13:39,320 different representations of an idea in the world and different uh, you know, 159 00:13:39,559 --> 00:13:45,879 putting putting out there in terms of the creation of a of an art object, 160 00:13:45,919 --> 00:13:48,159 right, because this is the problem. Now, this chair, you 161 00:13:48,159 --> 00:13:50,799 know, is not is not an actual chair, right, It's not a 162 00:13:52,000 --> 00:13:56,120 it's not a chair that you sit on. It's a fetishized chair that is 163 00:13:56,519 --> 00:14:01,440 used in the gallery in order to to create an artistic experience, I guess. 164 00:14:01,759 --> 00:14:07,360 And so although so again you have this problem of the alienation which the 165 00:14:07,480 --> 00:14:13,080 art object ended up creating in the in the world, and so you and 166 00:14:13,120 --> 00:14:16,919 then you end up having all these tropes of trying to kind of break free, 167 00:14:18,159 --> 00:14:22,120 break through the issue that the gallery space provides, and you know, 168 00:14:22,200 --> 00:14:28,519 the art space provides the most extreme version of this kind of conceptual art that 169 00:14:28,960 --> 00:14:35,519 is trying to be revolutionary. If you remember my last lecture on an El 170 00:14:35,600 --> 00:14:41,080 Greco and Andy Warhol is of course Pierro Manzoni who did the you can read 171 00:14:41,120 --> 00:14:46,440 it for yourself. He created cans of art that contained his own excrement. 172 00:14:48,200 --> 00:14:50,440 We don't even know if they really did, but that was the point. 173 00:14:50,519 --> 00:14:54,039 The point is to have these cans that contained the excrement of the artists and 174 00:14:54,080 --> 00:14:58,000 put them in the gallery. W was kind of taking Duchamp's gesture to an 175 00:14:58,080 --> 00:15:01,879 extreme, but Men's he only did all kinds of things like that, where 176 00:15:01,159 --> 00:15:05,000 he would he would take a vial of glass and fill it with air in 177 00:15:05,039 --> 00:15:09,360 Paris, you know, just have a vile of glass open and Paris close 178 00:15:09,399 --> 00:15:11,720 it and then show it all of the world and call it, you know, 179 00:15:11,840 --> 00:15:16,360 air from Paris or something. And it was this desire to kind of 180 00:15:16,440 --> 00:15:20,840 expose in some ways almost the very mechanisms of art and the very mechanisms of 181 00:15:20,879 --> 00:15:30,879 how of how art is a fetishized representation of something that has lost its purpose. 182 00:15:31,279 --> 00:15:35,000 So it's not clear exactly what his point was in the sense that is 183 00:15:35,039 --> 00:15:37,200 he denouncing it, is he participating it? Maybe he's doing both at the 184 00:15:37,279 --> 00:15:41,639 same time, you know, but he can perceive the problem of participation and 185 00:15:41,679 --> 00:15:46,720 the problem of the space, the art space itself as this strange space where 186 00:15:46,759 --> 00:15:50,279 we put things there in order for us to just look at them, and 187 00:15:50,360 --> 00:15:58,159 they don't have a kind of integration into the world. And so this conceptual 188 00:15:58,240 --> 00:16:00,840 art is this high, high con sexual art. Well at the same time 189 00:16:02,080 --> 00:16:07,399 exist with other artists that are doing what we call minimalist art, and here 190 00:16:07,440 --> 00:16:11,000 we're looking at pure reductionism. So if you look at an abstract painting by 191 00:16:11,480 --> 00:16:17,360 Frank Stella, for example, and so you know, abstract lines on a 192 00:16:17,799 --> 00:16:21,519 on a canvas, and it might make you think that this has more to 193 00:16:21,600 --> 00:16:25,600 do with Malavich. But someone like Frank Stella would be the very opposite of 194 00:16:25,960 --> 00:16:32,080 Malavich. He would say that my paintings are just paint on a surface. 195 00:16:32,360 --> 00:16:36,399 That's all they are. They have no meaning, they have nothing except for 196 00:16:36,679 --> 00:16:40,919 just being paint on a surface. Now, obviously, you know, at 197 00:16:40,960 --> 00:16:44,960 this point, hopefully everybody can understand that this is a of course, a 198 00:16:45,159 --> 00:16:49,840 ridiculous gesture. It's a ridiculous gesture to think that you can have just paint 199 00:16:49,919 --> 00:16:56,159 on a canvas, the whole question of relevance and and and and of wondering 200 00:16:56,320 --> 00:17:00,159 why I would care about paint on a canvas and not care about paint on 201 00:17:00,200 --> 00:17:04,640 a wall, or not care about you know, whatever it is is of 202 00:17:04,720 --> 00:17:11,680 course re engaging and is a kind of strange almost blind spot of an artist 203 00:17:11,759 --> 00:17:15,759 like Frank Stella, where you know, the the putting in the gallery of 204 00:17:15,839 --> 00:17:23,119 this canvas with abstract painted lines on it, cannot avoid entering into the whole 205 00:17:23,200 --> 00:17:29,039 question of meaning, of prestige and of relevance, and the question of culture 206 00:17:29,079 --> 00:17:33,279 and why we would have these objects that we elevate above other objects, and 207 00:17:33,319 --> 00:17:41,839 that we see as being kind of fetishized as as culture objects rather than just 208 00:17:41,000 --> 00:17:45,640 everyday, common day objects. And so you know, you can see how 209 00:17:45,680 --> 00:17:49,720 the pendulum calls its each other, right, the pendulum just just calls one 210 00:17:49,799 --> 00:17:53,720 extreme to the other, and sometimes even in the same object. And so 211 00:17:55,039 --> 00:18:03,480 without the whole structure of art, the whole structure of culture, and this 212 00:18:03,559 --> 00:18:08,720 whole idea of these objects of contemplation and and that are fetishized and put above 213 00:18:10,079 --> 00:18:14,359 common day objects, almost in a religious way, Frank Sella could not be 214 00:18:14,480 --> 00:18:19,640 making his paintings. And so even though he makes a reductionist move, the 215 00:18:19,759 --> 00:18:23,799 very fact that we care about his reductionist move, you know, makes his 216 00:18:25,000 --> 00:18:29,000 art participate in the other extreme all the time. And you see the same 217 00:18:29,000 --> 00:18:33,119 thing with any of the minimalist artists. Here of more examples, Carl Andre 218 00:18:33,599 --> 00:18:38,240 Donald Judd, who created these simple materials. They would just create these forms, 219 00:18:40,240 --> 00:18:42,640 and you know the Donald Juddy's boxes are made out of plywoods, They're 220 00:18:42,640 --> 00:18:48,039 made out of very common materials and put up in galleries in a very simple 221 00:18:48,039 --> 00:18:55,160 way, in a very reductionist gesture. Once again, you know, there 222 00:18:55,440 --> 00:19:00,680 is very difficult for them to avoid this pendulum. Now. One of the 223 00:19:00,680 --> 00:19:04,680 things that happens, and it's interesting to start thinking about, is that there 224 00:19:04,839 --> 00:19:10,759 is in the nineteen sixties especially, and it's then in the nineteen seventies you 225 00:19:10,920 --> 00:19:15,079 have almost like a breakout where I think many of the artists started to realize 226 00:19:15,359 --> 00:19:21,920 just how sterile a lot of this abstract art was becoming, this conceptual art, 227 00:19:22,039 --> 00:19:26,720 these minimalists are, how sterile, and just because it's the fetishized in 228 00:19:26,759 --> 00:19:32,079 the weirdest way, that these objects started to becoming and so what you have 229 00:19:32,279 --> 00:19:37,079 is artists that almost tried to start to break out. And in that group 230 00:19:37,160 --> 00:19:45,039 you have performance artists who start to use art almost in a ritual fashion. 231 00:19:45,400 --> 00:19:49,880 And this is what I mean by the question of ritualization. So this is 232 00:19:49,960 --> 00:19:56,599 Joseph Boyce. Joseph Boyce was a airplane pilot in World War Two and his 233 00:19:56,759 --> 00:20:00,400 plane crash and he has a whole story about what happened to him. And 234 00:20:00,480 --> 00:20:06,599 so his art tends to deal with these issues, right with the issues of 235 00:20:06,839 --> 00:20:10,680 the of the war, the issues of survival, the issues of the human 236 00:20:10,720 --> 00:20:17,319 person put in contact with animality. And so some of it is a little 237 00:20:17,359 --> 00:20:22,319 simplistic because it's almost like his own process of healing through where he went, 238 00:20:22,440 --> 00:20:26,400 you know, like the felt blanket that he would have had in the military, 239 00:20:26,480 --> 00:20:29,519 the sled, a flashlight. You know, there's a sense in which 240 00:20:29,839 --> 00:20:36,839 he's creating these spaces that are just putting things together in a way that is, 241 00:20:37,000 --> 00:20:42,359 let's say, remembering participation. Right. So it's the object in the 242 00:20:42,400 --> 00:20:48,039 gallery is obviously just fetishized like all the other art objects, but because he's 243 00:20:48,079 --> 00:20:55,200 trying to bring about a memory of the war, a memory of you know, 244 00:20:55,279 --> 00:20:59,559 how these objects participated in his own life. Then there's something going on. 245 00:20:59,759 --> 00:21:03,279 Now we're going to get back to Joseph's boice. But first of the 246 00:21:03,319 --> 00:21:08,559 most famous of the performance artists, especially right now is of course Marina Brownitch. 247 00:21:10,160 --> 00:21:14,640 And it's interesting to think about her and her work in what she was 248 00:21:14,720 --> 00:21:19,079 trying to do, because in some ways, you know, she was also 249 00:21:19,160 --> 00:21:26,160 trying to kind of break through the problem of art, art especially you know, 250 00:21:26,240 --> 00:21:30,000 represented as here's the art and here's the public, and now we go 251 00:21:30,160 --> 00:21:37,160 in and we are these passive, these passive almost you know, consumers, 252 00:21:37,240 --> 00:21:42,680 and we just look at these art objects and there's no form of connection to 253 00:21:42,759 --> 00:21:47,519 the world and to life. And so what she was trying to do, 254 00:21:47,759 --> 00:21:48,519 you know, she was trying to do a lot of things, but one 255 00:21:48,519 --> 00:21:52,480 of the things she seems to be trying to do is to try to break 256 00:21:52,759 --> 00:21:56,519 to break through that that problem. So she did very strange performances. Or 257 00:21:56,559 --> 00:22:03,440 one of her most famous performance is is shown here where Marina Brownwich stood in 258 00:22:03,480 --> 00:22:08,359 a gallery for six hours and she put on a table a bunch of objects, 259 00:22:08,839 --> 00:22:12,960 and all those objects were objects that a certain amount of people in the 260 00:22:14,039 --> 00:22:18,640 space with her were allowed to use on her and so you had feathers, 261 00:22:18,720 --> 00:22:21,279 you had papers, string you can kind of see, but you also had 262 00:22:21,319 --> 00:22:26,839 more dangerous objects like a gun, like a knife, and she just stood 263 00:22:26,839 --> 00:22:30,240 there for six hours. She wasn't allowed to react. She just had to 264 00:22:30,279 --> 00:22:33,599 take it. And then everybody in the gallery was allowed to do whatever they 265 00:22:33,599 --> 00:22:38,440 wanted. They were absolved of any responsibility ability legally. Of course, probably 266 00:22:38,519 --> 00:22:41,799 some of this is quite staged. You know, I don't want to question 267 00:22:41,920 --> 00:22:47,359 her method. But of course, as you can imagine, the situation starts 268 00:22:47,440 --> 00:22:52,319 very likely and then accelerates, and it ends in moments where you know she's 269 00:22:52,440 --> 00:22:56,440 very much in danger, where a knife is used on her. You know, 270 00:22:56,559 --> 00:22:59,839 there's a she's stripped, she's put on the table, you know, 271 00:23:00,119 --> 00:23:02,599 these things that are happening to her. You know, someone's you know, 272 00:23:03,119 --> 00:23:06,440 kind of threatens her with a knife. And so in the end, someone 273 00:23:06,480 --> 00:23:10,200 tries pulls the gun out, and then someone reaches for the gun and takes 274 00:23:10,240 --> 00:23:14,480 the gun away, and so you know, it's like intensity a nice Hollywood 275 00:23:14,519 --> 00:23:22,119 movie. But what it seems like she's trying to do is trying to break 276 00:23:22,160 --> 00:23:27,839 through the problem of this passive relationship to the art object. Now she's doing 277 00:23:27,920 --> 00:23:33,000 it obviously in a very modern way. She's doing it in a way which 278 00:23:33,240 --> 00:23:38,799 tends to reduce human human No, she now becomes passive and the viewer becomes 279 00:23:38,880 --> 00:23:45,559 active, and the whole relationship is one which seems to be framed on the 280 00:23:45,599 --> 00:23:49,920 possibility of sadism and a kind of passive masochism. And so, of course 281 00:23:49,759 --> 00:23:57,720 the relationship that she brings about is a very tortious modern relationship. But she's 282 00:23:57,759 --> 00:24:02,920 trying to bring back He could say something like the stakes, like the stakes 283 00:24:02,960 --> 00:24:07,079 of art, like what are we doing? Imagine in the ancient world, 284 00:24:07,119 --> 00:24:11,279 where you build a church and people would go and worship, and they would 285 00:24:11,319 --> 00:24:15,119 be these relics would be taken into the church and people would light candles, 286 00:24:15,359 --> 00:24:21,480 you know, and then people would people when they were angry at the king 287 00:24:21,599 --> 00:24:26,240 or whatever, they would deface the statue. And there was this whole relationship 288 00:24:26,359 --> 00:24:32,839 of art which was seen as participative and connected to life. And so it 289 00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:37,079 seems like she is trying to re engage that in a very perverse way. 290 00:24:37,119 --> 00:24:42,519 But nonetheless, you can see that there's a sense that there's despair in the 291 00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:47,920 art world, that we realize that this is the problem. What are these 292 00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:52,279 paintings like what is you know, there's nothing wrong with decorating decorative art, 293 00:24:52,839 --> 00:24:56,039 but is that what it is is that all of these paintings are are I 294 00:24:56,079 --> 00:25:00,960 don't most of the modern artists don't think so. They think they're doing something 295 00:25:00,039 --> 00:25:04,920 extremely important, but in the end these art objects end up just being passive 296 00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:10,599 objects to look at, you know, to trade, to exchange, to 297 00:25:11,079 --> 00:25:15,440 make money off of. And so artists like her try to break that with 298 00:25:15,599 --> 00:25:21,119 this type of activity. And so she's famously known for doing all kinds of 299 00:25:21,119 --> 00:25:25,960 weird things. You know. Here's a performance where she holding a bow and 300 00:25:26,599 --> 00:25:30,680 her friend is pulling on the arrow and for six minutes he just holds the 301 00:25:30,880 --> 00:25:34,640 arrow stretched out and if he would let go, she would die. Of 302 00:25:34,680 --> 00:25:40,000 course, the arrow would go into her heart. And so it's all about 303 00:25:40,200 --> 00:25:48,079 again the same weird problem of how to represent a kind of you know. 304 00:25:48,160 --> 00:25:52,559 And this is not just entertainment, right, This is not just a performance 305 00:25:52,759 --> 00:25:56,799 in the sense of a play, right, or a ballet or something that 306 00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:00,359 is without stake that it's just people doing things and we watch it, then 307 00:26:00,400 --> 00:26:04,400 we go home. There's a sensity where she's putting herself in danger whilst she 308 00:26:04,519 --> 00:26:11,359 is creating this performance of course, you know, as like I said before, 309 00:26:11,519 --> 00:26:15,319 the relationship seems to be reduced to a kind of Sable masochism, and 310 00:26:15,400 --> 00:26:19,039 which is very close. You know, it's funny if people don't realize to 311 00:26:19,079 --> 00:26:26,799 what extent Sato masochism is related to modernism and to what extent in the Enlightenment. 312 00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:30,920 At the birth of the Enlightenment appears both characters, right, Matthi sad 313 00:26:32,039 --> 00:26:37,720 and sasam Asuk, the two originators of what we could call Sadism and masochism, 314 00:26:37,079 --> 00:26:44,359 because there is already a problem. Once the Enlightenment and its pendulum starts 315 00:26:44,400 --> 00:26:49,240 to swing, you can see the first fruits of that in this reduction of 316 00:26:49,359 --> 00:26:55,920 relationships. On the idea of acting purely on someone right, being the complete 317 00:26:55,960 --> 00:27:00,279 actor, where the other person is a complete passive puppet for your desires. 318 00:27:00,599 --> 00:27:06,680 And on the other hand, the opposite of becoming that pure puppet for someone 319 00:27:06,680 --> 00:27:12,079 else's desires, of just becoming a passive recipient of other people's desires and violence. 320 00:27:12,279 --> 00:27:17,200 That that is something which could inevitably happen at the birth of modernism. 321 00:27:17,319 --> 00:27:21,279 And so Marina, whether she knows it or not, is putting on the 322 00:27:21,400 --> 00:27:26,079 scene this relationship, this kind of weird sado masochist relationship that the modern world 323 00:27:26,119 --> 00:27:32,519 has in a desire to re engage, re engage the stakes of art and 324 00:27:32,599 --> 00:27:37,200 re engage. I think it kind of participation at least at least the stakes 325 00:27:37,319 --> 00:27:40,960 you know, of art, and so much of her art is and so 326 00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:44,440 she became very famous because she's ditch and weird or stuff. Now, this 327 00:27:44,599 --> 00:27:48,240 is one of her performances where she just sits in a galley space with a 328 00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:52,799 bunch of cowbones and she spends six hours a day or eight hours a day 329 00:27:52,839 --> 00:27:56,559 whatever trying to wash the blood from the bones. So that's all she did. 330 00:27:56,559 --> 00:27:59,559 She would sit in the galley and she would just try to wash the 331 00:27:59,640 --> 00:28:03,400 blood off the bones for hours. That it creates again this very dark image 332 00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:07,240 of what it is to be human, what it is to participate, you 333 00:28:07,240 --> 00:28:11,880 know, is that what human life is, right, is that what human 334 00:28:11,960 --> 00:28:15,440 life is is to try to wash the blood off of bones. Right. 335 00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:22,160 The imagery is quite stark, and it is quite you know, it's actually 336 00:28:22,279 --> 00:28:27,640 a very good image of what contemporary life is and what the contemporary world is. 337 00:28:27,880 --> 00:28:32,279 This is what the world of the participation in the modern world. The 338 00:28:32,359 --> 00:28:37,599 analogy or the metaphor for a participation is Now, she got herself in a 339 00:28:37,640 --> 00:28:40,680 lot of trouble in the last few years because she did a lot of weirder 340 00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:44,640 stuff, things that are closer to the occult, things that are closer to 341 00:28:44,799 --> 00:28:48,200 rituals. Now you can understand whether she's sincere or not, like whether or 342 00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:53,119 not she's doing it on purpose or not. How what she's doing is coming 343 00:28:53,240 --> 00:29:03,319 closer to resembling rituals because intuitively we understand that ritualization is a form of participation, 344 00:29:03,839 --> 00:29:07,880 which is closer to the way that we understand art. What art is 345 00:29:07,960 --> 00:29:12,160 that is it's a reduction of the world, the compression of the world into 346 00:29:12,519 --> 00:29:18,680 into a kind of dance, a kind of ordered gesturing, ordered object making. 347 00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:26,039 It's a reductive object. Right. We compress things into images, we 348 00:29:26,119 --> 00:29:29,559 compress you know, the cup that is used in the liturgy, is it 349 00:29:29,640 --> 00:29:32,759 kind of compressed cups, like the cup of cups? Right, it's a 350 00:29:32,839 --> 00:29:36,079 ritualized cup. It's not just the cup you use every day, but it 351 00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:40,880 is. But it is a condensation of cup. So there's a there's an 352 00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:47,960 inevitable almost sense that what will happen is is as there's this desire to break 353 00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:52,759 out of the of the just the passive relationship to art. Things that people 354 00:29:52,759 --> 00:29:57,680 are doing, these performance artists will often start to look like ritual Now, 355 00:29:57,680 --> 00:30:03,119 whether they of themselves can eve what they're doing as rituals, nonetheless, it's 356 00:30:03,119 --> 00:30:07,119 participating in the same aesthetics, and there's no surprise that the rituals that they 357 00:30:07,119 --> 00:30:12,519 will engage with will be rituals which will reflect the sickness of the modern world, 358 00:30:12,799 --> 00:30:15,839 you know. And so she got of course also into a lot of 359 00:30:15,839 --> 00:30:22,119 trouble with what these these performances she did where there were spirit cooking or whatever. 360 00:30:22,359 --> 00:30:23,599 You know, She's done a lot of things. She would write up 361 00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:30,319 all these absurd recipes that look like magical formulas using human fluids and stuff mixed 362 00:30:30,319 --> 00:30:33,920 together in order to create food. And she did she does a lot of 363 00:30:33,920 --> 00:30:37,759 things with pain where she would film herself just you know, putting her hand 364 00:30:37,799 --> 00:30:41,920 over a candle or whatever and just burning herself. You know. I mean, 365 00:30:41,079 --> 00:30:45,400 it's not surprising, you know that that this is what she's doing, 366 00:30:45,440 --> 00:30:48,680 and you can understand that in some ways what she was doing in the nineteen 367 00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:53,240 seventies, and what she was doing back then is what would lead to things 368 00:30:53,319 --> 00:30:57,759 like cutting and self harm in the modern world, because cutting in self harm 369 00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:03,920 is all also a desire to participate. It's a desire to re engage the 370 00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:10,200 world, right, to reawaken our engagement with the world. It's just a 371 00:31:10,559 --> 00:31:17,400 just a very deluded and deranged version which enters into this this Sato masochistic paradigm 372 00:31:17,480 --> 00:31:19,400 that appears at the beginning of the modern age. Right, It's like, 373 00:31:19,559 --> 00:31:26,400 all I can understand the world to be is either a world of power in 374 00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:30,880 which I, you know, inflict pain and violence and torture, or I 375 00:31:30,920 --> 00:31:33,640 am the recipient of violence and pain and torture. And if I can do 376 00:31:33,759 --> 00:31:40,039 that to myself, then I am in like in control of the nihilism that 377 00:31:40,119 --> 00:31:42,759 I mean that I'm living in right of the of the kind of dark world 378 00:31:42,799 --> 00:31:48,160 that I'm engaged with. So you can kind of understand why this is happening. 379 00:31:48,279 --> 00:31:52,039 It is reduced from how dark it is. But of course that the 380 00:31:52,079 --> 00:31:56,319 most important to me, the most important thing that Marina did recently that kind 381 00:31:56,319 --> 00:32:00,720 of shows us an image of of the modern world and what is going on 382 00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:07,039 is the event she did at the at the Museum of Modern Art in La 383 00:32:07,359 --> 00:32:09,799 I think that's where it is, and so she did this performance with the 384 00:32:09,839 --> 00:32:15,000 singer of Blondie of all people, where you know, now we had a 385 00:32:15,039 --> 00:32:20,920 full on scale desire to re engage participation, and so she did a created 386 00:32:21,039 --> 00:32:25,400 and an art event which was also eating, you know. And so remember 387 00:32:25,440 --> 00:32:30,359 all the things that I've said about the you know, eating as an active 388 00:32:30,400 --> 00:32:35,519 participation and communion especially as the kind of highest ritual act and the highest act 389 00:32:35,559 --> 00:32:40,039 of participation. But that is a form of ritualized eating, because eating is 390 00:32:40,119 --> 00:32:45,759 so close to our our you know, our engagement with the world. And 391 00:32:45,799 --> 00:32:51,160 so now what she does is she creates a feast of eating, and I'm 392 00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:54,440 not going to show you all the pictures because they're quite disturbing, you know, 393 00:32:54,519 --> 00:33:00,039 where she engages all the tropes of cannibalism, you know, and all 394 00:33:00,119 --> 00:33:07,640 the tropes of human sacrifice into her event. So she had these cakes made 395 00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:10,440 of herself and of the Blondie singer, and the cakes came in on these 396 00:33:10,480 --> 00:33:14,880 tables, and now with the knife, they stabbed them and cut them and 397 00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:19,400 cut pieces and handed pieces of their cake to the people. And you can 398 00:33:19,440 --> 00:33:22,680 see how it's a parody, of course obviously of communion, a parody of 399 00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:30,799 the Lord's Supper, but done in a kind of dark carnivalesque way, but 400 00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:35,559 that is nonetheless right, trying to like in their own perverted, disturbing way, 401 00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:40,720 trying to break through the problem of the passivity of the art, of 402 00:33:40,839 --> 00:33:47,519 the art object, and the passivity of the entertainment culture and the representation culture. 403 00:33:47,839 --> 00:33:52,880 And so during the event, on the tables, they had actors artists 404 00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:58,519 who just stuck their head through the table and their heads were like the centerpiece, 405 00:33:58,559 --> 00:34:00,240 almost like in like a pig with it apple in its mouth in the 406 00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:04,960 middle of the table. As people were eating, they would just sit there 407 00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:07,440 and stare blankly, and they had, you know, naked women lying on 408 00:34:07,480 --> 00:34:12,519 tables with like skeletons on them, and you know, just very dark and 409 00:34:12,559 --> 00:34:17,280 disturbing things, right, and so close to ritualization that of course, you 410 00:34:17,280 --> 00:34:23,440 know, during the nine twenty sixteen kind of frenetic thing around Pizzagate, people 411 00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:27,800 started seeing these images and freaking out. And the thing is with good reason. 412 00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:31,719 You know, it's so funny that someone like her engages with tropes of 413 00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:37,840 occult cannibalism, all these very very dark images and then defends herself and says, 414 00:34:38,119 --> 00:34:42,000 you know, oh, I'm just an artist. This is just art, 415 00:34:42,159 --> 00:34:46,239 but her whole project is about breaking through the just art, like breaking 416 00:34:46,280 --> 00:34:52,719 through the idea that artists are just like innocent people who represent things. She's 417 00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:55,360 trying to break through. She's trying to re engage. She's trying to use 418 00:34:55,440 --> 00:35:00,840 images of her own self harm and her own you know, doing all these 419 00:35:01,039 --> 00:35:07,360 these very dark, disturbing gestures and then she's surprised when it breaks out, 420 00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:10,639 and then people react in a way that links it to the very things that 421 00:35:10,679 --> 00:35:15,440 she's using as her source material in order to create these things. And so 422 00:35:15,639 --> 00:35:20,800 whether or not she's an actual satanist or ancultist, like I've said off often 423 00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:22,320 in these videos, it's like, I don't have access to that, and 424 00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:28,519 to be honest, I don't care. But the the the the tropes that 425 00:35:28,559 --> 00:35:32,000 she's using are those if you use tropes of cannibalism, and you use tropes 426 00:35:32,039 --> 00:35:37,119 of human sacrifice and huge, you use tropes that are that are that are 427 00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:43,840 magical spells and magical formulas in your recipes and whatever, then don't be surprised 428 00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:47,719 if people react to that as if that's what you're doing. So anyways, 429 00:35:47,719 --> 00:35:52,599 it's just funny to see how she she she's out then she tried to play 430 00:35:52,599 --> 00:35:54,320 the victim, and you can see there's all these articles you can find them 431 00:35:54,320 --> 00:35:58,039 online where she's playing the victims, like, oh, stop harassing me. 432 00:35:58,079 --> 00:36:01,280 I'm just an artist. You know. All these conspiracy theorists that are saying 433 00:36:01,320 --> 00:36:05,559 that I'm doing these dark things, well, you are doing these dark things. 434 00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:08,280 You might not take it seriously. Maybe you're just doing it, you 435 00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:13,239 know, to be an artist, whatever that means. But like I said, 436 00:36:13,239 --> 00:36:15,960 the tropes you're engaging, those are the tropes. Those are the tropes. 437 00:36:16,039 --> 00:36:21,000 So you know, obviously I don't want people to harass her or whatever. 438 00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:22,440 I wouldn't want. I don't want that to happen. But you know, 439 00:36:23,079 --> 00:36:25,800 nonetheless, this is what is This is what is going on in your 440 00:36:25,840 --> 00:36:29,480 work now. One of the things I want to do is return to Joseph 441 00:36:29,719 --> 00:36:36,679 Boys, because Joseph Boys, you know, understood what he was doing very 442 00:36:36,719 --> 00:36:43,480 much as ritual and he was almost using kind of shamanistic shamanistic thing. He 443 00:36:43,519 --> 00:36:47,639 did these performances where he would lock himself in a room with with like wolf 444 00:36:47,679 --> 00:36:52,239 with a wolf, and he wore this felt blanket and would like engage with 445 00:36:52,239 --> 00:36:58,079 with the wolf in certain ways and was trying to almost create these rituals. 446 00:36:58,119 --> 00:37:00,400 And one of the problems that we're they were trying to deal with these artists 447 00:37:00,440 --> 00:37:04,239 was, of course World War Two. And you know, Joseph Voyce was 448 00:37:04,280 --> 00:37:07,760 a German artist. How to deal with the scandal of World War Two, 449 00:37:07,840 --> 00:37:12,760 how to break through the guilt and the shame and the guilt, you know, 450 00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:15,920 all the things that happened that he did as a soldier, that Germans 451 00:37:15,960 --> 00:37:21,599 did, and so trying to create these almost rituals of atonement in order to 452 00:37:21,639 --> 00:37:24,480 get through that, and so he did all kinds of stuff, you know, 453 00:37:25,400 --> 00:37:29,760 kind of absurdest things. Now, of course, the problem with this 454 00:37:30,119 --> 00:37:36,800 is the same problem as with Kandinsky, is that you can totally understand the 455 00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:44,320 desire to re engage rituality. You can totally understand the desire to also feel 456 00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:47,519 like there's no way to atone for the sins of your people, for your 457 00:37:47,519 --> 00:37:52,639 own sins, and try to create rituals of atonement and of transformation. But 458 00:37:53,679 --> 00:37:58,360 when you do it in a gallery, and you do it, you know, 459 00:37:58,519 --> 00:38:01,559 in a space that is just there to hold art objects, when you 460 00:38:01,639 --> 00:38:07,440 do it in a language that becomes so idiosyncratic that nobody can participate it except 461 00:38:07,440 --> 00:38:12,320 for you that people are looking at you ripping up pieces of paper and you 462 00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:15,719 know, writing on billboards and skinning a hair like he did, all kinds 463 00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:20,440 of stuff, you know, playing the piano absurdly that you might think that 464 00:38:20,480 --> 00:38:24,719 you're kind of doing something that's breaking through. But ultimately this will remain with 465 00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:31,119 you, right, it will not become a true language of a participation another 466 00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:37,719 artist that I personally enjoy and like I said, it's just because each of 467 00:38:37,760 --> 00:38:43,840 these artists has a little hint that there's a desire to move away from a 468 00:38:43,960 --> 00:38:47,639 kind of fetishization and and and of the of art and a you know, 469 00:38:47,679 --> 00:38:52,039 and a kind of meaning not meaninglessnss. But you know this idea of art 470 00:38:52,039 --> 00:38:55,960 for art's sake, that this pure art that just exists is an artist called 471 00:38:57,000 --> 00:39:00,400 ansel keeper. So and some keeper did things that were similar to what Joseph 472 00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:07,280 Boyce was doing. And but his whole uh that's a theme is about the 473 00:39:07,320 --> 00:39:14,199 possibility of using art as a a kind of medicine, where the representation of 474 00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:20,880 the images could take that's a culture and break it down or bring it down, 475 00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:25,000 uh, into the dark place, and then try to have it rise 476 00:39:25,079 --> 00:39:29,360 back off. And so you know, he would represent some of these Nazi 477 00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:34,559 uh Nazi building archet, this Nazi architecture, and would cover it with tar, 478 00:39:35,119 --> 00:39:38,639 would would try would cover it with like all with actual material, not 479 00:39:38,719 --> 00:39:43,159 just paint, you know, he would he would have ash and he would 480 00:39:43,159 --> 00:39:47,239 put sand and straw and all these things on the paintings. And would you 481 00:39:47,280 --> 00:39:52,360 know, and trying to in some ways, you know, rebaptize or or 482 00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:55,960 refound these buildings that are there. Right, what do you do now you 483 00:39:57,000 --> 00:40:00,119 have these Nazi buildings that are there in Berlin or in in other places in 484 00:40:00,119 --> 00:40:04,480 Germany? And how do you get through this? Like? Do you destroy 485 00:40:04,559 --> 00:40:07,320 them? Do you just get rid of them? And so his sense is 486 00:40:07,320 --> 00:40:13,280 that there's a kind of deep duplicity in his art where he is trying in 487 00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:21,679 some ways to recast very with hesitation, these objects and almost trying to act 488 00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:25,119 like a kind of traditional healer and heal these art objects. Now, once 489 00:40:25,119 --> 00:40:29,840 you understand that's what he's doing his art, the key to his art opens 490 00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:34,159 up very simply. He represents you know, these lead wings or sometimes you 491 00:40:34,199 --> 00:40:38,320 represent a lead artist palette, painter's palette that will be stuck on top of 492 00:40:38,360 --> 00:40:45,920 his of his images. He represent airplanes sometimes war airplanes as this dual symbol 493 00:40:45,960 --> 00:40:49,320 of something which is both dark but also rises up. And so there's this 494 00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:53,599 ambiguity about his work, but the ambiguity seems to be wanting to kind of 495 00:40:53,599 --> 00:41:00,599 push through and to to to break through the problem of modernism and the problem 496 00:41:00,679 --> 00:41:07,559 of World War two. The iconology that he uses is actually quite it's a 497 00:41:07,599 --> 00:41:10,159 little simplistic, you know, it's a little it's a little over the top. 498 00:41:10,239 --> 00:41:14,719 So here's a simple example, right, He a man lying on his 499 00:41:15,000 --> 00:41:20,480 back, and then out of him is coming this thing a flower, you 500 00:41:20,519 --> 00:41:23,719 know, a kind of stream, and this is going up now becoming a 501 00:41:23,760 --> 00:41:29,960 flower that dies and the seeds now fall back on the earth. And so 502 00:41:30,000 --> 00:41:32,880 you can kind of see this cycle of death and rebirth that he's trying to 503 00:41:34,159 --> 00:41:37,639 show. In the image here, this is actually the louver. You can 504 00:41:37,719 --> 00:41:40,400 see that there's a bunch of books, right, and the books are kind 505 00:41:40,400 --> 00:41:45,159 of stacked and piled and they they're made of lead, and so they're dead, 506 00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:49,360 you know in some ways, or they they're kind of like the problem 507 00:41:49,440 --> 00:41:52,440 of you know, I talk about this the problem of culture and the problem 508 00:41:52,519 --> 00:41:59,920 of the problem of art as this supplement, as this kind of dark aspect 509 00:42:00,079 --> 00:42:04,320 to culture in general. And so he gets that, and then he shows 510 00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:07,400 out of it, you know, a nonetheless kind of lead in flower. 511 00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:09,679 And so if you had seen this in person, the very center of the 512 00:42:10,159 --> 00:42:15,760 dead flower is gilded and has gold on it. And then a few of 513 00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:20,480 the seeds that have fallen back onto the trees, onto the books are also 514 00:42:20,599 --> 00:42:22,920 golden, and so a lot of it is led. If you have this 515 00:42:22,000 --> 00:42:27,920 kind of little hope piercing through right this dead this dead culture, see the 516 00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:30,519 same, you know, in this image as well. So the sunflower comes 517 00:42:30,559 --> 00:42:35,960 up, and then the sunflower drops its seeds back onto the ground, and 518 00:42:36,039 --> 00:42:39,639 you hope that some of it will be reborn. The sunflower seeds are also 519 00:42:39,760 --> 00:42:44,639 stars in his kind of imagination, you can understand, you know, here 520 00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:49,800 is something like the milky Way, this idea of like the principalities coming up 521 00:42:49,880 --> 00:42:53,239 and then acting back upon us, you know. And so there's something about 522 00:42:53,239 --> 00:42:58,119 his work which is obviously a little kitschy, a little new age, a 523 00:42:58,119 --> 00:43:02,760 little simplistic in its in its kind of basic imagery, something that you might 524 00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:07,480 find in a kind of second rate union type of thinking. But the desire 525 00:43:07,760 --> 00:43:15,519 to represent this this kind of decadence and this breakdown of culture and the weight 526 00:43:15,880 --> 00:43:22,239 of history, and how you know in this death that there might be something 527 00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:25,519 that is reborn. I think is a desire and a hope that for sure 528 00:43:25,559 --> 00:43:30,920 I share, and so I do find some resonance in his work in that 529 00:43:31,000 --> 00:43:37,119 sense, and I think that understanding that is something that has pushed me towards 530 00:43:37,480 --> 00:43:42,119 some of the things that I'm doing now. The problem, of course with 531 00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:45,800 Keefer, and just like the problem with Joseph Boyce or the problem with Marina 532 00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:51,119 Brownvich, is that the spaces in which they create these things, they are 533 00:43:51,679 --> 00:43:58,599 artificial spaces themselves, right The museum, the gallery, these are are kind 534 00:43:58,599 --> 00:44:04,079 of fetishized space. They aren't spaces of They aren't the public square, they 535 00:44:04,119 --> 00:44:07,880 aren't the church, they aren't the civic buildings. They aren't the things that 536 00:44:07,960 --> 00:44:15,400 we kind of recognize as holding our identity, holding our participation. And although 537 00:44:15,440 --> 00:44:20,239 the artists, you know, created these gallery spaces, not the artists, 538 00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:23,440 but for the art dealers, created these spaces just for art in order to 539 00:44:23,480 --> 00:44:29,880 sell arts, and those those spaces became, you know, like just places 540 00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:36,440 to see art and to to visualize. It is a desire to break through 541 00:44:36,559 --> 00:44:42,000 now I don't think they succeed. I don't think they succeed because they're trapped 542 00:44:42,440 --> 00:44:45,360 inside the art world. They're trapped inside a weird like key. For for 543 00:44:45,480 --> 00:44:51,159 example, his his paintings are very much on the art market. They're they're 544 00:44:51,159 --> 00:44:55,199 objects of speculation for for our dealers and art collectors, you know. And 545 00:44:55,280 --> 00:45:00,119 so just like all the other artists, he probably manages many pieces he puts 546 00:45:00,119 --> 00:45:04,840 out in the market and calculates his moves in order to make sure to make 547 00:45:04,880 --> 00:45:07,840 the best killing in terms of selling. All of these things are inevitable in 548 00:45:07,920 --> 00:45:14,159 the in the art world. And then collectors will, uh, let's say, 549 00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:17,000 want to see shows by this artists in order to make their collection be 550 00:45:17,119 --> 00:45:22,519 worth more. So there's this strange, this whole strange things in which they 551 00:45:22,559 --> 00:45:27,480 participate. And the same thing with Marina Abramovich. You knows, she's she 552 00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:30,800 she has these this this art foundation, and then she has it funded by 553 00:45:30,840 --> 00:45:37,119 these elites in order to make performance art that exists only within the space of 554 00:45:37,199 --> 00:45:42,519 the artists, of the space of art. Uh and doesn't really land right, 555 00:45:42,599 --> 00:45:45,559 It doesn't. It doesn't turn into folk dances, it doesn't turn in 556 00:45:45,559 --> 00:45:51,599 to the things that people imitate and in some ways she probably doesn't even want 557 00:45:51,599 --> 00:45:58,360 that to happen because she she doesn't totally understand the way that patterns embody themselves 558 00:45:58,440 --> 00:46:00,920 in the world. And so, but what you can see is at least 559 00:46:00,920 --> 00:46:05,599 the desire to kind of break through. And I think that once you see 560 00:46:05,599 --> 00:46:08,360 that, you can understand why. You know there are ways to do it, 561 00:46:08,519 --> 00:46:15,360 You know that there is a possibility of re engaging. And you know, 562 00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:19,239 at least in my vision, it starts with liturgical art, because the 563 00:46:19,239 --> 00:46:23,639 liturgical space the church is still a true space of participation. It is not, 564 00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:30,559 although in some churches in Europe it has become a fetishized museum. Most 565 00:46:30,639 --> 00:46:35,440 churches at least are still and sometimes the ones that are the least beautiful or 566 00:46:35,480 --> 00:46:39,480 that aren't as beautiful as the great cathedrals, for example, are spaces of 567 00:46:39,599 --> 00:46:45,559 true participation. And so the possibility of creating objects within that that world, 568 00:46:45,760 --> 00:46:50,159 you know, can anchor them in terms of their beauty, but then also 569 00:46:50,159 --> 00:46:52,199 in terms of the participation. Now, in order to give you a bit 570 00:46:52,239 --> 00:46:58,679 of hope, it's not like these contemporary art movements were the only movements to 571 00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:04,880 exist in the modern world. There were movements that tried to also integrate the 572 00:47:04,960 --> 00:47:09,239 different forms. So there are art movements that tried to you know, resist 573 00:47:09,280 --> 00:47:15,199 this fetishization that happened in the in the modern world. You know, you 574 00:47:15,239 --> 00:47:21,079 can see that, of course in movements like the arts and craft movements and 575 00:47:21,119 --> 00:47:27,960 also Art nouveau, which tried to link you know, the the architectural, 576 00:47:28,079 --> 00:47:34,920 the object printmaking that tried to kind of integrate that into the into the world. 577 00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:40,079 Now, I think that the arts and craft movement and Art Nouveau succeeded 578 00:47:40,159 --> 00:47:45,519 much more than the modern artists in avoiding the extremes. Now, of course, 579 00:47:46,039 --> 00:47:50,840 one of the issues with with the arts and craft movement and Art Nouveau 580 00:47:51,559 --> 00:47:55,559 is there was nonetheless this kind of how can I say this, There was 581 00:47:55,599 --> 00:48:00,199 a lack of angering a little bit in terms of you know, there was 582 00:48:00,239 --> 00:48:05,360 a fantastical movement, especially in our nouveaux, where we kind of moved for 583 00:48:05,559 --> 00:48:12,679 these fantastical shapes that moved into extreams and were very hard to embody in the 584 00:48:12,719 --> 00:48:15,440 long term, for example, So it's not surprising that our New Vaux was 585 00:48:15,480 --> 00:48:21,880 like a flash that really tried to integrate but then didn't really succeed in the 586 00:48:21,960 --> 00:48:24,400 end. It ended up finding a falling apart. And also because they there 587 00:48:24,480 --> 00:48:29,559 was so much emphasis on ornament you know, you see that with William Morris 588 00:48:29,639 --> 00:48:32,280 and and some of the arts and craft people. There was so much a 589 00:48:32,360 --> 00:48:37,679 beautiful ornamentation. You can see that, you know in the you can see 590 00:48:37,719 --> 00:48:40,360 that in these interiors for example, where there's a use there's a rich use 591 00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:45,360 of fabric of ornamentation, trying to kind of integrate these things into the common 592 00:48:45,519 --> 00:48:50,480 life, beauty into the common world, So not just beauty for beauty's sake, 593 00:48:50,559 --> 00:48:53,199 but but beauty in a chair, beauty in a beauty in a a 594 00:48:54,199 --> 00:49:00,119 curtain, and something that is part of the everyday life. And so so 595 00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:02,039 you know, there's still some of that. People can still kind of hold 596 00:49:02,079 --> 00:49:07,880 on to that a little bit, but there was such a there is such 597 00:49:07,880 --> 00:49:12,280 a kind of access, you could say, in the in the aesthetics in 598 00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:15,800 terms of I mean here it's like gilded peacocks on the wall, you know, 599 00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:22,079 this type of gilded surfaces and extremely you know, designed surfaces are things 600 00:49:22,079 --> 00:49:29,599 that maybe shouldn't be reserved for civic spaces, for for churches. But of 601 00:49:29,599 --> 00:49:32,480 course, because our new vogue is the modern movement, it got focused on 602 00:49:32,599 --> 00:49:36,400 homes, and you know, it's okay for your home to be beautiful, 603 00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:40,079 but if you push it too much and you create these excessively lavish homes that 604 00:49:40,159 --> 00:49:44,199 aren't for a king, for example, that are that are trying to be 605 00:49:44,239 --> 00:49:46,760 a model for the way in which we exist, it's going to be difficult 606 00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:50,519 to kind of hold on to that. But there are some things from these 607 00:49:50,559 --> 00:49:54,840 movements that we can nonetheless capture and a kind of vision in order to think 608 00:49:55,039 --> 00:50:00,079 differently about how art participates in life and to underst stand that, you know, 609 00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:07,320 the possibility of integrating beauty into the every day into the everyday object is 610 00:50:07,360 --> 00:50:12,559 something which is not is not impossible because the the arts and craft movement and 611 00:50:12,599 --> 00:50:16,719 the art removal movement was able to make beautiful lands, beautiful, post beautiful, 612 00:50:17,079 --> 00:50:22,360 you know, different objects of just participation in the world, and so 613 00:50:22,000 --> 00:50:27,519 there is a bit of access and so you can understand why, you know, 614 00:50:27,559 --> 00:50:32,280 the modernists tend to think that because of the industrial the industrial process, 615 00:50:32,360 --> 00:50:37,760 that these types of ornamentation have become impossible, that we should really you know, 616 00:50:37,880 --> 00:50:44,719 move towards you know, a kind of simple symbol, simple geometric forms. 617 00:50:45,079 --> 00:50:47,559 So hopefully this was just a bit of fun for you to kind of 618 00:50:47,760 --> 00:50:53,400 understand and see that the not only does the modern world and modern art really 619 00:50:53,599 --> 00:51:00,000 emphasize these extremes often this pendulum of abstraction, you know, high high attraction, 620 00:51:00,119 --> 00:51:06,199 but then also materialless very reductionist concerns, but that there were desires, 621 00:51:06,239 --> 00:51:12,119 and there's artists that tried to break through, you know, this just passive 622 00:51:12,519 --> 00:51:17,000 weird art object try to re engage participation, but would often do it in 623 00:51:17,039 --> 00:51:22,480 a way that would nonetheless re engage these extremes, extremes of idiosyncrasy, extremes 624 00:51:22,559 --> 00:51:29,719 of sadism and masochism in the terms in the case of Abramovic, you know, 625 00:51:29,840 --> 00:51:34,199 and and create these obscure languages that nobody understood. Although there are some 626 00:51:34,360 --> 00:51:37,960 like and some keeper that I show you who were re engaging images that you 627 00:51:37,960 --> 00:51:43,760 could recognize, right the wing artists, palette, human body, these things 628 00:51:43,800 --> 00:51:49,039 trying to be reintegrated. A little kitschy, maybe a little new agy, 629 00:51:47,800 --> 00:51:52,039 but at least you can perceive the desire, right, this desire to break 630 00:51:52,079 --> 00:51:59,519 through. And ultimately I do think that that liturgical art is the way out 631 00:51:59,559 --> 00:52:02,280 at least for you know, not to become a famous artist. And to 632 00:52:02,440 --> 00:52:07,360 become and to become known and to be shown in magazines or whatever and in 633 00:52:08,119 --> 00:52:15,400 different publications, but in order to really participate in a community, UNI making 634 00:52:15,559 --> 00:52:20,239 meeting making within the community. This seems to be at least the anchor of 635 00:52:20,480 --> 00:52:23,000 a way out. And so thanks everybody for your attention. I hope you 636 00:52:23,199 --> 00:52:28,800 enjoyed it, and I will talk to you very soon. If you enjoy 637 00:52:28,880 --> 00:52:32,159 these videos and podcasts, please go to the Symbolic world dot com website and 638 00:52:32,239 --> 00:52:37,119 see how you can support what we're doing. There are multiple subscriber tiers with 639 00:52:37,239 --> 00:52:39,880 perks. There are apparel in books to purchase. So go to the Symbolic 640 00:52:39,920 --> 00:52:43,239 world dot com and thank you for your support.