conceptual art of the time.
On Receiving a Postcard without a Message
In deepest Kent, that garden of England, a postcard drops through our door. What is this. A kind of totem pole, a demi crucifix? One looks on the other side for a message. Nothing. But the post mark says 'New York'. One scans who can it be from? Oh right, must be him.
Overall, my first response is one of velleity, on receipt of the postcard I have no desire to act, I suffer the lowest degree of desire or volition in regard to it. I do not know that the intention of the sender was but it leaves a vacuum in me, well actually, it leaves me with an absence of human hope that relatively educated people can pseudo communicate it this way.
You put the postcard aside but later you think what did this person wish to say by this communication that is wilfully not a communication. This totem pole which smacks of what, paganism, cultic thinking?
You wonder what this person thought in sending this card, one even starts getting a little peeved, for if he is advocating this piece of 'art' he must have feelings about it, and these feelings at some cognitive juncture surely must have must morphed into words.
A day later, you look at the card again. You pick it up. What is this piece of abstraction? You would have to have a belief in the chimerical, an unchecked imagination to appreciate it. Did the sender believe that through sending us this postcard without a message, that art would somehow divest itself to us, of its subjectivity and become an illusion less thing. Eh, I don't think so. After all what is inferred in this type of communication is that prior to receiving this postcard, you, the recipient's view of art was only a myopic view and now, here is your chance to see the real thing. There is a condescending message in this kind of communication which is: 'I see, I get it,' and I will put you on the rack to see if you 'get it' too.
But the sender is clearly unable to express his thoughts on the content of the postcard, and I don't even begin to understand its function, so as it stands the postcard is functionless and there it sits on the mantle piece again, spuriously imitating function, In the current detested idiom sender and recipient are not 'going forward'.
A couple of days later, in a moment of self-abdication, you just happen to look at the postcard again. How irritating it is. You think, are we as the communicated to subjects supposed, or impelled to lend coherence to this 'art object' and thereby give it the seal of authenticity. Or do we leave the postcard lying there on the shelf and let this wilfully obscurist communication just be consumed in death throes of dust in the inevitable entropy that will disintegrate all 'objects'. Yes, that is a just fate for this piece of non-communication that it should gradually disintegrate into the ever same.
But a couple of days later, I look again as I pass it by. Why is this bloody postcard so irritating. It just stands there loudhailering its non-identity. Is it a Munchhausen type winning lie that will get my intention to reduce it to identity?
We know this person has a predilection to fluff out his aesthetic feathers and one wonders what he would say if required to do so on this postcard. Would he lapse into the vagaries on all art that is not self-evident, "...well...it is just something that is made for its own sake." But it is in this capricious claim, this illusion that the very life blood of incoherent art flows. Besides, this nondescript summation of abstraction can become a voracious vortex to buy it wholesale is to spin off into the terra incognito, as ratchets come off the mind's rollercoaster and you are flying off into ontological vertigo.
Yet the postcard is irresistibly incoherent. And am I being philistine? Perhaps it is symbolic of a kind of weltshmerz, a world pain; an expression of world weariness. Hold on, here am I reifying it. Who was it? yes, Baudelaire who railed against reification. Stop trying to disambiguate the damn thing. Yet the non-communication has so irked me I am being syncopated into looking at it in an objective way. It is after all a commodity that will be endowed with aura at an art gallery, 'look but don't touch'. It is a commodity and if I give this postcard unearned respect then I am a commodity character.
But maybe - must not be lowbrow, maybe this totem pole is Beckettian in the sense of being a non-judging, judgement. Its appeal being its indeterminateness. After all, the process of disillusionment that characterise Beckett's work is what constitutes its irresistibility. Or, it is emblematic of a Rimbaud type frisson nouveau, as if we, the recipients of the postcard should shudder on seeing it. After all, for prior to receiving it, were we not cryptically shut about 'art'?
Yet to be trite, when one points a finger there is always four pointing back and I have quite often gone to a gallery, looked at some piece of obscurantist art on a postcard and having no idea what it really means sent it off, with one aim, to impress, to fluff up my aesthetic feathers. I too have sailed on that ketch, and in the plight of how to assert myself have sent a postcard without a message. But that was before I read up on people like Theodore Adorno whose thoughts pepper this article.
But damn it now that I am a recipient of this type of communication, it does irk. What is implicit in these kind of non-communication postcards is the sub-text, the unstated claim that the sender is categorically higher and more artistically elevated than you. And it is taken for granted that we, the recipient's of the post card are no more than the tabula rasa of subjective projections.
But in the end you come to a conclusion that the sender has been duped by the culture industry that commodifies all. Besides it is a lazy, egotistical and essentially bourgeois act to send a postcard to someone without a message. I know because I have done it.
So when you next see an incoherent piece of art on a postcard and feel like sending it off, pour l'amour de dieu, (for the love of God) leave a message on the other side.
C.
On Receiving a Postcard without a Message
In deepest Kent, that garden of England, a postcard drops through our door. What is this. A kind of totem pole, a demi crucifix? One looks on the other side for a message. Nothing. But the post mark says 'New York'. One scans who can it be from? Oh right, must be him.
Overall, my first response is one of velleity, on receipt of the postcard I have no desire to act, I suffer the lowest degree of desire or volition in regard to it. I do not know that the intention of the sender was but it leaves a vacuum in me, well actually, it leaves me with an absence of human hope that relatively educated people can pseudo communicate it this way.
You put the postcard aside but later you think what did this person wish to say by this communication that is wilfully not a communication. This totem pole which smacks of what, paganism, cultic thinking?
You wonder what this person thought in sending this card, one even starts getting a little peeved, for if he is advocating this piece of 'art' he must have feelings about it, and these feelings at some cognitive juncture surely must have must morphed into words.
A day later, you look at the card again. You pick it up. What is this piece of abstraction? You would have to have a belief in the chimerical, an unchecked imagination to appreciate it. Did the sender believe that through sending us this postcard without a message, that art would somehow divest itself to us, of its subjectivity and become an illusion less thing. Eh, I don't think so. After all what is inferred in this type of communication is that prior to receiving this postcard, you, the recipient's view of art was only a myopic view and now, here is your chance to see the real thing. There is a condescending message in this kind of communication which is: 'I see, I get it,' and I will put you on the rack to see if you 'get it' too.
But the sender is clearly unable to express his thoughts on the content of the postcard, and I don't even begin to understand its function, so as it stands the postcard is functionless and there it sits on the mantle piece again, spuriously imitating function, In the current detested idiom sender and recipient are not 'going forward'.
A couple of days later, in a moment of self-abdication, you just happen to look at the postcard again. How irritating it is. You think, are we as the communicated to subjects supposed, or impelled to lend coherence to this 'art object' and thereby give it the seal of authenticity. Or do we leave the postcard lying there on the shelf and let this wilfully obscurist communication just be consumed in death throes of dust in the inevitable entropy that will disintegrate all 'objects'. Yes, that is a just fate for this piece of non-communication that it should gradually disintegrate into the ever same.
But a couple of days later, I look again as I pass it by. Why is this bloody postcard so irritating. It just stands there loudhailering its non-identity. Is it a Munchhausen type winning lie that will get my intention to reduce it to identity?
We know this person has a predilection to fluff out his aesthetic feathers and one wonders what he would say if required to do so on this postcard. Would he lapse into the vagaries on all art that is not self-evident, "...well...it is just something that is made for its own sake." But it is in this capricious claim, this illusion that the very life blood of incoherent art flows. Besides, this nondescript summation of abstraction can become a voracious vortex to buy it wholesale is to spin off into the terra incognito, as ratchets come off the mind's rollercoaster and you are flying off into ontological vertigo.
Yet the postcard is irresistibly incoherent. And am I being philistine? Perhaps it is symbolic of a kind of weltshmerz, a world pain; an expression of world weariness. Hold on, here am I reifying it. Who was it? yes, Baudelaire who railed against reification. Stop trying to disambiguate the damn thing. Yet the non-communication has so irked me I am being syncopated into looking at it in an objective way. It is after all a commodity that will be endowed with aura at an art gallery, 'look but don't touch'. It is a commodity and if I give this postcard unearned respect then I am a commodity character.
But maybe - must not be lowbrow, maybe this totem pole is Beckettian in the sense of being a non-judging, judgement. Its appeal being its indeterminateness. After all, the process of disillusionment that characterise Beckett's work is what constitutes its irresistibility. Or, it is emblematic of a Rimbaud type frisson nouveau, as if we, the recipients of the postcard should shudder on seeing it. After all, for prior to receiving it, were we not cryptically shut about 'art'?
Yet to be trite, when one points a finger there is always four pointing back and I have quite often gone to a gallery, looked at some piece of obscurantist art on a postcard and having no idea what it really means sent it off, with one aim, to impress, to fluff up my aesthetic feathers. I too have sailed on that ketch, and in the plight of how to assert myself have sent a postcard without a message. But that was before I read up on people like Theodore Adorno whose thoughts pepper this article.
But damn it now that I am a recipient of this type of communication, it does irk. What is implicit in these kind of non-communication postcards is the sub-text, the unstated claim that the sender is categorically higher and more artistically elevated than you. And it is taken for granted that we, the recipient's of the post card are no more than the tabula rasa of subjective projections.
But in the end you come to a conclusion that the sender has been duped by the culture industry that commodifies all. Besides it is a lazy, egotistical and essentially bourgeois act to send a postcard to someone without a message. I know because I have done it.
So when you next see an incoherent piece of art on a postcard and feel like sending it off, pour l'amour de dieu, (for the love of God) leave a message on the other side.
C.
No comments:
Post a Comment