Salvator Rosa, Human Fragility, c. 1656, oil on canvas, 199 x 134 cm., Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
“Only the act of resistance resists death, either as a work of art or as a human struggle.”
French philosopher Gilles Deleuze on the “act of creation”, a meditation on the “mysterious connection between the work of art and the act of resistance.”
Saturday, marathon of “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist”.
I’m not starting a discussion on art as commodity or how TV programing on this side of the continent hasn’t been updated since 2010 (the international version of everything must be so behind?)
No, I want to point out something, because after a few chapters of watching it like I watch Project Runway (completely detached), they got into a challenge “A Shock to the System”. They had Andres Serrano as a judge and their mission was to created art that well, shocked. And I stayed curled up in bed observing how these artists had barely something to say. Therefore, they went for two routes:
1) The obvious and superficial incorporation of body fluids. Yeah, putting semen in a drawing really makes a statement.
2) Deep subjects poorly treated: child molestation and …Seriously, so many things wrong with the world and they come up with nothing?
Exception: Abdi and the human time bombs (Youth and discrimination)
And I had to question myself as I questioned them. They want to expose themselves and an idea, the process of creation has to have some sort of background, a context, a world of meaning, an identity. But, some art is not art; it’s a service for a society where only a few hours must be needed to create, only five seconds are needed to distinguish what is likeable or isn’t:
“[…]I get the impression that the idea is to shock. So many people laboring to outdo Duchamp’s urinal. It isn’t even shocking anymore, just kind of sad.”- Dorothea Tanning.
P.S. Deleuze, nicer to listen than to read. Dark concepts and an attention span of 20 seconds don’t mix well.
Jenny Saville- “Hybrid”
