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ANDREA
PAGNEZ
Anatomy
of an Artistic Spirit - Angel Orensanz |
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The Fall of Faust is
the fall of the artist, the fall of the man who wants to create
something or who has the presumption to create something. The artist’s
fall happens, if he is objective and honest, because he understands that
the creation of ‘something’ will inevitably lead to the following axiom:
ART Faust, the artist, faces his own creation and finds it is not as
perfect as his pure idea - the idea that he wanted to translate in a
tangible way, and he is not satisfied. He asks himself:
“What is art? What does it mean?”
ART = VULGARITY He finds that what he has created is ‘vulgar’ – that to
create is an act of presumption and he concludes that his creation,
whether beautiful or not, has only been produced to declare himself to
the world.
THE ARTIST’S REALIZATION He experiences revulsion of knowledge because
of the pretension of knowing.
TRAGIC NATURE Because knowledge is so vast and far-reaching he realizes
that, as a human being, he will never be capable of embracing knowledge
in its absolute complexity. He has to accept that his nature is limited
and therefore tragic and that he does not have the means to understand
what knowledge is. He can only comprehend that ultimately he, as subject
of knowledge, is the object of knowledge itself and the reason why
knowledge exists. He defers to the infinity of knowledge, accepting that
he has access to only a small part of it and that the subject of
knowledge is the object of knowledge itself.
‘Tragic nature’ is consciousness. Faust, the artist, becomes ‘conscious’
of the only way of procuring some knowledge. He understands the
limitations, his limit as a human being - a being that has the
presumption of knowing and creating. He can only ‘know’ that his life is
limited and that he has to accept it as such. His position is tragic.
His only real knowledge is his consciousness of that tragedy.
KNOWLEDGE The tragedy of the knowledge of tragedy.
THE DIVERSITY OF THE ARTIST’S POSITION The presumption to create ‘ex
nihilo nihil’ (nothing is created from nothing) is an act of will, of
non-conformity - but ‘ex nihilo nihil’ is impossible; it does not
exist.In the end, if art is just an act of will (and undoubtedly it is
an act of will) Faust’s (the artist’s) final question to himself is the
following: “Art qua Voluntary
Act? Hence Vulgarity.” Every volunteer act is vulgar. Nobody can escape
this statement. We can just pretend to be blind to it. Faust’s
consequential answer to his final question brings him to the initial
identity:
ART = VULGARITY
I. Art and science are free, and their
teachings are free.
II.
Man must not impose either limits or boundaries on art and science; they
must be allowed free rein. If limits are imposed, art and science become
filiations of man’s ego, an ego predisposed by internalunease and social
disquietude and, as such, they become ‘reflection’ and ‘subject’ and
therefore inferior.
III.
To impose is to oppose.
IV.
Art and science are entities of a higher expression and maintain a
propulsive force such that they can never be subjected to the dominion
of man. Anyone who imposes limits and boundaries on art and
science are doing nothing more than imposing limits and boundaries on
him/herself.
V.
The limits and boundaries of art and science (as
‘entity-subject’) must be searched for in their autonomous freedom and
existence.
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VI.
It is necessary for man to place himself dialogically before art and
science, respecting the dignity and the essential existence of these
entities.
VII.
Aberration is borne out of the effects and accidents of the
species (nature) including mankind. Aberrations are none the less
necessary.
VIII.
Art and science intrinsically harbour a force of rebellion
when man commands them without ‘knowing’ them. This becomes a
destructive force when man covets and abuses them.
IX.
Consensus is only a quantitative appreciation - the
adherence of many to one.
X.
It is possible for one to consent to an effect or thing without
necessarily feeling that it is a part of oneself - to consent only
because that effect or thing is marvellous. This kind of appreciation
happens as aresponse to taste or pleasure but what one is actually
recognising is the nuance of something that promotes a need for
satisfaction, something that fills the desire of the instant.
XI.
Whatever the question, if it is heard from outside our ‘being’ it should
not to be judged at all, because it has not been understood.
Knowledge, ego, being.
Substance.
Search.
Reality.
Non-ego.
XII.
Knowledge (whether of the many or the few makes no difference) is
an incommensurable force, often non-existent.
The ‘author-demiurge’ is a tragic entity in that he does not create, but
rather realizes himself only temporarily, or put another way, he
produces ‘time’ - a time that is represented, vis-à-vis the work, as
a‘phase-of-knowledge’. He tends to attain knowledge or at least to
possess a part of it. In truth, this coincides with the limitations of
the author, his individual deficiencies and the paucity of his intents.
He only ‘follows’ the idea of knowledge, an absurd idea that is
absolutely extraneous to knowledge in and of itself.
In art, producing time is a negation of the concept of time itself.
The executing procedure of the ‘author-demiurge’ is an attempt to
realize and steer the idea (that he possesses) ‘from’ – ‘to’, but this
movement in fact debases the nature or the ideal of the idea. Idea is an
entity that makes sense only in that it ‘is’. It does not ‘represent’.
Realization of the idea is therefore inferior. The ‘author-demiurge’
commands, with the ability that he is convinced he possesses, and leads
the idea to an equally lofty or intense (expressive!) level. Whatever
the final result, the level is always lower because the result is always
the end result of imitation.
The ‘author-demiurge’ must be absolutely aware of this, otherwise he
would not only be an imitator but a deplorable liar. He ascertains, in
this failure, tragedy itself - the tragic end of an idea and the tragic
end of the author of the transformation (from idea to realization) who
thereby becomes an ape. By imitating the idea, the author even debases
the ape, he kills the idea in order to give life to an image, but the
image is a mirror, a mere aberration of the idea.
The ape is the ‘mirror-aberration’ of the author. It is the author
himself who is incapable of attaining any other knowledge, or rather the
knowledge of himself or his tragic simian performance. |
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What allows us to
differentiate the ‘vulgar’ from ‘art’? What do we mean by vulgar? Is
nature vulgar? Never. What about Man? Man is often, perhaps always,
vulgar. Art is therefore the highest level of vulgarity, ergo what
is vulgar is art. It is the same thing. However, this is evidently
contradictory, as art is different from vulgarity, or at least we
think there is a difference between the two. If nature expresses
itself through us, via art, what detaches and distances man from
nature is technique. Thus, technique is undoubtedly vulgar.
Art and philosophy are identified with freedom of thought, thought
that is free to err through necessity. Art does not evolve!
Technology evolves. Those who speak of the evolution of art and
proclaim its death are vulgar. It is purity, ingenuity, and honesty
that save us from vulgarity. However, it is difficult to ‘find’
ourselves in times that smell of death, corruption, and rot.
But reality does not have a stench; it is corpses that smell and the
cities are full of them. In the hands of these corpses everything is
vulgar, even nature itself. I suffer immensely from having to see
nature made vulgar, and even more so from having to admit that this
is possible. “Bodies, indeed, must be disposed of more than
excrement itself.” Heraclitus
By exasperating the Greek concept of art, modernity has rendered the
concept of creation an absurdity. Creation is an absurdity as ‘ex
nihilo nihil’, meaning nothing is created from nothing.
The modern artist, like the ‘author-demiurge’, is a presumptuous
madman as he is devoid of the sense of necessity. He is an ungainly
ape - a tragic ape. The tragedy is underpinned by fixed,
insurmountable canons: the subject of deciding is the subject that
must be decided. This is the revelation of its comic nature. The
‘author-demiurge’ becomes a mad, pathetic clown, aping himself; a
tragic ape persuaded of the fact that the being is nothing. Faced
with necessity he seems to be limited in his movement, stupidly
haughty about something that does not belong to him. Because he has
been persuaded of the fact that he creates his own works he is
firmly convinced he is the author of these works.
ON THE CHARACTER OF ART
Art (and hence literature) has no gender; it is neutered and
ambiguous. More than a ‘being’ it is a ‘being-able-to-be’. Eugenio
Montale was one of the first to say as much. It is a perennial
question that never gives an answer. It always asks questions,
putting in doubt the sensitivity of those who would question it. It
is ungraspable, unspeakable, a suspension, an altering of the
logical rules proper to the kingdom of paradoxes - a contradiction
that cannot do without itself. It lives through imitation,
simulation, and fiction. The only form of sincerity that can be
gleaned is that it does not deny the drama of existence, the tragedy
of human life, precisely when it is called on to give an answer to
these questions. But even if it managed to propose solutions, these
would be impossible to realize in reality, because art is always a
fleeing from real time, a temporal negation that, in order to affirm
itself, annihilates the concept of art itself.
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Andrea Pagnes
Andrea Pagnes is an
artist, writer, curator and senior editor for the international art
and culture magazine World of Art. He lives in Venice.
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