The Women of Gil Elvgren

Beauty, as it is out there in the world, and our sense for beauty, that is within us, serve to arouse sexual attraction, i.e. to foster the reproduction process. Therefore beauty is linked to the probably only inherent determination of any species, that is to ensure its own reproduction. Therein, beauty is fundamental and primordial enough to receive the praise it usually receives. Of course, beauty is also distinctly transcendent to this. Humans at least may find things of all kinds beautiful. Humans have a sublimated sense for beauty, and there are humans that have a more sublimated, or seemingly innate sense for beauty than other humans. When philosopher Immanuel Kant says, beauty is what provokes “interesseloses Wohlgefallen” in us, i.e. pure pleasure without any longing for attachment to the respective source, we may consider it correct, at least after thinking the argument through. We may consider this a “deep” and truly sublimated notion on the character of beauty. On the other hand, we may see this notion as an expression of Kant´s alleged frigidity and deem It ridiculous to strip off beauty of its primary functionality: to make us feel (sexually) attracted to something. Yet to beauty we might both, or either-or, feel attracted or relate to it with a distanced awe. Mathematicians sense beauty in equations (and consider it as an indication for their truth), physicists muse about the “elegant” universe. We may consider nature beautiful, or art, or specific forms, but that may be because “nature”, i.e. flowers or animals are beautiful to attract mating partners, and due to our sublimated sense for beauty, also we may be aware of their beauty, without feeling sexually attracted to them. Children, with their big eyes, big heads, small noses, etc. look in a way so as that we feel emotionally attracted to them. We also feel attracted to the sublime, though the sublime is not necessarily beautiful. We may be fascinated by what is ugly or fearsome. Beauty is a bit paradoxical, or two-faced, as it is both “objective”, but seems to require also a subjective note. Beauty is objective as it is the most average looking face, a face that combines the most average characteristics, that we consider the most beautiful. That is the objective beauty standard. Yet the beauty that we personally feel most attracted to, the beauty that we love, will be a beauty with undistinguishable subjective characteristics. The beauty that we love will not be a clinical beauty. It will be highly subjective, a pulsating subjectivity, vital, vivid, blossoming, overflowing. It will seem like being born anew every time we look at it, it will be poetic. The highest form of beauty is not merely the beauty we feel attracted to. It is the beauty that we love. What we love will deem us beautiful (even if it objectively isn´t). In the highest sense, beauty is linked to a pulsating subjectivity. Love is the encounter of two subjectivities. And beauty, in the highest sense, is the encounter with a subjectivity that deems us of objective importance.

When I try to think on the last things, the transcendental things, or visualise them before my inner eye, there will be a vibrant fluctuaction of images, and semi-images. That is how the metaphysical abyss looks like, when you gaze into it. Yet likely my final image of what is beauty will freeze and solidify into a woman presented by Gil Elvgren. Gil Elvgren (1914 – 1980) was the genius of pin-up illustration. Pin-ups may be seen as something to please the so-called “male gaze”, by presenting “objectified” images of women, i.e. women turned into sex objects, to gratify an aggressive male sexuality, presumably entangled with a masculine will to power. But the dominant feature of the women of Gil Elvgren is their overflowing subjectivity. With their vibrant friendliness they will kill any aggressor with kindness. They are what a human being should be: they are happy and they are self-contained in their happiness. Their subjectivity is liberated. It´s a light world they inhabitate, and with their light that shines out of them they melt anything that seems complicated or uncomfortable like ice in the sun. The world seems like a garden where the women of Gil Elvgren bloom and blossom. Their vibrant, blooming subjectivities even overpower the underlying voluptuous character of this specific world. Gil Elvgren´s pin-ups are by no means vulgar, the eroticism is tacit, the risque element is usually presented in a humorous way. Gil Elvgren´s women have personality and verve. The verve lies in their body language, their personality lies in their sophisticated facial expressions. Feminists like to muse that many men are too fearful to actually look into the face of a woman. But when he is asked about the most important characteristic a model should have for him, Gil Elvgren mentions the face, respectively a face that is highly expressive. “A gal with highly mobile facial features capable of a wide range of expressions is the real jewel. The face is the personality.”

I have some real reasons to think that beauty is feminine. However attractive they may get, men are too clumsy and unsophisticated to really be beautiful. Men want to conquer territory and occupy space. They want to thrown things around and they make a mess. The technological manipulations and the theoretical and practical artefacts that stem out from this behaviour may be interesting and intellectually pleasing (Schöner ist das Frauenzimmer, interessanter ist der Mann, rhymes Nietzsche), but beautiful they are rather not. Men lack sweetness and grace. Their curves are miserable and dismal. Above all, men do not radiate innocence. It is the innocence that makes the women of Gil Elvgren so attractive. I know women with a sense for beauty. Even they overly post images of women way more than they do of men. Taking all this into account, I finally experience that I react to the women of Gil Elvgren actually with “interesselosem Wohlgefallen”. A state of pure pleasure and bliss that becomes self-contained. What has its roots in provoking sexual attraction equally elevates and transforms into a lofty state of attachment-free delight. Eminent logician Kurt Gödel used to enjoy Walt Disney movies, especially Snow White, because, to him, it presented a world in the way the world should be. Likewise to me, my garden of delight seem to be the pin-ups by Gil Elvgren. A world populated by the women of Gil Elvgren is the way a world should clearly be.

In the Anatomy of Human Destructiveness Erich Fromm distinguishes between the Biophilic and the Necrophilic principle, similar to Eros and Thanatos in the Freudian understanding. The Biophilic is life-affirming, positive, attracted to anything that symbolisises life and its growth process, anything that is blossoming, flourishing, self-sustaining, seemingly innocent. The Necrophilic tries to abstain from all these qualities, or openly opposes them. It is abstract, distanced, overly calculating and the like in its more general features, it is attracted to decay, death, aggression and perversion further down its own spiral. The Biophilic is anti-neurotic, the Necrophilic stems out of emotional blockades, or negative emotions. Most humans share biophilic and necrophilic tendencies. Only few humans are more or less thoroughly or completely necrophilic; in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness Fromm discusses Hitler as a respective example at great length. Yet there are also a few humans that are thoroughly or completely biophilic, as we may assume. As long as there is Being, the Biophilic will be the stronger principle than the Necrophilic, since as long there is Being, it will triumph over Nothingness. The pin-ups of Gil Elvgren are an emanation of the purely Biophilic, I would say. Gil Elvgren preferred to work with younger models at the beginning of their career. According to him, they may still carry the freshness and spontaneity that older and more experienced models lack. He valued models that were interested and enthusiastic, but said that they were “very hard to find”. The purely Biophilic and pure beauty are, indeed, hard to find, in the human swamp, in the swamp of existence. But, once they surface, they outshine the swamp. They give us the idea that we all are beautiful, biophilic, and authentic. And somewhere deeper down at least, we are. That´s why these emanations are so vital, and that is why the women of Gil Elvgren have a special place in my heart, and mind.

Whether beauty is “ontologically hard”, i.e. “out there” in the world, or just a subjective phantasma, however objective its criteria may be, is probably undecidable. That would render such speculations, in the final consequence, as mere metaphysics. That would all but close the circle, in which beauty appears as something “metaphysical” in the first place. The metaphysical is an eternal knot, or an eternal twisted loop, which relates our enigmatic subjectivity to an enigmatic objectivity, and tries to sort out the meaning of both by reflecting one in the other. The metaphysical seems to give our subjectivity objective importance and gravity, and the objective enigmatically mimicking or reflecting our subjectivity. And so does beauty.

Toni Schmale/Gedanken zur Skulptur

Die Skulpturen von Toni Schmale, die derzeit gemeinsam mit denen von Bruno Gironcoli in der Albertina Modern ausgestellt sind, finde ich ganz gut. 

Dabei habe ich es noch immer nicht geschafft, etwas über die Skulptur (oder die Fotographie) an sich zu schreiben. 

Skulpturen haben ein nicht so großes metaphysisches Potenzial wie die Malerei und gelten ihr gegenüber als untergeordnete Kunstform. Tatsächlich ist man in der Malerei als Künstler über die leere Leinwand mit dem metaphysischen Abgrund der eigenen Imagination konfrontiert – ahnungsvolle, unauslotbare Tiefe. Bei der Skulptur stellt man hingegen halt was hin. Das muss auch gekonnt werden. Bei der Skulptur fehlt aber die Möglichkeit, dass man über die bloß vorhandenen noch scheinbar zusätzliche Dimensionen aufzeigt, in denen ein tieferer Sinn auferscheint. In der Skulptur hat man die Möglichkeit (so) nicht, eine Welt darzustellen, durch die noch eine andere Welt hindurchscheint.  Das ist das Charisma der großen Malerei, und der großen Kunst. 

Skulpturen schaffen aber die Möglichkeit, der Materie zu begegnen. Die Materie ist etwas physikalisches, nichts metaphysikalisches, was Plumperes. Aber die Materie erscheint in der Rätselhaftigkeit des Raumes. Skulpturen schaffen Möglichkeiten, der Materie in ihren unerwarteten Möglichkeiten zu begegnen. 

Es ist eine stille Versammlung, in die man mit der Skulptur tritt. Diese stille Versammlung erzeugt dann eine rätselhafte, metaphysische Stimmung. Man begegnet einer Welt, die zwar nicht metaphysisch dämmernd und hyperdimensional ist wie in der Malerei, sondern man trifft auf etwas sehr Konkretes.

In ihrer Konkretheit und in ihrer Direktheit ist die Skulptur eine schweigende Manifestation. Eine schweigende Manifestation hat im glücklichen Fall etwas von einer Epiphanie. Also, wenn man so will, der Erscheinung von etwas Höherdimensionalen in unserer niedrigeren Alltagsdimensionalität. Das ist dann der metaphysische Hauch der Skulptur. 

Die Skulpturen von Toni Schmale hauchen mich sogar metaphysischer an als die von Gironcoli. 

The Feminist Avant-garde

For reasons ultimately unknown, women artists have been second-rate artists, at best, in the history of art so far. In the 20th century, I think Georgia O´Keeffe was on the threshold of being a first-rate artist, but I also think that actually considering her a first-rate artist would go too far. However, you do not always need to be a first-rate phenomenon to make a first-rate impact. (Most of) the Dadaists, the Vienna Actionists or the Fluxus artists have not been first-rate artists, but they have been at the right place at the right time and had the right ideas (in the manner of a low-hanging fruit they were able to pick or so). And so, they deeply ingrained themselves in the history of art; they made sense in the universe. Feminism also makes sense in the universe. Following the social upheavals of the 1960s and the transition to a new type of democratic mass society with a more emancipated and vocal type of citizen, feminism gained considerable momentum in the 1970s. Feminism also found its expression in art at that time. Feminism is not identical to itself though. Generally, feminism fights for women´s rights and the elevation of the status of women. However, there are different strains in trying to define (or to sort out) what it actually is (or means) to be a (wo)man. On the one hand, there is a “biologist” or “essentialist” feminism that claims there is a true identity of the woman, neglected and disfigured by patriarchy however, trying to find out what this true identity is like and realign women with it. On the other hand, there is a “gender deconstructivist” feminism that sees feminity as a mere social construct without a true substance. (These are highly pointed extremes, with the golden path, alongside which you assumingly walk in highest accordance with reality, likely being somewhere in between those extremes.)

Feminist´s and feminist artist´s concern initially was mostly to make their own female voices heard. Carolee Schneemann hit hard with her performances already in the 1960s (she has been a pioneer within performance art and body art in general). Marina Abramovic or Gina Pane came up with transgressive, often dangerous, brutal or tormenting (performance) art as well, implicitely or explicitely expressing female vulnerability as well as triumph over female victimization by patriarchy. Lydia Benglis made parodies of “masculinely reductive” minimal artists like Donald Judd or Carl Andre. Cindy Sherman visualised gender stereotypes, most famously via her Untitled Film Stills. Ana Mendieta tried to investigate the human (and female) connection to the earth or to mythologies (therefore having a much broader agenda than just a feminist one). Francesca Woodman´s photographies are about appearing and disappearing as a woman under the “male gaze”. Ulrike Rosenbach expressed the dullness women have been subjected via their roles as housewifes and the like. Rebecca Horn tried to express how uncomfortable it is for women to navigate through a male-centered society. Valie Export gave Vienna Actionism a feminist turn. In her performances Orlan tried to expose the violence done to women. Though Louise Bourgeois came to success only late in life (and thanks to the feminist movement) and she has not been a distinctly feminist artist, her transgressive art has continued to serve as an inspiration for feminism and feminist art.

Alongside with essentialist feminism there has been the question about whether there was a true “female”/feminine art, of distinct qualities; respectively if there were true, essentially female qualities in women, that have been effectively silenced or distorted by patriarchy. This specific branch of feminism however has always been entangled with difficulties that, in a boomerang-like manner, created backlashes against itself. For instance, differences and binary opposites between “the male” and “the female” have been tried to be identified (and, either, mourned or be affirmed) about which one does not know how much they are grounded in reality or deliberately “constructed” (a term that feminism usually applies for anything “patriarchy” does); like “male” being rational, aggressive, bold, clear-cut though a bit simple-minded, etc.; and “female” being emotional/irrational, soft, diverse, attentive to facets, etc. Reality, by contrast, seems considerably more nuanced and, more often than not, at odds with such categorisations. In the arts for instance, “soft sculpture” had been pioneered by Claes Oldenburg; the grids of Agnes Martin could be seen as masculine; Sol LeWitt´s reductive art, by contrast, has explicitly been hailed by feminist art critics for bringing “variety and disorder”. Moreover, if essentialist feminism seeks to unearth a “genuine” voice of women, how could it be identified what such a genuine voice of women actually will be? Consequentially, there is a tendency in feminism to see numerous voices and expressions by or on behalf of women as “still alienated” (even though there may be truth in that). Following Simone de Beauvoir, feminists have tried to capture the feminine as “the other”. In a more depressed fashion they will imagine this otherness as something still vacant and deprived of positive qualities; in a more narcissistic and grandiose fashion (which might eventually be labelled as “femifascism” or “feminazism”) they may hope to discover some hidden superiority of the feminine that will eventually overpower the masculine. The problem is that “the other” never finally allows closure; although you can experiment with it and get to know it somehow better, the “other” will eventually remain alien and opaque, maybe even just ghost-like. The “other” is bound to remain an enigma. The problem is that feminism, in its desire to free women from “male domination” and “alienation” AND in seeing “male domination” and “alienation” practically anywhere effectively at work, eventually might decouple women from any meaningful social relationships and run into solipsism, i.e. a permanently unstable (and undesirable) condition.

“Gender deconstructivist” feminism, on the other hand, carries the potential of being devoid of any positive, affirmative ideas concerning what a sexual or gendered identity could be, since an essential, biological sex is ontogically absent in its paradigm (in the extreme case; in the usual case the existence of a biological sex is not denied, only deemed irrelevant). Several feminists starkly oppose the “gender deconstructivist” branch of feminism, because they think it will make feminism actually obsolete (as it is deemed to make the female sex obsolete). In the case of Cindy Sherman, there actually is an exploration of gender stereotypes, but not of any positive role models for women. The (vulgarised) poststructural intellectual approach that everything that appears in social reality is just “constructed” and the tendency among feminists to consider everything they do not like as “patriarchal constructs” empties reality out of its density, its meaning and its substance. It is a fetishised view upon reality and upon human interactions. In the case of feminism, much of what is considered (and condemned) as “patriarchy” by feminists to a more moderate viewer might rather appear as stuff that naturally happens in reality, and among humans. Much of the art of the feminist avant-garde for instance revolved around the subjugation of the woman under the “male gaze”, or the reduction of the woman to a “muse” and “inspiration” (and not as a creator in her own right), or to the imposition of “patriarchal beauty standards” upon women. However, one simply cannot help seeing a robust narcissistic exhibitionism at work in the art of Hannah Wilke, Francesca Woodman or Valie Export, in which they permanently present their (beautiful) female bodies, i.e. there sems to be quite a collusion at play between a “male” gaze and a “female” desire to be seen (in the case of Hannah Wilke at least, her permanent, somehow flirtatious presentation of her beautiful naked female body in her feminist art has met staunch criticism from feminist art critics like Lucy Lippard – Valie Export´s art has been considered “pornographic” at least by more conservative viewers at that time). And in the end, it is irritating how the artists of the feminist avant-garde time and again make themselves the center of their art, in their nude or other portraits. The feminist avantgarde wanted to attack the self-saturated egomania of the male artist, however male artists are not known to have done anything similar.

The so-called feminist avant-garde has been something (or has accompanied something) that is socially very relevant. Therein might lie the gravity of the feminist avant-garde. Its currency is social relevance, and relevance for the individual emancipation of (wo)men. It seems a thing that needed to be done, it relates to things that needed to be sorted out, so as to be able to ascend to the next level. Unfortunately, intellectually and artistically the “male” (-dominated) avant-garde half a century before deems much more substantial than the feminist avant-garde. One is sorry to say that the feminist avant-garde (which does NOT mean: art done by female artists in general) seems to lack brilliant ideas as well as executions. It is not particularly brainy. Maybe a “feminist avant-garde” is even a bit of an oxymoron. In order to be (intellectually) avant-garde, you need to think at a very high level of abstraction and you need to transcend society in many ways. That is what happened within modern art, and among the eminent modern artists. Feminism does not operate at such a level of abstraction and it does not desire to transcend the social realm – its battles are within the social realm. Likely, the kind of visceral, bold kind of art of the feminist avant-garde was appropriate to its cause. It is difficult to think how the feminist rage could have been expressed in aesthetically pleasing paintings or so. Some Dadaism likely had to be applied. Nevertheless I am somehow disappointed by the feminist avant-garde. I would have expected more from it. Contemporarily there is of course a tendency to praise anything feminist or anything done by a woman in highest terms. Therefore some also praise the feminist avant-garde as kind of the most important movement in art ever since, with “immense” and “profound” impact on the arts in general ever since. Well, but I don´t know. First of all, the feminist avant-garde has not been a true avant-garde, and it has not truly been revolutionary (and after all, it is a term labelled in retrospect – to make propaganda for an exhibition about the feminist art of the 1970s). Feminism and feminist art, and the impact it has made on society since the 1970s, rather deem evolutionary within our kind of society; the broadening understandings concerning “gender and diversity” a natural process within open societies and within modernity – as modernity means a broadening of understandings, and of understandings and concepts becoming more complex and differentiated. Such societies also become more “democratic”, and allergic to any “elitism”. This does not necessarily produce awesome results. For instance, look at the arts. For reasons ultimately unknown, women artists have been second-rate artists, at best, in the history of art so far (there have been first-rate female writers/poets nevertheless). Yet today, among the internationally renowned artists there are considerably more women than in the past. Unfortunately, this is a mixed success at best, because there practically are no more first-rate artists around, be they male, female or diverse. Women are now more present in art, but art has ceased to be a first-rate phenomenon. Maybe the impact of the feminist avant-garde (and its desire to dismantle the “male” artistic genius) on the arts was that it helped to lower the standards and to allow things that are not very inspired to enter the domain of art.

I would not like to miss the feminist avant-garde, however. I do not like all too male dominated gatherings of humans. Likely, they are, in such an exclusiveness, actually dysfunctional, as the feminists claim. As everyone knows, I champion intellectualism, universalism, and the avant-garde. I desire to understand the world in the most universal way possible, and I suspect particuliarian and partisan ideologies to be an expression of (finally anti-intellectual and unethical) egocentricities, however justified they may appear or be in their original intent. Because of my unusual personality and my anti-egocentric attitude I can stretch out into the universal quite successfully. However I have come to notice that universality is impossible. It is a common feature – among universalists and partisan people alike – to think stuff out there and humans out there are more or less like themselves. I have become more sensible recently – to the fact that they are not. Therefore I welcome the surfacing of particularian ideologies, because they give me a better understanding of the world and a sense of how stuff in this world and people in this world are truly different from each other. This is, finally, something sad. But it is the way it is, or how it seems to be. The feminist avant-garde has been the expression of a particuliarian sentiment and ideology. With a universal appeal, of course, with the desire to broaden the understanding of the universal. This is so because women, i.e. half of the world´s population, are universal. Feminism, by contrast, still has not come to be a universal narrative that is applied by the majority of women. To a considerable degree, it is even rejected by many women (and, granted, there is some mystery to that). Some of the fallacies of feminism have been mentioned in this text, and one might think of others as well.

Roberto Matta and Surrealism

Roberto Matta was not a preeminent figure in the arts, but he was an important exponent of American Surrealism and a champion for the definition and the self-understanding of a genuine (US-) American type of art. Roberto Matta brings shattered shapes, biomorphic or, more often than that, tool-like or machine-like forms to canvas. Functional, either by themselves or in their arrangements, they do seem not. An interesting importunity and intrusiveness of forms, of materiality, coming packed and in a crowd, you seem to have, prefigurative, preverbal. Hallucinations that may stem out from the depths of the mind, before they can make sense, before they can form a syntax, before they become relatable forms and objects. Matta was convinced of the richness of the inner life, and, as a Surrealist, wanted to depict a very inner life, or epiphanies of the so-called unconscious. The Surrealists, with their dogmatism, however became too narrow for Matta, who wanted to establish a true American art in the middle of the 20th century. Due to his charismatic personality and sharp intellect he exercised great influence on the American artists who struggled for the same cause initially, but alienated them after a while with his own dogmatism and the narrowness of his concepts. Therefore he joined the Surrealists again (the other artists would then become the Abstract Expressionists). In general, there was a representational Surrealism, depicting irrational, dream-like associations between people or objects or showing them from unusual perspectives, as you had it in the works of Salvador Dali, Max Ernst or Rene Magritte. And there was a non-representational Surrealism where you did not even have true objects but imaginary forms. Such was the Surrealism of Jean Miro, or Roberto Matta. In the exhibition at the Vienna Kunstforum I found some of Matta´s paintings striking, even extraordinary, others have not been of that quality. That´s how it is the usual case in an exhibition, yet in general, I find Matta´s symbols and his imagery, though interesting, not strictly convincing or spellbinding. It is too weak and internally diffuse to create an iconography or universal signifiers, his non-representational Surrealism does not have the same originality and freshness as Miro´s. Matta´s use of colours is often extraordinary, but the blurred and washy character of his paintings, in a way, reduces their effectiveness. There are people who consider Salvador Dali´s art as stupid or trivial. But especially when I see other Surrealists in comparison I think Dali´s leading position in Surrealism does not come as a surprise or as unjustified. Dali managed to create an (in a way) concise, noticeable, memorable imagery that became iconic. Matta´s art rather gives me an impression about how paintings could look like if the more apparent possibilities already have been sorted out; American Surrealism was not as important as the European Surrealism; Matta´s art serves as a footnote. Although Matta strived for an objective stylistic intervention and innovation (Automatism), although he was a theorist and intellectual, I think his style finally did not transcend a personal style. Nevertheless, I think these flashy, boundless colours on canvas in this exhibition I will remember forever.

Maybe the Kunstforum made an exhibition on Roberto Matta because he was a friend and intellectual companion of Robert Motherwell, whom they had so graciously featured before. It is also imminent to focus on Surrealism, as the Surrealist Manifesto by Andre Breton from 1924 makes Surrealism turn 100 years old in 2024. And featuring a less prominent figure among the Surrealists strikes as a good idea. Surrealism emerged out of Dadaism and was anti-bourgeois. With the Surrealist Manifesto, Breton, who both had a concise intellect but also a somehow doctrinarian personality, broke with Dadaism and tried to emancipate new artistic directions from the Dadaist intellectual straightjacket. Inspired by psychoanalysis, Surrealism aimed at a psychological revolution. Breton defined Surrealism as pure psychic automatism by which one intends to express verbally, in writing or by other method, the real functioning of the mind. Dictation by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, and beyond any aesthetic or moral preoccupation. True artists and intellectuals (and other people) will have a desire to reach some state of purity of mind. They want to do something “true” and “authentic”. Respectively, when you work with the expression of content, of thoughts, of forms, you will then try to realign yourself with the originator of thoughts and forms – with the mind – in a primordial manner. Surrealism tried to reach such purity of mind by applying free association, the bizarre logic of dreams, of (unconscious) desire, of the culturally suppressed, and the like. It was, as is true art, an enterprise in introspection. Roberto Matta, more than anyone else, championed the element of “psychological automatism”, i.e. a direct expression of images that emerge out of the unconscious. (At least since the times of Arthur Rimbaud) in their desire to reach purity of mind, there is desire in artists to break up with ordinary syntax – or, as they envision, to break “through” syntax to achieve a vision of a different, transcendent or more primordial reality. Reality, as they think, is something “magical”, whose magic, nevertheless, is only able to shine through occasional cracks and gaps within ordinary, culturally conditioned experience. So they want to reach a total, or at least a different experience. I know this quite well because in my Book of Strange and Unproductive Thinking I strived for such a kind of “infra-writing” or “micro-writing” myself; trying to express dreams, hallucinations before falling asleep, phantasmas or the states of mind and the cognition of little children or of animals (which, naturally, failed (so far)), to get at some kind of “core” of the cognitive process or the syntax, or to transcend it in order to get a fuller perspective on everything or reach some kind of meta level. Most prominently, Getrude Stein struggled for a pure unconscious automatism in writing. After years of trying to achieve it, she noticed that in the final consequence it is a vain attempt. Regardless of how hard you try, you do not seem to be able to break through preconditions or through the syntax. Maybe this should not come as a surprise, since there supposedly is no actual reality and no actual thought process beyond the syntax. The syntax mirrors the way things happen in the world. Therefore, one also should not be frustrated with the art of Dali or even Miro (since one might think it is not as radical and completely otherworldy as Surrealism seems to initially promise). Also their art is bound to be “conventional” – and that is the way in which it successfully works. Upon reflection, Matta was actually more radical and went further down the abyss. His forms, achieved by Automatism, are actually more primordial, pre-logical and pre-syntactic than those of most of his fellow Surrealists. Therefore, Matta´s work has actually achieved something objective and serves as giving an illustration of how expression of a specific content (the “unconscious” and the most primordial, pre-syntactic depths of the mind) might actually look like (and it is not just a “personal style” as mentioned above). Yet it also seems to illustrate that the primordial, pre-syntactic depths of the mind are not necessarily a higher state of consciousness or that you operate at a higher plane of reality when you operate on such a level. Likely, it is a less competent level of cognition – and of phantasy and imagination. I think I can tell you: breaking through the syntax is not an end in itself. The goal of the purification of the mind is that the mind finally encounters itself. The destruction of forms should finally enable you to erect new and fresh forms. Surrealism should likely lead to some “Super Realism”, which means a more total and lucid grasp on reality, on the “infra level” of individualities and aberrations as well as on the level of abstraction and intellectual integration.

Surrealism, as Breton also acknowledged, should not serve merely as offering you a glimpse on an alternative reality. By merging “dream” and reality, it should give you a total view on reality. I think this is true because a more comprehensive view on reality should also include the imaginary and the possibility of alternative realities (in a more mundane as well as in a more lofty sense). Actually, the imaginary and chance and possibility are integral part of reality. To grasp that character of reality, your mind should be equipped with some kind of Möglichkeitssinn, a sense for possibilities. Surrealism champions for such a Möglichkeitssinn, therefore it is actually mind-expanding as well as liberating. The surrealist imagination is more liberating and superior to the ordinary imagination, as it imaginatively tries to realign possible realities with impossible realities (that run against natural laws, logic, syntax etc.). Therefore, you should both become a heightened sense for what is possible, but also a sense for what is impossible, and what finally serves as a limitation. Therein, Surrealism will equip you with a sense of irony. And irony is a supreme sensibility; it makes it possible to take things more lightly – while actually taking them more seriously than you pretend to do. Irony, as opposed to cynicism or sarcasm, is a sympathetic attitude towards things. It helps you to escape from prison-like viewpoints and give you a more floating experience of reality to which you nevertheless sympathetically hold on to. I like heavy metal because it serves me as a “surrealist exaggeration”, therein expanding my competence in dealing with reality. Metal people usually are funny people with a sense of irony. Irony even seems a basic attitude, a Grundhaltung, to them. I seem to like that. Surrealism was profoundly inspired by the writings of the obscure Comte de Lautréamont. As I suggested, I consider myself as a revenant of Lautréamont. Lautréamont, Rimbaud or Büchner expressed reality in such a dense way that it seems to come as a hallucinative epiphany of reality. I consider such a kind of consciousness as the Einheits-Bewusstsein, as the unitary consciousness. All my work revolves around outlining the unitary consciousness, is about the unitary consciousness being at work. Therein, I am a Surrealist as well; yet rather than that, a Super Realist.

When I was writing and investigating about the Abstract Expressionists last autumn I also wanted to investigate about Arshile Gorky. Arshile Gorky is not very popular in Europe, but he was considered a true giant artist by the American artists, on equal footing with Jackson Pollock. Unfortunately, like Jackson Pollock he was an immensely troubled person who died young (he killed himself at the age of 44). Yet Arshile Gorky´s role in art was not that of a staunch innovator, like Pollock, rather he was the one who gave a finish to stylistic developments and brought them to a logical end. The art he developed in his final years could be considered a Surrealism that merged with the upcoming Abstract Expressionism. Arshile Gorky was a non-representational Surrealist as well, with his painting depicting biomorphic forms and the like. I could not come to a conclusion about his art; on some occasions it struck me and impressed me, on other it didn´t. So I think I need to wait until I have the possibility to experience the originals, until there is an exhibition about Gorky. At the end of his life, when Gorky struggled with cancer, Roberto Matta started an affair with Gorky´s wife. Finding out that he was too weak to kill Matta in revenge, due to his illness, served to plunge Gorky further into depression, which finally resulted in his suicide. According (not only) to Gorky, the American Surrealists were obnoxious people with low morals; cheating and fucking around with each other´s wives, whom, in a male chauvinist manner, they considered merely as “muses”, serving the pleasures of the male artist. Taking this into consideration, it seems almost astonishing that an exhibition about Matta could take place and not get cancelled, because stuff like this seems to provoke panic reactions among most contemporary intellectuals and in the art world. But maybe the notion that there was an omnipresent so called cancel culture is a panic reaction and an exaggeration.

Roy Lichtenstein and Pop Art

Roy Lichtenstein achieved his artistic breakthrough relatively late in life, at a time when he was almost 40. His breakthrough consisted of painting motives from comics. How could a motive from a comic be art? Lichtenstein had experimented with various styles before, but once he painted his comic motives it became immediately clear to him that he had discovered something real, that he made an actual artistic discovery, that his paintings were a revelation what art could be. Indeed, his comic paintings became an immediate success, and together with Andy Warhol´s soup cans and the like they established New York Pop Art (ironically, Warhol had done paintings from comics as well originally, but as soon as he discovered that Lichtenstein did the same thing, he turned to other motives which would make him even more famous). Lichtenstein´s paintings consisted of relatively few colours, but they were tasty and bright, saturated and a pleasure for the eye. They were actually destined to become pop-ular. He expanded his motives and his style throught his career. His paintings would become allusions to Surrealism, or to Picasso, to Matisse or to Léger. His famous brush stroke paintings, icons of Pop Art all the same, were allusions to Abstract Expressionism and to Action Painting. Lichtenstein also made sculptures, of his brush strokes or of his explosions, i.e. something you would not consider a motive for a sculpture. But such was the tacit humour that you had in all his art. Eventually his oeuvre was full of citations from the history of painting. He was one of the most successful American artists, with many of his paintings becoming popular and printed as posters in huge quantities.

Pop Art was the last movement in art that managed to establish a universal signifier and a universal paradigm, a concise statement and a concise diagnosis of the world as a whole. Ideally, this is what you would expect from art. Yet such expectations have become frustrated afterwards, and ever since the 1970s or so. Therefore one might consider Pop Art as the last true triumph of an art that was somehow avant-gardist and somehow “stronger” and more intelligent than the world, than the society it sprang out of, that was ahead of its time. After Pop Art, developments in society seemingly became more turbulent, more intelligent and more avant-garde than art, with art merely trying to catch up with those developments, with art becoming an intellectual by-product of social developments. Art reflects on society, and society had changed at the time when Pop Art came into play. It had become a consumer society, a society of mass consumption and a society of (fordist) mass production. A wealthy and seemingly pacified society. The artifacts that sprang out of and circulated in society had changed – with the standardised mass consumer product, i.e. Warhol´s soup cans and Brillo boxes, becoming the emblem of society. Clement Greenberg´s sharp distinction between Art and Kitsch became blurred. Artefacts of the popular – i.e. consumer products and advertisement, comics, movies, fashion, music, etc. – were oscillating between Art and Kitsch, respectively they were neither (high) art nor addressing a stupid sentimentality as does the Kitsch. The Popular became a category of its own. Therefore it seems a natural consequence that art becomes poppy. Vice versa, in the later 1960s popular music or the cinema (“New Hollywood”) even became distinctly artistic. At any rate, Pop Art, in essence, reflected on the Popular. Although Pop Art was innovative and something new, it was not extremely avant-garde. Neither it was obviously critical and expressing an Unbehagen in der Kultur that intellectuals, and various types of people, have been lamenting ever since about so-called consumer society. Rather than that, Pop Art even seemed optimistic. In general, Pop Art reduced itself to being a diagnosis of its time, and little else. And in doing so, Pop Art did it perfectly right. In refraining from being judgemental, Pop Art preserved its charismatic enigma of leaving everything afloat. Andy Warhol left it open whether his art actually meant a lot – or practically nothing at all; whether it was full of meaning, or devoid of any. Therefore his art has the quality of great art – as it remains vibrant, oscillating, alive, present. Pop Art serves as an examination of the depth of the supposed flatness it seemingly portrays. It is, as any great art, an enigmatic clash of dimensions that finally cannot be explicitly sorted out, neither by our intellect or by our perception or imagination.

Pop Art has been deemed superficial. On the one hand because of its boldness and simplicity. Nevertheless, it was due to this boldness and simplicity that Pop Art became a success and a landmark within art history (Pop Art actually surfaced not in New York but in Great Britian and was pioneered by artists like Richard Hamilton, David Hockney or Peter Blake – yet British Pop Art was, in a way, too reflective, too thoughtful and too nuanced, too hesitant to reach its full maturity). On the other hand, politically conscious people may feel offended especially by the superficiality of Pop Art´s leading proponent and, moreover, the defining artist of his time, Andy Warhol. Although Warhol was able to artistically capture an entire age and to establish universal signifiers, he was unable, or unwilling, to reflect on what happened in the second part of the 1960s in America (a time when Pop Art was past beyond its prime, however), notably the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement, the race question. Truly, Andy Warhol was not a particularly critical or politically conscious person (and neither Pop Art had been of such qualities). His primary motive was to become famous, a celebrity. And it is true that all his art remained superficial. Warhol himself acknowledged that and at time lamented it. But his art was superficial in a highly evocative way. According to Dali, the genius spiritualises everything. And Andy Warhol spiritualised superficiality. That is no mean achievement. Superficiality is even something that is universal. The Vietnam war and the opposition against it, the Black Panther movement or the feminist avantgarde were things that happened in some space and in some time and that were linked to vocabularies that are somehow outdated. The consumer society (and the desire for fame) still persists. Also Lichtenstein´s art is less superficial than it appears to be. Apart from the mastery of execution and the humor and the versatility of the intellect that keeps his art highly alive, Lichtenstein´s art is evocative, almost an epiphany. His art clearly expresses what painting could be and what painting could be about. And it comes in an unexpected way. It catches by surprise. There is sophistication to it, but it is also easily approachable and tangible for a larger audience. That´s what art should be and should do. The white space of the empty canvas is an abyss. The metaphysical abyss of art. It confronts imagination with what could be, with what could reasonably happen in art. If you are lucky and very imaginative, something will rise up from this abyss that tells a greater truth. This is what happened also In Roy Lichtenstein´s case.  

It was a good idea of the Pop artists not to try to comment a lot about the change within society they reflected on – the transformation into a consumer society. Many intellectuals and wannabe-intellectuals could not evade that trap. However, the transformation into a consumer society is a historical change far too profound for anyone to truly grasp. It is a transformation that will likely have its effects on the rest of human history. Time and again, there is voiced a concern about the “superficiality” consumer society supposedly brings about. But, obviously, what consumer society brings about is something that is good. If anyone laments the superficiality of consumer society, it, well, is probably due to his own superficiality or inability to see and adapt to larger patterns. As already noticed, the Popular became distinctly more artistic in the later 1960s, epitomised for instance in the Beatles´ album Sgt. Pepper´s Lonley Hearts Club Band, arguably the greated and most universal piece of popular music of all time (the iconic cover was done by a true Pop artist, Peter Blake). With Sgt. Pepper the Beatles wanted to express the sentiment of their time, that is to say of carefreeness and of joy. Rightfully, Sgt. Pepper has dominated the lists of best albums of all time, also the famous List of 500 best albums of all time by the Rolling Stone magazine. Yet recently, Sgt. Pepper got positioned in distinctly lower ranks by the Rolling Stone magazine. Much more dominating are now albums by people of colour and by women (notably hip hop records). The best album of all time is now considered to be What´s Going On by Marvin Gaye. I have listened to What´s Going On several times in trying to understand what would be so great about it, but I still can hardly remember anything from it. I do not catch why this album should be super, musically. However, the Rolling Stone magazine is fascinated because What´s Going On deals with racism, police brutality or the Vietnam war. Well, okay. In championing for What´s Going On the people from the Rolling Stone magazine obviously think they are very thoughtful. However I do not think they truly are. The Vietnam war, racism and police brutality against Afroamericans is not something that is truly universal. Nothing of this actually affects me, or anyone I know. When the Beatles want to bring cheerfulness and joy it deems me a lot more universal. Meanwhile I have travelled the world a bit, and I have witnessed that most of the “oppressed” people in this world are conformists all alike. They are not very “conscious” and they are not very interested in politics. They are interested in consumer products. If they have consumer products, they´re happy. They bring them cheerfulness and joy. Therefore Pop Art is universal art. And Sgt. Pepper´s Lonley Hearts Club Band is the preeminent popular music album of all time.

Die Kunst denkt nicht

Jörg Immendorff, Daniel Richter, Albert Oehlen, Katharina Grosse, Arnulf Rainer oder Sigmar Polke, die derzeit in der Albertina Modern präsentiert werden, sind zweifelsohne erhebliche künstlerische Talente und echte Maler. Sie haben ihren Platz; das kann man nicht bestreiten. Allerdings kann das, was derzeit in der Albertina Modern gezeigt wird, nicht mithalten mit dem, was derzeit im BaCA Kunstforum hängt (Robert Motherwell). Während im Kunstforum Kunst hängt, die sich auch radikal will und sucht, hat sich die Kunst in der Albertina Modern ein wenig aufgegeben oder zumindest vernachlässigt; sie ist zwar Kunst, aber als Begleiterscheinung innerhalb der Gesellschaft; nicht eine, die sich triumphierend über die Gesellschaft erhebt und die Gesellschaft und ihre lärmende Aufdringlichkeit in die Schranken verweist. Allein bei Albert Oehlen scheint man da was aus dem Urgrund – bzw. dessen epistemologischem Korrelat: den Geistestiefen bzw. dem transzendentalen Imaginationsvermögen – aufzusteigen haben; etwas, das sich noch dazu in einer rätselhaften Überdimensionalität, in die wir nur partiell Einblick haben, zu entfalten scheint, so wie das bei letztgültiger Kunst ja ist (bei Albert Oehlen scheint man also, gemein gesprochen, etwas Aufsteigend/Emporkommend authentisch-voraussetzungslos Schöpferisches zu haben). Aber ich weiß nicht, ob Albert Oehlen das auch so versteht, oder aus dieser Intention heraus malt. Heidegger hat vor geraumer Zeit gemeint: Die Wissenschaft denkt nicht. Rettung (einen Ausweg für die Philosophie und für die Entfaltung des Geistes, für das authentische Denken) hat er dann deswegen in der Kunst gesucht, freilich in ihrer vergeistigtsten Form (Hölderlin). Seit in etwa dem Tod von Heidegger in den 1970er Jahren kann man aber wohl sagen: Die Kunst denkt nicht. Man kann allgemein nicht feststellen, wo die Kunst heutzutage groß oder tief denkt. Das ist ein Substanzverlust, der nicht einmal genau bestimmt ist. Er wird von den Kunsttheoretikern (die korrelativ dazu ihre beste Zeit auch hinter sich zu haben scheinen oder die zumindest nicht die gegenwärtige ist) in ziemlich äußerlicher Weise umkreist. Sie scheinen vergessen zu haben, dass Kunst eine Erscheinungsform des Geistes ist und dass ein Aufstieg oder Abstieg der Kunst daher notwendigerweise ein Aufstieg oder Abstieg des Geistes ist bzw. ebendarin zu suchen ist. So kommt in der besonderen Malerei von Robert Motherwell der Geist zum Vorschein, der sich selbst begegnet – deswegen ist sie außerdem auch rein als Malerei besser als Malerei, die weniger Geist verkörpert. Damit der Geist sich selbst begegnen kann, muss er sich extrem vertiefen. Der Geist muss in die Malerei stürzen und in den Abgrund der Möglichkeiten, die in ihr liegen. Nur dann kann Malerei den Geist des Betrachters absorbieren und ewig lebendig sein. Indem in ihr ein ahnungsvoller Abgrund gähnt – der aber das reine Imaginationsvermögen und dessen offener Raum und dessen lebendige Sogwirkung ist. Die Malerei muss also denken, die Kunst muss also denken, nur in dieser Bewegung eröffnet sich in ihr der abgründige, absorbierende Raum in all seiner unermesslichen Tiefe, aus der dann Motive an die Oberfläche gespült werden und das ganze dann einigermaßen fixiert wird. Man hat im echten Kunstwerk das einigermaßen Fixierte und Eindeutige, das im Offenen oszilliert, die klare Konturiertheit und intellektuelle Präzision in der Bestimmung der Gegenstände der Welt, die dann aber gleichzeitig wieder in der Offenheit und Rätselhaftigkeit des Welthintergrundes verschwimmen bzw. mit ihm verschmelzen – gleichzeitig wird durch diese Beleuchtung aber auch der tiefere, rätselhafte Welthintergrund fassbarer und konkreter gemacht, der Scheinwerfer auf ihn draufgehalten. Durch die Kunst wird also Licht, in der Kunst erscheint die Welt. Indem sich die Kunst z.B. bei Motherwell durch das intensive, suchende Denken geklärt hat, erscheint sie in ihrer reinen Form. Das Charisma der Malerei von Motherwell bzw. aller so genannter großer Malerei und großer Kunst liegt darin, dass in ihr scheinbar voraussetzungslos und unmittelbar was erscheint. Dem Künstler ist es gelungen, zum transzendentalen Imaginationsvermögen vorzustoßen und das transzendentale Imaginationsvermögen anzuzapfen, das dann der reine Hintergrund ist, in dem das reine Motiv erscheint. Und beide verweisen unmittelbar aufeinander. Das ist dann die Perspektive der Erleuchtung. Dass ein Motiv in einem Hintergrund erscheint, ist die Struktur der Welt. In der Perspektive der Erleuchtung erblickt man, wie sich Motiv und Hintergrund ständig wechselseitig durchdringen, interdependent sind, sich ineinander spiegeln und dadurch ihren jeweiligen rätselhaften Wesenskern ein wenig erhellen. Das heißt: man sieht dann die totale, dichte Struktur der Welt, in ihrer fraktalen, aufeinander verweisenden „Unendlichkeit“. Man meint vielleicht, die Erleuchtung sei etwas Undurchsichtiges, Geheimes, ein Geheimnis aus dem fernen Osten. Aber im Wesentlichen sieht man in der elementaren Kunst die Welt aus einer solchen erleuchteten Perspektive. Es sind reine Motive, die in einem reinen Hintergrund erscheinen und sich beide wechselseitig durchdringen. Die Erleuchtung ist die höchste Stufe des Denkens und der Verwirklichung des Geistes. Heidegger hat sie gesucht, sie aber nie ganz gefunden, dafür aber in interessanter Weise in all seinem philosophischen Streben umkreist. Heute scheint es nicht mehr so zu sein, dass nach einer solchen Möglichkeit gesucht wird, in der Kunst und anderswo. Bei Basquiat begegnet sich (vielleicht nicht ganz das Denken aber) zumindest die expressive Fähigkeit zum Malen selbst. Basquiat war scheinbar das einzige gewichtige Genie, das nach dem Tod von Heidegger in der Malerei aufgetreten ist, während vorher dauernd gewichtige Genies in ihr aufgetreten sind. Es ist aber zu früh gestorben, als dass man sein Gewicht tatsächlich beurteilen könnte. Ich frage mich, warum solche Vertiefungen in der Kunst nicht mehr stattfinden, angestrebt werden oder zumindest nicht gelingen. Trotz allem Nachdenken über diese Frage habe ich immer noch keine befriedigende Antwort gefunden, warum die Kunst nicht mehr denkt. Die herkömmlichen Erklärungsversuche – der Überdruss der Kunst an sich selbst angesichts einer unästhetischen Realität; die Erschöpfung der inneren Möglichkeiten der Malerei; die Nivellierung durch den Kunstmarkt; die Gravität und Pfadabhängigkeit des Niveauverlustes in der Kunst und in der Kunstrezeption, der sich verstetigt; der sozialistische/feministische Unsinn von der Überflüssigkeit des Genies – scheinen letztendlich ungenügend (auch insofern das alles Mächte sind, die als solche Gegenmächte produzieren würden), da sie äußerlich sind, und scheinbar nicht das Zentrum der Kunst betreffen. Denn das Zentrum der Kunst ist das Denken, ist die Begegnung des Geistes mit sich selbst und ist die authentische Begegnung mit dem transzendentalen Imaginationsvermögen, aus dem alles entspringt und aus dem heraus alles originär erscheint. Das Zentrum der Kunst liegt im Subjekt und im Geist, also in Territorien, die von der Gesellschaft und vom Zeitgeist relativ wenig beeinflussbar sind/sein sollten. Damit liegt das Zentrum der Kunst aber auch im Gehirn. Vielleicht haben die Mediennutzungsgewohnheiten und die Akkulturationen in den letzten Jahrzehnten die Gehirne verändert und die Subjekte deformiert, dass aus ihnen kein Tiefsinn mehr rauskommt/entspringt. Oh ja, so wird das sicher sein! Aber –

Robert Motherwell and the Dweller on the Threshold

Tension, forces, confinement and liberation are transcendental categories. In his signature works, Robert Motherwell paints ovals and thick bars that seem to express just these transcendentals, although they officially are Elegies to the Spanish Republic (the ovals are meant to be testicles of a bull, likely in a fight). They are breakthrough paintings, at any rate. An artist has managed to break through the wall and construct his own territory, or energy field. Another one of Motherwell´s series are the Opens: largely monochromous paintings with rectangular interferences that truly open stuff up and dynamise things (they would become more complex over the course of the years). Another transcendental category, very basic, probably that of encounter. Although Robert Motherwell had initially studied philosophy and likely was the most philosophically educated among the Abstract Expressionists, the metaphysics expressed in his paintings seems to come more tacit than in those of many of his peers. They are, probably, metaphysically less strong, bold and important than the paintings of Pollock, Rothko or Newman. But Motherwell was, above all, a supreme abstract painter, i.e. an artist. His intellectual purity expresses itself in the purity of his painting. He is a dweller on the threshold were art remains art and art becomes metaphysics. Or, he dwells in both of them territories.

Mark Rothko and Purity of Vision

The truth-seeker strives to get to know ultimate reality, the most fundamental reality. If this quest is philosophical and metaphysical, it will also involve introspection. Therein, the truth-seeker will also encounter the truth of his own mind, as an integral element of that reality. Such a quest for truth will lead to purification. If you are lucky, you will finally encounter a purified vision of fundamental reality and a purified vision of the mind. Mark Rothko aimed at expressing “universal truths”. In the world of his time, there were no universal truths anymore. Actually, only in medieval, in ancient, in atavistic times there have been lifeworlds and experience realms that were wholly integrated in themselves, unitarian and universal (or so we are inclined to think). Ours is a time of partial truths and accumulations of expert knowledges. Since man cannot bear living in an environment of partial truths, Rothko sought for expressing universal truths, yet at the basis of a contemporary, appropriate worldview and knowledge about the world. (And, I reiterate, what is likeable about the Abstract Expressionists, respectively about modern artists, is that, in apparent contrast to contemporary artists, they wanted such things.) For Rothko, the artist has the task to create a “plastic equivalent to the highest truth” and not to reproduce the specific details of a certain object. Since he was also seeking for truth in art, i.e. the medium in which truth can be expressed in specific ways, he was seeking for an absolute power of painting in itself, revealed not in reference to something, but in reference to itself. Rothko struggled a lot. Like the other major Abstract Expressionists it took him many years, decades to come up with the ultimate results that then became his signature paintings. (Because of this, the art of the Abstract Expressionists, and of the moderns in general, has the charisma of being born out of a transcendent effort, of having been through something, whereas contemporary art has not and therefore deems intellectually powerless.) If you want to get to know reality and the reality of your mind in a fundamental way, you have to be very active and contemplative. It will require great effort. You have to progressively deconstruct traditions, inherited knowledge, ideologies, affiliations, etc. You will finally encounter a vision in which there will be not very much to see. It will be some rather undifferentiated primal ground. Yet out of the primal ground emerges everything; virtually, the primal ground contains everything. In terms of the reality of your mind, you will encounter the primal ground of the power of imagination, the basic capacity of imagination. If you have managed to encounter this in such a fundamental way, you will finally be in control of reality and of the power of imagination. You will have achieved versatility. You will be enlightened. The signature paintings of Rothko are expressions of fundamental reality and epiphanies of the purification of mind.

The primal ground is something primitive and tranquil, but also, and foremost, something extremely sophisticated and very active, agitated. The individual visions of the primal ground are somehow similar to each other, but they are also different and differentiated from each other. Also Ad Reinhardt and Barnett Newman came up with visions of the primal ground (respectively practically all the Abstract Expressionists sought to come up with such a kind of thing, with something primordial). I personally prefer Newman over Rothko. Newman´s signature paintings contain the “Zip”, a narrow vertical flash that emerges over an undifferentiated ground. Such truly is the basic structure of the world: a motif emerges out of, or within, a background. With the right mindset, you understand them both. (“Enlightenment” means: you can permanently switch between motif and background, you oscillate between motif and background: this is then the desired vision of (an internally highly differentiated) “unity” of all things.) Rothko´s paintings are more unclear. They are less internally differentiated. It is said that Rothko wanted to express the Sublime, the Divine, or that he wanted to express harmony. He wanted to create pacifying environments. He wanted to do something  purely meditative. In contrast to this, Newman´s paintings are actually unsettling, even terrifying. They express the IN THE BEGINNING was the word, the Let there be light. They express basic creation, they express the event, something that rips, something that tears apart. Newman´s paintings express the Logos. With the “Zip”, the possibility of narration, of rationality, and therefore of eternal agitation, uneasiness, turmoil and tumult enters. Rothko´s paintings are pre-narrative. They are more oceanic or, if you may, they are more mud-like. Rothko´s paintings are more formulaic, they are more boring, they are weaker. They are, in their repetitiveness, even a bit silly and a bit stupid. But Rothko´s paintings are considerably more popular than Newman´s. Rothko is some kind of household name; Newman is not. If you are into sarcasm you may think this is so because Rothko is “less intellectual” than Newman. People do not want to be confronted with the Logos, especially not if it comes as an aggressive flash. They want to be lulled. Yet, first and foremost, Rothko, maybe more than Newman, actually has managed to create something truly iconic. Rothko´s paintings are more like – paintings (Newman´s actually are more conceptual). Maybe more than Newman´s, Rothko´s signature paintings are iconic, like Warhol´s soup cans, Dali´s Camembert watches, Raphael´s little angels in the Sistine Madonna, Michelangelo´s Creation of Adam, Leonardo´s Mona Lisa, or Duchamp´s urinal. If you have managed to come up with something iconic, then you have most likely triumphed over other frailties that there might be. In his comparative superficiality, Rothko is perhaps more profound, deeper, universal than Newman. (Superficial as I am, I still prefer Newman over Rothko.)

Clyfford Still and Radical Otherness

Clyfford Still makes the rest of us look academic.

Jackson Pollock

I reiterate: If you want to see the world aright, you need to get in mimetic touch with that that is different from you, you need to embrace the other. By permanently and consecutively embracing the different, the other, your vision will become more and more complete, your vision will become more and more one. There will be no more internal stratification inside you, just an open field (with, to be true, largely heterogenous elements, yet their boundaries will become fuzzy and blurred, i.e. open for interaction). E pluribus unum, or so they say. Clyfford Still was very different, very otherwise. Clyfford Still stands in the corner of another room, enigmatically. It is not easy to decipher what such a figure actually wants to say, it does not directly communicate; it is vibrating and humming in itself, obviously it is alive, but most obviously it is something different from us and from anything we commonly know. Clyfford Still is very original and very different, very unlike anything we know. Maybe it is us who are different – and forsaken – , and he is the one more close to the Real Thing, to the real Real. Or so we might think. Jackson Pollock said, Clyfford Still made the rest of the American painters look academic. He was a forerunner of Abstract Expressionism, developed his “style” in reclusiveness, and he disliked Abstract Expressionism once it had become fashionable, and, as he saw it, sterile and formulaic. So he withdrew from the scene. Ideally, Still´s largely monochromous paintings contain flame-like, wedge-like or eye-like elements that shake up the silence of the undifferentiated primal ground, but add another silence into it, or a language that mumbles, partly comprehensibly, partly unintelligibly. They are the (relative) silence of Otherness, the enigma of Otherness. While the other Abstract Expressionists come up with something vivid, or Barnett Newman comes up with a flashing Zip, out of Clyfford Still´s primal ground emerges some primal, originary Otherness. Silent, though not mute, reclusive. An all-over eye, that seems to envision the entire scene and its beyond. It is face-like, like the paintings of another one who was a radical Other: Wols. The paintings by Wols and by Clyfford Still are like faces of Otherness. We gaze into them, they gaze into us. In some way we do meet, in some other way we don´t. Very different, very otherwise, all that. What is striking is the in-your-face character of these painted faces, of the paintings both by Wols and by Still. They come unfiltered and unmitigated. The poststructuralists (Derrida) say that presence does not exist, but the paintings by Clyfford Still and by Wols are of an unmistakable presence. They seem to be presence itself. They shake up poststructuralism. They confront any systems of meaning with some strange, evasive super-meaning; or with an ultra-meaning and an infra-meaning. They are an extension to ordinary meaning. Clyfford Still probably was the best abstract painter who ever existed (or, upon reflection, Mondrian might have been). Yet, maybe therefore, he is not, or cannot be, a household name like Pollock, Rothko or de Kooning. There seems to be an additional level of abstraction to his paintings; in his paintings there seems to be a meta-level of abstraction and Abstract Expressionism. This is what the ordinary eye cannot truly bear: the eye of radical Otherness, the faces of radical Otherness. The art of Clyfford Still exemplifies radical Otherness.

Concerning Lacan´s “Great Other”, I do not know how individuals like Clyfford Still could be intimidated by the uncanny complexity and intransparency of any “Great Other”. Rather, it will be them who intimidate any other Great Other. If we take the “Great Other” to be language, customs, artistic styles – in the final instance: God – i.e. stuff that preforms and predetermines the individual and its modes of thought and expression, then individuals like Clyfford Still function in some way as the register of the Real to the Symbolic register that holds the Great Other. I.e. they are what evades the register of the Symbolic and predetermined language and modes of expression. They are something else. They are the Great Other to the Great Other. They are originary, and they seem to be primary to the register of the Symbolic (or, they seem to be an uncanny return of the Symbolic that has digested itself and now confronts the Symbolic that is still in place with the radical alterity that lies (not only) within the Symbolic (but in all the registers) – so, in some way they are near to the closure of the entire system of the registers). Lacan says the Great Other is barred. Although we may be inclined to think so, the Great Other is not complete and not identical to itself, just as we aren´t. The Great Other is barred. This kind of non-identity you seem to have in the art of Clyfford Still as well. But this non-identity seems to be much more natural and identical to itself, not as helpless as the non-identity in the Great Other, or inside us, whose non-identity evolves out of our inability to come to terms with ourselves. This is so because otherness is the inherent nature of it, and of such individuals who serve as the Great Other to the Great Other. Their otherness and alterity is primary. They are their own Great Other. They embody their own alterity, they are the embodiment of alterity. They are in natural touch with the other – and therefore with the entire universe. The common categories are: the self and the non-self (the other). But inside them, the self and the other are not separated. (You gotta keep em separated, sing The Offspring. But such individuals, who serve as Great Others to the Great Others, they do not.) Frank Stella says that Clyfford Still´s art seems to come effortless, originating from another place. In this effortlessness, it is unlike any other painting, and Clyfford Still is unlike any other painter. Clyfford Still himself says, in his paintings there should be expressed the amalgamation between life and death. What could be more different, more otherwise to each other than life and death? In the paintings of Clyfford Still you gaze into radical alterity, into radical Otherness.

Jackson Pollock and the Wormhole of Creativity

I reiterate: the goal of the creative process is to enable a transformation. The supreme creator attracts matter of all kind, internalises it, makes it his interior; via heavy intellectual concentration, via introspection, under its own weight and gravity it collapses into a black hole; this will open up a hyperdimensional channel through ordinary spacetime fabric, a wormhole; which will then eject the transformed, channeled, dimensionally challenged, warped interior in a complete other region in space and time, via a white hole. This is, then, a true transformation. Though we have recently managed to detect black holes, no one has ever seen the astronomical object of a white hole. But in creative processes, in the arts, you can, from time to time, encounter white holes. The signature paintings of Jackson Pollock, the drip paintings, are probably most exemplary of such white holes.

Pollock, a ruminative, cautious, uncommunicative fellow, seeked to gain access to the spiritual, the “unconscious”, via ancient symbols, totems, and the like. He was less interested in “figuration” or “abstraction” per se but wanted to express his interior via painting. He also wanted to paint “American”, for which there had been no actual template at that time. Well before he had come up with his drip paintings he already had been the only American artist who was able to free himself from the hitherto predominant European influence and to paint in a truly independent manner. He was the only American painter at this time who was able to achieve this. Like Picasso, Pollock was a great painter in the classical sense. Laypersons may suspect Pollock´s or Picasso´s paintings as “something a child could do”. But it can not. Both Pollock and Picasso were great painters that were in need to push boundaries. Via their breakthrough inventions, they seemingly eliminated boundaries and created a new spacetime, a new dimensionality, where stuff unfolds in all kinds of manners, according to the logic of these dimensionalities. That´s when they became greater than just “great”.

Pollock was explosive and highly energetic all along, but he was also highly introspective and creatively introverted. He was sucked into the abyss of his own creative introspection. When he finally channeled through the wormhole and released his energy through the white hole of his drip paintings, he actually managed to “fully express himself” and “turn his inside out”, to fully deliver, via his action painting, his “unconscious”. There is no distance anymore between himself and his paintings, between his expressions and that what is expressed. That was something new again. From a black hole nothing gets out and into a white hole nothing gets in. A white hole is a permanent explosion. Pollock´s drip paintings are said to be both ecstatic and monumental. They are both dynamic and frozen in a statuariness; they are, creatively, tranquil and calm. The are complete. They are, maybe, the world process from a God´s perspective. From a more mundane standpoint – which is yet extremely elevated and something in its own right as well – Pollock managed to do paintings that cannot be counterfeited or duplicated. What a wormhole! What a white hole!

Black holes, white holes and wormholes are logical, though dimensionally different from spacetime as we know it, or they are spacetime in reverse. Their core, their most interior, remains mysterious nevertheless. Scientists suspect that around a singularity anything can happen, as the common laws of the physical universe break down at this point. In the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock, anything happens.

Pollock, they noted, had a unique perception. He could see moving things and movements per se. He could see things from all angles. He had a superdimensional perception. Art, they demand, should let you gaze into another dimension. In the case of Pollock you see the entire dimensionality of the creative process. That is to say: let your stuff, via introspection, collapse into a black hole, dimensionally channel it though a wormhole, and release it through a white hole, unexpectedly, in some completely other part of the universe. This makes, then, a true transformation.