If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite, says William Blake. Infinity is but a (paradoxical) concept of the human mind; to which nothing in the empirical world actually seems to correspond to. The Abstract Expressionists (or at least a branch of them) tried to reach infinity via introspection. Out of the black hole of heavy introspection that willfully collapsed under its own weight, they created a wormhole of creativity through which contemporary modes of perception and expression were genuinely twisted and transformed, and a white hole at the end of the tunnel through which new forms, new modes of perceptual matter were emitted. This must be considered a perfect undertaking in metaphysics and creative transformation!

Robert Rauschenberg relied on abstract expressionism, at least in the beginning, but he tried to let the world, the perceptual matter, in – to a degree it becomes virtually infinite – by just opening the doors of perception (not necessarily intellectually “cleaning” them via introspection or some other intellectual technique). He let in mundane objects as well and included them in his artworks, therein becoming a forerunner of pop art. (Once again in art history) he levelled the distinction between “high” and “low” objects, therein also “high art” and “low art”. Many Abstract Expressionists, who longed for elevation, did not like that so much. But that is the general dialectics of things. I like elevation too, but I also like Robert Rauschenberg, because he championed the unitary consciousness, a democratic, non-discriminatory total consciousness and perception that tries to include all things. In order to achieve the unitary consciousness, you need to have a genuine faculty of being able to establish contact. The Combines truly are spaces of encounter and contact. In some ways, the intellect and its faculties may be too discriminatory to establish a true unitary consciousness. Via intellectual means, the Abstract Expressionists have achieved to express the infinite. The infinite is a metaphysical thing. But it is not the only thing out there. It is not even a thing at all; it is a state of mind, a category. Robert Rauschenberg did not try to achieve contact with things – with the virtually infinite number of things and their variations – via intellectual means or categorisations, but by practical contact. He was a truly practical man.

The Abstract Expressionists were “heroic” in many respects (and an awful lot of them had a short and complicated life). Yet also Robert Rauschenberg was ready to put his fortune and fame at risk more than just once for the sake of art, or for the sake of humanity. With the Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange project he tried to establish intercultural dialogue and exchange, and penetrating the hermeticism of dictatorial regimes like in Chile, Cuba or the USSR via the means of art in the 1980s. While the Abstract Expressionists cultivated some form of macho attitude, Rauschenberg was a friendly homosexual. The Abstract Expressionists tried to reach the infinite via intellectual means, but Rauschenberg´s friendliness – and the general friendliness of the unitary consciousness – mimics the infinite. With the unitary consciousness you are on solid ground.

Rauschenberg, like his friend Jasper Johns, was a marvellous painter and artist. He had a talent to get his artworks “right”. A talent that is obviously innate, since you cannot tell and you cannot predict how a work of art will look “right” in advance. This is unpredictable. And it seems to be the case even more with the art of Rauschenberg (or Johns). Since the art of Robert Rauschenberg is highly arbitrary. In every artwork of his you feel that the elements could be arranged in a completely different manner as well. That seems to make it especially difficult to tell how he manages it to get them “right”, since you cannot tell how the arrangement would look “wrong”. While this is not so easy to tell in any case it indeed seems to be especially complicated in the case of Rauschenberg´s artworks. On the other hand, you seem to feel that any other arrangement done by Rauschenberg would be “right” all the same. Via his innate talent he masters the entirety of the blank canvas.

Yet because of this innateness, this arbitrariness, friendliness and looseness, this practical talent that does not seem to rely so much on the intellect, Rauschenberg´s art seems to lack some sort of cohesion and solidity. It seems to lack focus. You know, art also should be a statement, a message, an Aussage. The works of abstract expressionism and of pop art are Aussagen in a strong sense. There is an intellectual concentration vibrant in them; an intellectual concentration that strives for deep and universal meaning. Introspection is something art should radiate. And the weak point of Robert Rauschberg´s art is that it radiates a lack of introspection. That makes it look like a bit feeble, compared to the movements of abstract expressionism and pop art, in between which Robert finally got sandwiched in the eye of art history. However, to reiterate, the intellectual is only one thing among some more. Practical ability, like that of the practical Texan Robert Rauschenberg, is another, and may make up for most. Practice makes perfect.

I have some attraction to the style of hyperrealism, that had its heyday in the 1970s and was championed by artists like Richard Estes, Ralph Goings or, for this respect, Don Eddy. You can see it as an epiphenomenon to pop art, or as an approach in technique (since the techniques behind attaining a hyperrealistic expression in painting are non-trivial), or as blatantly mindless and commercial. You can see it with reference to the Baudrillardian Simulacrum. Nevertheless you also seem to have some eerie metaphysics in it; and so you might regard hyperrealism as a form of the highest endeavour in art: of art trying to be “the true metaphysical activity” (as Nietzsche postulated it (with reference to Schopenhauer)).

Metaphysics in art means that art should reveal the “true”, “deeper” essence of a thing that is supposedly hidden beneath its surface, an essence that is both revealed and concealed by the surface and therefore reveals and conceals itself in interplay with the surface. In truly great art you therefore seem to have two worlds constantly shifting and shining through each other. The realm of the metaphysical is of another dimension. In the empirical world you are supposedly barred from directly gazing into the metaphysical, as you lack proper dimensionality. However higher dimensions will make themselves apparent via imprints and footprints in the empirical world, that are both revelatory and enigmatic alike. You therefore have to follow the footprints of the metaphysical and try to then deduce its entire structure; you will do so via speculation (in philosophy) or via apprehension (in art). The great artwork, where you have (at least) two worlds shining through each other, will evoke apprehension (Ahnung) in the viewer. Apprehension/Ahnung is the true mode of perception of the metaphysical, as expressed via the means of art.

Hyperrealism, as the term already implies, presents reality as a hyper-reality. Hyperreality, or making a thing go hyper, does not necessarily mean reaching into the metaphysical; in itself it just means blowing things up (or something similar to that). This alone, however, addresses the (metaphysical!) question, whether our understanding of “the metaphysical” is but a mere blow-up of our ordinary understanding and abilities (as an interpretation of the nature of metaphysics and religion in the tradition of Feuerbach would go), or something distinct to it. In the great artwork at least, you will have an evocation of the “inner reality” of the presented object, its “inner reality” will pour out of the object. In hyperrealism, objects beam and glow; you have that metaphysical glance pouring out of them. Of course, these are just mirror reflections of their lookalike surroundings on polished surfaces: indicating that they have no inner or original essence. They are derivative. Yet in their universally mirrored togetherness and assemblage they seem to create an own and autonomous sphere, governed by its own logic. It is the sphere of technology and industrial mass production and consumption. The metaphysical glance of the mass product you already had within pop art.

Hyperrealism seems to present a timeless, static, stainless and perfect world, a world that seems “metaphysical”. Like the Stillleben/still life, hyperrealism presents everyday and mundane objects. In the case of Don Eddy, it is mostly Volkswagens. Volkswagens are the product of a very sophisticated culture, they are unlike the fruits, dead animals and flowers presented in original still lives. They are the product of a very sophisticated technology. Therein, hyperrealism also bears resemblance to American precisionism of the 1920s, notably the “still lives” trying to capture the metaphysical aspects of industrial landscapes by Charles Sheeler. Technology, as Heidegger suggests, introduces a new Existenzial to human existence, and technology is also metaphysical and otherworldly. While technology is implicitly perfectly understood and mastered by man, the implications of technology cannot be; therefore technology confronts man with the Not-I, with the Other.

Also the traditional still lives confront man with the Not-I, with the Other. And they both confront man with persistence as well as transience and decay. The vegetables and flowers are prone to wither away, the dead animals are waiting to be consumed. Also the shiny Volkswagens will rust and become dysfunctional. You seem to have a dead or inanimate world in still lives and in hyperrealism. Therefore it confronts the viewer, who is alive, with death: which is something metaphysical. Which one is of superior order: the animate or the inanimate? That is a metaphysical question. You have a strange encounter of those orders in still lives and in hyperrealism: it translates into a metaphysical encounter. In the mundanity of its objects, something magical still seems to shimmer through. The magic of the existence of mundanity. Still lives, hyperrealism or the Pittura metafisica confront the viewer with the metaphysical character of pure presence. Pure presence does not speak and is not revelatory of itself. It evokes apprehension.

All metaphysics is strange. It is alienated, yet it is familiar as well. You feel connected to it and you can relate to it, but there is also a gap. The gap can only be grossed via the mind and via imagination. Although metaphysics is therefore only mildly strange, it never loses its strangeness and fascination, it is a dynamic strangeness that never becomes boring.

It is interesting though why we would usually think of the realm of the metaphysical as something static, silent and immovable. Why would the image of the metaphysical not be dynamic, even wild and chaotic, and loud? Since dynamics, chaos and sound are most obviously also principles that guide our existence. Maybe this is so because our dominant understanding of the metaphysical is still rooted in Plato´s concept of the realm of eternal ideas. Yet, apart from that, our natural aspirations seem to point in the respective direction. You like to think of the metaphysical realm as being primary, dominant, the unmoved mover, eternal. Overally, you will think of the metaphysical realm as something sublime. Therefore, as the counterpart to your nervous and ephemeral subjectivity, the metaphysical will appear as static and timeless, as a sublime objectivity. Of course, you have the expression of the metaphysical and of the sublime also in music, and music involves time. However, sacred music is usually static. And also for painting and sculpture, expression of the metaphysical is not at all necessarily static: It necessitates the two worlds constantly shining through each other, making up for something sublimely static as well as highly dynamic at once. While we may not know how the metaphysical realm actually looks like, the interaction between the empirical world and the metaphysical world is a constant fluctuation, a constant pulse. Within the pulse, the static and the dynamic become unified.

In the paintings of Don Eddy you usually will have presented a world soley made out of objects, absent from man or creature, or of any subjectivity. However, subjectivity you have in the usually very subjective angles that establish the perspective in his paintings. It is usually a narrow perspective, from which you see bits and pieces and fragments. And from what you can see, it is a narrow and packed world, it is confined. Despite the (odd) elegance of the Volkswagens, you do not seem to have an elegant world. Genius spiritualises everything, says Salvador Dali. In the actual works of Don Eddy you seem to have a de-spiritualisation of the sublime metaphysical realm, populated by Volkswagens, which are elegant but do not populate their realm in an elegant way.

That again raises big metaphysical questions. It might be that the metaphysical realm always will remain confined and restricted to our subjective viewpoint and therefore cannot fully be embraced by us, or so the story may go. However, like the Pittura metafisica of Giorgio de Chirico and his (surrealistic) followers it also seems to imply another, more uncanny interpretation: That the metaphysical realm itself is confined and unelegant. We would like to think of the realm of the metaphysical as something lofty and celestial, but actually the realm of the metaphysical might not be such a pleasant place to be. Like in the empirical world, there might be cruelty in it, and it might be intransparent and opaque to itself, it might be a battleground of conflicting forces or even a warzone. It might actually be quite mindless (and therefore silent, because it is too stupid to speak and elaborate on itself). Enter the metaphysics of H. P. Lovecraft and of the Necronomicon (although I would not like to go that far, but this might only be due to my optimistic personality).

Understanding these possibilities at any rate elevates the human mind. And therein, art “is the true metaphysical activity”. Over the course of time Don Eddy shifted away from capturing the metaphysical via Volkswagens or industrial landscapes; he often paints triptychs that show unrelated yet somehow ethereal images of the sea, of the sky, of plants or of ancient architecture. Of course, the metaphysical perpection cannot be a perception of the “whole”. It might likewise be the perception of distinct units of the whole simultaneously, suggesting that unification between these distinct units will be done by the mind, or the metaphysical ether – out there as well as within you – that puts all of this together. Thank you, Don Eddy; thank you, Hyperrealists.

Die Skulptur steht in weniger hohen Ehren als Kunstform denn die Malerei. Die Metaphysik der Skulptur ist die einer bloßen Anwesenheit, Präsenz, Materialität, Existenz. Sie ist eine schweigende Metaphysik, sie gibt keine Antwort auf die Frage: Warum ist Seiendes, und nicht vielmehr Nichts? Sie zeigt nur: Es ist Seiendes (wenngleich auch das eine metaphysische Aussage ist).

Wisse denn, Schwester! Die Struktur des Seins, die Struktur der Welt ist: Ein Motiv erscheint vor/in einem Hintergrund. Das höchste Bewusstsein, das erleuchtete Bewusstsein, besteht darin, dass es ständig zwischen Motiv und Hintergrund switchen kann. Das ist die Tiefengestaffeltheit der Welt, man nimmt sie wahr als ein ständiges Flackern. Dieses ständige Flackern zwischen Motiv und Hintergrund hat man in der großen Malerei. Auch die Malerei schweigt letztendlich. Aber es ist ein beredtes Schweigen, während das Schweigen der Skulptur ein schweigendes Schweigen ist.

Bei der Skulptur hat man notgedrungenermaßen nur ein Motiv, aber keinen Hintergrund, keine Eingelassenheit des Motivs innerhalb eines Welt-Zusammenhangs. Die Metaphysik der Skulptur ist die der inneren Tiefengestaffeltheit, der inneren Ausdifferenzhiertheit und Dialektik des Motivs, bestenfalls. Natürlich kann die Welt da mit hineinspielen. Aber sie ist nicht konkret darüber auffangbar. Sie erscheint nur negativ, als Abdruck.

In ihrer abstrakten Struktur von Motiv und Hintergrund erscheint die Welt, beziehungsweise erscheint sie übersetzt in ihren metaphysischen Raum, gleichsam zweidimensional. Mit ihrer wuchernden, sinnlos sich ausbreitenden Dreidimensionalität versaut die Skulptur gleichsam den metaphysischen Raum. Sie gehört da nicht hin. Vielleicht sollte die Skulptur gar nicht ernst anfangen, echte Kunst sein zu wollen. Vielleicht sollte sie sich darauf beschränken, Gebrauchskunst zu sein.

Beim Gemälde symbolisiert die leere Leinwand die reine Imagination, über die im Schöpfungsakt was heraustritt, emporkommt. Damit scheint das Gemälde unmittelbar als eine geistige Schöpfung, als ein geistiges Ereignis. Die Skulptur entsteht aus der Bearbeitung von beliebigem Material (das normalerweise an und für sich ein Material für Gebrauchsgegenstände ist). Das Material ist rein physikalisch, nichts Metaphysisches und Ahnungsvolles wie die Leinwand. Seine Bearbeitung erscheint gleichsam wie ein roher, körperlicher Akt.

Dass das Gemälde als etwas vorwiegend „Geistiges“ erscheint und die Skulptur als etwas vorwiegend „Körperliches“, dünkt als etwas sehr Ungerechtes (da außerdem die Skulptur auf Skizzen beruht), aber es ist so, und dieser Eindruck, die Konnotation, lässt sich nicht ändern.

Dann aber scheint mir die Imaginationsleistung, die hinter einer tollen Skulptur steckt, eigentlich noch höher und anspruchsvoller, rätselhafter und schwerer zugänglich als die hinter einem tollen Gemälde. „Toll“ ist keine metaphysische Kategorie. Und zunächst einmal aber sollte Kunst toll sein. So wie die Kunst und die Skulpturen von Fritz Wotruba toll sind. So was könnte ich in einer Million Jahre nicht und ich würde da auch nicht draufkommen und ich weiß auch nicht, wie man sich das erarbeitet. Offenbar denkt jemand wie Fritz Wotruba in mehreren Dimensionen wie ich. Denke ich mir immer: „Ich sehe den Raum.“ Aber eigentlich sieht ja er den Raum.

Your DNA is galactic. You have come to Earth from a distant galaxy for a specific purpose. Your purpose is to help people to overcome their pain and grievances.

Shamanic oracle Denise from Curitiba to Marina Abramovic

Otto Muehl derided performance art as something bourgeois and insipid. Otto Muehl was a bad person, but as an artist he displayed considerable boldness and intensity, therein he has some credibility. The Viennese Actionists championed performance art themselves, yet with a definitive anti-bourgeois thrust. Performance art is something quite diverse and a territory with fuzzy borders. Forerunners of performance art have been the works of artists as diverse as Alan Karpow, John Cage, Joseph Beuys or the Fluxus movement. As an art form, the Happening was the direct forerunner of performance art, often these Happenings originally would take place only in the inner circles of the artists themselves. They were some sort of experimentation and stemmed out from ad hoc ideas and they already took place in the 1950s. In the 1960s and 1970s there came structural transformations within and around the art domain. Painting seemed to have come to an end and exhausted in its inner possibilities; at least it would become ever more difficult to be highly original and avant-gardist as a painter. The separation between the lofty sphere of art and the “mundane world”, between Kunst and Kitsch, between high art and popular art became blurred. The political entered the domain, notably also the “voices of the oppressed”, art became open to “gender and diversity”, a move that was also directed against the notion that there could be a “master narrative” that dominates art, as has been exercised by the various avant-garde movements before. Also “low art”, popular art, became more sophisticated at this time and legitimately reached into the domain of high art, notably as concerns popular music (and popular musicians like Laurie Anderson or Glenn Branca would also be performance artists). Theater and dance moved to new terrains that would become osmotic with performance art (and vice versa). Alongside with questions of gender, identity and the hitherto oppressed, also the body entered the “spiritual” domain of art and would become a means of expression as well as an entity under investigation. Within this potpourri performance art emerged and solidified. Performance art is diverse. It violates borders between disciplines, genders, social stratifications, ethnicities, between the private and the public sphere (with both becoming more and more a sphere of staunch political articulation), between the intimate and the exposed, between private and public persona, between spirit and the body. In such a way, performance art is truly experimental and questioning. It does not give answers and solutions, it throws up things. It unsettles and discomforts. It is, in a way, also articulation and expression in itself: it does not present the result of an artistic articulation but the process and performance of articulation (which does not rule out that performances come with clear and distinct messages, yet usually the messages are ambiguous or there are no messages at all – which means that performance art does what art should do: open up the space for imagination). Performance art may be enigmatic; and art may be (and should be to some degree) enigmatic. Performance art also often is transgressive. I use to say that art should strive for transcendence. I.e. that, through immersion in itself, imagination should become so purified that the Geist finally meets the Geist itself. Out of this comes the magic touch that manifests as great art. Yet in the 1960s and 1970s the natural “line of flight” was not transcendence, but transgression. In the end, transgression is something weaker and more reduced than transcendence. And so, also performance art is not the strongest form of art, or the high point of art, as it results. There is good performance art, but performance art also establishes a domain where stupidiy and incompetence may flourish. It lowers the barrier for that which is considered as legitimate artistic expression and now we have resulted in living in an age of the low hanging fruit for wannabe artistic expression. Of course nobody would want to miss performance art though. It has expanded our horizon and our understandings and our means of expression. Despite performance art having become some kind of a formula long ago, performance artists may not qualify as sellout artists. Immaterial art does not sell well, and the rich people hardly invest in immaterial art. However, there is the problem that in contemporary art, art or an artwork has become some kind of mere installation or intervention. You place something in the corner what should not be there or would not be expected there. This is then considered to be an artwork. That will attract attention, however it may make little sense apart from that. Therein, the artwork is threatened by degenerating into some kind of empty peculiarity. This is a development that lies along the trajectory that also includes performance art. And may easily manifest in performance art itself. Mediate on this.

Marina Abramovic with the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 2012

Marina Abramovic, the Grand Dame of performance art, has no bourgeois roots at all. She comes from communist Yugoslavia, and both her mother and her father were staunch partisans; her father even was close to Tito (although he would later fall out with him). Her upbringing was harsh, especially her mother was brutal to her, and she hated the dullness and uniformity of Yugoslavian socialism. Yet the physical pain she endured and the risks she exposed herself to in her performances may be related to the hardening and inurement she experienced in her early days. In the 1970s and 1980s she would cooperate with her partner Ulay. They would make performances together where they hit each other, screamed at each other or mistreated each other up to the point of exhaustion. In her solo performances of that time, Marina Abramovic inflicted pain on her body and exposed herself to dangerous situations. In Rhythm 0 she would give anyone permission to treat her and carry out things on her as the person would like. While noting happened for a long time, the situation gained momentum after a while and finally nearly escalated as someone threatened to shoot her. These people would later regretfully claim that they never wanted to do such things to her and cannot tell what happened to them: yet it was a lesson in social mimesis, and the provocation Abramovics´s silent and enduring self-exposure would cause on others. Abramovic´s performances would – tacitly or openly – usually include the audience, which also means that their results were open and unclear. Ulay and Marina would also come into contact with people from very different cultures and their spiritualities. Notably, they spent a long time among Australian Aborigines and embraced much of their culture. In her artistic career Marina Abramovic would come into contact and spend time with buddhist monks, indigenous people from South America, Sufis, and she would meet the Dalai Lama. She made performances inspired by these cultural exchanges and also in favour and on behalf of these groups, to raise awareness for their issues and grievances. As a true artist, Marina Abramovic is a spiritual person and wants to use spiritual tactics and knowledge to come to a state of clear consciousness. Her art is also about what art should be about, namely situating man in the wider world and how he is connected to the wider world. Her art is about the problem of pain and overcoming pain through compassion and sympathy. After years of preparation and a politics of blockade by the Chinese government, Marina Abramovic and Ulay made their ultimate performance in 1988, where they walked in the direction of each other from the opposing ends of the Chinese Wall. Originally, when they would meet in the middle, they intented to marry, instead they ritualised their final separation, as they have become estranged over the years. After the separation from Ulay, Marina Abramovic´s work would become more object-orientated. She would create “transitory objects” with which the audience can operate. Yet primarily she would continue to do performances that would become mixed with other media. Balkan Baroque was a performance about the Balkan war, for which she received the Golden Lion at the Biennale in Venice in 1997; House with the Ocean View was a huge performance where she lived, visible for everyone, in an open house in a museum and made her daily routines. She would finally become a world figure with her performance The Artist is Present at MoMa in 2010, where she endured sitting motionless in a chair in front of individuals from the audience each day for 8 hours over the course of 3 months (which is extremely demanding for the body and she received training from NASA specialists who train astronauts for missions in space extensively before). They then would gaze at each other. The important lesson to be taken is that Marina Abramovic seemed to experience that most people do not look into themselves, try to shun their interior from consciousness. This would then become apparent when they try to concentrate on another person who kind of serves as a mirror for themselves. This would make them uncomfortable. Although they may be based on very simple or seemingly nonsensial ideas, Marina Abramovic´s performances hit the nail – even more, they hit a nail where you haven´t noticed a nail before. They are effective. They actually demonstrate that The Artist is Present. That may be a quality in itself, and a quality that cannot be effectively demonstrated by other or more traditional art forms. It has been criticized that the boldness and immediacy of performance art, and its obvious shock effects, may indeed be effective and make an impression on the viewer, but that true art opens up space for reflection afterwards. Which is what performance art, and the art of Marina Abramovic, does rather not and has little to offer in those respects. And indeed, that´s a problem. However, it may not be a fatal problem as other qualities of the artwork take over and make sense. You may say that beauty or the sublime may be what should be expressed in art. But art may also express intensity, immediacy, coolness, boldness, presence, materiality. Also these are qualities in this world, and art may do right in trying to express these qualities per se. It needs to be noted that Marina Abramovic is not only a performance artist with a limited range, but that she is actually more comprehensive. Her images, videos, photographs like The Kitchen, The Current, Four Crosses or Nude with Skeleton are tasty and well-arranged. She has a sense for aesthetics. And, in the end, some of her work, either material or non-material, has iconic qualities. If you sum up all of this, her art makes quite a lot. Finally, art should engrave itself in the universe, leave a trace in memory and existence. Or, as they say, art should “make a difference”. That is what Marina Abramovic has achieved with her art. I personally like the most her performance where she made a confession to a donkey and that one performance where she has masturbated audibly in a den beneath the floor of a museum. The performance took several hours and she came 8 times. In 2024, at the age of 77, Marina Abramovic made a performance at Glastonbury music festival in England where she managed a huge audience to remain silent and in a spirit of medidation for seven minutes. That seems no mean achievement, and maybe it was what she called it herself afterwards: a miracle. She has a commanding personality, but in a cool way. She said that she needed all her life experience to become like this, of course. But either way, Marina Abramovic is identical to herself. She is very real. Finally, there is goodness and compassion, self-assuredness and bravey inside her, and she radiates these qualities. They establish her charisma. Some say, or suspect, that Marina Abramovic is a vain egomaniac (though, at least, a likeable one and one whose self-exposure and exhibitionism should be excused for the sake of the purpose). I have read her autobiography and I have seen some interviews with her, and she appears to be a pleasant and humble person. I can recommend her autobiography. Unfortunately Marina Abramovic did not come to Vienna and so I could not cheer her up with regards to her nose.

PRELUDE TO A NOTE ABOUT MARINA ABRAMOVIC July 27 2025

Naturally I was thinking that Damien Hirst must be an airhead, and that is what you seem to get again at the current exhibition in Vienna. In the olden days, art was an enterprise that involved great intellectual depth. Nowadays, it is mostly some smart superficiality. In autumn at least we shall have an exhibition celebrating Marina Abramovic. That´s why I am reading her autobiography right now. She seems to be a likeable person. In her autobiography she occasionally reveals that she feels embarrassed by her formidable nose. But that is how women usually are, unless maybe they have reached some state of ultimate, transcendent perfection in an aspect (or not even then…). I, by contrast, find her nose somehow cute. Maybe Marina Abramovic will come in person later this year. I will then tell her that her nose is cute and nothing to worry about. Most likely, she will flat out deny that. Because that´s how women usually are. I will then try to cheer her up, tell her that her nose is charismatic and therefore makes her more beautiful. To which she will most likely respond somehow like “Eek, no”, … and so on. This will then be my conversation with Marina Abramovic, a conversation between two of the most important living artists today.

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. 

For reasons ultimately unknown, women artists have been second-rate artists, at best, in the history of art so far. In the 20^th 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 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 20^th 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 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.