The prophets of the end of the arts (Hegel was their most
convincing, but most misunderstood, representative) were so
confused by changes in the arts that, instead of approaching the
dynamics of the process, they concentrated on the logical
possibility that artistic practice is self-devouring and
self-destructive. The initial end-of-the-arts prophecies were
delivered during a time of relatively mild change in the status
of the aesthetic appropriation of reality. Recent prophecies
occurred in a very different context. It was only after World
War I that aesthetic experiences really difficult to connect and
integrate in an accepted explanation changed our notion and
expectations of art. With the experience of disposable language,
which the Dadaist movement submitted to a community already
skeptical of language, came the experience of disposable art.
While literacy supplied a framework for (almost) consistent
representations of values and norms, human practice at the
border between literacy and a-literacy introduced and fostered
inconsistency, believed to be the last resort of individual
freedom. Eclecticism and consumption joined in this experience,
since mixing without system or justification of any kind is like
stating that everything is worth whatever people make of it, and
therefore they want to have it. Re-evaluation of available art,
good or bad, aesthetically relevant or kitsch, significant or
insignificant, is part of this change. Once re-evaluation
started, the processes of artmaking and aesthetic appropriation
grew relatively disconnected. Where language, through literacy as
a generalized medium of interaction, maintained cultural
distinctions, such as the ones embodied in our notions of
perspective, resemblance, and narration, the new art experience
introduced distinctions at the natural level, such as instinct,
energy, choice, and change. For as long as literacy maintained
control and integration, viewers, irritated by conventions
foreign to them, physically attacked works (such as
Impressionist paintings) resulting from artistic practices
different from those congruent to the practice of language and
to the associated expectations of seeing.
Art under the scrutiny of literacy is always model driven. Once
the necessity of literacy as the only integrating mechanism was
challenged by the need to maintain levels of efficiency for
which language is not well equipped, new forms of artistic
appropriation of reality and a new notion of reality itself
became possible. Model was replaced by iconoclasm. Walter
Benjamin captured some of these changes in the formula of "art
in the age of its mechanical reproduction." The end of the aura,
as Benjamin has it, is actually the aura's shift from the
artifact to the process and the artist. It corresponds not to
the end of art's uniqueness, but to the artist's determination to
get rid of all restrictions (of subject matter, material,
technique) and to ascertain artistic freedom as the goal of
artistic experience. But there are yet more possibilities for the
emancipation of artists and their work.
As we enter the age of electronic reproduction, massive
communication that supports interactive multimedia, and
information integration through networks (adapted for pipelining
data and all kinds of images), we encounter such possibilities.
We are also subjected to new experiences-for instance,
simultaneous transmission of art and interpretation, moreover
the possibility to contribute our own interpretation, to become
co-makers of whatever is presented to us through the very
malleable digital media. Technology and change of aesthetic
goals affect the scale of artistic experience, as well as the
relation between artists and the world. Projects such as Walter
de Maria's Lightening Field and Christo's Umbrella project
(extended over California and Japan) are examples of both the
change of scale and of new interpretation processes. They are
also vivid proof that globality permeates art at each level. So
does the sense of rapid change, the acknowledgment and fear of
perishability, and the open-endedness of the practical
experience of making art. I doubt that anyone could have captured
this sense as well as the Web site on which millions of viewers
could experience the wrapping and unwrapping of the Reichstag in
Berlin. Christo and Jeanne-Claude might remain the authors of
record, but the event grew beyond the notion of authorship.
The artistic experience of the civilization of illiteracy is also
characterized by impatience and autarchy. Things happen fast and
relatively independent from one another. Artistic experiment
always embodied characteristics of the practical experience of
human self-constitution. From petroglyphic expression to the art
of our age, this happens again and again, obviously in
context-dependent forms. The Dutch and Flemish Baroque artists
celebrated results of industriousness through mythological
themes. Before that, religion dominated up to and through the
Renaissance. In the context of African, Asian, and South
American art, the forms were different, but the pragmatic stamp
is faultlessly evident. No wonder that in the settled age of
literacy, art had a structure similar to that of the practical
experience of literate language, regardless of the richness of
its forms. It even called for experimental settings reminiscent
of industry, or of the university context, as we know from art
history. And it was sanctioned on the same pragmatic criteria as
any other literate experiment: success (it was useful), or
failure (it was discarded). Accordingly, it implied sequential
development and a rather settled succession of operations. As
artistic experimentation took place in line with all other
experiments characteristic of the pragmatic context of literacy,
it even resulted in an industrial model based on modularity,
which the Bauhaus enthusiastically promoted. A number of shops
produced thousands of ready-made artistic objects with a clear
goal in mind: value through usefulness, function over form,
functionality as aesthetics at work. Artistic practice and
appropriation were coordinated through the still literate
language of the market.
Art in the civilization of illiteracy is less a matter of
invention and discovery, as it was in the civilization of
literacy, and more one of selection, framing, and endless
variation. Since the end of the last century, artists started
breaking away from some of the characteristics implicit in the
literate experience, such as hierarchy, centralism, and
nationalism. This is not a time for rules and laws, unless they
are taken from the books of the past, relativized and integrated
in the tools needed in artistic practice, made into underlying
principles. Appropriation is not of the object, but of the
method, process, and context. The tools of this civilization are
endowed with the literacy required for certain partial
experiences. Artists, instead of acquiring skills, are trained to
master such tools. In his series of ready-mades, Marcel Duchamp
anticipated much more than a style. He anticipated a new kind of
artistic practice and a different interrelation among the
individuals involved in producing-literally selecting from the
infinite repertory of ready- mades and framing-and the
individuals who appropriate the artifact for whatever reason
(aesthetic satisfaction, status, investment, irrational drive to
collect).
Today, artists are more dependent on others involved in the
pragmatic framework of the time. This dependency is the result
of the more integrated nature of human effort. Everything that
is eventually built into the work, regardless of whether this
work is an object, an action, or a process, results from other
human practical experiences. The time of the artist's inventing
his own pigments, making his own canvasses and frames, that is,
the time of the artist's integral ownership and quasi-
independence, was already over with the advent of industrial
production. In the context of mediation and task distribution,
new levels of dependencies are established and reflected in the
work. Video art, photography, film, computer-based installations,
and much of the computer music, interactive multimedia, and
virtual art experiences are examples of such dependencies.
Simultaneously they are examples of the new forms of conflict
and tension that mark the artistic experience. Artistic freedom
and self- determination are only apparent. The limits of the many
elements involved in an artistic experience affect choice and
artistic integrity. Free choice, a romantic notion, is a
delusion under these new circumstances. There is no censorship on
the Internet, but that does not make the medium totally free.
The forms of integration in the guise of new science and
technology are probably less troublesome than integration
through language. They are, however, much more constricting and
restrictive because they derive from elements over which the
artist has little, if any, control. The growth of non-verbal
modes of human expression, communication, and interaction
introduces elements of mediation. These can be seen as
intermediaries, such as images to be integrated, sounds,
political actions (a sit-in is the best known example) that are
involved in the practical experience of art in all its phases.
Formulation of aesthetic goals, in the form of video
improvisations, diagrams, multimedia installations,
computer-generated simulations, interpretation of an artwork
(animation of a painting or sculpture, for example), and
processes of meaning realization and valuation (represented by
market transactions, insurance estimates, political relevance,
ideological tendency, cultural significance) use mediating
elements. None of Christo's elaborate and very comprehensive
projects could have been carried through without such means.
Keijo Yamamoto's widely celebrated virtual performance could not
come into being without an understanding of all that it takes to
establish a Worldwide Network Art.
Art, as a human experience, emphasizes its own transitory nature
and becomes less permanent than in previous stages of artistic
practice, but far more pervasive. Still, to qualify this process
as mere democratization of the arts would be misleading. That
supermarkets are full of meat, oranges, cheese, and all kinds of
graphic signs should not be interpreted as the democratization
of meat, oranges, cheese, or graphic signs. The majority of
artists still strive for recognition. To the extent that their
own recognition as different means that there are people who do
not qualify for the same recognition and reward, there is no
equality in the realm of art. On the other hand, the pressures of
leveling and the iconoclastic component of artistic experience
reduce the passion that drove artists in the past, or at least
changes the focus of this passion. Although the artistic process
has changed in line with other changes in the systematic domain
of human experience in general, it still resists doing away with
the terms for artistic recognition. The uncertainty (including
that of recognition, but not limited to it) projected in the
work qualifies it as an expression of individualism. The
heuristic attempt to establish new patterns of human interaction
through art reflects the uncertainty. To own art that is stored
in units of information and in invisible processing instructions
means something totally different from being in possession of
unique artifacts embodied in matter, regardless of how much they
are affected by the passing of time.
The recurrent phylogenetic and phylocultural structure, on which
the artist-public interaction was built in the pragmatic
framework fostering literacy, is questioned from within artistic
practice. Art is only indirectly affected by the new scale of
humankind, as it tries to acknowledge this scale. But the
efficiency that this scale requires is reflected in the means
available to support experiences of human self-constitution as
artist. Related to scale are the notions of survival and well
being. People do not need art to survive, and the majority of
people on Earth are living proof of this assertion. But in a
broader sense, life that does not have an artistic dimension is
not human. That is what we have learned or what we want to
believe.
To express oneself in forms involving an artistic element is part
of self- constitution as a human being, distinct from the rest of
the natural realm. Moreover, to have access to the richness of
other expressive forms-rhythms, colors, shapes, movements,
metaphors, sounds, textures-is to reascertain a sense of
belonging. In this vein, the right to affluence implicit in the
civilization of illiteracy extends well into the domain of the
aesthetic. New artistic structures and means are continuously
submitted and consumed. Some end up in oblivion; others suggest
dynamic patterns. Freed from the constraints of a dominant
literacy, artistic practice is becoming more and more like any
other form of human experience, emancipated from the obsession of
universality and eternity (embodied in museums and art
collections), from centralism (expressed in such elements as the
vanishing point, the tonal center of music, the architectural
keystone). True, a great deal of narcissism has come to the
forefront. And there is a tendency to break rules for the sake
of breaking them, and to make the act of breaking the rule the
object of artistic interest. In transcending old media
boundaries, production and appropriation come closer together.
The person making the artwork already integrates the
appropriation in the making. Thus a complicity beyond and above
language is established in defiance of time, space, and the
universal. Nevertheless, artists still want to be eternal!
Art establishes itself on a plurality of levels of interaction.
This is its main characteristic, since the cultural level
supported by literacy is breaking the bonds of a generic,
pervasive literacy. Several specialized languages mediate at
various levels. The language of art history addresses
professionals at one level, and laymen at another, through an
array of journals and magazines. Art theory speaks to experts
and, in a different tone, to neophytes who themselves will judge
or produce artworks. The language of materials and techniques
delves into particulars beyond oil, canvas, melody, beat, and
rhythm that a generally literate onlooker or listener would not
readily comprehend.
The art of the civilization of illiteracy partly reprocesses
previous artistic experience. By no accident, the entire modern
movement looked back at ancient art forms and exotic art and
appropriated their themes and structural components. In this
experience, cultural conventions expressed through literacy (such
as the recurrent linear perspective, illusory space, or color
symbolism) are of secondary import. The goal is to account for
the tension between motives (the magical, the sacred, or the
mythic), the realistic image, and abstract extensions. The
experience, which language inadequately reported, but could not
substitute, is the subject of artistic investigation. African
and Chinese masks, Russian icons, Mayan artifacts, Arabic
decorative motifs, and Japanese syllabaries are invoked with the
intention of arousing awareness of their specific pragmatic
context, which in turn will influence new artistic practical
experiences. This is art after art. Evidently, Russian
avant-garde, French cubism, American conceptualism, and all the
other isms cannot be seen as ordinary extensions to experiences
alien to tradition, or as attempts to loosen the ties between art
and literacy in conscious preparation for relative emancipation
from language. This phase has its own, new, recurring
interactions. The post-modern is probably the closest we have
come to the expression of awareness and values about art in art,
a generic hall of mirrors.
Artistic practice led to a change in the structure of the domain:
art assumes a self-referential function and submits the results
to the public at large (literate or not). To look at post-modern
art and architecture as only illustrative of cultural quotes, and
possible self-irony, would mean to miss the nature of the
experience projected in making the new artifacts. It is an
undoing of the past in order to achieve a new freedom (from
norm, ideal, value, morality, even aesthetics). The concept of
art, resulting from the theoretic practice focused on
accumulated artistic experience in its broadest sense, is
subjected to change. Artifacts resulting from the practical
experience of artists constitute a domain congruent to the
aesthetic dimension of human interaction in the social
environment. This art is illiterate in the sense that it refuses
previous norms and values, comments upon them from within, and
projects a very individual language, with many ad hoc rules, and
a vocabulary in continuous change. Think about how, in the
post-modern, the condition and function of drawing change.
Drawing no longer serves as an underlying element of painting,
architecture, or sculpture. Rather, drawing ascertains its own
aesthetic condition. In a broader sense, it is as though art
continuously generates its definition and redefinition, and
allows those involved in artistic practice to constitute
themselves as entities of change more than as manufacturers of
aesthetically relevant objects. In a similar way, harmony is re-
evaluated in the experience of music.
The specializations within artistic practice (e.g., drawing,
harmony, composition) correspond to an incredible
diversification of skills and techniques, to the creation and
adoption of new tools (digital devices included), and awareness
of the market. Those who know the language of an artifact, or of
a series of relatively similar artifacts, are not necessarily
those who will appropriate and interpret the artifact. In this
age, aesthetic expression becomes an issue of information
processing resulting from the systematic deconstruction of the
aesthetic practice of the age dominated by literacy. Images and
sounds are derived from various experiences (photographic,
mechanical, electronic). Spontaneity is complemented by
elaboration. Previous stylistic characteristics- spontaneity is
only the most evident-are reified and framed in new settings
together with the interpretation. They are also reified in
artistic expression as the gesture of making the work and the
act of submitting it to the public with the aim of pleasing,
provoking, criticizing, ridiculing, confounding, challenging,
uplifting, or degrading (intentionally or not).
Post-modern artistic practice results from the display of broken
conventions and rules, or of disparate and sometimes
antagonistic characteristics. Suffice it to point out how the
private (the personal side of art, layout strategies, art of
proportions, drawing, symbolism, harmony, and musical or
architectural composition) becomes public. Real Life, an MTV
series, is the personal drama of five young people trying to make
it in New York City. The script was their day-to-day existence,
the attempt to harmonize their conflicting lifestyles in the
elegant loft that MTV provided. When the director fell in love
with one of the characters, he was brought in front of the
camera's merciless eye. Likewise, the artist-painter, composer,
sculptor, dancer, or film director-submits the secrets of his
experience to the viewer, the listener, and the spectator. The
artifact comes to the market delivered with its self-criticism,
even with a time bomb set for the hour after which the work has
become valueless. The making of art made public is at the same
time its unmaking.
Appropriation, one of the preferred methods of the art
experience, is based on a notion of aesthetic or cultural
complicity. The illiterate public accepts a game of allusions.
The alluded must be present in the work, because in the absence
of a unifying literacy, there is no shared background one can
count on. Insinuations, innuendo, and provocation are practiced
parallel to the quote around which the work establishes its own
identity.
Art is infinitely fragmented today. No direction dominates, or at
least no longer than the 15 minutes of fame that Warhol
prophesied. There is a real sense of artistic glut and a feeling
of ethical confusion: Is anything authentic? The public is lured
into the work, sometimes in ridiculous forms (a painting with
live characters touching the viewers, pinching them, reaching
for pocketbooks, or spitting chewing gum); other times in naive
ways (through mirrors, interactive dialogue on computer screens,
live installations in a zoo, live keyboards in a music hall).
Art is delivered unfinished, as a point of entry, and as an open
challenge to change. To copyright openness and sign it is as
absurd, or sublime, as delivering beautiful empty bars of music
to serve as a score for symphonic interpretation or a multimedia
event.