Page 26 - Studio International - November 1967

confused in his gratifications, is more distinguished. It was its reaction to the primness of the Victorian
Rather than the stylistic coefficients of decadence in period that made the fin-de-siècle, the period of Freud's
American art, it is the larger, more general currents of the great discoveries, such a graphic predecessor of this
American way of pleasure—as perceived and transformed development today. Extravagance and effeteness in the
by artists—that I want to examine. 1890s were side products of energies generated for their
own sakes; the Art Nouveau, which spread across in-
Theoretically, we are all dedicated to pleasure, or, as numerable sectors of society, was, for its part, merely the
Stendhal phrased it, every sensation which the mind registered and amplified pleasure taken in viewing the
would rather contemplate than not. And modern U.S. process of natural growth as one vast matrix of ornament.
society, still extremely concerned with a 'progressive But the articulation of playfulness today, vulgarian
view' of human history, is economically, commercially, rather than aristocratic, has materialized in a form which
and socially geared to engender that pleasure. It is an should not strike us as any more perverse : a dialogue with
aim that will not be camouflaged by calling the 'affluent' the commercial motifs which had only been surreptitiously
society the 'great' society. As a result, expectation of acknowledged earlier. In a sense, this is the nostalgia,
pleasure and gratification of said pleasure— domestic, often repeated in the past, of the élite intellectual or
sensuous, material—is accelerated, not least of all by the artist, pining for, and perhaps idealizing, the primitivism
whole credit instalment psychology, diner card, and and savagery—or at least the child-like spontaneity of
foundation grant syndromes of the business scene. Nor response—which is irredeemably beyond his grasp in the
can the vast and spectacular advances of scientific and world outside. To encompass the mass-cult style for
industrial technology be viewed as having any other over- reasons of personal delectation, a style which exists as the
all aim than the general and cheap accessibility of labour- most conspicuous example of contemporary waste of
saving and luxury goods. To resist this momentum is energy expended on the seemingly trivial, is to materialize
essentially to misconstrue, perhaps even to deny the a supreme form of playfulness. The aesthetic potential
dynamic of Western culture, which has physically and, which the Pop artists have found in this culture appears,
of course, psychically, influenced us all. We come to take in retrospect, to have been the most natural field in the
for granted the good living, shared by so many—even world for them to explore.
artists—that all class distinctions and eventually bases for In other words, we see an attempted rapprochement
stylistic prejudices tend to fuse into one hedonistic com- between an outer and inner human purpose, between
munity. It tends to make of us les hommes moyen sensuels. commercial ends and spiritual pleasure, which, in pro-
And yet, the processes which have brought about the portion as it grows more fused, becomes only more
expansion and the ever more efficient packaging and muddled, and probably falsified. The mass media, that
distribution of power, have required in themselves such is, cannot create, they can only reflect. Here, it is cer-
enormous sophistication and intellectual refinement, that tainly relevant to speak of the pernicious effect, not of art
among the educated, and the creative, pleasure loses publicity itself, but of the slurring of subtle qualities, and
its simplicity. Gratification becomes redefined as always gradients of meaning, which it masks. By endorsing the
more complex, fragmentary, and indirect than it had surface, or look, of new art, the public can con itself into
been previously. Above all, you postpone and rarify a complacence about its deeper challenges. In this sense,
that which may please, if only as a relief from the glut of then, there is no genuine primitivism today, but only a
instant joy, that coarse cajoling syrup called kitsch, bad faith, commercially inspired, on one hand, and rather
which inundates current living. In the end, this thinning fascinating epidemics of irony, on the other. And as for
and filtering of object and conceptual enjoyment takes spontaneity, the very fact that we have cults of enthu-
on the guise of the liberalization of the pleasurable. In siasm, computer dating, or 'happiness explosions',
the psychic area, this would mean marijuana and drugs, poignantly testifies to its loss.
which merge with therapy; in the sexual area, the I have mentioned the playfulness, the game like spirit of
mingling of sexual styles, and the appreciation of ambi- the contemporary sensibility. It would be reasonable to
guity in love; and in the aesthetic sphere, the equivocal suppose that the underlying aim was to recover that
embracing of sources in communications media and the liberation from constraint, that full-fledged participation
seeming mechanization of all handiwork. All these may in all the bodily joys which characterized childhood, and
be taken as essentially metaphorical in their value as which seemed to extend itself in a present without limit.
looseners of primitive gratification seeking, and even In many respects, this is the true charade content of the
more, of the erotic quotient in contemporary civilization. modern work of art. Additionally, only by playing, in the
It must also be accepted as correlation of the fact that the deepest sense, does the artist not merely free his faculties,
more liberal and open minded the attitude towards the but approach the reality of his own endeavour—as a
eliciting of desire—as, for example, in the halting and human experience. When Renoir's teacher, Gleyre, once
admirable attack on censorship of pornography—the less asked him: 'Young man, do you paint just to amuse
intense or durable the experience and the expression of yourself?' he replied: 'I wouldn't think of painting for
pleasure. We become more distant from that which any other reason.' This champion of pictorial health's
pleases, but the distance brings a new kind of pleasure. peculiar combination of simplicity and profundity could
The absence of repression ultimately lowers rather than not be more persuasive of the revelation of play.
raises the level of excitation. The procedure of coming to But one should not forget that this imperious self-
terms with these phenomena artistically is increasingly indulgence of Renoir, and really, any great artist since,
couched in terms of play and artifice. can also fall under the definition of the term decadent—in