Page 39 - Studio International - September 1972

The future and art

Adrian Stokes

There is no art without reference to a current values, for once, have only a small part in what objects, his ready-mades ? There has been a
culture but also, I submit, there is no art without follows. great broadening of the possible objects for
cultural attachment that rules. To take a very About the word 'future' in my title. I would aesthetic contemplation at the sacrifice of
narrow and literal example : we know Byzantine find it natural if you on whom the immediate precise imagery, delineated symbolic content,
icons and mosaics, as well as so much else, future depends, dismissed any one of my age in favour of a presentation of the pre-existent,
were subject to religious pattern books which from this theme when the considerations are the actual. Yet at the same time there has been a
determined not only the attributes but the very aesthetic. I, too, am doubtful. But I'm certain tendency to eschew many contemplative
cast of looks appropriate for each apostle. that there is an urgent feeling we share; namely inducements in favour of a more active
Those precepts made the representations easy unease about, lack of belief in, the future; a very participation, in favour of action, change,
to read. But far more general than such rules terrible ingredient in our living to which we happening, though these, like the proliferation
and the beliefs they serve, though equally have become accustomed. A Londoner of manufactured goods, are expected to enwrap
tenacious, there are usually, in my belief, moreover—as I said I shall be referring often to its consumers, the artist and his spectators. I
composite images that often settle for striking the urban scene—I have experienced throughout suggest that the proliferation itself of
concrete mise-en-scènes, sometimes architectural, my life this unease, as may well have you. manufactured goods is epitomized by the
that tend to symbolize, even to epitomize, a Although I have admired the early modern encompassing reduplication of the ribboned
wider cultural condition: that, as well as the architecture especially, I have not thought it urban environment where we witness the still
development of one group of artists from the the herald of advancing civilization. As for the strange intertwining as in some of our art, the
preceding, as well as the amalgam with foreign Edwardian buildings in my childhood, I can intertwining of change, movement, activity with
styles, these unforgettable environments in a truly say I experienced from them the the non-resonant character of whittled objects
big-unit culture provide the arena for the shamelessness of pretence as if death were that seem to signify only themselves, a milieu
choice of contemporary forms projected by the smug; yet in the present—any reverberation with which in a hundred contrasting ways our art
individual artist. Our art has no pattern books, being better than none, even any pretension has sought, must seek, to get on terms, even by
no norms, no settled iconography whatsoever. that has been numbered—I too cling to some of dismantling what has been conceived as art for
But though he may appear to have complete what remains. There are theorists who now centuries in regard to the separation that used
liberty of conception I still believe it is consider the days of Megalopolis to be to be taken for granted of aesthetic
impossible for the artist to formulate or to numbered. One can tolerate most things that contemplation from the state of being up-and-
communicate in a contemporary manner appear finite. But meanwhile cities swell, new doing. Other artists, however, taking advantage
entirely outside a framework of stylistic roads are ploughed. The future will of course be of the reductiveness that rules our urban scene,
alternatives that are invented or have evolved unimaginably different: that in itself causes no either in terms of coloured marks or by the
in the shadow of just such concrete epitomes or anxiety. By the future I mean in this talk the materials themselves as well, supply the varied
embodiments, in our case very often concise future for our near descendants through whom textures that our streets almost wholly lack.
and single, namely the urban environment and we have that degree of immortality. In old age Very satisfying, very consoling this art can be,
its products. For it's my belief that all modern one thinks of it more and more and more as even on the smallest scale.
art, every modern movement from the time of there is less and less security that there will be a Another stress, not very old, was upon the
the Impressionists at least — I would like to prolonged future other than for a few bereft random occurrence and upon the perishable or
include Courbet — will eventually be seen men. passing, as if art were otherwise cruel to natural
figured in front of this one general emotive disorder, to the successive, to universal
background with which to accommodate or to transience. For me this means not only the
supplement, on which to bring influence to recognition of an irreversible numbness in the
bear, from which to react. This is a solid static aspect of our urban scene compared with
context that the diverse and contrary tendencies which any chance concatenation is freedom,
have in common; this is the one simple, though poetry, elysium, but disorder attributed to
non-circumscribed, factor in what we call ourselves, an anarchic potentiality to which
modern art. For the artist all current feeling Remember the artist who at great labour and systematic sanguine thoughts from the past do
and thinking, his own and the thinking of those expense covered, sought to preserve one might not apply. Yet we know far more than has been
who influence him, occurs in the view of these say at first sight, or perhaps also to negate known hitherto about the chaos, by no means
concrete surroundings which are taken to through his own omnipotent, monolithic power romantic, by no means random though it
impinge on the circumstances, and even to as in the swathing of a building's detail, a appears random, of the psyche. Maybe happy
point the path, of our culture. I'm sorry to stretch of Australian coast, rocks and cliffs, with enough, helped to confidence by much
admit that if there be truth in this belief it is as polythene. Is it, perhaps, in one part as a kind of convenience and pleasure unique to modern life,
much presumed as demonstrated by this memento of what has evoked deep response but we will still endure frustration, conflict,
lecture. I shall discuss a few aspects of modern is subject to misuse, that a handful of artists negative states : and so we would in any age; but
art from this angle; and so any justification of have mapped out pieces of earth themselves and these, I submit, are likely to find far stronger
my approach will depend on explanatory value called it art ? Do these men, in one part, isolate confirmation than do the positive feelings,
in a very restricted field. I must add — I hope a length of ground as such for aesthetic projected on to our present urban scene. To me
unnecessarily — that there are constant values in contemplation in a manner not entirely unlike it appears that its indeterminacy, its
art irrespective of particular culture. These Marcel Duchamp's choice of manufactured non-resonance akin to destructiveness—see
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