Page 40 - Studio International - September 1972

what fine wild use the Futurists especially made Before long Marx's concept 'alienation' is born. feel that the general timbre of the urban
of it—can itself be interpreted as its chief echo— Though we visualize betterment, and indeed its environment has not been willed; in which,
and art of course is the manipulation of echo—in achievement in our time, perfect conditions, the from the contemplative angle, no one is truly at
spite of the greater variety that stems from this Utopias, these are altogether out of season, as home. Our milieu is all by-product. At the
environment, the enlarged choice of experiences are the hopes of heaven, once the firm refuge same time, custom, legend, religion, much of
available. So an appeal to the random may attest that Utopia replaced. Even in Buddhist what are called the cultural roots, have
a negative identification with our urban cosmogony, so much more pessimistic than crumbled, muCh of the under-pinning, in
mise-en-scène created by the ordering of man. those of the West, there is law and perpetuity of short, of any culture as that word is used by
This aspect, if it is an aspect of the cultivation of happening. In these matters most of us who are anthropologists. So, unless we have adopted a
the random, interests me more than the neither politicos nor mystics are disorientated political religion, those of us in towns especially
sometimes concomitant doctrine of a hidden or entirely : in these matters we live neither in the enjoy small common culture of positive effect
mystical order buried there. Though the past nor in the present nor in the future. other than as vogues expressing corporate life;
so-called 'opting out' of the hippy may prove, in But to this state of suspension—it is my chief that is, mostly in matters of its surface alone.
spite of schizoid connection, to have been the point—there has now accrued a limiting factor, Art, of course, must reflect cultural position if
first sign that our species may survive the the barrier of catastrophe that in virtue of so only because consensus is assimilated by art
present impasse, I consider reactionary the definite a challenge brings a feeling akin to with integrative activities of the artist's psyche.
perhaps inevitable mysticism that accompanies. relief. Apart from atomic warfare, the first The witness to some degree of sanity or of
By the way, those of us who persevere in horror to be widely recognized was the dilemma revolt is sought from surroundings real or
representing appearances are, by this now from over-population, soon joined by the imagined. The artist is the furniture removal
prosaic limitation, opters-out also of a different pollution threat, and then we encounter the first man of great ambition, converting vague objects
kind, if we work less with a false sense of a dilemma hugely enlarged by the threat of the from the dark into chair and dresser laid on the
continuing past, more in reaction to a present imminent depleting of natural riches that are street, insisting upon neighbourhood
whose actuality is estimated fully. Achievement unlikely in most instances to be permanently communion, the inner with the outer. In each
is likely to be modest for a time, it seems to me. replaced by substitute endeavours including, sphere, however, some co-ordination must be
Here, in the West, where we are surrounded one is told by some scientists, the harnessing of apparent for this feat, a clue to their
by human triumph in means of communication, atomic or the sun's energies. The species correspondence. In regard to the outer sphere,
in possibilities of health and comfort, the news appears endangered by processes that seem whether viewed in terms of urban panorama or
is always bad. I do not refer to the fact that only nearer inevitable than the danger of atomic of culture, the co-ordinating factors are not
disaster makes perfect news at any time nor to warfare with which we have lived for some propitious.
the endemic kind of bad news, much of it time, the first global threat—still with us—from Now, without the many, or without many of
arising from industrial success; unemployment, the side of man, a threat not only to the present the constrictions placed upon him by his
say, largely the result of what used to be called but to the accumulation of the past and to the culture in the past, the artist has for a hundred
automation; not even difficulties, risks, the hopes of the future. I am sorry to rehearse years more specifically, more openly, projected
outcome of occasional pollution. We are more matters equally well known or better known to his own mind and emotion in the terms of outer
widely in the stranglehold of a success deeply yourselves. I do so because, in a rather shaky forms. I think we are bound to say that as one
dangerous, of a failure due not only to manner though it will be, I want to make some result we better understand the character of art;
difficulties easily paralleled with those of the guesses at the psychological effect, and therefore and of course we know far more about the
past—there has always been depletion of soil about art. Moreover one needs constantly to be psyche; but that none of this success, this
and other resources of a particular area; there reminded. It is bad to entertain these problems, knowledge, has made of living or of art a fuller
have always been painful economic shifts—but worse to ignore them. Now that they have been achievement.
danger now from the point of view of the future registered I think there is urgent need that they We miss, particularly from art, modes for
of the entire human race. It is the more should influence, indeed determine, many our envelopment in wide connectiveness as well
remarkable since in rich Western countries attitudes over an area wider than is apparent at as in matters elemental. Whereas it was once the
perennial miseries, disease, slum, shanty town, the moment. concern of artists to organize Nature for the
starvation, though much remain have been picture of Nature, there is today the tendency to
reduced considerably, have waned because of employ Nature not only for expressionism but
science and technology as well as of political also, as we have seen, by a degree of concrete
pressure. Yet dreams are abandoned that were treatment whereby to project a symbolic value.
common some decades ago. Without these Even so, symbolic evocation of any kind seems
hopes for the future our crippled culture is less effective now to some who are unsure of
naked; and it is sad to realize that the period of Technological advance has caused these meaning beyond the lean actuality of the object
fervent hope was during the last two hundred problems that in regard to their cosmic scale we that might support it: and since a varied
years, dating exactly from the time that feel to be unfair, a heartlessness neither willed connectiveness involves doubts rather than
industrial development begat mass misery on a by man nor promoted by the untouched assurance, many of us long to be enveloped,
larger scale in our country, began to uproot not malignity of Nature. Thus they may seem even brow-beaten, carried away, by a mere
only the traditional occupations but where gratuitous in their emotional demand. impression of elemental actuality; of pure or
people congregated, the face of the earth. Similarly, for the aesthetic sphere, we may well abstracted actuality.
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