Page 43 - Studio International - September 1972

of opinion are about the degree and about the affiliations could achieve fresh poetic worth, are all the fashion as a kind of trust. The
immediacy, not so much in regard to population especially if men were to become better stunning impact so much sought today in art on
as to the aggravating factors. resigned to their role of human animals which we rather lazily like to lean, the
thoughtlessly evolved, driven on to death, restriction of statement to the non-eloquence of
sustained meanwhile by love, good feeling, by shock, marches with the impact our urban
the conviction of the value belonging not only environment best achieves as by the array, for
to the self but to its objects. We project on to instance, of filmy flashing lights that defies a
objects inner states and we take objects into finite space. I do not see a shock of the
ourselves together with the projections; we illimitable, of the extreme, as so strong a verve
introject. Inner and outer integration and in the future should the emphasis upon the
What is the likely meaning for the future of stability are interdependent. symbolic significance attached to measure,
art ? Over and above art, we are given at least Out of the quandaries to which I have containment, limitation, interpose and thereby
an aim, a simple aim: survival. A surge towards referred a new alignment on the aesthetic level reinforce the variety of interacting meanings
survival that in times of great danger, as in war, could emerge. We—I speak as if we were the gained from different objects set together. And
is apt to counter the surge towards death, might future—will have some thankfulness even for perhaps full-dress appearances may return in
produce heroic affirmation of the good, of the air, the purity of air—indeed we have it already—a art, newly meant. But this is not at all to suggest
value of life-giving processes and of brotherhood pride in an =poisonous sea though the power of that the milieu will cease to be powerfully
that can be summed as love. Even a little the sea would still appear limitless : for a restored technological even though the future were to
simplifying of the Western mode of life could world, where restoration should prove still belong to smaller communities than great cities :
relieve a load of vulgarity: by vulgarity I have possible, the world as it would be without undue nor do I suggest that I can visualize clearly that
first in mind needless, shining, obdurate interference in the balance that has governed measure in things to which I refer, in its
wrapping, all the stimuli, particularly plant and animal life, more clearly conceived combination with technological embrace, even
advertisement, of consumption as ideal. And it since the thought will be present that in in a world less at the mercy of the products of
would signify a brake, not on invention, but on modifying beyond a certain point we find we this embrace. My suggestions rely totally on the
the illimitable, as it seems, manufacture of destroy ourselves also. This is to take Nature, altered orientation in many spheres of which I
machine-made products : plastic milk bottles if rather than romantic aspects of Nature, as our have spoken, desperately needed in the struggle,
there is milk, but not endless plastic milk bottles. familiar. if it is to be successful, for survival. Maybe even
I believe that beyond a certain point such And so, whereas, if I am right, the present the journeys to the moon will prove to have
man-made proliferation of dead material, involvement in the creation of art objects with fixed our feet the more firmly on this various
unlike natural growth, is very frightening; that the haziest, or else with the most primitive and planet.
were it not for kindred fears, at least a few of our unramified, symbolic value must be linked to I have long thought there might be no
machines would have been developed—a the hollow echo from the urban scene, with the inevitable future for art, or, rather, for the
prototype of the steam engine was designed and impression of limitless non-resonance, the creation of first-order masterpieces : and at the
built in classical times—much earlier. We must future visualized here as the only possible same time, in compensation as it were, that
visualize a future, then, if there is to be a rich future wherein the human species will survive everybody becomes a bit of an artist, will
future, cleared of the sense of limitless plastic in a world fit for survival, could nourish an art attempt a mode of creativeness, an activity of
proliferation. Materials will have better worth, that, by conveying a temper of restraint aesthetic rather than utility value: sometimes as
better status, even the plastic milk bottle. The regarding both the material world and its a form of therapy. But now, in view of the
psychological danger from the machine has organisms, might rediscover richness in variety, issues to which this talk has attempted
always been the degradation of object-nature. rather than in the brutalities of abstraction or reference, I begin to hope that the diversity in
This is because our sense of the otherness, distillation which, while themselves native to relationship between mind and external object
uniqueness, self-sufficiency of objects outside the making of art, are not of course by from the angle of contemplation, this the
ourselves, the sine qua non of sanity, has not themselves, in isolation, necessarily the highest substance of art, will again achieve
been of easy attainment by any of us, and is embodiments of completeness. But I am not comprehensive contexts if—always this `if'—
always apt to be whittled or impugned in some denigrating forms of abstract art which I have much more than a handful of men in a polluted
respect or other, particularly of course in regard always greatly admired, nor the varieties of world robbed of metal, fossil fuel, fertility, shall
to people whom we tend to enter, control or Expressionism. I cannot make a comment on survive in circumstances infinitely better than
appropriate. Near the beginning of this lecture their probable future. I but weakly say that those. q
I suggested that in spite of threatened while it can approach an effect of cosmic
catastrophe the present challenge brings a contemplation, great generality, even at the [From a lecture first given at Camberwell School
feeling akin to relief. The limitations which will same time, often expresses some affiliation with of Art in March 1972.]
have to be recognized in the practical sphere the settlement of nerveless trance. Though we
would tend to mitigate a disproportion, viewed lack hope and belief, we are somewhat
from the contemplative side, with which we are mesmerized and stimulated by mechanical
still by no means at home. pressed button power, a wealth, a richness.
By a lessening—and that from necessity—of Such power may seem illimitable, able to take
rapacious attitudes at least to substance, our care of anything. Drugs, hallucination, lethargy
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