Page 25 - Studio International - March 1973
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painting has one particular 'outside' : China.   Suprematism gives back to colour its signifying   affirmed as principle, origin, reserve, reservoir
          China, for both contemporary reasons (the   function. The traditional chromatic function   to which corresponds a telos (finality). (In the
          Chinese revolution and the great proletarian   was to colour in, to fill in shapes. These shapes   course of this analysis and demolition we use
          cultural revolution) and ancient ones (the old   were themselves installed within pictorial   the concept of logocentrism as Jacques Derrida
          Chinese dialectical-materialist philosophy and   production and formed a compact and finished   establishes it in De la Grammatologie, pp. II/12;
          the ideographic writing-system) can reveal a lot   geometry (of a Euclidian kind), blocking the   we also draw on the writings of Marcelin
          for the theory and the practice of painting.   infinity of combinations that this chromatic   Pleynet in Art International). This system hardly
          This confrontation forces provincial Western   code produces.                        permits the apprehension of simultaneities, nor
          ethnocentrism to measure itself against its   Third comment. Dadaism and the New     the synchronic cross-section of the 'structure of
          `hidden side', which is nonetheless working   Realism: disappearance of the format and   organization of concepts in the totality of thought
          on the West from within, on the international   the canvas/stretcher coupling. But this   in the system' (Althusser, Lire le Capital, vol. 1,
         scene of a history made by landmarks.      disappearance is not thought out at all and ends   p. 83), thereby repressing dialectical materialism
          5. The articulation of these three last points :   in a redoubling of the ideological effect: plinths   as a technique for such approaches. In the
          Experimental practice                     and empiricist staging succeed from the    logocentric system, meaning pre-exists the act
          Linguistics, semiotics                    theatricality of the Renaissance, imposing a kind   and one can understand how painting has
          Chinese thought and writing               of reading which is ultimately classical.   attached itself — through theories of imitation
         with Marxism-Leninism                        Nonetheless these two 'avant gardes', as an   and representation — to a deciphering of this
          Psychoanalysis                            activity of rejection, posed the problem of   meaning in the world, and to a submitting of its
          The thought of Mao Tse-Tung               ideological elements contained within the   `signifying arsenal' to a reality that is considered
         should allow us to produce a certain number of   pictorial field. But for want of a coherent   to be sovereign truth. Through criticism,
          concepts constituting the science of painting, a   theoretical platform they were fated to become   rejections, rupture related to other fields
          new practice of painting, and to produce   polemical and aesthetic games.            (political: the rupture of 1871, the Commune,
          weapons for the struggle against idealism and its   Recuperation                     Cezanne), painting succeeds in restoring
          corollaries, State monopoly capitalism and   Ideological recuperation develops according to   productivity to the signifying function.
          imperialism.                              the laws of narrative and invites us to make an   The economy of idealist thought is not by any
            To change the bases of painting is not to   inventory of acquired cultural facts according to   means halted but finds itself in a position of
          change the world, but is contributing to the   a linear, non-dialectical scheme (art history).   repetition, of enclosure if not of ending.
          world's changing its basis. Peinture: Cahiers   This is a history computed as for book-keeping.   The symptoms of this enclosure are
          Theoriques will contribute.               (Its laws will be those of accounting' —   manifested in the prodigious accumulation of
                                                    J.-L. Schefer in Tel Quel no. 41 'Notes on   `works' of art (this accumulation corresponding
          (The following is an extract from an article   representative systems').             to the crises of overproduction that
          in the same number `Towards a programme of   Moreover, the general mechanism of      characterize the capitalist system), or in that
          pictorial theory' by Louis Cane and       recuperation presents the object of knowledge   permanent novelty of an avant garde
          Daniel Dezeuze.)                          (that painting is) as a real object (an object of   condemned to chew the cud of its own (idealist)
                                                    exchange, a possession like furniture) and this is   problematics.
          Critical introduction concerned with the   where the question of sale arises.          The 'epistemological ruptures' produced by
         words School, Avant Garde, Recuperation,   Sale                                       the unprecedented encircling of the human
         Sale                                       This question can only be discussed if we   sciences by the objective sciences signal the
          School                                    restore its level (the economic level) in relation   emergence of historical materialism as the
         The word 'school' in art is a creation of   to the specificity of the ideological level where   enclosing of empirical practices, as the science
          criticism in the service of the dominant ideology.   pictorial practice inserts itself. The explanation   of these ideologies and/or as a science to be
          But the novelty that a school contains — or is   of sale prices has the function of making clear   constituted. Many are the illusions of
          deemed to contain — is often merely the   the contradictions of the system, outside any   scientificity in the domain of painting.
          multiplication under different aspects of the   culpabilism (unhappy conscience) and outside   Technological art, wanting to give itself the
          same idealist scheme repeating itself inside its   any economism (mechanistic attitude). Thus if   status of a science, simulates a rupture that it
          enclosure . . . Art criticism calls this   we want to analyse systematically the economic   cannot in fact assume, for — in the course of
          mechanism a 'school' and so maintains its   network underlying pictorial production we   radically reducing the dialectics of history into a
          aesthetic, historical and often financial control   must couple this activity with the actual   dialectic generative of successive modes of
          over it. So it is outside this nomenclature and   exhibiting of this pictorial production . . .   production and still more of different techniques
          outside the word 'school' that the facts of                                          of production (cf. McLuhan) — it becomes itself
          pictorial production must be investigated; these   Towards a programme of pictorial theory   pure technicity and a closed area of
         facts of production allow us to approach the   One of the consequences of traditional artistic   technological discourse.
         specific object, 'painting', as object ofknowledge.   language is the concealment of the object of   If a theoretical activity can articulate itself
          Avant Garde                               knowledge, 'painting', behind aesthetico-  only through a complete break marking the
          Three comments on the avant garde by way of   spiritual phraseology moving within the closed   mutation of a pre-scientific activity into a
         example.                                   circle of an ideology. The elaboration of a   scientific theory/practice, this qualitative leap
           First comment. Cezanne exhibits with the   materialist and dialectical theory asks for the   can be achieved only by a return to traditional
         impressionists for the last time in 1877. He is   demolition and analysis in the object of the   pictorial activities. By which means, these
         about to systematically demolish scenic space as   whole ideology of the political and economic   activities can if necessary give account of the
         introduced by perspective. Hence the       system in force, which, underlying the texture   nature of the theoretical formations of their
          disappearance of projection in depth, of the   of culture, has the effect of denaturing the object   history, and of their specific conceptual
          theatrical representation of the 'ego' and a   `picture' in the historic functioning of its   condition/constitution through that history.
         certain 'expressive' effect. Beginnings of a   definition (the object 'picture' apprehended as a   Idealism tends to bury this history in art history,
          restitution of surface effects (flattening,   real object, and not as an object of knowledge).   in circuits of cultural distribution, or in the
         fragmentation).                                                                       attitudes of an anti-art which rejects all history
           Second comment. The Russian avant garde    Logocentrism characterizes the system of   and leads to a 'no place' whose void is
         (Suprematism and Rayonnism, 1913-1917).    western culture: logos and meaning are therein    immediately filled by the dominant ideology. q

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