Page 15 - Studio International - October1973

him beginning his own work — one of his very basic assumptions, posed in tremendously varied `modern' in art by revealing its most salient
best — on Tintoretto with the cherished word circumstances in his writings, are quite simple: characteristic: the open form, 'a form that
rien, nothing. He is Baudelaire, telling us as Nietzsche was right, God is dead. There are no destroys itself and starts all over again: it is
often as possible that the modern man, like further sources or solaces in Christian myths. reborn only to fall to pieces again and
Goya, has 'a love of the ungraspable, a feeling Man is in a position of no position, a fragment reconstruct itself again . . . In constant rotation,
for violent contrasts, for the blank horror of in a sea of Nothingness. No theory has been able in perpetual quest of its ultimate meaning
nature. . . .' He is Nietzsche declaring God dead to supply the hierarchical struts for the tower of without ever reaching it, the poem is a
and throwing us upon a nightmare of eternal the spirit. Art, which used to be the object of transformation mechanism . . . A form in search
repetition. He is Octavio Paz, brilliant criticism, is now criticism itself in the absence of of itself'.
beneficiary of Dostoyevsky's damned insight the world-view supplied formerly by religion. It is not difficult to transfer Paz's arguments
that 'civilization develops in man only a many- Not even Marxism could succeed in substituting to the broad fields of modern visual art. Along
sided sensitivity to sensations'. Above all this for Christianity. Only art, by transforming with Mallarmé and the symbolists, the
modern man is a relation as Paz so often tells us, itself into criticism, has managed to survive: impressionists stood for a conscious break with
in the complicated scheme of the universe. He is `Neither philosophy nor religion nor politics the past; the rebellion in terms of the fragment;
therefore deprived of a monumental image, for has been able to withstand the attack of science the dialectic (i.e. criticism) of real as against
how can a relation ever be defined except in a and technology. But art has borne up under the essence. In the broadest view, all modern art,
shifting configuration of fragments ? onslaught . . . Modern art is a passion, a whether poetry or painting, conforms to Paz's
No matter how ingenious the excessive critique, a cult . . . Dialectical materialism and vision of the age of criticism. Unfortunately,
pondering of the condition of being a modern the Nietzschean doctrine of the will to power however, the criticism of modernism in painting
man be, modern man ultimately sees himself, succeeded in bringing out a subversion of values and sculpture has narrowed fatally to the point
and above all, his works, in what Richard Gilman that both lightened our burden and tempered that we now have critics referring to 'modernism'
(Partisan Review, Summer, 1972) has called a our souls. But they have now lost their power of as though it were a stylistic category. In doing
set of clichés, 'a wearisome catalogue, perhaps, contagion. Both tendencies are essentially a this, the critic is able to historicize. That is to
but not yet dislodged: alienation, fragmentation, drive for more, but as this awesome energy say, he is able to treat works of art and
the continual erosion of traditions, change as a accelerates, its force decreases. . . Is there movements alike as documents, and documents
first principle, the sense of the world as a place anything left ? Art is what remains of religion: can always be classified (not to mention
of unprecedented dilemmas and unheard-of the dance above the abyss. Criticism is what falsified). Theory needs no vital works but only
enticements'. remains of dialectics : starting all over again'. itself to survive on, but art refuses theory after
Such cliches are indispensable. They are the The energy to start all over again never fails the fact as well as before, as history itself has
broth in which the bones simmer, the one Paz. He examines his modern self as it responds told us. Critics talk of Manet and Cezanne as if
impossible without the other. The question is: to works of art as though he himself were what their position were fixed in some linear
what's to be done with them ? (Breton would he says modern poetry is : an experimental progression. But look at Manet again: What did
say, eat them of course ! L'art sera mange ou process whereby the knowing subject is the he seek, the real or the essence ? It depends on
sera pas). Shall we subsume them in that object of knowledge. For this process to which day you look. Max Ernst mocked
hallowed category, modernism, and proceed to continue he must look everywhere. The only Monet's three asparagus. For him they
build ever more elegant theoretical super- certainty is his hunger for art. While he tells us represented outmoded realism. But those
structures ? Or shall we take ourselves to the of the grand lines, and makes the necessary three asparagus on some other day can be
theatres (market-places or temples, what does it theoretical abstractions, he is at the same time, seen as pure essences. They are evocations
matter) in which their living issue performs. at any moment, vulnerable to an experience that just as much as were his friend Mallarmé's
Purely rhetorical this question, since it is might contradict his theory. He never errs like fans. Are they images ? Things ? Or paint ?
obvious that if change is a first principle, all a pedant, but is errant like a poet. The All of them of course; but Ernst could not
superstructures must fall. simplicism of cause-and-effect logic (those afford to see them. He was the artist-critic as
All of this mulled discourse on modernism theories of modernism that tell of progressive Paz sees him, setting up the old, as the croupier
leads always to the province of criticism, for it is reductionism, for instance, and ignore the other calls the numbers, in order to declare a new. The
only criticism that reflects on itself. Art when half of the dialectic) does not work for him. On critic-critic, though, keeps trying to discern a
it reflects on itself is automatically criticism. the contrary, he acknowledges Baudelaire's pattern of attrition in which old is transformed
Whether it is Dostoyevksy's 'Notes from the insistence that there is no progress in art. much as the block of marble is transformed into
Underground' or Duchamp's Valise, it is, in Modernity and progress do, however, resemble a slender nymph. The whittling away he calls
the broadest sense, criticism. And if we speak in each other in one respect Paz says. They are modern art. He isolates 'form' in a defensive
the broadest sense, we must look for the both products of the view of time that is flight from the rampant confusions of alternating
broadest criticism of criticism, which can be rectilinear. But modernity, he speculates, is modern myths.
found in the alert mind of the Mexican poet, waning as progress itself is increasingly It is still the modern man who produces
Octavio Paz. His recently published essays, criticized (and this before the wave of modern art, and he is the heir, still today, of the
`Alternating Current' (New York: Viking, 1973) ecological propaganda). The circular time he nineteenth-century paradoxes and twentieth-
abound with insights derived from visits to the experienced in his long studies of Eastern art century cliches. There can be no 'formal'
works of modern art. Poet he is and therefore has invaded his consciousness and he dreams of history which does not account for the effort to
constrained to speak first from his experience. a new time, not based on linear succession but break and open form the minute it coalesces.
As a poet he experiences works of art with little `on the idea of combination; the conjunction, Such an accounting cannot be made on the
prejudice, seeking in them the meanings the the diffusion, the reunion of languages, spaces narrow columns of art historical ledgers, but
critic in him craves. The difference between him and times . . . An art of conjugation'. One only in the world or in the works in which art
and most other critics though is that he wanders suspects we are already there. transpires. The metamorphosis of three
everywhere freely in ever widening circles that Paz's most distinctive definition of modernity asparagus from idea into thing and image into
take in all times, all places, but always encompass is offered in his profound studies of the work paint is too vital an event to leave in the
the modern man; himself He looks at the great of Mallarmé already broached in his last book hands of the art historian, just as the throw
myths sustaining the modern man with a of essays, 'Signs in Rotation'. Mallarmé, he of the dice is too important to leave to the
benignant regard which doesn't fail, tells us in numerous allusions, invented the literary critics. What is open in both is
nevertheless, to discern their dissolution. His critical poem. That is to say, he incarnated the essentially open. q
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