ON PURE ART AND GOATS

In my opinion the high point of the Abstract Expressionist movement was the moment that Philip Guston said to Willem de Kooning “We know that this talk about pure art is a lie- I’m going back to figurative.”

Pure Art! How fortunate we were, after thousands, perhaps millions, of years of producing art- since before we left the cave, in fact- to finally, somewhere around 1940, discover “Pure Art.”

I fully realize that the abstract movements of the mid-20th century represented the culmination of many developments of the Modern Art era. However, in my opinion, it is foolish to tag any essentially academic development as being “pure.” It is not pure if it is contrived. And, as concerns the resurgent interest in Abstract Expressionism, I believe that the corporate popularity of much of it is largely because current abstraction, with rather few (but sometimes impressive) exceptions, is essentially visual muzak. It’s the safe art to hang in the bank, the office, the public lobby. It says nothing, does nothing, and is nothing. Entirely inoffensive, and what pretty colors. What a great merchandising tactic pure art has turned out to be.

The gradual destruction of form, the glamorization of the mass marketed product, and other such things as this have all been very interesting little diversions, but I think that we’re fooling ourselves to think that these theoretical progressions that artists and others in the arts have been too caught up in for most of the past 100 years now are ever going to result in any appreciation of the essential relationship between art and man.

In his essay “The Fall of Art” William S. Burroughs writes “What we call ‘art’ - painting, sculpture, writing, dance, music - is magical in origin. That is, it was originally employed for ceremonial purposes to produce very definite effects.” While Burroughs goes from there to address interests that I don’t care to follow here, this perspective that he’s related in the above is the pure art that I’d like to consider.

From the evidence that we have, cave painting was entirely interwoven with tribal acts of magic and conjuration. One of the earliest known cave paintings is of a man with a deer head- either the representation of some god or an illustration of a man in a ceremonial costume. Venus figures, those fat round women, obviously used in conjunction with fertility rites. And although many images were of common animals, many of these animals were game, and several representations of them have punctures, suggesting that they were drawn to be shot at- with the implication that the art was part of a conjuration ceremony intended to secure them a profitable hunt.

In the early period of Jewish monotheism the making of an image was considered to be synonymous with idolatry, as reflected in the second commandment “Thou shalt make no graven images.” Many today interpret this to have meant no images of God, but it plainly states no images of anything. In idolatrous societies, which pretty much accounts for everyone else of the time, ceremonial practice and visual art were so synonymous that without the image there was no god, and without the god there was no image. Much later, at the period of the Protestant Reformation, John Calvin recommended that Protestants should remove the image of Christ from the cross, largely because he was concerned that the popular Catholic crucifix inadvertently encouraged idolatry, and was therefore a violation of the second commandment. What power the image has, and how natural to constantly return to it.

Writing derives from hieroglyphics, and therefore shares a similar source with painting. Music and dance also derive from ceremonial rites, designed to invoke states of ecstasy. Even the prophets of the Bible did their prophesying during states of ecstasy produced by music. The books of Samuel relate that that prophet would flail around naked for days in such a state with other prophets. Reportedly the ark was brought to Jerusalem in the midst of such a dancing frenzy.

In other cultures the purpose was the same. For that matter, in today’s nightclubs the purpose is much the same, although stripped of it’s prophetic aspect. Among the Greeks the frenzies of the Bacchanalia were at first controversial, especially since the violent drunken orgies apparently sometimes resulted in the careless murder of a person. And that, warns Sophocles, is what’s going to happen to you if you don’t recognize the divinity of Dionysus.

But before the Bacchantes tear you apart, consider two popular theatrical and literary terms: “Tragedy” and “Satire.” As you probably know these are two types of theater that developed in Greece. Our word “Tragedy” seemingly derives from a Greek term that meant “Goat Song,” goats having been sacred to Dionysus, suggesting that at least Greek theater, like every other form of art, again derives from the ceremonial. And “Satire”, that’s just our way of saying “Satyr play,” satyrs having been those funny goat people that frolicked around in the woods playing music and chasing nymphs and laughing at everything that us regular people take so seriously, just like a modern satire does.

Now, certainly I am not so foolish as to believe that such art can be practiced in this society with the same implications. But neither do I believe that art in this society needs to remain defined by the standards of it's current prevailing criteria. If the artistic standard of pre-Modernism has been successfully assaulted by Duchamp and others, then what remains to accepted artistic development except for just some other sort of philosophical and theoretical elitism? Certainly the honest expression of creative individuals existing outside of this arena must be considered if we are to approach an art which is unadulterated.

If there ever was much consideration of what I might consider to be “pure art” in the Modern Art era it is due, in my opinion, to those such as Jean Dubuffet, who popularized what he called “Art Brut,” which was, specifically, the artwork produced by the criminal and the insane. Not because it reflected these behavioral extremes, but because it brought into artistic consideration some measure of untrained art, which is bound to be much nearer to what might be reasonably considered “pure.”

Too much has been done, I believe, to categorize and divide untrained art. As it has increasingly become presented (and perverted) as critically acceptable art we now have groups such as “Art Brut,” “Folk Art,” “Outsider Art,” “Roots Art,” “Visionary Art,” and so on. Terms which, I’m sure, mean nothing to the artists themselves. But since the division has been made, allow me to focus on what has been termed “Visionary Art.”

It’s been a few years back now that I saw symbolist paintings entirely dismissed by a local critic as passé, noting that museums don’t buy this stuff any more, except that if it emits from an untrained artist. Now I find this statement to be essentially ridiculous, but largely because the observation made in it is exact. And so I ask- Why is it that the use of symbolism, and specifically mythological and Biblical symbolism, has been deemed as acceptable in current art- as long as it issues from the obviously uneducated? Is it the Finster experience of the giant Elvis getting off of the U.F.O. and announcing that Jesus wants him to paint that has them so enthralled or what? Are educated people just supposed to be too smart for the use of these things? But don’t get lost in my cynicism, it is the Visionary Artist that I defend, and can only surmise that these ranks of the overeducated have accepted them only with some degree of condescension.

And it is not only the basic use of these elements that I find fascinating, but in these examples there is also the view which is seemingly naturally implicated in this sort of symbolist and fantastic work- a view of man as subject. A view in which man is interactive and culpable to his natural environment. Whether that larger entity is related as God, nature, the results of his own passions, or any other thing, this is not a view of man’s interaction with his own technologies and advancements, but with his own self and his natural and societal surroundings to which he must concede. As for my own interests in these things, I do not believe man to be powerless, but perhaps too proud for his own good. Taken within it's own context, I think that this language is a means of social commentary as viable as any other.

Now, I would not pretend my own artistic endeavors to be any realization of these things. Neither would I, on the other hand, pretend to be concerned with the the latest contemporary criteria. In my opinion, much of the critically accepted art of this contemporary period has become so caught up in it’s own development, it’s own politics, it’s own theories, that it has unfortunately ceased to have but little relation to the general populace. Whether we consider what seem to be the origins of art, or whether we consider the expressions of the unindoctrinated but creative individual of later societies such as the untrained artist is, there is an element in either of the divine, the supernatural, the mythological, and the symbolic. In fact, the only arena of art in which I find these elements to be most lacking is in the critically accepted art of this contemporary period.

And so, although I have been accused of it, I do not advocate a return to any past standard. Rather, what I advocate is some inclusion of an art that is, as I believe, basic, entirely natural, and essentially “pure.”