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This is
what we talk about............
Nina
Bondeson, on art and visual
storytelling
"The
steadfast
uncertainty and other everlasting values."
I believe that
we are predisposed to
make art, that it is part of our lingual predisposition. How we make
it, how it shows itself, has to do with the culture we develop it in.
I make art because I live and think about the world and need to
deepen my knowledge of it. The way I make art is due to my cultural
context.
It sounds
simple enough. But today my
cultural context shows two major knowledge systems in art. How did
this happen? Is it a problem or a blessing? And what knowledge
systems are we talking about?
On the
one hand there is the knowledge that originates from eye and hand, I
choose to call it Practical Artmaking. It stems from the very first
signs of communicative painting more than 120.000 years ago. It
announces an imprint of a palm in a cave some 40.000 years ago and it
goes on through the centuries, through inumerable materials, through
our visual orientation, through the capacity of the hand and the need
of the mind to think about the mystery of life.
On the
other hand there is a knowledgesystem that could be described as a
conceptual and linguistic route to knowledge that mainly emerged
within the American university art education during the 20th century.
There, it developed into an art tradition in which interpretation in
written or spoken language is crucial as the main creator of meaning.
And there, art itself eventually got the leading part on the art
scene that modernism had somewhat prepared for: Art, as it´s
own
major subject, dealing with itself as phenomenon and notion. This is
the origin of conceptual art, that later developed into the art that
we now refer to as contemporary art.
There are of course no
clean-cut boundaries between these two knowledge systems in art. But I stage
this model of the two systems as an adequate generalization that can be useful
as reference material when trying to understand similarities, differences,
connections and discontinuities that hide behind the overwhelming multitude of
expressed experiences. (The idea of making this model is snatched from Max
Webers definition of sociology.)
Conceptual
art was
first established on the artscene in USA in the 1960s. The
development of these two routes to knowledge in art is closly
connected to the history of American art education.
(Howard
Singermans
book ”Art subjects – how to make artists in the
american
university” 1999)
Graduate
courses in the fine arts were established at five of the most famous
and influential universities in the US as early as in 1893.
(Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, Harvard and Yale). The strive to make
others follow their example was founded in the concern to refine art,
educate artists and to unite against a ”common enemy, the
commercial, the vicious and the ugly”...
At
the universities
that launched graduate courses in fine arts, practical artmaking was
positioned as laboratory acctivities tightly connected to art
history. In an issue of The Art Bulletin from 1918 is stated:
”no
separate courses are offered in painting, drawing, modelling or
design and no college credit is given for this practical work except
as it is taken in connection with courses in art history and very
closely related to such courses.”
At
this time there was
of course no discussion whether this hierarchical view on knowledge
was justified or not. Practical knowledge was so subordinated within
the university that it didn´t really pass as knowledge at all
in
that context. Spoken and written language, thought and concept,
analysis and notion were the superior values that were to save both
the arts and the artists by giving the education a more scientific
identity.
The
student´s time
was thus divided between subordinated, practical studiowork and
theoretical studies, from the beginning mainly art history.
From
this university
art education, emerges a relation to art that develops strong roots
in art history and philosophy, in written and spoken language.
And
when you read the
statement made by Henry Flynt in 1963: ”......concept
art is a kind of art of which the material is language.”
it
stands clear that the
biggest difference between the old and the new art is the relation to
spoken and written language. The new conceptual art aims, as did
modernism, to dethrone the previous art, but it also, in opposition
to modernism, chooses art itself, as a phenomenon, to be the main
target.
So:
art itself becomes the primary content in art; it relates to what has
been done, rejects the previous art, investigates itself and
questions the notion of art. Verbal language developes into the
founding material in the new art, art itself into it´s
subject and
case and the written interpretation into it´s highest stage.
This
implemented a
strengthened position for the interpreters of art, art historians,
critics, curators and others, who up until now, had been situated
outside of the actual art making. Away from the tactile and tangible
in the process of creation they had staged their task of
interpretation in relation to what the artist had allready produced.
Opposed to this outsider situation, the linguistic and conceptually
based material in art is very well known indeed to these interpreters
as it is also their own working material. Now they did not have to
wait for artists to do works of art, but could in fact take the lead
alongside, or even in front of the artists and thus become a
significant part of the conceptual avant garde themselves.
Administrators of the forefront, confirmed by the
”institutional
theory of art” (George dickie 1974), appointed to deny or dub
artworld wannabees.
It
seems, however, that
this time-based, linear attitude towards art has come to an end. It
has brought us to a situation where everything can be art, since it
is now only the position in the contemporary artworld that counts and
the hegemony of the contemporary artworld that defines the position.
It has turned the artist into the artefact to be chosen, bought and
sold. It has reached a dead end. And ”when you have reached a
dead
end, you have to turn around and walk out of there.”
(Artcritic Dan
Jönsson) That is the only progress available.
Because
in art time is
not linear. In art time is a room, and we can move in that room in
any direction we want. The past is often denied but seldom deceased.
It can be awakened and re-used; not to be made a subject for servile
worship, but activated to participate in new constellations and
cooperations.
I work in the
knowledge system of
Practical Artmaking. I use different materials, tools and techniques
to create or process artefacts. And I use a figurative visual
language based on my own lived experiences and fiction. It is a
non-verbal communication that we have all inherited a readiness for.
We can reach it within us through our cultural inheritance. We do not
need to be aware of the theories that try to explain and understand
this culture, to be able to participate in the artmaking. We do need
encouragement and response to our communicative attempts, as we do to
develop any language. But we don´t need to theorize.
When we leave
the actual doing and try
to describe and understand why and how we do it, then, theories,
concepts and explanations are very useful. Then, we cannot do without
them.
I find the
difference between these two
activities, making art and understanding the making of art, very
interesting.
But
to make space for the practical artmaking is difficult today.
As
I see it, our time has a supersticious over-confidence in theoretical
analysis. It is a way of thinking that in latter years has had
substantial influence on all aereas of life and art. If your
experience don´t fit into written explanations it is regarded
with
scepticism.
And
given Edward Saids words maybe it is understandable:
”In
every society, that is not totalitarian, certain forms of cultural
expressions
get
the advantage over others,
in the same way
that certain ideas
are
more influential than others.
The
form for this cultural leadership is what Gramsci named hegemony,
an
indispensable concept for anyone who wants to understand the culture
of
the industrialized western world.”
This
explains why practical artmaking is put under pressure. It does not
fit in. If it is considered more important to talk about and analyze
art than to actually make it how can we get room to manouvre the
production of artefacts? Studios, workshops, schools? So, the
pressure on our knowledge system is understandable. But it does not
mean it is acceptable or that nothing can be done about it.
Hegemonies
are
made of opinions and theories and power. Even if they are difficult
to pinpoint and sort out, they are not phenomena like the weather or
outbursts of vulcanos. They are man made and they can be
contradicted. If we think otherwise, it is time for us to counter the
rules and regulations of the contemporary hegemony.
The
conceptual art, of wich the main material is verbal language is
closly related to the oversized theoretical interest in our time. But
it is one way of sveral ways of making art and it has its
justification in being just that. One way of many.
It
is not interesting to use it the way it has been used during the last
decades: as an overriding theoretical system for all kinds of
artmaking.
The
issue is not primarily about qualities in artistic results and how
they position themselves in the artworld. The issue is rather to
regard the process of production: what does it take to create useful
conditions for the different kinds of artmaking? What do we need to
paint, what do we need to do lithography, embroidery, sculptures,
etchings, woodcarvings? And how can we unerstand the need to make
this art? It is time to shift focus from position and views on art
and develop a discussion about knowledge in art.
It
is time to proclaim the democracy of experiences.
What
we do here,
this week, in this international graphic workshop, could easily be
disgarded as anachronistic. An attempt to create a sanctuary for
deceaced or dying artistic activities. Art in a palliative situation.
But
I think it
shows an active responsability to art as an eternal value, as part of
our hereditary non-verbal capacity. To knowledgesystems that are
rarely pronounced. Not because they lack insight or competence, but
because the skills do not have to be verbalized to be useful.
I
find this
workshop and the European network
for
development and education in printmaking to be an act of
progressive resistance.
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