Artă pentru mase

Mi s-a întipărit în memorie Artă pentru Mase odată cu expoziţiile grupului Supernova. Reducţionist vorbind, ei preluau obiecte de consum si le “traduceau” în obiecte de artă, iar rezultatul era ceea ce se numea Artă pentru mase. Era implicită critica societăţii de cosum dar şi comentariul asupra alienarii care acompaniază o astfel de societate.

Într-o manieră similară, Will Gompertz, scrie o istorie a artei moderne “la minut”. E un fel de “păr mai strălucitor în 7 zile” sau “arde caloriile mai repede cu suplimentul nostru nutritiv” sau “cu noi poţi să-ţi împlineşti toate visele”.

Traducerea în manieră consumistă a unuia dintre ultimele domenii necontaminate, cum e istoria artei, poate fi privită din aceeaşi perspectivă, aceea a privirii critice asupra obsesiei consumismului. Șapoul textului e chiar puţin ironic, iar ironia se păstrează pe parcurs.

E simpatic însă faptul că, asumând toate acestea, după ce citeşte textul, oricine poate să intre în pielea unui “admirator de Dali”, din categoria “ascultătorilor extaziaţi de Vivaldi”. E o postură falsă însă, despre arta reală afli lucruri după nişte lecturi mult mai aprofundate.

Genul acesta de text însă, problematizează exact relaţia pe care o crează între public şi artă. Arta pe care publicul poate sa o genereze involuntar dar nu o şi consumă decât împachetată “2 la preţ de 1″.

Iată câteva paragrafe mai jos, textul integral îl găsiţi pe site-ul Times.

Impressionism — painting outside of a studio with quick, loose brushstrokes to capture an evocative impression of their subject. Van Gogh was an Impressionist but wanted to express how he felt about what he saw so he distorted the subject. This helped to lead to Expressionism practised by artists from Edvard Munch through to Francis Bacon. The Fauves (wild beasts) expressed themselves by painting with bright colours. Jackson Pollock did it by throwing or dripping paint on a canvas. His paintings were abstract — Abstract Expressionism.

Cezanne was very important. He began as an Impressionist but then started to look at a subject from two different perspectives to represent how we see. Picasso and his friend Georges Braque were very impressed and started to paint subjects from lots of different views. This is Cubism. Marcel Duchamp was a Cubist but then changed art for ever. He said the idea is more important than the medium and refused to stick with the limited choice of canvas or stone. So he chose everyday objects and called them art because he had altered their context. This led to Conceptual Art where the idea becomes the medium.

The Dadaists were very cross. They blamed the horrors of the First World War on the Establishment’s reliance on rational and reasoned thought. They radically opposed rational thought and became nihilistic — the punk rock of modern art movements. Dada plus Sigmund Freud equals Surrealism. The Surrealists were fascinated by the unconscious mind, as that’s where they thought truth resided. Piet Mondrian thought he could paint everything he knew, felt and saw by using two lines placed at rectangles and three primary colours. This was called Neo-Plasticism and was inspired by Cubism. So was Futurism, which is Cubism with motion added. Vorticism is the same as Futurism, but British. The Minimalists might represent the real truth because they weren’t trying to represent anything. Performance Art is Dada live.