Thoughts on Suzi Gablik's Has Modernism Failed? (blog)

Some Thoughts on Suzi Gablik’s Has Modernism Failed?

 Here’s to The New Boss

      The collective trance of bureaucracy and mind numbing work (this is very much relative to the sentiments expressed in my book Make Time For Tom) within which the conformist’s mind does not grow without some form of disruption ( the disruption in this case was my use of surrealism to underscore the meanlessness of the corporate social construct). Suzi Gablik attempts to thread a very delicate needle in addressing this seemingly Gordian Knot in her book Has Modernism Failed. What Gordian Knot?  How a radical movement (modernism) overturns one rigid ideology without transforming into one’s opposite?

Gordian Knot

     "Managerial practices established cultural pace" (my feeling is that it is those institutions that must be eliminated, destroyed as it were so that art isn’t shoved into this human parcel we call culture). The capitalist model is a blight on our consciousness. However, if society at least knew its potential for cultural blight then we may be better prepared to exploit it for the good of society with temperance (echoes of Duncombe? He'll make me a believer yet). However, industrial capitalism has little patience for temperance.

 Gablik refers to British philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre as suggesting that managerial expertise eclipsed god. Societies have consistently been blinded by revolution. Long live the new king, right? Modernism rejected the absolutist ideology of the enlightenment and God only to become as absolutist.

Modernists became hypocrites when success was at stake … pretty simple. Though I should realize that I too am vulnerable to the same hypocrisy.

     Therefore, as Gablik suggests, “Decisions become a professional rather than a moral affair which provides cover for virtually any decision”. How does an artist mediate society when this modes operandi becomes virtually ubiquitous? Answer: on P. 109 Gablik quotes Gandhi,”The acts you do may be insignificant but is very important that you do it”.  Sure, lets not “disrupt” social norms but destroy them. Is social disruption as Gablik suggests enough? But then again as Gablik quotes Lewis Hyde on page 11,”How is an artist to nourish himself, spiritually as well as materially, in an age whose values are market values?” I was naïve. I thought if I just was honest about what I saw I’d be rewarded by society. What an idiot I was (and probably will remain).

Conform or die…

 Aspects of modernism and even postmodernism become caricatures of themselves in my mind due the psychotically blind underpinnings of capitalism. Success and MORE success subsumes all value systems. Is this a hyperbolic sentiment? To me it is not. 

Freedom!

 The western illusion of autonomist capitalism. The ultimate simulation is perhaps the illusion that capitalism provides the utopia of autonomy. No, the reality is that its has created the dystopia of alienation. Radical subjectivities caught in quicksand of its own making.

When the well being of the whole is brushed aside within the empty ethic of “freedom” we set the table for its demise from within. The red scare of the 50’s was a creation of self-delusion much like the tar baby in Brer Rabbit. Perhaps the concept of Terrorism is a tar baby of its own delusional invention.

Art: truth to self or truth to the value of society?

     Do these two ideas need to be zero sum ideas? Can these approaches operate as two distinctly separate practices? The knowing of “self” can be a pursuit that does not necessarily contradict the practice of making art which highlights the components of social values.  Is it possible for one to feed off the other?

     To me, what are perhaps in need of more rigorous scrutiny are the institutions to which we all must inevitably bow. Yes, if the Nevada Museum of Art invited me to have a solo exhibit I would fall all over myself to say Yes!!! Why? Is it just because it would advance my career? No, it is largely because it would help forge my individual identity within society. The problem is that I have problems with the hardened framework of contemporary institutions. Out of one side of their collective mouths they may say they intend to encourage fresh new ways of exploring our world. They are on the lookout for art that takes real risk. Could anyone imagine any contemporary art institution that would, on its face, refuse that statement? No, of course not until they are confronted with work that really operates outside of their own institutional value constructions. Gablik writes about the need to disrupt. Talk about a social entity overdue for disruption!

     As I wrote earlier regarding art institutions… “Art defined by the western model has rendered art useless. Which makes it the perfect abstraction with which the rich can masturbate and exchange, much as common currency. When it does not serve as currency it is little more than the bastard child in need of a condescending pat on the head as it is shuffled off to the nearest asylum/tomb (i.e. museum, gallery, insulated vessel, trophies and resume items for artists). Meanwhile, it is the masses who remain trapped in the cave (a reference to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave) with no access to its secret powers while the elite could care less about art's power unless they've got the corner office”.

                                                  Damien Hirst, For the Love of God, 2007 sculpture.

Smile, I'm alright, you’re a loser

    She refers to artists who in essence have their cake and eat it too. They reflect society as a non-didactic commentary while appealing to society’s often basest sensibilities and share in the spoils simultaneously.  I have to ask, am I being quixotic in thinking that a successful artist can also truly disrupt society’s accepted values? Or must we remain Jeff Koonsean/Hirstian cynics?