Beware the Swiss Bearing Sausages?
Prasanta Chakravarty In a 2007 art summer school held in Irsee, southern Germany, the English artist Clive Head and the Anglo-Cypriot writer and art theorist Michael Paraskos held a joint class. Head and Paraskos had previously taught together at the University of Hull, but had both left academic teaching in 2000, and partly gone their separate ways. The reunion in Irsee resulted in their publishing a small pamphlet, The Aphorisms of Irsee, in which they set out a series of seventy-five aphoristic sayings on the nature of art. These assume importance with respect to what HUG is trying to do, but it also demonstrates how risky and dangerous a programmatic venture on art can get and how HUG distinguishes itself from the stubborn reactionary elements ingrained in this kind of a manifesto that develops around the movement of New Aestheticism at this point in different ways. It is remarkable that the aphorisms highlight a return to a certain materialist romance. There is clarion call to return to the specific and the definite—against dogma. It is apparent in the way the two of them begin their series of aphorisms; right from the very first one, a thread develops. This is a welcome move—asking us to think outside of the ethical, linguistic, discursive or purely subjective possibilities in appreciating art objects and creations. This immediacy and directness in art probably propels the duo to reject learnedness (‘Scholarship is the enemy of romance’—No. 34 or ‘Three artists make a movement. Four make an art school—No.59). But this very anti-intellectual stance is also a problem, to which I’ll return in a bit. There is an attempt to amplify the ambit of language and make art sharper with perception and emphasise its extraordinary possibilities. This is surely a reaction to semiotic and other forms of abstraction (‘To call art a language shows the paucity of the language with which we discuss art.’—No. 41). Quite early on, both Head and Paraskos articulate a call to create forms of the impossible—heavens or anti-heavens. ‘Anti-heavens’ is an excellent idea and that gets quite an interesting shape through the notion of ‘slowing down’ (No.2), except for the fact slowing down means a mundane coffee binge! Is this a paucity of imagination, or a deliberate pointing towards the ordinary, placid and the average? Is this a counter move against over-reaching? It is terrific to see a celebration of curiosity and astonishment and a thorough, well-deserved dressing down of pettiness (‘Art should astonish its viewer, but most art is too mean-spirited to do this’—No. 15). HUG is particularly invested in everyday wonders and mutinies. And the aphorisms surely make a case for the sensuous, but again whether a return to sensuous merely points to towards forms of nature-philosophie is a thing to take stock of (‘Central heating has destroyed English art. It has removed the artist from feeling the real world—No. 61). What is real here? And how does matter work in such a real world? The real issue with New Aestheticism is that it hankers for a believable space that can be ordered. This is a dangerous reaction to things that might spill over, against the radical utopian possibilities of art. Hence, little wonder that the most disturbing aspect of the manifesto is that art is subservient to politics. There is nothing new in this kind of retrograde move. In fact, telling examples of how art ought to be safe and sanitised gets shape in No. 51 and No. 52: (Sometimes even the artist should realise it is too cold to go for a swim /One should live for one’s art, but there is no need to die for it). There is an extraordinary vituperation against photography and performance (also against literature, at a remove): Photography is too real—too material and reproductive. This is really a bad and un-nuanced understanding of materiality involved in the art of photography. And the chief charge against performative art is that it is an exercise in movement and dynamism: (Performance is not art: it moves too much and so adds to the flux. Art is always a moment of longed-for stasis—No. 38). The idea of stasis can generate freedom and anarchy, but in this case it seems to argue for collected tranquillity. But the amazing call for the national, the quasi-religious and the personal-salvific are the most reactionary elements in this new aesthetic world. How does Germany and England get placed against the Swiss? It is a certain deeply conservative idea of nationality that gets transferred to the idea of communion (No. 48) and transubstantiation (No.39). Such religiosity means naturopathy, therapeutics and is sharply moral (Bad art demeans nature and, because of this, bad art is immoral—No 55)! Politics or charting everyday conflicts in art would seem to the New Aesthete to be wallowing in acts of guilt and suffering. Pain has to be alleviated, not dissected. This is again an extraordinarily narrow and unhelpful binary—between pain and panacea, between trying to understand the vicissitudes of life and their mitigation through art. Since art has a moral aim, it should not try to be ironical. At best it can be playful, Head and Paraskos affirm. Notice how humour in art has to hide anger, not highlight it (No. 73) and terror is de-historicized completely, beyond human comprehension (No. 35). It is good to see some new moves in literary criticism at the beginning of this century. And manifestoes often clarify certain things at the basic level. But aphorisms also mean dogmatism of a different kind. They set the terms for repeatability. Art and art-practice becomes a project. One gets into the business of institutionalizing and ordering chaos. ———————————————– The Aphorisms of Irsee ( originally published in print form by the Orage Press, London in 2007.) 1. Art is always definitive, but never dogmatic. 2. Artists should slow down and experience the world. A quiet cup of coffee is often the best starting point for art. 3. All artists create heavens. The heaven of God; or, the anti-heaven of the Devil; or,