Go!

Go!1

1 by GioGio

5 Introduction

7 Practising theory

13 Beyond the Representation

19 Beyond art

29 Beyond Postmodernism

33 Art and life

41 Conclusions

Introduction

“If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done”                  
                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1980); Culture and Value 

What motivates us to write this paper is to approach the issue of theory and practice (theorizing practice and practicing theory) through the perspective of art. What is theory and what is practice in the creative process?

The part of artistic research on this subject was developed through the constant dialogue. Besides a shared involvement in arts, we also share an interest in philosophy and the world’s theology and mythology.

We decided to focus our attention on the works of Joseph Beuys due to the interesting interrelation between theory and practice in his work and life. We would like to invite you to analyze the concept of Social Sculpture and ask the following questions: what is the role of art and artists today? Is it a time for a radical transformation in art and life? Is there a possibility of an absolute certainty, negated by

the postmodernists, and production of art, which empowers people and becomes a catalyst for the transformation of the mind?

Practicing theory

The Cloud said to me, “I vanish”; the Night said, “I plunge into the fiery dawn.”
                                                                                                                                                 Tagore, Rabindranath (2004): The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore: Poems

In English language we polarize theory and practice. Theory applied rather to the world of ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and concepts; on the other hand practice is actualization of those aforementioned in reality. Are we living in two realities? One imagined, thought, predicted and the actual one (actualizing itself now and now and now...)?

Theory is described as an idea, system of ideas or set or principles - intended to explain something. Practice is the actual application of an idea, a belief, or a method as opposed to theories about such application or use. Contrary to this claim there is a take that theory and practice are not necessarily in opposition. Approaching the subject from the perspective of art, they appear to be two parts of one entity.

Theoria (θεωρία) is Greek for contemplation. It corresponds to the Latin word contemplatio, “looking at”, “gazing at”, “being aware of”. Greek Theoria, from which the English word “theory” has derived, means “contemplation, speculation, a looking at, things looked at”. Both Greek theoria and Latin contemplatio primarily meant looking at things, whether with the eyes or with the mind. The term was used by the ancient Greeks to refer to the act of experiencing or observing and then comprehending through consciousness.

Ancient theoria was a powerful tool given to the first Greek philosophers. They concerned themselves with explaining the entire cosmos. Their main struggle was to identify its single underlying

principle. It is important to note that for the ancient Greeks, philosophy as knowledge of Reality or Being, affected every day life.

To be a philosopher meant to contemplate on questions about how to live, because ethics has its origin in knowledge of Reality or Being: to know the Whole is to know one’s place in relation to the Whole. What a philosopher knew was not merely theoretical knowledge, unrelated to the other aspects of human existence. The ancient Greeks assumed that one ought to live one’s life in conformity to the way things really were. Thus the act of theorizing was intimately related to the act of practicing. It was like an invitation - being invited to the act of going beyond mental images and concepts and moving towards a direct experience.

“The unexamined life is not worth living”, - Socrates said that at his trial for heresy. He was on trial for encouraging his students to challenge the accepted beliefs of the time and think for themselves. The sentence was death but Socrates had the option of suggesting an alternative punishment. He could have chosen life in prison or exile, and would likely have avoided death.

Contemporary comprehension of practice/theory tandem denudes our only certain knowledge—we do not know. Our language structures seem to be a constant reminder of the precariousness of our understanding. Since reality is different from the world of our knowledge we are not certain how to act. Our desire of dividing theory from practice comes from disagreeing with the oneness of life. How can one live when one does not understand?

...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer”.
                                                                                                                   Rilke, Rainer Maria (2000): Letters to a Young Poet, New World Library






Beyond the Representation

“Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach”
                                                                                                                                                                                                           Sol LeWitt

Sol LeWitt (1928 – 2007) was a pioneer of the conceptual art movement. In his text Paragraphs on Conceptual Art (1967) he defines it: “In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work”.

Conceptual art remains the dominant influence on the contemporary art today and we would like to invite you on a brief journey through the essential developments in the arts during the last century, which have led to that.

The 20th century was an era of the radical developments in various fields (science, philosophy, technology, etc.) including the fine arts. One of the most important artists of the last century who influenced numerous developments in the visual arts was Marcel Duchamp (1887 – 1968).

Besides exploring the limits of painting Duchamp introduced Readymades, which shook the art world and “has challenged the boundaries and even the foundations of art as concept” Goldsmith, Steven (1983). In 1917 he caused

a scandal when he presented “Fountain”, as he turned an urinal 90 degrees and signed it with the pseudonym “R. Mutt”.

Duchamp’s controversial introduction of Readymades lead to the re-evaluation of fundamental values in art concerning aesthetics and authorship, which paved the way for conceptual art as well as development of Fluxus movement; Minimalism and Pop Art. Fluxus was exploring a notion of indeterminacy into art and the aesthetics of the everyday life incorporating its elements in art and blurring the apparent boarder between art and life. For example, John Cage (1912 – 1992) was composing pieces using existing sounds from the environment and presenting silence compositions consisting of the sounds from the environment that the listeners were hearing while the piece was being performed. While Fluxus attempted to merge art and life elements, Ad Reinhardt (1913 – 1967) stated rather opposite ideas in his theory of Art as Art. He rejected any kind of fusion between art and life or any mystification of painting.

Figure 1, Fountain, 1917

Figure 2, Ad Reinhardt and his black paintings in the studio

“What you can say about art is, it is art. Art is art and everything else is everything else. Art like art is nothing but art. What is not art is not art”Loredana Parmesani (2000), - states Ad Reinhardt. Further this was the era of various avant-garde

movements (Dada, Russian avant-garde, etc.), which were art as well as negation of art. However various movements and developments in art in the last century were striving to widen the definition of art bringing new elements into it from different fields.

What Joseph Beuys (1921 – 1986) was aiming to do, was to “export” the artist’s “way of thinking” and creativity to the realm of life. The body of works of Beuys, his concept of Social Sculpture and extended definition of art aimed to transgress any boundaries between art and life. These ideas of Beuys remain as radical and controversial today as they were then.

Beyond art

“Thinking Forms – how we mould our thoughts or

Spoken Forms – how we shape our thoughts into words or

SOCIAL SCULPTURE – how we mould and shape the world in which we live:

sculpture as an evolutionary process; everyone is an artist”
                                                                                           Joseph Beuys, Volker Harlan (2004): What Is Art?: Conversation with Joseph Beuys, p. 9 Clairview Books

We would like to present a short, yet insightful overview into the works and the way of thinking of one of the most influential and controversial artists of the 20th century: German conceptual artist Joseph Beuys. In our view, Beuys’ introduced the concept of Social Sculpture, inspired by the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner.

Figure 3, Joseph Beuys

Furthermore, he also presented an extended definition of art, which directly relates to the subject of practicing theory. He believed that ideas had the power to change the world. We would like to share some findings on how Beuys was practicing the theory of art’s potential

to transform the society using a brief overview of his artistic oeuvre. Beuys’ practice was very diverse: including drawings, sculpture, objects, performance, installation, graphics, actions, lectures, political activism, etc.

Beuys was trained as a sculptor and he started off with drawings as studies of the natural world. He also started to make sculptures and objects using unconventional materials such as fat and felt, which appear from his mythologized artistic biography.



Figure 4, Fat Chair, 1964

“My initial intention in using fat was to stimulate discussion. The discussion I wanted was about the potential of sculpture and culture, what they mean,

what language is about, what human production and creativity are about. So I took an extreme position in sculpture, and a material that was very basic to life and not to art”Tisdall, Caroline (1979).

According to Beuys, “My objects are to be seen as stimulants for the transformation of the idea of sculpture, or of art in general. They should provoke thoughts about what sculpture can be and how the concept of sculpting can be extended to the invisible materials used by everyone”Tisdall, Caroline (1979). “Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler” (Everyone is an artist) is the clearest formulation of Beuys’s intention. “It means a widened concept of art in which the whole process of living itself is the creative act”. We would like to add that it is not only widened concept of art but rather opened up concept transgressing any boundaries between art and life. What he means is that everyone is creating an ultimate work of art –life or the reality one lives in – by moulding one’s thoughts, shaping them into the words and further moulding and shaping the world one lives in. Further Beuys states that this is an evolutionary process taking human kind to the other level of existence and consciousness.

This statement brings a whole new perspective on art; instead of appropriating things from different fields and then using them in art, Beuys tries to do something rather opposite. He advocates that creativity does not belong to the monopoly of artists – he tries to “export” the artistic way of thinking and the act of creation into a broader reality, including other fields, such as economics, politics, etc.

Beuys further elaborates on this subject in an interview with Willoughby Sharp in1969, explaining: “At the moment art is thought as a special field, which demands the production of documents in the form of art works. Whereas I advocate an aesthetic involvement from science,

from economics, from politics, from religion – every sphere of human activity. Even the act of peeling a potato can be a work of art if it is a conscious act”Benjamin H.D. Buchloh: Beuys (January 1980).

When we tried to analyze this statement we were reminded of the ancient Greek word Arete. In its basic sense, it means excellence of any kind and corresponds with the Eastern concept of the art of doing something – like the art of archery also known as the way of something, e.g. the way of tea. This is a Japanese cultural practice involving the ceremonial preparation and presentation of matcha, powdered green tea.

Beuys was motivated by a belief in the power of universal human creativity and was confident in the potential for art to bring about a revolutionary change.

“It is time to show that art means the power of creativity, and it is time to define art in a larger way, to include science and religion too...”1Kuoni, Carin (1993).

Figure 5, Joseph Beuys lecturing

Beuys intensified his lecturing activities since 1973, with the aim to extend the notion of sculpture to that of Social Sculpture, and his theory of sculpture to an energy plan for western man, demonstrating the principles of the free international university and ultimately appealing for the regeneration of thinking that could lead to an alternative to both private (Western) and state (Eastern) capitalism, The black board drawings served to give visual form to ideas which otherwise remain at an abstract verbal level.

Beuys’s performances often took eight hours or more, and some lasted for several days. With that amount of time the work would quickly pass beyond anything that could be kept in memory, and the audience usually ended up making their own private stories to try to make the performances cohere into comprehensible narratives. According to the artist these drawings were a constellation delineating a structure for a harmonious social body—Social Sculpture. Beuys used chalk on blackboard to communicate to his audience the basics of his

 

Figure 6, Untitled (Sun State), 1974

theory reflecting the influence of Steiner’s concept of ‘thought drawings’. The blackboard Untitled (Sun State) is a drawing that evolved during Beuys participation in the public dialogue, “Art into Society, Society into Art” at The Art Institute of Chicago in 1974. The artist demonstrated, with a thin looping line and verbal descriptions, the connections among myth, alchemy, astrology, anthropology, and the social and political sciences. The result is a work described by the artist as a kind of astrological chart embodying his ideas of the ideal state.

The Social Sculpture that Beuys is talking about is something that can happen in society only through voluntary individual acts. What Beuys meant was that only when one is reaching the level of acting in a conscious and responsible way—deriving from one’s freedom— is one capable of becoming “an artist”. One who is able to reshape the reality we live in for the benefit of many.

By universal human creativity, Beuys meant every sphere of human activity could be a work of art as long as it is a conscious act. As we understand it, the social sculpture consists of contributions of individuals with those acts. But what does it actually mean? Does that mean that one has to reach a certain altered state of consciousness or awareness to be able to participate in the collective process of Social Sculpture; shaping the world we live in?

Beyond Postmodernism

“Postmodernism refuses to privilege any one perspective, and recognizes only difference, never inequality, only fragments, never conflict.”
                                                                    Elizabeth Wilson (from Storey, John: Fashion and Postmodernism, a reader: Cultural theory and popular culture)

As contemporary artists we live and work in an era of postmodernism, which literary critic Fredric Jameson describes as the “dominant cultural logic of late capitalism”. We embrace it, celebrating its critique of the “modernist” scientific mentality of objectivity and progress associated with the Enlightenment. However the main characteristic - the rejection of objective truth and global cultural narrative or meta-narrative, is inspiring and questionable at the same time. We could agree with the postmodern attitude towards the mentality of modernism and critique of objectivity rooted in science or reason, however the denial of absolute certainty celebrated by postmodernists is still questionable. Carl Olson, who examined and compared the philosophical positions of various postmodern thinkers and Zen Buddhist scholar concludes that “although they both share a radical skepticism with respect to reason, Zen allows for the possibility of a radical certainty that postmodern philosophy does not”Carl Olson (2004).

As artists we approach reality not from the scientific point of view but rather through intuition. In the artistic process conceptual thinking goes hand in hand with intuitive choices and the idea of absolute certainty does not appear as disturbing or uncomfortable. As Russian filmmaker Andrej Tarkovsky says, “artist must be capable of going beyond the limitations of coherent logic, and conveying the deep complexity and truth of life.”Tarkovsky, A.A. & Chiaramonte, G. (2004)

Walter Truett Anderson identifies Postmodernism as four typological world views. These four worldviews are the Postmodern-ironist, which sees truth as socially constructed; the scientific-rational, in which truth is found through methodical, disciplined inquiry; the social-traditional, in which truth is found in the heritage of American and Western civilization; and the neo-romantic, in which truth is found through attaining harmony with nature and/ or spiritual exploration of the inner self.

Art and life

“This journey I am proposing that we take together is not to the moon or even the stars. The distance to stars is much less than the distance within ourselves. The discovery of ourselves is endless, and it requires constant inquiry, a perception which is total, an awareness in which there is no choice. This journey is really an opening of the door to the individual in his relationship with the world.”

“I am the world and the world is me”.

                                                                                                             Krishnamurti, J. (2005): On Living and Dying, p. 78, Morning Light Press

The Neo-Romantic perspective is close to our attitude in art and life and we want to emphasise that harmony with nature and spirituality were essential issues in the practice of Beuys. Furthermore we would analyse the ideas on art and spirituality by a philosopher, Zen Buddhist scholar and Japanese tea ceremony master Shin’ichi Hisamatsu (1889 –1980). We would like to emphasise the importance of spirituality in the artistic practice. Therefore we direct your attention to the concept of “self awareness” in fine arts—presented by Hisamatsu, rooted in the Zen Buddhist tradition. We believe that Hisamtasu’s perspective on art

could shed some light on the comprehension of ideas of “conscious act” and “full human potential” advocated by Beuys.

According to Hisamatsu, the artist is able to reach the point of altered self-awareness, which leads to a manifestation of the deeper dimension in the work of art. He further states that the art is not the way to the truth, but the art piece is the expression of truth. Hisamatsu points out that certain practice is required (indicating the need for spiritual practice), in order to ensure that the expression is not just

a romanticizing of the ego/ self-expression, but the expression of something more real, as it is a dimension of non-rationality that is being expressed.

Furthermore art, according to Hisamatsu, is not actively creating - there is nothing that needs to be created. It is an expression of all that is there already. According to artist Lee Ufan “The highest level of expression is not to create something from nothing, but rather to nudge something which already exists so that the world shows up more vividly”Rawlings, Ashley (march/april 2009).

Hisamatsu further states, that the artist must live from the depth and the depth will from there manifest in his thoughts. His statements about the artist’s work could be applied referring to life and art of Beuys. It is difficult to say if Hisamatsu was familiar with works of Beuys or not, although they were contemporaries. However we would like to emphasise certain similarities which occur while analysing the legacy of Beuys in the light of Awakening of the Formless Self in the West expressed by Hisamatsu.

According to Hisamatsu, “Formless Self is the ultimate manner of being a man and therefore should be awaken in every man”Hisamatsu, Shin’ichi (1982). This relates to what Beuys was stating, that everybody is potentially “an artist”, a creator capable of shaping the reality one lives in. Beuys advocated that this is the ultimate way of being in the world, where by through a conscious act (mental, verbal and physical), one creates the reality one lives in. Such a statement in its essence is close to various spiritual teachings from different cultures.

However according to Hisamatsu this Awakening of the Formless Self* in the West would be “the great change in western art and culture, and its very nature of being, all of which have traditionally been based on the self with form.” He elaborates that then the culture of form changes to one in which the Self without the form expresses itself. Then something will emerge that has not been seen before outside the orient.

* Hisamtsu explaining the Zen concept of Formless Self emphasizes “Presence is that of the Formless Self, it is not of the kind that belongs to any temporal sequence; that is, it does not exist only between what is called the past and the future. Rather this presence means there is no temporal distinction of past, present, and future”. Following his thought further it appears that the true Self does not exist in any particular division of time, nor, in terms of space. The True Self exists “here and now”. Existing “here and now” transcends space and time – this existence is Presence, the true time”. Zen is the 

Self-Awarness of the Formless Self. Zen is Self-Awarness of Formlessness. It is this Self-Awarness – or Self – that Zen calls Buddha. Zen teaches that Buddha should not be sought externally”: “never seek elsewhere!” or “Outside the Mind, no Buddha.”

Furthermore the way of being an artist emphasized by Hisamatsu and the work of Beuys reminds the path advocated by the American mythologist Joseph Campbell (1904-1987). According to Campbell, inside all the different places, traditions, cultures which he explores, there is some shared fundamental structure. Campbell exposed a pattern that lies behind every story. There is a common shape of hero and path that one has to follow in order to find a treasure or elixir to benefit his world. Campbell stated once “the real artist is the one who has learned to recognize and to render...the ‘radiance’ of all things, as an epiphany or showing forth of their truth.” He continues: “To be an artist means constant try to transform a living moment somehow, a living moment actually in action or an inward experience”.

“What we are facing yet now is not only the experience of the problematic shape of our life and of all the reality, but the lack of any sense within them as well. Therefore we can do with them whatever we want, because it became for us a regular reservoir of poignancy. This is a result of the spiritual activity; it is a result of the spiritual struggle, which has been lasting for centuries. This struggle still goes on, and the results of it are more and more negative. But finally, this is the life of the human spirit; this is the way that spiritual man must follow, the path that cannot be avoided. It appears sometimes, as if the only result of the adventure of the spiritual life was to awake at the beginning of the way again; to awake at this point, where the whole movement starts: in this life that was given to us; this one that we cannot just jump over”.
                                                                            Patočka, Jan: Duchovní člověk a intelektuál (The spiritual man and the intellectual), Archives of Patočka in Prague)

Conclusions

“To become is never to imitate, nor to “do like”, nor to conform to a model, whether it’s of justice or of truth. There is no terminus from which you set out, none which you arrive at or which you ought to arrive at”
                                                                                                                                                                                   Deleuze , Gilles; Parnet, Claire (1977): Dialogues II, p. 2, London

Analyzing the oeuvre of Beuys in the light of practicing theory brought us to some discoveries. First of all, that there is no boundary between theory and practice (would it be art or life) and the only way to know something is throughout the direct experience. Yun-men Wen-Yen (862/4-949) was a Ch’an master famous for his single word responses to questions. As a response to the question: “What is Tao?” he replied, “Go!”Olson, Carl (2000)

The idea of Social Sculpture introduced by Beuys is an invitation for every individual, not only to be a passive consumer in the reality, which is out there “imposed upon” one, but rather be an active creator of it - “an artist” , who by moulding one’s thoughts is shaping them into the words and further moulding and shaping the world one lives in. Hence creativity is an anthropological property of any human being rather than a monopoly of an artist.

As Beuys states, it is an evolutionary process taking human kind to the other level of existence and consciousness. The question is are we ready? An invitation made by Beuys remains open for us today as much as it was back in his days. It is an invitation to act consciously from one’s freedom to create life one lives. With the statement like that Beuys transgresses the boundaries between art and life and leaps into a spiritual domain - the art of living. Hereby we would like to invite you to try and actually practice this theory here and now. We invite you to be “an artist”, to mould your thoughts, shape your thoughts into words and mould and shape the world in which you live!

In one of his last poems (27 July, 1941), Tagore writes:




The sun of the first day Put the question

To the new manifestation of life- Who are you? There was no answer. Years passed by.

The last sun of the last day Uttered the question on the shore of the western sea In the hush of evening- Who are you? No answer came again.

                                                                                                                                                Tagore, Rabindranath (2004): The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore: Poems

Bibliography

∆ Benjamin H.D. Buchloh: Beuys (January 1980): The Twilight of the Idol, Artforum, vol.5, no.18

∆ Beuys, Joseph;Volker Harlan (2004): What Is Art?: Conversa- tion with Joseph Beuys, p. 9 Clairview Books

∆ Campbell, Joseph; Moyers, Bill D; Flowers, Betty S. (1991): The power of myth, Anchor Books

∆ Deleuze , Gilles; Parnet, Claire (1977): Dialogues II, p. 2, London

∆ Elkins, James: Time and Narrative, http://saic.academia.edu/ JElkins/Books/74370/The_Visual_chapter_on_Time_and_Nar- rative_

∆ Goldsmith, Steven (1983): The Readymades of Marcel Duch- amp: The Ambiguities of anAesthetic Revolution, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

∆ Hisamatsu, Shin‘ichi (1982): Zen and the Fine Arts, New York

∆ Krishnamurti, J. (2005): On Living and Dying, p. 78, Morning Light Press

∆ Kuoni, Carin (1993): Energy Plan for the Western man – Jo- seph Beuys in America, , New York

∆ Loredana Parmesani (2000): Art of the twentieth century : movements, theories, schools and tendencies 1900-2000

∆ LeWitt, Sol (June 1967): Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, Art- forum

∆ Louth, Andrew (2003): Theology of the Philokalia. in Abba:The Tradition of Orthodoxy in the West, New York, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press

∆ McLuhan, M. (2008): The Medium is the Message, London: Penguin Books Ltd.

∆ Olson, Carl (2000): Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philoso- phy: Two Paths of Liberation from the Representational Mode of Thinking, New York

∆ Patočka, Jan: Duchovní člověk a intelektuál (The spiritual man and the intellectual), Archives of Patočka in Prague), http://www.graniczne.amu.edu.pl/integrity.html

∆ Rawlings, Ashley (march/april 2009): Lee Ufan: Illusions and Interrelationships, ArtAsiaPacific NO. 62

∆ Rilke, Rainer Maria (2000): Letters to a Young Poet, New World Library

∆ Tarkovsky, A.A. & Chiaramonte, G. (2004): Instant Light. Tarkovsky Polaroids, London

∆ Tagore, Rabindranath (2008); Gitanjali, Wilder Publications

∆ Tagore, Rabindranath (2004): The English Writings of Rabin- dranath Tagore: Poems,

∆ Tisdall Caroline (1979): Joseph Beuys, Thames and Hudson ∆ Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1980); Culture and Value

GioGio (Giorgio & Giorgina) is a collaboration between two artists: Michał Jurys (1978, PL/NL) and Inga Cholmogorova (1975, LT/NL). While still studying at Gerrit Rietveld Academy both artists worked together on several projects and since 2011 besides their personal artistic practice initiated a tandem GioGio focusing on performances, lectures/artist talks and publications.

www.cholmogorova.com
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