the corpse-grinders of berlin - episode 24
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The problem of the passage between the heart and the mind was the one which exemplified the western crisis. He saw it everywhere, in every guarded eye, in every calculated movement. Perhaps at different times in history this passage was blocked by different substances. At the moment it was choked by the shit of finance.
He thought about his last meeting with his friend Jadrin in the Ville de Bruxelles. It was at the cafe Le Clef d´Or. Brutal sunglasses, a shaven head, black attire. Jadrin was silent for a long time, then he said “You know the nineteenth century was the time of morality. Dostoyevsky, for example. Then the twentieth century, that was the time of politics. The world wars, the rise of communism, the 60s, etc.” He looked around the smoky French barroom a bit. “And today it’s the time of business.”
It was true of the entire western civilization, but nowhere was it more obvious than in the art world. It was in the 1960s when the redefinition of an artist occurred, and it was largely perpetuated by the New York artists like Rauschenberg, Pollack, and especially Warhol. This is when the role of the artist turned into being a businessman and the whole art world entered the field of marketing. Ever since being an artist had acquired a meaning that it had never had in history before. And the art community as a whole was largely unreflective about this obvious change. Only one artist from the older school even had the integrity to mention it:
The entire world of art has reached such a low level, it has been commercialised to such a degree that art and everything relating to it has become one of the most trivial activities of our e-poch. Art in these times has probably reached one of it’s lowest points ever in history, probably even lower than in the late 18th century, when there was no great art but only frivolity. Art in the 20th century has become to a similar function as a mere entertainment.
Marcel Duchamp
In northern Europa what it meant to be an artist was to fill out endless grant applications (or to pay for someone to fill them out for you) and going the route of middle class security. No more taking any risks. And yet everyone has always known that the middle class solution was the most cowardly- it was always better to be either rich or even poor- but never middle class. And it is the poverty of middle class aesthetics that rule the art world these days, along with its flimsy ideals.
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