Nothing Can Be Everything (A Manifesto on Modern Art)

 Have you made a face at the art scene of the past couple years already? Or are you still standing in a corner, claiming that anything can be something?

The ethos of the 21st century art scene has been- bluntly said- to accept everything, to understand everything and to relate to everything. Perhaps it started with the Fountain by Marcel Duchamp in 1917. This "art piece" is more famously known as the upside-down urinal, which aroused lots of controversy with people equally for- and against it. While some thought of the Fountain as the new frontier of art (which it was, since Duchamp's work inspired art movements like pop art), others spoke up about the immorality, vulgarism and plagiarism of the urinal.¹

Take a moment to think about your stance towards this piece, which has split people's opinions for over 100 years now... .

 Just to give you food for thought: Isn't this profane piece perhaps more of an art statement than Klimt's The Kiss? Mind you, I am going to lengths here to create some contrast in your cortex. Still, you are not sold. How on earth can a "readymade",  as Duchamp explained himself, be more valuable than The Kiss?

Well, it does not come down to the piece. What determines the artistic value is not the creation itself, but what is expresses. Humbly, we do not create art. From the start, we do not create the feelings that consume us or the experiences we pass through in order for us to say that we created the art. We create nothing; we have created nothing. We have invented nothing.

If you examine closely, ever since the dawn of time we have never created, nor come up with anything. We only expressed ourselves. Expression. There are different meanings for this word in English. They all however describe transformation. Transformation. From thought to action: I express myself. From tune or brush stroke to emotion: Artistic expression. From word to idea: When pigs fly. From symbol to quantity: 2πr expresses the circumference of a circle. From A to B: Oil is won through expression of fruit (Latin: to press out, express). And finally, gene expression: Information from a gene is synthesized ultimately affecting the phenotype (appearance) of a living thing. 

Now that was a lot of talk for a very simple construct: 

Art is about expression. Creation is a mirage². The value of an art piece is in what it expresses. The mastery of art is the mastery of expression so that each experience-r finds an expression of themselves in it.

So I ask you again: Have you made a face at the art scene of the past couple years already? Or are you still standing in a corner, claiming that anything can be something? Because I frown at the art scene of late. Blank walls, red dots, chaotic papers and black lines. I find individual contemplation at best, which reasons with no one but the artist. It is a plague. Individualism is the plague. And all modern creatives are ill. And all admirers and clients are carriers of this illness. We try so hard to accept everything, to understand everything and to relate to everything, as I've stated earlier. We learned to not question individualism and to not ask about the bigger picture because I am already complete. But am I complete alone?

Let's take a trip down our common memory lane all the way to the first humans to pursue an answer. Do we know the name of the first cave painter? Or why the first architects, poets and philosophers were anonymous? They were unknown because they did not express themselves for their sake. They were more significant than that. They stood for an era, represented hundreds of humans at once.

They were asked to express reality differently in order to solve problems. So they took resources in nature and transformed them to express solutions and alter reality. Much like how information is taken from the gene to synthesize end-products such as proteins that alter the phenotype of a living organism. From thought to action, from tune and brush stroke to emotion, from word to idea, from symbol to quantity, from A to B. This is the work they did. This is art. This is expression. And it is the opposite of modern art.

From: The Embodied Image (J. Pallasmaa) 

I do not think that art should be art to the artist only and be exhibited. Anyone is free to do what they like and enjoy, but not everything can be art. Not anything can be something. But nothing can be everything. And I exclaim that referring to anonymous. Those who expressed for the people, shaping distinct epochs and cultures. Who cumulatively shaped our civilization; those behind the wonders of the world.

From: The Embodied Image (J. Pallasmaa) 

So next time you wonder what happened to the art scene and how and why it went from eloquent contours and meaningful styles to a urinal, you might want to remember that the value of art lies not in its individuality but in its depth of expression and transformation of reality. Remember, not anything can be something but nothing can be everything.

 

 

¹ https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/dada/marcel-duchamp-and-the-readymade/

² 'I was drawing people's attention to the fact that art is a mirage.'- Marcel Duchamp https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573