Peras
Imposed on to Apeiron:
Rules
Make Art
By
Tecola W. Hagos
I. General Introduction
It is to be recalled a few months
back I wrote an article �The Irrelevance of Ethiopian Artists in
the Diaspora,� which stirred up the placid, unexamined lives of
very many Ethiopian artists and their surrogates. In the period
after, I totally ignored the screeching and shrieking voices of
mediocrity splattered all over the chat-world on the Internet
attacking me personally and not my ideas. The fact of the matter is
that all that cacophony did not diminish the rational or
truthfulness of my article. This article is not a defense; those who
know me best, also know that I hardly ever write defending myself.
Thus, now I am writing simply to teach, to expound, and to clarify
some of the main assumptions I made as the basis of my conclusions
in that article (�The Irrelevance��). Yes, I lecture too to
the consternation of some. I am also addressing some important
points I had overlooked in that article, in the hope of bringing a
more coherent view and understanding why we should look at all this
glitter and exaggeration about art and with a degree of skepticism
and even cynicism.
The requirement of standards or
rules for art that I was supposed to have prescribed in the
aforementioned article has specially ruffled the feather of some
Ethiopian artists and raised the degree of discontent among my
detractors because they misread the message as a challenge to their
creative freedom. People may have read too much into those ten
points I suggested as standards to look for in works of art as
analogous to the �Ten Commandments� of the Bible written on
granite--dogmatic, unchanging, and orthodox. It is easy to judge my
suggestion as iconoclastic and a reversion to the time of the
dogmatic and the medieval. It is a fact that a person sees what he
is looking for even in the best of circumstances let alone in times
of great upheavals. I fear people read what they sought for at the
primordial level of their lives not what I wrote. Thus, I see the
need for me to elaborate and explain the idea of the importance of
having �rules or standards� in art, and persued people from
reading too much into those points I offered. They are simply
starting points that one can develop, censor, or struggle with.
II. Philosophical Justification
for Art Principles, Rules, and Standards
I start my presentation with Greek
pre-Socratic philosophical thinking of Anximanderos, Pythagoras, and
Parmenides. The nauseating claim by western thinkers/nations that
Greek civilization is exclusively the source of Western civilization
is a bogus claim that at best simply can be considered too general a
statement with limited merit. The Greeks are as much our heritage as
they are of anybody else. The Greeks were not Europeans; there was
no Europe at the height of Greek civilization. They were simply
Greeks--better still, Achaean. [See Barnes, Jonathan, EARLY GREEK
PHILOSOPHY, Penguin Books, 1987; Wheelwright, Phillip, ed. THE
PRESOCRATICS, Odyssey Press, 1966.]
In fact, as an Ethiopian, my
reference or claim to Greek thinking maybe even more legitimate than
the claims of modern days Westerners� claims of ancient Greeks as
the exclusive source of their civilization. Before there was a �Europe,�
we Ethiopians had trade, cultural, and religious relationship with
the Greeks of ancient times. We have a true ancient inter
relationship starting in their timeless mythology of the Greeks in
the story of Perseus saving the Ethiopian Princess Andromeda from
the Sea Monster. They honored us like no other people on Earth by
naming three important Constellations after our people: Princess
Andromeda, Queen Cassiopeia, and King Cepheus. We even showed up in
the person of Memnon siding with the Trojans in the great Homeric
ancient epic of the Iliad. Even the Greek Gods were reported to
travel to Ethiopia for companionship for they appreciated the
hospitality they received in the hands of the �blameless�
Ethiopians. And in real ancient historic time, according to Diogenes
Laertes, in his monumental work on the Lives of Philosophers, in the
fourth Century BC, Democritus the atomist philosopher is reported to
have visited Ethiopia. You do not find in ancient Greek works as
much references to �Jews or Gentiles� or to England, France,
Spain, Sweden et cetera as much as references to Ethiopia that
abound in Homer, Hesoids, Herodotus, Ethiopis, Diogenes et cetera,
ancient Greek writers.
Probably the most profound
philosophical concept on the nature of reality was a statement made,
at the very beginning of philosophical enquiry, in the fifth century
BC, over two thousand five hundred years ago, by the Pythagoreans.
It is to be recalled that Anximanderos, a student of Thales, the
first philosopher, had stated that reality comes out of to
apeiron (undifferentiated stuff), in other words from chaos.
To the Greek mind, even to ours also, �chaos� is a frightening
state of being. Pythagoras, who was a generation younger and
possibly a student of the Melitian philosophers, building on the
idea of Anaximanderos to apeiron (chaos) articulated
the view that when peras was imposed on to
apeiron harmony and beauty came about out of chaos. Peras
meant some form of limit or structure. [Incidentally, there are no
orginal works preserved from the writings of Pythagoras; what is
available are quotations and references by other philosophers such
as Theano (Pythagoras�s wife) Plato, Aristotle, and others.] In
other words what the Pythagoreans are saying is that when �limit�
was imposed on �chaos� the result was our universe, which they
considered to be beautiful and harmonious. This of course led to our
pedantic reductionist identification of the Pythagoreans with �numbers�
and �musical notes� forgetting the far more profound base of
their thinking. I believe this view of the Pythagoreans is the most
beautiful and profound philosophical concept ever propagated by man.
When peras was imposed on apeiron beauty
and harmony emerged. Wow!
This approach is not an empiricist
approach of fretting out what reality �is� made of through sense
data, but rather understanding the organizing principles involved.
This approach is usually identified with Parmenides. Later
Philosophers have entertained similar concepts not as dramatic as
that of the Pythagoreans. The �nous� of Anaxagoras, the �logos�
of Heraclites, the �Forms� of Plato, the �Universals� of
Aristotle, the �God and faith� of Augustine and Aquinas, the �will�
of Nietzsche and Hegal, the �sense of tragedy� of Unamuno, and
the disembodied conception of human language of Russell and
Wittgenstein, and of late the narrative paradigm of the
deconstructionists etcetera are all attempts to explain that one
organizing principle, even if the effort of some is deliberately
anti foundational, underlining all of reality.
II. Life Itself as an
Organizing Force with Rules and Limits.
If there was no genetic
instruction, life would have been just a sludge of matter. It is peras
�limits� and specific instructions that defined what is
distinguishable as an individual in any one species or in any life
form. It is specifications, instructions, principles, and rules (not
to mention purpose) that underlie all life forms as we know them.
Because of higher evolution, mankind has a more pronounced sense of
order and purpose in life and as a result of such state of being we
have our civilization(s).
It is inconceivable that one group
of human beings (modernist and post-modernist artists) can single
handedly override such obvious fact of the universal necessity of
order, organizing principles, rules and standards (purpose) in life
or in particular life forms. It is both arrogance and ignorance of
individual artists to try to eliminate organizing principles, rules
and standards from art or anything else. Without principles, rules
and standards there can be no art form.
Thus, one cannot rationally
advocate for a system without organizational principles, rules,
process et cetera and at the same time maintain a �self� that is
a result of such organizational principles, rules et cetera, or live
in a society and derive the benefits of society that is organized on
principles of law, order, administration, et cetera. If one insists
without the necessary rational or reason to dispense with
principles, rules and standards one runs the risk of maintaining a
contradictory position that could easily drive any person into
insanity!
An advocacy for total freedom
without any organizing principles, rules and standards to be
observed is simply a nihilistic view. Philosophers have an
unflattering name for such outlook--solipsism. At its best it
camouflage itself with the concept of �freedom� and individual
�autonomy� thereby disarming simple minds to accept anti-social
behaviors and philosophies as some form of enlightenment of sort.
Freedom in the void is no freedom, the freedom of an individual
becomes meaningful in context of the goals and purposes that the
individual pursues. If the individual�s effort is constrained,
restricted, or denied we can see conflict that leads us to inquire
further whether the goals and aspirations of the individual put
society or the individual himself in danger. The problem is who is
going to decide what is dangerous or benign.
III. Conflict Between Entropy and
Complexity
The two main forces in the
universe could be summed up as the destructive force (entropy) and
the constructive force (complexity). Entropy is ever at work from
the very beginning of the cosmos if we follow that type of
description of the universe. Both time and space are alleged to
start at one point of singularity from an infinitely complex
structure.
Where there is a break down of
organizing principles that is entropy at work having the upper hand.
And where we have ever more organization we have complexity. It is
easy to conceive of art as a life affirming complex process, thus,
an organized or organizing structure where human life is enriched
and given meaning. If we just simply observe the simplest living
thing like a single celled entity, we can see first hand that life
itself is a complex structure ever fighting back entropic
destruction. The complexity of our human existence could simply be
observed in our organization whether as an individual or as part of
a system. We also could observe the cessation of an individual life
involves the breakdown of our exquisitely maintained complex
structure back into simpler structure, the fact of the end of our
complexity that was maintained against the ever present destructive
force of entropy.
IV. Human Perception: Space and
Time Dimension - Empiricism
The world of philosophy
experienced a tumultuous upheaval when Hume wrote his most famous
philosophical work AN INQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN
UNDERSTANDING,(1748).[The finest Philosophical work I have ever
read, not that I agree with Hume on all points.] Some speculated
that Philosophy was finished, caput! Kant came to the rescue with
his magnum works: CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, (1781); CRITIQUE OF
PRACTICAL REASON, (1787); and THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT, (1790). He
set us back onto on our course to this day. Philosophy did not die
out, but flourished into a formidable force even in our own most
barbaric Century, despite the fact of the nibbling of Derrida and
Rorty.
What was the reason that alarmed
the world of philosophy of an impending doom? Hume wrote, �All the
objects of human reason or inquiry may naturally be divided into two
kinds, to wit, relations of ideas, and matters of fact.� [Hume,
Section IV, Part I] Hume was perceived as a threat because his work
dispensed with a good portion of the basis for speculative
philosophy and theology, which also included art. His claim that all
true statements are either analytic (abstract reasoning such as
logic, mathematics), or synthetic (clinical reasoning, matter of
fact and existence), which meant what ever did not answer to those
two categories is nonsensical, paused real challenge to philosophy.
Hume�s profound observation was further refined by the analytical
schools where the emphasis was on the function of language either as
expression or description, which built a wall dividing what is
theology, myth, magic, poetry, art et cetera from what is science of
logic, physics, chemistry, psychology et cetera, the latter set
embodying truth.
This distinction between the
expressive and the descriptive, of necessity, focused on what is
sensible. Moreover, �art� is not science, but shares certain
qualities with the sciences. Here is where I take a different or
extended route from Hume and join up with Kant, and ultimately, as
method goes, with the views of Adorno or the Frankfurt Critical
School.
What is so terrible about modern
and post-modern art that drives people into some form of frenzy
either in defense or in opposition is its nihilism. Let me go
directly to the main two sources of the basic concepts of art that
fueled the controversy as we find it to date. Of course, there are
several refinements, pseudo-concepts, pretensions et cetera. The
first anti-art theory was initiated by Arshile Gorky to dispense
with the very discipline, skill, craftsmanship, even the
transcendental unity of the artist with his medium as understood and
doggedly adhered to by all artists over the ages. And the second was
the effort of breaking off the idea of a �picture� from the
product i.e. �the� painting.
In certain perspective, Gorky�s
effort to dispense with the art of painting is no different from the
medieval ideas of alchemy, magic, and witches craft--a process that
delaminated cause from effect or vise-versa. Gorky, the darling of
the post-modernist, started out with a tough life in Ottoman Turkey
occupied Armenia. He migrated to the United States in his youth when
he was about twenty years old. He changed his Armenian name,
Vosdanik Adoian, to Arshile Gorky claiming some �mythical�
family connection to the famous Russian author Maxim Gorky. He spent
all his adult productive years unsuccessfully to get away from the
overwhelming influence of Cezanne and Picasso. If it were not for
favorable propping of his work by the saturnine critic Greenberg he
would have died in obscurity not as a famous art theoretician and
artist of note but as an appendage to some famous artists. His work
as far as I can judge has merit (even without propping), but does
not seem to reflect his theories on art. In his art I see great
structure (composition) and harmony of color and form. This is the
founding father of total freedom in art, who simply is dictated by
discoverable principles of aesthetics. To some extent his
pronouncement on art is distinct from his actual work; moreover,
this radical departure of Gorky�s is understandable coming from an
individual whose formative years was painful as a member of a
persecuted minority. Under such trying circumstance, who would not
aim at total freedom, a state of existence free from any
restrictions?
The other extreme theory on art is
the idea of separating painting from it being a �picture.� A
task of far reaching implication than it seems on first blush. The
ideas of Kazimir Malevich were fully developed by the time he
presented to the Russian public his extraordinary work, �Black
Square� in 1915. This is what is later claimed to be the base of
the non-objective art world that sprouted very many offshoots. In
fact, Malevich even wrote a book in 1927 titled THE NON-OBJECTIVE
WORLD. The period before 1917 was the short lived but extremely
creative time of Russian avant-garde that truly was the harbinger of
modern art and even reaching over to the post-modern. As we all know
Picasso never overcome the tyranny of three dimensionality nor
formalism as a technique. It is in this sense that I juxtapose
post-impression period of Picasso, Matisse, et cetera with the
modern and post-modern non-objective and non-art movement.
Non-European artists especially
from Sub-Saharan Africa added great flavor to the �West�s�
modern and post-modern movement. Most of those artists were either
trained in European art institutions or pursued their artistic
endeavors in European settings (cities) inhaling the very life
giving atmosphere of western culture or social milieu. Ethiopian
modernists were no different in that regard than their African
counterparts else where. The very idea of abstraction, and for some
non-art art is borrowed. That is one reason why Ethiopian art
historians, or critics shy away from talking about �Ethiopian art�
as a point of departure or subject.
No matter how hard we try to
rationalize or universalize our (non-Europeans) claims predicated on
our membership in the larger family of humankind, the brutal fact is
that Western artists serve/d their communities; they are/were not
peddling their ware in some foreign communities. It is a mark of a
very weak social and economic structure that pleads and grovels in
order to be included in the culture of a foreign community. Betewso
kuta indih menzebanen.
V. Art as an Escape from
Dreary/Bleak Ethiopian Life
To a great extent our artists are
products of our social and economic system with stifling
limitations. Consider the fact that there is one fine arts school
for over sixty million people! The material deprivation of the
society is such that it could not even absorb the minuscule number
of graduates into its work force. What can be more tragic than such
social condition where you observe great individual talent without
social context.
The State of the arts is in dire
situation. The exception being poetry and drama that have made
monumental strides. Individuals such as Tsegaie Gebremedhin,
Yohannes Gedamu, Abe Gubegna, Adis Alemayehu, Baalu Girma, Kebede
Michael and many many others could hold their own with the World�s
best. There is no comparison with the painters or sculptors to those
giants of letters in the Ethiopian scene.
The current Ethiopian Artists
could be categorized superficially in about four over all groups.
The traditionalists (the Debteras), the Early European trained
artists who have died out for sometime now, the academy trained
artists (both in Ethiopia and the West), and the modernists (those
who came into maturation after the 1974 revolution) and a subgroup
of this may be the socialists who were mostly trained in the Soviet
and East-Block countries during the Military Regime of Mengistu
Hailemariam. Of course the group could be further refined. I have to
some extent addressed the classification of Ethiopian artist in my
article the �Irrelevance of Ethiopian Artists in the Diaspora.�
Because of the over all lopsided
economic development of the country, the distortion in the social
relationships of different sectors of the Ethiopian society is quite
disconcerting. True, there are a handful of Ethiopian artists who
are making a decent living from the sale of their works mostly to
foreign collectors, whereas the majority lead simple subsistence
lives. Most Ethiopians have very low income and as a result they
lead a life that is asethic, with deprivation and great human needs.
Thus, most artists suffer along so many.
There are several concerned people
who have alleged that Clement Greenberg, who later matured into a
formidable critic, started out as part of a CIA financed scheme to
undermine the new and promising �Socialist Realism� in art that
was winning the hearts and minds of people all over the world before
Stalinism chocked and reduced it into a third rate art-on-command
caricature or shadow of its constituting beginning. There are
serious art historians and social commentators who have studied the
situation carefully and have concluded that Modern Art with the
works of the Abstract Expressionists, such as Jackson Pollok and
many others are in fact the products of American CIA Cold War
manipulation. Those studies were not mere conjectures but supported
with plausible evidence. On the issue of the role of the CIA in
countering the Socialist movement in art employed people like
Greenberg, and by extension all the artists Greenberg promoted, I
recommend to you the most informative book on the subject by Frances
Stoner Saunders, WHO PAID THE PIPER? THE CIA AND THE CULTURAL
COLD WAR, (Granta Books).
The Smithsonian Art Show of a
handful of �Ethiopian� artists is organized in the nature of
such United States government sponsored distortion of Ethiopian
artistic life. The conspiratorial base of the Show started back in
the early 1980s soon after the group show at the Meridian House, in
Washington DC. At that time, Achameleh Debela tried to organize a
show with Skunder as the main attraction where Achameleh personally
would share in the limelight. Skunder was not willing to participate
in such a show, so do the other artists fully aware of Achamelah�s
manipulative effort refused to cooperate. This was at the time when
Achameleh was a struggling �artist� teaching on the side and
doing graduate work. Later things started to change, Achameleh was
well established, his contemporaries have drifted away, and new
artists were coming into the scene. Over the years Skunder had
declined in his health becoming more and more dependent on very few
individuals among whom Achameleh worked his way to a position of
influence. Thus, it took Achameleh some twenty years after all kinds
of impressive academic achievements, a chance to carry out his
greatest heist--the Smithsonian Show.
At the opening of the Smithsonian
Show in July 2003, since much of the show�s success was pegged on
to the prestige coming from the participation of Skunder in the
Show, the organizers of the Show literally carried Skunder from his
bed to the Opening Night of the Show. Sadly, Skunder died a few days
later. Such callousness in the pursuit of individual glory is not
limited to artists only.
Conclusion and Verdict On
Post-Modern art
I am tempted to use a different
lexicon describing most so called modern and post-modern artists.
They should be called �con-artists� starting from the phony
Warhol with his bleached hair piece [for the man was as bold as an
egg] who personified the age of greed and lightweight philosophy to
Robert Rauschenberg who is a scavenger of styles and ideas like the
Borg of Star Trek fame. In fact, it is when artists try to sell us
their theory on art in a futile effort to give rational to their
individual work that they fall flat on their faces. The intuitive in
art needs no second medium; it is already engaging the particular
form of art as its medium of communication, exposition, or
rendition. Except for few such as Reynold and Tolstoy, artists as
art critics or art theoreticians is a very dubious proposition, even
an anachronistic proposition.
Ethiopian modernists are much
different than their counterparts else where, maybe scales lower
since their art is not within a culture, but calculated and
imitative and an imposition. The sad part to this is the fact that
there is no need for such adulteration and prostitutization. We need
to make a distinction between influence in the natural course of
development of the arts within a particular culture or social
structure and mercenary type engagement of copying and imitating for
purely monetary purpose.
Whether they are famous critics
such as Greenberg, Danto, or a host of internationally less known
luminaries of the art world, they work/write from certain
trajectories that are at all times (as far as I can tell)
self-serving and ever collapsing on themselves with self
congratulatory indulgence--no different than youthful masturbation,
maybe pleasurable, but selfish and barren leading to no where. There
is nothing special to their ideas. Some simply assert tautologies
and insist on readers to accept their words as scientific truth
rather than �religious� truth, and others engage us in pseudo
reasoning using every conceivable device known to rhetoric.
Paradoxically, art criticism is also an art form. It may be
appreciated as a form of literary expression, once we get over its
pretentious attempt to expose or explain the other art forms of
painting and sculpting, music, and poetry. [On Greenberg see
Florence Rubenfeld, CLEMENT GREENBERG: A LIFE,
(Scribner,1998); Greenberg, COLLECTED ESSAYS AND CRITICISM,
(University of Chicago Press, 1986). It is not necessary that I
provide my readers with a coherent theory of art. It is enough for
me to punch holes in puffed up, hollow, and pretentious theories of
art expounded or claimed by artists and art critics.
I reject any system that preempted
a human being by pigeonholing him or her in a prior determined
social structure; nevertheless, I appreciate the wisdom of the great
Indian philosopher Sarveplli Radhakrishnan trying to bring a human
face to the horror of the caste system when he equated life to a
game of cards with the idea that the fact that some of us might have
been dealt good hands and others bad ones is no reason to accept the
inevitability of incidents of life, the point is to play well what
ever hand we are dealt.
Tecola W. Hagos
November, 2003
Washington, DC
Copyright � 2003 by Phineaus
St.Claire
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