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.

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

Copyright � 2003 by Phineaus St.Claire