Radim Langer/Marek Meduna
Berg
Like great tongues of the past which hardly fit the mouth. Like a burning highway leading somewhere from somewhere. Like multiple multi- expositions. It is no longer possible to think like this: in megalomania and audacious predictions, there is small-mindedness and evil. We are not whole; that is an illusion. In fact, we are dominated by the demon of individuality; we are stubborn in our craving for brilliance and ex- ceptionality. What is left are sham exhibitions and skirmishes with no conclusive result. We look down from balconies in art galleries upon the uselessness of our miserable existence. And the words that should have helped, have instead betrayed us.
Art implies mastery, this is clear even to the most hopeless bumblers.
Art, artificial, artificiality, an artificial plaything. The human monkey creates a shadow world that amounts to nothing but the shadow world itself.
Art as a structure for its own sake. It is shattered by its hierarchical perspective. Inequality throughout the structure of the arts has acquired malign dimensions in the course of its historical development.
Art is a riddle having only a possibility to be solved. This is because there is another riddle hidden in the solution. The chain is endless. Tran- scendence. And this is how it should be, goes the usual retort of the moribund spirit of the art of the Western world. No definite conclusion comes, every day is the last one and JGD’s whip keeps falling on the linen canvases of its purchasers.
Art cannot be crowned on a single throne. It works best while trumpeting its own demise. The right moment for art to abdicate comes when no one is paying attention. When it sneaks between the claws of an unexpected situation, when it is not parading itself. When it is art because it is not art. The basic dexterity of an artist depends on dialectics. The artists’ ideal is Janus, the Two-Faced one.
Art is always ideological — without exception. Art casts pearls of wisdom in the mirror of the world before the faces of obtuse spectators. Art is uselessness itself, exactly the uselessness that proudly believes it is overturning society, creating and destroying at the same time. This is exactly the paradise that every artist finds themself in during their lifetime: secure in their useless and necessary freedoms, together with the decrepit institution of art.
Art falls into the trap of the past. We, today’s people, are rather more a people of yesterday than of tomorrow. The shining examples of man- kind pace in a circle behind the bars of Mondrian’s cage. A ZOO of the art world: pavilions of the significant modernists. Information no longer urges us onward; instead, we use it to put up barricades against uncertainty. As the stuff piles up, the expanding heap slowly buries the street. In a society of the aging, the young also think about old age.
Art is always ideological. Yes, we are repeating ourselves so that the non-ideological character of the earlier message is heightened. This statement is true under any current circumstances. Art is ideology and there is no choice, exhibitions are merely technical expedients. Artists practice at Mondrian, Picasso, Malevich, and follow other exemplars. They play board games with fixed rules. Lines are lines and cast no magic spells. A collage is cut-up paper, not a herald of the New World. We admire Aleister Crowley because we know he was mostly about sex.
Art casts pearls before its own face and, lounging in a pleasant financial bath, it has been loafing for five continuous years of world crisis. However, something has to break, art schools have been churning out one graduate after another. After all, we, too, count ourselves among them. One human artist (a Czech) copies pictures from one folder to another. He minds his own business and takes pains so that the JPGs he’s downloaded from somewhere do not get mixed together. Grants, no grants, couch-potatoes and scarecrows, zero plus zero, wages and remunerations. They were said to fight for us, they were said to be struggling to represent our interests. Artists do not believe artists, there is
no point in arguing. They keep art going. We are they.
