Today I have an announcement to make. But first, I'd like to share a brief fragment originally written for a book of art theory I'm working on, as mentioned in my first post here at the Needle's Haystack.
Stencil and woodcut from a found piece of wood, 2020.
Sometimes writing more text is easier than discarding material, but the quality improves by removing the bad parts and keeping those that make more sense. It's like cutting the tops and a few branches of a tree; at first it looks ugly, even after a few years the tree still looks like a silly poodle, but if it survives it eventually sprouts new branches and resumes a more tree-like growth. Similarly, deleting a few sentences or pages of a text doesn't kill it but may allow it to grow in new directions. (This kind of organicist metaphor has been heavily criticised when applied to works of art, but I think it makes sense to some degree in describing the creative process.) Here I want to take the opportunity to present a short text originally intended to be included in my upcoming book in a section titled Intermission, which is full of tongue-in-cheek aphorisms and short prose. However, the book will be just fine without this text. Instead of committing it to oblivion I'll simply publish it here with some additional notes.
A Concise History of Art
Nothing happened before 17901
Theosophy seduced the symbolists
Impressionism dissolved into small dots
Cubism faded into gray
Futurism fought for Fascism
Dada killed art and survived
Surrealism cannibalised dada
Psychoanalysis sabotaged surrealism
The ■■■ compromised abstract expressionism2
Action painting ran out of action and paint
Situationism reinvented football and put spectacles on society
Phenomenology, not theatricality, spoiled minimalism3
Advertising bought and paid for pop art
Sots art made Lenin enjoy coke
Analytic philosophy explained conceptualism to death4
Happenings once happened
Fluxus flapped its ephemeral wings and flew away
Poor arte povera produced no luxury goods for collectors5
Reality surpassed hyper-realism
Post-modernism was never for real
Relational aesthetics could use a couples therapist
Whataboutism blames its predecessors for its failures
Although this brief history isn’t necessarily accurate in all details, there is, without a doubt, someone who believes in it.
And now for the announcement.
Call for mail art exchange
Mail art had its heyday in the 1970's when postal services were more reliable and didn't have to compete with electronic communication. The Fluxus movement in particular favoured the mundane letter and postcard media.
As a part of this mail art project I will experiment with asemic writing and something very reminiscent of a conlang, except that the words are not intended to carry any meaning. Video animations of a kind of audiovisual poetry are also planned.
If you want to participate in the exchange, send me your post address by email. You may also send me your own mail art by regular post. The email contact will not be used for the exchange of art but will be useful to check if delivery is successful (I'm tempted to quote T.S. Eliot: Tell her I'll bring the horoscope myself: One must be so careful these days).
The project will run through the year, perhaps longer. I intend to document sent letters or postcards, and will also scan and display incoming mail art on the project page (unless you prefer to remain anonymous). More information can be found on the official project page.
The year when Kant published his Critique of Judgement. According to Swedish artist and theorist Lars Vilks, art as such began around that time.
See Stonor Saunders, R. (2000). The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. New York and London: New Press.
Fried, are you listening?
Why else would Kosuth be so boring?
Hardly true even if they may have tried for a while.