Antoni Tapies on viewing modern art and his painting Wood and Straw:
Above all, if one does not play the "game" with a certain predisposition, no explanation will suffice, and it won't be fun for anyone. It is, in a way, the prior condition that must exist in one who prepares to attend a magic show, a feat of prestidigitation. And if one is not willing to let himself be 'put under' these spells that consitute the convention known as "art", we need not go any further. Just look at what happens to the spectator who enters the salon where the sleight of hand is to take place intent on only discovering the trick. The more tricks he finds, the more foolish the show seems because, in truth, it's all smoke and mirrors, a pure deceit that gives pleasure only to the unsuspecting innocent willing to be deceived. That's exactly where the fun is! And what fun it is! And how poetic! The whole ceremony, all those movements, all those colors, all that essential purity in telling us "now you see it now you don't," and that the rabbits and the objects are transformed even as they remain the same, and that they multiply, and that they melt, and that they grow and shrink. And fish turn into birds, and an empty trunk produces a young princess, and the stroke of a fan makes flowers grow, while coins come out of the ears of the most unbelieving.
I imagine the greatest surprise for the viewer who comes in unaware must certainly be the fact of finding this sort of pile of straw in an exhibition hall, where until recently one went to see more "important things". If the viewer gives us the benefit of the "magical spell", he will see, of course, that the artist has, from the outset, meant to make "art"-for we are not dealing with a pile of hay in a haystack, but one that is placed in the form of a painting in a place where art is usually served up-although with a very poor material. The first clue, then, is that the "magician"-in this case, the artist-that traditional specialist who has always dealt in the deep things of life, has chosen today this humble foundation, this straw, as a topic worthy of consideration.
So what's going on? Do those once favored by the muses no longer paint heavenly things? Do those who had always dealt with the great solemn occascions no longer glorify their lords nor anyone else in their grace? Well, no. Artists, who consider themselves the most refined, the most sensitive of beings, haven't believed in all that in years. No one is important enough for them, and they would like society to believe that as well. Instead, they fall in love with straw. And now the viewer's right of imagination can begin to go into action. We have all seen clumps of hay in a stable. But perhaps finding them here, on the scene of "important" things, the highest wisdom is incarnated in the poorest body. To reflect upon straw, upon manure, is to meditate on upon the first things, on the most natural things, on the origin of force and life. Because the artist feels, and this is nothing new, that this origin, this life source, this fertilizer that makes the earth fecund, the "salt of the earth" truly resides in those who struggle from below, who sleep, even if it is symbolically, in the straw of miserable huts, or on the pallets of so many prisons, or amid the stink of the manure in the stable for "heretics" or in the fields where those who are considered trash leave behind their sweat. And this is not out of sentimentalism nor any "artistic" tastse for poverty, but to allow for an understanding of the "primary nature" of the dialectics, and struggle of all things, naturally including, the class struggle. Because, what's more, the painting also contains a piece of wood that divides it in two. Two. Students of symbolisms of art would say much more than I about this "two". They would speak of opposition, conflict, balance, creator and thing created, black and white, male and female, yin and yang, life and death, good and evil, high and low. And both spaces are white. White. The color of the beginning and the end, the color of one who is about to change his condition, the color of absolute silence, which as Kandinsky put it, is the preparation of all living possibilities, for all the joys of youth.
Naturally there will always be someone who will say" "What is this guy talking about? There's nothing but a bunch of straw mane stuck to a white canvas with a plain old stick in the middle!" And we'll have to say he's right. He saw through the trick. All this show in fact is nothing unless we want or are able to see more than what there is. But the artist doesn't feel frustrated by this any more than thinks he's a failure, or the magician feels ridiculed. What right does this positivistic viewer have not to allow others to give free rein to their "imaginations"? And we still hear those that cry: "The imaginings of an impotent magician! No one will ever see so much philosophy in this! It is the art of pretension and vanity!" And the author must confess again, that they are right, that he too agrees. And perhaps it is precisely for this reason, for this fear of vanity, that he has chosen to make a painting of straw. Because he no longer believes in anything that can be glorified today but the most elementary, the purest, the most unpolluted, and even the most innocent things, on condition, of course, that these things be ready to catch fire. Because he sees that this is the only thing that keeps the world alive. This is life. And he doesn't want to hear anything more about the hierarchies and disguises asssumed by those who think they are important, but who are really dead. For the painter there is nothing more than a pile of straw, and a "two". And a "two" that is really a "one". And everyone has the right to tell him that he's a farceur, that this is all a lie, a deceit. Because he thinks so too. A painting is nothing. It is a door that leads to another door. Art, no matter how excellent, will always be just one more manifestation of maya, of the deception at the core of everything. And the truth that we seek will never be found in a painting, but will only appear behind the last door that the observer learns to open with his own strength. And the more important the painting, the more important the personages painted in it, and the more colors and coats of paint there are, the thicker will be the veil that darkens the truth, and the less we will find the path.
But let it be clear that nothing is hidden here. We have always said that these things were very important to us, but we have also said, right from the start, that they are not serious in the manner of those who think themselves too wise. Because art is a game and-who can say this is not true of all human acts?-only on condition that we become quite innocent will we truly capture its deep meaning.
Seeing Panda Bear perform in Berlin last weekend at the Hebbel Am Ufer 2 was nothing short of astonishing. The man behind the moniker, Noah Lennox, is firstly known for being 1/3 of Animal Collective, the most prodigious indie band of the last decade. When he’s not touring or writing music with them (check off 9 albums now), he resides in Portugal with his wife and kid and still finds time to make some of the most open-minded music to be conceived a single person. Now while never having played Berlin solo before, one would've suspected him to perform an evenhanded mix of stuff off his two albums, Young Prayer (quietly came out in ‘04 in response to his father’s death, recorded in the same house he passed away in) and of course, Person Pitch (took several ‘07 Album of the Year honors for its endless layering of samples, sun-warped rhythms and Brian Wilson-like vocal textures) but more on that in a minute...
While recently in Spain over the holidays, I got the pleasure of viewing the immense John Cage retrospective at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. At the very least, Cage is the American composer responsible for defining the radical practice of ‘experimental’ musical composition that ultimately changed the course of modern music and art forever. By relentlessly questioning the conventions of music, Cage took a wrecking ball to every formal and structural cornerstone that had been set in place from centuries past, clearing the air for equally important thoughts such as chance, fragility and uncertainty. Aptly titled The Anarchy of Silence, the sweeping exhibition is the first to move through Cage’s 50 year career since his passing in 1992, roving decade by decade with thrilling ease.
Through the 1950s, sometimes even before hostile audiences, Cage extended the idea of using chance in the process of writing musical scores as well as into the realm of performance. As expected, Cage’s landmark work, 4’33", was realized in this exhibition in several versions. This ‘silent’ composition, whose content is meant to be perceived as the sounds of the environment that the listener hears while it is 'performed' (rather than 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence) is presumably the most dynamic conceptual object to come out of the 20th century. Furthermore, many of Cage’s beautiful water and radio scores were also represented from this same period. In the 1960’s and beyond, John Cage became increasingly interested in media-based works that ruptured the ideas of authorship as well as attention. One the strongest pieces of the exhibition was his computer-generated slide, sound and film installation titled HPSCHD, which was presented in one of the final galleries of the show.
Lastly, the show explored Cage’s friendship and influence on several monumental artists including Marcel Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol and Nam June Paik. The museum displayed a number of stunning pieces from each of these visual pioneers and if you managed to look close enough, you could almost see Cage’s fingerprints quietly on them. Taken as a whole, MACBA did a tremendous job of clearly proving that without John Cage, the art and music of the last 80 years would have unfolded very differently…and certainly more drearily.
