The system of ethical transgressions of contemporary art or artists should take power
In questioning the functioning of contemporary art based solely on market economySome will not fail to address the pressing issue raised in our time reports on technological developments with those of the future of aesthetics (production of symbolic objects) and ethics (social morality). I will dedicate myself here to make an inventory in the observation and critical analysis of the workings of the system of contemporary art in its relationship between ethics and aesthetics, then I give the only possible course of action for The artist today in society as it presents itself.
I’m even more motivated to make this system of contemporary art over the last thirty years, prosperous and running at full speed without it we have been given notice, within it, even many philosophers, art critics, or scholars who put it into perspective, critical to denounce his ethical transgressions, his “light” aesthetics and, finally, the social alienation that embodies much of its production. On closer inspection, the artist would not it therefore a public entertainer (Ben), a conceptual designer (3 Buren, artist forced by the establishment, both in his service and served by him (Sophie Calle). As if it were accepted, based on art history, once and for all, that the artist could only exist in roles, pre-formatted, never able to escape this condition.
I am among those who believe the contrary, that the changing society will give artists the opportunity to acquire real status that will enable them to assume responsibility in our societies and a major role.
My purpose is timely because recent evidence now, after hegemony unchallenged, for decades, contemporary art, fault lines and doubts, which now seem to affect his system. We do not dwell on the questioning he was subjected in France in the 90 4 which was in fact an epiphenomenon. Defenders of the formal orthodoxy of the tradition that met there, as Jean-Philippe Domecq, Jean Clair, Marc Fumaroli, appearing often only as nostalgic bygone forms of the past. In fact, are never taken into account with them, in a speech without nuance, ideological changes, which affect social and technical societies, and renewed, in fact, the imaginary, symbolic and artistic forms.
Never, either, that their speeches at no time alludes to a significant movement yet of aesthetics to ethics.
Displacement as the art critic Pierre Restany emphasized early in his writings 5. For many reasons, I am convinced that the situation evolves. The critical position in relation to contemporary art, long dominant, but the models and running now accuse some form of obsolescence, is more prevalent. The artist outside the market and institutional support may also engage in forms that now allows the information revolution. If he has control of the latter, it provides the added advantage over the established powers (economic and political), speed of execution, the faculty of imagination pragmatic sense of creative strategies, full freedom of action without having to refer to a system or any hierarchy before taking action. Today, this is new, the first signs of a crack in the system of contemporary art began to emerge.
This is not so much a flaw as the aesthetic avant-gardes have both performed during the last century, chasing one after the other, with aesthetic proposals that sought ever new and innovative. But rather an insidious doubt that installs, swells and spreads.
A question that follows the triumphant arrogance of contemporary art, as irresistible tide, has invaded our museums and our minds for decades. The marketing of art has influenced and not in art schools successive generations of students.
Art magazines have succumbed to the understandable temptation of financial windfall for their readers regiment, subtly hinting that he who did not like contemporary art was simply a fool, an arrant reactionary doubled. Aesthetics has thus been relegated to a minor when the ethic, she found herself completely erased. Commodification and instrumentalization eventually level the aesthetic and even more its ethical function. It is the market, economy, finance, speculation, marketing who not only became the driving force of contemporary art called but, worse still, its vector unique creation.
In a changing world in crisis, artists (the real) can not remain locked in a ghetto, where the stakes have become ridiculous aesthetic and ethical concerns virtually absent. Contemporary art: a world elite, closed upon itself. Double-ended round, which no longer works on the equivalence of financial securities.
Values prefabricated assigned, handled by operators influential market. These operators, who benefit from the chain of authority established, the producer-artist basis, at the top of the pyramid, which focuses, ultimately, the value of, implementation, directly by the amount reached at Christie’s. These operators are so powerful in France, who recruit their own will, on occasion, employees at both former ministers of culture in ex-Presidents of the Centre Georges Pompidou, or, as reels useful, but of lesser importance, leaders of public cultural centers and Regional Fund for Contemporary Art. These operators by their financial strength thus determine the aesthetic value of 1/2 works, as they see fit, benefiting also from an effective network of personal and cultural administrations of public museums, making their efficiency in addition “aesthetic e” formidable. It is in this world without any transparency as to navigate to the artist known as contemporary art, thank you to their sponsors.
But what can they do well on the other those unfortunate artists, both victims and mercenaries in contemporary art, often despite themselves they say The answer is simple, as I myself have advocated publicly on several occasions, notably at the conference, the state of contemporary art and an impressive gathering of six figures, which do not count unless their rank, ten representatives of the State: the artist must take power! The entire system of contemporary art based, organized and structure entirely and exclusively on a mercantile ideology.
Once known (recognized) this basic truth that underlies the entire system, it will be neutralized by developing creative strategies that will use resources that can provide the tools today’s digital information, see misinformation.
The fact is that we can do in all sectors of human activities, has become dominant that it is the economic flows that govern the lives of individuals who have been transformed, say, citizen-consumers.
But in direct response to this trend, there has been some fifteen years (with the advent of the Internet) that cultural communities have initiated attempts liberation from the grip of the market. Free software has emerged in the mid-1990s. And finally, many groups of artists began to create organs of reflection on “generic infrastructure” on public services in open source on development approaches or “decay” collaborative, offering an alternative to unbridled liberalism.
Why artists would they be the initiators, contributors or guardians of these new powers shared Because the artistic action is both the last bastion, and the first indicator of democratic health and a certain authenticity. In a society where our every move is monitored, analyzed, dissected, the artistic act can still be highly symbolic and freedom. The power of the “artists”, that, aesthetics and ethics, may be unlimited if the artists just being aware. It is at their fingertips. It is enough that they stoop to pick up and appropriate them. Want is power.
They do not know yet. Tomorrow they will know already, because in this world crisis, they are uniquely able to reestablish the power sense, where there are more, and give the word power while its positive sense to change the world.
This new revolution in the art to apply as early twenty-first is the one called for by all my v 1/2 ux, which I call: realistic utopia.
Notes 1 – Le Monde dated Friday, July 11, 2008 p.8. 2 – Video Art sociological, Fred Forest, UGE 10/18, Paris 1977 3 – The assertion of the latter seems more funny coming from him when he strikes us, apparently without the slightest hint of doubt: “The official artist has no doubt existed, but no longer exists. I see no artist in France today on the back of which we could stick that label.
Who says an official artist artist representative said the power, whatever that is. ” For an artist with a good intellectual level recognized, we will take it home, of course, more to the cynicism of unconsciousness.
This is not the question of aesthetics that if we take here, as it will usually cause but that of ethics, evasion and denial of s assume that for one is. (Le Monde, “There are more artists official” interview with Harry Bellet, Friday, July 25, 2008). 4 – The crisis of contemporary art, Spirit Magazine, February 1992, No. 2. 5 – “The Revolution of Truth: Towards a new basic test of taste”, Public Seminar Fred Forest, MAMAC Nice, Friday, May 19, 1999. 6 – “The State and contemporary art”, Theatre du Rond Point, Paris November 29, 2007 (See Art Absolutely No Artension and September 22, 2007, No. 4, “The critical dissent,” May-June 2007Fred Forest Multimedia artist, Doctor of the Sorbonne, Professor Emeritus, University of Nice Sophia Antipolis