The fascination with reproduction (and loadsa money)

Recently, very strange events have started to occur in the ever weird and wonderful world of art, of painting specifically.

Last week I read that IBM Japan, Tokyo University and Yamaha Motors have developed a robot that paints. It is programmed "with certain artistic values" (?). If you order it to paint in 30 brushstrokes, you get an "abstract" (?) painting, 300 brushstrokes yield a "more realistic" (?) 'painting'. As yet, the machine does not actually see what it is doing. As soon as it is capable of that, it will make most human painters obsolete, as 99.9% of them "have certain artistic values", oppose 'abstract' to 'realistic', and think they see what they are doing.

However, this very robot might soon be obsolete.

A tad more sinister was the news that a Blockchain company bought a 'painting' by Banksy (turned out to be a print, in fact), burnt it, and subsequently sold it ($380,000) as a NFT (non-fungible token). That is to say, in the shape of a non-interchangeable digital file. Now I wouldn't mourn the occasional destruction of some graffiti here and there, especially if the undoing is not ideologically motivated, as were the Nazi book burnings - indeed, I find a blind wall preferable to most graffiti, more esthetically gratifying (but who am I to blow against the Beaufort scale?).

Yet why burn the thing?

According to the young arsonist commenting on his act of destruction (this episode was filmed), "the value of the artwork remains the same as that of the physical painting as long as it exists. As soon as you destroy the painting, the value of the painting moves to the NFT."

And here's me, offering reproductions of my work in this very blog, totally gratis, for free, on the house, free of charge. I had no idea of how philanthropic I actually am. However, for those interested I can always burn a drawing or two, in exchange for some hard cash. Any bidders?

But hold on. Hold the fire. 

Also in the news was the American 'artist' Beeple. Christie's auctioned a digital artwork of his for $69,000,000. There were 33 bidders.

Before going into the mind-boggling crackpot insanity, I have to remind the reader of something else. Americans (and they're not alone) are very loose and free with terms such as 'art', 'artist'. If you google 'Beeple' or others of his ilk, you will find images of this 'art'.

What is dubbed 'art' is in fact 'artwork': "illustrations, photographs, or other non-textual material prepared for inclusion in a publication" (Oxford Languages); "drawings and photographs that are prepared in order to be included in something such as a book or advertisement" (Collins). The perpetrator of this ultimately commercial discipline is not an 'artist' but an 'art director'. In the latter half of the previous century, Americans were particularly competent in artwork. Their booming economy called for it. These days, it seems they have somehow forgotten about old school stuff like such as color, tone, design, layout, typography.

Beeple's 'art' is weak, shallow illustration. In other words, cheap bullshit. Dime-a-dozen crap worth millions, apparently.

As to what the highest bidder receives for his money, here's an example:

DAY #4791 of BEEPLE’S EVERYDAY PROJECT (02.13.20)

Artist notes: ***

Auction has ended

Highest bid: $122,500.00

Sold

0 of 1 remaining

---

**This NFT includes a physical token that can be registered on beeple-collect.com and will allow the collector the option to provide additional offchain info.**

PHYSICAL TOKEN DETAILS

- An interface-free, always-on physical artifact of the NFT featuring a signed, numbered titanium backplate with hidden authentication markers.

- An mf baller-ass box with certificate of ownership and cleaning cloth

- Authentic Beeple hair sample*

- QR code links to beeple-collect.com and displays additional collector info (optional)

- Unboxing session over Zoom with Beeple (optional)

- Ships in two weeks

* totes promise it's not pubes.

For more info about this piece visit:https://www.beeple-collect.com/collections-1/dead

---

PHYSICAL TOKEN DELIVERY

Physical tokens will be issued to the NFT owner at the time of shipment (2 weeks). At that time NFT owners will register at beeple-collect.com to receive their physical token.*

*ok so after i ship you the physical token I obviously can't stop you from splitting up the physical token and NFT but I can assure it will make both of them less valuable. They are meant to augment each other and to me it's like cutting a baseball card in half and trying to sell the pieces. Nobody can stop you from doing it, but it kinda makes both pieces worthless. 😉

------

So that is what you obtain: a memory stick. With on it a digital reproduction, of a poor, commercial illustration. And some hair. Non pubic.

The physical work of art has been eliminated, sacrificed, gotten rid of. In its stead is now the digital reproduction. Brave new art world. It is committing seppuku, ritual disembowelment - not to avoid dishonor (it is well beyond that), but out of self-loathing, and for the sake of big money.

The nefarious effects of reproduction, and of the confusion of original and reproduction, have been known for ages. 

Allow me to share these prophetic words, dating from the mid-20th century:

    "The other danger is undoubtedly more serious because it is more seductive, and claims to be educational: the multiplication of increasingly resembling reproductions; the waxwork museums of monumental art, where questionable effigies of our great mural works are kept, piously sheltered from life, deprived of the light that gave them birth; the dismantling of the work of art in well-meaning and hopelessly explanatory films; and finally, in the distance, the skeletal profile of an Imaginary Museum that would consecrate the deadly confusion between image and painting - so many good intentions threaten the very essence of painting. They aim to replace the living, unique reality of the work of art with an abundance of dead images, an ossuary of petrified realities. They seek nothing less than to make this multiplied image into the only reality, the painting being no more than the prototype, as the author's manuscript is the original of the book. If this is a carefully organised massacre for great works of art, the very worst painting, on the other hand, has everything to gain by it - that is saying the chances of success of this undertaking. Never has the fascination with printed matter risked blinding more people."

                                                          Jean Bazaine, Notes sur la peinture d'aujourd'hui, Editions Floury 1948, Editions du Seuil 1953 and 1960, Editions Aubier 1990

                                                                                                                       (my translation)

The Waste of Words

Words cannot be trusted. Seriously, they are viciously deceptive. Especially words describing or explaining art, specifically painting. Whenever, in the context of painting, you encounter two or more words strung together – distrust them. Run away. They will turn out to be a base lie and they will deceive you.

During periods in my life when I am unable to paint (one has to earn a living), words start seeping in, from the very instant I lay down my tools. It is like a flash flood, it starts with a gentle trickle, and before you know it, you are up to your neck in text and language, and soon adrift in an ocean of words. 

Even when circumstances allow me to paint, I ordinarily spend the first hours of every day fending off words. So vicious is the attack, that I have been known to surrender, cast aside my brushes and sit down at my desk to write frantically about the struggle and ensuing defeat, instead of painting. And in the belief that this would help.

Not painting allows you to think about painting. Not in any good, fertile way, but in a straight, discursive, ‘worldly’ manner. As a subject of the Kingdom of Word. While not painting, words shamelessly multiply in order to enlighten one’s actions and choices, to elucidate, spell out the truth. Merely by means of thought, expressed in words, the Truth is revealed. The longer and deeper you are immersed in words, the more lucid your thoughts become. Not only does one’s growing insight pierce the secrets of Art History, one even comes to ‘understand’ one’s very own history and progress. And then the morning arrives when once again you boldly take up position, face your painting. En garde.

You stand there, hesitant, irresolute, shreds of words and sentences echoing between your ears. You know not what to do, how to proceed, if it is the right moment, or why you are there. In desperation you try to grab onto some thoughts. Anything to escape the gaping void. All of a sudden the words lose substance, they become quite inert now, insipid, anodyne. They all turn out to be of no use whatsoever. But they continue to nag as you proceed to act simply. If all goes well, you are able to act simply for a while, and the echo of words fades somewhat.

But even if all goes well, a time must come when one downs the brushes, for a break, for a rest, because night falls. Then, you remember the words. It is unspeakably shocking how manifestly untrue they now turn out to be, blatant, bare-faced, out-and-out Lies. Brazen, outrageous, naked falsehoods.

A shopping list found in a supermarket trolly speaks more veraciously and extensively about the person who wrote it, than the most insightful academic dissertation does about painting. The text has turned out to be painfully irrelevant, a colossal waste of time and energy. Insignificant, inconsequential. For as long as one’s days are ruled by painting, the very idea of shaping a thought in reference to it by means of words reveals itself as a lost cause, of complete and utter irrelevance. Recollection of art-historical insights, art-critical analyses and other common assumptions, can then only be met with scorn and bitter derision. They are of no use, indeed, they are ruinous, toxic. To the process of creation, to the painter, and likewise to the public, both prophylactically prevented from fertilizing or being fertilized, by means of the Condom of Art Theory.

The painter wipes his palette and resolves, for the umpteenth time, never ever again to rely on words. And then comes another interval, and once again words start seeping in.

Often, all too often, one encounters a statement on painting so abysmally imbecilic, a received truth so appallingly crass and injurious, that one is provoked into some sort of reaction.

Only, the question then arises: how? The wordless act of painting does indeed power the indignation and the resentment, the wrath and the fury, but it does not provide the words to strike back with. Then you become aware of the paradox: in order to disable the preposterous inanity, you have no choice but to use the opponent’s weapon: words. Deceitful, lying words. You have to discursively expose the falsehood, explain its flawed premises, and eludicate truth. Using words.

It is profoundly unfair. One can freely discourse on literature by means of its medium - language -, without necessarily deviating from truth. Even music, with its proper extensive vocabulary, can legitimately be discussed using words. Yet on painting – the most secret art (oh yes!) – words have almost no traction.

To discourse on painting is like painting a literary comment. It cannot be done. The former results mainly in absurd lies, and when the latter is attempted, it is always literature rather than painting.

Only a handful of ideas on painting may be expressed without automatically lying, but to the non-painter these appear very impalpable, vague, puzzling, even mystical. Mysticism may be of bad repute in art theory – in painting it is rock solid. Those who do not paint have no use for it, as soon as they can they return to common sense, however insane it may be.

There have been epochs when painting seemed to flourish, despite the insanity of common sense. Centuries of religious insanity have produced numerous Great Painters, as have many strata of insane conformist bourgeoisie. But even when its religious or social substrate is forgotten or disowned, an altarpiece or impressionist landscape does not become a lesser painting.

Rather, the essence of its being is continuously snowed under by an unrelenting blizzard of words. Clearing this literary snow is in itself not complicated, but extremely challenging. Impossible, for many. How do achieve this? It simply requires the beholder to imitate the painter in the initial moments of the working day. Not to follow in his footsteps - merely to step into his shoes for a moment, and stand there. Alone, facing the painting, not knowing where to begin, what to see, how to see it, and fundamentally distrustful of words. Open. Receptive.

No stories, no narrative, no references, no rational. No recipe, no explanation, no instruction, no guidance.

Only thus can one look without bias, and see a Rembrandt or a Rothko or a cave painting through the same eyes. Only thus, painting fulfills its sole purpose, which is to assert man’s freedom.

Should the painting lose substance once deprived of its narrative, without recourse to words, lacking instructions, then either you have not looked or the painting has failed. In the latter case, it is most likely not a painting at all, despite appearances, but an illustration of an idea, feeling or mood, a fanciful rebus, art work, journalism, side-show, political pamphlet or a decoration - something to match the curtains. All of which has nothing to do with painting.

Delightful as it may be, a seventeenth-century still life is not an appetizer for your next meal (even though originally so intended, perhaps). If Guernica is a good painting, it is not so as a criticism of war. And a nude by Renoir is not a pin-up, intended to arouse carnal instincts.

The fact that for most people paintings are what they ‘represent’, says much about the current decline in painting. Once again, it may safely be declared dead.

Should you be shocked by this statement, consider how much more appalling it is to insist that a corpse is alive. Besides, painting has innumerable lives. Only on the verge of extinction it has a chance to revive. Not due to technological innovation, not because of political, social or intellectual insights, or cultural bloom. Only under the greatest stress, painting has a chance to shed all or most of the obstacles that hamper its flight. Or rather, it can then flourish due to its obstacles.

Not in museums, galleries or art shows is one likely to encounter this resurrection. It is brewed up by an anonymous multitude of solitary painters, who are not diligently constructing their career or refining and polishing their public profile. It is being made by those who paint. Not knowing how to proceed, what direction to take, without a programme. Despite the acknowledged irremediable futility of words.

All of the above would seem to deny art criticism or theory any sort of existence. But that need not be the case. Only, it does not make writing on painting any easier, which probably explains its latter-day absence, partly. There can be no good reason why the art critic should not simply start from the initial position of the painter, and of any other beholder. Alone, without guidance and as impartial as humanly possible. That is what he should do. Subsequently, he should not simply rehash the words that were uttered by the painter/manager/curator. He should not dismiss the painter’s utterances offhandedly either, but explore them, scrutinize them. And, should they turn out to be a bunch of horsefeathers, scrap them. Ditch the whole shebang, if the words cannot save the painting. And he should not walk into the trap of waxing poetical, of imagining to reflect the painting’s creation in some ‘creative writing’.

In times of artistic crisis, even though they are an ultimately renewable resource, let us not squander or misuse words. Or blindly abide by them.

That is all. Easy.

Just when you thought painting was dead (again)...

 HILDA DEVOS, 29 x oil on canvas.

HD20201

HD20202

HD20203

HD20204

HD20205

HD20206

HD20207

HD20208

HD20209

HD202010

HD202011

HD202012

HD202013

HD202014

HD202015

HD202016

HD202017

HD202018

HD202019

HD202020

HD202021

HD202022

HD202023

HD202024

HD202025

HD202026

HD202027

HD202028

HD202029

(Due to light effects during shooting and different screen settings, the colors of the images may differ slightly from those of the actual painting. Thank you for understanding.)