Art and Dreams

I can generalize the essence of my observations as follows.
 

First, the arts of our day, freed from totalitarianism, are still subject to timeserving and conformity. There is nothing strange in this. In fact, the idea that art can be nonconformist and independent of its immediate environs belongs to an early openly antibourgeois stage of modernism. People in the creative domain discovered that this very antibourgeois approach can be sold profitably. Today's criterion of success remains the same: the ability to sell oneself. I will not even mention all those "personality ratings," creative elite kept under control by dealers and bound hand and foot by uniform contracts setting the ceiling of creative self-repetition - in other words, providing for an opportunity to squeeze as much dough as possible from every temporarily favorable market situation.

Actually, I have in mind another kind of conformism and timeserving. I mean that "middle class" in the creative realm, all those living mainly from filling in applications addressed to various foundations, centers, institutes, and banks (also to Western embassies, given our Ukrainian, and until recently, Eastern European conditions). Getting a fellowship or grant is impossible without getting to be liked (timeserving) and being in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing (conformism). The essential reorientation of modern creative personalities toward "action," "performance," "publicity" (regardless of the size of the audience, even its and the critics' response) is, in my opinion, caused by that same dependence on the grant-giver. It would be hard to picture a foundation subsidizing some vague project like painting so many pictures. A foundation is supposed to be stingy, but it is bound to buy something like "fall hog-killing" because it is something you can draw up a budget for, and the idea of civil society remains alive and well.

From this necessity to convince the grant-giver and win the contest in writing or words, follows another hallmark of today's art, its conceptuality. Here every concept must be clear-cut (the fund's functionaries must be fully aware of how their money is going to be used), stated using several sentences, while addressing a certain social problem. An Austrian woman named Elke Krischtufek reaches orgasm masturbating in public, something that could be used as a commentary on bringing to the level of societal concern women's intimate life in a sex-saturated society. An Austrian man, Hermann Nitch, splashes tons of fresh blood brought from Vienna's largest slaughterhouses over huge white spots as a commentary on eating meat as a form of murder. Oleh Kulyk bites women's legs at the entrance to a dadaist jubilee exhibit. A commentary on commercializing dadaism as a phenomenon. One could cite countless other "ecological," "ecumenical," "political-analytical" or "psychophysiological" commentaries.

The conceptualism of such events de facto rules out the criterion of being unspoken, that which in the early Middle Ages came to be known as imponderable. The latter was actually regarded as a sacral hallmark of that genuinely pure, although always a bit shaded hermetic art. A revolution is taking place, perhaps for the first time in the history of the visual arts, when visuality as such is supplanted by verbalization. The old truth that seeing is believing loses its urgency. Action art does not have to be seen to fully appreciate its products. It suffices to hear about it or read a detailed account. For latter-day artists communicating with works of art is not as important as information about them. Video recording also exists as a form of description which is impossible without verbal accompaniment. This verbalization makes it possible to talk about new myths - or at least new anecdotes. Indeed, concepts aptly, wittily formulated stand the greatest chance, for they can be easily retold. One example is growing an ice cap over Mount Everest so it measures exactly 9,000 meters in height.

It remains to note the unprecedented sluggishness of domestic action-mongers, for our schizophrenic realities offer occasions of which their Western colleagues would never dream. I would be personally willing, even happy to take part in some pie-throwing at the Verkhovna Rada Deputies. Wishful thinking, of course.