2023
Review by Beatrice
Review by Beatrice
Not a work of art can escape its belonging to culture within social organization, but not a work of art that is something more than an industrial product exists without directing the distant gesture to culture, which is inseparable from the process in which it has become such. Art is hostile to art, just as artists are. In renouncing instinctual purpose, it preserves the loyalty that unmasks the "socially desired," exalted by Freud, naively, as the sublimation that probably does not exist.
In the deified order of the system, according to T.W. Adorno, art introduces chaos into order, becoming the "magic freed from the lie of being truth." What matters is not the content, but rather what works of art have managed to wrest from existence.
The pathos of art lies in this: that, by withdrawing into the imagination, it contributes to the overpowering reality, yet it does not resign itself to adaptation and does not extend the violence of the external world into the deformation of the internal world.
It is a matter of considering the artistic phenomenon as situated in society but not fused with it; this is where its oppositional strength lies. If art were placed in an aseptic dimension, separate from society, the difference would not come to light, and its critical charge would diminish. However, at the same time, art must create a rupture with reality in order to avoid becoming ideology, to avoid falling back into its primary conservative aspect. In its belonging to the cultural sphere, art risks perpetuating the division between spiritual labor and material labor. Works of art, therefore, resist social reality without being estranged from it; they do not achieve reconciliation with the whole despite utilizing the "historical material of the time." Only in this apparent paradox does authentic art remain alive.
Furthermore, art that merely reproduces reality places fact above all else, emphasizing its value and, in a sense, falsifying empirical reality by absolutizing it. The artistic phenomenon is an unattainable synthesis, a union of the different without forcing it, the possibility of transforming historical-empirical material into something completely different, organizing it according to its own laws.
If the concept is a sign, the image is a SYMBOL. This is the true difference to be preserved against the devaluation of "vague and imprecise" images in favor of "rigorous" concepts. In the "imprecision" of the image lies the power of the symbolic, from which the concept, in its precision, is immediately exempted from any fluctuation of meaning.
According to Galimberti, the discourse of science does not allow for oscillations of meaning; the surplus of signification is only present in the symbolic language, which seeks not equivalence but ambivalence.
The SYMBOL contains an excess of meaning compared to known meaning; it emerges in the realm of encoded meanings like a question.
that does not address, but waits in that place where it does not refer to known things. This place, precisely because it has not taken place within the known routes of Western reason, we can call it the UNCONSCIOUS, but only on the condition of not finding, just as soon as it is unearthed, the imprints of reason, but rather what reason has overlooked because it is incompatible with its process of rationalization.
For Adorno, form is the mediation of the parts with each other, parts that it manages to organize in a "non-violent synthesis" that does justice to the particular and preserves it without quieting its contradictions. Form is therefore characterized in a diametrically opposed manner to a social structure that annihilates tensions, differences, and individual beings, subjugating everything to a deformed unity. And if form converges with criticism, it can also be said at the same time that form is inseparable from content, as the content becomes eloquent, speaking only through it. It is also important to emphasize that, just as the form is entirely objective, even though it passes through a subjective mediation, the true content of the work is completely different from the artist's intention; this is demonstrated by the fact that
...no intention, however immaculately distilled, guarantees that artistic creation will achieve it.
Through subjective production, something trans-subjective manifests. The trans-subjective, the non-factual, the further aspects that the work reveals highlight the spiritual or even symbolic, unconscious aspect that erupts from the sensible aspect. The spirit is the internal force of the work that makes it more than "thing," more than "reality." It manifests itself in the artwork but is not exhausted by its manifestation, as it only appears through the unique configuration of the work, and it can do so only because it refers beyond that.
Therefore, the spirit is not graspable, not only by the beholder or the artist but also by the work itself, which, in fact, transcends from the spirit. Thus, artworks are enigmas that demand critical engagement in an ongoing attempt to find a solution, but they are never fully and definitively resolved. To understand the work means to solve the enigma and, at the same time, preserve it. To completely eliminate the enigmatic character would mean to annul the transcendence of the work, its spirituality, and therefore its authenticity. Considering it without a solution would mean depriving the work of its meaning, which instead requires being grasped, even if only fleetingly.
It is not conceivable to arrive at a certain solution to the artistic enigma, just as it is not possible to possess its truth content, let alone give it a unique definition.
How little the content of truth coincides with the subjective idea, with the artist's intention, is shown by the simplest reflection.
Therefore, the content of truth is not identifiable through discursive language, to which the work of art renounces with the ambiguity of its enigmatic character.
Different perspectives are offered through which to understand what emerges in the works as truth. The True presents itself, at a first level, from a utopian perspective, in antithesis to dominant rationality; it expresses the possibility of realizing what does not yet exist, but along with the promise of the possibility of this non-existent, the question also arises of how it is possible that something that actually exists refers us to it.
The authority of works of art resides in this: they force us to reflect on what basis they, figures of the existing and incapable of calling into existence what does not exist, could become its overwhelming image, if the non-existent did not exist in and of itself.
For Jung, art is an area where the subjective and objective worlds, the realm of private dreams and communication with the external world, converge, creating a third space. It is in this place that the UNCONSCIOUS imagination becomes shareable. Art allows for connecting with one's internal world by giving it a form of representation, enabling the expression of the UNCONSCIOUS without completely forgetting or abolishing reality, thus also facilitating communication with the external world.
Humans have always endeavored to "give substance to shadows" in order to transform abstract concepts into images; symbols and allegories have been tasked with making immaterial entities visible.
Naturally, it is in art that the "truth" of imaginative discourse is fully realized, at the moment when it creates that universe of meaning and that marvelous synthesis of the particular and the universal that is the work. It seeks to harmoniously recompose the separate aspects of desire, the permissible and the forbidden, the identical and the foreign, the repressed and the unknown, and in this sense, its revolutionary value can be grasped, irreducible to any attempt at restrictive and one-dimensional interpretation. Art is the greatest heresy known to human history, the greatest assault on the repression and devaluation of the potential inscribed in nature.
In this text, Aldo Carotenuto addresses a broad panorama related to fantastic and magical art, as well as the metaphysical enigmas of De Chirico and the magical realism of Magritte, which are extremely significant in relation to the discourse that is emerging.
Carotenuto points out how De Chirico's writings tend to describe the work of art as a revelation that requires a state of anticipation, without the intervention of reason, until a new vision of the world is perceived. In this way, the opacity of reality is cleansed by reference to the enigma and mystery that characterize the human condition, and to which the artist guides us. Reality is not to be represented or interpreted because, through art, it is placed in another dimension to find a different space for reflection.
With Magritte's magical realism, the image overturns and disrupts visual conventions, presenting a reality quite different from what is believed to be known:
I am reproached for presenting objects in my paintings in positions where we never see them. Nonetheless, it is the realization of a real, if not precisely conscious, desire for the majority of men. Indeed, even the banal painter tries, within predetermined limits, to modify the order in which he sees objects. He allows timid audacities, vague allusions. Considering my desire to make the most familiar objects scream as much as possible, it was evidently necessary to upset the order in which objects are usually arranged: the cracks we see in our houses and on our faces seem to me more eloquent in the sky; the legs of a turned wooden table lost their innocent existence attributed to them if they suddenly appeared dominating a forest; a woman's body soaring above a city replaced the angels that never appeared to me; I found it very useful to see beneath the Virgin Mary and showed her in this new light; I preferred to believe that the iron bells hanging around the necks of our wonderful horses sprouted like dangerous plants on the edge of abysses... As for the mystery, the enigma presented by my paintings, I will say that it was the most convincing proof of my rupture with all the absurd mental habits that generally replace the authentic feeling of existence.
Michel Foucault outlines all the figurative and philosophical implications of Magritte's art compared to traditional art. Classical painting, in fact, established the dogma of verisimilitude with respect to an objective reality that the artwork would imitate. Magritte frees painting from the dictatorship of the equivalence between the image and reality in favor of an inquiry into the world, which art, with its ambivalence, manages to indicate.
According to Foucault, "painting is not an assertion," and Magritte seems to have separated similitude from likeness, as the latter would have a "master," a unique and external model, while similitude has an indefinite and reversible relationship with the model of the represented image.
If, for P. Klee, "the purpose of art is not to reproduce the visible but to make it visible," Magritte writes in a letter to Foucault dated May 23, 1966:
"What is of importance is the MYSTERY evoked in fact by the visible and the invisible, and which can be rightly evoked by the thought that unites things in the order that evokes the mystery." He also adds that he sent reproductions of his paintings with the letter, including "This is not a pipe," on the back of which Magritte had written:
"The title does not contradict the drawing; it asserts differently."
I have not found writings by Magritte regarding the relationship between his images and the Symbol, but it is not difficult to see in this statement, as in others, a proximity to the symbolic language of his art, according to which some meanings remain available without rigidly anchoring themselves to a thing, thereby launching an inexhaustible series of questions. The Magrittian image shatters logical schemes, forcing the viewer to reflect on what they see without the possibility of drawing a reassuring and predictable vision of reality.
It is a mystery that the artist tries to unveil without ever fully succeeding: the intention is to produce a visual effect that stimulates that inner illumination in order to provide an ever-new vision of reality.
Thought and Images:
Life, the Universe, Nothingness have no value for thought in the fullness of its freedom. For thought, the only Value is the Meaning, that is, the moral thought of the Impossible. Thinking the Meaning means, for thought, freeing itself from ordinary or extraordinary ideas.
In the field of the arts, thought is generally deprived of any freedom as a result of respect for dead traditions and obedience to ridiculous fashions.
The absurdity and wickedness of the world require the revolt of the generous heart and the attention of thought for justice.
My paintings are images. The valid description of an image cannot be made without directing thought towards its freedom. It is also necessary to be attentive both to the image and to the words used to describe it. The description of the painted image, which has become the spiritual image of thought, must be endlessly perfected. It is also important to beware of the inappropriate use of certain words (abstract, concrete, consciousness, unconscious, temperament, ideal, etc.).
I consider valid the attempt at a language consisting in saying that my paintings were conceived as material signs of the freedom of thought... They aim, to the "fullest possible extent," not to discredit Meaning, that is, the Impossible.
To be able to answer the question: "What is the meaning of these images?" would be to make Meaning, the Impossible, resemble a possible idea. Attempting to answer would be equivalent to recognizing a "meaning." The spectator can see, with the greatest possible freedom, my images as they are, trying, like their author, to think about Meaning, that is, the Impossible. -
06-Jun-2023 by Beatrice