communion /k 'mju:ni n/ n. 1 a sharing, esp. of thoughts etc,; fellowship (their minds were in communion). 2 participation; a sharing in common (communion of interests).
Oxford English Reference Dictionary.
"Once you know about a work of mine, you own it. There's no way I can climb into somebody else's head and remove it!"
Lawrence Weiner. American Conceptual Artist.
The true Art lover must strive to de-rationalise art and reverse the ongoing (so very hackneyed) trend toward elitism. They must seek to de-mystify the status of "artist" so that a broader artistic potential may be realised. They must trust in the belief that the communication age will herald a new renaissance; a better world for all in which more people than ever before will be free to explore their innate, yet latent, creative desires. New technology in fresh hands will see the discovery of innovative and exiting art forms; however, in order to do them justice, we must change the way we think about Art and we must challenge the orthodoxy that stands in our way. The "expert" is our foe, the "emotional" are our friends. How many academics (those highly [self-] praised verbal gymnasts) have sought to enhance the layman's enjoyment of art whilst they have vainly expanded the dust gathering volumes of art philosophy? When has a critic breathed life into a dead thing rather than kill what they cannot understand? And who among the iconolatrists, those art dealers who would sell their own mothers let alone Whistler's, would pit the happiness of the multitude against the purse-strings of the few? The critic, the merchant and the academic are the real philistines; the only distinction one can make between them is the currency they use.
Yet these are the very people who dominate the modern art world. A world so bedridden it threatens to destroy everything that it claims to represent. The parasites, the snobs and the profiteers have stolen art for themselves and locked it away in a tomb of institution. This hermetically sealed vault, The Airtight Garage, denies the artist free expression and the artwork its rightful audience. The Conspiracy of Good Taste (the title of a book by Stefan Szczelkun, a book that I consider to be one of the most important works ever written with regard to both art history and political philosophy: Working Press 1993) has brought an artificial hierarchy to the art world. Art institutions would have you believe that beauty no longer exists in the eye of the beholder but in the mouths of critics and the wallets of dealers. They’re the high priests of the Church of Establishment and they claim to have accessed a sacred knowledge that is beyond the understanding of mere mortals, unless, of course, you have a large enough bank balance. The truth appals many artists and the anti-art avant-garde is born.
Since the rise and fall (and numerous "Neo" resurrections) of Dada artists have tried to fight the institutional standards of taste. By this I mean the tastes of the critical establishment, curators, art dealers and their clientele, not the moral constraints imposed by the relevant era. "Taste" in art is no longer tied to the ethical whims of the dominant society; it has become the opposite to the antiquated idea of "common decency". Twentieth Century "tastes" were more likely to be swayed by what "sells". Shock value converted nicely into hard cash and so the more radical the artist the easier it was to recuperate their efforts in favour of the establishment. The artist may recognise and condemn this hideous reality but if she chooses to fight against it then the only reward she can expect is savage disillusionment. Heads the dealer wins, tails the artists lose. The art scene of the last century was in turmoil as each avant-garde wave crashed against the establishment's defences and, washed whiter than white, dissolved into a foam of misrepresentation. Even the obscure and obscene were nullified and recuperated by the free-marketeers who were much wilier than each new generation and more than ready for them. As Duchamp famously said "I threw the bottle-rack and the urinal into their face as a challenge and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty!" The efforts of the anti-art avant-garde seem to amount to nothing. The problem lies with their choice of solution rather than their understanding of the dilemma. Hans Richter pointed out in the 1960's "The repetition of this theme after forty years does not improve it, but rather empties it of meaning, typifies an 'empty existence', a vacuum." The cynical round of art and anti-art continues to this day.
Who are the real victims of this 20th century oubliette? Certainly the artist, those who take up the challenge and confront the establishment head-on are likely to become candidates for alcoholism or suicide, sometimes both; Jackson Pollock gave the twentieth century establishment one of it's best sellers and in return they ate his soul. The Faustian nightmare is alive and well and making good money at Sotheby's. Some play the game and reap the rewards of fame - a bullet from Valerie Solanis if your lucky - others take up chess or open restaurants. The establishment needn't feel remorse, after all, isn't the artist meant to suffer for her art!
But the main, though largely unrecognised, victim of art-scene vanity is the art lover. Not the investment junkie, nor the esoteric pretender, but the postcard buying public who might not know their Nouveau Réalisme from their Der Blaue Reiter (and are reasoned enough not to care) but know exactly what they like when they see it.
But these are the very same people who are ignored by the art world; we might go as far to say that they are actually scorned by the art establishment. Recently I read an essay where the author implied that the internet wasn’t a good artistic medium because the public wouldn’t be able to sort the wheat from the chaff without the help of an online expert. Unfortunately this attitude is rife among art journals; it almost seems as if they’re trying to argue that the layman cannot be trusted to understand the finer complexities of Art. They often claim that the masses are oblivious to culture. But the sad reality is that culture, or at least the version of ‘culture’ that the purveyors of the Airtight Garage seek to portray, is oblivious to the masses.
Artists alone cannot raze the Airtight Garage. Those who dwell within its confines were "educated" by academics, "recognised" by critics and "valued" by dealers. The commercial/academic art world is made stable by unnatural selection. After all, elitism is no more than a minority’s wilful exclusion of the majority in order to exercise power. The art establishment selects and rations it's luminaries in the same way that De-Beers controls the worldwide flow of diamonds, in both cases this is a shrewd business move played in order to influence market value. The artist is free to create (remembering, of course, that if he is to keep food on the table he must create what the market desires rather than what his muse wishes) but consumption is strictly controlled. Only by understanding the importance the observer in the equation of, and actively including them in the solution, can we hope to reverse the damage.
Communication is the real purpose of art. If it fails to communicate then how can it be called an "expression"? The Art establishment is deaf, dumb and blind. Time and time again it proves that it will not - or cannot - decipher the intentions of the artist; when it comes to passion they just don’t get it. To counter their misunderstandings the art establishment has endeavoured to specialise its language so as to disguise the poverty of its ideals. Wherever you find voluntary hyperlexia you can guarantee that you won’t find an original thought. In art, as in politics, specialist language exists only so that those "in the know" can exert power over the "naïve". If an artist chooses to work within the established Art culture then they will only help to alienate the true art lover. We would be foolish to blame this on the artist, but with their desperate attempts to out-manoeuvre the parasites they have unwittingly broadened the gap between the expert and the novice. The novice is forced to question her own judgement because of the social standing of the expert; but in reality the expert's job is meaningless, he seeks to define something that needs no definition, art is justified by orgasms and tears, not the over-exercised grey-matter of some pretentious academic. If Joanne Public does not like something then the expert accuses her of ignorance, but when has a breakdown of communication ever been the sole responsibility of a single party?
Richard Huelsenbeck wrote, "An old pair of shoes is an old pair of shoes. But if you hang an old pair of shoes on the wall, they are no longer 'the old shoes' but 'THE shoes', which are old, and they arouse in us certain thoughts and certain associations. Pop artists, the New Realists, are people who hang old shoes on the wall and seek thereby to arouse emotions in us. But, as the shoes are only manufactured objects, these emotions fail to appear. Thus, while the artist experiences a certain satisfaction in hanging up and exhibiting old shoes or chamber pots, the beholders are forced into a position of mental discomfort. They are therefore unable fully to appreciate the artist's irony and cynicism, things that only have real meaning when they are directed at dehumanisation. Because a lot of snobbish collectors buy the shoes or the chamber pots, beholders living in a conformist society are placed in an even more awkward position. They are soon like the donkey who no longer knows whether to turn it's head to the left or to the right." The art-scene has become reminiscent of that embarrassing situation where one hears a joke among colleagues regarding somebody you don’t know, you don't understand what’s so funny but feel obliged to laugh so as not to feel left out. How can the art world accept the alienation of the observer and still claim to be working in favour of art? The short answer is, it cannot! As Huelsenbeck also wrote "Neo-Dada has turned the weapons used by Dada, and later by Surrealism, into popular ploughshares with which to till the fertile soil of sensation-hungry galleries eager for business." And therein lies the real reason why the galleries and the dealers and the critics and the academics are prepared to ignore the increasing alienation of the art-loving public. Every move they make is made purely and simply for profit! In the words of Alexander Trocchi, "Perhaps the most striking example of the wrong-headed attitude towards art in official places is provided by the recent scuffle to keep the well-known Leonardo cartoon from leaving the United Kingdom. The official attitude has more in common with stamp-collecting than with aesthetics. The famous cartoon could have sold abroad for around one million pounds. For a small fraction of that sum, perfect replicas of it could have been made and distributed to every art gallery in the country. It is small wonder that the man in the street has such a confused attitude towards art. This confusion of value with money has infected everything. The conventional categories distinguishing the arts from each other, tending as they do to perpetuate the profitable institutions which have grown up around them, can for the moment only get in the way of creativity and our understanding of it." Under the dictatorial control of the architects of the Airtight Garage art itself has been reduced to its most basic material existence, it has been changed into hard cash. The artist, (who should be driven solely by artistic sensibility), is forced to create "anti-art" instead of an object of contemplation; which is, in the words of Hans Richter… "...what real works of art are. ", he adds, "I still think that one person who meditates before a work of art is worth more than a thousand who just gawp."
Enter the Communionists. A Communionist is someone who finds spiritual solace in Art (as opposed to those who make money by turning human expression into mere commodity). For the Communionist art is an intercourse not an item, it exists only when under the scrutiny of the senses. In a vault the work becomes uncertainty, as Schrodinger's cat is neither dead nor alive so the unobserved artwork is neither Art nor a pair of copulating dogs. What is Art when it is locked away from prying eyes? To the expert it is "missing", to the collector it is an "investment", to the Communionist it is "inanimate", a "dead thing", or, to be precise, it is "nothing".
FOR THIS REASON IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE OBSERVER AS WELL AS THE ARTIST TO RECLAIM ART FROM THE CONTROL OF THE ELITE.
Communionism is not just another avant-garde anti-art scream against the establishment. It is a movement that offers an altogether more holistic solution to the struggle and invites the art lover to take up arms against the parasites. In recognising the importance of the "observer" as an intrinsic component of the artwork Communionism seeks to involve that same observer in the reclamation of art for art's sake (and for the sake of our humanity).
The abandonment of commercial and moral value in art is hardly an original notion, there are, and have always been, many people who openly oppose the established art scene because of its commercialism (the Sotheby's effect is well known and widely loathed). One of the first suggested answers to this problem was the introduction of "Aesthetic Attitude." The AA advocates sought to abandon the notion of utility, economic and moral judgement, but they also, in a flourish of ‘stiff upper lip’, chose to ignore the involvement of intuition, personal experience and emotion. For the Communionist this abandonment of intuition makes the AA attitude nonsensical. The Communionist sees art as an intuitive process. A process that is as reliant on the emotions of the observer, as it is on the talents of the artist. As I have already stated, art is a two way process, it is communication, a dialect between conscious minds. If we were to consider Van Gogh's painting of the peasant's shoes from an AA perspective the work would be rendered meaningless, nothing more than an old pair of shoes - painted maybe, but as artistically dead as those hung on the gallery wall in Huelsenbeck's illustration. Seeking to distance oneself emotionally from a work of art is like masturbating at an orgy; it is a shallow, wasted opportunity.
It is only the observer's intuition that gives life to Van Gogh's work. In relation to our own experiences we project a "feeling" of physical exhaustion onto the painting, we bring an understanding of toil and exhaustion to Van Gogh’s shoes; the observer creates the art by giving emotional sympathy to a collection of pigments. The artist's genius is to invoke an irrational reaction; it is our responsibility to let go of the rational in order for the process to take place. This is made much harder for us once the work has been reduced to a commodity or, even more tragically, to an ideology, the weight of materialism is a heavy burden for the art lover to shoulder.
In favouring intuition over intellect, emotion over calculation, Communionism may be accused of "regression" in that it calls for the return of Romanticism. And in stressing that the communion between the artwork and the observer - (a state contrived by the artist's manipulation of an inert medium in order to stimulate the emotions) - is the only thing of any value, which, in turn, re-introduces the importance of aesthetic sensibility, the Communionist is undeniably Romantic. But a return to Romanticism isn't an attempt to back-peddle. We live in a different world and we are forced to view the universe from a new and historically unique perspective.
Humanity has found itself decentralised and demoted by the understandings of science. We no longer dwell at the centre of a universe in which we are God's chosen few. We no longer control our own destiny and we are denied the religious certainty of "forever", let alone the Newtonian security of the here and now. Or to quote Alexander Trocchi once again "One might say that man's idea of himself is something less than it was before God became a stuffed owl in the museum of natural history." In the light of such revelations we have leapt into the abyss of nihilism and wallowed in our own self-pity. But Nihilism is nothing more than a halfway house for the disillusioned, it is an important part of self-discovery, but it is not the end of the game. It is a philosophical condition that is hard to shake off, the trouble is that people may no longer "believe" in the things they once did but they are still clinging desperately to their ghosts. Take the post-modernists, they claim to distrust grand theories and ideologies yet they remain utterly attached to the last remaining super-ideology - capitalism. Until they break free from consumerism and hierarchy then all that they will produce is a bored, endlessly repetitive form of modernism. We cannot change until we pass through nihilism in order to confront and, more importantly, accept the transient nature of all things, there is no going back, we inhabit the same world but we are forced to look at it from a new, and vastly different, perspective. There can be no regression.
We have lamented the destruction of "meaning" for too long; we exude a self-indulgent (incredibly vain) sense of abandonment as if our own mortality implies that the universe is empty. Following the lead of science we sought the proof of our existence only to find that, with every new discovery, the mat of conviction was pulled farther and farther from under our feet. But instead of enjoying the free-fall we constructed a post-modernist parachute to keep ourselves floating in the materialist void. Nihilism is attractive to the young, proof that their parents are fools, but it soon becomes dull. The consumerists know this and they sell endless amounts of fads just to relieve the boredom, luckily for them the more often we choose to indulge in these whims the shorter our attention spans become. Although the consumerist spin talks about "individualism" it has actually turned us into unimaginative sheep. The individualism that they offer is, in reality, compartmentalism; you stand alone but you must never stand out. True individualism would mean that we construct our own worlds, create our own art, if we were to become truly free then the Airtight Garage would cease to exist because culture, the means by which society replaces our personal needs with it’s own desires, would cease to exist.
It is certainly not my intention to infer that science is to blame for the rise of consumerism and the (supposed) death of romance - Is something less beautiful simply because we know it's mass and chemical make-up? In fact modern science encourages a return to Romanticism, it has proven that we are interdependent components of the universe and has forced us to reconsider our relationship with nature, a relationship more intimate than we could ever have imagined without the aid of scientific insight. Technology may well feed the consumerist need for new trends but it has also provided us with impressive observations, images that cannot fail to rekindle tired imaginations. The mathematics of Chaos, most stunningly the Mandlebrot set, has redefined our notion of "natural beauty". This, in turn, invites a new renaissance in art inspired by our new "view" of nature. Not that any gap exists, or has ever existed, between the "natural" and the "human" world. The death of forever may have left us lonely orphans in a bigger and badder world, but it has also given us back our sense of wonderment. Capitalism requires a continuity of dogma and a belief in the everlasting, Communionism does not. It is not hard for the Communionist to accept a transient universe; our art lives in an ephemeral moment of communion. Once you acknowledge the fact that we are little more than farts in the wind then the whole world becomes a little less stressful. "Meaning" is for the lovers of crosswords and "Forever" only massages the vanity of kings.
Emmanuel Kant said of the enlightenment "[it is the] emergence of man from his self-imposed infancy. […] Thus the watchword of the enlightenment is: Sapere aude! Have the courage to use one's own reason." And so, putting aside our childish things, we have learnt to stand on our own two feet, free at last from the cradle of superstition. Only we are not a race of Vulcans, we enjoy it when Mr Spock is embarrassed by the "irrational" failings of his human side. Why then did we choose to appoint the rational over the emotional instead of seeking a balance? The result of our over-rationality being that, having escaped our infancy, we are flung into puberty, and, like all teenagers, we are emotional cripples. It is time to raise the status of emotion and rediscover our, albeit better educated, intuitive wisdom. A new-found Romanticism may be the cultural fix that we need in order to make ourselves "whole" and lead us, finally, to the full maturity of adulthood.
Art is the language of irrationality. And although, like all language, it represents the mediation of emotion at least it demands an honest reaction. What is more, the language of art is universal; an Esperanto for the spirit, all those who possess a consciousness can speak the lingo. Sum, ergo cogito, as a less solipsist Cartesian might say. But, yet again, we must be careful of culture. If every woman and every man were allowed to fulfil their creative potential right here, right now then I’m afraid that they may create exactly the same things. Our desires have been manufactured by the dominant ethos (show me a lottery winner who has changed anything about themselves beyond the number of bedrooms in their artless homes and I may consider retracting this statement). Before we can raise monuments we must learn to raise questions. Art can help us because art helps us to question everyday life; murals, happenings, theatre, anything that makes you stop and stare. Liberty lies in philosophy and in philosophy the enquiry is always more important than the certainty.
Communionism is Romantic and as such it says that the artist should strive to communicate on an emotional level (as opposed to purely intellectual works that cannot be understood outside the art world clique). But ours is not to argue for a return to realism. Communionist Romanticism should not be confused with the aesthetic fascism advocated by the tabloid press each year when they attack the Turner Prize and spout their "proper art" bullshit. Emotional responses can be evoked simply by suggesting a "theme" or by forcing the observer to re-address commonly held assumptions. Works like Damien Hirst's "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" (a shark preserved in a tank of formaldehyde) rely on a title in order to excite intuitive responses from the beholder. When viewed solely as a physical object the audience is left in the "position of mental discomfort" referred to by Huelsenbeck. Conceptual art, by its very nature, works on a more intellectual level. However we must apply caution and work in such a manner so that everyone gets the joke. If the piece only works with specialist understanding then it is nothing more than coded symbolism. The only thing worse than this is the imposition that an art "expert" brings to a piece by adding intellectual scrutiny to something that is beyond the rational. Many artists are counter establishment and produce works that try to break down the boundaries between the public and the art world, it is the expert's job to re-establish control; which is why nine times out of ten the expert is talking rubbish. People who need experts to tell them what they like are not art lovers. A person that feels he needs to add his own opinion to an artwork in order to justify its existence is either a philistine or a snob. And snobbery is the cornerstone of the airtight garage.
The Romantic does not need, or even seek, "proof" to enjoy art and no ideology (including the ideology of post-modernism) can add to the pleasure and the pain that artistic communion foments within us. Art itself proves that we each share an intuitive understanding that goes beyond reason. There exists, hidden away in a museum draw, a flint axe that was fashioned tens of millennia ago. On its surface, centrally positioned, is the fossilised remnant of a shell. It is an object fashioned with aesthetic intent, it is a work of ART. It is as beautiful to a 21st century estate agent as it was to a prehistoric hunter-gatherer. Art isn't totally independent of science, philosophy and technology, but science, philosophy and technology are less human(e) without art.
Mass-production is seen as a threat to art. Why? If art is communication, as we, the Communionists, believe, or, to put it another way, an object of meditation, as Hans Richter pointed out, then Mass-Consumption is a good thing. For the first time in history we have a near instant, global communication network, cheap, high-resolution, reproduction processes and, soon, we will have the ability to duplicate an object on an atomic scale. Walter Benjamin, in his The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, stated that "I saw that the authority or autonomy of original works of art derives from their unreproducibility - (except as fakes) - which gives them a magical aura, a charismatic halo that surrounds authentic art objects because they are 'one-offs', irreplaceable and hence priceless." For, our Walter, even the most ludicrous anti-art becomes art simply because it is a "one-off", for him "rarity" gives aesthetic beauty to Duchamp's piss pot and an "aura" to Huelsenbeck's shoes.
Under Benjamin's formula something as unique as the Hubble Space Telescope must be given artistic status. It is a one off, never to be repeated (improved but not repeated). However we do not recognise it as art because it was not built with aesthetic sensibility in mind, it was designed to communicate on a rational, as opposed to emotional, level. Hubble does, of course, appeal to us on an emotional level but, to its designers, this is nothing more than an immensely beautiful side effect.
Pop Art was seen as a remedy to the elitism of Abstract Expressionism (though a Communionist might say that it was only the imposition of academic snobbery that threatened to make Abstract Expressionism "elite"). Ordinary, sometimes mundane, objects were raised to the level of art. The techniques of mass production were used to create artworks that were as free from the artist's "personality" as they were from establishment intellectualism. The pop artists of the fifties and sixties showed that art exists outside galleries and auction rooms and they invited it in for the art world to admire. Marco Livingstone writes "Advertisements, comic strips, movie stills, postcards, reproductions of works of art, photographic images from magazines and newspapers, the design of automobiles and other consumer products were all plundered as a rich source of motifs that had previously largely been ignored as beneath an artist's dignity." Art once again celebrated life as it is, not as the elite would like it to be. Ironically, with the movement that made art out of everyday objects, the artist was elevated to the status of icon. Though Peter Blake created the most widely owned Pop Art image (which, to be honest, may be due to the talents of the Beatles - Peter Blake designed the cover for Sgt Pepper's) Andy Warhol had the white wig, hence his more prominent fifteen minutes.
Originality is more important to an object's value as a commodity than its status as a work of art. Rarity gives economic desirability to a 1970s Star Wars action figure or a piece of toilet paper signed by John Lennon, but the only emotion stirred by these objects is sentimentality.
To be fair, the idea of material originality may have been more important in Benjamin's time when the only good quality reproduction was a fake. But in the digital age an artwork can be created on a computer and transferred to a billion screens with every single image being identical to the original. Does this mean that it isn't art?
Then again if you believe that the real, and only, value that an artwork possesses is it's ability to communicate (and that it is only art while in communion with a self-conscious entity) then even the concept of "fake" is worthless. Thus the Communionist cannot be duped.
A belief that Mass-Production/Consumption somehow de-values an object's artistic value tells us more about commerce and class than it does about art. The only questionable pieces are those where the choice, and use, of the medium itself influences the way that we perceive the image. Violent staccato paint-work hints at the nature of an artist’s mind, the purposeful decay of organic material steals back a little something from the prophets of profit (damned formaldehyde!). But the fact that collectors are prepared to lock such works away, denying both the masses and the artwork the freedom to communicate, shows us how little they know about passion, these people are dead from the waist down and paralysed from the neck up. One of my favourite artworks was seen and admired by millions but remains impossible to price (unless we think in terms of production costs - which would rank this work higher than "The Mona Lisa." "The Sunflowers." and "The Ambassadors." put together). It was the Guinness advert that combined computer enhanced imagery, music by Leftfield and quotes from Herman Melville and it was exhibited in front rooms all over Britain. I am opposed to consumerism as a motivation for creativity and I’m certainly not saying that all advertising is art, indeed the careerism that the media promotes among creative people can has a negative effect, but there was something about the overall work that demanded attention. And I am far from alone in my admiration, people who profess no love of art have commented favourably on the advert but they cannot say why they love it (and as a Communionist I would distrust anyone who claimed that they could).
Only a childlike obsession with possession (which should have been kicked into touch when we passed through the gates of nihilism) can make us refuse to accept the aesthetically created objects of Mass-Production, Mass-Consumption and, along with them, Mass-Media as legitimate art. Only the difficulties of making profit from Mass-Production force the establishment to tighten its hold on "originality", the more reproductions there are of a painting the higher the commercial value of the original becomes. [To be fair it is difficult for us to drop our fixation with ownership. raised as consumers we do not cope well with the notion if transience. We even turn to material possessions for comfort when confronted by the ephemeral nature of the universe and our own mortality. Our fear makes us hold on tighter and tighter to the very thing that stops us living life in the first place, or in the words of Echo & The Bunnymen "so I want more than I can get, just trying to, trying to, trying to forget, nothing ever lasts forever." Even the Buddhist's - who see the world as no more than a lightning flash, the water of a mirage, the erection of a eunuch - have insurance companies.] But this fixation with icons is driving the artist farther and farther into the airtight garage. What, to me, is even more unfavourable, is that it denies the recognition due to those who work with the latest technologies. After all our art should be an expression of our existence not a convenient form of currency or a symbol of status. (PLEASE NOTE: This is not an attempt to justify Mass Culture, it is a call for Mass Creation. Everyone as Artist and Art for Everyone.)
The avant-garde has always explored the latest technologies. Dada and Surrealism led to photographic and cinematic experimentation that is still reflected in modern films and commercials. But for most of the twentieth century the technology itself was a one way system, the means of production being controlled by an elite minority with the masses remaining passive consumers. This suits the establishment; technology is the ultimate engine of desire so as long as they control technology they can still exercise power. Here I will quote once again from Hans Richter's book DADA: Art And Anti-Art. Alexander Trocchi describes this situation in a note on George Orwell in the Evergreen Review, No. 6, 1958: "The proliferation of vast projects in human engineering, and the resultant threat to the integrity of the individual, is a direct consequence of the sudden emergence of the mass. Ortega y Gasset speaks of the 'vertical invaders' referring to the hundreds of millions of men of no tradition being born into history through a trapdoor - a consequence of the industrial revolution. By and large the education for these men-without-roots has been governed by the technological requirements of expanding industry. What culture they have has been acquired from the daily newspapers, pulp or slick magazines, the popular cinema, lately television. The technician, qua technician, is essentially passive, and the structural attitude which is imposed on him during his working hours is carried away by him into his leisure hours; he is the victim of leisure, not its master. Restless, passive, with few vital inner resources and little creative doubt, he has to be amused, and, as a customer of amusement he is subjected to the same battery of techniques which have boosted production. There is no doubt that this kind of efficiency-consciousness is dangerously closed." Though things are beginning to change our schools, work ethic, politics and the art establishment are still governed by the capitalist values that put "efficiency-consciousness" and crass profit before our natural creative urges. And although the expanding middle-class tries to cover itself with a veneer of cultural etiquette the leisure industry is still the fastest growing business sector. Trocchi warns about "leisure" and "entertainment" again in a piece written in 1963, "Meanwhile, […] the problem of ‘leisure.’ A great deal of what is pompously called "juvenile delinquency" is the inarticulate response of youth incapable of coming to terms with leisure. The violence associated with [juvenile delinquency] is a direct consequence of the alienation of man from himself [sic] brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Man has forgotten how to play. And if one thinks of the soulless tasks accorded each man in the industrial milieu, of the fact that education has become increasingly technological, and for the ordinary man no more than a means of fitting him for a "job," one can hardly be surprised that man is lost. He is almost afraid of more leisure. He demands "overtime" and has a latent hostility towards automation. His creativity stunted, he is orientated outwards entirely. He has to be amused. The forms that dominate his working life are carried over into leisure, which becomes more and more mechanised; thus he is equipped with machines to contend with leisure that machines have accorded him. And to offset all this, to alleviate the psychological wear and tear of our technological age, there is, in a word, ENTERTAINMENT."
I cannot agree totally with Trocchi's conclusions, growing up in a working-class area I can testify that there are people who stand out among the sheep whatever their "tradition" may, or may not, be; yet the art establishment remains unashamedly classist. And are there not artistic gems even among the carrots of the Hollywood sick-bag? But he is correct to infer that culture is a creation of those in power, it is the way in which their desires are turned into our desires. Art, in their hands, is a weapon against creativity; their narrow ideals means that the art-world ignores everything that does not perpetuate their Eurocentric, money orientated mythology (if you do not believe me just ask yourself why everything created outside Europe is given the label ‘ethnic’?). The various aristocracies throughout history (even those that call themselves democratic) have shaped art history simply because it was they who were the first to create the free time needed to explore the creative possibility of our species. But new technology (just so long as we control that new technology) has the potential to deliver us from the pulp-faction and turn each and every one of us into a Renaissance (wo)man.
The future of art will belong to the common man. Computers mean that new and powerful techniques for the creation and distribution of artworks are becoming widely available. The (supposed) anarchy of the Internet terrifies the prophets of profit. Here there is a world where they have lost (though maybe not for long) the ability to control production and consumption. Here is a world of interaction, of Mass-Communication. If the Western mono-culture that has shaped the modern world were geared toward art rather than commerce then the internet would be the greatest of (multi-)mediums. Imagine poems contrived by the combined efforts of a hundred poets, images worked and re-worked by a thousand artists with the beholder selecting the exact moment in time (the point of communion) that is right for them (every image original but mass-produced and produced en masse! - Walter would have a fit), endlessly expanding novels that break the confines of alpha and omega, and as for the tired apres-garde notion of putting a live person on show as part of an exhibition - through video conferencing we can exhibit life! Unfortunately this is not the case. Ours is a world of satellite dishes and video recorders. Raised as consumers we lack the self-confidence to enjoy anything that we did not pay for. In an environment of "chat-rooms" we still seek out "experts", the success or failure of a feature film can depend on the whim of an obese, self-publicising, American critic rather than the combined feelings of a host of cinema lovers. You have to be emotionally unstable to choose a guru over a soul mate but critics are rarely unemployed.
Interaction is vital to the Communionist. Not only do we wish to smash the walls of the airtight garage in order to make art more accessible to the public, we want to devalue the artist in order to give the public more access to the means of artistic expression. To an artist his may sound somewhat masochistic, but anyone who loves art will appreciate the positive effects the invention of photography had in releasing the artist from the cage of realism. The twentieth century was an explosion of creativity - despite the art establishment - imagine the possibilities we would create once we abandon the notion that art is something made by "artists". Every human endeavour profits from being more open. In Brazil football is the pursuit of poor working class kids, it’s played on the streets and on beaches, they produce some of the best footballers in the world. In North America it’s a different story, football (sorry, "soccer") is played by the affluent middle class and hey presto! Basketball on the other hand...
We need complete and open access to both art and the means to produce art. The technology needed is here; it's time that we appreciated it. Interaction already exists in the galleries. Recently I came across a sculpture where small glazed clay tablets with words like "pity" or "joy" written on the sides were placed on shelves and the observer was asked to arrange them in a way that expressed the way they were feeling when they were looking at the sculpture. This is only a step away from placing a lump of clay in a gallery with a sign saying, "Express yourself!" And why not?
The Communionist has a very simple objective, but an incredibly difficult task. To reclaim art from the establishment's confidence tricksters one must abandon all yardsticks but one's own intuition. We will not rest until the last art critic has been strangled with the guts of the last art dealer, or, if you are looking for something less militant, we need to make their roles unnecessary. If we are to achieve this then art must be allowed to exist in a less mediated environment. Though the Communionist openly condemns the art establishment he recognises that the establishment and the people involved in the running of that establishment are two very different things. It is possible for anyone to be a Communionist and therefore we hope to offer guidelines for everyone. Firstly one must dissolve the false notion that we know what art is. The idea of "qualification" and "expertise" is a nonsense to the emotional mind, we cannot stop an infatuation just because we know the neurological physiology of love (and if we could we would be poorer people for the experience). Next, bearing the first in mind, we must exchange the artificially imposed establishment hierarchy for a system of mutual aid where creation is put before consumption. The masses not only deserve unimpeded access to existing works of art, they, for the sake of art, need free access to the means by which they can add to them. Not through the restrictive world of art school but through community funded facilities that provide only the material technology needed in order to produce - and reproduce - new artworks. Thirdly we must learn to trust ourselves; we must create art because we love what we create, not because we hope that somebody else will love us because we created something. How small are their yardsticks? How big is your imagination?
The Gallery is already a place where art can be enjoyed for it's own sake; it is the only place where a godforsaken wretch like me can find spiritual release. The gallery is my basilica and I, for one, would lament the fall of the house of Tate. We will all find non-dogmatic divine joy when the art world takes a leaf out of the book of Saint Thomas, but until the day every council estate in Britain smells of linseed and turpentine then we’re going to have to rely on the galleries for our communion. Unfortunately the work displayed in galleries remains mediated in that there has to be a selection process due to the limitations of space. Galleries do a good job in refreshing displays and the travelling exhibition is favourable, but why do they forget that a building has wall space on the outside as well as the inside? All galleries must be FREE, it our moral responsibility to gatecrash any that charge an admission fee. Galleries should have studios built inside them. The ideal Communionist Romanticist Institution would be a combined studio/gallery where established artists and members of the public interact freely, wallowing in the creation and appreciation of the visual arts until their roles become meaningless. The artist teaching technique to a layman willing to express himself, the layman giving instant feedback to an uncertain artist, Not simply an artist's commune but a stable dedicated to the breeding and development of passion.
The Artist must seek new ways to fight the establishment while producing art (as opposed to anti-art, which is fun for the artist but nowadays it only communicates with snobs and robbers, not the general public). This may involve computer generated imagery offered as "share-ware" over the internet, the mass-production of posters to be displayed at bus-stops, holographic sculptures where the original is ceremonially destroyed, murals on private houses or public buildings, tattoos, etc, etc. It is not fitting for this manifesto to tell you what subject matter to choose, but whatever form a Communionist piece takes it should be created because it appeals to your artistic sensibility and not as an appeal to the establishment. All artists with Communionist sympathies should produce a selection of avant-garde Communionist works, but they should not become a solely Communionist artist - the legitimacy of existing art-forms is not in question and they should be added to without any restriction - especially the restrictions of Communionist Romanticism. All artistic knowledge should be shared (which includes the unique skills of the Boyle Family) and we must actively encourage as many people as possible to become involved with the creative process. How about getting together for a visual art jam?
The Collector has a special obligation; they must provide total access to the artworks kept in their possession. There is already a legal right for "national treasures" to be treated this way, this is merely an extension of that aim. Why not fund galleries and artists rather than headhunt and destroy items of beauty. Have the works in your possession set behind Perspex panels built into the walls of public amenities; place them in the windows of your home - facing outwards! You cannot own art! Even if the scientists reverse the ageing process this is still a transient universe, you will die, better to be remembered as a philanthropist. Take a lesson from Edward Marsh who found "buying Old Masters in shops... a sheeplike, soulless, conventionalism. How much more exiting... to go to the studios and the little galleries, and purchase, wet from the brush, the possible Masters of the future."
The rest of us have the most important job of all. To meditate on art and carry it around in our heads in the certain knowledge that we are transporting the only thing of real value that art can give.
The Conspiracy of Good Taste. Stefan Szczelkun. Working Press 1993
DADA: Art And Anti-Art. Hans Richter. Thames & Hudson 1965
Moebius 3: The Collected Fantasies of Jean Giraud. Jean Giraud. Titan Books Ltd 1990
Revolutionary Self-Theory: A Beginner's Manual. Larry Law. Spectacular Times 198?
created and compiled by Warren Draper.
acknowledgements must be made with regard to; Jean Giraud (AKA Moebius), who not only supplied the notion of the Airtight Garage (a perfect description of the art establishment) but also (albeit unwittingly) illustrates Communionist Romanticist beliefs with the existence of his graphic novels; Hans Richter and Alexander Trocchi for opening my eyes. Jaques Vache for producing the greatest act of poetry the 20th century never saw. Richard Huelsenbeck, Hannah Hoch, Francis Picabia, Max Ernst, Andy Anderson, Gaston Chaissic, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Larry Law, Guy Debord, André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Stefan Szczelkun, George Grosz, &tc, &tc for knowledge of the enemy; Collectable Anorak for the kiss of life; Louise, Adam and India Kate for love; Siddhartha Guatama for luck.
In loving memory of Pauline Edith Draper.