david michael clarke
this is an artist's dossier
This is an artist's dossier. It contains images [reproductions] of an artist's work and a text purports to help explain the images. It's purpose is to 'shed light' on the artist's work. To clarify certain issues. To define [even justify] the practice in terms of 'art'. But in order to define the work as art, one must first reach a definition of art itself.
'The trouble is that essays always have to sound like God talking for an eternity, and that isn't the way it ever is. People should see that it's never anything other than just one person talking from one place in time, space and circumstance. It's never going to be anything else, ever, but you can't get that across in an essay.' - Robert Pirsig [1]
Definitions are a scary business. I run away from them as often as I can. They seem so limiting, so restrictive. I'm going to need some help.
'The one thing to say about art is that it is one thing. Art is art-as-art and everything else is everything else. Art-as-art is nothing but art. Art is not what is not art.' - Ad Reinhardt [2]
What a fucking great statement that is. That's Ad Reinhardt for you - a real master. I love statements like that. They really get my head spinning. Pure tautology, and not a definition in sight. Freedom.
'If someone says his work is art, it's art.'- Donald Judd [3]
There's another one. Donald Judd - fantastic stuff. If I say it's art, then it is art. It's as simple as that. This should be easy.
But it isn't easy. Something is wrong. Something so tangibly wrong that I can almost taste it in my mouth. I think 'purity' is the key word. It's all too 'pure'. There's no such thing as 'pure art' or 'art-as-art' as Ad Reinhardt put it. Art is created [or invented] by humans and you just can't create or invent purity. Purity is an elemental quality. We use pure sodium and pure chlorine to make what we call 'pure salt'. But salt isn't pure. It's either sodium contaminated with chlorine or chlorine contaminated with sodium. Contamination - that's all salt is.
But there's more to this purity problem than just that. Tautologies [like those of Reinhardt and Judd] are great fun because you go round and round in circles and end up with you're head all dizzy like after a fairground ride. No matter how hard you try, you just can't argue against them. This is because they are built on truth. But all tautologies have the same problem and paradoxically the thing that pulls them apart is the very thing that they were built on - Truth.
'Well our meeting this morning was so profound,
And I like his rhythm and like his sound,
But a very famous poet, no crit can criticise,
And then I pause for a moment and I start to realise,
He's telling lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies.' -Gordon Gano [4]
I mean, it's all well and good saying, 'If someone says his work is art, it's art,' but at the heart lies a great presumption. It presumes that when the artist says that his work is art, he is telling the truth. Even the smallest study into human nature, not to mention a brief glance towards the recent history of art, would reveal the folly of this presumption.
'Every word that I tell you is stupid and false.' - Marcel Duchamp [5]
So what if the artist is lying? What happens to art then? Look let's forget about art for a minute. Let's raise the stakes a little. Let's talk about love. If I tell you that I love you, does that mean that I do? Well obviously it's not necessarily so. The fact that the question is raised at all makes me either a lover or a liar, but the answer is unclear. It rests on confidence and trust. How much do you trust me? Maybe the question is unimportant. Maybe it doesn't matter.
'Honey you lied when you said you loved me,
And I had no cause to doubt you.
But I'd rather go on hearing your lies,
Than to go on living without you.' - Elvis Presley [6]
Elvis Presley, the King of Rock'n'Roll, didn't seem to care. He obviously felt that the love he felt for her was enough for the both of them. He was supremely confident. But then again maybe she wasn't lying at all. Maybe it was a double bluff - Elvis was no stranger to Las Vegas after all. Maybe she was to love what Duchamp was to art.
'There is no solution because there is no problem.' - Marcel Duchamp [7]
St. Paul was certainly more informative on the subject of love than Ad Reinhardt was on the subject of art. In his first letter to the Corinthians he said:
'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, l am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing.
Love suffereth long, and is kind, love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.' - St. Paul [8]
Cracking stuff. Basically, in the first part he's saying that even if you score the winning goal for England in the world cup final, but you aren't in love, your life's worth jack shit. In the second part he's going on about all the qualities that love doesn't have, and then all the qualities that it does. And in the last part he's saying that in space, time and circumstance, love is bigger than the Great Wall of China. At no point does he even begin to say what love is. There's not a single definition in sight, and most of it is completely unreasonable. But we feel it, we understand it. We know that in some way he's only scratching at the tip of an iceberg, but that's okay for us, we know the rest is there, because without it, well it just wouldn't float.
And perhaps what's even more surprising, I believe every word of it. There are some things that exist outside reason. Maybe even before it. Purity is one. Quality is another. Love is there as well.
'The sun of Quality does not revolve around the subjects and objects of our existence. It does not just passively illuminate them. It is not subordinate to them in any way. It has created them. They are subordinate to it !' - Robert Pirsig [9]
You can't think yourself to these places. You can't reason yourself to these places. You can only feel the way. It's not reasonable precisely because it comes before reason. And if you try, it just doesn't work out:
'When you ask what is zen, there is no more zen. When you ask what is Duchamp, there is no more Duchamp. When you ask what is style, there is no more style.' - Judy Tomkins [10]
I know this doesn't sound very scientific or even logical, or even academic, but even Albert Einstein knew it:
'The supreme task is to arrive at those elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them.' - Albert Einstein [11]
So in a way, we're back where we started. And in a way, we should have the same old problem. But somehow we don't. This time we didn't try to create purity. This time we intuitively found ourselves there. But what do we do now we're there? What's left? Well if purity was our goal, we'd be fucked - we'd be dead.
'You want to know how to make a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.' - Robert Pirsig [12]
You see it's impossible. There's no such thing as a perfect human being and there's no such thing as 'pure painting'. But this time round we didn't try to create purity, rather it created us. We're there, we're at purity. But it's not our goal. Our business is to mix and to mess. Let's come back to the idea of contamination - you remember, when we were talking about salt. Sol Le Witt was wrong when he said,
'It's difficult to bungle a good idea.' - Sol Le Witt [13]
It's easy. Everything we touch, we fuck up. It's our natural instinct as human beings. Contamination isn't just a product of human activity. More, contamination is the natural corollary of all human activity.
'They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.' - Philip Larkin [14]
People are always talking about how children's paintings are great because of all the bright colours they use. This is bollocks. Children's paintings are only bright when the paint box is brand new. On the second day the yellow is already shitty and by the end of the week all the colours look the same. Marcel Duchamp knew all about this:
'I have not stopped painting. Every picture has to exist in the mind before it is put on canvas, and it always loses something when it is turned into paint. I prefer to see my pictures without that muddying.' - Marcel Duchamp [15]
I've seen my art as a process of contamination for a long time now. I may not have used that word. But that was exactly what I was trying to get at. I knew there was a relationship between my ex-girlfirend and Joseph Kosuth because I had a daydream about her during a lecture on 'Art after Philosophy', but I was frustrated because I couldn't explain it. Today the frustration is gone, but not because I've discovered the explanation. The frustration is gone because I've realised I don't need to explain it. All I have to do is celebrate it. My work exists in a time when we are 'not ourselves', the time when we act irrationally, when we do not know quite what we're doing. I seem to be forever excited by the futility of my attempts at bringing logic to an emotional situation, and at bringing intuition into academia. Futility fills me with optimism.
The sun's come out now. I can see the mud. And what's more, I like it.
David Michael Clarke
Nantes, 2001
notes
[1] Robert M Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Published by Bodley Head, 1974.
[2] Ad Reinhardt - Art as art. Studio International, VI, #10, 1962.
[3] D. Judd - Statement. Catalogue to the exhibition - Primary Structure: Younger American and British Sculptors, The Jewish Museum, New York, 1966.
[4] Gordon Gano - Lies. Taken from 'Violent Femmes 3'. Gorno Music ASCAP, 1988.
[5] Marcel Duchamp - Taken from 'Plays and Wins' by Yves Arman. New York 1984.
[6] Elvis Presley - Are You Lonesome Tonight. Spoken Insert. Turk/Handman. Redwood Music, 1961.
[7] Marcel Duchamp - Taken from 'Plays and Wins' by Yves Arman. New York 1984.
[8] St. Paul - 1 Corinthians 13. The version cited here is a rather strange mixture of the King James version and the New English Bible. This mixture was used by Tony Blair at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales.
[9] Robert M Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Published by Bodley Head, 1974.
[10] Judy Tomkins - Interview, New York, November 1983.
[11] Albert Einstein - Speech, 1918.
[12] Robert M Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Published by Bodley Head, 1974.
[13] Sol Le Witt - Sentences on Conceptual Art. Art-Language, vol 01, no 01, 1969.
[14] Philip Larkin - This be the Verse. High Windows. Published by Faber and Faber 1974.
[15] Marcel Duchamp - Taken from 'Plays and Wins' by Yves Arman. New York 1984.