- The Modern Dynamic
Kristeva Zoe
- Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs
The equilibrium of Modern society may be defined by three conceptual constructs: a mindset of stability, a telos of progress, and a dynamic of rebellion. Strangely, this structure is able to stand by undermining itself, with the irreconcilability of stablity and progress offset by the challenging of both. Modernity sets itself a paradoxical project; and, quite appropriately, it is those who dispute it who forward it. Nowhere is this more manifest than in the visual arts. Indeed, the Artist has risen to an almost mythic stature in her role as conveyor of the Modern condition, whether this be as the mirror of her times (establishing a mindset), avant-garde / visionary (presenting a telos), or critic / rebel (forging a dynamic). The discourse which results from the juxtaposition of these three roles of the Artist not merely reflects but actually comprises the structure of Modern society.
The Modern mindset brings with it the myths of order, rationality, and the consequent infinite potential for human control: "it was assumed that uniquely rational procedures exist for handling the intellectual and practical problems of any field of study, procedures which are available to anyone who sets superstition and mythology aside, and attacks those problems in ways free of local prejudice and transient fashion" 4. (In aesthetic terms, this translates into the classical Greek and Roman virtues of balance, proportion, harmony, regularity, and symmetry -- the work of Mondrian has become perhaps a cliche.) Pippin attributes this shift towards control to Machiavellian thought, whereby the "peaceful contemplation of the cosmos, and the place of human being within such a cosmos" is replaced by the 'achievable' telos of "the satisfaction of the passions". "Nature was to be mastered, not contemplated; the distinction between theory and techne was collapsed and modern humanism, as a kind of technological self-assertion, was born" 4.
Consider: "Newman conceived Broken Obelisk in 1963 but could not have it executed until four years later, when he found the right steel fabricator" 2. Newman's (temporary) inability to enforce his artistic will is construed as the result of inadequate ingenuity, rather than of inappropriate vision. Smithson satirizes such exercise of control for its own sake in his Earthworks piece, Spiral Jetty: here the Earth itself has a form imposed on it, to no real end. The Jetty curls in on itself uselessly. The fact that Smithson's piece is doomed to eventual erosion only heightens the irony. Pippin underlines the paradoxical nature of any attempt at a "humanist technology": "the very existence of poetry or the arts, particularly in modernity, implies a claim that the irreducible individuality and contingency of many of the most significant aspects of human life cannot be accounted for by the universalist and abstract language of philosophy and science" . Like Smithson's Spiral Jetty, modernism is an artificial imposition of structure which goes nowhere and is inherently unstable.
This tension leads to the birth of the Artist as the avant- garde. It becomes the Artist's role as an individual to better define the telos towards which Modern rationality is to work: "there is a lot of talk, not about reform or forcing the Enlightenment project to live up to its own ideals, but about wholesale negation, revolution, another new sensibility, now self- affirming or self-creating, rather than a universalist or rational self-legitimation. This in turn suggests a tremendously heightened role for the artist, the figure whose imagination supposedly creates or shapes the sensibilities of civilization". The avant-garde is commissioned by society to anticipate the future, to scout out new intellectual terrain: "Aesthetic modernity is characterized by attitudes which find a common focus in a changed consciousness of time... The avant-garde understands itself as invading unknown territory, exposing itself to the dangers of sudden, shocking encounters, conquering an as yet unoccupied future. The avant-garde must find a direction in a landscape into which no one seems to have yet ventured" 1. Seurat's Invitation to the Side Show has the mystical quality of one such foray into the unknown: the pointillism lends the work an indefinite, dreamlike, visionary feel. The Modernist message is clear: "Seurat's systematic approach to art has the internal logic of modern engineering, which he and his followers hoped would transform society for the better" 2. Seurat's vision was subsequently taken up by the (aptly-named) Futurists, a group of Cubists who "saw in the new style a special affinity with the geometric precision of engineering that made it uniquely attuned to the dynamism of modern life". The avant-garde Artist's orientation towards the Modern concept of "progress" is clear. Through imaginitive extrapolation, the avant-garde shepherds Modern society towards the goal that only the Artist can see.
Yet elaborations upon accepted wisdom can only lead so far. Hence the paradoxical reliance of the Modern project, not on the shepherds who would direct it, but on the wolves without. The Artistic Rebel must claim her own identity if the project is to avoid stagnation. "The autonomy of the aesthetic sphere could then become a deliberate project: the talented artist could lend authentic expression to those experiences he had in encountering his own de-centered subjectivity, detached from the constraints of routinized cognition and everyday action" 1. The Artist becomes an individual -- both distinct from, and capable of transcending, her environment. "What independence there is, the independence of the artistic imagination, is often achieved at the price of a very costly social 'refusal', as in the modernist obsession with gamblers, outlaws, con men (all figures of the ever alienated artist) those who try to act out or confirm their independence from the mediation of others; or more typically, at the price of great loneliness and isolation..." 4. The hand of the artist is seen as somehow dangerous, as it transcends the boundaries of what is dictated by this world. Yet it is precisely this transgression which makes the Rebel figure indispensible to the Modern project: this challenge to the status quo allows for even greater "progress". "Modernity revolts against the normalizing functions of tradition; modernity lives on the experience of rebelling against all that is normative. This revolt is one way to neutralize the standards of both morality and utility" . Hence the Rebel, in questioning societal trends, actually reaffirms the more basic presuppositions which allow such trends to exist in the first place. It is the discourse created through the denial of expectations which provides the Modern with its dynamic.
Dada and Surrealism have likely been the most successful Modern artistic rebellions insofar as they have attacked the very presumption of meaning itself: "Dada has often been called nihilistic and its declared purpose was indeed to make clear to the public at large that all established values, moral or aesthetic, had been rendered meaningless by the catastrophe of the Great War... Dada preached nonsense and anti-art with a vengeance" 2. This is less the death of the Artist than her suicide. Surrealism similarly sought to negate its creator, through "pure psychic automatism... intended to express... the true process of thought... free from the exercise of reason and from any aesthetic or moral purpose" . Habermas believes the Surrealist uprising challenges the fundamental right of art to exist. However, he claims it fails on two accounts: "First, when the containers of an autonomously developed cultural sphere are shattered, the contents get dispersed. Nothing remains from a desublimated meaning or a destructured form; an emancipatory effect does not follow". More importantly, communication networks are both complicated and interrelated. "A rationalized everyday life, therefore, could hardly be saved from cultural impoverishment through breaking open a single cultural sphere -- art -- and so providing access to just one of the specialized knowledge complexes". Perhaps; yet is this attempted suicide of the Artist truly an attempt to end artistic discourse, or is it simply an entry into discourse on another level?
The beauty of the Modern order / progress / change dynamic is that it is constructed in such a way that it is very difficult to attack without having that very action assimilated. Habermas comments that "the new value placed on the transitory, the elusive and the ephemeral, the very celebration of dynamism, discloses a longing for an undefiled, immaculate and stable present". One might as well be arguing with Freud concerning one's own personal motivations. The key to a true artistic rebellion would necessarily lie not in criticism, but in creating a new vision independent of grounding in the Modern altogether. This is likely what the Dadaists and Surrealists have been attempting in their radical attempt to remove themselves from their work: and in thus 'playing possum' they have at least managed to deceive several philosophers.