Sunday, September 25, 2016

Nordic Void

                        


                              
                          We remember the past arranged as a linear progression that stamps on events a number that is followed by subsequent number as if by unbreakable,fundamental necessity. The arrow of time points in one direction.That is true for Time but not necessarily for cultural phenomena. They group,cluster,meander: nothing looks inevitable or clearly resulting from their supposed causes.Visual expression of emergence, growth and decline of cultural movements,trends,manieres,fashions and fads are not well represented by arrow of time. Rather quite the opposite: a confusing tangle of threads would be much closer to remind how nothing there has a clear cause-effect simplicity.

 Ugliness,like beauty is graduated.Swedish IKEA delivers to the world these plastic chairs for people who kick them at the moment of hanging themselves.The model is called [in Swedish] "good riddance,Sweden".




                         When Renaissance turned into Baroque the difference in style was instantly recognizable, striking and asking the viewers to taste and savor very different range of emotions expressed in the new style. But- what the promoters of Nordic Void want us to do is much different.
Imagine,please a painting that contains one object. Not even one object and some background:just one object : a yellow solid color. Now imagine a musical composition of one tone and a poem consisting of one word,or even less- one root of a word. Those are offerings of Nordic Void. A quick glance at the entire history of western art shows no place where any of those offerings could have been regarded as art objects. It seems almost like one of Rabelaisian listings to assert that drops of rain,wood splinters,worm castings,pocket lint,ear wax,brackish ditches,used tissues,foot prints,potato peelings,discarded band-aids,recordings of silences,diary of observed clouds,named rain-puddles and boiled car-keys are not art objects either. Similarly the one color “paintings” are not object of art but mistakes induced by art incubators on three streets in NYC. They rule the art-market and the museum acquisitions and manufacture “greatness” of extremely talent-less seasonal names. It is ,like war, a racket.

 If I were a lonely cube rather than a homo sapiens  how much would I want to join this geometric gas chamber.


                                 Careful anthropologists in some distant future will uncover in tar-pits of greasy layers of Styrofoam cups and New York Times intriguing deposits of artifacts soon to be known as Nordic Void Culture.
According to National Geographic article the find contains paintings,pieces of furniture and serigraphs. All of the recovered artifacts exhibit distinct stylistic tendency which allows the scientists to separate them chronologically from the past and subsequent art of their culture with great certainty.
Art historians close to the project remarked that while all the previous epochs of western art had rich,often complex content of meanings this new find presented them with unaccountable puzzle. The artifacts have no meaningful content whatsoever! 

 Now,this inspiring  presentation is the new exhibition of Latin American artist at the Samuel Guggenheim Museum.If any irresponsible optimist would think that some sovereign cultures avoided the cretinism of Guggenheim and Friends than sadly and tragically that optimist is wrong. It spread as broadly as syphilis, avian flu and zika.O Guggenheim,O Guggenheim Wie treu sind deine Blätter!!!