Mortal Danger
Is it good for the intransigence and orthodoxy of concrete art
to remain on the straight and narrow path imposed by the patristics
of concrete painting?
The process of abstraction in painting is sufficiently known through
cubism, so I needn't talk about it. The process of concrete art, with
its point of departure in the artist's unconscious, is infinitely more
dangerous. Even the work relying on a rational system will not escape
the danger arising from the mysterious junctions from which the forces
of traditional painting radiate-- a springboard for all the Hercules
of Antiquity and the Renaissance. Two points located on the same plane
and at a certain distance from one another, a perpendicular dropping
between them on a horizonal line, suffice-- horresco referens-- to suggest
a head.
Our generation takes immense pride in progress. But progress will
not help us advance toward the absolute. We are capable of blowing up
the world, because we don't like to compromise. We will come to an end
in these fireworks without ever reaching the absolute. Wouldn't it be
better to arrange a compromise that would save the earth and save art?
Various attempts made by artists have failed, I think, because of that
fear "of accepting any compromise." It's not an old wives' tale to say
that science is incapable of simultaneously establishing both the location
and the speed of a particle. The overweening presumptuousness and vanity
of man thus seem too indescribably grotesque.
To terminate this little tale, let me ask you a question: wouldn't
it be better to occasionally allow a nose to appear in a square?
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