Italo Calvino and Artist Thomas Hirschhorn Both Indicate an Interest in Open Systems - Essay Example

The Politics of Time: Italo Calvino and Artist Thomas Hirschhorn both indicate an interest in open systems. Compare and account of this shared interest. The common sense view of time is that it is an objective measure: it runs continuously, unendingly and at the same pace constantly. Time can be measured just as the distance between two towns can be measured. Indeed, at it most extreme forms distance is measured in units of time, through the light years that occur in astronomy to avoid astronomical numbers being used that would be incomprehensible to the ordinary mind. But time is not necessarily an objective and unchanging measure, it seems to run either "fast" or "slow" according to the mood of the person, even though in fact it is running constantly. Similarly, within different kinds of Art there are different types of time. For example there are the so-called "time-based media" of film, performance, dance and theatre which demand a particular kind of investment from the viewer, both in concentration and in the amount of time that is needed to experience them. However, as one study showed, the average amount of time that a viewer spends in front of a painting is about four seconds. Can this brief exposure to the work of art be compared to, for example the four hours that it takes to view The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Also, different kinds of Art involve contrasting investments of time from the artist. Thus a painting is an essentially solitary creation that may take many hours, days or even months to complete - all for that four seconds viewing time. The artist in this case is distilling a particular experience of vision of the world into a picture that will only be seen for a few seconds. Paintings outside of museums will obviously be seen by their owners more often than this four seconds, but an image on wall becomes a part of their life, floating in and out of perception as the person goes about their life from day to day. Such a painting is constant work of art within the context of the viewer as compared to the temporary work found in the museum painting or even the longest film. One major question is whether the discrepancies of our experiences of time can be put down solely to the shortcomings of perception or whether it is the common, but incorrect, assumption that time is measurable that is the source of the confusion. Thomas Hirschhorn has been a leader in exploring the relationship between time, perception and space within the work of art. Within the group of artists called Grapus he was concerned with politics and culture, displaying what were essentially impromptu posters, paintings and collages on the streets using both the form and language of advertising. This was Art that was not tied to a particular place, and thus which did not demand to be "looked at" in the way that a traditional painting is. His early works could (and often were) seen by people who were just casually walking down the street, not expecting to indulge in the heightened expectations of Art. This was art as a commonplace part of the environment, designed to take it away from the rarefied atmosphere of the art gallery or museum. Leaving Grapus he moved to the hyper-saturated installations that he is known for today. These use a variety of common materials such as cardboard, duct tape, foil and plastic wrap. The use of common materials within art is hardly unique to Hirschhorn of course, but he manner in which he places his works of art outside of the gallery, making them site-specific implies a kind of double removal from the normal "time" and "place" of art. These works of art are thus open systems that are limited by neither time nor space. He has commented upon his work in the following manner: I do not want to invite or oblige viewers to become interactive with what I do; I do not want to activate the public. I want to give of myself to such a degree that viewers confronted with the work can take part and become involved, but not as actors. (Buchloh, 2004) He has also stated his interest in doing "too much": I'm interested in the 'too much'; doing too much, giving too much, putting Too much of an effort into something. Wastefulness as a tool or weapon. (Buchloh, 2004) The fact that the works are located in often ordinary spaces, but cannot be moved because of their very form and structure makes the task of the viewer somewhat different from someone looking at a painting in a gallery. The idea that he wants to give so much that the viewer does not need to become a part of the actual work is in many ways traditional: it almost fits into the interpretation of the viewer as a passive observer of something 'great'. The distance between the work of art and the observer would thus be maintained, even while the space is more casual and the experience of the art less formal. While Herschhorn's works are designed to be seen for a while before disappearing forever, the work of a writer such as Italo Calvino is, by its very nature "permanent". Calvino suggested that his writing was the only permanent thing about life: Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and final than one's mother's womb. (Calvino, 1987) Language, and thus the work of art from which Calvino uses words to create, is thus somehow set within the author, even while the outside world may be mutable. This fight between permanence and mutability has been considered by writers for many centuries, from Shakespeare's sonnets "so long lives this, and this gives life to thee" through Marcel Proust's massive attempt to "search" for lost time and on to the present day. The central question here is whether the experience of a particular moment in time can be satisfactorily captured and thus rendered to the reader, viewer, watcher etc.. A consideration of some of the first people to question the idea of what pictorial art should do, early in the Twentieth Century, will aid an exploration of these ideas. Further expansions upon the idea of the artist occur: . . . without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up into chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere. (Apollinaire, 1913) Here is a vital point, that illustrates that words can provide a profoundly revealing commentary on art. Art does not, as had been previously suggested, hold up a mirror to nature, but rather it creates something "sublime" out of the "monotony" that exists within nature alone. According to Apollinaire, Picasso is one of the pioneers of this artistic vision, through the intensity and specificity of his vision. Picasso's vision of art in general, and of the artist in particular, went through as many metamorphoses within his lifetime as his actual painting did. In his famous comments to Simone Tery in 1945, Picasso stated: Art is not made to decorate apartments, it is an offensive and defensive instrument of war against the enemy. (Picasso, 1993) According to Picasso, at least at this point in his career, art is designed not for its aesthetic beauty or even its more banal decorative value, but rather as an object of violence. The idea of art as destructive rather than constructive is revealing, and is reflected by a comment from ten years earlier, before Europe was plunged into the Second World War. In a "Conversation", Picasso stated the following: A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case a picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture - then I destroy it. In the end, though, nothing is lost. (Picasso, 1993) The idea of art as destruction, or at least the process of creating art as destruction, seems contradictory. Picasso is perhaps suggesting that his art is not intended to be "looked at" and "appreciated" in a passive way but rather should have an active effect upon both the artist and the viewer. The "sum of destructions" may be the destruction of pre-conceived notions and previous attitudes. This is why, paradoxically "nothing is lost" - because, perhaps, something new is gained. Within Cubism Picasso would explore the various vantage-points of time through the simple but extraordinary technique of showing a figure of face from various angles that would be impossible in a single moment, but quite realistic within a few second just be moving to the side of the person. In a sense the tyranny of time is thus both examined and destroyed. Many times in the course of this brief discussion it has become clear that artists speak of their work of creation in terms of destruction. Thus Hirschhorn speaks of confronting his viewers, while Picasso is involved in a process of creating an "offensive" and "defensive" instrument, or perhaps more simply, he sees Art as a weapon. If it is weapon then it is surely most effective at both highlighting and then defeating the exigencies of time and the fact that all human beings know something that no animal knows: our own mortality. The first signs of human art appear at the same time in our development as some kind of ceremonies involving the dead. The concurrence is no co-incidence. Art, at its best, is a confrontation with Time; it is the ability to say "I was here" and, perhaps most importantly, "I am still here, even though I am dead, because this is my art." This sense of art as a deeply personal, individual, unique process has been somewhat rejected by many critical movements of late. From post-modernism to deconstruction art is seen as an indelible product of a particular place and time rather than something which in some way surpasses those limitations. But artists themselves, as has been shown in this analysis, as different as Calvino and Hirschhorn, have seen art as essentially personal. Indeed, Calvino makes language more personal, more central to his sense of being as an individual, than the experience of being within the womb. What a Freudian might make of his allusions would be interesting, but for our purposes, it is obvious that the creative urge seems to stem from, as much as anything else, the need to take on the inevitably of time passing, and thus the inevitability of our deaths. Time passing, like death, cannot be ignored, but it can be placed in context and, within the work of art - whether it be painting, novel, film or play, frozen at a particular instant and thus made sense of. ___________________________________ Works Cited Apollinaire, Guillaume. The Cubist Painters: Aesthetic Meditations 1913. Buchloh, Benjamin. Thomas Hirshhorn. Phaidon, London: 2004. Calvino, Italo. The Uses of Literature. Harvest, London: 1987. Picasso, Pablo. "Conversation with Picasso" in ed. Wood, Paul. Art in Theory: 1900-1990. Blackwell, New York: 1993 Read More