Lily
Fürstenow-Khositashvili: How would you
characterise critical tendencies in contemporary artistic discourse,
what role does the critical aspect play as far as artistic value is
concerned?
Boris Groys:
Malevich wrote
that an artist should never do what he/she
likes. Because as soon as one does so, the work is inscribed into the
already existing aesthetic parameters. In fact, one has to observe
that due to critical aspects contained in the artwork people start
talking about things, for example, about Arthur Zmijewski, or about
the notorious Pussy Riot. You and me inclusive. That's right, they
were disliked but they are remembered precisely because of that. And
whoever was liked by the public has already been forgotten.
LFK: Why
is this sort of artistic practice so problematic to be accepted?
BG: Critical
artistic position has always been a minority position.
We never remember whatever we like but all
that we dislike. Only this serves as an example, only this causes
reaction or gets press coverage. Everybody reacted to Pussy Riot and
to Zmijewsky, they were in the centre of attention. They're the only
ones who stuck in memory, because nobody liked them.
LFK:
I would raise here the issue of what is being represented in art
being at odds with the means of representation. I mean, what is at
stake here: the intrinsic quality of the art works as well as the
targets the artists set themselves.
BG:
Art cannot be explained from the intentions of the author. The issue
is here the contextualisation of the art work, as well as other
political and artistic gestures of the artist.
As for the aesthetic
criteria it would be problematic to speak of these at this particular
moment in history. One would go as far as to presume that there are
none. Kunstwissenachaft als Pseudowissenchaft: I would suggest that
art history could not formulate
any criteria of quality so far. Artists
are people, we cannot separate different
aspects of their
lives. We like Byron because he wrote
poems, because he died in the Greek war, because of the women related
to him. That's why, we like him, we admire him, we're irritated by
him. All this counts. All in all, it constitutes our attitude to the
author and the work.
The decisions: political,
economic or aesthetic are all related. A decision of that kind is
always to your advantage, and ... your disadvantage. There's always a
positive and a negative part to it.
Art history cannot be
separated from human history. It is not a
natural science like Botanic,
or Zoology. Animals,
for instance, never
read scientific papers, nor
change their colours as a result of
this reading. Artists, on the other hand,
study texts
related to arts and take respective
decisions and do change their colour. This is the significant
difference.
LFK:
The artworks speak for themselves...
BG:
No, our
reaction to the artworks depends on their context.
The whole contemporary
discourse on
art evolves around the contextualisation
of the work of art within
the whole of the
artistic and political strategies taken by the artists. Political
decisions define one's aesthetics.
If Albert Speer were not a
friend of Hitler, if he were not a fascist, no one would be
interested in his architecture. One can hardly remember any other
German
architects from this period if
one is not
specialized in the history of architecture.
We remember
Speer, only because he was a fascist, we remember Leni Riefenstahl
only because she was a fascist, there were in fact many other
documentary filmmakers at the time, but we
remember her.
LFK: Can
we expect these subjective experiences to inform the logic of the
archive, that decides what gets in and what stays out with time?
BG:
If we some day appreciate the so-called Soviet artists: Russian,
Georgian or others it we will only happen because they were
communists, not because they were good artists. Quality issue never
existed in fact, and it completely disappeared by now. Quality wasn't
the issue ever. The artist's social and political stance mattered.
Aestheticism is
also a certain social, economic and
political position. The artists of the movement were as good or as
bad as any others.
Yet we value them not for
their merit but for their attitude, because they stood for their
ideas, or claimed they had ideas.
But, of course, all these attitudes have
to be critically analysed.
LFK: What
about the issue of artistic merit? Could one still go as far as
defining certain criteria of quality?
BG: Art
is interesting in
so far as it is a symptom of the processes that take place in peoples
minds, in peoples hearts, as a
symptom of the socio-economic and
political relations. This is the essential aspect of artistic value
if at all.
Art history is not a
science but rather a compilation of politically and ideologically
motivated, extremely complex statements, generally false as
they are. As such, they are interesting
for socio-economic and political analysis, otherwise they don't have
any value of their own, neither does art. Apart from these, art is of
no particular value.
LFK:
Do you mean that the value of an artwork is contextual and relative
depending on the political and socio-economic climate? What is the
logic behind some artworks being acquired by museums or put on show
and others not?
BG:
At any rate there are no criteria defining artistic merit. Today
something is considered in, tomorrow it is out. It does not make much
sense anyway. Museums are based on our historical consciousness and
function in agreement with it.
If certain art is symptomatic of its time
then
it is in, selected for the shows, otherwise it
is not.
As for Kant's Critique of
Judgement you've been mentioning, he mostly refers to natural
phenomena, rather than to art. Any educated person after
contemplating art for a while gets back to contemplating nature.
Because no work of art can ever compare to an average sunset, which
surpasses any artwork in its beauty. To say noting of waterfalls or
else. Kant, who set up the criteria of aesthetics, actually excluded
art from them. Art was
subjected to these criteria on a later
date, which is nothing more than a commercial strategy.
Art is symptomatic for the
development of culture. And since we are interested in people, we are
interested in what people do, we take a look at art and either it
speaks to us and we can identify with it or not. So basically what
matters, is the identification with the position of the artist. It
happens
on many registers: aesthetic, social, economic, temperamental. All
this is symptomatic, and interconnected.
LFK: What
are the basic artistic strategies after the collapse of the USSR?
Could one speak of continuity of tradition, or rather the tradition
of avant-garde has been obsoleted in favour of other more urgent
modes of artistic expression?
BG:
I wouldn't say that avant-garde is forgotten, neither in Russia, nor
anywhere else. The problem of avant-garde is that it aimed not at the
description of life but at the transformation, reorganisation of
life. And it coincided with the historical moment of revolution. The
moment when the old system was destroyed and there was the feeling of
something on the rise. That was the moment of the new beginning that
the post-Soviet space doesn't experience.
On the contrary, it is
defined by the return to the past.
The
fall of the Soviet Union brought about the
establishment of the reactionary and conservative social
structures. The return to capitalism, to
nationalism, the return to the 19th
century in fact. The post-Soviet territory has returned in a certain
way to the pre-revolutionary stage
of development. Practically it is the
period of Restauration. In France it took a few years before the
Restauration started: from the French Revolution till the end of
Napoleon wars. In Russia it took quite a long time, seventy years,
now the period of Restauration started.
In the epoch of
Restauration the ideas of avant-garde can be
further
developed but they don't
coincide with the Zeitgeist, they are
not synchronised with the general
situation and the public
state of mind. We know that, and Marx has
also written on what is art in the epoch of Restauration. It was
the art of realism. Like the art of Balzac
as Marx’
favourite example from literature. The
post-Soviet world is the world in the epoch of Restauration with all
its specific characteristics, of which there are three basic ones:
capitalism, nationalism and the return to religion. Critical
reflexions on reality, a certain form of realism, a certain aspect of
the Russian Peredvizhniki movement are
more relevant now than avant-garde.
LFK: Social
relevance of realism containing the element of critique has a long
tradition in Russian painting. Does it still remain politically
efficacious and relevant within contemporary international artistic
context? Speaking of archive, could one determine differences between
the aesthetic practices and the political value of contemporary
post-Soviet artists and the international art scene?
BG: I
think that both in Russia and in Georgia all this has to settle down.
I
would say that the process of
internationalisation is not complete yet, practically nowhere on the
post-Soviet
territory. The cause of this is partially
the extreme nationalism and, generally,
regressive, reactionary and restaurationist social climate in
these countries.
LFK:
Yet there's so much unresolved creative potential...
BG:
The Soviet Union
attempted at creating a certain type of Soviet identity. Now each and
every national state that emerged in its place, is attempting at
creating some sort of their own national identity, and, of course,
the local
archives and the cultural policies are all
subject to this goal. One can always argue about what makes up a
national identity, but practically all involved into this argument
are pretty overwhelmed by the subject. This argument is meaningless
and useless, though. It has neither winners nor losers. One cannot
take sides either. And the argument is endless. Nationalism, once
again, largely blocks the integration into international community.
It will still last for some time.
This argument will end
when the participants get tired of arguing. Tiredness is in fact an
immense culturally formative power. Only when people get tired of
this nationalistic discussion and start looking further, one can talk
of integration and the archives.
LFK: How
would you characterise contemporary
post-Soviet artists work, the idiosyncrasies of their artistic
practice, if at all?
BG: The
Russian art of the 19th
century is the art of the Peredvizhniks, I don't think Russian art
has changed a lot since then. Russian art is still involved with
social criticism. It is also realistically oriented, and the same is
characteristic for Ilja Kabakov or Erik Bulatov, to name but a few.
These artists strive in various forms to express their critical
attitude towards the existing reality. I'm currently writing about
Olga Chernyshova,
and she is also a realist artist,
working in contemporary media, with
contemporary artistic means, dealing with the lives of common people.
As for contemporary
Georgian artists I would mention Gia Edzgveradze whom I know and
wrote about, his wife Tamara K. E. is also an interesting artist who
was exhibited here and in New York. Also a couple of other Georgian
artists that were working in Germany and in the US. I would say, I
can speak about the Georgian diaspora artists. As for the situation
in Georgia itself, I cannot speak much about it, I have never had a
chance of visiting the country, I was invited a couple of times
though.
In any case Georgian
diaspora artists may not be characteristic for Georgia itself since
the are strongly influenced by the West. Their oeuvre is
characteristic for the countries they live in. Speaking of Russian
art, there's a certain art scene, quite a large one, with quite a
large number of artists. I'm under the impression, that they search
for a national approach to art, but what is basically characteristic
for the art scene in Russia, I noticed it during my last visit there,
that this art is highly politicised. Abounding in very strong leftist
neo-Communist tendencies, with very strong protest spirit against the
existing power structures in Russia.
Boris
Groys
is Senior Fellow at the IKKM in Weimar, professor of Russian and
Slavic studies at the New York University, and senior research fellow
at the Karlsruhe University of Art and Design. He is an
internationally acclaimed expert on late Soviet postmodern art and
literature, as well as on the Russian avant-garde. Groys is a
permanent member of the Association internationale des critiques
d’art (AICA) and served as the curator and organizer of various
international art exhibitions, such as the Russian Pavilion at the
Venice Biennale in 2011. His recent publications include The
Communist Postscript
(2010); History
Becomes Form: Moscow Conceptualism
(2010); Going
Public
(2010); An
Introduction to Antiphilosophy
(translated from German by David Fernbach, 2012); and Under
Suspicion: A Phenomenology of Media
(2012)
Dr.
Lily Fürstenow-Khositashvili is researcher and curator working in
Berlin and Tbilissi
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