Martha Rosler, was 20 when the twentieth century came
in the 1960s attended the transition from what was left of the modern world and
the new contemporary world. Change after change. "If we want some kind of
revolution, we have to do manifestations, be out there, to organize ourselves,
we devote ourselves." And this is not even activism. It is
"citizenship," said to the Portuguese newspaper Público in an
interview on the sidelines of the Future Forum in Oporto, where he was guest
lecturer.
She began his lecture by explaining that, in the
1940s, when Jackson Pollock was doing his abstract paintings, or the artists or
the art public could imagine the intrinsic link between their world and the
major international financial flows.
How Pollock worked the screens on the floor, had
anything to do with the idea of territory and territorial possession. Indeed,
the fact that he give up the perspective - that was what made his painting -
binds with the history of land ownership. There is this and the most obvious: the
relationship with money, which intensified a lot, because it has become much
more visible. Pollock was part of the first generation of artists in the world
financial markets had focused in the United States and had become completely
hypertrophic. All this and the emergence of celebrity culture weighed much
about the abstract expressionists, most of which were part of a culture of
bohemian outsider vaguely impoverished.
I think we can say that abstract expressionism was
destroyed by his relationship with money and fame. Still say that there is a
reason for the transcendence model he proposed can’t legitimately remain in the
postwar world: the economy. So we know more [about the relationship between art
and money] and the pressure intensified vastly. Everyone who now has something
to do with the art world, even at the popular level, realize the connection of
this world to the world of finance, especially in the United States. As someone
said, we have reached a time when some of the artists are as or richer as their
collectors. It's not exactly like that because some of the patrons of art are
immeasurably rich, but obviously there are artists who have become extremely
rich. The 'financialization' art shot up to the top of the roof [media] that
makes the art world. In publications [reference] as the New York Times auctions
are so history as [the exhibition] ... It's like professional sports - what you
really hear is money, who cost much, who is doing as what the great players got
the best contract and how many millions of euros or dollars a year makes.
The art world has become a sort of big annual sprint,
the hundred meter hurdles to see who gets the better end quoted market. It is quantification
and 'financialization' of anything we considered before being out of the
valuation of goods system [whose value depends on the laws of supply and
demand] and we now know to be completely inside. This started happening in the
last four or five decades. We can’t pretend it is new. But reached an
unprecedented point. Let's look at a more popular reference - the movies:
nowadays it is thought a movie ticket for their results. If a movie is a ticket
success, people did not even bother to mention the fact that whether or not a
good movie. Maybe later in the specialized column [in the press], but the big
immediate step is always, "No. 1 at the box office."
The painting was an art easel. After it became too big
to be on the easel. What Pollock did no one had done before was to make the
paint a representation of the landscape but in landscape. And there is a
certain irony in the fact that the canvas becomes a territory for action
[Action Painting] and this is a good window through which to see the
relationship between art and power. The lieutenant’s land can’t set your
property without a metric system. Nor can represent the landscape to look real
without perspective. Now, the history of painting is the history of the
development and the rejection of perspective - because the abstraction is the
rejection of perspective, the choice of two-dimensionality, still, ironically,
on territory. This is especially ironic in the case of Pollock, because he
paints with the canvas on the floor. His canvas is an area where we have come a
territory. And even when he, in the end, to put back the canvas vertically [the
wall] everyone realizes how there has been reached "meaning" derived
from the horizontal. Such as land tenure is the basis of capital accumulation,
these paintings also become a principle of capital accumulation. At the time, no
one was thinking about it, but I can’t help thinking.
The transcendence model proposed by Abstract
Expressionism could not take place in the world and in the post-war economy,
because artists depend on the ideas of its patrons. That's why I often speak in
the development of the bourgeois public from the late nineteenth century and
the theories that link the abstract, symbolism, etc., as a way to escape the
issues of realism, which led to the representation of the working classes and
militancy of the working class. Of course, the artists did a lot of that, but
mainly in the design and engraving. And those who did not turn very well paid
for it by its patrons, who actually wanted was to see other images.
The transcendence model corresponds to the fact that
the artists show us another world. It was a very important theory. But at the
time the center of the art world moves from Paris to New York, in the 1940s... The
patronage in the United States never was very interested in intellectual
specializations or representation theories, just want things very immediate. As
Rockefeller once said about Rothko [Mark's painting] - and I paraphrase, offers
a relaxing space to tired businessman. This is perfect! The space of
abstraction is a view of another world, without any specifics. But this could
not last, because art has become appreciated in a way more massif. When it
became a commodity, an expensive commodity, Jackson Pollock appeared in Life
magazine cover. Life magazine was practically in every American home! Was in
doctors' offices - was everywhere. Defined the image of the world. Before
television be in the home of everyone, was there a Life. And in case one day
appeared this artist who was dethrone Picasso as the most important artist of
the twentieth century. Pollock eventually died drunk in a very short time after
car accident and this idea that art is supposed to be about something else,
mysterious, transcendent ... It's a little Catholic doctrine, this. I do not
know...
The young artists today see themselves as producers of
tradable goods. Some project a successful career of about 10 years. It's like
the millionaires.com: had an idea that was purchased, if
reformed and had a happy life somewhere not to do anything that they did not
want. This is what many young people think of elite schools, for which they
paid a lot of money. They think: make a fortune and
disappear overnight.
