Re: THE NEW NEGLIGENT ART

[david turgeon <dt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>http://www.thisistheonlyart.com/negligence/
>[3] We have forgotten Art History. Art History is a dead weight. It is 
>sometimes nice to look at pretty pictures in the Louvre and funny films of 
>people nailing themselves to VW Bugs. But we have forgotten all about it. 
>None of it matters. We're negligent of it all. And we're negligent even of 
>our own Negligence. Which is not to say that we simply don't care. DADA 
>was about dissing Art. Surrealism was all about attacking Bourgeois Life 
>in the Name of the Unconscious. That's nice. Fluxus was the last one to 
>try and pull it all together. We've forgotten what it even was these 
>people were trying to pull. We weren't even born then.
>[...]
>[5] Forgetfulness is a Virtue. Stealing from the Vaults is a Virtue. These 
>Virtues have no Histories. They only echo in the Here and Now. There's 
>nothing wrong about yesterday. There is no lack: only desire.

so what is negligent art then?  an intellectualised version of naive art, 
that is, without the obligatory 'naive aesthetic' which eventually took 
precedence over the original concept?  (but was there ever an original 
concept, or is it another fiction of art history?)

this new term doesn't seem to mean 'empty art' as it encourages the 
pillaging of the vaults of art.  it does however maintain: 'we've forgotten 
what it even was these people were trying to pull.'  it would be 
interesting to know whether this is a simple statement of fact, of a motto 
for the future?  i.e. do we make it a law to refuse to understand?

but then, 'forgetfulness is a virtue.'  & 'there is no lack: only 
desire.'  what a strange ring to these words...  at this very moment, such 
'bold' statements seem less (to me) like a bona fide aesthetic proposal & 
rather more like a conceptual illustration of a, dare i say, 'political' 
situation which very much forms our common, present time.  this is an art 
piece disguised as a manifesto, as most manifestoes are or should be.

& if it's really a serious manifesto, then it can't be for anything but a 
general terminology encompassing the efforts of dada, anti-art, fluxus, 
independent group, futurism, 1910 russian avant-garde, automatism, (some) 
surrealism, basically, any art movement that refused or ignored art history 
as an aesthetic/conceptual guide.

that being said, we're delving on utopian grounds here.  their refusal or 
ignorance was never truly 'total'; in every artist's work, no matter how 
'forgetful of the past', you can trace back a number of sources (i.e. 
'influences'), not necessarily obvious or taken directly from art history, 
but quite simply bits & pieces from the artist's universe.  at any rate, as 
a pen & ink artist myself i mostly ignored the surrealists but i can't 
escape the lessons i got from miro...  (of course, i learned the most from 
klee, but that's because he reads like a cheat sheet...)

have a nice day
~ david

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