Art as a human institution on the vitality of life

 

In a society where we are used to perform based on the manuals or instructions given to us, from the minute that we are born and we are taught how to belong to a society, when we attend an institution or join a work enterprise, and we are accepting their social agreements, I want to believe contemporary art is a tool for leading society to a freedom of experiencing life through self-realization, using a symbolic medium.  

 

By this meaning, we will start from Dewey’s view on the artistic process, where the artwork does not work when it is an object of contemplation, since the art does not rely on the object, but on the intensified experience of the transitory everyday life that surroundsthe viewer.

To understand this aesthetic one must begin with it in its raw form, in the events and scenes that hold the attentive eye. Rothko would get it, by hanging relatively low his immersive, colorfully layered paintings, facing the viewer’s body completely. This conversion of painting into art object would immerse the viewer in the midst of its compositional simplicity, and would reassure him that going beyond that would reveal in perspective the limitations of his work, as told by the same Rothko. Meaning that emotions cannot be intellectualized or conceptualized; they are an immediate realization. They do not project into the object, they are just part of the environment created, in which the viewer is sort of an intimate intertwined element. 

 

Either with the Still painters that were deeply involved in colorfields that appealed to the senses, or the Actionist painters, whose exploration was irrationality and instinct manifesting through movements of the body experienced in the finished canvas, Abstract Expressionism was committed to the emotional experience, by giving the object a lack of representation. It was searching for a state of “reverberation” between the viewer and the work of art. 

So, while abstract expressionists were embracing personal emotion, minimalists emerged to remove expression and themselves from their work. The intention was to leave only the true essence of the receptive experience, by using the painting as the object for detonating it. Frank Stella presented a proposal of shaped canvases, which explored the tension between the arrangement of colors against the flat regulated patterns, as well as the optical effects of the advancing and receding forms, which allowed a situation or an action to happen inside of the work. Minimalist art attempts for fading the limits between painting and sculpture, were the product to naturally inducing a visual or moving experience. Donald Judd’s “Specific Objects” integrated the space, involving light, color, reflection and movement interaction, with the patterns of his industrial materials, in a way of giving the illusion of expanding beyond its bounds. Permitting the viewer to have an experience of infinity, in confrontation with the limits of human life. The same happened with Dan Flavin, proposals or situations, which used specific space and light reflection to engage with the viewer more actively, enhancing the three-dimensional aspect of the room.  

 

Even when the medium was different, the commitment to the artistic process in the search of the aesthetic experience created a remarkable capacity of tension on Contemporary art. These moments of tension constitute to this aesthetic ideal resolving, in a realm, where the past is not a burden, and the future is not an ominous threatening presence, so they can incorporate to the present experience of the viewer, to be fully here and now. Allowing an immersive contemplation of the self, and the world of objects and events surrounding it. 

In a quest for the truth of the artistic content, Conceptual art came to offer a new medium, the idea. Everything else could be left apart, as a way to understand objects based on mere reflection, reason, rationality, and not on our naive everyday understanding from the interaction with those things. Sol LeWitt, who saw himself as a composer, would leave instructions for his drawing installations, emphasizing the concept, rather than the physical outcome of the work, to the assistants of his projects for them to interpret and perform. Meaning was not a requirement for him, the experience was based on the process or material at hand. Dan Graham would blend the line between sculpture and architecture on his “Two Way Mirrors” by staging the experience of looking at the work of art. And Eva Hesse would use soft, organic, ephemeral materials, that would play with an indeterminate status. Their rubbers and ropes would disintegrate, change, and self-destruct with the passing of time, questioning the immateriality and longevity of the work of art. All these experiences give the viewer a glance of understanding their context as transient elements, highlighting their awareness of impermanence and death.

 

There was also a constant pursuit of free form, which Soetsu Yanagiwould call irregularities. This irregularity focusses on the utility and experience of the object. Beauty doesn’t lie on the perfections or imperfections of the esthetics restrictions, but in the aesthetic of experience. Such distinctions have ceased to exist, leaving a state of mind of “thusness”, where the unconscious is led by the intuition. The mind is free from any attachment of form of esthetic conceptions, situating the viewer as part of the world, freeing him from social constructs, and letting him experience natural life. Beauty would be achieved then as a result of a constant effort on one’s beliefs, a deep meditation on its work, and dedication on its process of creation. Naturally appearing in, when instinctively created. 

Art would start having a self-analysis around its notion, emotions and spiritual aspects. Questions of personal awareness, mindfulness, and living process would arise. Artists needed a new concept and new means for the creation of total art. So, Kaprow blurred the boundaries of art and life with a model of natural and infinite flexible time and space, which he coined with the term “happening”. Its art depended on how deeply involved with the elements of the whole, the viewer became, and the freshmen of these when they occur next to one another.

The viewer inhabits these spaces, that are fully contained and enclosed for human action to make possible. The beauty will rely on the recognition of the absence of differences between the object and oneself, since the two are essentially the same thing. 

 

In performance, the hierarchy of the subject (man appreciating an object / man producing an object) and the object (crafts) has been destroyed and transformed into unity in its place. Marina Abramovic creates moments of tension, and then of resolution resolving on an overcoming equilibrium in a never-ending play of changing conditions between the “fixed” and the “unexpected”, within an open and fluid shape which resembles to everyday experience, without imitating it.

 

Art is an intensified form of human experience during our basic living interaction in our environment, through the medium of the works of art. The experience is the actual artwork and the presence that produces to us by being fully alive creates a rhythm that opens a window to transform this interaction into participation of the senses and communication on the demands of its environment.

Art shows dualism, allowing an abandonment of it, leading to a path towards the reality of consciousness, where there is no separation from the object, nor the environment. Given this development of our consciousness, we can reflect on the conflictive relations that we find in nature, so we can find tools to deal with the cause and effect of what was an obstacle before, through the artistic mediums. As a result, we get an exchange on our engagement with the world, a new understanding through sensibility against thinking. A natural flowing freedom from the static and regulated. 

 

What is the origin for artworks to be great? Their significance in civic life and ceremony of an organized community, by creating an interruption on time which allows recognition in the reflection of the emotions and ideas that are associated with the chief institutions of social life in a full organic experience, with our whole being within the conditions of existence.