|
|
| NATURE. ENVIRONMENT. MAN Artis Svece "It's one thing to assess the accomplishments of our representational art: this has been done, so it's a familiar task. It's quite another matter to place it face to face with world problems: this has not been done, so it's an unaccustomed task." Ojārs Ābols. "Man's place on our restless planet". | |
|
I must say I'm astounded myself that the title of the exhibition "Nature. Environment. Man", at the exhibition hall Arsenāls of the State Museum of Art, seemed so intriguing to me. I couldn't really fathom why. Although I've taken an interest in nature as a theme in art at the level of a personal hobby, it didn't seem the right explanation. Neither do I have any warm feelings towards the 1984 exhibition, the anniversary of which was marked by the exhibition in 2004. I'm finding out more and more about the works seen back then in St Peter's, but all the same I can't seem to understand whether I really have or haven't seen the original "Nature. Environment. Man" exhibition. However, reading the article by the initiator of the original exhibition, Ojārs Ābols (republished in the April/May 2004 issue of Studija), I got the feeling that the words about placing Latvian art face to face with world problems really did hit the mark. This is what attracted me. Forget the small-scale forms, "Riga 800" and the futuristic interiors. I don't need to be reminded that our artists can be clever and observant, that they have good taste, that they've mastered the whole palette of contemporary media and are able to turn into a work of art every nuance of their moods. But what about those "world problems": what about the threat of ecological and biotechnological catastrophe; what about global processes tearing apart the Old World. After all, how do they feel this dynamic and saturated age experienced in contemporary Latvia?
On the one hand, what comes to someone's mind on hearing the title of an exhibition is of no consequence at all. And the curator of the present exhibition was not Ojārs Ābols, but Inese Baranovska instead. Neither can I know to what extent the 1984 exhibition corresponded to Ābols' intentions, since he was already dead and the idea was realised by others. Was such an exhibition possible at all? Again, I don't know, although it's clear that you can't place art face to face with "world problems" by force. The result is predictable: either it becomes pompous and reproduces the most banal of all the slogans, or else it shuts itself off, chuckling or sobbing in the accustomed manner, muttering something angrily under its breath, and paying more attention to some little cork found in the sand than to all the problems of the world put together. Something of this kind also happens when you place within the context of some particular theme works that have already been created. The context may undeservedly emphasise one of the possible interpretations and prevent a view of the polysemous character of the work. Moreover, if the aspect being highlighted has not appeared significant to the artist himself, then it would seem wrong to charge him with a lack of imagination or an inability to engage with the subject. With the exhibition "Nature. Environment. Man" too we might play a game of "change the title and see what happens". Thus, I can quite easily imagine the majority of works displayed here being shown in the frame of the concept "Contemporary utopia", "The state" or, let's say, "Life after death", and each of these titles would give a different meaning to the photographs by Gints Mālderis of people who tend allotment gardens, to the "Cow" by Kaspars Podnieks, to the work "Oil. Petrol. Ammonia. Anna" by Izolde Cēsniece, and to the rest of them. On the other hand, such group exhibitions are usually capable of gaining the public's attention precisely because of the common idea: the principle by which they are grouped. Of course, the principle might be "Europe's finest artists" or "Works painted this February", or "You've never seen anything like this before", but an exhibition featuring simply a fortuitously assembled collection of works is unlikely to be describable as interesting and successful. Responsibility for bringing them to life in an exhibition lies, first and foremost, with the curator. There's no doubt about that, but the artist too is responsible for the context in which he permits his works to be placed. It may be that in 1984 the title did serve only as a "Trojan horse" (Interview with Jānis Borgs, April/May 2004 issue of Studija), a means of getting a new kind of art into St Peter's, but in 2004 there was no longer any need for a Trojan horse. Certainly, it's hard for me to come up with reasons preventing me from taking the theme of the exhibition seriously and considering the works displayed in the Arsenāls hall in the context of "Nature. Environment. Man". It's another matter that this string of words can be diversely interpreted, so that there's no real foundation for connecting it with "world problems". Nevertheless, the idea of Latvian art being stood, or standing, face to face with world problems permits one to perceive some aspects that, to my mind, are very significant in this exhibition. It's clear that there's no way of telling what should be drawn on a piece of paper for the viewer to declare with conviction: yes, the artist has stood face to face with world problems. But there are things you can say. In the first place, this concept does point to the universal, the global. If we look at the works in the exhibition, we see that they relate for the most part to a very specific and local context. Here I mean not only the works dealing with allotments on Skanstes Street (Gints Mālderis and Holgers Elers) or the peat-cutters of the Seda Marsh (Kaspars Goba), or those on the European Union (Ingüna Elere) or, for example, on the prohibitions imposed by officials (Andris Vītoliņš). On the one hand, you might say that social neglect of invalids is universal (Kirils Panteļejevs), that any urban setting is characterised by phenomena such as down-and-outs (Kristaps Epners observes what he calls "urban sanitarians"), and art's collision with consumer culture is an unmistakeably fundamental theme of 20th century art (Iveta Laure and Kirils Panteļejevs). On the other hand, these works do not refer to the global. The images and references they employ send us straight to the things being discussed in the local media, to our everyday experience (and, in my view, to a quite conventional interpretation of it, so that the exhibition held very few surprises). The focus on local context comes naturally for several reasons. The theme of nature in general, of Man in general, of global and fundamental world problems is received in the art world with a degree of suspicion. Intellectuals avoid discussing crises of humanity and culture. This belongs to the tradition of the great narratives, so widely criticised by the so-called Postmodernists. The literary work "The Postmodern Condition" by Jean-Francois Lyotard came out precisely a quarter of a century ago, even a few years before Ojārs Ābols published in Literatüra un Māksla his article "Man's place on our restless planet". You might even say that we live in an age when messages on humanity and the universe are no longer possible in art. At best, it tells stories about communities and the environment they inhabit. For example, the photographs by Kaspars Goba are interesting in the sense that they focus our attention on a small group of people, the existence of which is probably unknown to a large section of Latvian society, and which turns out to be quite exotic - at least that's how it's presented in the photographer's comments. However, it's hard to find in these works any humanist pathos or existential contemplation. Which is, of course, not a reproach. The problem is only that alongside pluralism and the sense of the world's diversity, our life is characterised by an ever-greater consciousness of each person's dependence on global processes in nature, history and society. Alongside multiplicity, there is movement, connectivity and interaction. The concept of the environment, which has nowadays replaced the concept of nature, does contain this aspect of dependence, interaction and involvement. This concept too might be interpreted as a component of a particular discourse or message, but it's a concept hard to avoid. Of course, there's no question of this placing any obligation on art and artists, but, if these aspects of the contemporary world are ignored, then it could (contrary to what several philosophers have maintained) become a second-rate form of human consciousness and self-cognisance. At least one would come to find that, on very many significant issues, art, unlike science, has nothing to say. I was brought to suchlike romantic visions because I was surprised at how backward-looking and in a sense conservative are the works shown at the exhibition. This too might be perceived as an attempt to comprehend the contemporary world, but with the help of a kind of denial. The artists are interested in conserved time, in people who have not integrated into the contemporary world, i.e. people doomed to extinction, and in personal and universal origins (Evelīna Deičmane and Kristaps Epners). The return to Baroque examples also seems telling in this context (Sandra Millere and Ilgvars Gradovskis). Only Anta and Dita Pence showed certain doubts about the past. In Ieva Jerohina's "Zenta", this mood seems to turn into an almost tangible, material reality. You could say that the exhibition reflects more the perception of the curators than of the artists, but my personal impression is that things are not much different outside of this exhibition. But there is a wish for something else. I would like to have, instead of nostalgia, a new language for a new age. And now for a final remark. Irony is very characteristic of contemporary art and renders it interesting, exciting and enjoyable. But irony has a weakness. It too is very rarely capable of offering a new language, being rooted mainly in denial. And, to my mind, there are moments when this is not enough. So I look at the "baker", by Laure and Panteļejevs, and think to myself (yet again) that, on the one hand, it's not bad: the cook is amusing and the irony seems clear. But on the other hand, there's nothing more being presented for my appreciation than a plastic baker, of the kind they put up outside bakeries. Likewise, it's perfectly clear that the "Strength Mandala" doesn't give any strength. And that's the significant difference between Buddhist mandalas and the F5 mandala. A mandala created from cat food really is a clever idea, which can be played around with in a great variety of ways, and you can go ahead and say it's all pointless anyway, but if we're talking about art, then we see that nobody other than the artist himself can create something that isn't pointless. I don't believe in the force of the mandala, but I do admire those anonymous artists who created a world formula that could stimulate people for centuries. I doubt it'll happen with the baker or the cat-food mandala. Irony, after all, can also be regarded as a sign of weakness. | |
| go back | |
