EVOCOMOTUS

A MANIFESTO

A specter is haunting America. The specter of emotional denial in art. It tells us that as artists, we may shock, but we must not appear shocked. We may cause grief, but must keep any signs of it out of our work. We must be unaffected and cavalier in our attitude. In short, we must NEVER appear to care. Should we stray into the idea that art can still portray the human condition we are chastised by critics…

"Nothing new can be said with the figure" they dismiss

"GROSS SENTIMENTALITY" they declare

Or the damning sentence: "SIMPLY TRITE" they condemn.

Where are your guts Artists? Has the superficiality overlaying 21st century society left you without a soul with which to express any real feeling? Has the constant drone of posturers blithely mouthing endless nonsense about "it’s all about the line" or "only color is important" or "without movement it can’t be art" left you standing alone in a wasteland wondering what the hell they all want from you?

Here is the answer:

IF ART WAS ONLY ABOUT WHAT SOMEONE ELSE WANTS, ART WOULD HAVE CEASED TO EXIST WHILE WE STILL LIVED IN CAVES.

You are the artist.  It is for YOU to show the world what art is about, not the other way around.

WEAKNESS AND EMOTION

In some climes, the display of emotion is a taboo.

The social mores of the "stiff upper lip" must not be

applied to art!

Is the bland reiteration of cold facts with no ancillary attachment to the artist still art? Perhaps, but we propose that:

art which boldly expresses human emotion must not be dismissed as folly, weakness or the ultimate condemnation, “trite” simply because the elite find it inappropriate.

I put forth to you that Homer was not coldly unemotional. Virgil was not above showing man bawling his eyes out over an ideal. Dali blatantly displayed orgiastic emotion, and Bosch showed terror.

Has the last century of abstraction in art, left us with a fear of rejection if we are anything but abstract in our depiction? There is a trend in the art world reflecting the rightist-fascism of American politics in declaring that anything figurative is unacceptable unless it is "naïve", the puerile assertion that the figure is bad, is pornographic.  That depicting human emotion has no relevance.

ARTISTIC ELITISM IS UNACCEPTABLE!

PATRONS AND INVESTORS

How many decades of going along with the newest art movement before you look down and realize that your viscera has all been eaten away by the requirements of the art investor?

No longer patrons, the investor may not like what he collects, or even choose the art he buys himself, paying someone else to do it based on what is most re-sellable at a profit to himself (not you, the artist).

Have you reflected that visual artists sell the original of their art, never to be touched by them again? A musician or performance artist carries her art within her, a writer can read the book once published and not diminish the experience, but a painter or a sculptor? If copyrighted, each time a musical score is performed, the artist receives compensation. And though a painter can have lithographs made and reserve the right to sell copies, the original may be sold again and again for more and more and the artist will see no remuneration for the appreciation of the piece.  The visual artist receives no royalties.

For a sculptor, the piece can be copied, but again, the same is true, once you sell it, it is the "Investor" who benefits by any increase in the artists fame by selling the piece for an appreciated value.

While the artist will always require a buyer for their work – the artist should always be true to their own way and not be the slave of the "fad of the moment".

The greatest artists have always made art their own way, even when the critics said it was crap. Time vindicates, though that is hardly of comfort to the artists who died in poverty while the investor reaps the benefits.

Where are the great patrons today?  Those who recognize originality and relevance?  Those people who kept art and artists alive?

 

MALE DOMINATED WORLD – SEXISM AMONG ARTISTS

In this male-dominated society, emotions and standards associated traditionally with the male are the ideal. A male can emote over a mistress or a woman he can’t have, but it bores to tedium to speak about his love for a wife. A male can die in passionate heroism for political ideals, but a woman who committed suttee was simply doing her duty.

Anything portrayed artistically outside the male ideology of acceptable social emotions is automatically subordinated, labeled as weak, as FEMININE. Is this so? Is the portrayal of a woman risking death to bring a man’s heir into the world so much less heroic because it isn’t done on the battlefield stage? A woman’s deep feeling of betrayal at being forced to be a vessel for parasitic life when portrayed in art is dismissed as simply disgusting or, once again, trite.

I may personally, find the premise behind some religious art egregious and sickening to my soul, but a moving portrayal of religious devotion and subjugation of the self to something else cannot be anything if not art.

ALL SINCERE EMOTIONS MUST BE EQUAL IN ART.

 

MODERN MEDIA TUNNEL VISION

The modern media bombards the public with pre-packaged emotional pabulum. But remember, this is mostly artificial, like the mock sincerity of the anchorman interviewing the grieving widow. It is a way of making the horrors and mundanities of life endurable by the masses, much like medieval religion. A watered down version of reality, more palatable than the passionate display of living life from someplace other than one’s living room. Even passion is destroyed by the preponderance of empty packaged pornography that poorly mimics the reality of rawness and/or tenderness in sex, making even that act something that a critic can comment on and judge as trite.

 

THE ARTIST MUST USE ART’S VOICE TO SPEAK PLAINLY WITH LANGUAGE THAT SHREIKS OF PASSIONATE FEELING.

 

 Christine Cianci

Friday, April 13, 2001