Hyperallergic posted about this just a few days ago.
It interests me that Nitsch ritualizes the un-ironic turning back to Modernism that characterizes much of the art being made during our ostensibly postmodern or altermodern period, whether or not the artists involved acknowledge this.
Nitsch's performative ritual renders mystical Modernism's apparently inescapable gravity. Through it the contemporary turn-back is purged of nostalgia, guilt, creative confusion, maybe even the sense of creative inadequacy. On the other side of the equation Modernism itself is purged of angst, violence, a dozen drunken legacies and a few suicides, and rendered a sacrament for contemporary artists, so long as they submit to the white-robed priesthood of the market's sacred dropcloth-sanitized space.
The undeniable humor of this apparently straight-faced performance (?) can't mask the fact that religification (goofy word but follow me now) is one means of driving phenomenon deep into an unreachable past and birthing generations of agnostics who can say, much as we (most of us anyway) say about the religion of ancient Egypt, "Fascinating mythology, interesting artworks, but it's clearly of the distant past and not relevant to our time."
It's electrifying to imagine a time, perhaps not far in the future, when we can sincerely say the same thing about Modernism.
photo from Mike Weiss Gallery's website
0 witty retorts:
Post a Comment