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Carlos Zerpa and the Venezuelan Government: The Continuation of a Legacy

Governments, politicians and people in power have often used art as a weapon in order to pass a message and fulfill their political objectives. Building art into a political weapon is not a new practice. It has been lingering on the line of art history since its beginning. Kings would have portraits made of them and sent by diplomats as a political message, filled with symbols and messages in order to establish relations. Governments in the 20th century, specially the Communist and the Fascist one would restrict their artists to create works of art that supported the party’s ideals. For example, Kasimir Malevich saw his very abstract art restricted and censored by the USRR because it didn’t show the soviet people at work and the prowess of its people and leader. For the American government of the 50’s and 60’s, the artistic movement of Abstract Expressionism was a way of showing the world the freedom of thought that the country had. The degree of deep internal abstract expression was a way of comparing themselves to the rigid control the USSR had on its people. Their art was a symbol of democracy and freedom that the American government didn’t miss a chance of using. Indeed they used it as the ideal comparison so that they appeared better than the soviet government who censured its artist into a figurative and partisan art. Nowadays, governments keep using art as a strength in order to pass a message.
The Venezuelan government just found itself supporting graffiti and street artists who blatantly show the opposition to American government and their empire-like control over the world. Caracas’s Ministry of Commune is now creating and supporting groups of street artists such as Guerrilla Communications which give stencil and graffiti workshops all around the city. Others, like Communications Liberation Army, operate somewhat autonomously but still get material like spray paint from the government. Mr. Chavez’s policy is to endorse graffiti artists who support his revolution and his demonization of the American government. For the people walking on the streets, all these graffitis work just as advertisements work for consumerism, they push you to adhere to a certain belief and behavior.



If we compare two works, one from the XVI century and one from the XXI, we’ll see that in that particular aspect, art follows a certain pattern, it keeps serving the same purpose, no matter the cause, the aesthetical style or the materials used. Art has a legacy itself, that of passing a message, that of being a symbol. That is why politicians have used very often in history. The first piece is a painting of the English King, Henry VIII by Hans Holbein, a German painter established in London. In this painting we see that the painter depicts the king with a distorted figure, making it look much bigger than normal so that he looks more menacing and imposing. The facial expression is that of someone who is serious, who is there for important business and doesn’t want to waste his time. Finally, his clothes, rich and covered with jewellery and bright colors give the sense of a rich and powerful man. The presence of the gloves and the sword present the king as someone who is diplomatic and a gentleman, but nevertheless capable of going to war if the occasion requires him to. Overall, this image passes the message onto the receiving diplomat that the King is not to be joked with and that if things get sour, he would be ready to go to war. The painting constitutes a political message. A few hundred years later, in Caracas, we have the work of Carlos Zerpa, a member of the Communications Liberations Army, melted onto the walls of the busy city. In his graffiti representing Caravaggio’s David having cut Hilary Clinton’s head instead of the giant Goliath, M. Zerpa fills also a political role for his government by criticizing the American Secretary of State. This work of art, just like Holbein’s, is supported by its government because it fulfills a role of sending a message, a political and ideological one. As the artist himself put it, “It’s a metaphor for an empire that is being defeated”.

Though centuries and miles apart, Holbein and Zerpa twisted art in order to fulfill the same purpose, that of which making it serve as a political symbol in order to pass a message. This comparison, I hope, illustrated that Art, even though it suffers a lot of different movements and conflicts, some things stay elementary to it, no matter the time or place.

Carl Andre: The viewer Differentiation.

When going to a gallery where a Carl Andre work is shown, watching people relate or not to the work of art is quite an interesting phenomenon. For example, Aluminum Copper Alloy Square is an ensemble of picked and found metal plates, grouped together in order to form a square and laid on the ground. Now, you can have three different types of viewers: The first that doesn’t even realize there is a work of art on the floor and walks on it in order to get to the next room, the one who notices the work, either by looking on the floor or by reading the tablet on the wall, and that will circle it admiring it from different angles though never walking on it. “It’s a work of art” they will say, “It would be an insult to the artist and the work to walk on it”. Finally, you have the viewer who notices the work, understands it and walks on it, thus relating to it. Though, which viewer is right? Definitely not the one who didn’t even notice the work. Maybe the one who will not dare walk on it? Somewhere he is right because he identifies the work as a sculpture and walks around it as it were on a pedestal. He will determine the work of art himself by delimitating the perimeter of the work, where it starts, where it ends, where he can walk and where he cannot. By doing this he will also show the rest of the people how to relate to the work, working as monitors. Nevertheless, he didn’t quite understand everything. The viewer who sees the work and walks on it understands that the artist sought to create a relationship with the viewer by making them walk on the grid and feel something, be part of the work, and not take it as seriously as other would. That is why the plates are a little bit over elevated, so that when the person walks on it, he will sense a difference from the gallery floor to the work, making them feel something. The work is then truly functional.

Although, this work opens the discussion to much wider subjects, I wanted to stress the point of how people react differently to works of art, and I’m not talking about very personal expressionist art, but to a simple and very neutral minimalist work, basically metal grids on the floor. So now, you might ask yourselves: “What kind of viewer am I?” Asking yourself that question, is one of the first steps in order to better understand art. How will you position yourself to the work, how are you supposed to move around it and relate to it; Am I meant to touch it or simply look at it?, Walk around it or plainly look at it straight forward? Once this is set, the function of the object will become much clearer. That is why I choose to use Andre’s work because it shows that once the individual understands how he has to position himself to the work, its purpose becomes transparent. I agree it’s not an easy task, but one worth doing.

Along with this article, I added a video of someone truly, though playfully, interacting with the discussed work.

Giacometti Record: Seen with a Business View

On February the 3rd 2010, a new world record was broken. In the art world, a work by Giacometti, ‘L’homme qui marche I’, has been sold at 65 million pounds, the most expensive work of art ever sold in an auction house. A lot of speculation around the anonymous buyer has been brought up. Who would be willing to spend this amount of money on a sculpture and not brag about it, since, after all, the art market is often about that, who owns what, at what price and who owned it before him. Though I have already written an article about this particular sale, I did it with an artist’s approach, explaining the work of art and the subjects at work in order to explain this event. This time, I will apply a much more practical and economic view on the sale, bringing forth some very compelling questions about the art world; how can art be seen as an investment, and which type of art is surer to bring more money in a resale objective.

Some people might perceive the purchase of art as any other purchase. It can be done because it is pleasant or because it can represent an investment, a really expensive and uncertain one. Is it really that uncertain though? That is one of the key fundaments of this sale that I would like to stress. During the economic meltdown of 2008, the art world saw a considerable decline in its sales; particularly in the conceptual segment. People stopped “investing” in art that wasn’t sure. They went back to more solid values like impressionism or even older art. By doing this, they bought art that they knew they could resale because it would not loose its value. A lot of people have had it before them and a lot more would keep having it. The demand for it would always be present. On the other hand, buying more risky works of art was more dangerous because it was new and did not have an established reputation. This could cause the work of art to be outdated or out of fashion rapidly, thus making it harder to resale. Plus the artist is probably still alive, thus leaving the probability for him to influence the value of the work a lot by his personal life or even keeping the risk of creating better works. With older works, nothing is unknown or uncertain; everything is already on the table. For example, Damian Hirst, a very popular conceptual artist, selling million dollar works saw himself falling right after September 2008. During the year 2008, 65 works above $1m. were sold, generating a total revenue of $230m. Just six years earlier his annual total amounted to two millions dollars. However, Hisrt’s extraordinary performance came to a halt just after the Beautiful Inside My Head Forever auction at Sotheby’s on September 2008. His unsold rate went from 11% to 55% between September and December 2008 and in just 12 months some of Hirst’s pieces had fallen back to their 2004 prices, eliminating four years of speculative inflation. Hirst even had to fire half of his studio employees because of the downfall. Another example of contemporary artists having stumbled after the recession is Takashi Murakami. Where in 2003, he was one of the fifteen most expensive artists on the art scene with a total sale of 3,4m USD and peaking in 2008 with 32m USD; in 2009 he didn’t make the top ranking of revenue generating artists, even though the entry ticket was only of 3.4m USD, his actual revenue of 2003. You could compare this with deciding whether to invest in a long term, stable company, knowing that prices won’t move much or on a new rapid growing company that could bring a lot of dividends but on the short term; having it for a long time could be perilous. The problem here is that you don’t know if your going to be able to resale your stocks at a reasonable price. A work by Hirst bought by Christie’s during the 2008 market meltdown, was sold a year later at half of its price. It was sold at $450,000; its initial 2004 auction price: $415,000 (18 October 2004, Sotheby's).

By buying the work of a renowned artist and very popular piece it is, the buyer made sure that he could resale the product. The fact that it belonged to a bank, gives it an added value because past owners are really important to determine the price of a work. Plus, now that it has a title of being a record breaker, the work has an even greater recognition on the market, giving it a certain mystique, rareness to it. And, every business man knows that if there is a demand for something, a sale can be established.

Though, it is still important to keep in mind that the expected sale amount was of 12 to 18 million pounds meaning that the actual sales price (65m. GBP) was almost 4.4 times higher than was expected. Specialists estimate that 100 euros invested in a Giacometti work in 1998 are worth 490 today. It is therefore important to know that like in any other market, things can get out of hand and investors find themselves with surprises, be it good or bad.

To put it in another context, for the sake of understanding, buying a pricey art work could be like shopping for a really expensive and rare car that Schumacher used to drive. Some people might spend a quite a bit for it. Or else, to put it in a context most businessmen will understand, it would be like buying Tiger Wood’s putt with which he won his first PGA in 1996. Nevertheless, I guess following recent events, might make this purchase more unlikely. I hope that those smart businessmen out there might understand a little bit more of the art world and what a huge sales event this was since it also dethroned one of the kingpins of modern art, Picasso.

To retrieve the information on which this article was based, click on the title.

Giacometti: A record breaking artist

On February 3rd 2010, a new world record was broken. In the art world, a work by Giacometti, "L’homme qui marche I", has been sold at 65 million pounds, the most expensive work of art ever sold in an auction house. Part of this huge pricing is based on the quality of the artist and the subjects his works of art approaches.

I assume that the cost of this work was highly evaluated (estimated sales price of 12-18million pounds) because of the artist’s popularity, the appealing aesthetic and because of the rareness of the work. In fact, Giacometti did only six other works like these. It was a series meant to decorate the park of the New York bank Chase. The sculpture’s aesthetic is quite interesting because of its 6ft dimension and its slim format, but also because it has an eerie aura. There is something quite strong about this work in its representation of mankind with a new way of seeing space, but also the human being itself. Giacometti would sculpt his subjects very thin, even fragile, because he sought to create sculptures that were themselves and not blocky spatial representations of someone; for him this didn’t represent a person since it only gave an image of its physical appearance. He wanted to create sculptures that represented someone’s inner being, the part that really means who you are, its soul. For this, Giacometti would strip his sculptures bare of any physical trait, of anything that might make a resemblance to anyone possible. It is taking of the shell in order to find the nut.

He will try to depart himself from the traditional sculpture who will try to imitate its model onto the object as perfectly as possible by giving it all the likeness he can achieve. Giacometti criticized these copies as saying that it was copying what was known and not what was really seen. He often said himself that he made his sculptures so, in the objective that you could not recognize who was represented. Jean-Paul Sartre, who would write a lot about Giacometti, once wrote that ‘to sculpt, for him (Giacometti), is to take the fat of the space’ (Lynton, p.218). Giacometti’s walking men present the human being on a new perspective but also with new preoccupations, that one of death. The Egyptians, from who Giacometti was greatly influenced, thought that these vague and ethereal sculptures would help them keep something from death, not the body, but a remembrance of the person’s real self, its soul.

These ‘people’ are truly intriguing, giving the sense that someone could stare at them for hours, commenting on how they look like humans, yet being so different. Tough we can not identify anyone in particular, we know that somewhere in that sculpture, there is something to which we can relate and identify ourselves to him, just as we do to any other human being. I would say this is the most human sculpture I’ve seen much more than Michelangelo’s David or any other Greek sculpture even if it looks so different to one. Though, is this a reason to give so much money away for it? I guess this huge event proves that art is much more than just a price on a product, it has something else to it, it provoques and interests you. It has a certain soul of itself. That is the main difference why a t-shirt is 30$ and a sculpture of this magnitude is a few million pounds.

This video gives you a closer look at the work


This other video, gives you a broader sense of his particular style of sculpting.

Yves Klein: Prophet or Not Really

In France around the 19650-60s appeared a new art movement called New Realism which was influenced and functioned in parallel to the development of the mechanic industry of the post-WWII era. This increase of state-led modernization was mainly triggered in Europe thanks to the Marshall Plan set by the US. In this period, people were subject to a lot of publicity and to a rapid growing market since the economy was in good health and people were buying a lot. This increase in economy, publicity, and mass imagery also reached the art world, opening it to a class-variegated audience. Though, more and more started to appear a difference between the American and the French market. Indeed, by 1961, one in eight people owned a car, whereas in the US the ratio was of three out of eight. The French New Realists sought to differentiate themselves from their American counterpart, the Abstract Expressionists. In these French artists also lingered a Duchampian influence of readymades and his questioning of what art was and what the role of the artist was (Hopkins, p.76).

Yves Klein, one of the most prominent artists of this movement particularly attacked the idea of individuality and uniqueness that Abstract Expressionists brought forth. He distrusted the arbitrary integrity of the Expressionist gesture. The way they wanted to express themselves, commenting that their feelings were unique didn’t appeal to Klein. He disliked the idea of artists finding their own way through art, and then throwing it out onto the world (Hopkins, p.79). For example, his monochromes produced in 1955, permitted Klein to overpower figuration and the competing claims of line thus attaining a state of purity and spirituality. Son of painters, he sought to destroy painting. (Godfrey, p.68-69). Thus, going farther that the abstract expressionist’s ‘all-over’ technique. In his fight against figuration and line, we can see an attack to the American artists such as Louis, Newman, de Kooning and Pollock. Moreover, in his Anthropometries of the Blue age, Klein will mock de Kooning’s macho attitude and Pollock’s very particular expressive technique. By using female nudes, transformed and ridiculed by being completely covered in paint, not depicting these monstrous women on the canvas but actually throwing and making themselves rub on the virginal paper, makes reference to de Kooning’s ridicule of women. Moreover, by placing the paper onto the floor and by taking a certain distance to the painting, because Klein would instruct these women on what to do, it mock’s Pollock action paintings in which he would place the canvas onto the floor and required the artist to perform dances around the painting in which he would enter a trance to achieve maximum expression. Klein will furthermore ridicule abstract expressionist since he obtains ‘fake’ expression in a mechanical manner since he takes a certain distance to it because someone else is doing it for him. It’s only print after print, voided of expression whatsoever. Where abstract expressionist works were biographic and expressing personal feelings, Klein’s work were non-autobiographic because someone else was really doing it for him, even though he placed his signature on the work (Hopkins, p.80-83).

On the other hand, even if Klein mocked the Americans in their uniqueness and their expressiveness, he will place himself contradictorily as a self- appointed messiah and self aggrandizing showman (Ibid, p.79). Klein was a devote to a cult in which they believed that one day men would levitate. In his work The Painter of Space Hurls Himself into the Void, Klein places himself, the powerful artist, as being the one who would show the way to levitation. In the picture, he throws himself to the void as the prophet that will continue floating as though he could fly. Klein saw his spirituality important enough to be transferred to the world and enjoyed the importance of mass media to make his exploit know by everyone. Indeed, he created his own one-day journal in which he posted solely articles about his work and himself (Godfrey, p.69). Moreover, after the huge popularity of his Monochromes and their particular tone of blue, he decided to patent his blue IKB (International Klein Blue) as though this belonged to him and everyone using his color would obtain the same spirituality and prowess of the artist. This technique is very similar to the one used by publicists: Buying a product will allow you to be happy, sexy, smart, athletic, etc. He also went on calling himself ‘Yves the Monochrome’ as though doing monochromes was only done by him, making him unique (Hopkins, p.81). It also gives the image that Klein had been transmitted the spirituality of monochromes onto himself. This patenting of the color also has the result of making him public, yet unique at the same time. Klein was very aware of how things were done in the market and used it to promote his greatness. It’s all about creating the image of the god-like artist.

Klein was also very aware of the fact that massive industrialization brought easy life savers into peoples lives. All those canned foods, vehicles, televisions, and what not changed the way people saw life. Indeed, now they turned towards these products to turn their life easier. Klein will therefore also use simple, purchasable objects to fulfill their expected desires from art. For example, another of his works of art, The throwing of Gold, brings forth the idea of easy consumable objects, yet keeping this mystique about the artist. Klein would sell gold leafs to rich buyers with whom he would go to the Seine and throw the gold into the river while the buyer would burn and throw away the receipt given to him by Klein as a proof of the purchase of the work of art. In this work, the artist places himself above industrial market because he sells ideas, concepts and experiences. All of this gives him back the mystique about the powerful and spiritual artist that can transform gold into art, and then transform it again into void. He would actually sell nothing and people would buy it. The artist becomes a powerful seller because he can sell things that had no proof of happening. Finally, in his Anthropometries of the Blue Age, Klein will have a role of deciding where and how his ‘living paintbrushes’ would move. He’s some sort of director that controls everything with an absolute power. This act reinforces the idea of the god-like artist attitude Klein used to take.

In conclusion, even though Klein criticized the Abstract Expressionsist of their quest for individual expression and personal quest of self, he still sought to create around himself this aura of supernatural powers that were accorded to him as an artist. Indeed, he will create this mystique of the artist that can levitate, transform gold into art and then making it disappear, and command people as an authoritarian spiritual leader. A reason why his mystique worked is thanks to his understanding of economic factors and the mass media, while applying it for his own promotion. Though, Klein was more of a joker than an actual consumption critique, making fun of the world around him and how it functioned, with all it’s superstitions and prejudges. (Godfrey, p.70).

Bibliographie

Godfrey, Tony, L’Art Conceptuel, Paris: Phaidon, 2003

Hopkins, David, After Modern Art 1945-2000, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

This video gives an idea of how Klein's performances were undertaken, showing the extent of control over his 'paint brushes'.

Johns and Rauschenberg vs The Greenberg Doctrine

In the Unites States of the 1950’s, where Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns started to being recognized as prominent artists, on the political scene, the Cold War was raging. The American population was afraid of communists inside their own country. McCarthy started having a considerable amount of influence and commenced to pursuit people under the assumption that they were communists. Gays were also persecuted by this doctrine. On the art scene, the dominant form of art in the Unites States was Abstract Expressionism with its protector, the art critic Clement Greenberg. The kings of painting would be artists like Pollock, de Kooning, Neuman, Gorky, etc. Greenberg would act as a despot with very strict views about what art should and shouldn’t be. He claimed that everything that wasn’t Abstract Expressionist wasn’t art. For him, painting had to be differentiated from other types of art, such as sculpture, and have strict characteristics. A painting had to be flat, have an all-over presentation, a clean modern look and being masculine in an American way in order to distinguish itself from other art markets such as the French one. When Rauschenberg and Johns became widely known, they caused a stir because of their denial to follow these rules.

When Rauschenberg created his ‘White Paintings’ in 1951, he sent right away a big opposition to the Abstract Expressionist painters. He opposed the main purpose of Abstract Expressionism: outward expression. As Hopkins describes them,” they were passive receptors, awaiting events rather than prescribing sensations”. (p. 42). They were void of any expression; they were what their title really meant, they were white paintings. This brought forth the thought of how art should be perceived. Instead of overflowing the spectator with huge canvases of massive drippings and expressive lines, Rauschenberg left it to the spectator to feel what he would like to. Nothing was imposed to him; he was part of the art himself, creating and building it as the artist did. It is not about the spectator to seek the feeling inside the painting but to really feel it because the painting provokes him to. One could say that the White Paintings are also an attack to the Abstract Expressionist painters themselves because white represents purity and virginity, totally the opposite of the other American painters who where know to be heavy drinkers, womanizers and violent people (Hopkins, p.50). In fact, Pollock was following therapies because of his heavy drinking when he did his famous all-over paintings. Even though, Rauschenberg’s White Paintings do not oppose every aspect of the Greenberg doctrine, such as the all-over characteristic, it does critic its core element.

Another piece of work by Rauschenberg, which’s reputation is based on its impact it had on Abstract Expressionism is that of ‘Bed’. This piece created 4 years after the ‘White Paintings’ is a much more chaotic scene. The first American painters sought to liberate themselves from European influences in order to create a real, pure American art. For example, Pollock used primitive and native American art “as a wedge between himself and his awareness of Europe”.(Lynton, p.230). Greenberg was a fierce defender of this. Though, Rauschenberg travelled a lot in Europe, especially in France and Italy, where he was influenced by Alberto Burri to use body fluids as stains in his paintings as though it was part of the painting (Hopkins, p.49). This is very present in ‘Bed’ since this use of body fluids gives us metaphors of sexual connotations related to the object. Right from the start, Rauschenberg opposes Greenberg’s doctrine because his painting is not purely American, it has some European touch in it. By using body fluids, or at least what looks like it, Rauschenberg goes much farther than the Abstract Expressionists because, even if these artists sought to use ‘a full bodily involvement’ (Lynton, p.237) to reach full expression, Rauschenberg uses actual parts of his body in his paintings. Greenberg sought into Abstract Expressionism a purity of paint where it stood as a fine art, not mixing with others in order to make it independent. In ‘Bed’, Rauschenberg mixes various types of art and even objects of everyday life to join heterogeneous elements into one single work of art. This is what he will call his ‘Combines’. ‘Bed’ mixes painting, with sculpture and crafts. This was to be an unusual practice at the time. Moreover, the fact that he spreads and drips paint in a very abstract expressionist manner on top and leaves the bed sheets on the lower part criticizes the manly character that these American painters were very proud of. Indeed, Rauscheberg opposed the macho attitude that the abstract expressionist painters had by contrasting it with the bed sheet who would usually be a woman’s work. Even if this opposition is more present in ‘Erased de Kooning Drawing’, it is still translucent in this work. Finally, ‘Bed’ proposes the question about the use of art. Where Greenberg stated that art was to be for the experience of feelings, Rauschenberg raises the question in a Duchampian way. Even if ‘Bed’ is an expressive and stimulating piece of work, can it still be used, since its name hasn’t changed; it remains a bed, a dirty, tainted bed. Or did it become a work of art just because we put it in a vertical position. Rauschenberg All of these questions caused quite a stir in the American art scene because of their opposition to the most important art critic at the time.

Jasper Johns is another artist who had a certain disrespect for aesthetic boundaries and who sought to oppose Greenberg’s point of view regarding art. One of Johns’s works of art counterbalancing Greenberg’s theories is ‘Target with Four Faces’. The first contradiction with the critic’s point of view is the mix of arts. Even if in its majority, this work is a painting, on top of it resides four casts of faces. Johns purposefully overpasses aesthetic boundaries by mixing these two contradictory means. First of all this work of art is in 3D, where Greenberg wanted paintings to be flat. Though, it is important to decide what it is exactly, and how to perceive it. If we see it as a painting, were going to put aside the four casts. On the other hand, if we see it as a sculpture, then we would be cutting most part of the work. This sent a real controversy to the art world because it questioned Greenberg’s doctrine. Indeed, if we analysed this work as Greenberg wanted, it would be incomplete and misleading.
Maybe so, Greenberg’s way of seeing and cutting art is not as accurate as it used to, mediums can actually mix themselves to create homogenous works of art. Moreover, within the painted part of the work itself there is an opposition to the critics doctrine. Where Greenberg saw painting as being flat and clean, Johns gave him a painted surface that seemed flat and clean, but really wasn’t. Even if the lines of the target were totally flat, because they were concentric, the viewer would have an optical illusion and see the circles as being 3D. The technique he used, called encaustic, also gave it a sense of profundity and of dirtiness. Finally, this piece of work also challenged the way the viewer would relate to the work. Where Greenberg saw a more passive viewer, experiencing the artist’s expression of his inner feeling, Johns presented to us a work of art where the viewer would interact with the work. He could open and close the box covering the faces, thus modifying the work as he pleased.

In conclusion, Johns and Rauschenberg challenged the American artistic context of their time by doing works such as ‘Bed’ and ‘Target with four faces’ that opposed the major art movement of America and questioned the views of the dominant critic and rule maker of the art scene in the US in the 1950’s.

Bibliography

Hopkins, David, After Modern Art 1945-2000, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Lynton, Norbert, The Story of Modern Art. Ithaca, New York: Phaidon, Cornell University Press, [c. 1980] 1994.