***  Haus der Kulturen der Welt: Forum1 Archive  ***
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   [Date]: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 15:35:50 -0600
   [From]: Juan JosŽ D’az Infante  <jdiazinfante@altamiracave.com>
     [To]: Cultural Exchange via Internet <forum1@hkw.kbx.de>
[Subject]: The dislexic society and the art of conversation

Hi everyone, I have been out of town setting up a contemporary video 
exhibition at the Cineteca in Monterrey and another one of Indian
Handicrafts in Mexico City.

I am very late into certain points of the discussion but
I would like to comment on several issues trying to catch up.

>Suzan wrote:

>Picasso said, Art is the lie that reveals truth. I tend to agree with this
>assessment. However, the use of real...

>objects like human and animal remains, consitutes a perplexing turn of
>events in the realm of contemporary art>
>practice that may have even surprised Marcel Duchamp.


There are two types of artists: the ones that can feel emotion and the ones
that are only "creative" in a sense of composition of aesthetics. The second
type of artist correspond to the one that takes a long time to become an
artist.

There was a schism in Zen over an argument of the actual way on reaching
consciousness.There are two schools of thought the one that thinks that you
can reach enlightment after a long process of education, meditation and
research and; the other one, the one that teaches that enlightment can be
immediate in one second without pursuing it, instictive. It reminds me of
"Death in Venice" : Beauty after a life of work versus beauty as a gift.

There are very few artists capable of being able to feel and create (the
subconscious dictation), one example is how Picasso "took" a lot of work
from Braque (ask Maeght). On one side you have the engineering of talent and
on the other raw talent.

Once in a while there is an artist that is able to manage both types of
narrative, like Duchamp, and artists like him sets "traps" to the system.
Hints for the future to let you know what is correct and what it is not.
They become encoders of simple messages. They make them obvious, so obvious
they are very hard to see.

When Picasso insists that art is the lie that reveals the truth, he is
referring to art as a lie, to art as what is understood and not what it is.
Art as a myth kept un-understandable. When Duchamp uses the "migitorio"
(urinary) as a piece of art is one of those traps, one of those lies. It
leaves behind a trap to remind us of what is not real, something that is
only a perceived value. Breton has exactly that problem with Davila Dollar
who takes the premises of poiesis set by Breton (actually taken and
"institutionalized" from Dada) into the bank account to the point of being
expelled from the whole movement.

When an artist or an intellectual grow beyond the game of the lie, then they
become  mystics. Crucifixion is their reward...

Juan