civilized ku # 1178 ~ the reenchantment of art
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 11:57AM 
Samuel Champlain monument base ~ Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggenIn her essay The Reenchantment of Art - 12/87 in the long defunct New Art Examiner and expanded upon in her 1991 book of the same name - Suzi Gablik wrote:
I have been teaching and lecturing a great deal about the ways that art has become a mirror for the manic materialism of our culture. And as I came to understand how much, as individuals and as a culture, we have suffered our deep creativity and spiritual well-being to become damaged in the bureaucratic drives for power and profit, the need to play by these cultural "ground rules" has lost its meaning for me. Perhaps the possibility exists of liberating oneself from the modern "contingency sickness" and the taken-for-granted assumptions of one's time simply by denying them interest, and turning the attention purposefully toward other areas which are open to influence, like the whole vast universe of the psyche.
I am talking about here about the question of remythologizing of consciousness and the question of mythic thinking - whether it is possible at all today, and if so, in what way, given the inevitable stream of cybernetic simulacra that is now presented and accepted as social reality. I am talking, obviously, about thinking which is less paradigm-bound, and in which a visionary attitude to culture is predominant.
Whew. If you're of a mind to, there's lots to ponder in just those few words and I must admit that when I read the entire essay back in 1987 (I wrote as a photography critic for the NAE), I was very intrigued by Gablik's premise. To wit, as she stated:
My present concerns have to do with how to give our culture back its sense of aliveness, possibility, and magic. It is an an issue that I believe will find resonance in many minds, among all those who are similarly convinced that, in losing the ability to perceive the grand harmonies of the cosmos, our Western civilization has been thrown seriously out of equilibrium.
Keep in mind that Gablik was lecturing, teaching, and writing about a seriously out of whack civilization back in 1987. Her contention that...
In the modern world view, reality has been distorted by a thoroughly negative set of assumptions about the world ... a way of life based on manic production and consumption, maximum energy flow, mindless waste and greed, is now threatening the entire ecosystem in which we live.
All that well before climate weirding / global warming, the recent financial meltdown, numerous consumption bubbles, and, when it comes to cybernetic simulacra, well before the internet all of its glorious connectivity and ever-spawning connectivity devices, not to mention cable television with its 1000s of channels of mind numbing / deadening "content". If the reenchantment of art was suppose to stem that tide, well, IMO, that battle is over but the war goes on.
However, I still believe, now more than ever, in Gablik's idea that what the world needed then, and needs even more so now, is, in fact, a reenchantment of art ...
We have made much of the idea of art as a mirror (reflecting the times); we have had art as a hammer (social protest); we have had art as furniture (something to hang on the wall); and art as a search for the self. Perhaps we need another kind of art ... I am talking about art which speaks to the power of connectedness and establishes bonds, art that calls us into relationship, and thus addresses our failure to grasp what it means to be actively related to the cosmos.
All of that said, I have been involved, in my picture making, in what might be labeled The Reenchantment of Art Movement since the late 70s. At that time, during what was the seminal moment in the development of my picture making / appreciation sensibilities - my participation in the making of the book the new color photography, I began throwing off the constricting chains of the "taken-for-granted" "paradigm-bound" "ground rules" of picture making. What the experience of working on the new color book introduced to me was the beauty to be found in making pictures of what you see rather than of what you have been told is a good picture.
In directing my picturing to that which I see all around me, the everyday / the commonplace / the so-called "banal" and "mundane", I began to discover a beauty and a real, albeit "soft" and subtle , reenchantment of my art which was made manifest as a result of increased connectedness to the world which is all around me. I, was and still am, building relationships, not just with the "grand" tour of iconic grandeur, but with the subtle and transient moments experienced in the many fleeting daily encounters seen during the getting on with everyday life.
And that is why I find it very easy to create bodies of work rather than to focus (ttJN) on creating a succession of single - not necessarily related - "greatest hits" pictures. Since my picturing is an ongoing venture, in a very real sense, I have evolved into a picture diarist (some might prefer photo diarist). Like a word diarist, my "diary" makes the most sense when viewed and read (as in, reading a picture) as a whole. Not that some "greatest hit' type pictures do not emerge from the work, they do, but that is just not the point of my picture making.
That (w)holistic approach is why I like picture books, both my own and those made by other picture makers. It is the driving idea behind my recent book project (my own personal SoFoBoMo, albeit a picture book every month). It is why I have numerous picture books comprised of my pictures already hanging around my house. It is why my picture collecting is aimed at collecting books rather than prints.
And it is why I wish more picture makers like (but not by any means limited to) the The More Original Refrigerator Art guy (Tyler?), who has altogether eschewed even the making of prints much less picture books, or Juha Haataja, who in a grievously erroneous bout of self critiquing thinks that I might think he is a pretty picture maker (I most emphatically do not), or Mary Dennis - I do have a collection of 10 beautiful prints from her Fragments body of work - would make a few pictures books. Or, better yet, a PictureBook-A-Month - ones to which I would subscribed in an reenchanted NY moment.
IMO, each of these pictures makers have contributed much to the advancement of the reenchantment of art. And, it is well worth noting, they have all done so without resorting to any picture making cheap tricks. Each picture maker has and continues to enchant me with straight, honest, connected-to-the-real visions of the world around them and their relationship with/to it.
And, most importantly, by creating pictures of the world as they see it, not as they have been told to picture it.
Reader Comments (3)
For the last month or so everyone has been posting their Autumn colours photos and having just started my own blog I thought I should get in on the act. The problem was I couldn't get out for a few days and the colour was fading fast. The tree and hedge in the neighbors' yard across the street were in full glory so I figured I'd try a "Landscapist" style photo. The picture that resulted is not the usual kind of image for me but oddly enough the more I look at it the more I like it. I have been reading The Landscapist for years but I think now I'm finally getting what your talking about. Thanks for that.
I have tried on several occasions to pull together some sort of book Mark but I am woefully inadequate in design skills. They always look amateur and tasteless in my opinion. The one that I did print and order felt and looked more like a childish, fat brochure than a photo book. I like the idea of a folio better anyway I think, like Anil Rao has so beautifully done. That is one of my goals this fall and I hope to make it from the series I am currently working on entitled Forest Floor. It seems like a more manageable project than a book, at least for me.
Lots of interesting things to think about in this post-from you and from Suzi Gablik. Thanks.
Well, and this is glorious. Just glorious. And timeless. Love the lace of the trees.