Jump to content

Letters to the Red Crayola I, 1968-2012

From Red Krayola Wiki
Letters to the Red Crayola I, 1968-2012
Art & Language
Project Letters to the Red Krayola
Year 2012
Dimensions 35 × 75.6 cm[1]
Materials Ink, acrylic, collage and mixed media on paper

Text

Dear M, While the black square is not in the form of a badge here, it has certainly been one in both dream and reality. The badge of the conference and commerce has some connection with the commodity fetish even though it may not itself be one, or be one rarely. It is a sign of the mechanisms whereby individuals are attached to the commodity fetish. But black squares as badges can also be signs of art. In a dream, or in some half-remembered and spectral reality, we have seen what must be a late self-portrait of Kasimir Malevich. While his style has not quite been turned into Socialist Realism, it has Neue Sachlichkeit and expressionist margins. It would get him into very little trouble with the authorities. In the painting, he is wearing a blue jacket, and on his left lapel is a badge in the form of a small black square. It is, then, a self-portrait within a self-portrait. The black square badge is a sign. or rather an emblem, of the cultural identity that the artist acquired around 1914-1915. It serves to remind the viewer that this is a self-portrait by the Suprematist of the Black Square, author of 'The Non-objective World' and that the self-portrait genre is perhaps more of an historically determined anomaly than an artistic development. The badge in the dream (or the ghostly memory) of Malevich is pathetic, a displaced thing that is nevertheless successful qua badge. Its emblematicness is simple and immediately historical. But what we can't tell from the dream is whether the badge is itself a fetish or in fact the dialectical other of a fetish. We might say, perhaps, that this arrested gesture of the monochrome square has now become a sign of degenerative commodification: of a (post) modernity that rots the mind. You ask how we should respond to those who, having been over-excited (one suspects, also, made lazy and comfortable by Jacques Rancière) repeat one form or another of the mantra 'all art is political'. Best look for the exit. They have demonstrated a degradation of the mind. The political significance of the work of art will never lie in the journalistic virtues of documentary truth or causal connection to events. The black square badge occurred in a dream, after all.

Interpretations

References

  1. ↑ https://www.artsy.net/artwork/art-and-language-letters-to-the-red-crayola-1
Retrieved from "https://redkrayolawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Letters_to_the_Red_Crayola_I,_1968-2012&oldid=7137"