[Art-lover]

Previous post touched a favorite amusement of modernism called "I - the first". But all this controversy kids in the sandbox.
If we go to adult cases, the decisive battle for the birthright in the world of abstraction to be held between Pithecanthropus and Neanderthals.
(However, the inner voice tells us that after the upcoming redistribution of the market above all arts will be quoted on Sotsbi abstract artifacts Sinanthropus)).

About how dangerous to ignore these things and play by the old rules, recently experienced the hard way the organizers of the exhibition Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925, which was opened for display at New York's Museum of Modern Art on April 15 of this year.

(For a long time trying to persuade himself to follow the example iside and get out of the transfer of invective against Roger Denson MoMA over the last exhibition - especially because I'm not entirely agree with his position - but what I managed to get myself - it agreed to replace the transfer to a detailed account of: Denson argument in some detail, and not without interest to readers section will try it themselves to the tooth).

Dimensions of the article and the lack of time forced to cut the text and serve slices.
Portion 1:

Roger Denson.
The colonization of abstraction: the MoMA exhibition "The Invention of abstraction," denies the ancient global sources of abstract art.
(Part of the translation, part paraphrase)

   The heads of state and diplomats know all too well how often negotiations between countries may depend on such seemingly minor details like a prefix to the word. Not required if the most authoritative of our cultural institutions to be attentive to the language used to represent the history of international art, especially the stories in which mitigation has not forgotten trauma caused by historical political and cultural colonization, is required to facilitate the pursuit of a new global civilization to intercultural exchange?

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I mean the name of the running at the Museum of Modern Art exhibition "The invention of abstraction, 1910-1925 gg." This choice of words may seem benign to Europeans and Americans, who have been educated with a small emphasis on the role of our former colonial nations, but in relation to the artistic audience a variety of countries with which we are building a new global community, the name seems unfair attempt to sell the genesis of the world of abstraction As a purely European company, and completely modern. How much more historically accurate and relevant exhibition would be her name if the curators have added two small syllable - "Pere" - "rediscovering an abstraction." After chose, in the end, the exhibition's curator, Leah Dikerman and assistant curator, Mary Chlenova - both from the Department of Painting and Sculpture MoMA - the correct name for the audio gallery of modernist European music - "Update music."

The intention is clear. MoMA is intelligent enough to recognize that music existed before 1900, but in fact, it seems disclaims any sense, arguing that the visual abstraction until 1900 did not exist. More specifically, MoMA, apparently does not want to recognize the visual abstraction existed outside Europe, disregarding that they can be detected on all six inhabited regions for at least tens of thousands of years.

How much trouble is the blatant chauvinism will bring the museum and its curators is hard to imagine. That speaks volumes, this is a clear and unequivocal resistance museum administration grinbergianskogo rejection of the claim that abstraction is a European and a modern invention. It was Clement Greenberg, an American art critic who championed the Abstract Expressionists, the first great American school of modern art at the same time denied that the movement is related to the historical and global sources, which, according to the statements of many artists - Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko , Sam Francis and. etc. -. inspire their creativity. The 1980 proclamation that more could be explained by a lack of awareness. Today, it is the direct militancy. Today there is hardly ever an educated art lover who does not recognize that the abstraction is so pervasive that it escapes our attention only when they do not have enough attention to look for her. It should also be noted that the only reason that modern Europeans came to the conclusion to isolate an abstraction, and thus declare its uniqueness, is that five centuries before the Europeans (and some other classical cultures such as China and Japan) began to carry out the distinction between art and artifact so that the "raise" the art of imitating the appearance of nature in paintings and sculptural incarnations over the more utilitarian crafts - thereby separating the painting and sculpture of the works in which abstraction, as the practice and the principle (sold subconsciously ) remained integrated.

What is neglected here - this is a story that tells us how much of the nation and civilization formed ideologies that define the way in which images appear, develops and accomplishes as a meaningful representation of cultures. It is also important that the historical fact that Judaism, Islam, and some sects of Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, as well as numerous classic and tribal communities to prohibit the use of naturalistic images, thus forcing society to guide cultural curiosity and expression of its artists to the systems and forms of abstraction: abstraction often considered sacred, representing the power and controlled power. The great history of Western art from Spain to India, since the art of the Bronze and Iron Ages in Judea and Sumeria until the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, in one form or another responded to the second commandment, as it is written in the book of Exodus 20: 4: "Do not make yourself idol, or any likeness of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth. " Centuries of diverse interpretations of the commandment led to the abstraction that passed through the patterns and symbols that have dominated for centuries in art and architectural projects. This makes it inconceivable that meant MoMA, accompanying his collection of early avant-garde title and equipment are not only short-sighted, and so full of Eurocentric arrogance, but also historically incorrect.

Abstraction is the basic principle underlying the production of all the arts - whether it's iconic and visual, formal and conceptual. Ee "invention", as it is now thought to have occurred at least fifty thousand years ago, and it can be said to happen spontaneously, both in Africa and in Asia and Australia, and the Americas, and Europe. Of course, the curators know that anthropologists and ethnologists have been telling us for centuries - that the School of Advanced Studies of the human experience in Santa Fe a few years ago, precisely summed up as our duty to the abstraction of the ancients: "For thousands of years something special was transferred from the internal consciousness through the hands of the artist on the walls of caves and rock surfaces. Along with familiar images of wild game and the fearsome predators we see abstract symbols - curving lines and crinkles, stars and an amazing variety of spiral forms. As in the real world inspired this "art" escapes our full understanding, but most scholars agree that the capacity for abstraction has been an integral part of people's attempts to map the natural and the supernatural forces that shaped their days - whether those living forces in the arch of night sky or in the whirlpool of water going down into a deep pool. "

Captions for pictures:

1. Forgotten MoMA curators were many obvious abstract tradition that existed around the globe for thousands of years.
The pictures from left to right are four examples of the last century: the traditional mask of the solar disk bobo tribe of Burkina Faso and Mali, 19th century; Shugetsu Tokan, landscape-style Haboku, ca. 1510; pottery of the Hopi Indian tribe of the Pueblo tribes in northeastern Arizona, the 19th century. Dome of the mosque of Sheikh Loftally in Isfahan, Iran, ca. 1618.

(A little help for Haboku - (lit. broken spattered ink or ink) - free technique of ink painting, characterized by contrasts of light and shadow. Unlike the technique of "dry brush", gravitating to the detail of the image, haboku - the letter at once with characteristic laconic composition and refinement Tusheva spots).

2. Kandinsky painted in a past life Tibetan drums? If MoMA rights that Russian avant-garde artist invented abstraction, there can only be one answer.
It may be different if the MoMA is wrong, and the Tibetans, as well as many of the community have made abstraction of a vital part of their cultural heritage. Left - painted Tibetan drum, approx. 18-19 centuries, to the right - the famous first abstract watercolor by Wassily Kandinsky, 1912

3. The left image is like a painting by Kazimir Malevich's Suprematist, ca 1915, but in reality it is Tantric paintings based on the illustrations of the 17th century to the Indian religious text. Next - Kazimir Malevich, Black Square and Red Square, 1915, MoMA, New York. Next ill. - The Crucifixion, ca. 1425, Holy Trinity Church Holy Trinity-St. Right - Malevich, Suprematism#56, 1915, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
It is quite possible - as the best of the Russian Orthodox and Byzantine icon painting abstract and figurative equilibrated in a balanced drama of passion - that Malevich had seen in the iconography of such vital energies of the spirit, which he sought release from the sensory domain-visual attributes. This Malevich affinity with practicing Tantra, who saw in the contemplation of pure forms up the possibility of higher states of consciousness and spirit.

4. Looking as elegant and modern, as well as all that was created after 1900, these three highly abstract sculptures are products of aesthetics, ideologies and technologies, respectively, of the Bronze Age, the Neolithic and Paleolithic. Left - Profile Cycladic head, 2600-2400 BC, Athens, Museum of Cycladic Art, in the center - ambrimsky slit drum signal, the island of Ambrym, the southern Islands of the Pacific Ocean, 1850-1900, on the right - Venus Monruts of Neuchatel, Switzerland, 13,000 BC

5. Left: Nepalese Tantric painting of the 17th century, represents a visual lexicon for the awakening of higher states of consciousness. Right: mesh painting, found in the cave of Pech Merle, France. Dated to between 16,000 and 25,000 BC