ROBOTIC and SYNTHETIC PERFORMANCE: Steps Toward a Culture of Liberation a Manifesto of the OmniCircus
XIII. FORMALISM
Artform of Monopoly Capitalism
The utter dominance that the late-capitalist profiteer exerts over the realm of culture has produced an unprecedented divorcement of art from its progressive, laboratory role in the guise of "formal" exploration. Formalism and its bastard, Structuralism, are based on the notion that the formal, mathematical, internal, or "mythical" structure of a piece (rather than its social language or connotation) creates its essential artistic value. British aesthetician Suzi Gablik says this about modern Formalist art, "...the structure of much of contemporary art is determined by the internal relationships which prevail among its component parts and by generative rules, not by iconic resemblances." Formalists are usually abstract artists, but they deny the abstract form any corporeal associations or experiential references. Structuralism theory, being rather a more sophisticated update of the Emperor's new transparent Formalist cant, postulates that internal formal relationships, when examined, give us clues to the essence of our being. Like most ruling ideologies, this appeal to "universal truths" acts as a disguise for the protection of present-day privileges.
Richard DeGeorge speaks of the views of noted French Structuralist anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss:
"Levi-Strauss postulates that...art, literature, myth, religion, table manners are all ways of social expression, and all are structured by a similar unconscious process of the human mind...if one were able to bring to light the deeper structure common to the deep structures of each of the systems, one would be well advanced toward the goal of discovering the structure of human nature itself."
The Structuralists believe that there are only two ways in which art can express ideas and feelings: 1. "iconic resemblances", the technique of Bourgeois Realism that they reject as outmoded; or 2. "structure", which reveals through a process of purely formal manipulation of line, shape, color, the structure of "human nature" itself. They are abstract artists, in that they reject realism and deal with art as a design language. But they also reject the idea of a socially defined abstract aesthetic, preferring instead the idealist notion of a universal, super historic "human nature." To the Structuralist, the evolution of the productive forces (and their associated design languages) merely coincides with the evolution of art, as yet another example of the "structure of human nature" made manifest.
What causes the divorcement of the Formalist artist/designer from the social content of their work? A careful look at that bulk eraser for the human mind, American entertainment television, will suggest one possible answer. TV commercials and so-called entertainment programming are fantastically well made kinetic art works whose message is...buy this product! (And absorb the hidden ideological messages contained, like toxic Easter Eggs, in the underlying assumptions of the "entertainment".) The talented professionals who create this programming have to dissociate themselves from the content and social context of their work, in order to justify serving Mammon with their craft instead of advancing their art. Similarly, academia is rife with grant-whoring intellectual guns-for-hire who roam the ivory-covered plateaus with fully loaded PCs, furtively slavering to do the bidding of DARPA and Corporate science-dominatrixes and kill (for a huge bounty) any and all progressive science or culture that comes within range. Formalism is the intellectual justification for this professional opportunism, which is forced upon scientists and artists who have no other way of surviving economically. The "artists", technocrats and engineers who work for reactionary corporations - or who are driven by the same mentality - divorce themselves from the real content of what they are doing, from its social context, and fix their gaze with morbid fascination on the formal aspect of their craft. Imagine what physicists go through in justifying their work on nuclear bomb or chemical/biological weapons; many imagine that they are working on "pure" physics for its own sake, ignoring the implications of their research. Here is a quote from Edward Teller, one of the main inventors of the H-bomb: "Einstein made moralistic statements with which I completely disagree. To believe a scientist has more responsibility than to discover, to apply and to explain is a remarkable, wrong kind of immodesty."
DeGeorge again on Formalism, the predecessor of Structuralism: "Formalism, as found in the Russian Formalist School of the 1920's, focused on the form of a work of art, on the craft of the artist, and on his use of the tools of his trade, in reaction to the traditional emphasis in the content of the work and on matters external to the work itself."
The corporate capitalists are the "sponsors" of Formalism and the technocratic caste implements it. But there is also a modern anti-technology, anti-science culture of great dynamism, giving birth to the Abstract Expression movement and much other reactionary effluvia. The social base of these chaotic art forms is the modern-day petty-bourgeoisie (small merchant class). This class is anti-industrial. They fear technology, because the small capitalist is at the mercy of corporations whose use of industrial forces, and accumulation of capital, make them overarchingly more powerful. The petty-bourgeoisie also tend to worship at the altar of technology - their fear is mixed with awe, since the solution to their historical dilemma is to master industrialism and thus become big bourgeois themselves. The small capitalist also opposes the working class, because they are usually incapable of paying union wages. So the industrial worker and industrial capitalist, and their cultures, are antithetical to the petty-bourgeoisie. In culture, this class prefers nostalgic myth mongering, occultism and idealization of nature and pre-industrial techniques of production to modernism in most of its incarnations. However, when emboldened by extended economic success, as in the United States after World War II, the petty-bourgeoisie begin to feel omnipotent again, magically free from their burden of impending extinction at the hand of voracious industrialists. They flex their psychic muscles and sponsor a mystical and escapist modern art, the imbecility of which has yet to be fully fathomed.
The ruling elite of Europe and the United States, sponsoring their army of experts in the modern-day art world, was terrified of the Russian Revolution and its immense attraction to intellectuals and artists. In those days, the modernist, abstract (design-oriented) art movement was mainly led by those who considered themselves Constructivist and inspired by the idea of the creation of an international "industrial design" aesthetic. Realizing this, the survival mechanism of the kicked in, and with the seemingly infinite craftiness which has characterized the Emperor's tailors since the time of Napoleon Bonaparte, the bourgeoisie fashioned a new set of clothes again - an "abstract" art which would use all the technical advances of modern society without the progressive political and aesthetic language of Constructivism. Thus came Formalism and its haggard and loathsome progeny. What is Constructivist abstraction, and how does it differ from Formalism?
