The Inclusive Modern

The current interest in modernism within the field of contemporary art might very well reflect a variety of underlying ways of rethinking the modern. Thus, different perspectives and angles towards the entire enterprise of modernism are surely put into play at the moment.

A productive and contemporary rethinking of the historical modernism can take the notion of the not yet included as its starting point. What has been marginalized or perhaps even categorized as altogether inferior or lower in rank in relation to the canonized modern of the twentieth century is of interest in relation to a fresh and new take on modernism.

Notions of femininity and references towards feminine worlds of life are more or less present in many spheres of the historical modern in spite of the official androgynism of the modern tradition. The oeuvres by the female russian constructivists like Alexandra Exter and Varvara Stepanova are paradigmatic examples of this. They show us that strands of the feminine were among the fundamentals of modernism from the very beginning. Nevertheless, these feminine fundamentals of the modern have precisely been excluded in many prevailing narrations of the twentieth century modernism. They are among the not yet included elements of the edifice of the modern.

Right now a huge amount of highly interesting works of art can be interpreted as a reflection upon the marginalized aspects of modernism. I think that we can at least tentatively say that the modern of today reflects precisely upon the not yet included aspects of the traditional modern.

These not yet included aspects might not necessarily and only be tied to notions of the feminine. They can very well come into play and confront modernism as elements of another origin rooted in a wide range of different sources. As we all know it is not only the feminine which is traditionally categorized as the Other or simply left untouched or even brought into silence in relation to historical narratives of the modern.

If we right now take a look at a prominent and diversified selection of contemporary works of art that relate themselves to the historical modernism I guess that we can allow ourselves to identify and describe a new cluster of interesting and viable contemporary art practices as practices dealing with what we can call The Inclusive Modern.

Dorte Jelstrup. Definitely Standing (Now Broken Into Pieces), I, 2008. Gouache on paper, pen and ink on paper, gouache, pen and ink on paper, satin ribbons and methylcellulose on linen. 105 x 148 cm.

The contemporary modern

How come that modern forms seem to be so appealing in the field of contemporary art? What is it precisely about modernist art that makes one think that there is after all something related to the modernist enterprise that presents itself as relevant and interesting in the present day situation?

In the catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition modern modern that was recently held at the Chelsea Art Museum, April 17 - June 13, 2009, and which was curated by Pati Hertling, Jan Verwoert argues that it is the crooked, the contradictory and the unresolved implied in many modernist works and practices, and not the straight laid bare in the disastrous modernist masterplans for an all-embracing revolution in the world, that gain distinction as being valuable if one takes a closer look at the modern project today. In the same catalogue Pati Hertling points to the idea that what she calls the modern modern has a sadness attached to itself and deals with longing and missing. Hertling also reminds us that objects are simply beautiful.

Now, these analysises of what we can call the contemporary modern are surely going straight to the point. There is an undeniable attractiveness to the revolutionary commitment to endless experimentation and innovation in artistic form inherent to the twentieth-century avant-garde modernism. The intense innovative spirit of many early modernist artworks are nearly mad or at least a little bit over the top if one takes an ordinary conformist point of view. That madness is precisely encapsulated by Verwoert in his theorizing about the crooked modern. At the same time there is, as Marjorie Perloff has stressed, a dominance of the lyric with its associated effects of singularity in some modernist art, say modernist poetry for instance, which fits very well with Hertlings nodding in the direction of an emotionalism attached to the contemporary modern. To the extent that the postmodern can be analysed, at least in part, as a refusal of the aesthetic Hertlings accentuation of the concept of beauty again touches upon a feature that surely makes the current focus upon modernism quite understandable and transparent. Because the aesthetic never really left the field of contemporary art and beauty matters. If something is beautiful it is simply worth seeing. And if something is beautiful in "the over the top way" or in the mad or the crooked way it is really worth seeing.

Allow me to emphasize some examples from the modernist reservoir. The beauty of diversity, say the blending and/or unification of different media found in modernist works of art like the cubist collage is an example from the twentieth-century avant-garde modernism that presents itself as interesting today in relation to a contemporary modern approach. The radical innovatory spirit in the works of the female russian constructivists like for instance Varvara Stepanova, Alexandra Exter and Lioubov Popova can very well also be seen as an example of an experimental strategy that went far "over the top" in the very positive sense of the phrase and which is highly interesting today. These female artists, sometimes described as the amazones of the early twentieth-century avant-garde, did not refrain from either a sensuous color spectrum rooted in the russian folklore or the combining of a soft and feminine material like chiffon with a hard-line geometrical constructivist sculptural structure. In other words, they did not refrain from going far and sometimes then went really "over the top." Their works might again serve as interesting points of reference for a contemporary modernist approach.

Furthermore, if we pause for a look at the post-war western art allow me then to emphasize the lyric spirit of the works of the american female artist Joan Mitchell. No doubt that Jackson Pollock was the favorite artist of the modernist art critic Clement Greenberg compared to for instance artists like Lee Krasner or Joan Mitchell. In these matters Greenberg suffered from a masculinist bias. Nevertheless, the intense lyricism in Mitchells paintings and the marked "deep" aesthetic of a unique personal style that her works so paradigmatically exemplify make her an emblematic artist of the post-war american modernism associated with abstract expressionism. Also Mitchells paintings offer themselves as interesting points of reference for a contemporary modern orientation.

So, let´s go for some more modern talk!

http://starship-magazine.org/index.php?page=news

http://www.chelseaartmuseum.org/exhibits/2009/modernmodern/index.html

Dorte Jelstrup. Untitled (Abstraction of an Opening), 2008. Gouache, pen and ink on paper. 76 x 56 cm.

Abstraction, again

In the light of the current interest in abstraction within the field of contemporary art it might be relevant to reconsider the relationship between abstraction and representation. Historically speaking abstract art has by many of its practitioners been viewed as a means to metaphysical insights or alternatively, as a trace of the inherently human and emotional gestures that produced it. This underlines the fact that abstraction admits of degrees. Moreover, it gives support to the view that the distinction between abstraction and representation is based on a difference in degree. It´s not based on a difference in kind.

By the end of 2008 a major exhibition of the works of Paul Klee was held at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. The exhibition illustrated in a very nice and straightforward way how abstraction and representation is interrelated in the works of Paul Klee. As an artist Klee drew no sharp line between the abstract and the representative. On the contrary, he excellently oscillated in the very same picture between the abstract and the representative in a way that profoundly blurred the distinction.

Anyway, the linking of the abstract with the representative might point towards an interesting field, also for current artistic explorations of the dynamics of abstraction. Unless we go for a blurred distinction between the abstract and the representative, we might at the end of the day be left with the illusions of a pure abstraction resulting in a focus solely upon the physicality of art.

Subjectivity and geometrical abstraction

Explorations of subjectivity within the field of contemporary art can take many forms. Among the most promising at the moment are renderings of subjectivity that more or less incorporate the register of forms rooted in the archive of geometrical abstraction often associated with modernism. Now, that might sound a bit surprising. Usually we expect geometrical abstraction to go hand in hand with ideals such as rationality and objectivity. Nevertheless, geometrical arrangements of forms imputed with symbolic meanings focusing upon mental states and the lived subjects inner experiences are at least thinkable. Dense geometrical grids could for example refer to the subjects experiences of closings and, likewise, transparent geometrical structures could correlate to different states of openings. Just to say that it´s possible. Geometrical abstractions of subjectivity and the I´s mental acts are subjectivity dealt with in the geometrical manner. These subjective abstractions are perhaps the most interesting instances of More Geometrico around right now. And they are refreshingly new.

The beauty of diversity

Diversity is no doubt among the most important properties of works of art today. The juxtaposition of many different elements and the multiplicity and variety of forms in a given artwork might be said - at least at a symbolic level - to somehow echo the experience that living and being in a contemporary globalized world is a complex affair. I guess that one can say that diversity is probably the most true-to-life property in the 21st century and that beauty nowadays resides in the complex manifold lending itself to the synthetizing acts of the spectator. 

Besides that the inclusiveness of the complex artwork also seems to underline the primacy of an open mind towards different perspectives and ways of seeing. Inclusiveness could be said to correlate to a democratic state where everybody so to speak has a voice to be heard in the world - and metaphorically speaking also in the work.

Not to say that a complete unlimited and unorganized chaos of elements in the artwork is preferable. Properties like unity and coherence still have a worthy role to play. Compositional organization and aspirations to a more or less overall effect of unity and coherence at the narrative level serve as valuable constitutive spots in the artwork from where the spectator can join the interpretative play and engage in a free and celebratory creation of new meanings. But the basis of this fiesta - not only for the eye but also for the mind - is the beauty of diversity.