The scene is a square in a small muggle town. Up-stage a house composed of a ground floor and one storey. The ground floor is the window of a grocer’s shop. The entrance is up two or three steps through a glass-patted door. The word EPICERIE is written in bold letters above the shop window. The two windows on the first floor are the living quarters of the grocer and his wife. The shop is up-stage, but slightly to the left, not far from the wings. In the distance a church steeple is visible above the grocer’s house. Between the shop and the left of the stage there is a little street in perspective. To the right, slightly at an angle, is the front of a café. Above the café, one floor with a window; in front, the café terrace; several chairs and tables reach almost to centre stage. A dusty tree stands near the terrace chairs. Blue sky; harsh light; very white walls. The time is almost mid-day on a Sunday in summertime.
RON WEASLEY and HARRY POTTER will sit at one of the terrace tables.
Here are the determining facts of the past which tie us together and which, among others, interest us: ‘plastic’ triumphs over anecdote (Manet) – the first geometrization of the exterior world (Cézanne) – the conquest of pure colour (Matisse) – the explosion of representation (Picasso) – exterior vision changes into interior vision (Kandinsky) – a branch of painting dissolves into architecture, becoming polychromatic (Mondrian) – departure from the large plastic synthetics (Le Corbusier) – new plastic alphabets (Arp, Taeuber, Magnelli, Herbin) – abandoning volume for SPACE (Calder) … The desire for a new conception was affirmed in the recent past by the invention of PURE COMPOSITION and by the choice of UNITY, which we will discuss later. Parallel to the decline of painting’s ancestral technique, followed experimentation with new materials (chemical applications) and adoption of new tools (discovery of physics) … Presently we are heading towards the complete abandonment of routine, towards the integration of sculpture and the conquest of the plane’s SUPERIOR DIMENSIONS.
From the beginning, abstraction examined and enlarged its compositional elements. Soon, form-colour invaded the entire two-dimensional surface, this metamorphosis led the painting-object, by way of architecture, to a spatial universe of polychromy. However, an extra-architectural solution was already proposed and we deliberately broke with the neo-plastic law. PURE COMPOSITION is still a plastic plane where rigorous abstract elements, hardly numerous and expressed in few colours (matte or glossy), possess, on the whole surface, the same complete plastic quality: POSITIVE-NEGATIVE. But, by the effect of opposed perspectives, these elements give birth to and make vanish in turn a ‘spatial feeling’ and thus, the illusion of motion and duration. FORM AND COLOUR ARE ONE. Form can only exist when indicated by a coloured quality. Colour is only quality when unlimited in form. The line (drawing, contour) is a fiction which belongs not to one, but to two form-colours at the same time. It does not engender form-colours, it results from their meeting. Two necessarily contrasted form-colours constitute PLASTIC UNITY, thus the UNITY of creation: eternal duality of all things, recognized finally as inseparable. It is the coupling of affirmation and negation. Measurable and immeasurable, unity is both physical and metaphysical. It is the conception of the material, the mathematical structure of the Universe, as its spiritual superstructure. Unity is the absence of BEAUTY, the first form of sensitivity. Conceived with art, it constitutes the work, poetic equivalent of the World that it signifies. The simplest example of plastic unity is the square (or rectangle) with its complement ‘contrast’ or the two-dimensional plane with its complement ‘surrounding space’.
Een nieuw bewustzijn binnen de wetten van de dialectiek
The dissolution of Western classical culture is a phenomenon that can be understood only against the background of a social evolution which can end only in the total collapse of a principle of society thousands of years old and its replacement by a system whose laws are based on the immediate demands of human vitality. The influence the ruling classes have wielded over the creative consciousness in history has reduced art to an increasingly dependent position, until finally the real psychic function of that art was attainable only for a few spirits of genius who in their frustration and after a long struggle were able to break out of the conventions of form and rediscover the basic principles of all creative activity.
Together with the class society from which it emerged, this culture of the individual is faced by destruction too, as the former’s institutions, kept alive artificially, offer no further opportunities for the creative imagination and only impede the free expression of human vitality. All the isms so typical of the last fifty years of art history represent so many attempts to bring new life to this culture and to adapt its aesthetic to the barren ground of its social environment. Modern art, suffering from a permanent tendency to the constructive, an obsession with objectivity (brought on by the disease that has destroyed our speculative-idealizing culture), stands isolated and powerless in a society which seems bent on its own destruction. As the extension of a style created for a social élite, with the disappearance of that élite modern art has lost its social justification and is confronted only by the criticism formulated by a clique of its connoisseurs and amateurs.
Western art, once the celebrator of emperors and popes, turned to serve the newly powerful bourgeoisie, becoming an instrument of the glorification of bourgeois ideals. Now that these ideals have become a fiction with the disappearance of their economic base, a new era is upon us, in which the whole matrix of cultural conventions loses its significance and a new freedom can be won from the most primary source of life. But, just as with a social revolution, this spiritual revolution cannot be enacted without conflict. Stubbornly the bourgeois mind clutches onto its aesthetic ideal and in a last, desperate effort employs all its wiles to convert the indifferent masses to the same belief. Taking advantage of the general lack of interest, suggestions are made of a special social need for what is referred to as ‘an ideal of beauty’, all designed to prevent the flowering of a new, conflicting sense of beauty which emerges from the vital emotions.
As early as the end of the First World War the DADA movement tried by violent means to break away from the old ideal of beauty. Although this movement concentrated increasingly on the political arena, as the artists involved perceived that their struggle for freedom brought them into conflict with the laws that formed the very foundations of society, the vital power released by this confrontation also stimulated the birth of a new artistic vision.
Chers passagers, nous vous invitons maintenant à rejoindre le complexe du rez-de-chaussée, où à vous installer à l’étage – la mutation va bientôt commencer. Pour le bon déroulé de cette séquence nous vous engageons à trouver un endroit confortable et à svous asseoir pour écouter dans les meilleures conditions.
« Les grandes personnes sont décidément bien bizarres », se dit-il simplement en lui-même durant son voyage.
Vous qui entrez, n’abandonnez pas tout espoir, ni toute mélancolie Entrez dans l’espace de la désidération Entrez dans ce lieu où diagnostiquer le vertige de la perte des étoiles Quand l’émerveillement pour le cosmos se retourne en mélancolie Nous faisant sentir tout ce qui est perdu Quand le plaisir renouvelé des choses spatiales dit aussi la tristesse, et l’abandon Et la volonté de retrouver quelque chose d’indistinctement cosmique Et de goûter la douceur et l’amertume du miel laiteux des étoiles Voilà la désidération qui s’étoile bientôt en affect, en syndrome, en pensée, en fiction, en recherches spatiales, endocosmologiques, tous azimuts Entrez dans ce lieu fait aussi pour appréhender une voie qui mène à un état autre Un lieu pour réinventer l’espoir et la mélancolie, Un lieu pour transitionner, avec les étoiles, les humains, les mondes, Un lieu pour appréhender l’affect de la désidération, et muter avec lui Un lieu pour initier cette découverte et cette transmutation Un lieu pour appréhender l’avenir Un lieu pour découvrir Une onde Un chemin Des voix dans le cosmos Un lieu pour voir, un lieu pour écouter, un lieu pour dormir, un lieu pour rêver Avec l’aide de la cellule Cosmiel Avec la voix de Radio Levania Vous qui entrez, n’abandonnez pas tout espoir, ni toute mélancolie.
In 1941 Bertolt Brecht was living in Santa Monica, California. He aspired to sell stories to Hollywood … it did not go well.
Das Dorf Hollywood ist entworfen nach den Vorstellungen Die man hierorts vom Himmel hat. Hierorts Hat man ausgerechnet, daß Gott Himmel und Hölle benötigend, nicht zwei Etablissements zu entwerfen brauchte, sondern Nur ein einziges, nämlich den Himmel. Dieser Dient für die Unbemittelten, Erfolglosen Als Hölle.
Am Meer stehen die Öltürme. In den Schluchten Bleichen die Gebeine der Goldwäscher. Ihre Söhne Haben die Traumfabriken von Hollywood gebaut. Die vier Städte Sind erfüllt von dem Ölgeruch Der Filme.
Manchen der Freunde sah ich, und den geliebtesten Hilflos versinken im Sumpfe, an dem ich Taglich vorbeigeh.
Und es geschah nicht an einem Einzigen Vormittag. Viele Wochen nahm es oft; dies machte es schrecklicher. Und das Gedenken an die gemeinsamen Langen Gespräche über den Sumpf, der So viele schon birgt.
Hilflos nun sah ich ihn zurückgelehnt Bedeckt mit den Blutegeln In dem schimmernden Sanft bewegten Schlamm. Auf dem versinkenden Antlitz das gräßliche Wonnige Lächeln.
The Monster
Just how many constructions can be put on a man’s behaviour was shown recently by an incident at the Russian Mezhrabpom film studios. It may have been insignificant and it had no consequence, but there was something horrible about it. While The White Eagle – a film about the pre-war pogroms in south Russia, which pilloried the attitude of the police at the time – was being shot in the studio, an old man turned up and asked for a job. He forced his way into the porter’s box at the street entrance and told the porter he would like to take the liberty of drawing the company’s attention to his extraordinary resemblance to the notorious governor Muratov. (Muratov had instigated the bloodbath at the time. His was the leading role in the aforesaid film.) The porter laughed in his face, but since he was an old man he did not eject him straight away, and that is how the long, thin fellow came to be standing, hat in hand, with a faraway look amid the hubbub of extras and studio technicians, seemingly still nursing a faint hope of earning bread and shelter for a couple of days on the strength of his resemblance to the notorious killer.
For almost an hour he stood there, constantly stepping aside to let people go by until he ended up hemmed in behind a desk, and there he was at last suddenly noticed. There was a break in the shooting and the actors headed for the canteen or stood around chatting. Kochalov, the famous Moscow actor playing Muratov, went into the porter’s box to make a phone call. As he stood by the phone he was nudged by the grinning gatekeeper and when he turned he saw the man behind the desk, whereupon peals of laughter rang out all around him. Kochalov’s make-up was based on historical photographs, and the extraordinary resemblance that the old man behind the desk had been telling them about was obvious to everybody.
Aesthetic of the Engineer, Architecture: two things firmly allied, sequential, the one in full flower, the other in painful regression.
The engineer, inspired by the law of Economy and guided by calculations, puts us in accord with universal laws. He attains harmony.
The architect, through the ordonnance of forms, realizes an order that is a pure creation of his mind; through forms, he affects our senses intensely, provoking plastic emotions; through the relationships that he creates, he stirs in us deep resonances, he gives us the measure of an order that we sense to be in accord with that of the world, he determines the diverse movements of our minds and our hearts; it is then that we experience beauty.
