Résumé and extracted from the epilogue of the
book " Rectoversion, the exit "
EPILOGUE
.... (...)... We have tried throughout these pages to share a certain
number of experiences with you, experiences undertaken by visual
artists. You will have noted that the most incredible visual experiments
have been carried out for almost one century. This artistic expansion
corresponds to a more general transfer which has an impact on all
knowledge and all practices. Certain protagonists no longer hesitate
to express what they have concealed until today.
Science is more and more efficient at describing ' how '
phenomena occur but is unable to explain ' why ' . Even if
one day the scientists manage to explain that in the form of mathematical
equations the origin of the Universe, they will not be able to explain
why there was this rather than nothing. This metaphysical impossibility
is the abc of any honest scientist.
The history of modern and contemporary art knows the same metaphysic
limits. Some even sometimes wanted to make of art into a pseudo-science.
For many, including for specialists in artistic speculation,
'rectoversion' seems unsuitable for consumption. This non assimilation
can be explained in the following way: 'rectoversion' does
not oppose the causal evolution of visual facts (modern and contemporary
in the majority, in which the concepts of rupture and innovation
play the major part), with the continuity of artistic tradition
which maintains painting within the traditional scope of the flat
exclusively two-dimensional surface.
It would seem that modern sequencing of visual facts and their
analysis obeys a logic where objectivity is the driving force. Painting
is regarded there as a suitable material for objective experimentation.
This empirical aspect brings it closer to renewable almost scientific
experimentation. The trouble is that in fact from objectivity, contemporary
art often evolves in an exasperated subjectivism, which moves it
away from any scientific process.
If physics cannot delete several milleniums of metaphysics, it
is the same for painting. Any art that is satisfied with this chronic
subjectivism cannot ignore that the founder role of art is a magic
act where the artist stands back and makes way for reality which
exceeds him and which he serves. How to reconcile tradition and
innovation? 'Rectoversion' is one of the proposals able to
solve such questioning...(...)...
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