Cancel Culture enters the Biennale: easy to cancel, more difficult to fill with new meanings
As far as we can go back in time, the dawn of what we consider our civilization does not begin until a few thousand years ago, when the first buildings date back, a very short history compared to the geological age of the earth, yet it seems that this past holds us prisoners, so that we have to free ourselves from it in order to proceed further. If desired, it can also be traced back to the expression cancel culture , which has found its visible expression in the destruction or removal of the statues of famous people, albeit with reasons attributable to their physical testimony of the oppression of women, non-white ethnic groups. , to native cultures.
I found a radical form of it in the interview with the curator of the Venice Biennale, Cecilia Alemani, who in addition to emphasizing the participation of women at 80 per cent, representative of the whole world, went so far as to talk about overcoming of Renaissance anthropomorphism, a fact that a stretch appeared to a graduated from high school, given that the shattering of the subject, man or environment, took place much later, I would like to say with Cubism; so far a joke that would strike the imagination of the potential visitor, who should expect a sample of works that can only be understood from the title written on the labels alongside. But, in an idea projected forward, he praised a future beyond the human, which is not well understood if he meant to refer to the advent of that new man, a mirage of more than one revolution, but now achievable with a complete disengagement from any legacy experienced as suffocating. Nothing wrong with that, not even original because the artistic language like the literary one has always tried to evolve, claiming its original imprinting, even when this meant taking a step back, finding criteria and styles of a previous time, this has been precisely, as the name implies, the Renaissance, with at its center the recovery of what Leonardo synthesized in the Vetruvian man, placed at the center of the world and the universe.
But, as happens in the entire past, up to language, which up to now constituted the first and essential instrument of identity, once transmitted with the same milk from mother to child, every revolution, if successful, has carried out the pars destruens , among other things by exploiting the existence of a social structure to be demolished; but it almost never succeeded in realizing pars construens , as it had been promoted by its promoters. It is not necessary to leaf through the history books, because we have a verification of it in the double Nazi and Communist experience, which was totalitarian precisely because it was intended to change not only the institutional structure, but society itself, making it the cradle of a new man, comrade or companion who was, under the banner of the primacy of race or class.
Certainly if this is the commitment, difficult that it can be fulfilled by someone born before the Second World War, impregnated since the course of study by a classical culture, starting with the so-called dead languages, which, however, have carried over the centuries an authentic philosophical, civil, political heritage, which has been transfused into the body of what we call Europe, not for nothing by making a Greek mythological fable our own. If this common heritage were missing, as far as the last generations may be aware of it, Europe would lack any identity that was not geographical, despite the incomparable richness provided by the coexistence of different nations in the EU.
If I were able to ask this innovative director of the Biennale a question – among other things supported by a budget of around 18 million, of which only three and a half from private donations – I would ask if what she says is a declaration of the existence of a feminine art – as, moreover, it has been argued for medicine and even mathematics – which deserves a consideration in itself, something similar to athletics, distinguished by gender, but here due to the different performances by bodies with different masses muscular. That is, it implies a pragmatic acknowledgment that it is no longer necessary to study the techniques practiced at various ages or that it is even inadvisable to visit our museums, even if they guarantee Italy absolute prevalence in international comparison.
Certainly this involves a discrimination, if seen with the eyes of today, the artistic production that overflows – so much so that it cannot be exhibited, locked up in the darkness of the deposits – is largely masculine and can be labeled, for what it means, as Western. But it is not a discrimination in the past, but in the reconstruction we make of it in the present, falling into the error of de-historicizing what goes back in time, which is fashionable today, but destined to repeat itself even more vividly when in the future they return to today.
Indeed, one would think that what characterizes contemporary art, beyond the anti-discrimination motivations, is the claim of the absolute primacy of individual experience, now and here, which is proposed as such, so that the user must live it. in a kind of emotional symbiosis, burning in a certain sense the same work, not infrequently prepared as something not lasting. If this is the case, museums could become venues for temporary exhibitions, not intended to host works destined to become "classic", an art synchronous with technical acceleration, which makes every invention obsolete, a present that burns the past, is destined not to have future, but perhaps this is precisely what is most least sought, under the banner of a nihilistic individualism, which optimizes in its own making the fleeting subjective moment.
Many years ago, visiting the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the MoMA, I saw a framed white canvas exhibited as the last piece, despite the criticisms of an expert who accompanied me, I continued to find nothing more than a scrap of fabric, a kind of confession of impotence, everything had already been painted, nothing could be any more. Well, it seems that contemporary art has restarted from that void, which meant a sort of unconditional surrender to the exhaustive and unsurpassed legacy of over two millennia; now the surrender has turned into a negation, if everything is done, everything starts all over again, except that it is relatively easy to erase what is written on the blackboard, not to go back to filling it with communicable messages.
We old people have been taught that art is a language, with its own grammar and syntax, which are extremely variable as indeed the languages spoken, which, since they live, adapt, albeit slowly, to the passing of the seasons, but if instead of a language , it becomes the expression of a personal sensation, transmissible only emotionally, then it makes us suspect that it is a completely different thing, that is strictly contemporary, destined to end with the passage of a couple of generations.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/la-cancel-culture-entra-alla-biennale-facile-cancellare-piu-difficile-riempire-di-nuovi-significati/ on Sat, 12 Feb 2022 03:55:00 +0000.