Art: how it breaks!

Imagine a world where there is nothing left, only ruins and people fighting for survival. And imagine a man who rises from the dust and begins to draw marks on a wall.

He draws a tree, a hill, draw the silhouette of a person.

The others look at him: what he does has nothing to do with their suffering existence, he is not providing food or water, he is not building a shelter.

immagine tratta da artslife

Now shapes other indefinite forms, perhaps they are flowers, galaxies, images that only he can recognize.

People approach, following his movements. Someone walks away shaking his head, others remain, interested. Interested in something that does not concern their daily lives. Or maybe yes. It is art, they know, they are not primitive, they are men of a possible disastrous future.

For a long time, they did not think of artistic action as something possible, too senseless in the contingency of events. Yet, one day, someone started to make art, going beyond the mere material need.

Something invisible and powerful is unleashed by this decision, by this action, drawing a line between a before and an after, opening new horizons.

I was reminded of this hypothetical story thinking of the famous gesture of Marcel Duchamp when, in 1917, he proposed his work "Fontaine" to the Society of Independent Artists, but he did not exhibit it. The work consisted of a ready-made object, specifically a urinal.

In fact, it was a provocation and "Fontaine" became the work of rupture par excellence of the 20th century and beyond. In a world that was increasingly filling with objects, the object itself, industrial, is "elevated" to a work of art, clearly in contrast with the common idea of art as a search for beauty.

And what elevates it to a work of art? The artist's gesture, his decision to propose the object as such, period. Move a urinal from a bathroom to a museum and it becomes art.

The debate on the meaning of such a gesture can be endless, what matters here is the breaking value of the gesture. A rupture that is always openness.

Imagine Duchamp in the early decades of the 20th century entering an art gallery with the urinal under his arm and supporting him decisively in the middle of the exhibition hall, making all those present turn astonished. And now imagine a person of a hypothetical post-apocalyptic future, who rises from the dust and begins to create a work of art, making those present bent people to raise their heads in their daily survival.

In that context, the industrial object of Duchamp memory would have no breaking effect, it would probably simply be used!

You could play the game of "find differences and similarities" for hours. Obviously, art is the daughter of its time, but it can condition its rhythm.

The strength of artistic action is something that cannot be described exhaustively but it is certainly recognizable its being an instrument of rupture, of demarcation. It does not always happen, but by the hand (and mind!) of some individuals who, intercepting an underground movement, periodically it strikes.

Play your game, but the rules don't exist.

Miriam Fusconi