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Visionary cultures: My everydayness is your exotica
wherein your faithful narrator belabors the obvious yet again and again, repetitiously, about art, globalization, imagination, and Alex Gross and Bruce Sterling. With an excursion to Belgium at the end of it.
I continue to be preoccupied with the pseudo-problem I set for myself in a previous post with regard to the ongoing imaginative depths of Victoriana, or more accurately, why and how things come to be cool that formerly were regarded as utterly dorky.
The Surrealists simply discovered (as others had before them) that the outmoded, the outworn, the discarded took on a certain aura once time had removed it from its original humdrum context. But this is only a special case of the general principle that my everyday is your exotic, and vice versa. Some of the trade goods of antiquity were precious in their countries of origin, and unobtainable in the countries to which the caravans traveled; but others were simply the product that could be had in abundance in the country that marketed it, but not at all in the countries that wanted it. As with the not very good imported beer that became a trendy item in America a couple of decades ago (pretentious consumption has since gotten better at insisting on value for too much money), distance and unfamiliarity gave things a cachet. Thus do the torn T-shirts of the North American continent become the prestige items of parts of Africa, and second- or third-rate versions of African craft become designer décor in return.
Sometimes, perhaps often, the recontextualized object finds a superior use to its original one, as well as a greater emotional valuation; some Victorian emblemata that were mawkish in their original versions become considerably more complex the second time around (as in the original Surrealist practice), though other times the new context is just as treacly as the old one was.
I know, the rejoinder to that is, you got something against treacle?
Anyway, the imagination is capable of recycling absolutely anything as a more interesting and engaging product than it was in its original literal incarnation: the most boring and unremittingly bland of daily lives can be and are made into the stuff of eminently readable novels, though I personally find it sufficient to stop with the reviewer’s summary most of the time.
And while human society can be based on premises that seem utterly improbable to those who do not share the preconceptions, one of the many constants in human behavior seems to be this tendency to find fascination in the novelty of alien objects and practices. It isn’t a constant across all psychological types, and certain types seem to be more dominant in some cultures than in others; there are those for whom childhood familiarity really is all there is, who live in a kind of constant disgust at the world’s variety ever thereafter. And we all know the societies in which cultural contamination has been proscribed on pain of death. But such drastic measures wouldn’t be necessary if it weren’t possible to imagine some perverse soul wanting to engage in it.
I continue to belabor the utterly obvious in this manner, because the utterly obvious becomes baffling to me when looked at long enough. Obviously the ongoing obsession with cultural purity (ways of doing and thinking that have to be kept at bay, as distinct from economic and social threats to prosperity and public order) occurs across the political spectrum. But that is a well-worn topic, and I would prefer not to add to the rhetoric expended on it.
But that isn’t what I was setting out to discuss; what I wanted to discuss was the new book on The Art of Alex Gross (Chronicle Books; April 2007) with an absolutely brilliant introductory essay by Bruce Sterling.
However, I think I will try to hide that behind an LJ-cut for the sake of those who grow impatient with my art essays, which stubbornly refuse to migrate to the Counterforces weblog.
( ”gross” )
wherein your faithful narrator belabors the obvious yet again and again, repetitiously, about art, globalization, imagination, and Alex Gross and Bruce Sterling. With an excursion to Belgium at the end of it.
I continue to be preoccupied with the pseudo-problem I set for myself in a previous post with regard to the ongoing imaginative depths of Victoriana, or more accurately, why and how things come to be cool that formerly were regarded as utterly dorky.
The Surrealists simply discovered (as others had before them) that the outmoded, the outworn, the discarded took on a certain aura once time had removed it from its original humdrum context. But this is only a special case of the general principle that my everyday is your exotic, and vice versa. Some of the trade goods of antiquity were precious in their countries of origin, and unobtainable in the countries to which the caravans traveled; but others were simply the product that could be had in abundance in the country that marketed it, but not at all in the countries that wanted it. As with the not very good imported beer that became a trendy item in America a couple of decades ago (pretentious consumption has since gotten better at insisting on value for too much money), distance and unfamiliarity gave things a cachet. Thus do the torn T-shirts of the North American continent become the prestige items of parts of Africa, and second- or third-rate versions of African craft become designer décor in return.
Sometimes, perhaps often, the recontextualized object finds a superior use to its original one, as well as a greater emotional valuation; some Victorian emblemata that were mawkish in their original versions become considerably more complex the second time around (as in the original Surrealist practice), though other times the new context is just as treacly as the old one was.
I know, the rejoinder to that is, you got something against treacle?
Anyway, the imagination is capable of recycling absolutely anything as a more interesting and engaging product than it was in its original literal incarnation: the most boring and unremittingly bland of daily lives can be and are made into the stuff of eminently readable novels, though I personally find it sufficient to stop with the reviewer’s summary most of the time.
And while human society can be based on premises that seem utterly improbable to those who do not share the preconceptions, one of the many constants in human behavior seems to be this tendency to find fascination in the novelty of alien objects and practices. It isn’t a constant across all psychological types, and certain types seem to be more dominant in some cultures than in others; there are those for whom childhood familiarity really is all there is, who live in a kind of constant disgust at the world’s variety ever thereafter. And we all know the societies in which cultural contamination has been proscribed on pain of death. But such drastic measures wouldn’t be necessary if it weren’t possible to imagine some perverse soul wanting to engage in it.
I continue to belabor the utterly obvious in this manner, because the utterly obvious becomes baffling to me when looked at long enough. Obviously the ongoing obsession with cultural purity (ways of doing and thinking that have to be kept at bay, as distinct from economic and social threats to prosperity and public order) occurs across the political spectrum. But that is a well-worn topic, and I would prefer not to add to the rhetoric expended on it.
But that isn’t what I was setting out to discuss; what I wanted to discuss was the new book on The Art of Alex Gross (Chronicle Books; April 2007) with an absolutely brilliant introductory essay by Bruce Sterling.
However, I think I will try to hide that behind an LJ-cut for the sake of those who grow impatient with my art essays, which stubbornly refuse to migrate to the Counterforces weblog.
( ”gross” )
