Kenny Wilson's Blog

Category: Art

  • The Bride and the Bachelors: an exhibition at The Barbican, London March 2013

    Duchamp Nude Descending a Staircase
    Duchamp Nude Descending a Staircase

    Until recently I knew about Marcel Duchamp but not very much. I knew he was an iconoclast who presented a porcelain urinal as a work of art but I had no idea of his profound influence on others like John Cage and Merce Cunningham. Visiting this exhibition at the Barbican changed all that. It is apparent how important Duchamp’s ideas were. In fact, it has filled in quite a few gaps for me.

    It is perhaps not suprising to have not seen many of his works in the past. It seems that most of them are in Philadelphia and there aren’t really that many of them. Also, many of his art works were conceptual and the original pieces were lost. It was the idea that was important. This was especially true of his readymades. The famous urinal piece Fountain was presented for exhibition  to the Society of Independent Artists exhibit in 1917. “Artworks in the Independent Artists shows were not selected by jury, and all pieces submitted were displayed. However, the show committee insisted that Fountain was not art, and rejected it from the show. This caused an uproar amongst the Dadaists, and led Duchamp to resign from the board of the Independent Artists.”(Wikipedia)

    Duchamp Fountain
    Duchamp Fountain. This is the only known photograph of the original urinal that was lost. Signed by R.Mutt! It was turning it on it’s side and signing it that made it art!

    This was the point at which Duchamp rejected retinal (roughly, things you can see) art and developed ideas of “art at the service of the mind.” In fact, he is probably the first conceptual artist. He liked the idea of being an artist but was not so convinced by art.He was a big influence on the Dadaists of the early 20s who rejected mainstream art.

    Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of World War I. This international movement was begun by a group of artists and poets associated with the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition. The origin of the name Dada is unclear; some believe that it is a nonsensical word. Others maintain that it originates from the Romanian artistsTristan Tzara and Marcel Janco‘s frequent use of the words da, da, meaning yes, yes in the Romanian language. Another theory says that the name “Dada” came during a meeting of the group when a paper knife stuck into a French-German dictionary happened to point to ‘dada’, a French word for ‘hobbyhorse’.(Dona Budd “The Language of Art Knowledge”)

    I don't belive in art I believe in artists.

    This exhibition deals with Duchamp’s ideas but also looks at his influence on other artists particularly John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. As I found earlier on this year he was also a big influence on Richard Hamilton who created his own picture of Nude Descending a Staircase which you can see in a previous post. The Nude by Duchamp was painted at a time when he was influenced by both Cubism and Futurism and he tries to convey movement in the picture which I think he succeeds in. The Hamilton picture on the other hand seems very static. Was that intentional?

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    Hamilton’s version of Duchamp

    John Cage is someone I know a lot more about. Like Duchamp and other members of the American avant garde in the 1940s and 50s he was often seen as a dilettante, a kind of fool but after the publication of his book Silence in the early 1960s opinion of him radically changed and he is now seen as one of the most important composers of the 20th Century. Yes, he is the composer of the infamous 4’33” that so many have heard of but so few have actually heard. It consists of silence in three parts. Of course, he used it to prove there was no such thing as silence. He was influenced by Duchamp but his readymades were found sounds. He put forward the theory that all sound is and can be music. He also introduced chance into his compositions by using the I Ching (a Chinese divination book of wisdom) and other methods. Artist Robert Rauschenberg created paintings that were pure white to show that visual events still happened with shadows, blemishes etc. Choreographer Merce Cunningham created dances in collaboration with Cage and Rauschenberg that used similar chance methods. All of this happened because of the ideas and influence of Duchamp. His position in history is assured.

    John Cage score for Strings 20
    John Cage score for Strings 20 created by dropping ink stained pieces of string on to a page.
    White Painting by Robert Rauschenberg
    White Painting by Robert Rauschenberg

    The exhibition was fascinating and definitely worth visiting. There is music playing and the recorded sounds of dancers (and sometimes real dancers).  There is a strange kind of peacefulness in the air, probably helped by the fact the gallery wasn’t that full when I was there! It raises and in some ways answers the question “what is art for?”. On the other hand the pieces are still displayed in a pristine white gallery and they are still worth millions of dollars to collectors. It’s ironic that 50 years after Duchamp questioned Art and announced the readymade that Andy Warhol could take a Brillo box or a soup can and call it art and it now sells for tens of thousands of dollars. Either someone didn’t get the joke or they never really understood what was being said in the first place. And in the post modern world of Damian Hirst and Tracey Emin there is no longer even any irony in it.

    Duchamp with his bicycle wheel mounted on a stool.
    Duchamp with his bicycle wheel mounted on a stool. Apparently this was never exhibited. He liked having it in his studio and spin the wheel round!
    Jasper Johns Figure 8
    Jasper Johns Figure 8. Creating art from the mundane!
  • ‘Yellowism’ Explained!

    I found this blog when looking for images of Duchamp and decided to copy and post it here. It links to my ‘Vandalising Rothko’ piece and at the time I had no idea what Yellowism was! I found it very interesting so I reposted it in full. It is clear that Vladimir Umanets was very influenced by Duchamp. I want to make it clear that I do not necessarily agree with what’s written here, I’m not sure I can even understand it! However, I believe that Umanets was motivated by a strong force and the question “What Is Art For?” is still a valid pursuit. He showed courage and commitment to do what he did but I’m not convinced by his philosophy at this stage.

    Here’s an interesting post from Interdome about the treatment of Umanets i.e. giving him a two year prison sentence for defacing the Rothko:

    As a case study, let’s look at Ai’s Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn.

    On the surface level, the photo set appears to mock artistic fetishism: Ai looks like he could not possibly give a fuck as he lets the valuable artifact shatter on the ground. There’s a sublime disregard in the pictures; it’s art against art like Kruger’s sentences are ads against ads. But as an artist, Ai can’t destroy art, he can only make more. From one urn, he gets three pictures. If I went into the Hirshhorn, grabbed one of the photos off the wall, and let it fall to ground like I didn’t give a fuck, I would be arrested and taken to jail. It’s only freedom of expression if you break something you own, otherwise it’s vandalism.

    One true vandal learned this lesson (or taught it) very publicly when Vladimir Umanets was sentenced to two years in prison for writing “a potential work of yellowism” on a Mark Rothko painting in London’s Tate Modern. Yellowism is the idea that if anything can become art regardless of its use value, then we could imagine a third category of stuff past art, in light of which the art/non-art distinction dissolves. Both are equally potential works of yellowism, just like a soup can and a urinal are equally art objects. Umanets writing “a potential work of yellowism” on a Rothko is the same as Duchamp Sharpie-ing “a potential work of art” on a toilet while he takes a piss. Except Umanets isn’t an artist. We know he’s not an artist because he’s in jail in England, and England, Ai would remind us, has freedom of expression.

    Umanets wasn’t looking for freedom of expression, but freedom from expression, out from under the artistic injunction to replace what you destroy. He wanted to break without buying, but that’s not in liberalism’s deal. And no one cries for a vandal.

    Because Umanets is a vandal and not an artist, there won’t be any complaints from the U.S. State Department. Because this is England and not Russia, there won’t be a Human Rights Watch report, as there was for the band Pussy Riot when they were arrested for trespassing. Even anti-capitalist arts writers called for his head on a platter.

    Anonymous asked: FUCK OFF PLEASE

    x

    29 Mar 2013 / 0 notes

    ►► The Authors of the Death
    by Marcin Lodyga

    When looking from art perspective, one can say that yellowism is a dead territory where the richness of meanings and interpretations is reduced to one – to yellow. But one needs to remember that yellowists don’t announce the death of art. Art is and will be alive forever. They rather say that yellowism is dead, inert, homogeneous mass without creativity. Authors of the manifesto and definition of yellowism are the authors of the death – yellowists are the authors of a single interpretation. This death is positioned outside of art, like mirror.

    Roland Barthes in “The Death of the Author” says: “To give a text an Author” and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it “is to impose a limit on that text.” Barthes argues against the method of reading that relies on aspects of the author’s identity — their political views, historical context, religion, ethnicity, psychology, or other biographical or personal attributes — to distill meaning from the author’s work. Yellowists want to impose a limit on the text, on art, and on ordinary reality too, but not by giving a “text” an author. Paraphrasing Barthes I say: To give a “text” a YELLOW and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it is to impose a limit on the text. Barthes demands the death of the author (author disappears) because the author’s identity limits the text, the reading. In yellowism case author also disappears and yellow – the necessary “limitation” appears instead of the author.

    Inside yellowism the artistic kingdom of meanings and interpretations is erased together with the author. It doesn’t matter WHO made a piece of yellowism because all pieces were, are and will be about yellow only. Yellowism is permanent, boring, inert, homogeneous flat, ‘dead’ mass. Always was and always will be. Like in the forest where all the trees (meanings) ‘look’ the same – wherever you go you are in the same place anyway. A thousand kilometers left, two meters right or backwards – you are always in the same place. In yellowism the nature of the authors has “the identity of the indistinguishable forest”.

    Barthes conclusion: “the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author.” Yellowism conclusion: the death of meanings and the death of the author must be ransomed by the birth of single meaning – yellow.

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    Marcin Lodyga
    “Sounds from the chamber”
    piece of yellowism
    for public audition in yellowistic chambers only
    CD / audio recording of a walk through Miroslaw Balka exhibition Gravity made in the gallery space
    executed in 2013

    Anonymous asked: please can you explain the relevance of all the tits and bums on this site to yellowism. Is yellowism tits and bums? is that the context everything is reduced to?

    x

    5 Mar 2013 / 1 note

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    Anonymous asked: At least Marinetti was funny..

    x

    4 Mar 2013 / 1 note

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    ►► Luncheon on the grass
    (on the grass: Arthur Danto, Roy Turner, Joseph Kosuth, Marcin Lodyga)

    What makes the difference between a Brillo box and a work of art consisting of a Brillo box is a certain theory of art. It is the theory that takes it up into the world of art, and keeps it from collapsing into the real object which it is. – Arthur Danto. But to expose the irrelevance of this idea when attributed to the tradition, we have only to ask what “real object”, “Le déjeuner sur l’herbe” by Manet collapses into when the implicit theory which supported it is refuted. – ask another thinker Roy Turner (Philosophy Now magazine)

    Marcin Lodyga starts: If “Le déjeuner sur l’herbe” by Manet was placed in the context of yellowism, inside a yellowistic chamber, then it would stop to be a work of art and it would become a piece of yellowism – a pure expression of yellow color in the form of Manet painting. Inside yellowism the painting by Manet is not a work of art. We have only to ask what piece of yellowism “Le déjeuner sur l’herbe” by Manet collapses into when the implicit context of yellowism which supported it is refuted. The answer: it collapses into a work of art, it becomes a work of art again, it gains its previous status.

    Painting is a kind of art. If you make paintings you are already accepting (not questioning ) the nature of art. One is then accepting the nature of art to be the European tradition of a painting-sculpture dichotomy. – nervously said Joseph Kosuth (“Art After Philosophy”). Dear Joseph – Marcin replies – in the context of yellowism – which is NOT a kind of total, huge conceptual art work, as you would consider it probably, painting is not a work of art. You said: “Art is the definition of art”, I say: yellowism is the definition of yellowism.

    text by Marcin Lodyga
    27/02/13

    The Flaneur art blog- Should Umanets really be jailed for 2 years for defacing a Rothko? #yellowism –

    flaneurphotos:

    New Post has been published onhttp://flaneur.me.uk/12/should-umanets-really-be-jailed-for-2-years-for-defacing-a-rothko-yellowism/

    Should Umanets really be jailed for 2 years for defacing a Rothko? #yellowism

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    26 Feb 2013 / Reblogged from flaneurphotos with 5 notes / yellowism

    Interdome: As a case study, let’s look at Ai’s Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn. On the…

    interdome:

    As a case study, let’s look at Ai’s Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn.

    On the surface level, the photo set appears to mock artistic fetishism: Ai looks like he could not possibly give a fuck as he lets the valuable artifact shatter on the ground. There’s a sublime disregard in the pictures;…

    26 Feb 2013 / Reblogged from interdome with 4 notes / yellowism


    fixedgearbikesyeah asked: NO ONE CARES

    x

    9 Feb 2013 / 1 note

    justiceismine asked: Yellowism is neither art, nor anti-art but a cause. Some might ask if Yellowism is needed or say it’s pathetic/stupid but I say it deserves it’s place as did Jackson Pollock for example, which he did not get at his time.

    x

    6 Feb 2013 / 3 notes

    spacecowboysparklefingers asked: No one is going to drink your yellow kool-aid. Your totalitarian snake oil ideology has been ineffectual and irrelevant since De Stijl/Neoplasticism tried it. There is no dialogue here, you won’t even respond to this with anything more than an “X”. Please don’t write on anymore Rothko’s (or any other pieces of art for that matter), they are not yours to write on, and some people really enjoy them. No one wants you here yellowism, go home.

    x

    6 Feb 2013 / 1 note

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    Marcin Lodyga
    “You can start painting again, in yellowism”
    yellowistic draft
    signed and dated on the front
    poster printed for the occasion of Duchamp season in Barbican, London
    150 x 100 cm
    executed in 2013

    image

    ►► Rome outside of art
    by Marcin Lodyga

    Yellowism is not dadaism or neo-dadaism. If you think that yellowism is dadaism then actually you are a dadaist, because you try to devalue yellowism and make it meaningless. Dadaists were nihilists and they “promoted” nonsense. The fact that in yellowism everything means yellow leads to the wrong conclusion that everything means nothing and therefore yellowism is perceived as nihilism /dadaism. This is the big misunderstanding. The real consequence of yellowism existence is the philosophy of ONE and the vision of many different isms (existing outside of art) which can be reduced to (one) yellow-ism anyway. Although yellowism clones exist under different names – they are yellowism. In the future: many one-perspective “worlds”. Not only one “world” full of perspectives (meanings), many various subjective interpretations – like in postmodernism, especially postmodern art, but also many separate “worlds” (greenism, blueism, chairism) with one perspective each, concentrated on one meaning only. Yellowism, divided into many isms, will be positioned away from the forever developing, “organic” realm of art.

    The total flattening announced by yellowists is more humanitarian than dadaism because it doesn’t leave people with nothing – inside the desert of meanings where you can watch only the wrecks and corpses of culture. Yellowists save one meaning (yellow) for everything and also they let you live in the “yellowistic totalitarian illusion of many”- you can exist in autonomous groups called greenism, blueism, chairism or skyism etc. but you will be a yellowist anyway. All roads lead to Rome. The universal Rome – the absolute truth will be always outside of art.

    Dadaists are nihilists, they do not offer anything, they don’t show a new perspective, new possibilities, they replace everything with nothing. » Dada (…) wants nothing, absolutely nothing, and what it does is to make the public say ” We understand nothing, nothing, nothing “. “The Dadaists are nothing, nothing, nothing and they will surely succeed in nothing, nothing, nothing.” « 391, No. 12, Paris, March 1920 Francis Picabia who knows nothing, nothing, nothing.

    Nihilists say that without absolute, universal, and transcendent values, there can be no real values at all. Friedrich Nietzsche, however, argues that the lack of such absolute values does not imply the absence of any values at all. Nietzsche “permits” the values of many different and even mutually exclusive perspectives. This is called “perspectivism” – all ideations take place from particular perspectives. This means that there are many possible conceptual schemes, or perspectives in which judgment of truth or value can be made. This leads (me) to postmodernism. Postmodernism is the consequence of Nietzsche’s perspectivism but is nihilistic. The proliferation of alternative perspectives, beliefs and values makes that postmodern society is foundationless.

    This what we see in the galleries is the result of postmodernism or post-post modernism, or postpostpostmodernism, whatever. Many perspectives, many points of view, not one grand and universal but many interpretations closed inside the circle called “art”. In the future artists will resign from art, will abandon this circle. Art full of many perspectives will still exist but will be surrounded by – isms. Some artists will never leave the territory of art but there will be yellowists, greenists, chairists looking at them from outside – located in one perspective circles.

    All the other isms are actually yellow-ism because, they have the same architecture, logic. Finally they can be reduced to yellowism, flattened to yellow-ism. However, people will need this totalitarian illusion of many isms, they will construct their own contexts, for example greenism,redism, chairism or godism, and they will be happy inside the isms but all the new one-meaning worlds can be always considered as yellowism.

    Yellowism doesn’t replace (like dadaism) all the values with nothing, yellowism gives one sense instead of nonsense. Yellowism presents the vision of many autonomous territories around multiperspective art. Yellowism saves the ONE – whatever it is: blue, green, chair and offers the new grand philosophy of ONE.

    Marcin Lodyga
    18.01.2013
    London

    mysar: yellow posterby rasym aka. mysar

    mysar:

    yellow posterby rasym aka. mysar

    19 Jan 2013 / Reblogged from mysar with 3 notes

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    Marcin Lodyga, Khadija Davies
    Portrait of Members of Art & Language with Caps, in the Style of Jackson Pollock
    yellowistic draft
    signed and dated 18/01/13 on the front
    magazine cover, pink ink
    22.4 x 28.6 cm
    Executed in 2013

    The authors of manifesto and definition of yellowism Marcin Łodyga and Vladimir Umanets at The British Museum in London (January 2012).
    © Sylwester Kolton.

    ►► Discipline and punish.The birth of the black hole

    Yellowists see the whole domain of reality and the whole domain of art as gigantic readymades which can be transported into the context of yellowism. Yellowism is a specific prison, a ghetto in which you are free from freedom, in which the freedom of interpretation doesn’t exist. Every content placed in this territory defines yellow color. It requires a noetic discipline. You have to respect the internal yellowism law. Yellowism is a bit like a black hole – most of the information about the matter that went into forming the black hole is lost. In the end yellowism only remembers the total mass, charge, and angular momentum. The physical form of objects and beings transported from art and reality is preserved, but all the forms carry only one, always and forever the same, identical message. You can observe that something is moving inside, you can watch pieces of yellowism free from the past and future; there is a movement but there is actually no time.

    Yellowists don’t punish art, they don’t take a revenge on art or reality. Manifesto of yellowism is not a death sentence for art. Yellowists don’t destroy and don’t create. Yellowism is not vandalism and it’s not a form of creation. There is no postmodern, Derrida’s deconstruction, any destruction or creative construction inside yellowism. There is something else: flatstruction. Everything is flattened to yellow, all interpretations are ironed to one flat surface, to one meaning. The total flattening (flatstruction) is a state of permanent homogeneity. Yellowists don’t create and they don’t destroy, they make everything flat therefore, inside yellowism, deconstruction, creativity, vandalism, surrealism or fascism or anything else is flattened to one, to the expression of yellow.

    Artists push the boundaries of art and are imprisoned in their seeming freedom. Yellowists are free outside of art. They resigned from art, they overstepped the boundary and the fact that everything can be about yellow gives them the almost cosmic freedom.

    text by Marcin Lodyga

    ►► A dead animal

    Today you can overstep the border, you can be a bit like Alice through the looking glass, you don’t have to, together with other artists, push the boundaries of art further anymore, now it’s time to cross it and discover the another, still unknown for many, space called yellowism. Of course, you can stay where you are and run your artistic life in harmony with the motion of postmodernism. Yellowists don’t announce the end of art; they say in manifesto: art is a forever developing whole. They don’t promote a slogan: “art is dead”, they rather say that yellowism is dead and always was dead and always will be dead. Therefore they don’t want to replace art with yellowism. They just introduce a new autonomous territory, specific environment which is parallel to the context of art. They give you a vision of time in culture when the resignation from art will be a trend. Yellowists show you the possibility of alternative existence in which the fact that you abandon art is considered as the most creative decision. It doesn’t matter what the condition of art will be after twenty or hundred years – yellowism will be still the same. Any changes and any progress around yellowism are and will be, metaphorically speaking, like a tank of formaldehyde for a dead animal.

    text by Marcin Lodyga

  • What I am! : a poem by Kenny Wilson

    richard-hamilton-dies-007

    You have tried to control me
    and you have succeeded
    You have tried to take what I am
    and put it in a pocket
    and control me
    and take what I am and
    say what I should be
    in a grim world
    of dark shadows.

    No you can’t!!
    I will not be controlled
    by your desire for power
    and lost energy.

    I am free!!

    Please leave me alone so I can grow
    in the garden of my own making
    and my own design.

    I don’t belong to you or anyone
    I am ME!
    You have no control over me.
    Let me breathe!
    Let me be!!

    duchamp_was_here

  • DAVID BOWIE EXHIBITION

    David Bowie Exhibition (reprinted from ‘That’s Not My Age‘)

    Starman suit.

    Bowie Mania has come to town – and I like it. Record advance ticket sales (an astounding 47 thousand) for the V&A’s exhibition and a number one album highlight this 66-year old superstar’s enduring appeal. From the Ziggy Stardust neon flash in the foyer, to the floor-to-ceiling surround-sound Bowie Fest in the penultimate room, this exhibition documents the artist’s life, sound and vision-style. And if there’s one artist who’s life is worth documenting in a world-class museum, here he is. Stereo headphones for the soundtrack – thankfully there’s no Tin Machine – and banks of video screens for the Man Who Fell To Earth visuals, immerse visitors in the World of Bowie.

    More than 300 objects from His Majesty’s personal archive – wonky handwritten lyrics, naive sketches, even a crumpled up tissue with Bowie’s lipstick on it (much redder than you’d imagine) – are on show for the first time. I’m not a fan of blockbuster shows, Art Rage is something I can live without, but it was worth being jostled by journalists and clobbered by cameramen at this exclusive preview. I loved seeing the stage costumes, over 60 of them – the teeny tiny waisted, pale blue suit from his Life On Mars video, the Aladdin Sane knitted all-in-one, designer gear from McQueen, Mugler and Slimane – plus photos and videos of the artist’s many guises, are a reminder of Bowie’s radical individualism and his massive influence on fashion, style and popular culture. Not that we ever needed one.

    Knitted Love: Aladdin Sane
    Remember when everyone wore Bowie pants?
    Diamond Dogs suit.
    Photo: Terry O’Neil.

    Towards the end of the show there’s a ‘David Bowie is all around you’ installation, highlighting his impact on musicians/artists/fashion designers/Tilda Swinton, and The Periodic Table of Bowie by Paul Robertson (poster available in the museum shop).

    As the Jon Savage quote goes, ‘David Bowie has lasted. To the public he is beyond a pop star.’

    And now I’m off for a lie down. I’ll be dreaming of BBC2’s feature length profile on Bowie scheduled for May.

  • Lichtenstein A Retrospective at Tate Modern

    lichtenstein_web-banner

    I visited this exhibition last week and was very impressed. The paintings are incredibly familiar ( at least, the 60s pop art pictures) but to see them full size in a gallery is a monumental experience. They are huge. This is what gives them their power.

    Lichtenstein has been accused of being shallow and only concerned with surface but there is a suprising depth in much of the work in this exhibition. The Late Nudes and Chinese Landscapes are particularly affecting. The landscapes enhance and yet subvert the Japanese originals by their sheer size  but the use of dots is incredibly subtle and project a calm atmosphere.

    This is what the program notes say about the nudes:

    Unlike many artists, Lichtenstein did not use live models for his depictions of the female body; instead he returned to his archive of comic clippings to select female characters as subjects – and then literally undressed them, by imagining their bare bodies under their clothes before painting them as nude.

    The paintings Nudes with Beach Ball 1994 and Blue Nude 1995 are examples of his late approach to the nude, brought together at a huge scale in original compositions of single, double and group portraits. The result is a disturbing violation of conventions. The noble nude has been rendered as erotic graphic pulp; the paintings propose her large schematic bland body as an object of desire, yet she experiences desire as well, often captured in a state of reverie or bliss. Like Picasso and Matisse before him, Lichtenstein’s fascination with the painter/model relationship reaches a new level of intimacy and sensuality, meshed with the formal concerns of his painting.

    Blue Nude
    Blue Nude
    Henri Matisse, Blue Nude II, 1952, gouache déc...
    Henri Matisse, Blue Nude II, 1952, gouache découpée, Pompidou Centre, Paris (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    His reimagining of works by other artists also display a greater depth than some people might have thought. He covers many different periods and brings more than just parody to the work. In fact, he shows just  how effective the use of lines and dots can be.

    Still, my favourite of his is his first pop art picture “Look Mickey” to prove to his son he could paint pictures as good as in the comics. Now that is real genius! The rest, as we know, is history!

    a000014d

  • Overcoming the Cultural Crisis by Otto Gross (1913)

    Front cover of the German "Die Aktion&quo...
    Front cover of the German “Die Aktion” from 1914. Illustration of Charles Péguy’s on the occasion of his death made by Egon Schiele (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    The psychology of the unconscious is the philosophy of revolution: i.e., this is what it is destined to become because it ferments insurrection within the psyche, and liberates individuality from the bonds of its own unconscious. It is destined to make us inwardly capable of freedom, destined to prepare the ground for the revolution.

    The incomparable revaluation of all values, with which the imminent future will be filled, begins in this present time with Nietzsche‘s thinking about the depths of the soul and with Freud’s discovery of the so-called psychoanalytic technique. This latter is a practical method which for the first time makes it possible to liberate the unconscious for empirical knowledge: i.e., for us it has now become possible to know ourselves. With this a new ethic is born, which will rest upon the moral imperative to seek real knowledge about oneself and one’s fellow men.

    What is so overpowering in this new obligation to appreciate the truth is that until today we have known nothing of the question that matters incomparably above all others – the question of what is intrinsic, essential in our own being, our inner life, our self and that of our fellow human beings; we have never even been in position to inquire about these things. What we are learning to know is that, as we are today, each one of us possesses and recognises as his own only a fraction of the totality embraced by his psychic personality.

    In every psyche without exception the unity of the functioning whole, the unity of consciousness, is torn in two, an unconscious has split itself off and maintains its existence by keeping itself apart from the guidance and control of consciousness, apart from any kind of self-observation, especially that directed at itself.

    I must assume that knowledge of the Freudian method and its important results is already widespread. Since Freud we understand all that is inappropriate and inadequate in our mental life to be the results of inner experiences whose emotional content excited intense conflict in us. At the time of those experiences – especially in early childhood – the conflict seemed insoluble, and they were excluded from the continuity of the inner life as it is known to the conscious ego. Since then they have continued to motivate us from the unconscious in an uncontrollably destructive and oppositional way. I believe that what is really decisive for the occurrence of repression is to be found in the inner conflict … rather than in relation to the sexual impulse. Sexuality is the universal motive for the infinite number of internal conflicts, though not in itself but as the object of a sexual morality which stands in insoluble conflict with everything that is of value and belongs to willing and reality.

    It appears that at the deepest level the real nature of these conflicts may always be traced back to one comprehensive principle, to the conflict between that which belongs to oneself and that which belongs to the other, between that which is innately individual and that which has been suggested to us, i.e., that which is educated or otherwise forced into us.

    This conflict of individuality with an authority that has penetrated into our own innermost self belongs more to the period of childhood than to any other time.

    The tragedy is correspondingly greater as a person’s individuality is more richly endowed, is stronger in its own particular nature. The earlier and the more intensely that the capacity to withstand suggestion and interference begins its protective function, the earlier and the more intensely will the self-divisive conflict be deepened and exacerbated. The only natures to be spared are those in whom the predisposition towards individuality is so weakly developed and is so little capable of resistance that under the pressure of suggestion from social surroundings, and the influence of education, it succumbs, in a manner of speaking, to atrophy and disappears altogether – natures whose guiding motives are at last composed entirely of alien, handed-down standards of evaluation and habits of reaction. In such second-rate characters a certain apparent health can sustain itself, i.e., a peaceful and harmonious functioning of the whole of the soul or, more accurately, of what remains of the soul. On the other hand, each individual who stands in any way higher than this normal contemporary state of things is not, in existing, conditions, in a position to escape pathogenic conflict and to attain his individual healthi.e., the full harmonious development of the highest possibilities of his innate individual character.

    It is understood from all this that such characters hitherto, no matter in what outward form they manifest themselves – whether they are opposed to laws and morality, or lead us positively beyond the average, or collapse internally and become ill – have been perceived with either disgust, veneration or pity as disturbing exceptions whom people try to eliminate. It will come to be understood that, already today, there exists the demand to approve these people as the healthy, the warriors, the progressives, and to learn from and through them.

    Not one of the revolutions in recorded history has succeeded in establishing freedom for individuality. They all fell flat, each time as precursors of a new bourgeoisie, they ended in a hurried desire to conform to general norms. They have collapsed because the revolutionary of yesterday carried authority within himself. Only now can it be recognized that the root of all authority lies in the family, that the combination of sexuality and authority, as it shows itself in the patriarchal family still prevailing today, claps every individuality in chains.

    The times of crisis in advanced cultures have so far always been attended by complaints about the loosening of the ties of marriage and family life … but people could never hear in this “immoral tendency” the life affirming ethical crying out of humanity for redemption. Everything went to wrack and ruin, and the problem of emancipation from original sin, from the enslavement of women for the sake of their children, remained unsolved.

    The revolutionary of today, who, armed with the psychology of the unconscious has a vision of a free, happy future for the relationship between the sexes, fights against the most primal form of rape, against the father and against father right. The coming revolution is the revolution for mother right.* It does not matter under what outward form and by what means it comes about.

    (From Die Aktion, April 1913, reprinted in Anarchism…, vol.1 p281, Robert Graham.)