Modern ideas are often applied within the aesthetic imagination of the Filipinos. F. Sionil Jose’s obsession with the significant form and the greatness of the art of the masters echoes Clive Bell in his The Aesthetic Hypothesis, “It is the mark of great art that its appeal is universal and eternal. Significant form stands charged with the power to provoke aesthetic emotion in anyone capable of feeling it… Great art remains stable and unobscure because the feelings that it awakens are independent of time and space, because its kingdom is not of this world… The form of art are inexhaustible; but all lead by the same road of aesthetic emotion to the same world of aesthetic ecstasy” (Bell online). Poleteismo, being something which is not covered with such “great art” becomes a subject of controversy and even ridicule of those that remained left in the time and politics of the “great masters”.
The controversy also shows the pre-conception of a bourgeois, educated perspective in the appreciation and critique of art. Isagani Cruz writes in his column, ““Kulo” was clearly too sophisticated for the general Filipino audience. That is proven by the controversy itself. Even the rich and famous who should know better because they have had the chance to visit the largest museums in the world reacted as though they had never travelled. Because they were miseducated, a number of Catholics understandably could not even distinguish between Church and State, art and religion, protest and violence” (online). This echoes the closed and elitist art world that is reflected in Jurgen Habermas, in his Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, “The bourgeois avant-garde of the educated middle class learned the art of critical-rational public debate through its contact with the “elegant world”. The courtly-noble society, to the extent that modern state apparatus became independent from the monarch’s personal sphere, naturally separated itself, in turn, more and more from the court and became its counterpoise in the town. The “town” was the life center of civil society not only economically; in cultural political contrast to the court, it designated especially an early public sphere in the world of letters whose institutions were the coffee houses, the salons, and the Tischgeselleschaften (table societies)” (1747). It appears that popular critics still believe that there are still the salons and table societies that may house more progressive art forms rather than exposing the general public to such artworks. This elitism and close-mindedness in art discourse fails to enrich the Philippine art discourse and does not address the issue of aesthetics valuation of the Filipinos.
Instead of daring to delve into the aesthetics of conceptual art, art writing in the Philippines are stuck in the ideal, reverting once again to beauty. GWF Hegel’s Philosophy of Fine Arts would become more resonant rather that any exploration or consideration for conceptual art. He says, “Only in the highest art are Idea and presentation truly in conformity with one another, in the sense that the shape given to the Idea is in itself the absolutely true shape, because the content of the Idea which that shape expresses is itself the true and genuine content. Associated with this, as has already been indicated, is the fact that the Idea must be determined in and through itself as a concrete totality, and therefore possess in itself the principle and measure of its particularization and determinacy in external appearance” (Hegel 101). They look into the beauty and truth of an idea of the artwork, rather than its corporeality in everyday life and Philippine society, “For the Idea as such is indeed the absolute truth itself, but the truth only in it’s not yet objectified universality, while the Idea as the beauty of art is the Idea with the nearer qualification of being both essentially individual reality and also an individual configuration of reality destined essentially to embody and reveal the Idea. Accordingly it is here expressed the demand that the Idea and its configuration as a concrete reality shall be made completely adequate to one another. Taken thus, the Idea as reality, shaped in accordance with the Concept of the Idea, is the Ideal” (100). Such an ideal pervades the imagination of art discourse and art practice that unfortunately traps other forms of discourse and practice. There is limited growth in simply searching for the ideal and never even challenging the concept of this ideal that is assigned, even forced into, upon the Filipinos.
The intolerance of varying opinions on art is reminiscent of Immanuel Kant’s The Critique of Judgement wherein the judgement on “taste” is given importance and such concepts were invoked by various critiques published during the controversy. Such elitism of taste is widely invoked by writers and columnists, particularly, again, by F. Sionil Jose as he writes, “Now, let me contribute my two pesos worth in this melee. Bear in mind, I am an octogenarian. I have seen almost every major art museum in the world. I operated one of the earliest art galleries in Manila, Solidaridad, from 1967 to 1977, with the intention of giving our art a Filipino and an Asian face. I am also a novelist, and, as we all know, literature is the noblest of the arts. I am enumerating these not just to establish my bonafides but to show that I know whereof I speak. The exhibit should not have been shown at the CCP. If submitted to my old gallery, I would have rejected it. It is not — I repeat — it is not art! It is an immature and juvenile attempt at caricature. I have not seen the exhibit itself but I have seen pictures of it and they are enough to convince me of the validity of my conclusion” (online). Though there are differences in opinion, published works seeks the agreement of everyone and see the conditioning of “taste”. Kant states that, “The subjective necessity attributed to a judgement of taste is conditioned. The judgement of taste extracts agreement from every one; and a person who describes something as beautiful insists that every one ought to give the object in question his approval and follow suit in describing it as beautiful. The ought in aesthetic judgements, therefore, despite an accordance with all the requisite data for passing judgement, is still only pronounced conditionally. We are suitors for agreement from every one else, because we are fortified with a ground common to all. Further, we would be able to count on this agreement, provided we were always assured of the correct subsumption of the case under that ground as the rule of approval” (Kant 94). Kant also argues that “The necessity of the universal assent that is thought in a judgement of taste, is a subjective necessity which, under the presupposition of a common sense, is represented as objective. In all judgements by which we describe anything as beautiful we tolerate no one else being of a different opinion, and in taking up this position we do not rest out judgement upon concepts, but only on our feeling. Accordingly we introduce this fundamental feeling not as a private feeling, but as a public sense. Now, for this purpose, experience cannot be made the ground of this common sense, for the latter is invoked to justify judgements containing an ‘ought’. The assertion is not that every one will fall in with our judgement, but rather that every one ought to agree with it” (95). This insistence upon the belief of one that should be subscribed to by others is the discourse that is espoused by F. Sionil Jose and those who dealt with the issue. Such matters of taste and those with supposed superior or higher standards of taste is advocated through the popular media as opposed to those who have a limited access upon it.
As revealed in the discussions on Poleteismo, Filipino people are still looking for beauty in art. Numerous articles are looking, not just for beauty but also for the ennoblement of the soul. It almost appears that the Filipino aesthetic valuation and theory remain still with the “great masters” echoed by F. Sionil Jose. In another article by Isagani Cruz, he states that, “Instead of ennobling some Catholics, “Poleteismo” made them commit one of the deadly sins — anger. It made them receive Holy Communion with hatred in their hearts — the sin of sacrilege. It made them judge and therefore made them liable to be judged. It made them throw the first stone even if — let us not be hypocritical — no human beings except Jesus and His mother Mary were born without sin. There is provoking and there is provoking. The kind of provoking that Mideo Cruz did was not justified by the creative piece that he did. Critics always say that an artist should “earn” the effect of his or her work. That means that there should be a deliberate, successful effort by the artist to achieve whatever it is she or he wants to achieve. No art piece can be conceived simply on the spur of the moment. Every art piece that aspires to be art is always the product of long, careful, profound hard work. Therefore, based on the reception of the work, “Poleteismo” flunked the test of good art. It may be art, but it is bad art. It may be art, but it is not Art” (online). This kind of discourse becomes the popular and the norm for the Filipinos, which ironically, echoes some of the earliest aesthetic discourses. Plotinus, in his Ennead One: Sixth Tractate, echoes the same sentiment, “Such should be the experience of beauty, amazement, pleasant consternation, yearning, ardour, and excitement mixed with pleasure” (50). Such belief is also reflected by Francis Hutcheson in An Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, “Our sense of beauty seems designed to give us positive pleasure, but not positive pain or disgust” (97). These are early philosophies of aesthetics that are subscribed to by the popular writers and are therefore what most Filipinos are exposed to.
Looking back, one of the earliest theories on beauty is that of the Greeks. Their understanding of beauty focuses on the “1. wonderful and supreme; 2. as beyond all measures and distinctions, related to un-limit; 3. as pertaining to all things; 4. as pertaining to the gods and to nature and natural things as well as to human beings and their works, including works of art; 5. as pertaining to finite things, shapes, colors, sounds, thoughts, customs, characters, and laws; and 6. as inseparable from goodness and excellence (arete)” (Ross in Oxford 238). There appears to be a limited understanding of beauty as well as the canons of art in the aesthetic understanding of the Philippines. It is widely believed that there is a standard of beauty and a specific canon that should be followed for art to be considered as art. There is, not only a canon for beauty but also a canon on how art should be perceived. Silvers writes, “Canonical objects accomplish this not by modeling how other works should look (each should be unique) but instead by modeling how we should look at other works; that is, the eye or ear or sensibility of the prospective connoisseur is cultivated by exposure to art that the admiration of previous generations of connoisseurs has marked as canonical (Oxford 335). This kind of perspective was perhaps part of what inspired F. Sionil Jose in citing his experiences of seeing the works of great masters from great museums that make him an expert on judging the work as something which is not art. The discernment from a photograph is enough for him to determine that he can actually do the work and therefore declare that it is not art. Again, as this is a word by a National Artist, it pertains to a canonical valuation as well as a canonical perspective on beauty.
On judging beauty, David Hume’s Standard of Taste should be looked into. He says that, “It is well-known, that in all questions, submitted to the understanding, prejudice is destructive of sound judgement, and perverts all operations of the intellectual faculties: It no less contrary to good taste; nor has it less influence to corrupt the sentiment of beauty (Hume 494). Ironically, Hume also points out that not everyone can properly judge artworks as they may be lacking in their taste. He further states that, “Thus, though the principles of taste be universal, and nearly if not entirely the same in all men; yet few are qualified to give judgement on any work of art, or establish their own sentiment as the standard of beauty. The organs of internal sensation are seldom so perfect as to allow the general principles their full play, and produce a feeling correspondent to those principles” (494). The belief that there are standards to be followed and that not everyone is capable of having or discerning that standard is prevalent among the Filipino popular writers. For F. Sionil Jose and the others, it is the great masters of the art world that are the standards of beauty and greatness of artworks. Again, as F. Sionil Jose writes, “First, what is art? I go by this simple definition: Being an artist myself although I work with words not with the brush — if I can do it, it is not art. If I were to do the Jesus Christ commentary in oil, I would have used imagination, craftsmanship, and most important — originality. None of these basic qualities are in the CCP exhibit” (online). There is a canon of the medium–the oil, and not only that, but also the canon of looking at and examining the medium. Though there is a welcoming online discourse on the matter, it is still those with a larger voice that is given the larger space to express their views, as in the case of columnists and editors; more than the ordinary netizen or even the academics and theoreticians.
There is also the pervading belief that art should be pleasurable because of its beauty. Perhaps it is where aesthetic education of the Filipinos today came from and eventually got stuck there. Friedrich Von Schiller in his essay On the Aesthetic Education of Man, he states that, “For whole centuries thinkers and artists will do their best to submerge truth and beauty in the depths of a degraded humanity; it is they themselves who are drowned there, while truth and beauty, with their own indestructible vitality struggle triumphantly to the surface” (Schiller 580). The Cultural Center of the Philippines is still stuck in “The true, the good and the beautiful” that the aesthetic education of Filipinos became stunted in its growth. The Imeldification that struck CCP from its founding in 1969 until the present day was never truly replaced. Risqué, challenging and confrontational artworks that do not fit “the true, the good and the beautiful” suffers. The publicity received from the Imelda visit and her comments on KKK (Katotohanan, Kabutihan at Kagandahan) struck a nerve, not just on the artworld but on the Filipino public. Once again, this woman was listened to, especially as newspapers, such as Inquirer and Sun credits her for the closing of the exhibition. This discourse on beauty is traumatized and afraid of disgust and merely looks into pleasure. These valuation is where the aesthetic value of the Filipinos, even the institutions got trapped in. It is a good philosophy to a certain extent, but far too narrow and limited. It may apply more to the 19th century Filipino oil paintings but hardly to conceptual and popular art that numerous artists are exploring in the present time. Contemporary context of art will hardly apply to the concept of “the true, the good and the beautiful.”
In the discourse of beauty and the sublime, the sublime was hardly looked into within the popular discourse. Mideo Cruz’s Poleteismo would fit more into the theory and aesthetics of the sublime, rather than the concept of beauty that was insisted upon by the popular media. Guy Sircello in Is a Theory of the Sublime Possible? poses the possibilities of the sublime discourse that might also be useful in the discourse of Poleteismo. He first distinguishes the tripartite aspect on the issue of the sublime, “first, there are experiences of the sublime or alternatively, sublime experiences. Second, there is what I call the sublime discourse. And third, there is talk about the sublime (Sircello 541). In this context, he poses some assumptions, “The first assumption is that only sublime experience properly motivates sublime discourse and therefore that only sublime experience is the proper and ultimate subject matter of talk about the sublime” and “My second assumption is that sublime experience can and does occur in a large variety of personal, cultural, social and historical contexts, all such contexts also inevitably involving experience that is not specifically sublime” (542). He formulated a theme on the sublime which he refers to as an “epistemological transcendence” (542) that is supposed to validate a sublime discourse that can somewhat be quantified without falling into the trap of universalism. Despite this attempt, there are still various topics that needs further exploration, “(1) what it might mean, (2) whether it is indeed presented in sublime experiences, (3) what, if so, there might be about such experience that could present an epistemological transcendence of that form, and finally, (4) whether epistemological transcendence as so interpreted is warrantable or believable are tasks–among many other tasks–at least for more talk about the sublime, if not for a theory of the sublime. This exploration of the subliminal discourse will be much useful in Mideo Cruz’s work, particularly in the experience, discourse and talk that the artwork and the surrounding controversies inspired.
Part III of Art Conversations. I am working on this topic. I am posting it here, hoping for a response from those who wants to engage in this conversation.
The earliest cries on the aesthetic value of Poleteismo is its position as art. It is the root cause of the controversy and debate when the issue of religious offense was set aside. Various definition of art was propositioned from various sectors, including two of the most popular and opposing editorials–F. Sionil Jose’s Hindsight: The CCP Jesus Christ exhibit: It ain’t art and Raul Pangalagan’s Freedom for the thought we hate. F. Sionil Jose states that, “First, what is art? I go by this simple definition: Being an artist myself although I work with words not with the brush — if I can do it, it is not art. If I were to do the Jesus Christ commentary in oil, I would have used imagination, craftsmanship, and most important — originality. None of these basic qualities are in the CCP exhibit. Our problem as art patrons and viewers is that we have somehow lost the capacity to discern, to criticize, and also to remember. We go back to the yesteryear, the masters we studied in school, the sculptors of ancient Greece and Rome, the classical writers as well, Homer, Cervantes all of them. Even without the superior implements and materials today, the many varieties of oils for the painters, and the modern cutting instruments powered by electricity, the artists of the ancient world were able to produce those sculptures and paintings that continue to delight us with their fine detail and their exquisite form. Now, we say that there is a new way of looking at things and I agree, but the old verities remain: that artists are craftsmen, they are a special people, for not everyone can draw, or write” (online). Meanwhile, Raul Pangalagan cite’s that, “The fourth fallacy is that Poleteismo deserves less protection because it is lesser art, a “mere” collage, in contrast to, say, a “real” painting. What is art, after all? If you have to ask, Rambo, you’ll never know. The CCP’s curator selected only well-known artists, and this exhibit has been previously housed at two universities, the Ateneo de Manila and the University of the Philippines” (online). Obviously, each has a position in the artworld enough to enable them to write a these columns. It is recognized by both that to a certain extent, art has to be validated, particularly, by the institution that concerns it. F. Sionil Jose’s position, certainly places himself as an institution that can verify the art as an art, higher than the institution of the CCP, comparing the work to ancient “masters”. Meanwhile, Pangalagan recognizes the CCP as the institution that can show and decide on art, as well as recognizing other institutions–Ateneo de Manila University and the University of the Philippines as having the valid voice in granting the label of art.
As demonstrated, one of the key concepts that is brought by the controversy is the very root of artistic and aesthetic discussion–the problem of defining art. The very basic concept that will be discussed in an art class is the definition of art. What is art? Lengthened study on the subject will not bear a specific definition on the matter. Until the present time, there are numerous debates on this issue. It is most beneficial in the matter at hand to go back to the institutional definition of art, especially as espoused by three theoreticians–Morris Weitz, George Dickie and William L. Blizek. Though there are various points that they critique on one another, there is a basic principle that is obvious–the definition of art is highly relevant on the institution that it resides in. Aside from the galleries and auction houses that highly contributes to the market of value of art and its place in the art world, it is the academic institution that theorize, research and establish the concept of art. It is upon the book, journals and other writings published by credible writers, academics, critics and historians that largely determine the concept and definition of art.
Morris Weitz in his article The Role of Theory in Aesthetics focuses on the determination of the nature of art elucidated in the definition of it, thus answering the basic question of What is art? The definition is formulated by the identification of the necessary and sufficient properties of art (Weitz 191). He compares the definition of art with games wherein there is no common properties, instead there are strands of similarities. He says, “Knowing what art is not apprehending some manifest or latent essence but being able to recognize, describe, and explain those things we call “art” in virtue of these similarities” (195). Weitz points out that the concept of art is an open concept and its character cannot ensure a solid set of defining properties (195-196). In the study of aesthetics, he says, “To understand the role of aesthetic theory is not to conceive it as definition, logically doomed to failure, but to read it as summaries of seriously made recommendations to attend in certain ways to certain features of art” (198). For Weitz, aesthetics would apply more into the judgement of what makes a work of art good rather than what makes art, in which the exploration would likely not work.
George Dickie on the other hand goes beyond Weitz’s “generalization argument” and “classification argument” and actually gave an institutional definition of art in his article What is Art? An Institutional Analysis(207). He defines an art work as “(1) an artifact (2) a set of aspects of which has had conferred upon it the statues of candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting on behalf of a certain social institution (the art world)” (212). He also defines the people who belong into that art world, “The core personnel of the art world is loosely organized, but nevertheless related, set of persons including artists (understood to refer to painters, writers, composers), producers, museum directors, museum-goers, reporters for newspapers, critics for publications of all sorts, art historians, art theorists, philosophers of art, and others. These are the people who keep the machinery of the art world working thereby provide for its continuing existence. In addition every person who sees himself as a member of the art world is thereby a member” (212-213). This definition clearly has a renewed interpretation with the online world as anyone can have and does have a voice on the art world and therefore may also declare one’s self as part of it. This is also the main point that William L. Blizek will challenge.
In An Institutional Theory of Art, William L. Blizek challenges Dickie’s concept on the membership int he art world and the role that a person plays in that art world. His main objections are– “(a) It will be difficult to determine which objects in the world are works of art if anyone who ‘sees himself as a member of the art world’ can transform any object into a work of art simply by treating it as a candidate for appreciation” (219) and “(b) Many objects which are not generally considered to be works of art might be included in the realm of art simply because someone had at one time or another conferred upon them the requisite status” (219). This challenge applies especially in today’s scene as the mode of communication rapidly changed. Anyone can post anything, as a comment, critique or otherwise that are immediately viewable to a wide public. It may be open to the criticism or agreement of others. How can the conferring upon an object as an art happen by a member of the art world happen in a communication landscape that opens up the conferment to virtually anyone.
The conferment of the art world into Mideo Cruz as an artist and his work as an artwork in largely verifiable. The audacity of the controversy made the conferment of the object into art is the insistence that if there is a large number of people who declare it as non-art makes the object non-art. More importantly, the struggle of power between institutions, from the religious to the political tries to undermine the role of the artworld in the conferment of the artifact or object into an artwork. As previously cited, at least three art institutions verified Poleteismo as art–the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Ateneo de Manila University and the University of the Philippines. As far as the art institutions are concerned, Poleteismo is art. Can this conferment be undermined by other critics such as F. Sionil Jose, the religious institution and the political institution? Perhaps the conferment of Poleteismo cannot be undermined as an artwork but certainly the threats received including the threats of violence, the removal of funds and the removal of positions was enough to close down the exhibition. The problem is not precisely on the definition of art but the power play between institutions, the art world, unfortunately, having the least power compared to religious and political institutions of the Philippines.
Part II of Art Conversations. I am working on this topic. I am posting it here, hoping for a response from those who wants to engage in this conversation.
A hundred and fifty years after Jose Rizal’s death, about a hundred years after Marcel Duchamp’s The Fountain, where do we actually find ourselves?We are still stuck in the conventions of the great masters of the great museums all over the world. At least, it appears that we are. How did we get here? How did the Filipino aesthetic sensibility missed the point of modern art as we proceed towards the end of a post-modern world. We are also at the balancing point as the contemporary art world tends to move beyond the post-modern. A post-post-modern perhaps? Yet, as recent controversies surface, it appears that the Philippine artworld, at least that outside of the academe, was left far behind in terms of art discourse. The national art institution–the Cultural Center of the Philippines, remains stuck within the concept of “the true, the good and the beautiful”, being left behind by contemporary art discourse.
The controversy surrounding the Kulo Exhibit for the commemoration of Jose Rizal’s 150th birth anniversary started almost quietly, as the artworld laughed it off and regarded it as something that would increase Mideo Cruz’s market value. But soon enough, due to the influence of the netizens on the internet, it exploded into something else. There were numerous controversies surrounding the artworld before, but it has never been as widely felt as Mideo Cruz’s Poleteismo. The most obvious reason is that it went head to head against a powerful Philippine institution–the Catholic Church. Another reason is the media hype created through the use of traditional media–television, radio and newspaper and heightened by the new media–the internet. For the first time, every person who has access to the internet, which is a large percent of the Filipino people can give their comments and opinions through various sites available, as well as on the articles published by the daily newspapers. Everyone can express the voice and be heard, without the curatorship of newspapers and publishers. These comments can also be made under the cloak of anonymity, so there was a no limitation and no censorship on the opinion on the matter. Art even became a trending topic on Twitter during the senatorial hearing conducted for the controversy. There were a healthy amount of debates, not only on the “offensive” nature of Mideo Cruz’s art work, but more importantly, on the nature of art itself.
Various issues were brought up, that in a matter of days and weeks, the art exposure and education of the Filipino population was widely exposed. Surprisingly, numerous debates that have been long-buried within the academic world was once again unearthed by the population. The very nature of art and artist was debated upon along with the concept of good art and bad art, as well as the concept and definition of beauty. Even the role of the institutions in art production as well as the rules, regulations and laws that may apply to art production was widely explored. Some concepts were surprisingly archaic while others were issues are very complex as it applies to the Filipino imagination.
Part I of Art Conversations. I am working on this topic. I am posting it here, hoping for a response from those who wants to engage in this conversation.
What is a woman? What defines her? Is she different? How so? These are some of the questions I asked as the strength of my character was challenged and measured today. Things were on track. My paper was working out in its own way. Everything was relatively fine. And then, bam, my month old laptop froze and quick fixes just weren’t working. No other choice but to give it up for repair or even replacement. Two to three weeks, he says. On the last three weeks of the semester, with papers to write and grades to compute. More importantly, with research materials stuck inside that laptop, a laptop that they need to rip apart piece by piece. It will come back in mint condition, but containing nothing of what was placed there.
This concern, my concern, is a middle class concern. Obviously, in some way or another, I managed to purchase a supposed quality laptop. I am writing, an undertaking not open to everyone, especially not to those who are too busy with children to take care of, a household to run or manual labor to exhaust. They can, if they really wanted too, but too often, they just don’t. This particular moment is when I remember a remarkable woman, Virginia Woolf. In a way I have always felt for A room of one’s own, but moments like these in particular would remind you of what she says, “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well” (Woolf 210). I am fortunate because despite of having to work, I still have the time, energy and capacity to study, contemplate and write, rather than simply being occupied with everyday life. I have my independence, first provided by my family and then supplemented by my own capacity. Again, as Woolf says, “…what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about. No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house, and clothing are mine forever. Therefore not merely do effort and labour cease, but also hatred and bitterness. I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me” (230). This is the independence that she has been given, that I have been given. But, unfortunately, this independence is not given to all women, not even to most women.
Being a single woman in Philippine society is not simple. Even if good circumstances in life bring you independence—society, culture and tradition will make independent living difficult. I for one have been termed a soltera in the most derogatory fashion. Women in ragged clothes with unkempt children, even those borrowing money from the family would express their sympathy for my sorry state in life, being never married. I was 25 when I was first called that. I expected to be at least 30 before being termed such. In a society such as ours, we can go back to the first wave of feminism and witness the same concerns expressed in present time. Society will make you feel like an incomplete woman without a man by your side and without birthing children to carry on the line. Unless of course, if the soltera is useful, such as in educating siblings and cousins, providing money and material things to their family. Living an academic life, teaching and writing, being in the art world, does not count. Being an only child, not having to provide but will in fact inherit—being unmarried is confusing if not downright unacceptable. Society assumes that there is something seriously wrong with you. You are the incomplete woman. This is part of the price to be paid for independence—the independence that you need to study, contemplate and create.
Yet, this independence that I enjoy, despite the challenges of society, is not enjoyed by most women. It is like we never learned, never grew up from the past. I know for a fact that a lot of women now still have no voice. I remember the assertion of Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Women, “But, if women are to be excluded, without having a voice, from a participation of the natural rights of mankind, prove first, to ward off the charge of injustice and inconsistency, that they want reason- else this flaw in your NEW CONSTITUTION will ever shew that man must, in some shape, act like a tyrant, and tyranny, in whatever part of society it rears its brazen front, will ever undermine morality. I have repeatedly asserted, and produced what appeared to me irrefragable arguments drawn from matters of fact, to prove my assertion, that women cannot, by force, be confined to domestic concerns; for they will, however ignorant, intermeddle with more weighty affairs, neglecting private duties only to disturb, by cunning tricks, the orderly plans of reason which rise above their comprehension” (2). She fights for women’s voice. Despite the grounding of this in the domestic life, which has been a dominant place of the woman for a very long time, her assertions are still relevant in the present time. Though the feminist discourse today veered away from the moralist discourse of Mary Wollstonecraft, she still paved the way for it, and her discourse still hits home. Where is feminism now, if we are still at a time that a universal human right is still widely denied—the provision for women’s health?
We keep on going back, remembering the first wave of feminism, “Moralists have unanimously agreed, that unless virtue be nursed by liberty, it will never attain due strength- and what they say of man I extend to mankind, insisting that in all cases morals must be fixed on immutable principles; and, that the being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason” (Wollstonecraft 164). Unlike the time of Wollstonecraft, feminists broke away from the moralist tendencies. In fact, the fight for women’s rights goes against the grain of the traditional moralists. The fight for the RH Bill is raging. The sexist patriarchal Philippine society is rearing its head. A law that provides gender equity, freedom of choice and education is barred by moralists as something evil and demonic. It is a different world from which Wollstonecraft came from but we still have the same problems, the same concerns.
“The State recognizes and guarantees the exercise of the universal basic human right to reproductive health by all persons, particularly of parents, couples and women, consistent with their religious convictions, cultural beliefs and the demands of responsible parenthood. Toward this end, there shall be no discrimination against any person on grounds such as sex, age, religion, sexual orientation, disabilities, political affiliation and ethnicity.
Moreover, the State recognizes and guarantees the promotion of gender equality, equity and women’s empowerment as a health and human rights concern. The advancement and protection of women’s human rights shall be central to the efforts of the State to address reproductive health care. As a distinct but inseparable measure to the guarantee of women’s human rights, the State recognizes and guarantees the promotion of the welfare and rights of children.
The State likewise guarantees universal access to medically-safe, legal, affordable, effective and quality reproductive health care services, methods, devices, supplies and relevant information and education thereon even as it prioritizes the needs of women and children, among other underprivileged sectors. The State shall eradicate discriminatory practices, laws and policies that infringe on a person’s exercise of reproductive health rights.”
Current feminist discourse keeps falling into the trap of post-modernism, the trap of non-difference. How can we look forward without seeing that the earliest feminist concerns are still unrealized? We had two female presidents; the first was a hero-worshipped weakling and the second was a demonized political leader. The society still admires the woman that is weak and is afraid of a woman that shows strength. What we now see is the death of feminism, its status as a ‘post’, yet in reality, we have not yet fully enjoyed the fruits of feminism. Amelia Jones say in Postfeminism, Feminist Pleasures, and Embodied Theories of Art, “The recent resuscitation of this patriarchal fantasy by the right under the guise of ‘family values’ is a symptom of the massive anxiety of the patriarchal system, signaling a reaction formation against the threatening incursion of women into the work force and, more recently, the political arena” (384-5). A grieving widow is a hero and a fighting leader is a demon, that is how we still see women in the political arena and this is still the country’s model.
The fighting, screaming voice of feminism is now made to be tame if not silenced. I find this incredibly sad, frustrating even. The work, the ideology is not yet done, yet it’s already starting to ebb. The fire is dying a slow painful death as feminism is appropriated in a non-different post-modern world, “The strategic appropriation of feminism both radicalizes postmodernism and simultaneously facilitates the silencing of the confrontational voices of feminism–the end result being the replacement of feminism by a less threatening, postfeminism of (non)difference” (Jones 388). Where is the woman then? Where is her voice?
How can women gain the power and dominance of her voice? In finding the women’s voice and place, it is interesting to look into the French feminists. They look into the personal aspect of relationships and breaks down the sexism of psychoanalysis. Simone de Beauvoir deals with this in The Second Sex, “Today the combat takes a different shape; instead of wishing to put man in a prison, woman endeavours to escape from one; she no longer seeks to drag him into the realms of immanence but to emerge, herself, into the light of transcendence. Now the attitude of the males creates a new conflict: it is with a bad grace that the man lets her go. He is very well pleased to remain the sovereign subject, the absolute superior, the essential being; he refuses to accept his companion as an equal in any concrete way. She replies to his lack of confidence in her by assuming an aggressive attitude. It is no longer a question of a war between individuals each shut up in his or her sphere: a caste claiming its rights attacks and is resisted by the privileged caste. Here two transcendences are face to face; instead of displaying mutual recognition, each free being wishes to dominate the other” (51). This struggle of the heteronormative relations is still present today. In the more traditional curve of Philippine society, this is the struggle of the male and female. As a woman, I know my voice and I want to express it. I have no sovereign; I have no wish to be dominated. Looking in the bigger picture of the society in which I belong, my struggle is simply not right.
Like almost every Filipino woman, I am expected to marry and to bear children. This is if I am to belong and if I am to become a complete woman, according to expectations. Helene Cixous’s take in The Laugh of the Medusa challenges this expectation, “There are thousands of ways of living one’s pregnancy; to have or not to have with that still invisible other a relationship of another intensity. And if you don’t have that particular yearning, it doesn’t mean that you’re in any way lacking. Each body distributes in its own special way, without model or norm, the nonfinite and changing totality of its desires. Decide for yourself on your position in the arena of contradictions, where pleasure and reality embrace. Bring the other to life. Women know how to live detachment; giving birth is neither losing nor increasing. It’s adding to life an other” (891). There is nothing wrong in marrying, and giving birth, but there is also nothing wrong in not doing so, or having no desire to do so. It is a matter of the right and freedom of a woman to choose, and not to be judged or discriminated for her personal choices. This basic principle is still denied most women. There is no law for or against it, but for women to live in accord with her society, this is what is expected of her. She is not expected to create, other than that of her own children. Cixous, admirably, tries to break this barrier down and go beyond the psychoanalytic expectations of a patriarchal society, “Beware, my friend, of the signifier that would take you back to the authority of a signified! Beware of diagnoses that would reduce your generative powers. “Common” nouns are also proper nouns that dispar-age your singularity by classifying it into species. Break out of the circles; don’t remain within the psychoanalytic closure. Take a look around, then cut through!” (892).
Going back to Simone de Beauvoir, feminism and the fight for women’s rights is not about denying her a man, if that is what she wants. It is more on the relationship of the woman to her society, to other people, and to end her situation as ‘the second sex’, “To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue none the less to exist for him also: mutually recognising each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other. The reciprocity of their relations will not do away with the miracles —desire, possession, love, dream, adventure — worked by the division of human beings into two separate categories; and the words that move us — giving, conquering, uniting — will not lose their meaning. On the contrary, when we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the ‘division’ of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form” (De Beauvoir 60). Only in freeing the woman, emancipating her and giving her the rights to live the life she wants, can she truly be capable of art and artistic discourse. There may be few artists who surpassed such odds—Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt for instance, yet there are more to achieve when freed from society’s bounds. Imagine how many more Jane Austen is out there, that lies bound by society. Like Jane Austen, I may never marry nor gain fame in my lifetime, but, I will struggle to study, write and contemplate like she did. But my hope, as in the hope of feminism, is that women will not have to be bound, silenced or pressured to conform.
Being in the academe, a woman is allowed to express more as opposed to her peers. But we have to always be careful of some academic pitfalls. There is still hope in the academe, “Interestingly, then, while the postfeminism of popular culture works to deny the continuing empowerment of feminist discourse and the sexually and professsionally active feminist subject, the postfeminism of academic criticism works simultaneously to celebrate and absorb feminism and feminist theory. Postfeminism in art discourse is precisely this absorptive operation: the incorporation of feminism into postmodernism as ‘post’ (Jones 389). The challenge though, is to translate feminism from an academic and artistic discourse into the discourse of women everywhere. The struggles enumerated by Linda Nochlin in Why have there been no great women artists? still holds true today, “The question “Why have there been no great women artists?” has led us to the conclusion, so far, that art is not a free, autonomous activity of a super-endowed individual, “Influenced” by previous artists, and, more vaguely and superficially, by “social forces,” but rather, that the total situation of art making, both in terms of the development of the art maker and in the nature and quality of the work of art itself, occur in a social situation, are integral elements of this social structure, and are mediated and determined by specific and definable social institutions, be they art academies, systems of patronage, mythologies of the divine creator, artist as he-man or social outcast” (Nochlin online). We cannot enter into the realm of post-feminism, we cannot allow the death of feminism, because the end of feminism has not yet been realized.
Looking into writing, and art production in general, Helen Cixous still resounds in my mind,”I shall speak about women’s writing: about what it will do. Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies-for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text-as into the world and into history-by her own movement. The future must no longer be determined by the past. I do not deny that the effects of the past are still with us. But I refuse to strengthen them by repeating them, to confer upon them an irremovability the equivalent of destiny, to confuse the biological and the cultural. Antici-pation is imperative” (Cixous 875). There is no changing the silence of women’s past, but the silence of the present and the future is unforgiveable. Maybe there is also a seed of truth into writing as the symbolic phallus. I have men enough men that are easily intimidated by women who write, women who create. It is through these productions that we break our silence, “It is by writing, from and toward women, and by taking up the challenge of speech which has been governed by the phallus, that women will confirm women in a place other than that which is reserved in and by the symbolic, that is, in a place other than silence. Women should break out of the snare of silence. They shouldn’t be conned into accepting a domain which is the margin or the harem” (881). It is a time that women should break away from the bounds of expectations, and for society to stop trying to bind their women according to patriarchal ideals.
Instead of the death of feminism, going into post-feminism, we should look into the re-embodiment of feminist. The goal of feminism is still unrealized, women’s struggles are still alive, and there is still a need for feminist discourse. Instead of ending a much needed discourse, perhaps we need to re-embody it into our present situation, “My central argument is that at this particular moment the most radical rethinking of feminism can take place through the articulation of re-embodied theories of female artistic subjectivity, feminist agency, and representation in the broadest sense. Ideally, by re-embodying the subjects of feminism–by saturating theory in and with the desiring making, viewing, and interpretative bodies of art theory and practice–the notion of a unified feminist subject (a notion that we saw was integral to this subject’s termination in the popular press accounts of postfeminism) can be rejected. And, by acknowledging multiple feminist subjects of infinitely variable identities, we can perform reinvigorated feminist art histories and practices that are radically empowered through the newly recognized diversity of feminisms” (Jones 395).
I am lucky that I am not Virginia Woolf’s Judith Shakespeare, I was not a poetic mind driven mad with frustration by society’s bounds. It may be a middle class, elitist dream, but creation can more easily happen in Woolf’s imaginings, “By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream” (300-1). More so, she says, “So that when I ask you to earn money and have a room of your own, I am asking you to live in the presence of reality, an invigorating life, it would appear, whether one can impart it or not.” This is what I hope for every woman, as her story goes. This is just the beginning too, as its merely scratching the surface of a heterosexual woman in society, a place that I also belong too. And women’s stories do not, in any way, end here. We can start again by taking care of health, and then break the bounds of society instead of conforming to it. After that, creation, writing, artistic productions and criticism may easily follow. A woman as a writer, as an artist, as anything she may want to be would be just as acceptable as her role as a daughter, a wife and a mother. Hopefully, not just in my ideals but also in reality.
References:
Brand, Peggy. “Feminism and Tradition”. Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, 1999.
Brodsky, Joyce, “Feminist Art History”. Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, 1999.
Cixous, Helene. “The Laugh of the Medusa” trans. Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, Signs, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Summer, 1976), pp. 875-893
De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Online.
Jones, Amelia. “Postfeminism, Feminist Pleasures, and Embodied Theories of Art” The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, ed. Donald Preziosi. New York: Oxford University Press (1998) 383-395.
Nochlin, Linda. Why Have There Been no Great Women Artists? Online.
Silvers, Anita. “Feminism”. Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, 1999.
The Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health and Population and Development Act of 2011. 15h Philippine Congress.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Online.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.
Once again, I am staring at a blank sheet of paper as I struggle with the topic I am working on–psychoanalysis and phenomenology. Neither of the two are my favorite. I certainly do not want to unearth the writings of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, again. As an undergrad, encountering their perception of the world for the first time, I was very impressed. I found it fascinating to read. I was opening the world of psychoanalysis, something I have never encountered before. Familiar, in a way, of the story of Oedipus, and having Oedipus Rex as the first play I have watched by Dulaang UP, I was enthralled. I thought it was a viable theory and even fooled myself into believing that it was an explanation for sexuality, behavior and representation. I had feminist leanings as a teenager as well, so encountering Laura Mulvey‘s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema was a revelation. I found myself writing more and more about psychoanalysis and visual perception, I even remember my paper on the image-formation of Filipino women in cinema using Mulvey’s paper as a theoretical framework. Fortunately, I outgrew that perception of the world.
As I grew up and grew more critical of what I am reading and writing, I find psychoanalytic theories too encompassing, without consideration for other people and other cultures. Certainly, not everyone in the world can be the same? As fascination for a new concept fades and criticality begins, Freud’s Oedipus Complex and Jung’s Electra Complex became more and more ridiculous. I now find the concept of a son hating his father and desiring his mother, and a daughter hating her mother and desiring her father, in the way of their psychosexual development, absurd. Of course, in time, I knew that various points of their arguments were also disproved. The five stages of psychosexual development is no longer accepted. Yet, these are the starting point in the discussion of psychoanalysis. Certain theoreticians still adapt and appropriate these theories in their analysis. It is also a good beginning in the discussion of consciousness, particularly of the concept of the sub-conscious. Still, I struggle with the fact that, I just don’t want to write about this again.
I watched PETA’s production of William last Saturday. I have to say that its a very good play, a combination of Shakespeare 101 for students and ‘identify the reference’ for Shakespeare fans. Its a different feeling when you get to witness a theatre-full of teenagers laugh and applaud a Shakespeare-inspired play. Looking at this from a psychoanalytical point of view, the play could go down the road of over-reading and absurdity. There are various parent-child relationships in the play, notable ones are the relationship of TJ Domingo and Estella Marie Carandang. Their relationship with their fathers (played by the same actor but with different characterizations) display more or less the Oedipal and Electra Complexes. TJ Domingo, the rebel, aggressive jock has a violent relationship with his father. His father, a dominant and aggressive man is abusive and tends to beat-up TJ, whenever TJ fucks up. TJ of course, resents his father. The absent mother is never mentioned, but he looks into Estella, the mature mother-image of the group, to help him out whenever he was in a bind. He also grew to love her in a romantic way. Sounds familiar? Looking into Estella’s parental relationship, on the other hand, she resents her mother greatly for leaving them and is very close to her father as a result. The father tends to be over-protective of Estella and Estella adores him greatly. Again, familiar right? So, maybe Laura Mulvey wasn’t too far off in her essay, even though the narrative here is in theatre form. If my main focus is on the psychoanalytic aspect of the play, it would focus in these two parent-child relationships and its representation. There are two other characters with fathers (again played the same actor) with the same dynamics. A little bit different, though, is Erwin Castro’s relationship with his father. Even though he is male, he has a good and gentle relationship with his father. But the thing is, though Erwin is not gay, he is, in a way, effeminate. He is very gentle and soft-spoken, almost the common characterization of a woman. He is not aggressive, so there is no competition for dominance or for being the alpha male of the family, unlike in TJ’s case. Here, there is no struggle for power. Erwin, to a certain point, is a mediocre push-over. Using the psychoanalytic perspective will go far in any narrative, but I have grown up enough to know that it is often not enough, that there is something more to the perception of the world than psychosexual and power relationships of gender and consciousness. Or more to the point of psychoanalysis—the sub-conscious. Though this theory does not lack in merit, I still feel that there is something else, something more.
This is where I see phenomenology coming in. Instead of just focusing on the universal sub-conscious that psychoanalysis seem to imply, I want to explore art as we experience them. I want to point out the self-consciousness of the audience rather than the psychoanalytical dispositions and secret sexual desires that the audience apparently has no control over. Looking into Merleau-Ponty, when we perceive something, we also perceive ourselves, that we are also visible. He says that, “The visible can… fill and occupy me only because I who see it do not see it from the midst of nothingness, but from the midst of itself; I the seer am also visible. What makes the weight, the thickness, the flesh of each color, of each sound, of each tacile texture, of the present, and of the world, is the fact that he who grasps them feels himself emerge from them by a sort of coiling up or redoubling, fundamentally homogenous with them, he feels that he is the sensible itself coming to itself” (113-14). When you watch a play, you do not just see the play, you also locate yourself in the play. Part the popularity of William is the easy self-identification with at least one of the characters and recognizing other characters as someone one have encountered in everyday life. Very suited to the teenagers as the characters are mostly teenagers themselves, most adults can also relate as they have played such roles earlier in their lives. Often, the tendency is to relate to one character and remember people encountered in life that embodies the other characters.
There were five main characters in the play, the five students–TJ Domingo, the popular, basketball player, jock; Sophia Reyes, the nouveau riche, social climbing, beautiful, shallow, romantic girl; Richard Austria, the gay guy “outed” during the course of the play; Erwin Castro, the mediocre, push-over, quiet-type geek; and Estella Marie Carandang, the plain-looking, know-it-all nerd. These are the five stereotypes of the typical high school classroom translated into students learning about Shakespeare from their weird, passionate teacher Ms. Lutgarda Martinez. When viewing these characters, it is not a simple identification of the high school stereotypes but also self-identification with previous experiences informing and affecting the perception of the play. Paul Crowther further explores Merleau-Ponty:
“There are two aspects to this (though Merleau-Ponty does not always clearly separate them). First, as we have seen, things define themselves as styles brought about by our body’s modes of orientation towards the world. Our perceptual contact with the world is expressive, in so far as the body is constantly taking up new positions and launching itself into new projects. This means that the stylizing and expressive foundation of perception is of general validity. Each human has the same broad range of bodily capacities and will, therefore, tend to see and do much the same things (i.e. share the same styles of perception) as other human beings. However, it is also true that as individual embodied beings we each retain our particular view of the world” (108).
Aside from recognizing the Shakespearean motifs in William, the audience also recognize themselves as they experience the play. As Merleau-Ponty says in Eye and Mind, ” Things have an internal equivalent in me; they arouse in me a carnal formula of their presence. Why shouldn’t these (correspondences) in their turn give rise to some (external) visible shape in which anyone else recognize those motifs which support his own inspection of the world” (60). There are several layers of recognition that may happen. At first, the easiest one is the characterization of the high school stereotype that an audience may relate to. Next, is the Shakespearean references that such characters represent. Another layer is the Shakespearean play or sonnet that the character is acting out, whether straight-up recitation (Shylock’s monologue from The Merchant of Venice) or appropriated to a more Filipino context (Marc Anthony’s monologue from Marc Anthony and Cleopatra). Yet another layer that may affect this identification is the actual knowledge or experience the audience have of Shakespeare. Though some are easy to identify as it is explicitly stated in the performance, some are not, and only those who have some previous readings and knowledge of Shakespeare may recognize. Such identifications may happen in different layers within the embodiment of the play. Each person will have a different sense and layer of such embodiment. A necessary condition for such embodiment, is self-consciousness, as Crowther defines it, “To be self-conscious is to be able to ascribe experiences to oneself. It is to be a person” (150). In order to examine the consciousness and embodiment present in William, I want to go beyond the consciousness and sub-consciousness of Freud and consider the phenomenological proposition of Crowther in Art and Embodiment, from aesthetics to self-consciousness:
“The first of these I shall call attention. By this I mean our capacity to be receptive to sensory stimuli. It is a basic orientation or directness bound up with our body’s position in relation to that world of sensible items and events with which it is causally continuous. The second necessary capacity is that of comprehension. A self-conscious being in one who must be able to organize the stimuli received in perception by discriminating sameness and difference amongst them. This capacity is powerfully enhanced by the third necessary (and complex) feature, which I shall call projection. A being can only be self-conscious if it can posit situations other than those presented by the immediate perceptual field. The chief projective powers are memory and imagination; the former enables us to posit situations in which we have previously been, and the latter enables us to posit alternative possibilities of experience to those which are immediately accessible to us in perceptual terms. The projective powers, of course, are the very flesh of any sense of having a personal history” (150-51).
I will take into consideration, the most powerful performance delivered in William, the character of Richard Austria, the gay guy. His story embodies Shakespeare’s Shylock, the Jew from The Merchant of Venice. Richard was a closeted gay, “out” only to his closest friends. A fight with TJ caused him to be “outed” in his entire school, resulting to his persecution. Richard, the hard-working class representative was suddenly mistreated and harassed by his fellow classmates. Thus, he delivered Shylock’s speech, as they both embodied persecution, “He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction” (Act III, Scene 1).
In the manner of Crowther’s self-consciousness, the layers are attention, comprehension and projection. In Richard’s arch and almost every other performance, the most obvious part in experiencing it is by paying attention, in order to be receptive of the performance. Next is to organize the stimuli received and basically understand the performance–what is happening, why it is happening, what are the the Shakespearean references made, what is the plot, what does the plot pertain to in Shakespearean plays, etc. But the most notable part in Crowther’s self-consciousness is projection, the actual embodiment. The relationship of Richard’s character and performance and the memory or imagination of the audience will come in to play. Do you need to be gay to be able to feel for or project the performance of Richard’s character? Not necessarily. Because even though you do not have the memory of being a discriminated gay student, you still have the memory of others as well as your own imagination that enables you to project yourself into the performance. Through an effective performance, one can project the self into it through memories and imagination–feel the frustration, the pain of betrayal, the hate of discrimination and the release into freedom after the resolution. The phenomenology in experiencing and projecting into a performance could be achieved in that manner. This projection will also have another layer, as the audience will not only project themselves into Richard, but also into Shylock as he is embodied by Richard. The pain of persecution and the desire for revenge is something that would be powerful in the memory and imagination of the audience. The layers of embodiment enriches each other, as the character (Richard), the character reference (Shylock) and the audience affect each other and enrich each other in the phenomenological and aesthetic experience, and transcend this relationship into the projection of the self.
Another interesting character is TJ. He is initially presented as a stupid jock, a bully and a villain. As the narrative goes further, he was humanized as his relationship with his father was explored. He was also redeemed towards the end as he apologized publicly to Richard. Again, looking at it from Crowther’s self-consciousness and embodiment, one does not necessarily need be in TJ’s situation or have a memory of experiencing such event. The imagination of the audience will help transcend the performance from attention and comprehension, well into projection. With such imagination, the audience may project on to the humanization of TJ, his reasons for being a bully, his eventual redemption. The viewer may not only comprehend the meaning of redemption but also characterize and embody the feeling of being redeemed. This gives the ephemeral character of a performance lasts in the imagination of the audience. Just like in Richard and Shylock, the layers of embodiment is also there. This time, the relationship is between TJ, Claudius and the audience. One does not necessarily be a betrayer to feel the pain of betrayal. The use and enhancement of memory and imagination will come into play as the humanization and pain of the villain is represented. The viewer transcends into the character of TJ and into the the character of Claudius from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
“O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
A brother’s murder. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will:
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offence?
And what’s in prayer but this two-fold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardon’d being down? Then I’ll look up;
My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder’?
That cannot be; since I am still possess’d
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
May one be pardon’d and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but ’tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell’d,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? what rests?
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe! All may be well.”
(Act 1, Scene 3)
This is the aspect that William does well in terms of engaging the audience. The main intention of the play is to enrich the knowledge of the audience, particularly the high school students, of Shakespeare. They do this, phenomenologically. The audience are given so many layers in the engagement, depending on the depth of their self-consciousness. As mentioned earlier, the easiest to identify with is the high school students. At one point or another in the audience’s high school and teenage life, they embodied a form of these stereotypes. Next is the embodiment of the character of another characters, those of Shakespeare’s. They transcend space and time as they bring to life characters hundreds of years old and embody them in their characters. The audience then, is given another layer of story and characterization to project themselves into. While all these is going on, the audience are projecting both their memories and imagination into the complexities of the characters performing. These workings on the aesthetic experience and the embodiment of the self into the artistic production enriches the performance as well as the viewing of the performance. It does not work in one way. There is the interchange of the phenomenological experiences between the audience and the performers as they project their own uniques selves—previous experiences, memories and imagination, into each other.
This dynamics in the art, not just in the theatrical performance, needs to be further explored, rather that being stuck in the rut of the sub-conscious. The theory of the sub-conscious, at least for me, is imaginative, too imaginative that the theory robs the imagination from the audience and the viewer. It is in the psychological couch that all imaginations are sucked in, never to be shared into the world. Self-consciousness, on the other hand, is far richer than the sub-conscious that the conscious realm cannot control. Self-consciousness, at least can be enriched. A person, through their own choosing, may enrich their own experiences, dig deeper into their memories and use their creative imagination as they experience things around them—particularly art, such as the theater. It has become so easy to rely into more “scientific” theories that the realm of imagination has become limited. The audience have the option, the choice, in using their memories and imagination—they become the proactive actors, rather than being mere victims of the psychosexual development and sub-conscious desires. Self-consciousness and the embodiment of aesthetics may evolve, develop and may enrich—it does not limit a passive recipient. Instead, aesthetic embodiment, in a phenomenological sense, may enrich, both the audience and the performance. It is a consistent transcendence of memories and more importantly, of the imagination. It is not just the artist who may imagine, but the audience and the viewer as well.
References:
Crowther, Paul. Art and Embodiment, From Aesthetics to Self-Consciousness. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Legarda, Maribel, dir. William. Philippine Educational Theater Association, September 2011.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Phenomenology of Perception trans. Colin Smith with revisions by Forrest Williams. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible trans. Alphonse Lingis. Evanston: North-western University Press, 1968.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader, ed. Terry Eagleton, 1985. 158-166.
Shakespeare, William, Hamlet. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2008.
Shakespeare, William, The Merchant of Venice. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2008.
This is a familiar battle cry. What kind of UP student are you, if you have never heard this chant, everywhere in the university. They even chant it outside of the university–to the senate, the congress, the palace… This often shocks or at least overwhelms new students. Yet, at the same time, the older you grow in the university, the older these cries become, until such time that it grows devoid of meaning. The once passionate, powerful cry for freedom, becomes nothing more than an empty statement, lacking even the slightest of fervor. How did we become this, the most powerful and emotional aspect of rebellion and revolution, turning into a deadened piece ideology?
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were wrong when they assumed that capitalism would end immediately and that socialism would soon begin. They were very much mistaken in these assumptions. They lived at the time when capitalism was just beginning, and if they were right about the process and evolution of society’s political-economy, it doesn’t look like socialism would follow, especially after the trauma lived through by the contemporary population. What would then, come next?
For now, no one really knows for certain what would come after capitalism, largely due to the fact that no one really sees an end to the present-day capitalism. Socialism and even communism is a failure for the most part, in the countries that forced them into practice. China, initially one of the more successful communist countries, is now one of the most successful capitalist countries of the world. This very fact itself, shows that capitalism is inevitable, at least in the present circumstances.
Given the inevitability of being trapped in the capitalist political-economy of the current circumstances, one may wonder if there is still a place for the Marxist ideology. Raymond Williams quotes William Morris, “Even supposing he did not understand that there was a definite reason in economics, and that the whole system could be changed… he for one would be a rebel against it” (283). Does Marxism still have a place in today’s ideology, or is it merely a representative of hope for a better system and even a better future? Is there a point, still, for rebellion?
Then I remember Mideo Cruz, and the Kulo exhibit in the wider context of Philippine history. Once, people were willing to die fighting for the freedom to speak, the freedom to express. Once, the streets of Mendiola were bloodied by the deaths of rebels, fighting for equality, fighting for a voice. Now, people are no longer willing to die for a cause, rather, they threaten, and are even willing to kill, in order to oppress. Are they not aware of the trap they have fallen into? Have we fallen so far from the hopes of Marx and Engels to the point that we would kill, or at least threaten to kill, in the face of a shocking voice unacceptable to a religious elite?
“In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. the sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society–the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness… With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations the distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic, or philosophic–in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out” (284).
One would often wonder, whatever happened to the Filipino consciousness, for them, for us, to become a nation of oppressors. For an entire nation to result to violence and threats, just to silence another person’s voice. Is the religious superstructure in the Philippines still that strong, to enable its people to band together and scream for silence, rather than scream for a voice? Instead of being freed from the repressive state apparatuses, Filipinos were fighting to be closed-in, into the empty spirituality and religiosity, trapped within a materialistic symbolism, rather than being concerned with the state of reality of the Filipino life. Again, one can ask and wonder, what happened to us?
Such attitude almost reminds one of the internal conflict in Leo Tolstoy‘s character Konstantin Levin from Anna Karenina, “Maybe all that is good, but why should I worry about setting up medical centers that I’ll never use and schools that I won’t send my children to, that the peasants don’t want to sent their children to either, and that I have no firm belief that they ought to send them to?” (Tolstoy 244). There is this pervading conflict of fighting for what is right, for what is necessary; and for selfish desires, and even the exhaustion to have compassion for others, “I only mean to say that I will always defend with all my might those rights that I… that touch on my interests. When the gendarmes searched us as students and read our letters, I was ready to defend those rights with all my might, to defend my rights to education, to freedom. I understand military service, which touches the future of my children, my brothers and myself. I’m ready to discuss anything that concerns me. But to decide how to dispose of forty thousand in zemstvo funds, or to judge Alyoshka-the-fool–that I do not understand and cannot do” (246). Such statements come from Konstantin Levin, the more exposed brother to the life, thoughts and ideologies of the peasants. It is Sergei Ivanovich, the brother out of touch from the life of peasantry, that maintains a dream-like ideology of society, “Well, you should leave philosophy alone,’ he said. ‘The chief task of philosophy in all ages has considered precisely in finding the connection that necessarily exists between personal and common interests. But that is not the point, the point is that I must correct your comparison. The birches are not stuck in, they are planted or seeded, and they ought to be carefully tended. Only those nations have a future, only those nations can be called historical, that have a sense of what is important and significant in their institutions, and value them” (247).
Is it really those who are detached from the realities of life, that are able to imagine a more ideal world? A world that common good, the common interest will pervade in the human imagination? Is still useful to fight for the freedom of the oppressed if it is they, themselves who want that oppression? Do you fight for something that they never wanted in the first place? Where then, do you place Marxism in the everyday consciousness of the Filipinos?
Perhaps, it is useful to remember the times when the population is fighting for their freedom. Dexter M. Santos’ Rizal X reminds the audience of the difficult time of the Marcos Regime, the time where the Communist Party of the Philippines was most active, the time when Filipinos are willing to leave their families, sometimes even in the pain of death, just so the nation can regain its voice. Act II, Part V, Fili Revolution pertains to this era, as Filipinos fought oppressors, yet seem to still fall into the same trappings all over again. Curtain Call was performed by a character living in UP village, in memory of those who lost, despite winning:
“When the lights start fading in
and the sound caves itself in
I’ll be right beside you
Wherever you are
I’ll stay with you,
until the night falls
I’ll be with you to
to face it all
you don’t need to worry.
I’ll be with you…
until the curtain call
I’ll stay with you,
until the night falls
you don’t need to worry,
I’ll be with you…
until the curtain call.”
Is it curtain call for idealism, for communism, for Marxism? Is it an empty ideology now as it is robbed of meaning in the life of the proletariat, the everyday Filipino? Or is there still hope? Rizal X, after all, was ended on a positive note, with a song Pabalik sa Palaruan:
“Hindi ba’t nais mong lumipad
Sa rurok ng langit
I handa ang iyong mga pakpak
Ang liwanag mong taglay
At diwang malinis
Mula sa Maykapal ay gagabay
Lagutin ang gapos ng iyong diwa’t damdamin
Taglayin mo ang lahat ay ginigiliw
Lagutin ang gapos ng iyong diwa’t damdamin
Malayang lumipad
Malayang lumipad
Malayang lumipad
Hindi ba’t nais mong sumakay
sa mabilis na hangin?
Landas ng puso’y iyong lakbayin
Angkinin mo ang pangarap
Pag-asa’y bukas
Ang tungkulin mo’y iyong tuparin
Ang puso ko’y iiwan ko sayo
Lagutin ang gapos ng iyong diwa’t damdamin
Taglayin mo ang lahat ay ginigiliw
Lagutin ang gapos ng iyong diwa’t damdamin
Malayang lumipad
Malayang lumipad
Malayang lumipad”
Though we are nowhere the end of capitalism, it is not reason enough to stop fighting for idealism and what one believes as right. There is still no reason to be subjugated and oppressed, despite the fact that most people, particularly of the proletariats, accept such subjugation and oppression. It is still a matter of fighting the strong currents of the oppressive cultures. Going back to the Kulo controversy, F. Sionil Jose’s position, reminds us of a romantic criticism, as opposed to Mideo Cruz’s materialistic critique of society. Raymond Williams cites Alick West’s Crisis and Criticism:
“Romantic criticism was a great achievement. Its conception of social relations as constituting beauty in art, of a conflict and antagonism in these relations and of the same conflict reconciled in art, of poetry as the voice of humanity against oppression and injustice and the duty of the poets to cooperate in ending them– all these ideas are of the highest value. Instead of abusing them, or divorcing them from their social meaning, or preserving only their idealism, we have to use them. We cannot use them simply as they stand, because of that idealism. As indicated earlier, the romantic poets were unable in the particular circumstances to give a material meaning to their social conceptions… Hence, in romantic criticism, the social relations which constitute beauty in art are not the actual social relations, but the conception of the relations” (Williams 291).
F. Sionil Jose, was ahead of his time, at the height of his writing career. But in the face of a fast-changing world, he was not ready for the ugly, for the grotesque, for the decay, as actual tools for social change, rather than the concept of art and beauty that he was conscious of. He, along many others and their limited views of art, did not fathom and absorb the concept of the current consciousness of the Filipinos. Things changed, fast, and they were not ready for such changes. Art, good or bad, beautiful or not, is capable of changing people, of changing societies, whether they are ready for it or not. Williams looks into Christopher Caudwell’s definition of the value of art, “The value of art to society is that by it an emotional adaptation is possible. Man’s instincts are pressed in art against the altered mould of reality, and by a specific organization of the emotions thus generated, there is a new attitude, an adaptation” (297). People are meant to adapt. Though numerous Filipinos were not ready for the kind of art Mideo Cruz created, yet, they are meant to adapt to it, as artistic creation continues to move and to evolve, and sometimes, become powerful enough to shake the seemingly solid, yet oppressive conditions of society.
If the artist has this power, to shaken and even weaken established systems and beliefs, and more importantly to effect change, what exactly is their role and where does one draw the line, if a line can be drawn? Williams refer to Lenin’s words, “Every artist… has a right to create freely according to his ideals, independent of anything. Only, of course, we communists cannot stand with our hands folded and let chaos develop in any direction it may. We must guide this process according to a plan and form its results” (302). Then again, where does one draw the line of freedom of expression, responsibility of the artist, and the conditions of social consciousness and the desire for change? There never was and perhaps never will be a clear dividing and definitive line for this, perhaps there may be no need to. Yet, where does an artist, an artwork and even an audience position themselves in these circumstances? How does one fight for freedom at the same time bearing responsibility towards their fellow human beings?
During the academic forum hosted by the Department of Art Studies, a Catholic student gave a very Marxist argument on the issue of Poleteismo and the Kulo exhibit. She insists that artists should start creating works for the ordinary Filipino, for the poor, for the oppressed. This is the social responsibility oftentimes forgotten by exhibiting artists. How do you free the oppressed through your artworks? Does one go to the extent that Lenin did, create works for the sake of manipulating them and pushing them to want their freedom, or does selfish desire and a degree of self-expression out weigh this? There is no simple answer nor solution to these issues. More than a hundred years may have passed since the height of these arguments, yet, there is still no answer for it.
How do you free those who are content with their position as the oppressed? How far can you take your social responsibility in line with your freedom of expression and your own desires? Perhaps, simply trying is enough, until such time that society is really ready for a socialist and communist ideal. It is a possibility that socialist and communist movements were failures because it was forced. It may also be that there’s another form of political-economy waiting for people after the end of capitalism. But these values and beliefs, whatever they are and wherever they may take the population relies heavily on the ideals of art, because such beliefs can mostly be understood and accepted in the arts before anything else. It is a heavy weight of social responsibility for the artist.
The time, perhaps, is not yet ripe for revolution. After all, majority of people are comfortable where they are. The wealthy are unlikely to be willing to give up their riches and property for the population. The middle class, though often unhappy with their jobs and with what they have, are unwilling to move away from it. The poor, though oppressed and lacking opportunities, also seem comfortable enough on where they are, or at least unwilling still, to do something, in order to change to social structure of the Philippines. For a long time, we have been here, and by the looks of it, we would be here for a longer time still. In the meantime, art has a key role to play in preparing people for social change. Art, may in itself, create and inspire ideologies that would be key in the creation of a new political-economy, a new social structure. Though still dependent on the current political-economy, it is after all anchored strongly enough to an independent structure–the imagination.Though artistic production may no longer be as intentional to create ideologies as in the conception of Lenin, it is still a big influence on the imaginary of the people, and artists can always take advantage on that imagination. They can take it beyond “the true, the good and the beautiful” towards the ugly, the grotesque, and even onward to an actual social change. It is unsure, whether socialism and communism would take hold of the world, but for now, a social imagination of change may be useful. Marxism, is not an empty and dream-like ideology, but perhaps may serve as a tool for the creation of an ideal imaginary, that may eventually pave the way to real social change. For now, society and art have to survive capitalism at its height and with Marxism, still, at the ideological level of imagination.
References:
“Critical Theory.” Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 462-473.
“Marxism.” Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. Vol. 3. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 185-191.
Santos, Dexter M., dir. Rizal X. Dulaang UP, August 2011.
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Penguin Books, 2002.
Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society 1780-1950. New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company Inc, 1960.
150 years. Did the world really change? Most times, I feel like life is spearing ahead too fast. But if you examine our history, our legacy, you may ask, did it really change?
150 years after. We celebrate Rizal’s 150th birthday with exhibits, shows, parades and many other commemorative exercises. We celebrate the hero. Yet, are we really free from the things that he was fighting for, more than a century ago?
Today, we are faced with things that I didn’t think is still possible, especially in the age of internet and new media. CENSORSHIP. Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, do the Filipinos still know that these novels were censured by the Spaniards? Why? Because it was offensive to the church. Do we not remember that? Do we not remember so many of our heroes, persecuted, tortured and killed because of causing offense to the church, because they were fighting for our rights.
Why then, that after more than a century, this hard-fought battle is still ongoing. Sadly, now, it is Filipino against Filipino. Mideo Cruz strikes at our culture, at our beliefs. He makes us think, he offends. But he does not attack a person; he does not curtail anyone’s right. Yes, he offends, but it is never against the law to offend. He challenges our society, is that so wrong?
What hurts more is that the Philippine press, the very institution that should be the bastion and supporters of the freedom of expression, contributed to its curtailment. Irresponsible journalism runs amok in the country, selling even their fellow artists out for increased ratings and earnings. XXX completely misrepresented the exhibit, without any objectivity in their reporting. This was followed by other columnists and newspaper writers. Do you know your crime? Do you not honour your brothers and sisters who died fighting for just that—for the freedom of expression? Yet now, you sell us out.
The church started calling us sinners, calling to arms their supporters. Is that not a bigger problem of our society? The followers of Catholic belief, of Christianity—creating hate pages, threatening death and violence, attempting arson, vandalizing and worse demonizing Mideo Cruz and other cultural workers, yet the CBCP thinks that the art is the problem? They never even called to their people to stand down, they never asked them to be calm, and instead, they instigated this hatred and violence. Amazing, for people who say they follow one of the most peace-loving persons that ever lived, Jesus of Nazareth himself.
Expectedly, the Aquino Administration supports this. PNoy himself, called the board and let them know of his displeasure and of “concerns” over the issue on the exhibit. Democracy, yes. But if you are the President of the country, there is an obvious imbalance of power. There is a big discrepancy of the expression of my own personal opinion and the opinion of the President of the country. Is it really your democratic right? To censor? More so of our atrocious Senators. Senator Sotto threatens to use his power as Senate Majority Leader to deprive CCP of its budget. Along with Senators Enrile and Estrada, they demanded the resignation of the CCP Board. Over what? Do they not know that they are committing a Grave Abuse of Discretion? That according to the Doctrine of Prior Restraint, they are not allowed to go through with a Senatorial inquiry because it is a curtailment of the Bill of Rights?
This is not the Middle Ages, we can offend the Catholic Church, there is no incidence of Offending Religious Feelings according to the Revised Penal Code—the work was not done inside the church, no religious service was interrupted and no one was prevented from practicing their religion. No public fund was spent by Mideo Cruz, it was a Venue Grant. He exhibited inside CCP but he was given no money by the government to create his work, he was not paid to exhibit. It was simply his artistic expression. The people breaking the law are the abusive fanatics who vandalized, threatened life and property, and even the Senators and the President who are abusing their political powers in order to censor, a crime against our human rights, as stated in the 1987 Constitution’s Bill of Rights. Ironic, that a law established by the first President Aquino is being destroyed by her only son, the second President Aquino.
We Filipinos have fought long and hard, so we can attain the democracy that we have now. Yet, this democracy is being destroyed by denying us our basic human right. Even Rizal, the hero for whom the Kulo exhibit was for, died fighting for that right. People keep on missing that point, that exhibit was not about the RH Bill, it was about the struggles of Jose Rizal. We now get to experience firsthand the kind of oppression Rizal suffered from the church. What’s worse, we are suffering oppression from our fellow Filipinos rather than from foreign colonizers.
Rizal died for us, for our country; he died fighting for this freedom. He died to show us and the rest of the world our reality and suffering. Do we continue to be oppressed people? Do we continue to be ruled by an oppressive religion? What do we do now? I can my fellow Filipinos to continue fighting this struggle. It has been too long. Too many centuries we have been oppressed, it is time we break free from it. Rizal tried, but is it all in vain? Do we all in that same trap? Or do we fight?
I say no to censorship, as many others say no to censorship. Let our voices be heard. Let us not stand by and watch as our basic human right is denied us. It is not about Mideo Cruz and the Kulo exhibit anymore. It is about oppression, censorship, irresponsible journalism, misrepresentation of religious doctrine and most of all, abuse of power. We should not accept this sitting down. We should stand up and fight.
Soft lighting, generic jazz music, cheap wine, flowing beer, canapés, dimsum, finger foods and pretensions—that pretty much describes the stereotypical gallery opening in the “modern” art world of Manila. People laugh, smoke, kiss each other’s cheeks and throw in art words as they toast to the success of the exhibiting artist and gallery. They are the connoisseurs, artists, gallery staff, collectors and critics. They are deemed “experts” in the artistic field—the avant-garde.
How can one fully appreciate the avant-garde of Manila’s art? Charles Baudelaire described the perfect audience of modern art—the flâneur, “The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world yet to remain hidden from the world—such are few of the slightest pleasure of those independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito” (Baudelaire 795). Maybe one does indeed need to embody the French flâneur, in order to bear with the avant-garde.
The Son of Man by Rene Magritte
A work regarded as avant-garde is something good, great even. It is the new and chic in the art circle. One often hears of this artist or that is really avant-garde and is quite popular and celebrated. These artists are the new and the modern artists. Endless small talk among the popular experts would continue for about three to four hours. If you would actually listen though, among the clinking glasses and swishing beers, you would be left in a wide-eyed wonder at what everyone is actually talking about. Through the eyes of the flâneur, this scenario might’ve been much better. For an idler that could independently wander around through endless parties, belonging yet remaining hidden, perhaps the flâneur would enjoy gallivanting through this crowd.
It will not be surprising that such a circle would not have read Clement Greenberg’s Avant-Garde and Kitsch written as early as 1939. He cites the pre-eminence of the avant-garde because of its “superior consciousness of history” and its purity as “art for art’s sake” (Greenberg 2). You can stare and listen for hours, wondering if they are aware of how old the concepts they were talking about are. Given the flâneur’s luxury of time, perhaps a flâneur would’ve read Greenberg and would be able to articulate on the avant-garde much better in this crowd. One would wonder, though, would the flâneur be as aware and as conscious of what modernism really is and where the concept came from?
Would the flâneur have the time to read on history and philosophy or would parties and gallery exhibits mostly occupy such luxury of time? Would he encounter the fact that the newness of the modern started out as early as the mid-1500s when the break between the accepted dogmas of the church surfaced upon the scientific findings of the Copernican Theory? That the dogmas were declared wrong and the man is proven correct? This concept would later be refined by Galileo and Kepler in the 1700s. Ecclesiastical authority declined as the man discovered his own authority over the environment. The power of the man is slowly recognized until such time that a man is considered as the creator and discoverer rather than being a subject of a creator. By the time the Renaissance came into being and classical knowledge were re-discovered, religious dogmas were relegated as the myths of the “dark ages” (Russell 491-495). Can the flâneur take some time off from the socialization and go in-depth in the concept of modernism that created the very nature of a flâneur?
Thinking about is, would a flâneur go to church? Or perhaps feel how it’s like to be trapped within a belief of one? Emancipation from the church gave rise to the individualism. The role of the individual increased and was freed from the collective as the church followers and followers of god (493). By the time Greenberg wrote his article, the individualization and specialization of the artist is no longer a new concept, but a concept a few hundred of years old (Greenberg 4). Contrary to pretentious belief, the modern individuality of an artist is not an invention of the present but something that has been written about in 1939 and was developed as early as the Renaissance. I then wonder how some artists would feel, declaring themselves as modern artists, if they are made aware of these concepts. Will the flâneur know how old the concept espoused by the nature of his own individual existence?
Ironically, though modern thought and philosophy started with breaking away from religious dogmas and doctrines, modernists still went back to these debunked concepts to explain modern art. Greenberg cites the imitation of God in the dissolution of content and the sole focus on the forms (2-3). This type of thought would persist as the form and even colour is viewed as the resonance of the spirit such as in Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Though the break in the philosophical thought was significant, it eventually came into full circle as modernists went back to religiosity, spirituality and godliness in their philosophies. Again, I begin to wonder how the art circle would accept a reading of the avant-garde modern paintings they market into something akin to Kandinsky, that the blue is restful and a heavenly colour and that it has profound meaning in its retreat from the spectator. I also remember a work of Joya in the Ateneo Gallery, a white and yellow painting. In the Kandinsky analysis, the white is the harmony of silence and the absence of colour while the yellow, as typically earthly colour, is a sickly colour that can never have any profound meaning (Kandinsky 27-45). Such thought process is still difficult to reconcile to modern philosophy of breaking away from religious dogmas that has ruled over art production before modernism. Can the flâneur, exposed merely to bourgeois society, understand the irony and implication of spirituality in modern art?
The Man of the Crowd (based on Edgar Allan Poe) by Brian Pedley
The flâneur belongs to society, particularly, the bourgeois society, wherein they drink in and experience the pleasures of art. The more prevalent modernist perspective among the appetizer guzzling, alcohol gulping and social climbing is the experiential aspect of artworks that is a very modern perspective. Modern in the period of modernism, certainly, but looking at their perspective today, it is very different. In 1914, Clive Bell wrote that, “Without sensibility a man can have no aesthetic experience, and, obviously, theories not based on broad and deep aesthetic experience are worthless. Only those for whom art is a constant source of passionate emotion can possess the data from which profitable theories may be deduced; but to deduce profitable theories even from accurate data involves a certain amount of brain-work, and, unfortunately, robust intellects and delicate sensibilities are not inseparable. As often as not, the hardest thinkers have had no aesthetic experience whatever” (7). They talk of experience without thought, yet nowadays, we all know that everything—even matters of the “heart,” are actually processed by the mind. Such processing of experience from “significant forms” without consideration for content is still a mental and an intellectual practice. Of course the quality and depth of such practice will vary from the halls of the academe to magazines and even to cocktail receptions of the art circles. Which perspective will the flâneur prescribe to?
The flâneur hopefully, might be able to open a book once in a while. Maybe then, the flâneur may be forced to face a concept that goes against his existence. One wonders which would prevail in this confrontation. The art crowd would do well to do a little bit of reading, particularly, John Dewey’s Art as Experience. Before spouting “art as experience” in between munching canapés or some strange pesto on supermarket bought French bread, they should pick up a chapter or two instead. They might realize what they have done, “So extensive and subtly pervasive are the ideas that set Art upon a remote pedestal, that many a person would be repelled rather than pleased if told that he enjoyed his casual recreations, in part at least, because of their esthetic quality” (Dewey 5). Art is not meant to be separated, relegated to museums and galleries, surrounded by petit-bourgeois and inaccessible to the live creature or the ordinary human beings. Dewey further states that:
“The existence of art is the concrete proof of what has just been stated abstractly. It is proof that man uses materials and energies of nature with intent to expand his own life, and that he does so in accord with the structure of his organism—brain, sense-organs, and muscular system. Art is the living and concrete proof that man is capable of restoring consciously, and thus on the plane of meaning, the union of sense, need, impulse and action characteristic of the live creature. The intervention of consciousness adds regulation, power of selection, and redisposition. Thus it varies the arts in ways without end. But its intervention also leads in time to the idea of art as a conscious idea—the greatest intellectual achievement in the history of humanity” (25).
Though Dewey opened up the art experience to the living creature, much of the art circle still subscribes to the Baudelaire’s concept of the flâneur. This flâneur would converse and mingle in the art crowd, in search for modernity, as Baudelaire would describe him, “Be very sure that this man, such as I have depicted him—this solitary, gifted with an active imagination, ceaselessly journeying across the great human desert—has an aim loftier than that of a mere flâneur, an aim more general; something other than the fugitive pleasure of circumstance. He is looking for that quality which you must allow me to call ‘modernity’; for I know of no better word to express the idea I have in mind. He makes his business to extract from fashion whatever element it may contain of poetry within history, to distill the eternal from the transitory” (798). So many still subscribe to this concept, forgetting that it is a bourgeois “man” created and conceptualized to appreciate modern art in its “art for art’s sake” realm. To experience and appreciate art, does one really have to subscribe to the demands of the “modern”, does one have to be a flâneur and kiss one another’s cheek in the formation of an art discourse? This concept would shock the flâneur and might question the very foundation of his modernity.
Perhaps, it is true that the art circles have not escaped from the modern trappings. They do not realize that this new modernism is actually old, that when they are trying to be avant-garde, they are actually moving backwards and that when they are trying to be flâneurs, they are trying to be bourgeois male of many decades past. Jürgen Habermas, in his Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere states that, “The bourgeois avant-garde of the educated middle class learned the art of critical-rational public debate through its contact with the “elegant world.” This courtly-noble society, to the extent that modern state apparatus became independent from the monarch’s personal sphere, naturally separated itself, in turn, more and more from the court and became its counterpoise in the town. The “town” was the life center of civil society not only economically; in cultural-political contrast to the court, it designated especially an early public sphere in the world of letters whose institutions were the coffee houses, the salons, and the Tischgesellschaften (table societies)” (1747). The more today’s artists, curators, gallery workers and collectors insist upon avant-garde(ness) and modernism, they are not moving forward, they are not even staying still, they are moving backwards, further and further back into art history.
Edgar Allan Poe's Daguerreotype
Going back to the flâneur, himself an imagination of decades past, as early as Edgar Allan Poe’s The Man of the Crowd, and even Jean de la Bruyère’s The Characters, is neither a new concept nor a unique one. The perspective of a bourgeois middle-class man should be let go of the art world, more importantly, they should let go of the false belief that this is of their own creation in the contemporary world. Modernism is old, so is the avant-garde, so it is about time that the art world should stop trying to be flâneurs. They cannot live as the flâneur lived, nor should they try to, “In the window of a coffee-house there sits a convalescent, pleasurably absorbed in gazing at the crowd, and mingling, through the medium of thought, in the turmoil of thought that surrounds him” (Baudelaire 794). Though experience, pleasure and modernism have a place in the art world, it shouldn’t be the central concepts that drives it. For one thing, we are not all men. Independent bourgeois hardly ever exists anymore as most of us have to work for a living as well. We are no longer concerned with “art for art’s sake,” instead, we are engaging in an art discourse.
READ. Soft lighting, generic jazz music, cheap wine, flowing beer, canapés, dimsum, finger foods and pretensions—before falling into this trap, READ. We should stop being flâneurs looking at “art for art’s sake.” Instead, read, study and understand before spouting avant-garde and going backwards, falling into the trap of modernism and Tischgesellschaften. After all, it’s the kitsch that had more success in the long run. It’s the popular image that we live in today. It’s the iconic effigies that are burned in rallies and assemblies. It’s how we got our democracy back. We should live in the present. It’s about time that the art circle grows up and moves on. Before wine sipping and beer guzzling on show openings, opening a chapter or two of theoretical books cannot hurt; after all, it’s the terminologies that they are so fond of using. Though the trappings of modernism are not easy to escape from, we should at least start to. We should accept that we are not, nor we will ever be flâneurs. We don’t have Tischgesellschaften. We have a lot of discourse available to us, we should start discussing topic relevant to the contemporary world that would develop, not hinder art development and maturity.
Works Cited
Baudelaire, Charles. “The Painter of Modern Life.” Leitch, Vincent. Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. 792-802.
Bell, Clive. Art. New York: Frederick Stokes, 1917.
Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Penguin Books, 1934.
Greenberg, Clement. “Avant-Garde and Kitsch.” Partisan Review (1939).
Habermas, Jurgen. “Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.” Leitch, Vincent. Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. 1745-1758.
Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art. New York: Dover Publications, 1977.
Russell, Bertrand. History of Western Philosophy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.
Such attitude almost reminds one of the internal conflict in 
Portia Placino 