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Thirty Three Principles for a New Sociology of Art

Dr. Kubilay Akman

I. Today we have arrived the level where we can redefine the concepts concerning art after radical transformations and turbulences of the 20th century. Today art waits to be defined. Art and theory have gone hand to hand for a long time. During this interactive companionship theory trickled into art and art leaked into theory, shadows have mixed into each other. In this environment of indefiniteness the explanatory power of theoretical approach weakened and had a crisis. It must be highlighted now that theory is an effort to understand and to explain. Sociological/theoretical approach directed towards understanding art, even if it is included by arts now and then, has to act for comprehension of artistic productions, praxis and movements.

II. Art resists to be understood; desires it, but resists at the same time. This situation is based on the charm of power provided by being closed as well as art’s common past with sorcery.

III. Contradiction between power and resistance has lost its manifestation coming from the past. We live in an age today that everybody takes a portion from the strength. Some artists intends to share the sovereignty offered by art, some others try to save their power and sometimes the game of sharing becomes a strategy of power itself.

IV. Art is everywhere: in art galleries, museums, streets, theaters, books, garbage cans, restaurants, TVs, beds, bodies, houses, social relations, situations, conditions, tastes and all other perceptions. People who desire and do not desire art, who like and dislike it are exposed to art and perform it at any moment.

V. Art is like a journey that you experience without a map. This journey has got a flexible route that is determined by conditions, environment, artist’s will and choices of art audience. Nobody can envisage and predetermine the route from the beginning.

VI. Beauty is important still. However the measures on beauty provide an endless diversity.

VII. Artist is a social subject. Artistic behaviors even which are considered as the most individual and unique ones happen in an interrelation with social structure and social relationships.

VIII. Human of today is afraid of consciousness. Being so much widespread of drugs is because of the fear of people about consciousness. Dilemmas of modern society do not offer any opportunity for solution to people. On the one hand art operates as a medium to paralyze consciousness and on the other hand it serves as a perfect catalyst to be more consciously.

IX. Art, if still we talk about it, is seductive (Baudrillard) and therefore one of the most feminine elements in social field.

X. Money is seductive as well and art world is seduced by money on a large proportion. Some art guerrillas (Alexander Brener) who resists against this rotation appears as a different social phenomenon.

XI. There are thousand of creatures dancing around us. We call these creatures as concepts or images now and then. We do not know what are they exactly; they are maybe beings between concept and image. We realize through a smoke that we have started to dance too as these concept-images drive us into dizziness.

XII. The total pictures that we have intended to construct are escaping from us, as the mirrors are broken.

XIII. Work of art is open (Umberto Eco). All attempts to close work of art will be absorbed by its openness and profundity entirely.

XIV. There is transversality between other types of artistic expression. No story finishes at all in the same land where it began.

XV. Sometimes dark streets are more secure than broad squares. If the aesthetic thought would not like to go out from the universe of ideology, this is just because it would be dissolved as meeting pragmatic realities of the age.

XVI. It is not possible to make exact separations between society and state. We were talking about the ideological apparatus of state (Louis Althusser) in the past, today, the societal ideological apparatus work like states themselves and art is trapped by them usually.

XVII. The specters that were told by Karl Marx are not haunting over Europe and the all world anymore. But specters, new ones are everywhere. Human beings should love specters because their way passes by art galleries too sometimes; their some marks are seen on paintings, sculptures, videos and installations.

XVIII. Sociology that was born to analyze and to orientate modern societies seems that being has completed its function on a vast scale today. Sociology of art also may be considered as a refugee camp for sociologists from whom society does not expect any noticeable service more.

XIX. The world had an era when European culture has been spread through the help of American cultural production media. Even Europe itself has become a “specter” haunting over the world. In our age, the media that has served to spread European culture and which is also a western product itself can provide a proper ground for more democratic exchange and communication of world cultures.

XX. An evident bridge is built between consumer society and art with Pop Art. Nowadays a lot of consumption objects are so artistic that they can surpass Pop Art works of the past. Millions of young people who have never heard even Andy Warhol’s name have an artistic pleasure themselves from the bottle designs of energy drinks, CD covers, concert posters, perfume cans, etc. without any substantial intellectual background.

XXI. Academies are pressed between the dilemma of traditions and adaptation to the age. The academy has realized that its existence depends on a transformation process. It needs a new face to be able to exist, but the melodies it sings will remain the same with this new appearance.

XXII. Art market is a tremendous machine. This machine spread the canals where artistic pleasure flows and one-dimensional readings will not be able to give us any knowledge about the general structure of this machine. This market, as all markets, has some rules too and also it is manipulated despite these rules often. Art market has got a masculine character obviously as well.

XXIII. The main aim of human thought is to draw some planes over chaos (Deleuze). Art appears, as one of these planes as well as it is a version of chaos itself.

XXIV. The Western thought is in tendency of classifying, dividing and limiting time and space. However time and space overflow that kind of interferences. Aesthetic meaning exists with this overflow together. Aesthetic thought is one of the perfidious children of the West.

XXV. Repetitions kill the meaning. Our age is hurt with repeated themes just like it is performed in a piece of techno-music. Today the rhythm is a trap.

XXVI. Always a divine light is observed in art. This light is not a compass and we should not expect that it would orient us towards the right art; because there is not anything that might be called as “right art”. However, this light seems sometimes as the unique truth.

XXVII. Announcing death of art is one of the biggest lies. All murder attempts against art have been concluded with failure. Art is alive still.

XXVIII. The magical value and power of art are in the agenda now again. It is indefinite that if this would be a white or black magic.

XXIX. Nowadays it seems that everything is tried. Maybe now the virtue is that trying to rediscover modest harmonies of the past rather than participating the race of searching new things always to experience continuously.

XXX. Art has got a nostalgic characteristic part always.

XXXI. The unexplainable excites people. Secular narratives do not get societies excited anymore. There is an inclination again towards the mystical. It is possible to see numerous examples in cultural lives for this process.

XXXII. Clamor is everywhere. Maybe in the near future becoming silent will appear as an artistic style rather than expressing yourself.



XXXIII. According to me, Dalibor Martinis’ The Finally Dinner provides productive associations concerning the matters of art, society and culture. A similar of Jesus’ Last Dinner represented in this video-installation. The table is decorated to resemble the original last dinner with its real candles; but dishes and eating hands are projected on it. This projected record is from a performance that the artist did before with his friends as focused on the same subject. Audience may listen with headphones the sounds of Andy Warhol, Mickey Mouse, Marilyn Monroe and the other figures from the 20th century. Martinis’ work shows us how the icons about and from the modern society have taken the place of religious images of the past. At the last dinner of art the artist, audience and the modern figures included make finite one become eternal in protection of the work. Also there is a traitor around the table, a traitor who wishes to announce death of art maybe; but art will exist too as the work remains. Moreover, in Martinis’ installation each seat is free surrounding table and everybody could experience any position as seat the place he/she would like. The border between fidelity and treachery has been left to the choice of audience. The last dinner of art continues as an endless feast.

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The Sacrificial Aesthetic:

Blood Rituals from Art to Murder

Dr. Dawn Perlmutter

The concept of the "sacrificial aesthetic" introduced in Eric Gans's Chronicle No. 184 entitled "Sacrificing Culture" describes a situation in which aesthetic forms remain sacrificial but have evolved from a necessary feature of social organization to a psychological element of the human condition. Gans concludes that art's sacrificial esthetic is essentially exhausted as a creative force and argues that the future lies with simulations, virtual realities in which the spectator plays a partially interactive role. His most significant claim is that "This end of the ability of the esthetic to discriminate between the sacrificial and the antisacrificial is not the end of art. On the contrary, it liberates the esthetic from the ethical end of justifying sacrifice." The consequence of the liberation of the ethical justification of sacrifice is the main concern of this essay.

Throughout the history of art we have encountered images of blood, from the representations of wounded animals in the cave paintings of Lascaux through century after century of brutal Biblical images, through history paintings depicting scenes of war, up through the many films of war, horror, and violence. Blood is now off the canvas, off the screen and sometimes literally in your face. It is no coincidence that this substance has intrigued artists throughout history. Blood is fascinating; it simultaneously represents purity and impurity, the sacred and the profane, life and death.

There are many expressions of the aesthetic that manifests itself in blood and flesh. The most familiar examples are evident in the current popularity of tattooing, piercing, branding and body modifications. These comprise the basic prerequisites for entry into the worlds of Modern Primitives, Vampire Culture, and The Fetish Scene. These highly ritualized subcultures evolved out of various aesthetic genres such as: Happenings, Body Art, Performance Art, Ritual Art, the Gothic Movement, and Hollywood. Originally the goal of these artists was personal transformation and attempts to reclaim the spiritual. The result was unconventional forms of the sacred manifested in art that attacked fundamental values of Western culture, provoking censorship on many levels of society. The culture war began. In this essay it will be argued that aesthetics now ideologically freed from ethical responsibility to society has evolved into an authentic sacrificial culture inclusive of ritual murder.

The Flesh

A phenomenon in contemporary art has been occurring in which blood is no longer merely represented but is actually being utilized for various art forms. Performance artist Chris Burden did not paint or sculpt a crucifixion; in 1974 in a work entitled "Trans-Fixed" he had himself crucified to a car. In the 1970s Burden’s art performances also included having himself shot with a gun, punctured, burned and run over by a car. Burden’s body became the ultimate sculptural material, the ultimate object. [images/interview "Interview with Chris Burden" http://www.artnode.se/burden/] Artist Gina Pane does art performances that consist of self-inflicted cuts to her body including her face. In 1971 she performed "Escalade non-anesthésiée" in which she climbed a ladder that had blades attached to the steps. In 1972 in a performance entitled "The Conditioning (part I of "Auto-Portrait(s)," she laid down on an iron bed with very few crossbars that had fifteen long candles burning underneath. In 1974 in a performance entitled "Psyche" she kneeled in front of a mirror, put on make-up and proceeded to cut into her face with a razor blade. In 1975 in a performance entitled "Le corps pressenti" she made cuts between her toes with a razor blade so that the blood would create permanent stains on a plaster cast that her feet were resting on. [images "Gina Pane" http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/8344/gina_pane.html] In 1974, artist Marina Abramovic performed a work entitled "Rhythm O" in which "she permitted a roomful of spectators in a Naples gallery to abuse her at their will for six hours, using instruments of pain and pleasure that had been placed on a table for their convenience. By the third hour, her clothes had been cut from her body with razor blades, her skin slashed; a loaded gun held to her head finally caused a fight between her tormentors, bringing the proceeding to an unnerving halt."(1)The same year artist Petr Stembera performed an action entitled "Narcissus #1" in which he stood gazing at a self portrait which was placed on an altar surrounded by lit candles. Blood was drawn from his body with a hypodermic needle; then Stembera proceeded to mix the blood with his own urine, hair, and nail clippings, finally drinking the mixture in front of his altar. These are just a few examples of the use of blood in performance art.

2

Beginning in the 1960s and culminating in the 1970s there were several European artists who used animal and human blood in violent actions that focused on the body. The most famous of these were a circle of Viennese artists that included Hermann Nitsch, Gunter Brus, Otto Muehl, and Rudolph Schwartzkogler. These artists utilized several artistic mediums inclusive of painting, assemblage, drawing, photography, and collage. They also created and participated in what was referred to as action-happenings. However their work was fundamentally different then the American Happenings and Fluxus movements in that it was based on the tradition of Surrealism, which accounts for the overwhelming prevalence of blood and violence. Their work, which influenced many American artists in the 90s, became known as Viennese Actionism and their interests included the cult of Dionysus, the rituals of the Catholic Church and the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, Karl Jung, and Wilhelm Reich.(2) Hermann Nitsch did a series of performances titled "Orgies-Mysteries-Theater" that frequently entailed the dismemberment of animals, large quantities of blood and traditional religious symbolism. [exhibition review "Bloody Man: The Ritual Art of Hermann Nitsch" http://www.zhurnal.ru:8080/staff/gorny/english/nitsch.htm/] A 1974 performance entitled 48th Action at the Munich Modernes Theater involved the disembowelment of a slaughtered lamb whose entrails and blood were poured over a nude man, while the drained animal was strung up over his head. Art Historian RoseLee Goldberg describes Nitsch’s performance in terms of ritual:

Such activities sprang from Nitsch’s belief that humankind’s aggressive instincts had been repressed and muted through the media. Even the ritual of killing animals, so natural to primitive man, had been removed from modern day-experience. These ritualized acts were a means of releasing that repressed energy as well as an act of purification and redemption through suffering.(3)

Hermann Nitsch is still conducting his Orgies-Mysteries-Theaters; now they last as long as six days and are often protested by animal rights activists. [image/information "The Official Hermann Nitsch O.M. Theater Website" http://dogbert.inreach.com/vissol/index.html]

Brus and Muehl were more concerned with creating political statements through the use of photography and collage; however, their images also entailed blood-drenched bodies and violent mutilations. In the book Out of Actions Hubert Klocker, curator of Collection Friedrichshof, Vienna, states, "Nitsch and Schwartzkogler employ the magical gesture by assuming the role of the shaman or the priest. Brus, on the other hand, uses the body as a projection surface for the subconscious collective potential. It then turns into an expression of the sacrificial act.(4) The most controversial of these artists is Rudolph Schwartzkogler, who participated in Nitsch’s actions and created works that he referred to as "artistic nudes--similar to a wreckage" in which he performed self-administered mutilations. Schwartzkogler died violently on June 20, 1969 prompting several conflicting reports regarding the circumstances of his death. Art critic Robert Hughes in a 1972 issue of Time magazine stated:

Schwartzkogler seems to have deduced that what really counts is not the application of paint, but the removal of surplus flesh. So he proceeded, inch by inch, to amputate his own penis, while a photographer recorded the act as an art event. In 1972, the resulting prints were reverently exhibited in that biennial motor show of Western art, Documenta V at Kassel. Successive acts of self-amputation finally did Schwartzkogler in.(5)

Art historian Kristine Stiles claims that this is one of the notorious myths surrounding performance artists and that the real cause of Schwartzkogler’s death was that he plunged to his death by jumping out a window while obsessed with Yves Klein’s photomontage "Leap into the Void," which falsely depicted Klein jumping from a second story window. She also states that Schwartzkogler had begun experimenting that year with physical health regimes which he hoped would cleanse and purify his own body and mind.(6) In either account, Schwartzkogler’s death was a violent act inspired by his immersion in the aesthetic and has the quality of a failed purification ritual. [article/images 'Rudolph Swartzkogler'' http://www.brainwashed.com/axis/schwarzkogler/rudolf.htm] This incident inadvertently created an aesthetic mythology in which suicide is hailed as the ultimate performance art, the completed sacrifice.

Similar examples of extreme body modifications in performance art can be found throughout the world and are strikingly similar to religious rituals that entail blood. ["Body Modification Ezine" http://www.bme.freeq.com/index.html] "Performance artist Michael Journiac made a pudding with his own blood and offered it for consumption by his audience."(7) This is similar to the practice of autosacrifice by Aztec priests who drew their own blood as an offering.(8) Australian artist Stelarc suspends himself in different environments by ropes attached to hooks driven through his flesh. Although he claims "that these works are only involved with transcending normal human parameters including pain,"(9) they are strikingly reminiscent of rituals among some Plains and Northwest Coast tribal groups of North America. [image/video "Suspension" http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/suspens/suspens.html] Performance artist Fakir Musafar has made it quite clear that his intentions are to perform live demonstrations of religious rituals and practices. Influenced by National Geographic and Compton’s Picture Encyclopedia, "by the time he was twelve, Fakir had begun a systematic, personal exploration of virtually every body modification and ritual practice known to man."(10) A small sample of his performances include hanging by fleshhooks while performing an Indian O-Kee-Pa ceremony, penis stretching with weights while performing sexual negation rituals of the Sadhu of India, having one-pound weights attached to his chest with fishhooks enacting mystical practices of the Sadhu of India, and corseting his waist enacting an initiation ritual of the Ibitoe. Fakir Musafar has been performing rituals and body modifications for over forty years. [images/magazine "Fakir Musafar’s Home Page, Bodyplay Magazine, and Piercing School" http://www.bodyplay.com/]

3 The Blood

The use of blood in performance art can be likened to the use of blood in Girard’s theory of sacrifice. Girard refers to the two natures of violence as harmful violence and beneficial violence and proposes that ritual is nothing more than the regular exercise of beneficial violence which is achieved through sacrificial rites: "The physical metamorphoses of spilt blood can stand for the double nature of violence. . .. Blood serves to illustrate the point that the same substance can stain or cleanse, contaminate or purify, drive men to fury and murder or appease their anger and restore them to life."(11) This is consistent with artist Barbara Wiesen’s explanation of why she uses blood as a medium in her art works: "because I wanted to provoke multiple responses that might both attract and repulse at the same time."(12) For Girard, "The function of ritual is to 'purify' violence; that is, to 'trick' violence into spending itself on victims whose death will provoke no reprisals."(13) Blood rituals are necessary to redirect violence onto inconsequential victims in order to purify the community of the terror of uncontrolled killing.(14) Girard states,

Only blood itself, blood whose purity has been guaranteed by the performance of appropriate rites--the blood in short, of sacrificial victims--can accomplish this feat. . .

The properties of blood, for example, vividly illustrate the entire operation of violence. . . Blood that dries on the victim soon looses its viscous quality and becomes first a dark sore, then a roughened scab. Blood that is allowed to congeal on its victim is the impure product of violence, illness or death. In contrast to this contaminated substance is the fresh blood of newly slaughtered victims, crimson and free flowing. This blood is never allowed to congeal, but is removed without a trace as soon as the rites have been concluded.(15)

The artist becomes or enacts the sacrifice, the stage represents sacred space, the performance is held in sacred time, and significantly the blood is fresh, crimson and free flowing. A classic example of performance art as blood sacrifice is a performance entitled "Bloodbath" by Minnesota Artist Billy Curmano. Press releases announced that "The artist’s own blood is shed in a human sacrifice intended to focus attention on global violence."(16) At the performance, which was symbolically held on Saint Valentine’s Day, Curmano was dressed in white and sitting next to a globe of the world; the audience was informed that his blood would be spilled as a sacrifice to ease the need for suffering and death."(17) Since Curmano had promised that he would supply his own blood for the sacrifice and would not mutilate himself on stage, a nurse sat next to him and extracted a dozen vials of blood by needle from Curmano’s arms as a drum beat in the background. During the ceremony Curmano opened each vial with his teeth and spilled his blood on the globe while a voice offstage announced the names of countries in conflict.(18) Although this encompasses all aspects of the use of blood in sacrifice, it is basically a non-violent performance.

The Pain

The use of blood in performance art is often extremely violent and similar to another religious concept, mortification. In a wide variety of religious traditions mortification occurs in the context of initiation rituals. "The term mortification derives from the Latin mortificare (to put to death) . . . some practices of mortification seem intended symbolically to assimilate the initiate into a deathlike condition that is to precede an initiatory rebirth."(19) The practices refer to specific forms of bodily discipline, ranging from sleep deprivation to ritual forms of abuse. Deprivations are ways of symbolizing death: the dead do not speak, eat, drink, or sleep. Violent rituals can be seen as endurance tests that serve as a rite of passage into adulthood. The significance is not the violent act but a symbolic death and rebirth.(20) Christian mortification can be seen as an element in the more general practice of asceticism. The concept is derived from the Pauline ideal of participation in the crucifixion of Christ by putting to death the desires of the flesh. This self-imposed martyrdom was a way that Christians could recapture some of the self-sacrificing intensity of the early church.(21) This included various degrees of self inflicted violence, such as fasting, sleep deprivation, self-flagellation, the wearing of what is referred to as a hair shirt, "really a scourge worn as a belt against the naked flesh, the rope made more painful by being knotted or by the addition of metal nails."(22) The goal of this self-infliction of pain was to experience ecstatic union with God. In his book entitled Holy Anorexia, Rudolph Bell describes the life of Catherine Benincasa, one of the many medieval women who tortured themselves as a form of Christian mortification:

from the age of sixteen or so she subsisted on bread, water, and raw vegetables. She wore only rough wool and exchanged her hairshirt, the dirtiness of which offended her, for an iron chain bound so tightly against her hips that it inflamed her skin. For three years she observed a self-imposed vow of total silence except for confession. . .. three times a day she flagellated herself with an iron chain. . . each beating lasted for one-and-one half hours and blood ran from her shoulders to her feet.(23)

4

In her book, Mutilating The Body: Identity in Blood and Ink, Kim Hewitt eloquently stated: "Catherine’s religious devotions rewarded her with visions that led her to believe she experienced mystical union with God. She was canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church and became a model for holy anorectics for the next two centuries."(24) In an interview with Andrea Juno and V. Vale in the book Modern Primitives, British performance artist Genesis P-Orridge recounts one of a series of art performances entitled "Coum Transmissions" that has strikingly similar characteristics to mortification practices:

Instinctively, without pre-planning, I started to do cuts--scrape my body with sharp nails (not razor blades; to me, that didn’t feel ritualistic enough; it had to be a dagger or nail or implement. . . I was pushing myself to the point of being declared near dead. At the last Coum Transmissions action in Antwerp . . . I started cutting a swastika shape into my chest about 9" square with a rusty nail; then I turned it into a Union Jack (the British Flag), and then just scratched and cut all over the place.(25)

After that performance he was rushed to the hospital where he had a near death experience inclusive of astral projection [interview "Coum Transmissions" http://www.brainwashed.com/tg/coum.html] Another example of an art performance that exemplifies mortification practices is that of Sheree Rose and Bob Flanagan entitled "Autopsy." Flanagan lies nude on an autopsy table while he is whipped, beaten, strangled, pinched with clothespins, has various objects inserted into his rectum and has his penis sliced with a knife. The title has obvious references to death, and although Bob Flanagan does not speak in this performance, in earlier interviews he relates how "frequent near death encounters modified his concepts of gratification and abstinence, reward and punishment, and intensified his masochistic drive."(26) [film review "EUFS: Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist" http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/filmsoc/films/sick.html] The rationale behind both Genesis P-Orridge and Bob Flanagan’s art performances are that they are means of achieving spiritual transformation through imposed or self-imposed pain and violence leading to deathlike conditions. The question remains: how does one distinguish this activity as performance art from other acts of sadomasochism? In response to a similar question Genesis stated:

I’ve met genuine masochists and they’re usually rather dull, because they don’t give you any intellectual explanation at all, nor are they interested in one. . . I’m interested in heightened awareness, and I’m interested in learning more and more--about not just myself, but what is possible through the achievement of--not early trance states, but altered states in the true senses.(27)

This presents the conception of sadomasochism as a form of spiritual art which corresponds to the concept of mortification in initiation rituals and Christian asceticism. [film review "Not So Sick" http://www.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/1997/dom/971103/acine.not_so_sick_.html] It also corresponds to Bataille’s philosophy of sacrifice, which is equated to eroticism. Bataille states:

It is the common business of sacrifice to bring life and death into harmony, to give death the upsurge of life, life the momentousness and the vertigo of death opening onto the unknown … if we now consider the similarity between the act of love and the sacrifice. Both reveal the flesh. Sacrifice replaces the ordered life of the animal with a blind convulsion of its organs. So also with the erotic convulsion; it gives free rein to extravagant organs whose blind activity goes on beyond the considered will of the lovers.(28)

Bataille’s concept of eroticism posits an interpretation of sadistic and masochistic acts as a form of ritual sacrifice.

Another example of an artist who employs sadomasochism in his performances is Ron Athey. Athey incorporates piercing, bloodletting and tattooing in his art events to create rituals of redemption. Ron Athey is HIV positive and a former heroin addict. In a 1993 performance entitled "Martyrs and Saints," Athey hung nude strung up to a column with long needles inserted into his head in such a manner as to represent a crown of thorns. His stated artistic intention is to achieve redemption through self-mutilation. [interview "FAD: Ron Athey’s Saints" http://www.fadmag.com/items/athey/athey.html] Another example of what could easily be construed as masochism is the work of French multi-media performance artist Orlan, who has been undergoing a series of cosmetic operations as art performances. She incorporates religious imagery, food, and comments on spirituality and its connection to the body while fresh blood is running down her face and body. During her performances she receives liposuction and facial reconstruction while reading aloud and eating. The title of her performance is Image/New Image(s) or the Re-incarnation of Saint-Orlan and her intended goal is to transform herself into a living saint. At the current time Orlan has undergone nine separate operations towards her physical transformation. She states, "It is no longer plastic surgery, but revelation."(29) [images "Orlan" http://www.rtbf.be/interieurnuit/metamorphoses/orlan.html] Orlan’s ritualized surgeries are reminiscent of the mortification practices of the many medieval women who tortured themselves to achieve spiritual ecstasy. This postmodern mortification further exemplifies the philosophy of George Bataille, "The urges of the flesh pass all bounds in the absence of controlling will. . .. If a taboo exists, it is a taboo on some elemental violence. This violence belongs to the flesh.(30) According to Bataille’s concept of eroticism, the violent masochistic acts performed by Genesis P-Orridge, Bob Flanagan, Ron Athey, and Orlan are means of achieving spiritual ecstasy through the mutilation of the flesh precisely because these violent actions are prohibited in Christian doctrine. Taboos shape transgressions and the fluctuation between the two give rise to religious phenomena. There is no reason to doubt an artist’s claim that acts of self-mutilation and violence in their work provide a personal transformation for them. What becomes questionable is the decision to practice these violent rituals in the context of performance art, which is then further complicated when the intention is to redeem or transform the audience.

5 The Crisis

From both historical and religious perspectives, the use of blood in performance art fails to accomplish religious rituals of blood sacrifice or ritual mortification because "rites involving blood always require the participation of the group or community."(31) When saints and monks performed private individual rituals they had the full support of the Catholic Church, and when mortification occurs in the context of initiation rites, the ritual is part of an established cultural tradition, but artists do not have a collective doctrine of beliefs or a community of believers to support their rituals. However, this is not the only reason why the use of blood in performance art does not succeed as religious ritual.

René Girard proposes a concept he calls "the sacrificial crisis" which occurs when the entire sacrificial structure fails. According to this concept rituals can fail in the following ways: 1) when the sacrificial victim loses its mimetic relation with the community, creating a situation in which the sacrificial substitute is recognizably different from other members of the group; 2) when there is an unequal balance between pure and impure violence; and 3) when the rite is not believed in by the community. Furthermore, ritual failure can cause more harm and unleash even more uncontrollable violence. According to Girard "anything that adversely affects the institution of sacrifice will ultimately pose a threat to the very basis of the community, to the principles on which its social harmony and equilibrium depend." (32) Violent Performance Art fails as ritual on all three counts and significantly represents a breakdown of American culture as defined by Girard’s concept. When performance artist Gina Pane burns her feet and hands, gashes herself with a razor and makes slits in her eyelids,(33) the audience is not experiencing a sense of communal catharsis; these acts only serve to provoke a sense of horror at this vision of apparently inexplicable violence. An example of sacrificial victims losing their mimetic relation to society is performance artists who are HIV positive or use HIV positive blood. This fails as ritual because the blood itself is designated as "polluted," making the artist an unacceptable surrogate sacrificial victim for a healthy community. Girard states: "If the gap between the victim and the community is allowed to grow too wide, all similarity will be destroyed. The victim will no longer be capable of attracting the violent impulses to itself: the sacrifice will cease to serve as a 'good conductor,' in the sense that metal is a good conductor of electricity."(34) An example of ritual failure occurred in a performance by Ron Athey. Athey pierced himself with needles, then carved designs into an assistant’s flesh, afterward hanging paper towels blotted with HIV-soaked blood above the audience, which caused a commotion in which members of the audience fled from the auditorium in panic. This exemplifies Girard’s concept of a sacrificial crisis: when the blood rite goes wrong it only serves to set off a chain reaction of uncontrollable violence.

Many of the previously cited works are situated on the edge of mainstream American culture and occasionally shocking even to veterans of the New York avant-garde art world. In order to gain a fuller understanding of the phenomenon of the use of blood in contemporary art it is necessary to examine these works from the perspective of religious and social prohibitions. Let us examine how current censorship of art evolved from the Biblical prohibition of images. In his essay entitled Art and Disturbation, philosopher Arthur Danto addressed the topic of violent performance art which he termed "the arts of disturbation." "Reality must in some way be an actual component of disturbational art, and usually reality of a kind itself disturbing: obscenity, frontal nudity, blood, excrement, mutilation, real danger, actual pain, possible death. . . It is disturbation when the insulating boundaries between art and life are breached.(35) According to Danto, Disturbational art is a regressive movement; instead of going forward to its transfiguration into philosophy, it goes backward to the beginnings of art, and our involvement with this art puts the viewer in an entirely different space than anything the philosophy of art has equipped us for.(36) Danto proposes that "the aim of the disturbatory artist is to sacrifice himself so that through him an audience may be transformed . . . it is an undertaking to recover a stage of art where art itself was almost like magic--like deep magic . . . in brief, it is an enterprise of restoring to art some of the magic purified out when art became art."(37) Although in agreement with this characterization, I would specify that the expression "when art became art" should be taken to mean when Judaic/Christian ideology subjugated this form of the aesthetic with biblical prohibitions on image worship. In his essay Danto suggests that disturbational art is what provoked the iconoclastic controversies at various times in history over the making of graven images:

You after all have to ask yourself why there has been at various times in history such intense controversy over the making of graven images, why there have been movements of iconoclasm at all. It is a struggle against the use of dark powers on the part of artists who, by making an image of x actually capture x.(38)

6

What Danto is describing is the religious concept of idolatry. The use of blood in art, specifically when the intention of the artists is spiritual redemption, would constitute an idolatrous act because artists are substituting themselves for the idol or the scapegoat. The artist is becoming another god, violating the biblical prohibitions as stated in the second and third commandments "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" and "Thou shalt not make for yourself a graven image."(39) The use of blood in performance art also has striking similarities to rituals of blood sacrifice in form, content, and ideology, which is exactly what the prohibitions forbid. The violent use of blood in art will always be seen as deviant in American society because self-mutilation cannot be culturally sanctioned in a society founded on Judeo-Christian values. Bataille posits an explanation for this:

Transgression in pre-Christian religions was relatively lawful; piety demanded it. Against transgression stood the taboo but it could always be suspended as long as limits were observed. In the Christian world the taboo was absolute. Transgression would have made clear what Christianity concealed, that the sacred and the forbidden are one, that the sacred can be reached through the violence of a broken taboo.(40)

The ideal that the sacred can be achieved by transgressing religious commandments is an extremely frightening concept that would both politically and religiously undermine American culture. This explains why the works of artists are taken so seriously that they provoked a Supreme Court decision to regulate decency in art. From a Christian perspective, the concept embodied in these artworks that violence, sex, and ritual is a means of achieving the sacred constitutes blasphemy. Since the American legal system is fundamentally based on patriarchal Christian principles, it is no surprise that artworks incorporating blood, urine, excrement, semen, and violence will not receive any public funding on the grounds of obscenity. That would be the equivalent of financing the demise of the current American political and religious structure.

Although religious and government opinions on the subject are obvious, the response of the viewing audience needs to be addressed. Whereas artists may achieve individual spiritual transformation through their work, choosing to exhibit or perform publicly entails viewer response and participation. When an artist posits himself as a sacrificial scapegoat during an art performance, the experience of the audience is determinedly meaningful in interpreting the event. Interestingly enough, Danto’s view of disturbatory art in aesthetics and Girard’s theory of sacrifice in religion hold the same position in regard to the significance of audience participation. According to Danto the viewer’s choice of whether to participate in a violent action or not is what distinguishes performance art from anything the philosophy of art has equipped us to construe as art.(41) According to Girard, the viewer’s choice of whether to participate in a violent action or not is what distinguishes performance art from acceptable ritual. So it is no coincidence that violent performance art does not fit into Danto’s Hegelian construction of the history of art and without audience participation represents what Girard refers to as "a sacrificial crisis," for in each case violent art is neither beneficial to nor culturally sanctioned in art or religion. This provides a non-biblical explanation of why the use of blood in art is a secular form of idolatry. It represents a struggle between those who would retain the ethics and morality of a monotheistic patriarchal society and those who believe in other ideologies. The principal point is that American art, religion, and culture cannot allow for the use of blood in contemporary art for the same reasons that blood is prohibited in the Bible: it is a threat to the fundamental principles of the Judeo-Christian world view.

However, the fact remains that artists are increasingly using blood and violence in art and audiences are attending. This art can be referred to as "postmodern mortification" because it represents a spiritual attempt by artists to dismantle personal and societal boundaries through physical sacrifice as a ritual form of purification. Although it was demonstrated that this fails as religious ritual, it is a ritual process nonetheless. What will define the progress of this genre is not so much the artists as the audience. If audience participation begins to take place, participation being defined as religious interaction and communal transformation, performance art will no longer be positioned in the category of the aesthetic but will be designated by society as a new religious movement.

The Scenes

Ritual participation has been achieved and can be encountered in what is referred to as The Vampire Scene, The Goth Scene, The Fetish Scene, and The Body Art Scene, each of which is fundamentally based in aesthetics. It was the acceptance of the aesthetic use of blood in contemporary art that popularized these movements by sanctioning blood ritual. The significant difference is that ritual participation of audience members is required in the Vampire, Fetish, and Body Art Scenes, producing an authentic form of the sacrificial aesthetic.

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Vampire culture like other religions consists of people who have committed themselves to an ideology, maintain ethical tenets within a hierarchical system, participate in rituals specific to their clans and in which aesthetics holds a significant, often magical place of significance within the group--aesthetic being broadly defined as symbolism, style, language, religion, art, presentation of self, appearance, and other cultural expressions. The Vampire Scene evolved from a combination of cultural myths, legends and the romanticized Hollywood image. Modern Vampyres signify themselves by spelling vampire with a "y," which distinguishes them from Hollywood, mythological, and fictional references. The "Vampyre Scene" refers to individuals, groups organizations, events, businesses, and so on, who all share an interest in the Vampyre lifestyle. One particular group has an intricate network of members and is referred to as "The Sanguinarium." This term is derived from the Latin word for blood "sanguis," and signifies how Vampyres regard each other, as in "of the blood." The Sanguinarium promotes a common Vampyre lifestyle comprised of etiquette and aesthetic and other tenets. [images/information "The International Vampyre Connection" http://www.sanguinarium.net] The manifesto found on their web page states:

The Sanguinarium is a network of individuals, social organizations and businesses for which the vampyre/vampire is a metaphor, representing a community interest in fetishism, the Occult, theatrics, art, lore as well as individual and spiritual expression and exploration . . . The Sanguinarium’s final goal and purpose is to bring together all people who enjoy and find pleasure in darkness, occult, vampyrism and dark fetishism.(42)

Vampyres also distinguish themselves from Goths and the Gothic Scene, although aesthetic styles are similar and many times they attend the same clubs. The differentiating criteria are that Goths do not become members of clans or adopt the vampyre ideology. Many people are introduced to the Vampyre scene through the role-playing game "Vampire: the Masquerade," others through the erotic nature of the lifestyle and many more through popular literature such as Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. Members congregate at Havens (Vampyre nightclubs) and Courts, which are social events or "town meetings" held in specific geographic locations. There is a sophisticated system of Courts and Havens throughout the United States and Europe. For example, The Court of Gotham includes all of metro New York City and the following Havens: Long Black Veil, The Bank, Alchemy, Contempt, and Mother. Another example is the Court of Lost Angels which encompasses Los Angeles and Southern California and whose havens include the Fang Club in Los Angeles, Bar Sinister, Coven 13 and Absynthe in Hollywood, Vampiricus and Release the Bats in Long Beach, Repent in Anaheim and many more. [images/information "The Fang Club" http://www.fangclub.com/findex.html] Currently the Sanguinarium lists ten Courts on their web site each containing many Havens. This demonstrates that Vampyre culture is not a passing fad but an extensive, highly organized community whose members number in the thousands.

The Sanguine Ankh is the symbol (sigil) of the Sanguinarium. Designed by master metal smith D’Drennen, it allows members to identify each other worldwide. It was derived from the ancient Egyptian symbol of eternal life and refers to the priest of the Egyptian god Horus’ use of the bladed ankhs for bloodletting rites. The hierarchical structure of Vampyre culture is referred to as The Three Pillars. The lowest level consists of Fledglings who are either new to the lifestyle, inexperienced, or who are children of Vampyre adults. They are signified by having no prefix before their name and no stone in their sigil. After a period of initiation Fledglings can become Calmae, which signifies experienced members of the Clan, coven, or circle, and they wear a red stone in their sigil. The highest level is that of the Elders who are the most experienced and influential members of the Sanguinarium. They consist of leaders and founders of clans, owners of havens and fangmakers (dentists who make permanent fangs for members), and they have a purple stone in their sigil. [artifacts "Sabretooth Emporium" http://www.sabretooth.com/main.html]

Use of language and etiquette is very significant in the Sanguinarium, which claims to promote chivalry, honor, style, and creativity. The expression "The Awakening" alludes to initial attraction to the Vampyre aesthetic, which is also referred to as the "birth to darkness" or "the becoming." A Sire is a Vampyre parent, including parent and child, lovers, friends--anyone who guides a fledging to his Vampyre nature. The fledgling or childe is an initiate until moving up to the next level. Mundanes signify non-Vampyres and people who do not support the lifestyle. Swans refer to those who are aware of the culture but choose not to partake. Black Swans are people who are tolerant of the lifestyle while White Swans are those who disapprove and try to persuade family members or friends to get out of the scene. It is interesting to note that black is a positive term and white is a negative term in Vampyre culture. Other forms of etiquette include Vampyre or Scene names, which are pseudonyms derived from various historical, mythological and biblical sources. Prefixes such as Lord, Lady, Marquis, Marquise, Mistress, and Master denote status in a clan. There are also distinctive Vampyre greetings; in the Gotham Sanguinarium, this involves joining of hands, a kiss on each hand, followed by a mutual kiss on each cheek.

8

Other aesthetic characteristics include clothing, referred to as "garb," which usually reflects a historical era such as Victorian or Edwardian, and an assortment of fetish, corset, bondage, and so on. Preferred colors are usually red, black, and purple. Silver jewelry is preferred to gold since it is less representative of the rites of the Catholic Church. Music is dominated by Gothic; other genres include Industrial, Classical, Punk, Techno and a variety of other forms. Some of the more popular Vampyre bands include Inkubus Sukkubus, Type O Negative, Nosferatu and Malkador. Wine is the drink of choice and some members will also partake of absinthe although it is illegal in the United States and most European countries.

The code of conduct is enforced by the Elders in a tradition that is known as the "Black Veil." "The Black Veil" is comprised of eight ethical tenets of which the first and most important is to keep sanguine secrets confidential among members. The philosophy of the Black Veil includes secrecy, vampyre names, individuality, honor thy blood, respect, courtesy, and safety of the blood. Punishment entails excommunication from a clan for various lengths of time, according to the violation. It is significant to mention that these tenets only apply to the Sanguinarium and that there are many different sects and belief systems among vampires who are not part of this particular fellowship.

Some clans partake of blood drinking and bloodletting. A group of members who imbibe blood are referred to as a "feeding circle" and as opposed to media depictions they do not bite each other on the neck but usually use razor blades to make cuts into each other’s bodies and suck the blood from those cuts. Again it is important to mention that not all members of the Sanguinarium engage in this practice. Other popular customs include fetishism, sadomasochism and bondage & discipline sexual activities. This is inspired by the myth of the Vampyre as hunter. Participants are referred to as Regnant (master) and Thrall (slave); this involves an aspect of Vampyre magick termed "True Name" which is a variation on the sadomasochism safety word.

The Vampyre Scene is a serious and growing phenomenon that holds gatherings where thousands of Vampyres attend. The largest gathering is called "Endless Night" and is held in New Orleans throughout Halloween. Equivalent European gatherings include Vampyria and the Whitby Vampire Festival.

The sacrificial aesthetic is thriving in the form of this new culture. From a sociological perspective, when a group of people participate in a shared aesthetic in which identity and status are organized around a style that is distinguishable from the dominant culture it is referred to as a subculture. The Vampire subculture exists in opposition to the fundamental Judeo-Christian principles of mainstream Western Society. Vampyres pride themselves on practicing the antithesis of Christian ethics and this is apparent in the ritualized sexual and violent activities that permeate their interactions.

The Festivals

Vampyres frequently attend Fetish Scene and Body Scene Clubs, which involve public sadomasochistic activities. It is at the numerous "Scene" clubs where the worlds of body mutilation, piercing, performance art, blood rituals, tattooing, and all forms of bondage and violent sexual activity converge. The Fetish Scene refers to clubs where fetish, sadomasochism and bondage & discipline are promoted and The Body Art Scene refers to body piercing, tattooing, modern primitives, and so on. Performance artists who use blood attend and perform at all of these venues. These Scenes, which are all fundamentally based on violent aesthetics, are not mutually exclusive and usually overlap. The names of these clubs often appropriately reference historical predecessors. For example, a popular Fetish Club in Brisbane and Townsville Australia is called "The Hellfire Club." In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, Hell Fire Clubs referred to places known for raunchy sexual and reckless excitement, where hedonistic and occult activities were prominent. The original Hellfire Club was founded by Francis Sashwood in 1751 when he converted an Abbey into a cult headquarters by decorating in Gothic style and pagan statuary. It was rumored that these clubs were linked to Satanism and Witchcraft. Keeping with tradition, the contemporary Australian Hell Fire Club provides its members with an assortment of specially designed rooms, furniture, and devices in which they can imaginatively experience pain/pleasure. [images/information "Hellfire Club Information Page" http://www.hellfireclub.com.au/intro.html] One of the most infamous clubs in London today is appropriately named "Torture Garden." Founded in 1990, it is currently Europe’s largest Fetish/Body Art club. Its average attendance is 600-800 people with special events attracting as many as 2000 and it claims to be a major pioneer in the fetish/body art phenomenon. It is a combination of a fetish, S/M, body art, Modern Primitives, straight, gay, performance art, body ritual, fashion, techno/industrial/atmospheric music, multimedia, and cyberspace club. The concept of Torture Garden may initially be difficult to accept, as it encompasses the most extreme manifestations of body piercing, mutilation, and ritual uses of blood in Western culture. [images/information "Torture Garden" http://torturegarden.com] Besides dressing in the latest leather sadomasochism designs, original accessories include catheter bags filled with blood and urine, medical bags filled with blood, and air hoses when necessary. There is every imaginable form of mask, chain, whip, and sometimes even chainsaws and blowtorches are part of the festivities. The Torture Garden also contains a manifesto that clearly demonstrates the anomalous nature of fetish clubs. Their manifesto boasts:

Torture Garden remains the most radical and alternative club, always on the cutting edge of the latest underground subculture . . . Torture Garden is a world where the bizarre, strange and dreamlike become normal . . . Torture Garden is the apotheosis of all antinomies . . . The dissolution of all oppositions . . . As you mutate with Torture Garden, you reach new peaks of pleasure and eroticism and freed from the shackles of social convention . . . Torture Garden breaks taboos . . . Torture Garden has established an international reputation for encouraging artistic experimentation and transgression . . . (43)

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This is practically a textbook definition of ancient festivals in which the deliberate violation of established laws occurred and where scandalous behavior was temporarily acceptable. It also exemplifies Bataille’s concept of "orgy" in which he contends that "In the orgy the celebration progresses with the overwhelming force that usually brushes all bonds aside. In itself the feast is a denial of the limits set on life by work, but the orgy turns everything upside down . . . These excesses derive their most acute significance from the ancient connection between sensual pleasure and religious exaltation."(44) In Bataille’s philosophy of eroticism he claims that the origin of orgy evolves from the existence of taboos which were set up to prevent murder and sexual violence and that these taboos shape the nature of transgression. Essentially the decadent nature of such clubs as the Torture Garden evolved directly from the violence and sexual prohibitions in Western culture. The manifesto of the club also claims, "At the Torture Garden the boundary between audience and performer disappears."(45) The crucial difference between performance artists who enact blood rituals and activity at the various "Scenes" is that audience participation now takes place. That is the significant criterion, which dissolves the line between the aesthetic and the religious, taboo and transgression, imagination and reality.

Allowing for the fact that the different "Scene" clubs are analogous to festivals, from a Girardian perspective they still do not resolve the problem of the sacrificial crisis. According to Girard "The fundamental purpose of the festival is to set the stage for a sacrificial act that marks at once the climax and the termination of the festivities."(46) He also claims that, "Festivals are based on the assumption that there is a direct link between the sacrificial crisis and its resolution."(47) The problem of Vampyre culture is that it exists in a perpetual state of sacrificial crisis. Without any reference to a surrogate victim and any predominant ritualistic structure it is the epitome of a failing society that has reverted back to its violent origins. Activities in these Vampyre Havens and Fetish Clubs exemplify the concept of a deritualized festival. Girard states in reference to the festivals of failing societies "Instead of holding violence in check, the ceremonies inaugurate a new cycle of revenge. By a process of inversion that can befall all rites and that we have already had occasion to observe in the case of sacrificial rites, the festival ceases to function as a preventive measure and lends its support to the forces of destruction."(48) Bataille’s philosophy supports this view: "Orgiastic eroticism is by nature a dangerous excess whose explosive contagion is an indiscriminate threat to all sides of life."(49)

The Sacrifice

Unfortunately, the violence that occurs in these clubs will only continue to escalate until ritual meaning is restored. The logical resolution of the sacrificial crisis as manifested in the various "Scenes" is the sacrifice of an original victim in order to reestablish meaning to future surrogate victims. It is at this point that the line of demarcation between performance and reality collapses and ritual violence erupts into what is designated occult murder. One example is a self-styled vampire clan in Kentucky who were arrested on November 29, 1996 for the murder of a Florida couple. This incident has been sensationalized in books, television, interviews and an HBO special entitled "Vampire Murders." [images/article "Court TV Verdicts: Florida v. Ferrell" http://www.courttv.com./verdicts/vampire.html] Sixteen-year-old Rodrick Justin Ferrell was the leader of a vampire clan comprising four other teenagers in which rituals included cutting each other’s arms with razors and sucking the blood. On the day of the murders, Heather Wendorf, the daughter of the victims, participated in the "embracement ritual" with Ferrell and "crossed over" into the clan by drinking each other’s blood in a cemetery. Ferrell than became her sire. That evening Rod Ferrell bludgeoned Richard and Naoma Wendorf to death with a crowbar in their Florida home. The letter "V" was burned into their bodies, symbolizing Rod whose vampire name was "Vassago." Smaller burns on each side of the "V" represented the other members of the clan. After pleading guilty to armed burglary, armed robbery, and two counts of first-degree murder, Ferrell was sentenced to death in Florida’s electric chair on February 27, 1998. He is the youngest person on Florida’s death row. Another teenage clan member, Howard Scott Anderson, is serving life in prison after pleading guilty to participating as Rod’s principal accessory in the double murder. Anderson’s plea bargain saved him from the electric chair. Ferrell’s attorneys portrayed him as a troubled youth addicted to drugs and sexually abused by relatives. He became involved with Vampires through the role-playing game "Vampire: The Masquerade" and he was initiated into the scene by an older teenager Steven Murphy (vampire name Jaden) who subsequently testified at the trial that:

he initiated Rod into vampirism during a crossing-over ceremony in a Murray (Kentucky) cemetery that involved slashing their arms and sharing each other’s blood, followed by a lengthy period of meditation. As the senior Vampire who initiated Rod, Murphy said he became the younger boy’s sire and was responsible for his behavior. And although he explained the rules of vampire conduct to Rod, the witness said, his protégé violated those principles when he organized his own band of followers . . . The Wendorf Murders were not vampiric, Murphy explained, because Rod didn’t bleed the bodies. "There was no bloodletting. He did not take from them."(50)

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This contradicted his earlier testimony that vampires don’t kill and are expected to show the highest admiration for life. If vampires do not kill there would not be any knowledge of a distinctive vampiric modus operandi. It came to detectives' attention through John Goodman (vampire name Damien), a close friend of Rod’s, that his motivation for the murders was that he was "possessed with the idea of opening the gates to Hell, which meant that he would have to kill a large, large number of people in order to consume their souls. By doing this, Ferrell believed he would obtain super powers."(51) Psychological justifications aside, Rod Ferrell’s immersion into the occult clearly demonstrates that he was thinking in religious conceptions of sacrificial murder. This case is just one of many that entail blood rituals and murder. It is simpler to relegate these crimes to aberrant behavior than to imagine that we are living in a sacrificial climate.

Occult groups that practice ritual murder have an authentic understanding of the sacred nature of violence. You do not have to convince Vampyres or Satanists that humans are violent by nature; as living examples of Girardian theory, they fundamentally comprehend this. This provides an explanation as to why the Elders and High Priests of these groups show no remorse for their killings. The reason why many of their followers recant is that they have been re-indoctrinated into mainstream ideology and subsequently view their actions as crimes as opposed to sacrifice. It is dangerous to view occult criminal actions from a strictly psychological perspective that tends to categorize them as psychopathologies; this relative assumption gives the false impression that these are not logical, rational choices. It perpetuates the denial of occult crime and relegates the offender to the only socially comprehensible category, "the irrational other." Contemporary acts of inexplicable sacred violence are more effectively understood in what I refer to as "ritual anachronisms," which are violent actions that are inappropriate to, or not adapted to, the value system that they are enacted in. No matter how bizarre a murder may appear, it can always be situated as acceptable in some historical era or distant culture. Occult crimes are the natural result of the escalation of violent aesthetics that dispute moral values. Blood Art, Vampyre Culture, The Fetish Scene literally set the ritual stage for sacrifice. Ritual murder is the epitome of the sacrificial aesthetic freed from ethical responsibility to society. What begins as artists experimenting with the use of blood and mutilation as a form of personal transformation escalates to an entire culture founded on the principles of a dark mythology manifested in orgiastic ritual. Once blood rituals turn participatory and ideologically justify sacrifice, idolatry is achieved.

11

[Notes]
1. RoseLee Goldberg, Performance Art from Futurism to the Present (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1988): 165.(back)
2. Paul Schimmel, "Leap into the Void: Performance and the Object," Out of Actions Between Performance and the Object 1949-1979. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, museum catalogue (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1998): 84(back)
3. RoseLee Goldberg 164(back)
4. Hubert Klocker, "Gesture and the Object: Liberation as Aktion: A European Component of Performance Art," Out of Actions Between Performance and the Object 193(back)
5. Kristine Stiles, Out of Actions Between Performance and the Object 290(back)
6. Kristine Stiles 293(back)
7. Kim Hewitt, Mutilating the Body: Identity in Blood and Ink (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University. Press, 1997): 104(back)
8. Mircea Eliade, Editor in Chief, The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1987) Volume 3, Cannibalism 60.(back)
9. Hewitt 105(back)
10. V. Vale and Andrea Juno, editors, Modern Primitives, An Investigation of Contemporary Adornment & Ritual (San Francisco, CA: Re?Search Publications, 1989): 6.(back)
11. René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, translated by Patrick Gregory, (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972): 37.(back)
12. Interview with Barbara Weisen, 1998.(back)
13. Girard 36.(back)
14. Girard 36.(back)
15. Girard 36-37(back)
16. Len LaCara, "Curmano Plans ‘Bloodbath’" (Winona Daily News, Thursday, February 9, 1984.(back)
17. Renee Boyle, "Bloodshed, Not Roses, Prevail" (Winona Daily News, Wednesday, February 15, 1984).(back)
18. Renee Boyle, February 15, 1984.(back)
19. Eliade, Volume 10, Dario Sabbatucci, Mortification 113, 114(back)
20. Eliade, Volume 10, Dario Sabbatucci, Mortification 114(back)
21. Eliade, Volume 10, Dario Sabbatucci, Mortification 113(back)
22. Eliade, Volume 10, Dario Sabbatucci ,Mortification.(back)
23. Rudolph M. Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985): 43.(back)
24. Hewitt 45.(back)
25. V. Vale and Andrea Juno, Modern Primitives 167, 168(back)
26. V. Vale and Andrea Juno, Modern Primitives 206.(back)
27. V. Vale and Andrea Juno, Modern Primitives 169.(back)
28. Georges Bataille, Eroticism, Death & Sensuality translated by Mary Dalwood, (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986, originally published as L’Erotisme 1957): 92.(back)
29. Linda Weintraub, Arthur Danto, and Thomas McEvilley, Art on the Edge and Over, Searching for Art’s Meaning in Contemporary Society 1970s-1990s (Litchfield, CT: Art Insight, Inc., 1996): 79.(back)
30. Bataille 93.(back)
31. Eliade, Volume 2, Jean-Paul Roux, Blood, 254.(back)
32. Girard 49.(back)
33. Hewitt 103-104.(back)
34. Girard 39.(back)
35. Arthur C. Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986): 121.(back)
36. Danto 117, 123.(back)
37. Danto 131, 126.(back)
38. Danto 127.(back)
39. The Lockman Foundation, editors, New American Standard Bible, Reference edition, (Chicago: Moody Press, 1960) Exodus 20:3-4, 61.(back)
40. Bataille 126.(back)
41. Danto 123.(back)
42. The Sanguinarium Home Page, manifesto section, http:/www.sanguinarium/scrolls/manifesto.html(back)
43. The Torture Garden Home Page, manifesto section, http://www.ainexus.com/torturegarden/manifesto1.html(back)
44. Bataille 112.(back)
45. The Torture Garden Home Page, manifesto section, http://www.ainexus.com/torturegarden/manifesto1.html(back) v 46. Girard 119.(back)
47. Girard 120-121.(back)
48. Girard 125.(back)
49. Bataille 113.(back)
50. Clifford L. Linedecker, The Vampire Killers (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998): 262.(back)
51. Linedecker 159.(back)

The Electronic Journal of Generative Anthropology Volume V, number 2 (Fall 1999/Winter 2000) ISSN 1083-7264 URL: http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ Email: anthro@humnet.ucla.edu

article

Anti Technologies of Resistance

Alexander Brener & Barbara Schurz

In the beginning of 1999 we published a little book called What to do? 54 Technologies of Resistance Against Power Relations in Late-Capitalism (in Vienna, and before that in Moscow.) This book is a collection of a number of semi-anecdotes and semi-reflections about the possibilities of political and cultural resistance under the condition of a globalized market and multiculturalism. The centre of our examination were so-called technologies of resistance: familiar and traditional methods of political struggle and cultural resistance, as well as individual 'transgressive' techniques. On the one hand we tried to analyze critically technologies such as demonstrations, sit-ins, hunger strikes; on the other hand we discussed the effectiveness of showing your ass in front of your enemy, throwing eggs and spitting on your opponent's dress. Resistance must take into consideration concrete circumstances of place and time and must act from very precise strategies and tactics of local struggle, if it wants to be effective. Borrowing from Foucault, who spoke about the 'specific intellectual' we suggested the term 'local and specific resistor.' Such a resistor doesn't act from universal concepts or out of the doctrines of parties or groups, but struggles against these very doctrines and keeps moving endlessly, not knowing what he or she will do tomorrow. In combating the current art-system, local scandals, interventions, leaflets, graffiti etc. may be effective at a certain moment but useless in another context. Soft subversion, a heritage inherited from the 1980s, is no longer adequate, and the hidden undermining of the political context of the enemy is obsolete and has finally degenerated either into cynicism or into conformism and strategies of success and survival within the system. 'War is necessary!' was our answer to the question 'What to do?'

However, the term 'technologies of resistance,' which we have used untill now, no longer satisfies us. From now on we want to talk not about technologies but about anti-technologies of resistance. After the works by Artaud, Bataille and Foucault, Lacoue-Labarthe, it becomes clear that the Greek term 'techne,' which denotes a mimetic ideal in the sphere of art and is directly connected with the art of politics, still subordinates itself to political and aesthetic activities in modern society. Techne implies a model of society that is based on the hegemony of certain technologies of power and on the subjection of the will of individuals in a direction favorable to the elite. Technologies are the skills and abilities which guarantee the functioning of knowledge and power in very different fields - from a shoemaker's business to the construction of intercontinental ballistic missiles, from artistic collages to espionage satellites. Power relations produce technologies and distribute them partly through dictatorship, partly through seduction, but always in the interest of the ruling order. Even if one or another technology is employed in the service of resistance, at a certain moment it inevitably turns out to be the hostage of power and, deriving from power relations, it permanently return us to them. Technologies serve the oldest and most productive game of power, where its myths get the 'final' and 'competent' confirmation from experts. Nowadays techno-myths serve the neo-liberal elites, repressive tolerance, and the new Right. We no longer want to speak about 'technologies of resistance' because we associate the term 'technologies' with 'power' rather than 'resistance.' Anti-technologies of resistance are necessary!

In 1959 Gustav Metzger presented his concept of 'auto-destructive art.' ("Destructive of what? Destructive of the peace of mind, the pleasure in the arts, the moral integrity of people directly or indirectly supporting the violence of the state, structural social discriminations, different forms of oppression…") Metzger's concept was directed against an understanding of art as a stable and completed technology that has a fixed aesthetic and market value. At that time, Metzger's political views were close to anarchism, and he thought that 'auto-destructive art' would enact the destruction of capitalist economy and imperialistic politics. Metzger discovered and articulated the connection between aesthetic technologies of the production of art and political technologies of the reproduction of the hegemonic concept of cultural memory, tradition, and the 'history of the winner' Unless an artwork destroys itself, it is at the service of capital. Metzger was the first to question how technologies (of art and power) can turn into their opposite, destroy themselves and become something else.

Anti-technologies of resistance entail the destruction of the cultural and scientific technologies which are at the service of power, and, secondly, the creation of 'unpleasant,' 'dissatisfying,' dubious, and crazy practices that cannot be included in the toolbox of the technologies of power. We would like to stress the importance of the terms 'dissatisfying' and 'unpleasant.' Dissatisfaction is the only real product of anti-technologies of resistance. Deep, restless, and exciting dissatisfaction should be felt not just by the power structures, against which resistance is realized, but also by the resistors themselves and by the 'uninvolved' observing audience. To cultivate anti-technologies of resistance means to create an atmosphere of unpleasantness, defeat, disappointment and indignation in today's world of successful 'humanitarian interventions' (for example, in Iraq and Yugoslavia) and festive representations of triumphing cultural imperialism. Anti-technologies of resistance are like a fart at a cocktail party with guests dressed in evening attire. This fart must be really unbearable and instill consternation and dissatisfaction into the souls of those present. It should not have anything in common with Christof Schlingensief's theater or Roman Singer's performances. This fart must be really anti-artistic, but not like punk or J.J. Allin, because these are also technologies. Anti-technologies are not art, but at the same time they are art because nobody knows what art is although everybody can do it. Anti-technologies are the striving for the impossible, and in no case just another aesthetic phenomenon which decorates the pages of art magazines. Art magazines are shit!

Anti-technologies of resistance are atmospheric appearances, because they are principally indescribable and non-reproducible. It is impossible to repeat an anti-technology (otherwise it becomes a technology.) Anti-technologies are anti-systematic. At the same time some more or less constant characteristics of anti-technologies can be named.

1. Connection with specific and local context. Only these specific connections can determine the effectiveness of resistance. However (we can say parenthetically) no one has ever practiced such a deepening of context-from court organs to artists. Without this deepening, there is no understanding.

2. The body as the opposite of a machine. Bodies do not organize or create anti-technologies, but appear as anti-technologies-it is through bodies that anti-technologies become visible and perceptible. Bodies are not machines: neither machines of desire, nor war machines, nor machines of power. Bodies destroy their function, come out of their frames, get into contradiction with themselves. Bodies show their discrete anti-machinery. Bodies carry the truth of anti-technologies, which can be defined through the interrupted pulsing of 4 elements: body-thinking-happiness-suffering. Happiness is not a technology; neither is suffering. Suffering and happiness live at a high-speed detached from technologies, like death is a high-speed detached from life. (If you don't understand this, try drowning in a bathtub.) Thinking is not a technology because it can exist only in desperate disagreement (with the primate of technologies.)

3. 'Wild' and 'antisocial' activities. These do not have anything in common with all sorts of expressionism, or, moreover, with a frustrated iconoclasm. (Expressionism is just another mercantile technology.) Wild activity means introducing chance elements into the order of technology, thereby demolishing this very order. Chance elements are bodies, chairs, water, night, dirt, hunger, flowers-in a word, everything available right at the moment.

4. Striving for decomposition and unproductivity. Decomposition is an attempt to hinder the repressive order, which in hegemonic culture is perceived as the main source of productivity. The normative product in today's understanding is repressive consensus in a certain packaging. Exactly this consensus must be subjected to the procedure of decomposition. Decomposition and disintegration are the weapons of a minority, calling into question the consensus of a moral majority.

5. Striving for discontinuity. Discontinuity is a risky leap out of the body of cultural history, which Benjamin called a 'history of winners.' (The ‚history of winners' is the history of the fat giggling of patriarchal owners who stage celebrations on the bodies of poverty.) Leap into what? Into dissatisfaction, risk, pain. Into the void… But more than anything, a leap into thinking, into producing resistance.

6. Refusal of any aesthetic and ethic satisfaction. No satisfaction, not for yourself, not for others. No consumption and pleasure of success. We confess that this idea is not clear in the end even to ourselves: What does no satisfaction mean? No laughing, no enthusiasm? Rather not that: laughing and enthusiasm, but with the disgusting feeling of shit coming out of your neck. (And immediately a shout and attack.) This feeling was described by Bataille in Literature and Evil. The political equivalent of this feeling: Contra-Attack against your own post-bourgeois fatness. Anti-technologies are convulsive contra-attacks against the fascism of your own machine-body.

7. Refusal of normative documentation. A typical means to collect fat around your hips is to document your own 'works.' Anti-technologies entail refusing the principle of documentation. Documentation is the main way to archive hegemonic cultural memory. Documentation is the liberal form of social consensus, ironically making fun of the conservative term 'masterpiece.' Documentation is today's whiny form of recognition, begging for critical revisionism. Don't document and exchange information but think! And every thought must find it's own specific and mortal (political) form.

8. Non-originality. Originality is the crumpled, rotting intellectual fruit of old shit-preservers like Jürgen Harten and Kasper König. Puffed up 'experts' talk about originality, while they are disgusting non-original functionaries. Originality is the commercial success and mass-medial triumph of some obedient bodies over others-nothing more. In a political field, efforts are the only reality of resistance-culture! Non-originality means adopting radical-democratic principles in a cultural, social and political realm.

Our short theses about anti-technologies of resistance are connected with the actual political situation in the modern age of globalized capitalism. The noticeable repoliticization of social groups (youth, immigrant, trade-unions, different social movements) in many parts of the raises the specter of local and specific struggle against various enemies: neo-liberalism, conservatism, the new rights, racism, cultural populism, subtle sexism, various 'progressive' institutions, serving the interest of political and social elites. 'Micro' resistance is necessary to combat the expansion of capitalist instincts and orders in every direction, every place, all bodies, all discourses, all objects. Struggle at the level of elementary particles of thoughts and activities. Start with yourself, with your own context, your professional field. Re-view theoretical approaches; give up using current discourses, contemporary formulas, fashionable technologies. Speed, imposed by modern culture, is just the speed of capital. It is necessary to brake sharply, to stop and slow down. It is necessary to carry out what Foucault called a return to: "If we return, it is because of a basic and constructive omission, an omission that is not the result of accident or incomprehension.... This non-accidental omission must be regulated by precise operations that can be situated, analyzed, and reduced in a return to the act of initiation. Both the cause of the barrier and the means for its removal, this omission - also responsible for the obstacles that prevent returning to the act of initiation - can only be resolved by return... It follows naturally that this return... is not a historical supplement that would come to fix itself upon the primary discursivity and redouble it in the form of an ornament... Rather, it is an effective and necessary means of transforming discursive practice." (What is an Author?)

A 'basic and constructive' institutional omission of resistance-culture (the culture of Mary Richardson, Arthur Cravan, Antonin Artaud, Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper, Gustav Metzger, Jack Smith...) has already taken place. About a return, so far, we don't have to speak.

 

Austria/Russia, 2000

article

Andy Warhol: Living And Dieing With The Radical Liquidation of Art

The Diaries, 20 Years After

Dr. Gerry Coulter

 

“I always like to work on leftovers… Things that were discarded, that everybody knew were no good. …It was like recycling work. I always thought there was a lot of humor in leftovers." (The Philosophy of Andy Warhol)

“I got out my book of old paintings and saw all the clever things I used to do, and I just can’t think of something clever to do now. Maybe I should do soup cans again” (The Andy Warhol Diaries: 395)

I. Introduction
Andy Warhol, who died twenty years ago on February 22, 1987 at age 58, kept a diary for the last decade of his life. The final entry was made five days before the gall-bladder surgery from which he would not recover. It was published two year’s later with an introduction by its editor and Andy’s long time friend, Pat Hackett (who transcribed his almost daily entries over the telephone). Andy’s diaries contain the private details of his thoughts and experiences – the ones he wanted us to have after his death. A well managed and edited diary can be an excellent source of publicity in the after-life – and this one is. Warhol remains an enigma in his diaries and Hackett participates in this by giving us [the original diary is over 20,000 pages], like the famous soup company, the condensed version (807 pages). The diaries are also an interesting look into the life of the Warhol machine and the lives who networked with it (including candid accounts of scenes such as this one from the offices of Interview): “Ronnie opened the door to the bathroom in the conference room – that lock doesn’t really work – and there was Margaret Trudeau sitting on the toilet with her pants down and a coke spoon up her nose” (125).

On the twentieth anniversary of Warhol’s death I reflect on two aspects of his diaries: 1) The fascinating snapshot of 1970s and 1980s life in New York as read by Warhol’s inimitable arid coolness, and 2) how the diaries reveal to us a man who was not in artistic crisis toward the end, but someone who was living out the catastrophe he perpetrated on art and aesthetics twenty years earlier. These two aspects of the diaries are not unrelated.

II. Life In The Epi-centre of the End of the World
Like New York, Andy Warhol never seemed to stop, only slow down after 3 am. If there is joy in keeping on the move, in being a celebrity’s celebrity, Andy knew how to find it. He almost never stayed home nights, there was always a dinner or a party, Studio 54, a show, or multiple events keeping him out late. His diary is that of a person who accompanied, dined, and partied with an incredible array of the rich and famous: Donald Trump, the fashion designer Halston, Mick Jagger (Bianca and Jerry Hall were both close to Andy), European royalty, Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Onassis, the Kennedy’s, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jane Fonda, Liza Minelli and most artists of his generation and the ones on either side of it. The rich and famous were also important clientele for portraits at a rate of $25,000 per.

The diaries show that he was expected to be an important walking talking “event” for other celebrities to have to their parties. Warhol also lived the life of a public homosexual in a society that at best tolerates gays and at worst kills them. Caroline Kennedy’s handlers were nervous about who might accompany Andy to her wedding. He was anxious about personal assaults and purchased a bullet proof vest not long after John Lennon was murdered. On his audience with the Pope: “They finally took us to our seats with the rest of the 5000 people and a nun screamed out, ‘You’re Andy Warhol! Can I have your autograph!’ She looked like Valerie Solanis so I got scared she’d pull out a gun and shoot me. Then I had to sign five more autographs for other nuns. I get so nervous in Church” (275-276). Andy the machine does not theorize or analyze in his diaries as such efforts ran against his cool temperament. We are left to piece together the story and what we see is a man who was both loved and loathed. Even some of those who liked and respected him enormously (Mick Jagger) kept a certain distance between themselves and Andy.

Andy’s outward character was difficult, dry, machinic, and he had only one long term relationship (Jed Johnson). Jed left him a few days before Christmas 1981 throwing Andy into a period of depression for more than two years. After his parting with Jed he fell hard for Paramount VP Jon Gould who told Andy he had to be more serious (391). Even people very near to him simply did not know how to take him. Yet it was precisely his distant and cool character that made him famous as a celebrity and also allowed him to distance himself from art and to free us from art and aesthetics. What made his personal life painful was also the key ingredient to his success and lasting importance.

The diaries are outrageously funny in places and are a delicious time capsule of the Studio 54 era which is passing into history: “Turned on the TV and saw Jimmy Swaggart preaching and he had a huge auditorium of people, more than Prince” (750). Among my favourite of the entries is this one from a fellow weekly attendee at Catholic Mass: “Went to Madison Square Garden to see Billy Squier. …Backstage there were about fifty nude girls serving hot dogs and beer and mud wrestling. …And an absolutely nude girl came over and said, ‘I see you at St. Vincent’s church every Sunday’” (453). Andy was often expressly not at a loss for words in an awkward circumstance: “My boyfriend Peter came up and found me with my boyfriend Danny so I introduced them as my boyfriends and that got them interested in each other so they left together” (84).

We also meet the impressionable Andy struggling to refine his thinking against the 1980s current: “I know killing animals to make coats is sad, but look, even when you think about killing cows to eat they’re so big and beautiful and everything’s alive – the plants are screaming” (279). There are also chuckles from the banality of everyday life: “And when Brigid and I go to May’s, you see people opening the toothpaste tubes and taking a taste. Brigid does that” (344). Public Andy the celebrity is always autographing, anything and everything: “A guy came over and said he had the biggest cock in L.A., so I offered to sign it and Marissa got so excited she leaned over to look and her hair caught fire in the flames of a candle – it was like instant punishment” (172). Warhol also shares his anathemas with his diary: “Dylan was never really real – he was just mimicking real people and the amphetamine made it come out magic. With amphetamine he could copy the right words and make it all sound right. But that boy never felt a thing – I just never bought it” (663).

We also meet philosophical Andy: “I’ve got these desperate feelings that nothing means anything” (372). And we meet the very human side of the machine: “Went home lonely and despondent because nobody loves me and its Easter, and I cried” (373); absolutely profound Andy: “Everything died out in the sixties” (290); indifferent Andy: “I voted once. In the fifties, I don’t remember which election… and I got called for jury duty and I wrote back: ‘Moved’. I’ve never voted again” (304); hysterical Andy, owner of two dogs: “I woke up with flea bites and … I ran out and got flea collars for my ankles” (533); irrational Andy: “I never had a priest exorcise my room that had the spontaneous fire. I blessed it myself – I got the holy water. But I still think there is something funny about that room. I had the Picabia painting of the devil that fell down in there and also the ceiling fell down” (559), and: “So my face broke out in pimples, I was being paid back for not going to church on Easter” (568). Finally, there is Andy the walking exposed nerve: “I think I got a cold from drinking a really cold daiquiri. I can feel it, it pierced me” (386).

Warhol’s diaries contain countless other moments of a cool appreciation of the banality of life at the end of the twentieth century, as well as brilliance, insight, a wry wit, and some scandalous morsels about the rich and famous. The diary is a one man tour of life in the fast lane of the city Baudrillard called, at that time, the “epicenter of the end of the world”. Andy Warhol’s New York is the end of the world because it is an introduction to a different universe for those who did not travel there with him during this time. Far more important however, and every bit as interesting, is what the diary reveals about Warhol’s relation to art after he stopped it cold.

III. Living With The End of Art
If we call Andy Warhol an artist we should do so with a sense of irony because he held a distinct advantage over art – he never believed in it: ”I told them I didn’t believe in art, that I believed in photography” (315). His importance, and we see him struggle with this in his diaries as in his creative life, is that he was on both ends of simulation in art – “authentic” 1960s simulations – when he led among a number artists making a Duchampian gesture of extreme liquidation, turning everything into art and exploring the insignificance of the world through the image (see Baudrillard, Art and Artefact:10). If everything is art (celebrities such as Elvis and Marilyn, common items such as Campbell’s soup cans and Brillo boxes), then nothing is art.

In the 1980s when Warhol paints the Brillo boxes again he is indulging in the frustration of “inauthentic” simulation. The 1960’s soap boxes were an original form of simulation but in 1986 he reproduced only the “stereotype of simulation” (see Baudrillard, Ibid.:11). We see this self appropriation emerging in 1983 when he writes in his diary: “Decided to work at home on boxes. When you flatten out product boxes they’re so beautiful” (499). Product packaging was this commercial artists fetish and for him all images were equally good. How many could leave the art world in ruins by simply exposing their fetish? Only Warhol and Duchamp succeeded in so thoroughly deconstructing the sign of art. The joke played on the art world, including by itself, is that both Duchamp and Warhol are enshrined members of its utopia. The art world did maintain a certain distance from Andy in his day [MOMA for example had only one small Marilyn when he was alive] (576).

While it remained somewhat skeptical of him, the art world being the art world, could not help itself from being drawn to Warhol’s event horizon. In 1984 he writes: “There’s a painting of mine going up for auction soon, and its estimated at $100,000. It’s a coke bottle. And Roy’s [Lichtenstein] things go for five, six, or seven, and Jasper’s [Johns] go for a million” (536). Besides, since he left it in ruins by the mid 1960s what was the art world to do but to enshrine him as they had Duchamp? These two men took the most banal objects and made them art forcing the banality of the consumer society into the dwelling place of aesthetics. The twentieth century was the century of the banalization of everything and when Warhol and Duchamp made the entire world aesthetic, the end of art was the result. Still, like politics which goes on in distressing forms after we enter the transpolitical, and economics which becomes transeconomic and launches itself into orbit around the globe via satellite, transaesthetic art continues after the end of art. Small wonder we find so much garbage (literally and figuratively) in contemporary art shows today. I recently attended a contemporary show “Faster, Bigger, Better” at ZKM Karlsruhe in which the most interesting, of a very few remarkable works, was one of Duchamp’s bicycle wheels which was tucked away in a corner.

Warhol was witness to what Baudrillard would term “the conspiracy of art” – a kind of insider trading in escalating prices and reciprocal praise: “I had an appointment to meet [art dealer] Bruno Bischofberger… he invited us to Julian Schnabel’s loft… And [he] does bad paintings… there’s this whole group of kids doing this bad art. I think they’re influenced by Neil Jenny. Then Bruno comes along and says, ‘I’ll buy everything’, and these kids get used to big money” (343). And this from later the same year: “At Castelli Gallery saw works of Kenny Scharf. So I was thinking of buying a work and figured it would be $4000 or $5000. When I called later about it they said it would be $16000. I mean, these are kids right off the street getting these prices” (501). On auction houses Warhol says: “These auction houses are so fake… They just put things out again if they don’t sell them and then eventually a sucker comes along” (344). On his own experiences of the art world Warhol has things like this to say: “I really can’t stand doing this show at Ron Feldman’s, it’s just publicity for his gallery and he should be paying a lot more (402); and: “Went to the Whitney, I was there to ‘advertise’ my Campbell’s Soup Box painting. We must be getting desperate. Me standing there twenty years later and still with a Campbell’s soup thing, it felt like a New Yorker cartoon” (681).

By the end of the 1970’s, when he was doing a series of piss paintings (174, 463), six years before his appropriations of his own earlier simulations of soap boxes, Warhol’s diary reveals that he was in what some would read as a full creative crisis. I think something even more significant was happening – Warhol in the 1980s was struggling with the implications of his own acts of devastation in the 1960’s. “I wasn’t creative since I was shot” he writes ten years after Valerie Solanis almost ended his life with a gun in 1968 (182). He publicly announced to an advertising agency during a photo session that he was not creative (274), and as early as 1981 tells his diary that he wants to do soup cans again and how after twenty years he is “still doing this stuff” (402). Warhol’s “crisis of creativity” was in fact his own lingering experience of the art world he had destroyed. No one, as the diaries of the 1980s show us, including Andy, found it easy to follow his radical disenchantment of aesthetics and art. Andy summed it all up, uneasily, comparing himself to Mick and the Stones: “the rolling stones got glowing reviews and what they did was just a repeat of their old album. And here I’m doing a show repeating all the old pop images (406).

IV. The End of Andy

“I just don’t know how to be real” (165).

Being the one who stopped art cold at a relatively early age wasn’t always easy to live with. He had once stood on the edge of art’s expanding universe and made it stop – and in that moment he felt creative power as he never would again. As the decades passed into the 1980s it was no easy ride being modernism’s anti-hero. Is it possible his remark about Dylan (above) was a compliment? It certainly was a difficult task to outdo the most radical efforts of the avant-garde (liberating us from both aesthetics and art), while never being part of an avant-garde. Andy had to adjust to circumstances of his own creation: If soap boxes and soup cans are art, then there are no more artists. Or, as Joseph Beuys put it: “Everyone is an artist”, which means the same thing.

This was, as it turns out, the perfect place for what Andy was at heart – a superb businessman and commercial artist. Who else would thrive more from turning art into a reproductive machine. Warhol in the 1980s was not going through a crisis of creativity he was passing through the implications of one’s murder of the creative act. Art could continue to exist, but Andy didn’t have to believe in it. And so he did his portraits of the rich and famous, the art world maintained an elliptical orbit around him, and he died before fully coming to terms with the devastation he had wrought (see Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime: 81).

So what did Andy do after ending art? He went into business art and he was a shrewd businessman who left an estate of more than a quarter of a billion dollars. In his “philosophy book” he wrote: “Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. After I did the thing called ‘art’ or whatever it's called, I went into business art. I wanted to be an Art Businessman or a Business Artist. Being good in business in the most fascinating kind of art” (The Philosophy of Andy Warhol). He even went so far as to refer to his 1980s forays into commercial art as “portraits”, no longer distinguishing between “art” and “commercial art”: “I’ve been getting a lot of commercial portraits to do lately – like liquor bottles and things instead of people” (584); and: “I really want to do the Oreo cookie’s portrait. It’s having its seventy-fifth birthday” (737).

But the business of business and commercialism wears thin and it certainly wore Andy out as his diaries reveal. In this sense, perhaps Warhol’s body knew just when to quit (he was anorexic for years) – there was nothing left to do and there hadn’t been really, for twenty years. After you have ushered insignificance into the centre of the art world, be prepared to deal with the full implications of “the lethal strategy of the image” (see Baudrillard, “War Porn”). Art is yet to come to terms with Warhol but it has become an enormous global business. Like other businesses it turns out many things we really do not need while producing its own forms of cultural pollution. Andy Warhol’s diaries show us the strange forces at work when this universe was being born.

“I broke something and realized I should break something once a week to remind me how fragile life is”(688).

*The author expresses his gratitude to Kelly Reid for her insightful commentary during the writing of this article.

References

Jean Baudrillard and Nicholas Zurbrugg (Editor). Art and Artefact, London: Sage, 1997.

Jean Baudrillard and Sylvere Lotringer (Editor). The Conspiracy of Art: Manifestos, Interviews and Essays. New York: Semiotext(e)/ MIT Press, 2005.

Jean Baudrillard. “War Porn” Translated by Paul Taylor. International Journal of Baudrillard Studies. Volume 2, Number 1, (January, 2005) www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol2_1/Taylor.htm

Jean Baudrillard. The Perfect Crime, New York: Verso, 1996:81.

Pat Hackett (Editor). The Andy Warhol Diaries. New York: Warner, 1989.

Andy Warhol. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1975.