Another earlier post worth reposting: “Take Picasso. Throughout the twentieth century he had an ability, the moment others seemed to be catching up, to simply spin out of whatever form represented contemporary control. The world of official art history spent much of its time intellectually – artificially, in fact – trying to attach his innovations to the Western tradition. From time to time they would reluctantly offer a tip of the hat to the influence on Picasso of creative traditions from what they considered to be Third World societies. They couldn’t pretend that the painter, and other painters, hadn’t taken notice of these theoretically lesser traditions in Africa, the South Pacific and the Canadian West Coast. Why were they lesser? Because they had not entered into the artistic evolution of Western society. There art was therefore ‘naïve’ or ‘brut’ or ‘primitive’. But it was also good. It was art which had remained in a spatial, non-linear mode. What’s more, it had links to the creative roots of imagination – that is, right into the animistic reality. And it had the imaginative aggressive drive to reinvent itself constantly. The Western tradition, having cut itself off from the animist, found it difficult to spin into reinvention. What made the art world so nervous about Picasso was that he seemed to look at Western imagery with the eye of an anthropologist. Meanwhile, he related to the art of that other world – let’s call it the animist – with the imagination of a participant. It is not accurate to say that he was influenced by the images of Africa, Western Canada and Oceania. He had actually spun out of the Western linear tradition – cut free – and entered right into the spatial world of the OTHER. He took a tool bag of Western techniques and conventions with him. But he was actually ensconced inside the other imagination. He merely used the various Western forms. You could say that he had entered the spatial, animist world and was merely influenced by the Western tradition.” From On Equilibrium by John Ralston Saul
Posted on: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 01:30:35 +0000