Text-Number: 0123E
Available: 18/09/1996
Category: CultureNumber of characters: 6784
Author: Robin Stein
Title: A log-book on art (1)
Art in Canada ?
Copyright: Robin Stein

Robin Stein

A log-book on art (1)

Art in Canada?

Why writing about Art in Canada and not about Canadian Art? Why writing about art in Canada too and not only in the USA or in an European Country? First: Because there is no Canadian Art. It's the same with other nations: There is no French Art, no German Art no USArt. But why then mention that it is something special to write about art and Art in Canada? Because there seems to exist something like American Art or European Art, at least in the mind of certain people. The same people that talk about Art in England or Quebec or New York or Berlin do not mind to discuss American or European Art. If one follows this aspect, something astonishing happens: People in Europe talk about American Art, but they seldom mention Canadian artists. For Europeans American Art seems to be the same as Art from USA. Maybe this occurs, because a lot of Europeans think Canada to be one of the stripes or at least  stars of that famous banner. (As a couple of Americans still think Germany to be such a star too.) But, however, this cannot be the only reason. Because even those experts tend to discuss origins of art in the mentioned way, who can be expected to know about political borders. Europeans are amazed, when they are told about this phenomenon. Some of them explain it as follows: In the view of some Europeans (and perhaps some Americans too) the USA have in respect to Canada the same status as for example Germany in respect to Austria. The difference is that the USA seem to be "America" but Germany is not "Europe". Nevertheless a lot of Germans think Art from Austria to be German Art. 
All this seems to be confusing. Why is it important to think about the relationship of art and nations that arises in the way people talk about it, why think about the difference between art and Art? Because there is a tendency to appropriate a highly individual achievement - art - as an output of collectives: Art. And even experts have an inclination to seize what they think to have a special quality as a contribution to that cultural area, where they think to have their own cultural rootes. That means: if a famous artist from a foreign place did a "good job" his work is reclaimed as "ours". If he did a "bad job" (and in the view of people who mainly talk about art as Art he usually did, if his work didn't become famous) he is "only" an artist from - for example Canada or Austria. 
Therefore it doesn't matter where one writes about art and so it comes we write about art in Canada, and not about great Canadian Art. To do so we think to be important. Because we think that the only criterion for the fact that art outranks Art is that the criteria of art are founded on art - and on nothing else. Back to Berlin for instance, showing their film "For German People" - "Dem Deutschen Volke" (it's the inscription above the portal of the Reichstag), Jeanne-Claude and Christo have been asked again, what "message" their "Wrapped Reichstag" should give. The answer was: We don't give messages, we are making art.
To write about art in Canada therefore simply means to write on art. And to do so differently means not to write about Art in a usual way. So we do not care about the question what might be interesting to Canadians concerning a group or a "movement" or an single artist or a work we are going to present. We are going to care about art.
For whom we are going to write on art (in the same sense one backs a horse and bets on it)  and not about Art? For those who are interested in items of art that are nudging perception as well as production. 
Even to state that art is art and anything else is anything else makes art not a solipsistic action or solitary field. Art counts, even if one not always can reckon with it. Therefore we will make efforts in showing how art counts - and perhaps in asking what counts as art today (besides usual calculations that rely on art as Art). We will not say what Art is. Not even what art is. Everybody knows. And if not, we simply had to say: just have a look (or listen or read or touch ...). We will write on art as it works and as the artist works. And we will follow certain traits that make art art and anything else anything else. But we will also follow traits that make anythig else art and art anything else. To put it simply (even more simply): We are inviting readers to take part in a voyage to foreign affairs, bodys and matters whose transgressions of borderlines do not rely on political or geographical borders. The map of art-sections contains lateral and latent fringes whose procreative capacity still lies in wait for users. And this is only one aspect of seduction that appears if one is really starting to take the bearings.
Doing so, we are adventurers but no impostors. You cannot ignore Art to experience art where traits of both collimate or collide. But we will not talk about Tradition and Avantgarde, because there are a lot of traits of art in tradition and there is a lot of Art in avantgardistic traits. Our bearingline aims at stakes of art that are characteristic for positions beyond the realms of Art. So we attach a first stake of Art to this invitation au voyage, before we start through it as a gateway to art in a short time. And give you some time to come to a decision:
The great Samuel Beckett wrote a little text about the paintings of Bram van Velde. But it is mainly a contribution to the disitinction between art and Art we made. The title is: Le monde et le pantalon, The world an the pants. It deals with Art-educated prejudices that are told people who ask questions about art - or just try to enjoy it and don't care about what we still call Artificial buncombe or cant. In institutionalized Art everything happens, Beckett writes, to prevent the onlooker from following fault lines of art. He is told: "Everything that is good in painting, everything that is usefull, everything that you can admirer carefree, belongs to the lineage that leads from the Grottos of Eyzies to the Galerie de France." But he is not told, Beckett says, whether it is a prestabiled line or a trace, which appears gradually as the slimy track of a slug. He is not shown, how he can recognize, whether this aspect, this somehow invisible line, belongs to a painting and whether this line by chance demonstrates a plan.
To follow the lineaments of art therefore needs a reorientation too - without renunciation of Art. The challenge is to stop reagarding it as a repository and to deliver it from storage and to return it to art as a work in process. That's what we call a passage to art. We intend to write about it in a log-book on art. And we don't conceal that it might be a dangerous journey, because it could be an expediton without return.