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’Ashtaroût
Bulletin volant n° 2013∙0223 (février 2013), 3 p. ~ Aesthetica
ISSN 1727-2009
Eddy Choueiry
The Irresistible Drift of Art towards Culture
All arts take root in the symbolic function.
Circuit of Representation
Reminder. – Symbolic function consists
in representing an absent object. Usually
there are at least five modes of representation: through imitation, through the symbolic
play, through drawings, through mental
imagery, and sure, through the language.
On top of symbolic function, I consider
that art includes two other peculiarities:
– Art as means of description.
– Art as a message, including a signification.
Circuit of Expression
Is not art, by definition, a modality of
being?
Art has at least an advantage on science
by the stylized description of a phenomenon.
When science is in inability to properly
represent a phenomenon, it drifts towards a
theory. The Artist, on the other hand, has
this remarkable and completely particular gift
to represent our universe accurately and
poetically at the same time. When the scholar
tramples or skates, art gives us with zeal a
palette of modes of expression and descripttion. Whether it is as a poet, a painter, a
sculptor or a musician, we are dealing with
masters of expression.
Circuit of Communication
The third peculiarity of art relates to
message transmission. Art convey a message
which means. It is full of significations which
ring out in every direction. Circuits of
exchange settle at the same time between
1
artists, between artist and publics, and
between the various publics. It goes without
saying that all these messages, in all their
levels of signification, are ballasted of unconscious, and should include mysteries. The
role of every addressee, including the art
critics, does not differ from that of the
transmitter (the artist): all run after interpretations which miss them partly.
The artist creates a stylized sign,
thanks to his Skills, which is his work.
The space where art occurs is Culture.
This circuit of communication ends in
a dialectical feedback. This feedback is
one of the sources which enrich Culture.
The artist creates a work of art which will
be accepted by various addressees, whom
in their turn create a loop of feedback.
These loops can look like a critical study,
or even a different work of art (a homage
to, an allusion to, an imitation of). Take
this article for example.
The element of the photograph is
light.
One and Three Chairs Equal Five! Here
is how I understand the installation of
Joseph Kosuth in feedback. He forgot to
count the shadows of his chairs 1.
This new intruder in the field of art –
the black box – is a machine of symbolic
production intended to re-present an
object moving towards nothingness, I
mean an object which is going away from
our sight. It is a machine with a specific,
rigid, well defined role, to capture reality
with a fidelity increasing day by day. The
weird thing is, as soon as a man touches
this machine he haunts it, enlivens it, and
kneads it with his wishes and drives. He
perverts it. The device ends up capturing
I end my subject with a machine of
outstanding symbolic functioning, the
photography camera.
1 Marcel Duchamp in “Notes”, note number 13 ”Photography of
Shadows of the Ready-Mades” Champs Flammarion
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pictures which no human eye has ever
seen, and which no mind has ever
imagined. The camera, held at the end of
the arm, is transformed into brush held in
the hand of a painter. In other words,
reality is just a pre-text. That’s how the
artist – including the photographer –
performs through his wishes the magic tie
of Symbolic Function with the Unconscious and Sexuality.
My last photography project revolves
around a game of shadow and light on
illuminated synonyms: Silhouette / Glint
/ Shadow / Reflection. It is a Raw art.
But this time, it is Nature-Made. What is
presented on the photograph is a kind of
Ready-Made which covers objects with
symbolic functioning, in other words
Phantom Objects!
The artist crops the real with a purpose
to put up a detail to mean something.
Something which he misses the significance, as much as the addressee. Before
he wonders whosoever, he is marveled
himself first.
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