1965
About the Magic of the Object
COPYRIGHT ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL «O MUNDO DE LYGIA CLARK»
1965
About the Magic of the Object
1965 – About the Magic of the Object
When an artist uses as object of the daily life (Ready-Made) he thinks to give this object a poetic power. My “Walking” is quite different from that. In its case there is no need of an object: it is the act that carries the poetics. What is so important with the “Ready-Made”, then? With it we still find the shift from the subject to the object, a separation from one another. But today there is no longer need of that, as poetry makes itself in the act of making. What is the role of the artist, then? To give the participator the object that has importance in itself and only will have when he act with it. It is like an egg: we can only see its substance if we open it. I ask myself if after the experience of the “Walking” we become more conscious of our gestures – even the most trivial ones. Maybe this would become impossible because it demands that we keep away all practical and immediate meaning in these gestures. The first time I cut the “Walking”, I lived a meaningful ritual in itself and I wished that the same action would be lived with the greatest intensity by the future participators. It is necessary it to be gratuitous and you must not try to know – while you are cutting it – what you are cutting and what you have cut.
COPYRIGHT ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL «O MUNDO DE LYGIA CLARK»
1965
About the Magic of the Object
It requires concentration and a naïve wish of learning about the absolute via the act of making the “Walking”, to keep free the act of doing and living it. The act of the “Walking” is a proposition directed to man whose work more and more mechanized has lost the power of expression. He had before the power to express himself, like the craftsman when in – evolved with his own work. Perhaps man has not yet lost entirely this expressivity quality in relation to his work to the point of the work to be completely strange to him. If such a change has to happen in contemporary art, it is necessary more than the “participation of the spectator”. The work should act as a step forwards, offering ground for the freedom of the spectator-maker and not merely a selfcontained object. The spectator-participator will be aware of the proposition which is offered to by the artist. It is not here a matter of participation for its own sake, but that participator should give meaning to his own gesture and that his act to be fed by a thought and in this case the emphasis on his freedom of action When the work was presented all made (the “work of art” the spectator could only try to interpret it – and sometimes it took several generations for this to happen, as it was a problem of elites. From now on with the “Walking” the spectator that participates in the instant of the act can immediately realize the meaning of his own action. It is a mush more direct communication and no longer an elite’s problem. In another hand, the old work of art – the object enclosed in itself – reflected an experience that was gone, the artist had lived it before. “All art become the spiritual exercise of freedom. The happening of freedom is also the realization of art” (Mario Pedrosa). We arrive at the anonymous work – its own signature is the act of the participator.
COPYRIGHT ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL «O MUNDO DE LYGIA CLARK»
1965
About the Magic of the Object
COPYRIGHT ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL «O MUNDO DE LYGIA CLARK»