[ NOTA #11 ] Momento de luz + momento de visión.

[... tachar y volver a tachar... anular (como si de un dedo supuestamente inútil se tratara). Con el proposito de de abrir el sentido a su multiplicidad y dejarlo estar para el conocer estético. Mesa estática y extática que ya no lo será más... mesa vacía que ya no lo está. El objeto para si. Lo que tacha tacha en tanto que comentario y lo que representa en tanto lo que había... en la imagen recordada y en la imagen idolatrada. En el fetiche lo reprimido se muestra como síntoma puesto fuera de nuestro cuerpo físico... ahí fuera. Influyendo con la gravedad de la leyes físicas. Atrayendo nuestro ser a recorrer caminos no sabidos... tal vez desconocidos (mil veces andados por unos o por otros, pero no pensados y no comprendidos). Indeterminación del ídolo... del objeto, de la escena, de la ley en la perversión... ]

[... «Es demasiado idealista... y, por eso mismo, cruel».

Dostoievski, Humillados y ofendidos... ]

[... cruel con la pintura. Con todos los efectos que esta es capaz de desplegar... una idea, un orden una visión. Componer y descomponer... encajar la imagen y dejar que se diga y nos exprese hasta la emoción. Pero esa emoción no llega. No llegará... ]

[... dorado... gamas y capas de dorado que subliman el blanco y negro de la no pintura (o de aquello que se pretendió como pintura otra). Superficies sobre superficies que se ciegan, nublan e invisibilizan las unas a las otras. No puede haber una imagen cabal, completa y frontal de lo que se hace, de la imagen construida, Esta se somete al punto de vista y gana en armonía, en cromatismo, luminosidad y en la negación de si misma y de todo su potencial de sentido a través del valor diferencial que la constituye en lo material. Y en la idea previa, en su origen y en el pretendido destino. Su imagen es azarosa y sujeta al punto de vista y al recuerdo de todos su posibles y potenciales puntos de vista y momentos de luz. Momento de luz y momento de visión se desterritorializan para amalgamarse como el momento de emoción y con el inesperado momento de la verdad... cuando la imagen deja de estar fuera... y ya la idolatramos como a un carnero dorado elevado en su altar que no todo es sin la hecatombe, el sacrificio, o la ofrenda de quienes aguardan del símbolo la alegoría que permitirá vislumbrar el sentido de todo ser y estar... de los acontecimientos y de la razón misma. Signo de vida... ]

[ NOTA #10 ] ... DICIENDO (Gerhard Richter...)

Picturing things, taking a view, is what makes us human; art is making sense and giving shape to that sense. It is like the religious search for God.

Notes, 1962

Since there is no such thing as absolute rightness and truth, we always pursue the artificial, leading, human truth. We judge and make a truth that excludes other truths. Art plays a formative part in this manufacture of truth.

Notes, 1962

Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless. It demonstrates the endless multiplicity of aspects; it takes away our certainty, because it deprives a thing of its meaning and its name. It shows us the thing in all the manifold significance and infinite variety that preclude the emergence of any single meaning and view.

Notes, 1964-65

Art is not a substitute religion: it is a religion (in the true sense of the word: 'binding back', 'binding' to the unknowable, transcending reason, transcendent being). But the church is no longer adequate as a means of affording experience of the transcendental, and of making religion real – and so art has been transformed from a means into the sole provider of religion: which means religion itself.

Notes, 1964-65

Now there are no priests or philosophers left, artists are the most important people in the world.

Notes, 1966

How do you interpret your role as a painter in our society?
As a role that everyone has. I would like to try to understand what is. We know very little, and I am trying to do it by creating analogies. Almost every work of art is an analogy. When I make a representation of something, this too is an analogy to what exists; I make an effort to get a grip on the thing by depicting it. I prefer to steer clear of anything aesthetic, so as not to set obstacles in my own way and not to have the problem of people saying: 'Ah, yes, that's how he sees the world, that's his interpretation.'

Interview with Rolf-Gunter Dienst, 1970

Art is the highest form of hope.

Text for catalogue of documenta 7, Kassel, 1982

Other people did, however, try to tie a label on you. 'Capitalist Realism' was one catchphrase that stuck. And it was actually coined by you in the first place.
Yes, we were amazed when that happened. It was a real joke to us. Konrad Lueg and I did a Happening, and we used the phrase just for the Happening, to have a catchy name for it; and then it immediately got taken up and brought into use. There's no defence against that – and really it's no bad thing.

Interview with Wolfgang Pehnt, 1984

Could you tell me a little about your Manifesto of Capitalist Realism? 
That was a piece I did in 1963 with Konrad Lueg in a department store, in the furniture department. It was announced in some papers as an exhibition opening, but the people who came didn't know that it was to be a sort of Happening. I don't think it is quite right that it has become so famous anyhow. It was just a lot of fun, and the word itself, Capitalist Realism, hit just right. But it wasn't such a big deal.

Interview with Dorothea Dietrich, 1985

I originally came from Dresden, where Socialist Realism prevailed. Konrad Lueg and I came up with it, for the most part ironically, since I now live in capitalism. It was certainly 'realism', but in another form – the capitalist form, as it were. It wasn't meant that seriously. It was more a slogan for that particular Happening at a furniture store.

Interview with Christiane Vielhaber, 1986

Art is the pure realization of religious feeling, capacity for faith, longing for God. […] The ability to believe is our outstanding quality, and only art adequately translates it into reality. But when we assuage our need for faith with an ideology we court disaster.

Notes, 1988

What does the word 'Informel' mean to you today?
As I see it, all of them – Tachists, Action Painters, Informel artists, and the rest – are only part of an Informel movement that covers a lot of other things as well. I think there's an Informel element in Beuys, as well; but it all began with Duchamp and chance, or with Mondrian, or with the Impressionists. The Informel is the opposite of the constructional quality of classicism – the age of kings, or clearly formed hierarchies.

So in this context you still see yourself as an Informel artist? 
Yes, in principle. The age of the Informel has hardly begun yet.

Interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, 1993

In general, American Pop Art concentrated on public imagery and commercial culture. But previously you told me that as German Pop artists Polke, Lueg and you wanted to represent a broader experience, a wider view of reality. I wondered if you could say something more about this larger vision in relation to the focus of American Pop Art?
Maybe we didn't even have a chance. The message of American Pop Art was so powerful and so optimistic. But it was also very limited, and that led us to believe that we could somehow distance ourselves from it and communicate a different intention.

So, where does that difference lie? 
It was not possible for us to produce the same optimism and the same kind of humour or irony. Actually, it was not irony. Lichtenstein is not ironic but he does have a special kind of humour. That's how I could describe it: humour and optimism. For Polke and me, everything was more fragmented. But how it was broken up is hard to describe.

[ NOTA #9 ] NO (insuficiencia_fracaso)

[... Art is the pure realization of religious feeling, capacity for faith, longing for God. […] The ability to believe is our outstanding quality, and only art adequately translates it into reality. But when we assuage our need for faith with an ideology we court disaster. Gerhardt Richter 1988... ]

[... la mesa vacía... y el intento de acabarla llenando la representación con la metáfora de la tachadura, o del borrado...  de ambas cosas, una tras otra o simultaneamente. La cosa sucede y la representación se manifiesta,  encaja y abre paso a un decir lo que no se sabe. Lo que no se sabe pero se intenta... ]

[... la mesa vacía como disfrute del no saber y del hacer por hacer... lo que se sabe hacer y lo que se hace...]

[... tachar / borrar / tachar y borrar (invertir la acción) pura acción poética que expresa el fracaso como problema y la insuficiencia como el terreno de juego para resolver el problema... se insiste una y otra vez...]

[... tachar (y todo lo demás) no es fácil. En el preciso instante de copiar el gesto del artista, que en mi es mera sublimación de lo que se intento decir y se hizo, el pulso tiembla sabiendo que ni es facil ni será adecuado el resultado... sólo el dorado garantiza una capa de sentido que marca la decadencia y la vana gloria de todo intento. Esto es así aún a mi pesar porque el ciclo tendrá que ser explicado... llevando la contraria, y contrariando, al autor. Pero ese es mi camino. Hacia el ídolo... atraído por su saber hacer...]

[ NOTA #8 ] FETICHE_TIEMPO_ESPACIO [ídolo]

[... No hay precisión, o esta, al menos se ve derivada a la sugerencia de no querer ser preciso. O solo preciso cuando lo que se produce es la tachadura, o en su lugar el borrado, ambos como intento o marca: en cada caso el significante es otro ya que incluye las posibilidades multiples de lo que se quiere decir... a saber, que sobre lo impreciso de dice algo que se da por realizado. Esto nos acerca al fetiche pues invoca en el espectador el principio de indeterminación. Demasiadas cosas, todas las por ahora dichas, para una mesa vacía... y también para una cuestión de estilo... y también para un golpe de efecto (que "marca" el des-efecto pretendido... y también un desafecto... ] [... volver a leer y volver a mirar... en la mesa la marca y la indicación de una intención que debe causar en primer lugar, sorpresa, sorpresa... ]

[... quién da más... ]

[... el fetiche como expresión, lo escribía antes, de nuestro participar, infinitivo e infinito, en la determinación y la imposibilidad de la misma por ser el mundo la totalidad de los acontecimientos y de las causas, relaciones y efectos de tal supuesta totalidad... El fetiche como ídolo...]

[ NOTA #7 ] INVISIBLE _DESVISIBLE_AVISIBLE INTERVISIBLE

[ NOTA #6 ] ... ESTAR O NO ESTAR...ser o no ser...

[ NOTA #5 ] JAMES LEE BYARS...

the death of james lee byars