H O M E E X H I B I T I O N S G A L L E R Y M A N I F E S T O A R T  T H E O R Y L I N K S

ARMANDO ALEMDAR - A DIALECTICAL PHILOSOPHY OF ART DECONSTRUCTING POST-MODERN MARXIST SHOES Fredric Jameson in Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism [Verso, London 1991] believes that postmodernism is an age that has forgotten how to think historically.55 Postmodernism for him is not a style in art but a cultural dominant; a conception which allows for the presence and coexistence of a range of very different, yet subordinate, features.56 A Post-modern work of art is characterised by superficiality and celebrates the death of meaning reflecting the economic self-seeking mentality of a consumer culture in its latest stage of multinational capitalism. Jameson places Postmodernism in a historical context recognising that it is mimetic, not mystifying. Culture has no autonomy from the economic. There is no need to consider a Post-modern work of art aesthetically for, in any event the world is capable of grasping the demonstrably baleful features of capitalism along with its liberating dynamism simultaneously, within a single thought, and without attenuating the force of either judgement.57 Jameson asks us to accept capitalism (and Postmodernism) as a passing stage, as simultaneously the best and the worst thing that has happened to humanity. This contemplative, above-good-and-evil stance has made A. Callinicos, another Marxist art critic, call Jameson the “Hegelian Marxist” and Gen Doy accuses Jameson of lacking in dialectics in a Marxian sense. Callinicos in Against Postmodernism sees Postmodernism as primarily a response to the failure of the socialist upheaval of 1968 intellectuals to fulfil the revolutionary hopes it had raised. The grand narratives did not redeem humanity and were therefore replaced by the subjective and relative values of Post-structuralism. For the deconstructionist Jacques Derrida the difference between a subjective interpretation and a universal symbol depends on the wealth of association and allows a myriad of interpretations that can also be variations without an essential norm. Derrida asks what makes the universal truth universally accepted. What are the criteria? For him a truthful interpretation cannot be surmised by immediate acceptance of the codes inherent within the infrastructure of the language of western metaphysics. For Derrida meaning is non-existent full stop. Not only is meaning less real than the sign, but it is a sign itself. In Restitutions Derrida criticises Peasant Shoes, Martin Heidegger’s essay on Van Gogh’s shoes saying that “...one never knows if it’s busying itself around a picture, “real” shoes, or shoes that are imaginary but outside painting; not only disappointed by the crudeness of the framing, the arbitrary and barbaric nature of the cutting-out, the massive self-assurance of the identification: “ a pair of peasants’ shoes”, just like that! Where did he get that from? Where does he explain himself on this matter? 58 Derrida fixes on the process of identification that might take place when observing a painting and offers this solution ‘fix a certainty that looks axiomatic’. Now, Derrida’s tentative word looks is pivotal. The certainty may only appear axiomatic. The meaning is only another symbol that signifies the signified, an endless cycle to which a postulate can be built of language’s complete autonomy, an opaque entity. Derrida recalls the snare Shapiro laid for Heidegger during their frustrating debate about the true meaning - as if there could be only one - of Van Gogh’s picture The Shoes. (plate IX) Cezanne said “I owe you the truth in painting” and Derrida wants to negate the truth in the word truth, just as Nietzsche had negated the word knowledge. While Heidegger rushes to put the peasant back in his shoes, Shapiro wants Van Gogh to wear them because both art historians are certain they know to whom this pair of shoes belongs. We observe the laces are loosened, the shoes detached, not only from their owner but from their surroundings and from each other. Making the same observation Derrida asks can the fact that the shoes are a pair be proved. ‘...is it not the logic of this false parity rather than of this false identity which constructs the trap?’ 59 So there is not only one possible reading of a work of art but several. When we observed the picture we were moved by the way Van Gogh had painted these well-worn shoes and had humanised them. We were perhaps too subtle to ask exactly who wore these shoes because we had been satisfied by the way the artist had rendered them in paint on canvas. Not two but three possible meanings already in one small oil on canvas of a pair of shoes. With Derrida (and the Greeks) we must agree that Shapiro and Heidegger are hubristic when they ‘owe the truth in painting, the truth of painting and even painting as truth’: “It is of course, necessary to take into account the debt of duty - ‘I owe you’ - but what does speak mean here? And ‘speak in painting’: truth spoken itself as one says “in painting”? Or truth spoken in painting, in the domain of painting?.... by the sole means of painting, no longer spoken out - “to speak” being only a manner of speaking, a figure - painted, truth silently painted, itself, in painting?”60 Staying with Derrida a little longer as he wryly notes that the painted shoes are useless footwear, we will add - briefly setting aside the beauty of Van Gogh’s picture - that they are doubly detached, detached from themselves - no one can prove they are a pair - and locate the feet that wore them - if they were ever worn. Now Derrida questions the need of reattachment: ‘They are in a hurry to tie up the thread with the subject. Detachment is intolerable’.61 Turning now to Shapiro’s critique of Heidegger, we see that the latter has not actually described our picture but its subject matter, as if the image was an illustration in a footwear catalogue, instead of a work of art. What Shapiro reckons Heidegger has defined in the image is a common pair of shoes like any other pair of shoes. Even Van Gogh’s honest brushwork has eluded him. It seems, for Heidegger a photograph would suffice. It is not necessary for the shoes to have been painted: ‘The same truth could be presented by any shoe painting, or even by any experience of shoes and even of any product in general’.62 For Heidegger Van Gogh’s picture The shoes is useless63 in the sense that no painting is ever at all useful to us for the apprehension of the usefulness of a product.64 Clearly Shapiro, Heidegger and Derrida were unmoved by Van Gogh’s picture, unconcerned about the artist’s motives, oblivious to his inspiration, in the furore of their debate. We are inclined for a moment to agree with Michel Foucault that the author is dead. Certainly these three authors seem to have missed a good painting. Turning now to another pair of impractical shoes, not a painted pair, but the subject of a post-modern photo - montage that gives the impression that the cobbler fashioned this pair of shoes out of human skin. The cobbler, Robert Gligorov, a Macedonian - born photographer, has been at pains to make sure that the toe of only one of the shoes is pointed by a nipple. (Obviously not a pair).(plate XI) [Shoes 1997 carbon print on aluminium, 120x100cm] After the initial revulsion we must recover ourselves and question the calculated, obscure and intimately destructive nature of this photo montage. Marxist reasoning could offer an explanation. True, we are disgusted by the idea that the shoes are made of human skin painfully moulded into shoes evoking thoughts of Aushwitz. With Shoes Gligorov coldly observes the humiliation and disintregation of one being, and enjoys its transformation into the Other. The shock and the shocking. Horrific feelings are aroused by one’s defence system like other disgusting thoughts that could surface from our subconsciousness consciously exposing our vulnerability. Could we wear these shoes? If so, at what occasion would we wear them? Why did the sight of this pair of shoes remind me of the baleful features of capitalist modes of production, exploited workers and the link between my own skin and a cow’s hide bringing into question the value of labour and surplus profit? Were the artist’s intentions Marxist? (Gligorov was born in a formerly Marxist country). Does this interpretation derive from my own Marxist background? Have I merely projected my own interpretation onto a meaningless work of art.65 Be that as it may, the shock Gligorov’s Shoes raises a lot of questions and epitomises a Marxist view engulfed by a wave of Postmodernism. We have seen that the question why was the painting painted is not asked by Derrida, Heidegger or Shapiro. The notion that the artist’s inspiration and motive could join in a dialogue with the viewer giving insights into the creative process - is never considered. Heidegger also misses the point of Van Gogh’s picture deciding that it is not an adequate illustration for a footwear catalogue. That a pair of dirty shoes inspired a well painted picture is suprisingly overlooked by this Hegelian modernist. Shapiro the Marxist art historian, wants the shoes to belong to an urban dweller. If Van Gogh’s picture depicted Cinderella’s shoes, no doubt these three princes of contemporary art history would have a good time finding the Cinderella to wear them. Whether the shoes in Van Gogh’s picture belong to a peasant or an urban princess, even Derrida admits that ’an army of ghosts are demanding their shoes’66. What is left for us? Callinicos, in a different context, remarks that to a world that is slowly being destroyed by the consequences of competitive capital accumulation. “(a) Baroque melancholy and Romantic irony - cultivated by Modernism, reduced to the merest pastiche by the prophets of Postmodernity - seem the only appropriate response so long as we leave out of out account the possibility of global social transformation which could impose a new set of priorities, based upon the collective and democratic control of the resources of the planet. Once we admit this possibility, then, ‘with this one about - turn’, everything changes: we see both sides of Marx’s perspective on capitalism - not simply the destruction it wreaks, but the potential expansion of human capacities it involves. Unless we work toward the kind of revolutionary change which would allow the realisation of this potential in a transformed world, there is little left for us to do, except, like Lyotard and Baudrillard, who fiddle while Rome burns.”67 The obliqueness of deconstructionist theory does not see further than its vast empire of signs governed by language, blind both to the meaning and form of a work of art as it floats listlessly on a troubled sea of words. Deconstruction declares the autonomy of language by pointing to the relative nature of its discourse. However, deconstruction theory is relevant historically, because it affords a perspective on historical narratives that have been invested with the values of the present. This theory could also be useful for a Marxist approach to art history because it espouses art’s dialectical process. In Derrida dwells a post - Marxist repentant, a deconstructivist that was never a fully fledged anti-Marxist, but rather a misguided philosopher when pondering on art that had accepted the Marxian spirit of opposition. Like Callinicos, Derrida admits that the ideological stalemate in the late 1950s was the origin of deconstruction. [ J. Derrida, Spectres of Marx 1994] BACK   FORWARD