 |
| Osvaldo Romberg, Black Printed Paper Analysis, 1976 [Henrique Faria Fine Art, New York, NY] |
Art to Art. Life to Life. Osvaldo Romberg. The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, 2000 Art begins when life is not enough. In modern culture the acceptance of death signifies the loss of connection with the infinite. It is in this area of thinking, in the loss of the infinite, that art gives relief and new hopes for spirituality. Art makes evident (and occasionally succeeds in resolving) the conflict between being and integrating with the world. This is a dilemma in which religion can no longer address.
All the religions of the world are narratives. In these narratives are implicit mythologies and explanations which help people to survive the panic of death and solitude. In the past, art merely rearticulated these narratives.
 |
| Osvaldo Romberg, The Third Investigation: ‘Young woman at her toilet (Giovanni Bellini, 1430-1516)’, 1977 [cookie butcher, Antwerp] |
In recent years, however, I have observed that art is replacing religion by raising its own issues of morality, identity, mortality, and transcendence. Art used to be the illustration of the metaphysical. It has now become the metaphysical itself. The vitality and dynamism of contemporary art challenges religions ability to face the relevant issues at the end of the millennium: artificiality, reproduction of the species, and equality. Paraphrasing Martin Heidegger, we can say that the authentic dialogue with the art of an artist is artistic, as opposed to critical. There is no artistic dialogue between artists and those who do not believe in the power of art to contain essential truths. Art can be viewed as an antidote to the static and paralyzing force of religion in a post-capitalist, globalist era. The idea of art as a regenerative activity is described in The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse, which I read in my adolescence. The book is about the translation of all information systems and human knowledge into one code, The Game. Once you enter this universal language, you can integrate all aspects of human experience. Marcel Duchamp is the “Magister Ludi.” Art today can surpass the two pervasive theories confronting our post-capitalist world: the pseudo-democratic relativism of postmodernism vs. the oppressive dictatorship of fundamentalism. Referring to The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even, in a 1966 interview with Pierre Cabanne, Duchamp said, “… I almost never put any calculations into the Large Glass. Simply, I thought of the idea of a projection, of an invisible fourth dimension, something you couldn’t see with your eyes.” Is this not the domain of the divine? Source:
abstractioninaction.com
 |
| Osvaldo Romberg, The Third Investigation: ‘Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (Manet, 1863)’, 1976 [cookie butcher, Antwerp] |
 |
| Osvaldo Romberg, 1-7 Tonal Value, 1977 [Henrique Faria Fine Art, New York, NY] |
Comments