Page 11 - Masters

reduced to clichés during the spectacular and by no should answer these questions? who should and could
means essential political skirmishes between factions really guarantee, for art and for artists, better conditions
representing purely economic interests that reduce and prospects for their very existence and life? Perhaps
the dignity of individuals to their mere social cost, the institutions themselves, at this point. The fact is that
their more or less marked autonomous ability to meet such enormous issues investing the conscience of our
their own existential needs. Art, seen as an elevation collective society must be dealt with on a large scale.
of conscience by researchers and the creative act of The attempt to develop cultural projects of serious
the individual, to the collective of organised society is renewal end up conflicting with an infinite series of
a craft that must be, for its acceptance, highly civilised, problems, not the least of which is general apathy.
that is a permanence within individuals of an intricate Apart from a subjection to and an ensuing cooptation
network of values and of values that are attributed to with the dominant cultural elites, there seem to be very
the things in the world. And unfortunately it does not few options available.
seem that today’s society is moving towards those
conditions that enable the dissemination of these Some might ask, at this point, and after this devastating
values or that society has assumed the tenets of analysis of contemporary art, whether it really is worth
humanising its subjects. continuing with cultural operations, whether producing
art and bringing together, as is the case in this volume,
who, nowadays, is dedicating hours of television 100 survivors of artistic creation has any meaning. The
programming to the mutation, through contemporary answer is yes, because apart from the see-sawing
art, of the spirit of men who belong to a specific social sense of frustration and defeat that often results from
context or, what’s more, to the same population? who accepting such an onerous task or a mission for which
is really protecting artists who deserve to be publicised we feel destined, legitimating a role that someone has
and sustained in the name of social usefulness and chosen as a sincere calling will always be an onerous
intrinsic value, independently of whether or not their task – and most certainly an essential, noble and
works can be translated into economic worth? who necessary one. And this is so because the germs of
is protecting the profoundly ethical reasons informing cultural renewal will always have a reason to exist only
the existence and production within history of new within and through the communal and constant efforts
works of art, not by referring to a discriminatory and of those we call enlightened spirits.
unfounded criterion which is assumed by a mercenary
logic, the only universally and imperiously overarching ANDREA PAgNES
logic in today’s western systems? I’m afraid that the art critic, editor
only answer to these questions is “nobody”. But who world of Art global Art Magazine

7 masters of today