Gabriel Baldovin - The Basics of Theoretical Art-Color

The basics of
theoretical art
Gabriel Baldovin 2011
In memory of Matei Calinescu
THE BASICS OF THEORETICAL ART.............................................. 1

INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 5
1. Psychology of perception and aesthetics ...................................... 11
2. Art as data center.......................................................................... 14
3. Traditional art as a natural psychotherapeutic exercise.............. 15
4. Art and evolution of the human mind............................................ 18
5. Humanity culture stages reflected in art....................................... 21
6. The 3 stages of culture that are found in 3 central art general
components ....................................................................................... 23
7. Traditional art as intuitive, esoteric and ambiguous.................... 28
8. Understanding the outside world and the level of community
permissiveness of expression are found in traditional art ................ 30
9. Traditional art criteria.................................................................. 32
10. The modern art and the mode item. The rejection of the traditional
journalistic item ................................................................................ 38
11. The modernity and its cultural mutation..................................... 45
12. The consumerism as return to the traditional art .................... 48
13. The design in relation to the consumerism ................................. 54
14. The relationship between the consumerism and the authentic art
........................................................................................................... 58
15. The industrial multiplication and the mode item crisis .............. 61
16. Why the modern art became different from the traditional art?. 64
17. The discentrical art and the visible emergence of conceptual item
........................................................................................................... 68
18. The discentrical art forms ........................................................... 74
19. The discentrical art and the consumerist culture ....................... 79
20. The discentrical art and the conceptualism as protest culture ... 85
21. The conceptualism between art and philosophy ......................... 91
22. The conceptualisms benchmarks ............................................... 94
23. What is not conceptualism though looks like one ..................... 102
24. The discentrical arts crisis. On the arts death idea ............... 113
25. From the conceptualism to the theoretical art.......................... 117
26. The theoretical art as the conceptual factor acme in art.......... 119
27. The science remained as art in the communitys consciousness
......................................................................................................... 121
28. Theoretical art and relationship to the object .......................... 123
29. Theoretical art retrospective in the art history......................... 126
30. What looks like theoretical art but is not .................................. 128
31. My art and theoretical art......................................................... 130
32. Theoretical art manifesto. Art is every thing ............................ 134
Gabriel Baldovin
The basics of theoretical art
Introduction
This work is both art manifesto and scientific study of art as

a general phenomenon. This text is the first level of (scientific)
explanation on my artistic project that I previously called
theoretical art. The simplest definition for that is this: the
theoretical art is a conceptualism whose text reaches the
typical scientific coherence. If most of conceptualism uses text
to transmit some quick sensations or to expose insufficiently
explicit hermetical sentences, on the contrary the theoretical
art explains various topics for everybody.
But, as I see it now, the theoretical art was made also by some
conceptualists. For example Art as idea as idea or One and
Three Chairs, that are recognized as essential works of
conceptualism, surely can be included in what I call theoretical
art, besides their typical place inside the conceptualism.
Obviously, as it is seen today, the conceptualism includes what
I call theoretical art, although much of it, as I see it, namely
that of the actual body of science, is not yet accepted as art
Gabriel Baldovin
by the art community professionals. It is possible that it will
remain under this title and the future generations will decide
if what I call theoretical art will still be included as part
of conceptualism or will be recognized as different from it. But
for now, I believe that conceptualism is different from it
because of this extension of the limits of art in the science
body. Throughout history, many scientists with special skills
in communication have assumed it, being able to say through some
few words or to show through some gestures the essence of their
science. But no one can say about these scientists that they are
conceptualists as long as many of them are at the limit of
acceptance the conceptualism as art. But most of them accept the
art form some certain scientific expressions, formulas or
gestures that come from their guild.
The art field has expanded to proximate areas such as industrial
objects (ready made, installation) or social reality
(performance art, happening). Among all these areas only for the
science there was expressly and directly denied its right to be
the object of art. The art history has not previously recorded
such an extension except those mentioned above. The main reason
for the fact that such assimilation officially never happened
is that the modern or traditional artists themselves were not
science creators or had no appetite for prolixity and accuracy
of scientific discourse. But what actually would stop such an
extension of the limits of art to science? Science can also be
an artistic object just as the proximate objects of reality have
had became art. For me, the art limits moving from the proximate
objects to the science itself is homologous with the transition
from Dada to surrealism; if dada randomness was done only at the
outside object level, on the contrary, the surrealism randomness
was consumed within the free association of the mind.
Consequently, the science field is the human mind itself, and
the art can expand into this field, transforming it as object
of art just like the (exterior) Dadas randomness had
transformed into (interior) surrealisms free association

randomness.
The art history showed several artists with obvious scientific
interests and best known case is that of Leonardo da Vinci. Also,
many writers have been historians of literature or philosophers
and, if we accept that philosophy is a science of maximum
generality, regardless of its research methods that can be more
or less scientific, then we can get an idea about the link between
art and science. Working with the text, the literature (and,
through it, the theater and the film) often stepped in the realm
of science, but more by popularizing theories that had been
previously created by other theorists than artistically
espousing their own scientific theories. There are notable
exceptions here, such as the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky,
which anticipated existentialism, turning the Kantian theory of
reason theoretical activity justification by its moral function.
Then, there are several SF literature writers who exposed their
own more or less original theories about the universe into their
writings. These artists are the Theoretical Art creators. But,
what interests me, namely the visual arts, although there were
some theoretical art signs, as I previously mentioned, yet no
one try to theorize it. So far none of conceptual artists in the
visual arts or otherwise tried to theoretically unify the two
fields or to seek for a possible point of confluence. Yet,
between these fields must be some connection since sometimes
they were made by the same people.
So there came the time when these people must not be perceived
as empty nature that does not assume their artisticness and would
only unconsciously affirm it. It is time that they take
themselves seriously and recognize their work as art.
Unfortunately, many of them make this art the same way the
primitives do; they live through it, they dedicate everything
to it, but they just can not realize it in light of a modern vision.
Therefore, just like the street artists with no art studies, who
make art for marking territory, the scientists will neither be
admitted into the club of art if they themselves do not ask for
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access. Of course, the acceptance problem does not belong to them
only but also to the very art community itself that has not yet
adjusted to the new artistic experiments. A science man is too
preoccupied to improve, or to popularize its theory, or to
discover something else than to present it in a way that is still
insufficiently accepted by the art community. Then, the
professionals art community itself seems to be still affected
by the preconceptions of the traditional art limits. But we must
not forget that many authentic artists were facing these
preconceptions when they have expanded the boundaries of art,
exposing objects that, at one time, only they thought to be art.
So, these scientists must be accepted as theoretical-artists
because they themselves perceive themselves as artists. However,
on the other hand, as I previously suggested, they can not be
accepted as conceptualists because they themselves do not
understand and do not have much in common with such a trend
(obviously I talk about that incoherent part of conceptualism).
But this paperwork proposes more than that. As it will be shown
latter in the text, the theoretical art is a maximum
generalization of a theoretical conception, just like the art
in general is a reduction of a story or of a more complex ideology
to a much simpler language. The symbol is such a general sign
that includes a multitude of meanings. As the first level of
explanation for the theoretical art concept generality, this
text becomes less artistic and more scientific. And even if the
art community would not accept at some point this new side of
art proposed by me, however, in this work there are introduced
and defined new concepts for scientifically understanding art
as a general phenomenon. So whether this paperwork will end up
as a failed art manifest, yet, the philosophy, the theory and
the sociology of art and aesthetics (as the science that studies
the general phenomenon of art) can record these scientific
assertions made over the most of its text. I made a (general)
summary of art history sociology, a subject that perhaps should
have been previously treated in detail. Although I did not use

a more detail and clarification approach, still I believe that
the reader can make a first utile contact with some new ideas
about art as a social phenomenon.
This assumed limitation in approaching this subject must not be
interpreted as superficiality in work. I could not make a
complete and detailed study about art as long as I still have
to solve other sociological and psychological theoretical
problems (to the extent that these two areas can be thought as
separate). Their difficulty requires many years of study. That
is why I was pleased just to sketch the main ideas. To dedicate
several years in order to make a very well documented book would
have delayed building my artistic project. This text is mainly
supposed to support my artistic manifesto for my own art. So,
my main interest is to capture the audience that is less
interested in aesthetics or philosophy art theory details, to
make it known and focus it on the pure theoretical area. Although
the number of pages that serves to my art manifesto is much
smaller than the number of pages dedicated to the scientific
study of art in general, still the art manifesto is the most
important in this book since the theoretical study logically
supports what has been expressed as artistic emulation. That is
why I tried to be as short and concise as possible without too
large themes development and without trying to cover most of the
debate possibilities that can be developed from certain ideas.
With more effort I could do a theoretical manifesto that comes
to spread over several hundred of pages with arguing for or
against certain theories, or to develop up to the completeness
some different theoretical problems. But that would have been
very strange and inappropriate concerning the main intention of
this study. Therefore I preferred this summary treatment of a
very serious issue and I will go back to it once with finalization
of these sociological and psychological problems.
Perhaps the reader could also think about the opposite idea that
I could make a less long and more readable art manifesto than
Gabriel Baldovin
this text that has became a book in its own right. Well, I did
this one by 2002 when launched this project. I have published
it on the Internet. Anyway, I decided to republish this first
manifesto even in this paper in the last section, as a summary
of the whole book. On the Internet I have made links between the
two levels of generality of this theme as in the printed
presentation of this work I used the classical joining together.
So, if the reader finds my speech too detailed, then she or he
can go directly there and read it in more compact form, with no
concern about loosing the theoretical arts rigors, as I define
over the main text. Thus, the reader can either make a general
idea about my project, without going into too much text detail,
or simply can use it as a guide in covering these details.
Once with this study, my project increased. When I first launched
it, the theoretical art was not very clear in my mind, but I felt
I have to do it. In the meantime there have had some echoes in
the artistic community several theoretical art works made by me
since then through graffiti stencil or intervention in public
space, from which I am now classified as conceptualist by some.
And here is the problem. I do not consider myself a conceptualist
not even of the Kosuths kind which is closer to my vision.
Obviously, such a statement can cause confusion and should be
followed by further explanations. So I felt that this issue
clarification was absolutely necessary. Therefore, this
theoretical approach is intended primarily to find the essence
of conceptualism and then to clarify more precisely and in
greater detail exactly what is theoretical art that links to it.
That is why I wrote this paper. I first needed myself to clarify
and I think that the reader, or the audience, needs it too.
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1. Psychology of perception and aesthetics
Any perception that we have is due not only to the object we

perceive but also to our past experience concerning the classes
of objects that it belong to. That experience is then cognitively
projected into the external objects and only after this
retroactive cognition we get the final perception as we know it.
The psychical base is fully involved into this process. A special
psychopathological constitution reduces the external object
role in building the final perception in the favor of mental
internal contents. A special psychopathological constitution
makes external object role to diminish in exchange for projected
mental internal contents that come to have a decisive role in
the final perception of the object. For example, a neurotiform
psychopathological constitution will perceive the trees from
the evening park as some strange creatures or as some criminals
ready to attack. Only direct experimentation of the object (in
this case, the trees) by lighting it or something else can lead
to partial and temporary comfort for the initial anxiety when
the real data about the object becomes qualitatively more
important than the phobic content projected in it. For a
schizophrenic deeply broken cognitive apparatus the higher
quality information about the object is almost useless; the
trees would not only be perceived as aggressors, but they could
also be heard day or night as accusatory persecutors regardless
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Gabriel Baldovin
the information quality obtained by the senses. In this case the
deep psychic power is bigger than the superior cognitive one.
So the past experiences are crucial for the present objects
perception. In the same way we perceive art also, not only as
a natural object, but as an object of cultural significance. When
we see Young ladies of Avignon painting we will accordingly
perceive all Picassos artistic evolution stages in it, and not
only this painting itself. We will see there Guernica, we will
see there Artist and his model, we will see there Portrait of
Dora Maar, his Minotaurs and all half forgotten that we can
remember about this artist.
The popular thinking kept some interesting idioms on the subject
such as the pot calls the kettle black meant to show how someone
tends to see in the outside world what it is proper to oneself.
The first theorist that systematically demonstrated the
projection of inner contents into the external reality in the
knowledge process was Immanuel Kant, beyond previous intuitions
of the ancient sophists and of the modern David Hume.
The first theorist that scientifically demonstrated projection,
with examples and verifiable facts was Sigmund Freud. I. Kants
gnoseological philosophy was very close to a scientific approach
to knowledge field but he used the traditional philosophical
concepts which he attempted to scientifically mend. He succeeded
this only partially. His work, in this case, remained with one
foot in the field of philosophy, even if his theories are the
base for the contemporary epistemology and for some currents in
psychology. For example, the Gestalt-psychologys basic
principle is that the human mind manages to compose and to
imagine a complete whole system once there is shown only part
of it. This means that, it projects mental contents into reality
and, after that, it interiorly reassembles and processes them.
If Kantian concepts are sometimes too broad to be considered
science, the Freuds concept of projection, on the contrary,
is too tight, being reduced to what he called Ego defense
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mechanism. After Freud, the Ego would expel in the exterior
those things that cause dissatisfaction, and thus it would get
rid of this burden. Freudian psychology has the disadvantage of
refusing to step forward to the upper areas of the mind, to
cognition, logic and intelligence instead of focusing only on
the middle, infantile layers. In fact, the phenomenon of
expulsion, which Freud observed, is not an Ego defense
mechanism as he thought, but the whole minds basic principle
of operation, either in its middle layers that are responsible
for neurotic symptoms, or in its upper cognitive layers that are
responsible for the scientific results. This paper is not mainly
focusing on psychology so it is a bit inappropriate to dissect
in detail Freuds theory. I analyzed this issue in detail in The
Dynamics of Abyssal Psychology. Right now I only say that the
concepts of Freudians second topic (Id, Ego, Superego) have
themselves a dose of vagueness in them and therefore his theory
of projection receive this blur from the Ego which he defined
as such. In consequence, I think that the projection concept
he introduced must be much wider than the psychopathological
limits he set.
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2. Art as data center
As a purely psychological phenomenon, the artwork has 2 types

of information, as the dream itself theorized by classical
psychoanalysis. The first one is the manifest content and the
other one is the latent content. This distinction is famous.
It was initiated by Freud to understand the dream. Manifest
content of dream is just the dream as we remember it in the
morning while the latent content is subsequently and gradually
revealed through the meticulous work of analysis. The art
manifest content is restricted to the type of information
directly observable in artwork as the art latent content is
basically projected by spectators mind into the art object, so
this kind of information is not directly present in its
expression. But that does not mean that this latent content would
actually appear at the very moment when someone analyzes the
dream; it is concealed and hidden there before. The analyst
simply unwraps it through the analyzing. Just like the dream,
the artwork latent content is more or less revealed and
deciphered. And just like the dream analyzing, the artwork
latent content have an (what psychoanalysis calls) over interpretation, a deeper level of analysis, a different meaning
from what is originally discovered or accepted by the artist.
However, the meanings that artwork finds inside the spectators
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mind can be multiple and very different from one to another, so
the number of interpretations can be unlimited but still
authorized by the phenomenological autonomy of personal
relation with the object.
The link between the art and the dream is very close. Surrealists
used to describe their dreams in their works, as artists own
dream explanation inside the artwork happened not only in some
artistic currents but all across the culture. Religion has been
decisively formed after the magicist analysis of dreams. The
importance of such psychological background will come up later
this text, when I will differentiate theoretical art from
traditional -intuitive art.
3. Traditional art as a natural psychotherapeutic

exercise
The major problem of human civilization is precisely the gap

between modern and primitive lifestyles, found both inside the
infantile behavior and ideation as much as in the deeper layers
of adult memory. Deep adult memory layers corresponding with
infant age become more and more ignored and repudiated since the
human mind develops into adult utilitarian philosophy. They
dont totally disappear with the adulthood, but simply get into
some kind of numbness state. These profound mental contents come
to be isolated and captured within the depths of the soul and
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Gabriel Baldovin
so they mediate the energy path coming from instincts or from
the fundamental complexes of psychical system. As the adult
ideology ethically and strategically rejects the infantile lack
of utilitarian purpose, the old psychodynamic energy movement
channels gradually fill up. Thus, the adult mind turns into a
kind of energetic arthritis as these memory networks corks.
Civilized human being becomes parvenu and rootless, thus failing
to find its place in the world.
Children art
That is why we need art. It is made to find the correlation

between these primitive or childhood deep memory layers and the
adult human superior lucid and utilitarian ideation. Art is
meant to drain those blocked channels between the two types of
mentality and allow smooth movement of energy, which actually
means the reconciliation between them. It restores the broken
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links between deep and upper layers of memory. It is an assumed
and intentional getting back to a primitive or infantile
language and mentality, as its language is not very accurate but
a vague and primitive one.
All the elements of primitive thinking are found in traditional
literary figures of speech. Personification projects the human
soul and will into objects, things and animals. It is a
constituent part of the primitive as much as infantile thinking
that actually raises it to the rank of religion. The other three
figures of speech involve cognitive projections of elements,
objects, things or human beings into other structural and formal
different elements. For example My bounty is as boundless as
the sea / My love as deep; the more I give the thee shows a
comparison between Juliets love feelings and the depth of the
sea. The epithet cadent tears reveals the joining of waterfalls
property into that particular human feeling that express through
tears.
All these figures of speech are actually involved by a poorly
argued and poorly scientific crystallized primitive thinking.
Epistemologically speaking, the extension of such objects
attributes to different formal and structural objects causes
paralogisms, which are actually logical errors. But for art they
are the most important parts. In the other arts there are some
literature counterpart shape grammars as composition,
color/sound arrangements, symbols, etc. All of these are part
of a subliminal language, understood and undertalked, but
technically lower than that of everyday life. Nevertheless, the
art encourages such errors because there is a certain need to
allow different ways for mental decongesting. They are
deliberate judgment errors that traditional mentality uses for
awakening the deeper pattern of thought from numbness and make
it to shake off the psychodynamic energy trapped in there. This
situation looks like that of desert fish that lives under the
ground during drought and wakes up to life every few years, only
when it rains and the desert is washed. This fish stays under
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Gabriel Baldovin
the ground wrapped in a kind of mucus, living in a kind of
hibernation during the drought. Just like the desert rain for
this fish, the art has the same role for the mental contents numb
revival. Such a reactivation slows down the energy pressure of
a part of the psychical system and that explains the spectators
satisfaction when gets in contact with the art.
Here is an obvious similarity between this cultural process and
the ideas free association as it appears in the psychoanalytic
cure or, more specifically, with the paradoxical action method
from cognitive psychotherapy (found in almost all methods of
psychotherapy with different shapes). Traditional arts usually
have this natural psychotherapeutic role for the community, long
time before the actual psychotherapy became professional. This
pattern still continues today through mass culture centered on
the Hollywood phenomenon though, as it became an industry, its
disinterested original purpose has been replaced by some more
obscure ones.
4. Art and evolution of the human mind
Art phenomenon is a cultural matter developed in thousands and

thousands of years. Its appearance is due to the way the human
being perceives and interprets reality. Its development is
directly related to human control of the reality and to storing
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the information transmitted from generation to generation. So
the stages of art evolution are actually the stages of mankind
cognitive evolution. Such cognitive development could not be
exclusively communicated throughout the scientific language, as
it happened and as it is happening with primitive culture that
exists today in different parts of the globe. For this culture,
the appeal to art is not a result of manipulation strategies,
as it came to be made in contemporary mass culture, but a result
of the intrinsic need to transmit information to communities
members and even to the whole human specie. Both classical and
modern art was and still is an attempt to change public and
private space in accordance with the evolution of knowledge
about the world. Internal revolutions of the individuals have
no effect whatsoever if would not be communicated to their specie.
As sexuality is meant to make natural selection and pass the best
genes to survivors, in the same way the art creates a kind of
natural selection at the level of proximate objects, by
communicating to the others the data in another way than by the
accuracy and, sometimes, the rigidity of scientific language.
Art proves itself to be a mediator for the human specie, the new
way to understand, to experience and to live the world. Church
frescoes were originally a way of communicating the life of
Christ to those who were unable to read. Such a fact can be a
key to understand all the art.
The spirit of art is closely related to the spirit of science
that is found in the perception of the world. The Renaissance
was possible not only due to the funds excess that Rome collected
from the surface of Europe who used to worship the Pope, but also
it was due to a new way of seeing the world differently than it
used to be seen in the Middle Age. If we only consider the
scientific revolution made by Copernicus who, strangely for that
time, stated that the sun is fixed and it is the earth who is
mobile, then we can understand the beginning of human being
self-perception as not the only intelligent species in the
universe, to which the rest of the world spins around, but as
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one among of many other possible intelligent species. Since then,
the civilized human being gradually has started to see itself
not as the Gods only son, as religion used to say. Meanwhile,
the number of those who believe in the existence of aliens is
much more than those who claim to have seen such creatures.
It is possible that the primitive art that have been discovered
inside the caves to mainly serve as counting or as a bookkeeping
for animals that the primitive human had interest for. The
impressionism appearance and the taste for free nature is
closely related to the human need to escape from the old cities
that were becoming increasingly overcrowded, while the new level
of morals ceased to see conquest wars as good occupation and
loosing the interest for building fortresses like previously it
used to be. In the following sections I will get in more details
in explaining these principles.
Primitive animals painting
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5. Humanity culture stages reflected in art
The first art stage is the primitive one, when both religion
and science coexisted in the same cultural pattern. The
cognitive capacity specific to this stage is limited to a very
basic knowledge about the world, as proximate environment. This
stage has no cosmos and microcosm knowledge and thus any
conception on the world and the universe is compressed into
mythology (religious, but not scientific). As well as the
science, the art does not have independence from religion in this
stage. The art made in this period reflects the religion only.
The primitive religion is less a cosmic religion (due to the
particularly lack of advanced astronomical knowledge), but a
religion of communion and coexistence with nature. The primitive
man does not live inside of the castles walls but as part of the
natural environment. The primitive deities do not subsist in the
cosmic space like the classical God, but simply in forest animals
and plants.
The primitive art story does not concern the human being as a
measure of all things, as seen in the traditional art, but the
human being as a partner of things, and even as a subordinate
of them, when they are part of its religion. The primitive art
objects are separated by the individual artists or by the
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Gabriel Baldovin
primitive human and they have no purpose to testify some certain
individual spiritual level, like art does in modern times, but
only to promote the communitys religion.
The second stage is the classical, traditional one that belong
to esoteric, alchemy, freemasonry etc., which generally is the
equivoque to an increasingly complex world. This stage has the
specificity in raising questions and doubts concerning religion,
science and philosophy, as the art starts to claim the
independence from religion and focus on human or other items
different from deities. Historically, this stage is the period
between the ancient Greek classicism and the modernism.
The traditional art aims themes specific to hierarchical and
structured under the fixed rules society. The individual feels
the pain coming from the traditional discriminatory society for
the general welfare. The obedience to a higher authority, and
no protest against it, challenges a special type of anxiety. The
crude repressions against all forms of rebellion, coming form
those who pay taxes, create the introverted classic mentality,
unable to express itself due to that fear. Whether a slave or
master, the threats came from all-around. They came from the
master to the slaves or from other masters rivals, as much as
from the slaves revolt against masters, which generally is the
base for the traditional culture anxiety. The refugee into early
childhood is a key for the classical ideology and for the
classical art. Trying to recovery this golden period or
desperately looking for a kind of heaven with no such a
psychological war is a benchmark for traditional art.
The third stage is that of modernity, which corresponds to
maximum scientific doubt, due to an extremely cautious and
specialized cognitive system specific to the past centuries
socio-cultural experiences. This cultural stage is not totally
different from the previous two. But the individuality is
stronger, which sometimes makes the cultural forms to take an
unusual aspect. The artist individuality and originality is more
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important than the tradition which is now perceived as a way not
to be pursued rather than a way to follow. The revolutions and
the modern technological innovations are the ingredients of the
modern success. But these are not done with the classic obedience
but with the modern courage and stubbornness to do something new
and to beat the classical myths. Incredulity towards
meta-narratives 1 is not a constant only for what was called
postmodernism but for the whole of modern culture. The old
themes of classical culture and spiritual fulfillment of search
are generally abandoned. The Eden of moderns is no longer a
boring garden with fountains, even though, at one point,
everyone would like to live in for a longer or shorter period
of time. The moderns either isolate a banal corner of their
social and make it artwork or are looking for thrills in their
culture.
6. The 3 stages of culture that are found in 3 central

art general components
The art is shaped by 3 major social-cultural elements. The first

is the documentary, journalistic item, as evidence for
geological, social and historical or religious-cosmic events or
their influence over the world. This stage involves more or less
details that normal journalism, as we know it today, rarely
captures although it uses advanced devices for doing it. Those
Jean-Franois Lyotard -The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge (1979)
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significant details reveal the whole story and require hours and
hours of interviews and footage. The journalistic art goal is
to isolate the most significant details and bring them to public
just like the authorities build a report. This first item belongs
to the primitive ideology. The primitive art is a way of
journalistic presentation, specific to primitive ideas about
terrestrial spirits and deities, as the primitive religion core.
Such journalistic details are initially more abstract for the
primitive art (as children involuntary abstract the reality
through their drawings), but this happens also because of the
poor technical means for the artistic details achievements.
These technical means had gradually specialized in the history
and became extremely powerful as today Hollywood productions.
Rembrandt The Feast of Belshazzar
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Naturally, if we talk about the journalism 2 we also talk about
handling and manipulating information, censorship and other
such facts specific to this business. All these are directly
developed from repressive classical age culture because it is
the first one that uses this type of restriction for common
people.
Gerrit Rietveld Table and chair for the Schroder House
In the U.S. 1960's Tom Wolfe published his book "The New
Journalism" which promoted the idea of a "journalistic ethics" in which
was included novel techniques with conflicting ideas and individuals,
displaying all points of view, etc. It is assumed that such a book has
revolutionized the journalism. But, actually there was no revolution in
journalism whatsoever on this respect; the very legends specific to
different communities are part of a certain kind of naturally done
journalism. At that point, the official journalism simply tried to adapt
to such folkloric trends besides promoting authorities official messages
that press had to do it as an obligation. Meantime, unfortunately, the
contemporary journalism became a soap opera with artificial conflicts.
The real information is manipulated not only to create bigger audiences
but also to present a social reality in the old spirit of obedience trends
to political power (exceptions are irrelevant in this case). Although it
looks like being independent in the state, the media proves to be an
important channel of social and political manipulation.
2
25
Gabriel Baldovin
The second is the mode item, that of innovation in art which
concerns the novelty material/signs of artistic expression or
the minority, the rarity on the market in which it appears. The
first one is specific to technical innovations, as the second
one is specific to refashion, which is an oldfashion opposition
phenomenon that consists in outmoded forms comingbacks. In the
meantime, those forms that once had been taken their place in
the mode market would became also outdated and forgotten
altogether. Their return to the spotlights corresponds to a
genuine discovery or a technical innovation. The difference from
journalistic item is that the mode one is not guided by the tastes
of the majority, it is not looking for the mass cheap selling
but for the expensive elite. It seeks to contradict again and
again the common tests for art and design, and thus creates new
art forms or gets back those already forgotten.
First manifestation of mode content that replaced journalistic
item in the visual arts appeared in the El Grecos and
Caravaggios baroque, when the accurate technique execution
where replaced by color vibration and early expressionist
elements. Later, the impressionism and all the currents after
it had gradually increased nonfigurative tendencies to
abstraction. These currents separated more clearly from the
journalistic and fashion item, thus reaching total separation
in the end, as seen in the abstractionism.
The third element is the conceptual item, meaning the
philosophical, theoretical approach in general. It does not
relate to any of the other previous two contents but to a
meta-analysis on the art itself which corresponds to a
scientific state of mind more than that of the religion. I will
come back to it later.
It is obvious that the most successful art is that which manages
to combine all these three elements altogether. Next, I will
describe in detail these ideas and develop them to better
understand.
26
Francis Picabia- Reveil matin
27
Gabriel Baldovin
7. Traditional art as intuitive, esoteric and

ambiguous
The intuitive art involves the ambiguous and esoteric elements

within its manifest content that points out to a much more
diverse story. The expressive facts, the multiple meanings and
the deep connotations irony are the defining technique for the
intuitive art. The late hellenism and baroque are exacerbations
of expression in visual arts and they exist in different doses
in every other current of intuitive traditional art.
The typical common public question regarding traditional
(elitist) art is "What does it represent?" That is because common
public usually perceive art as a metasensorial reality (specific
to a Cartesian, dualist philosophy). The presence of such
classical mentality elements within the manifest content of
traditional art is by definition the guarantee for its value.
Using the symbol and the Sisyphean eternal search for symbol
meanings is part of the spiritual interest of traditional art.
Human mind offers to rebuild this road and to restore missing
links of the story chain. Thus, such previously reminded deep
memory networks come to life again. The traditional art appears
to be a puzzle that the spectator solves by reaching the
journalistic comprehensive panorama concerning the subject.
28
Leonardo da Vinci Gioconda
29
Gabriel Baldovin
8. Understanding the outside world and the level of

community permissiveness of expression are found in
traditional art
The hereditary memory data recovery is done first in the interest

of the primitive ideology. It interprets the terrestrial
deities messages into the natural phenomena that it gets in
contact with. The reality interpretation made by the primitive
human is made with a less efficient, naive cognitive system,
specific to that mankind historical stage. The
magical-mythological explanations made by primitive thinking
are scientifically false most of the times, but they have the
full advantage of producing maxim certainty about stressful
human problems (such as consciousness of death for example) and
that leaves no room for doubt.
On the contrary, the classical art is cynical towards the
primitive marks because the artistic interest is not directed
by specific primitive world cognitive shortcomings but
basically by political and social range interests. This
classical art is a nonchalance master art that show (and thus
objectify) its ontological superiority in front of the slaves.
The classical art reveals that kind of tolerance, widely enjoyed
30

by the superior classes, but strictly prohibited and severe
physically or morally punished for slaves/common people class.
The sexual freedoms are assumed by the higher classes but hidden
for the mob. The severe sexual inhibitions are imposed by the
church (the main factor in classical education) to inferior
classes through education or other classic state institutions.
The false kindness and the false generosity shown among the power
of weapons, with which slaves are held in a state of slavery,
are visible components to traditional ideology and classical art.
The alchemy of meanings, originally known by elite only, the
hidden secrets of classical art are in fact the elements of a
monumental cynicism of classical culture which is the moral
guidance behavior towards other people that can not become a
universal judgment because it is used in its own caste only. It
is unspoken and even forbidden for lower classes that are meant
to be servant. The classical esotericism is thus a specific wild
education tool, a blinding Hegelian coil for simple and easy
understandable meanings to maintain political domination over
masses. These ideas must be hidden from the ears of slaves
because they could copy them, then put them into practice and
thus they could overthrow the social order imposed by the
authorities.
Todays media centered on the Hollywood culture has led to acme
the mass traditional culture of persuading common people to pay
taxes and to eternally seek for improvements and performance
that enrich the corporations and todays higher classes. Unlike
the past centuries classicism, which used the weapons
threatening for making the slave accept its social condition,
the contemporary traditionalism uses especially the cultural
persuasion in order to make it to accept that social status (in
addition to the false promises). Scientific data taken by modern
individual are reliable information but their field is a
commonplace utility. Since many people still have a slavery life,
the need for a sure better life, the need for a future heaven
is absolutely irreplaceable. Here cynically comes the
31
Gabriel Baldovin
advertising techniques that continue the road of classical art
and infiltrates the anxiety messages inside the latent content
of art objects in order to convince the modern slaves to consume,
to buy and work for the money the need for such consumption and
thus to enslave themselves more and more. That is a very intimate
connection between the traditional culture and the social and
economic mechanisms.
9. Traditional art criteria
Threatening and convincing the slave to perform labor for the

lord is part of basic classical culture. The more severe is the
threatening the more efficiently is the servant convinced to
have the fear of God. Such a measure dehumanize both the servant,
forced to remain in a primitive ideology, and also the lord, who
becomes a stone figure, always ready to punish the slightest sign
of insubordination and always expecting revenge from those
persecuted. The severity, the rigidity, the intolerance, the
excessive dignity and the pride are the values of traditional
morality with deep echoes in lords mental state.
32
Jacques Louis David The oath of the Horatii
Traditional art themes concern human philosophical questions

about existence and expressing emotions as opposed to primitive
art themes that are independent from such events and reflect
elements of primitive religion as coexistence with nature. These
questions are due to the specific classical ideology fears like
slaves education repressed tendency to revenge, and the lords
fear about the potential servants revolt or the attack form the
rivals. Both the slave and the lord deeply mental suffer from
the daily death threatening, which is reflected one way or
another in their culture. Traditional art is trying to find a
land of illusory refuge out of this psychological warfare
between social classes specific to classic society. The
traditional arts themes are:
Eternity and immortality of the soul is a specific traditional
33
Gabriel Baldovin
society topic, especially because of the obedience to those who
adhere to such a belief to a higher social authority. The
classical society slaves accept easier this situation if there
is such a cultural promise for eternal life. In the same way,
the high class heroism is also sustained by the belief that,
after death, the soul continues to live. Both the servant
obedience and the master heroism are part of the traditional
retroactive society interacting with one another.
Statue of Buddha
The love lived with metaphysical overtones is a theme that cover

the rigid rules of traditional society concerning sexuality. But
sexuality involves a very important classical individual
satisfaction, especially for the slaves. The specific wild
education threats psychodynamically increase the libido energy 3 .
The animal pray increased libido and the predator decreased intensity
libido is due to the prey attempt adaptation to environmental conditions by
increasing the number of members. A strong libido may control such a
34

The classical morality anathematization of such sexual behavior
is meant to culturally dishearten the servant pride in front of
lords privileged status. But, for pardoning the lords
sexuality there was a need for a little cultural adjustment
of sexuality, so its high lyrical metaphysical investment became
a compromise solution. The sexual behavior inhibition or
anathematization has recoiled into the metaphysical
spirituality. Classical sexuality thus became neurotic with all
its specific complications and subsequently found in
traditional culture. There is a genuine primary benefit of
nonphysical abstract classical love (as well as for any
psychical symptom) that lover wants to objectify the belonging
to a higher social class. As a synthesis of sexuality and
maternity, the classic love is a way out refuge to the golden
age of childhood from the classic psychological warfare.
Sandro Botticelli Primavera

survival requirement for pray species. The experimental psychology
confirmed this by observing growth libidinal intensity in chimpanzees
which received regular electric microshocks, received as pain experience,
compared with those who did not received such treatment.
35
Gabriel Baldovin
Depression found in elegy and tragic themes reflects the
specific topics and historical events that tend to highlight
human littleness in front of the fate of historical, cosmic,
geological, etc. events. Immanuel Kant theorized the concept of
sublime as a kind of mystical unleashed force of nature, or
as an abstract immensity conceived by human subjectivity. But
all of these are meant to highlight the strength of metaphysical
- religious lord heroism, its power to decide the life of common
people and thus the latter convincing them to pay the tribute
and to create its high life. The slaves fear about the master
forces are then projected into outer reality that first create
the divinity and then create this half atheistic concept of
sublime, in which the wild education has a decisive role.
Such a concept is first able to include inside the human need
of obedience and service to a relentless force of the universe
that the classic individual uses to discreetly threat its
potential aggressors. But with its withdrawal from the bed of
traditional religion, and with its turning to the evidence of
the nature and of the universe, there is noticeable, on one hand,
some scientific doubt regarding the old precepts of religion and
the need for scientific certainty found in the sublime elements
that are tangible and visible to everyone. On the other hand,
this turning over shows a certain refusal of the end of classic
era to accept the masters authority emerged from that of the
divinity. The growth of atheism or its increasingly stronger
cohabitation with religious elements is mainly due to the
classical man more and more refusal to obey the lords power,
which finally led to drastic limitations of the power specific
to contemporary democracy. The great masses rebellions against
kings and emperors, like the French or the Bolshevik Revolution,
have been made with declared atheist ideologies. Such a
political liberation out of slavery automatically involves the
cost of undermining religion that eventually leads to
cancellation of illusory comfort of immortality mentioned at the
36

first point of this list 4 . The existentialism of the twentieth
century, with its depressive elements, has also clear atheist
coordinates. Therefore, the depressive elements are crossing
gates of classical ideology to the modern one.
Laocoon (late Hellenistic sculpture)
Freud also analyzed this phenomenon but he stopped with the analyze to
its oedipal neuroticist microfamilial layer refusing to go further to a
macro-political analysis.
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Gabriel Baldovin
The humor is actually a counteraction to previous topic but it
is more representative for lower classes. Structurally speaking,
the humor is the psychological phenomenon that allows a
temporary release and sublimation for psychological tensions
specific to cultural repression to which the lower classes are
confronted. The excessive humor, overused in almost any
situation, is typical for such a cultural stage. This emotional
state is specific to classical society order. Using the humor
in any case, the permanent cheerfulness can lead into kitsch
culture, as a part of classical culture.
10. The modern art and the mode item. The rejection of
the traditional journalistic item
The modern art shows a freer, more playful and more relaxed human
being that seeks new opportunities for expression and
communication rather than to refugee into the childhood Edenal
world or to ensure its eternity as the traditional art did.
The psychotherapy reached scientific professional level and the
modern culture human being had this experience either directly
by attending to psychotherapy cabinet or indirectly somewhat
through a more relaxed education. This is caused by the
industrial era, by replacing the classical slavery with the
modern machines. The problems of survival that are found in the
38

traditional human mind seems to be totally meaningless and with
no interest for the modern bohemian. Therefore, the modern art
(and the contemporary also) is a postpsychotherapeutic culture,
rather seeking the new experiences and the mode item than seeking
to solve the past problems, as found in journalistic item
specific for the traditional art. The modern art no longer needs
reconciliation with the past but the newness revelation whatever
it might find there. Putting such new content into the light is
more important than the fear to give it action liberty.
The modern art generally began to more and more reject this
psychotherapeutic role out of its contents as there has arose
a bohemian type of community, living the moment and not very
interested in everyday life worries. The bohemian people
extravagance, their freedom is desirable by everybody because
their lives seem to be really out of the traditional society
constraints. The communion with the childhood or primitive mind
depth is naturally made in daily life by rejecting the rigid
stressful lifestyle behavior of maximum utility and efficiency.
Thus, easing the tensions between the two ideologies, the
returning to the nature and encouraging the ecological behavior
generally transformed the modern human being into being very
sensitive to the natural environment and the innocence
protection.
The abstract artist affords to defy reality and create artistic
signs neither with heroes nor with lords. The abstract art
refuses the journalistic item as far as it refuses the narrowness
of the traditional conservative values of traditional mystified
culture. Such a state of arrogance is specific to the
abstractionist artist as it is difficult to conceive in the
traditional art. It reflects the very status of society
democratization and relaxation of educational standards, which
has lead to common people greater confidence. The traditional
obedience to the authority is mainly replaced. The refusal
concerning the journalistic item is the most important criterion
of abstract art in particular and modern art in general. Even
39
Gabriel Baldovin
if someone can interpret a story relatively to the abstract forms
present in the image, such a story has not the traditional art
journalistic item objectivity that the viewer can see directly,
without interpretation.
By insisting on the mode item, which is the novelty and
surprising, the modern (and contemporary) art seems at first
glance to give up the mind depths reparation and the traditional
art psychotherapeutic status. However, the need for
experiencing the mind obscure areas is noticeable in modern
innovation also, because the mode novelty structurally
associates with the originality and the uniqueness of
traditionally inhibited mental contents. Thus, these hidden
mental contents are brought to life through this connection.
Traditional prohibition of psychical impulses has lead to
strengthen them energetically during the human civilization
evolution, so the prohibited lately became appetizing and
attractive in contemporary civilization, through the dialectics
of Eden and Traumatic complexes, and with the changes of the
macrosocial level.
The journalistic and mode items mainly differ due to the degree
and quality of genealogical defusing of the mental elements that
art reconstructs. The journalistic item concerns the memory
recovery regarding degraded data, mainly caused by forgetting
individual experiences from one generation to another. The mode
item rather refers to community or morally unacceptable data,
but still active in human mind and temporary hidden for future
usage when needed. It is easy to see that the traditional art
data are much older on the genealogy pathway of the individual
heritage memory while those stimulated by mode item refers to
some new and more active ones.
40
Marcel Duchamp Nude Descending a Staircase
41
Gabriel Baldovin
The clothing (fashion) industry offers the art entropy
phenomenon which the mode item of art in general can be very
precisely understood. It develops within three steps. The first
is the launching mode. When a mode is launched, the pieces have
a high price and are bought by the wealthy. The second is the
majority snobbery. Those who are not usually wealthy but want
to overestimate their social status also buy those products
after being part of the wealthy status. The third step is the
obsolescence, when the elite are bored of them and move on to
something else. Their price decreases and so the vast majority
can buy it also. These three steps show why the mode item is a
real phenomenon of art entropy. It can be likened to the universe
entropy released by some currents of contemporary physics that
sustain that the universe is in continuous degradation and
disintegration. In the same way, any art and any artistic
revolution degrades itself, becomes obsolete in time, thus
strengthening the premises of another revolution and the
emergence of another novelty. It can be said that the collective
human spirit has assimilated that certain artistic revolution,
so it is ready to go further.
There are two criteria for the mode item. The first one is the
unusual forms for the taste of edge. The other is the novelty
and technical innovation of materials and media. In the first
case the forms are most of the times invented by the artist, or
are geometric, floral and geological rare and exotic forms that
art history and culture has not recorded them at all, or has very
little recorded about them, because of their rarity. The second
case reflects the spirit of absolute novelty which the mode
automatically takes over. Any cultural product that meets these
criteria can be included in the mode item.
42
Henri Matisse Blue Nude IV
43
Gabriel Baldovin
The mode item does not appear from nothing in modern art. It is
found inside the traditional art too. For example, the
Renaissance nude is a returning to ancient tradition to which
the artists of 14-th to 16-th centuries had subscribed. Oil
painting innovating techniques are part of the mode item that
is clearly found in the art of past centuries but it was not
enough just by itself as it happens with abstract art. The
traditional art wanted that mode and journalistic items to work
together and support each other to overcome the tradition. That
is why between the traditional and modern art there was not a
radical break, as it is believed today, but there is certain
continuity. The journalism item has lost its role that used to
have in the past, but it was not totally abandoned. There is a
whole section in the general contemporary art where this item
not only has been kept, but it even has prospered. The next
section will analyze in more details this situation.
44
11. The modernity and its cultural mutation
As the sciences like physics, psychology, anatomy, botany, etc.

have emerged from the ancient philosophy, in the same way the
journalistic and the mode items came to be separated from the
old traditional body art. The journalistic item has been
industrially developed into the press as the mode item came to
be industrially made by designers. It is not just a coincidence
that the mid-nineteenth century media explosion (initially as
newspapers) took place once with the impressionisms appearance
(which is the first current of modern art). The two phenomena
are very intimately related. Then, a major separation took place
in the art history. On the one hand, the journalistic item became
the press and the consumerist art, as a presss extension. On
the other hand, the mode item became modern art in first phase,
and then it became design, after the commercial interest stepped
into the modern avantgarde that reached the second and even third
level of art entropy, as previously mentioned. Thus, the design
met in a kind of circle with the consumerist art to which the
other direction derived in, through the utilitarian function
that was applied to.
Here is how the journalistic item, which initially went in one
particular direction, finally meets the mode item that
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Gabriel Baldovin
previously went in the opposite direction. The impressionism was
the first who gave up the neoclassicism and academism details
heaps, and after that it progressed to post-impressionism,
expressionism, fauvism, cubism (and orphism) and finally to
general abstractionism with its variants (constructivism,
neoplasticism, etc.). We will see next how the abstractionism
is the base current that contemporary design was inspired from.
On the contrary, the public classical need for more journalistic
details was satisfied by the photography that came to be inserted
more and more in the newspapers texts. The photography, as an
independent art, became film once with the camera invention. The
movie pictures and the design joined together as contemporary
consumerist art.
Modern newspaper
Here is how the traditional art journalistic item came to be

concurred by the real journalism. Accordingly, most of its
audience has gone to daily gossip consumption. In extend to this
46

real journalism there came up the consumerist art which is an
embellished intentionally spectacular made journalism that
sometimes introduces elements of circus and illusionism.
The spread of techniques and materials has led to a real
inflation of artistic products that the human capacity of
synthesis fails to fully analyze. Even the culture professionals
do not have enough time to digest them. Mona Lisa by Leonardo
embodies the spirit of a terrible struggle, a remarkable
technical innovation typical for Renaissance titans. Today, the
same image can be obtained with much less effort and with much
less spiritual involvement using the camera more or less
efficient, using well-modulated artificial lights and a real
world photo model. Such a quick picture is similar as visual
perception to that of Leonardos result achieved after years and
years of intense work. Someone who comes from outer space and
has no visual culture could not distinguish between the two
images.
In this way, at the macrosocial level, in the culture history,
there has happened the same phenomenon of entropy that occurs
at the microsocial level with a specific cultural current. This
phenomenon reflects the mode item dynamics. After being launched
as avant-garde, any current then gets popular, and then it ends
up out of mode. In this stage, the present public is no more
inspired by it, and goes next to another cultural form that will
also have the same destiny. The values, the techniques and the
technology of traditional art have been assimilated by a
nonelite public, and thus, its essential function for
civilization has been lost, as dealing with mediocre spiritual
products. So, the art has moved its center of gravity to the
conceptual item, after the journalistic and the mode items have
became popular and turned into the mass culture. Further on I
will describe in details this cultural mutation of modernity.
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Gabriel Baldovin
Scene from Titanic
12. The consumerism as return to the traditional art
When the mode item mainly consists in refashioning, returning

or mannerist repetition of previously established art forms, we
are dealing with the consumerist culture. The main mark of the
consumerist culture is of course the general audience as
nonprofessional and not enough educated one. This kind of
audience has not assimilated the culture history, due to the lack
of education or due to lack of time, mostly because it is occupied
48

with getting the necessary daily living.
The consumerist term given to this kind of culture is very
well-found, as commercial cultural productions look like some
foods that have short-term effect over the body needs, with their
nutrients. In the same way these productions are currently
consumed by public, and are continuously replaced by other ones
that take their place and that also end up being forgotten. Not
all the consuming cultural products come to be forgotten. There
are some that will withstand in time. But most of them will have
such a fate. Unlike consumerist culture, there are few works of
art of high culture which delights even today, although they may
no longer inspire the contemporary.
Although it lives in the present days, this kind of public is
rather configured under the classical, traditional culture. Its
lifestyle attests a traditional culture and its landmarks
crystallize in its soul from the everyday social experience. The
profile of such a mass culture consumer is that of the classical
slave descendant. Although she or he received certain political
rights than his or her ancestors (as the right to change the
master by resignation, or proportional remuneration with the
performed job difficulty), yet he or she remained a slave
becoming modern, waged slave. Although it is surrounded by goods,
by products and by food that were specific to the upper classes
in the past, still the mass culture public has very similar
mental life with that of her/his ancestor, the classical slaves.
The waged slave is no longer forced by death threats to serve
its master, but it is lured into consuming traps to sign
contracts and to serve the privileged ones. Like its ancestors,
the modern slave, who is pompously and deceivingly called free
worker, feels the need to escape from the present into a better
world, through the love and faith ideal for a perfect happy
eternal life. This eternal happiness is promised as achievable
either after death under the traditional religions or, newly,
it is promised as achievable even during the lifetime under the
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Gabriel Baldovin
model of that so-called American dream. It promises the
happiness and the victory in exchange for obedience to the
corporatist ideas and aligning inside a certain hierarchy of
commands. The similarity between the American dream propaganda
and the promise that ancient Roman soldier received, to become
a free citizen of Rome after the military service, is absolutely
amazing.
Contemporary common people spirit
Just like the classical slave, the modern one also ambivalently
worships and hates in the same time its masters and its idols.
In the modern edge the masters and the idols are not only the
religious and political figures only, like in the past, but they
had become actors, athletes, musicians etc. But the main
difference between today mass culture and the traditional
culture of past centuries relies in the firsts greater
permissiveness. Today mass culture usually stopped trying to
adopt the upper classes habits, and when it does, and then it
obviously becomes kitsch. Its authenticity remains by
presenting the lower classes way of life as it is, with their
50

verbal tics, with their daily routine due to extra dose of
liberties that the modern slave worker has comparatively with
the classical slave. In the past the lower classes were much more
restricted in expressing their thoughts and their lifestyle
habits and, thus, they used to imitate upper classes that
invariably became kitsch. So, the contemporary consumerist
culture itself has not totally escaped the risk of becoming
kitsch. In fact, the consumerism itself crystallized from the
kitsch culture that became professionalized over time. There are
many consumerist productions that sometimes go back in the
kitsch zone by trying to imitate the upper classes culture. The
consumerist culture predisposition to kitsch is given by modern
5
slave low self-esteem (the main public of consumerist culture)
that follows the classical slave self-contempt that it inherits.
The need to escape into another world and the willingness to
appear as a member of such a (superior) world involves this kind
of lack of authenticity specific to kitsch phenomena.
This low self-esteem ambivalently coexists with its narcissism
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Gabriel Baldovin
Although it has many contents specific to mode item, the
consumerist culture focuses on journalistic item. The
suggestive told story or unusual story is what draws the audience
into a new world different from its own. As I argued in another
paper, the so-called postmodernism is most of the times a
theoretical objectivity form some artists availability to do
some business by reselling old cultural innovations to a certain
audience that has forgotten or never met them. The returning to
tradition, that this supposedly postmodernism boasts on, is
often an impotence to get over it.
But the consumerist culture means not just that. It is a
full-fledged business that operates under the rules of an
industry. It is a real commercial product and the public pays
for it. The consumerist culture is a very profitable business
as being a true fairy tale that the slave laborer naive dreams
project into. It converts the evening slave frustration and
fatigue into its morning optimism and enthusiasm. This
enthusiasm convinces him or her to do his or her daily job and
the privileged classes prosper on.
Although the consumerist culture does not directly advertise for
a certain selling product, still it keeps up the worker spirit
and motivates him or her to work for one more day. In the past,
the armies used to threaten the classical slave to work and to
be profitable. The today waged slave is motivated by the new
armies of stars to serve the system. Therefore, in addition to
direct sales profitability, during certain films made in
Hollywood, there can be seen hidden advertised products but also
political messages containing unpopular ideas that subliminally
get to impress the consumer worker mind, once he or she enjoyed
the movie. The consumerist culture has managed to wash the
slavery crime image that the privileged classes did. So it
managed to keep religions voice down about the slavery sin by
replacing the traditional armies of recruiting and forcing slave
to work. The wage slave is not forced anymore to become slave
since she or he free in mind and spirit comes to be recruited.
52

As washed from the guilt of classical slavery, the contemporary
new liberalism pays consumerist culture big bucks in return,
in addition to those taken from directly selling these consuming
productions. That is why the consumerist culture is a very
profitable industry, one of the most profitable.
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Gabriel Baldovin
13. The design in relation to the consumerism
The word design is relatively new in the language and did not
have time to naturally crystallize. So it tends to receive at
least two directions with some relation between them but they
essentially still remain different. There is an aesthetic side
and the technical side for this term. The technical side is
closer to engineering and its main interest is the technical
innovation. The technical conceiving of a certain device by an
inventor or an innovator is called design by the community.
The difference between this work and the proper engineering is
that that, although the designer is more an engineer or
technician, still she or he makes only the sketch or a virtual
simulation or a prototype of the final product, but not
necessarily its concrete implementation which is indeed the
engineers task. But just like the aesthetic designer, the
technical designer uses the imagination, and probably this is
the very connecting link between the two meanings of the term.
On the contrary, the aesthetic designer wants to show more than
the real virtues of the product. Being a true salesman or auction
seller, the aesthetic designer beautifies the product and makes
a better picture for it than its actual value in the eyes of the
potential buyers. For example, the shape of Formula 1 that a
54

designer can make for an ordinary car forces buyer to feel that,
by buying it, would own such a fireball and would have the chance
to be a champion.
The aesthetic design can be divided further more into two main
parts. The first is the product design offered for sale, the
shape that makes it attractive and desired by the buyer. The
second part is the advertising design which is the product
outside image, the propaganda and lobby made for showing its
qualities in the various media. From the simple poster to the
association with a celebrity, the product in question is
introduced to the buyers or is advertised as having superior
qualities that it actually has. From this point of view, the
design is very close to the kitsch culture, by refusing its own
status and more or less successful imitating the upper classes
culture. The more exaggerated are the qualities the closer is
the design to kitsch, although its main role is essentially to
force as much as possible the credibility of much higher
qualities than the real product actually has. For example, a
towel with the image of Mona Lisa on it will be invariably kitsch.
The buyer may believe that has made a big deal by buying not only
a towel but also the Leonardos famous painting. Moreover, that
certain buyer can have the illusion of living in high-class
coming to wipe his or her skin with the famous painting, though,
not only that person will not ever achieve it, but he or she may
not ever get to see it even behind the glass protection in Louvre.
By buying a Gioconda towel, the buyer shows a false social status,
and that fact is specific to kitsch.
The mass culture and the design are very close one another. The
difference between them mainly relies in the applied character
of the design. The main design criterion is the usefulness of
the product before of the artistic contemplation joy. On the
contrary, the mass culture may contain ads (as out of product
design), but they are not its characteristics. The mass culture
is meant to capture the audiences attention for a certain ad
that is going to come, but it can also exist without advertising.
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Gabriel Baldovin
The mass culture is a fairy tale for adults and its consumers
have the satisfaction of tale listening just like children. It
tells a captivating story so it focuses on the journalistic item,
thus being a modern form of traditional art. Unlike the mass
culture, the design often insists on mode item, not directly
tells a story, and has not the power to capture with a certain
story. But it attracts by the product usefulness attached to it,
or by the advertising novelty to which it subscribes.
The consumerism and the advertising are two things very closely
related to each other. The TV stations generally survive through
advertising. Because they must reach the buyers attention,
there are consuming productions required to make it stand in
front of the TV, entertain it and make it remember the product
from the ad. But the most obvious link between the two, that can
also determine their precise relation, is given by the fact that
mass culture can not be conceived without the designers. Any
consumerist production is build like the factory conveyer belt,
not only in making the series which can be unlimited but also
in their original designing. Each designer has a well
56

established role and is in charge with a certain aspect of the
final product development, much like a production line worker
who performs a particular task.
The phenomenon is not entirely new, as was practiced in the past
in cases of some of the greatest works of art. It is known that
Phidias led an army of sculptors to decorate the Parthenon and
each of them have a well established role. Likewise, in the
Renaissance, the master used to paint only the characters faces
and the hands, as the rest of the painting was painted on by the
disciples. The worker mentality has been perpetuated in modern
art also. Constantin Brancusi, an emblematic figure of
abstractionism, said at one point that the art is 99% work and
1% talent. Regardless of the level of metaphor involved in such
a statement, however, it can be noticed an insufficient
distinction between artistic and industrial or manufacturing
factor, that the ancient Greeks tried to solve with their word
techne. Under these conditions, the criticism from the past,
but also from today, in respect to ready made phenomenon that
would contaminate the eternity of art, with the limitation and
banality of industrial objects, is simply absurd. In fact, art
will always be dependent on external rules and laws of the object
(or language for literature). Its handling for achieving its
final form will be the subject to technological approaches of
the object. And any kind of technology involves the
manufacturing or industrial factor of machines or robots.
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Gabriel Baldovin
14. The relationship between the consumerism and the

authentic art
Just like the global consumerist culture, the design also does
not create anything from zero but takes or offers variations of
previously occurred currents of authentic art. The same thing
happened with the traditional design that appeared long before
the emergence of the term design. For example, the baroque
furniture is a traditional design as the authentic baroque art
features met with those objects utility. The consumerism and the
design do not have avant-garde but simply make small innovation
for the currents that authentic art has launched before. The most
commonly current used for modern design is the geometric form
of abstractionism, the figurative abstract stylization and
certain elements of Art Nouveau. Sometimes it can be seen,
however, elements of abstract expressionism or of naive form of
abstractionism. But the geometric abstractionism is most often
used because it fits the less poetic and more technical
designers mentality. Instead of basic geometric forms used by
Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, Barnett Newman and many others,
the modern design introduced more elaborate geometric forms,
particularly certain regular curves. The major difference lies
in the execution perfection, mainly due to computer automation
used for making these products. For somebody who is unfamiliar
with the art history, these forms may seem a true image
revolution, but so far, since the abstractionism itself was
launched, at the beginning of 20-th century, it has already
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became mannerism, losing its avant-garde quality under the
principle of evolution of mode item, as copied by the design.
Piet Mondrian Tableau 11

Most designers think they are brilliant artists and compare
themselves with the Renaissance masters that often overshadow,
regarding the details and the execution smoothness. But the
technique or the technology assimilation does not always involve
artistic result. It can be appreciated as art by an uneducated
public but an expert can easily see it as mannerism and sometimes
even kitsch. Their technical dexterity and mechanical
assimilation of rules for creating art does not make them at all
brilliant artists, as they perceive themselves. Their situation
is not new in art history. Thousands and thousands of baroque
artists who decorated western fountains, buildings and
furniture has been forgotten almost all by the art history. But
it will always remember that Michelangelo knew how to anticipate
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Gabriel Baldovin
baroque in his art. Although he never made a genuine baroque,
when we think of baroque we invariably think about him as its
father, without taking into account many others who were genuine
baroque artists, who were inspired by this current but did not
return big deal back to it.
So, just like those anonymous Baroque artists, the contemporary
designers do not exceed their condition, being unable to
understand the spirit of contemporary art and to perceive art
more like a succession of revolutions, in the human spirit
evolution chain, than as a need a touch a kind of classical
perfection. Most of the designers do not have complete artistic
education because they have spent all their childhood playing
video games or watching TV. Although very visible on media, the
most of them are simply mediocre artists. Although there are some
who have genuine art studies in serious schools, it seems they
caught nothing from. The primitive and children art seems for
most of them simply ... wrong. Obviously, if would have power,
many of them would be willing to rename the museums of
contemporary art in museums ... degenerate art. In this case,
they seem to be some kind of smiling Hitlers, just like the
corporatism that they serve is a kind of semi fascist or of
smiling fascism. Many of them represent a real outrage to
civilization in the most proper sense of the term. So, before
considering the design as authentic art, we must ask ourselves
whether the design itself is able to respect the genuine art and
enter art temple with the piety of the newcomer, and not with
the conquering warrior aggressiveness. Sometimes there were
strange rejections among artists, most often due to rivalry or
enmity, but there were rare cases where artists would rub out
in such a way other genres and styles of art as many designers
are predisposed to do with the noncorporatist art.
But there are also open-minded designers, and the pop
are best examples. Many of them started their career
painters or image makers in general, but with time they
the border to genuine art and let the spirit to rise
60
artists
as ads
crossed
up the

surface before commercial interests. Other designers often
realize that are wasting their talent making mediocrities
painted in false elitism, but they had become addicted to higher
financial gains from their job, thus being trapped into this
vicious circle.
15. The industrial multiplication and the mode item

crisis
Further on must be made a deeper analysis regarding the

technological innovation and the development of new materials
in art. This should have all the advantages to become authentic
art due to its novelty. The technical and technological
innovation had marked the emergence of new style and was recorded
each time in the art history. The mode item of traditional art
criterion is fully met. If they would be recognized as art by
an artist or art professional, and if would be put into the
exhibition hall right after their occurrence, these
technological innovation would become counterparts of
traditional art revolutions. This is neither snobbery nor
tyranny of any taste, whatsoever. This is the meaning of art
throughout history. If you do not know to enter the community
of artists or collectors, then you are simply nature and nothing
but innocent nature, no matter how unique you might be. The
nature itself has some maximum unique areas that worldwide
tourists visit and marvel. But these natural wonders are not art
under the very traditional acceptation of the term.
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Gabriel Baldovin
Unfortunately, for the emergences of such innovative materials,
there are working people who have either a minimum interest or
no interest at all in art. This is not due to the art world
snobbery. These innovators main interest is to create some
materials to remove the defects or improve the previous ones.
The technological function is what they are after. The mass
multiplying, market creation for to be sold or their utilitarian
shaping decreases their artistic value although they become mode
in the mainstream community. So, until an art professional come
to make contact with them, these materials already have been
melted in the last phase of the mode item that actually means
the phase before oldfashioning. The financial factor is crucial
in this development of technological innovation. Although the
individual price of the design object that contains innovative
material is much smaller than of the work of art, however, by
becoming a market or even an industry, these products bring
incomparably greater profits to the producers than if
duplicating material would not have occurred and would remained
original for ever. Unlike this situation, we can compare van Eyck
brothers technical innovation that are supposed to knew how to
dissolve amber and make it painting material by a method unknown
to this day. Given the fact that guild secrets were not the told
it is likely that they might had been achieved such technical
innovation and keep it secret.
But, if van Eyck remained landmarks in the art history, not the
same thing will happen to the most contemporary technological
innovators. Their interest is primarily financial and not a
spiritual one. Despite plenty of revolutions, some of them even
radical, art had a certain fine aristocratic or exotic attitude,
which meant the ID for a special kind of people. That is what
the contemporary designers are missing today, as they have
rather trader instinct than the artists in their blood. The
design and the consumerist art show false spiritual revolution.
The revolution technologies and novelty items has ceased to be
human spirit objects. In contemporaneous age, the successions
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of modes are superficial art revolutions and especially the
consumerist art productions which do not reflect any spiritual
revolution but propaganda or advertising. They boast themselves
to be blockbusters but are very mediocre productions that manage
to become popular to the ticket paying audience, eager for
entertainment. Their producers have mechanically learned the
grammar of art production and industrially repeat it for
commercial gain but not for the purposes of communication for
humanity the new spiritual landmarks, as mode item used to do
in art history. They themselves reject the art creation for the
corporations designing. Their interest is a morbid obsession to
create financial empires and to recruit the rest of humanity into
their modern slavery. Under these conditions the human spirit
is captured into the utilitarian modern objects (but often
unnecessary) ivory tower that make wage slaves believe they
would escape slavery if buy them. The corporatist strategy is
not interested in creating a spiritual development of others,
as art does in principle, but to maintain them in the same level
of ignorance or even besot them some more.
The general perception about the traditional sacred art (with
which even the modern art is judged as superficial) can not agree
with the dealers ideas. The authentic art itself has been
reduced to the price and the money, but its spirit will always
would be one located above such worldly interests. The religious
affiliation of art has never been forgotten by the human spirit.
Even if then it broke away from mother religion, though the art
did not totally rebelled against it, but became itself a religion.
Despite the fact that they have become tools for strengthening
the wage slavery, at their origin all of the modern religions
reject the slavery, considering it immoral. The corporatism, as
wage modern slavery, does not differ from this pattern.
It is possible that, in the future, when the social scams and
lies problems would not be so tricky, the design could be
accepted inside the large body of art just as happened to the
very architecture that is also an applied utilitarian art that
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Gabriel Baldovin
came to be regarded equal with the rest of the arts. The Parthenon
can successfully stand next to any sculpture or painting artwork.
Just like the design that commercially exaggerates the qualities
of product meant to be sold, in the same way the architecture
used to exaggerate the divine qualities of a place or of its
occupants, suggesting the divine sonship by different
architectural elements that create the illusion of reaching the
sky (the dome for example) or the illusion of channels of
communication with it (pyramid-shaped sharp towers that look to
be continuing forever in heaven). But, for now, the design can
only be rarely accepted into the body of authentic art.
16. Why the modern art became different from the

traditional art?
As creative and spiritual revolution, correlated with the

revolution of mode item as a style, the art was about finished
when the abstractionism and the surrealism emerged. Henceforth,
making art as the previous trends, innovating and producing mode
is a commonplace thing with no specific artwork traditional
spiritual elitism, but as part of the advertising and PR
industries. Neither one of contemporary abstractionism variants
(such as geometric minimalism for example) nor those from
graphic design do not or create genuine revolutions in art. They
only extend the old area of abstractionism to other fields.
The rapid artistic trends succession that began with the end of
the nineteenth, that continued in an avalanche in the twentieth
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century, was an attempt (sometimes personal) by the new artistic
elite to save the traditional elitist spirit that came altered
in some ending currents of traditional art itself. For example,
the neoclassicisms rigidity was a whim of the new bourgeoisie
who wanted to show its power towards the dying aristocracy.
Despite the fact that neoclassical painters have exceeded all
in respect to the technical dexterity and accuracy of details,
yet the neoclassicism has paradoxically a flavor of kitsch
inside since. The returning to traditional values, that the
bourgeoisie was displaying at the surface, was a simple bravado
and the bourgeois ideology was rather an industrial one than
mythological, as neoclassicism showed itself. The inferiority
complex of the bourgeoisie towards the aristocracy cultural
tradition is almost identical to the marginal worker who creates
the kitsch culture under the desire to imitate the culture of
city that does not accept him or her inside its walls. Most of
the members of bourgeois had such a marginal family tradition
that has gradually raised the social ladder by the levers of
industrialism. Also, the realism that became impressionism
later meant an abandonment of classical themes in the favor of
humble and simple life of marginal people, or in the favor of
normal and banal places that reveal no traditional deity
whatsoever.
Meanwhile, the old masters art either became an industry, or it
was image engineering from the very beginning. Unfortunately for
them, the human spirit wanted an escape from this strict and
rigid rules world, as shown in previous section. We can talk
about ancient Greeks engineering of building temples without
cement, helped only by pieces of marbles that were polished by
hand, to perfectly combine one another and perceive the virtue
of the ancient architecture tradition like a culmination of the
spirit. But we would not do the same thing about todays Golden
Gate Bridge, which is a much higher engineering marvel. That is
because these miracles simply become banal things for our
contemporary perception. If a dog that learns to do basic math
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Gabriel Baldovin
additions, then it would obviously be perceived as a remarkable
fact and this dog might became a global star, although these
mathematical operations are peace of cake for humans.
Image from Las Vegas
The multiplied to infinity industrial objects can not assume the

role of corollary of the human spirit. The novelty has become
a daily commonplace. As mobilized by the legends of the old
artists, the contemporary art elite could not accept and would
never accept the anonymity of the new category of cultural images
and products creators. The technology development allowed easy
manipulation of materials to produce art. The tourism became a
handy reality so someones adventures can easily be putted on
paper and processed into a novel. Once with the specialization
and the industrialization of journalistic process, the humanity
suddenly had found itself bombarded with more or less
sophisticated and entangled stories in such a way that reached
the point of abusing human memory capacity. The world has come
66

to be reluctant to billions of gigabytes of information of all
kinds. The human capacity to store and organize this information
explosion has started to pink and wariness about novelty began
to take enthusiasms place.
Suddenly, the art found itself in an unprecedented inflation
following the industrialization process of the old techniques
and the community widespread cultural patterns. From this point,
the culture gradually began to reject not only the journalistic
item within but also its mode item. Gradually it focused on
novelty and cultural contents originality, giving up the old
formula who claimed that the art is only form but not content.
From a celebration of spirit that used to be, the art thus has
become a tiresome agitation even for the professional audience.
Therefore, the contemporary artist was obliged to analyze the
new situation. There came up certain questions about the art and
the culture that were unthinkable several hundred years ago. If
the art itself has the same destiny as the gross industrial
product, then how can it differentiate from that and how will
it any longer justify its value, particularly the financial one?
Does the elite artist exits? Are the common people just a series
articles producer? Today even the technical innovations that
have defined the art for centuries (I. Kant used to consider true
artist genius the one who give rule to art) is increasingly
perceived as platitudes, while the art core is crystallized in
the conceptualist zone. Here is how, after the cultural
oldfashioning and regimentation of abstractionist products, a
part of contemporary art in general gave up making replies or
bringing back in mode the forgotten forms, as mass culture does.
On the contrary, this part of contemporary art began to question
their value as well as the value of those that belongs to the
well cultural established traditional art. So, their value and
their social context that emerged from has become the subject
of questioning of art on itself. Such an estheticist intrusion
into the body of the contemporary art, particularly into that
of conceptualist nature, was meant to be an auxiliary element
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Gabriel Baldovin
attached on the cultural product, a kind of guide of using it.
I will analyze in detail this situation in the following
sections.
17. The discentrical art and the visible emergence of

conceptual item
Once with avalanching industrialization of both the

journalistic item from traditional art and the mode item from
modern art, the only one who has kept its traditional elitism
is the conceptual item. As the mode item, the conceptual one is
also not new in art history. It can be found also in the
traditional art, even if somewhat more diluted and hided. The
art evolution from the darkness of history until today
progressively revealed the concept and the scientific data
involving among the artistic forms. That is because the
civilization is evolving towards a scientific and pragmatic
ideology, rejecting more and more the religious one that
represents a certain stage in the history of civilization.
Obviously, the two spiritual phenomena can not be radical
differentiated: the religion and the science have common
elements but the difference between them is the same as that
between the archaic and Formula 1 cars.
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Raphael School of Athens
That is why, today, the culture is more theoretical (or pragmatic

- see the phenomenon of advertising) even when it makes the
apology for Edenic childhood and returning to simple happiness
of the primitive spirit. For example, the trends like
romanticism, neoclassicism and realism have brought great
technical and technological innovations of the image. But the
main difference between them is the very journalistic item, the
chosen story. The neoclassicism returned to mythology or gave
mythological aura to the present. The romanticism oscillated
between heroic and fatalistic -entropic themes. The realism was
pleased to simply show the banal beauty of the world that
previous art was not interesting in. In addition to journalist
item that is the decisive factor in shaping these trends, here
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Gabriel Baldovin
can be foreseen the very conceptual item. Each one of these
currents has its own ideology. The neoclassicism is close to
classical and Christian philosophy. The romanticism relates to
the psychologist side of the ancient sophists and, obviously,
it is announcing or even it is contemporary with Nietzsche (as
the composer Richard Wagner for instance). The realism relates
with the political side of the ancient sophists, with J.J.
Rousseau and K. Marx. The conceptualist core found in these art
currents will be even more visible later, once with their
modernizing, when the romanticism will turn into surrealism (via
metaphysical painting) and the realism will turn (among others)
into socialist realism in communist countries or consumerism in
capitalist ones.
Obviously, at this level, the conceptualist side is almost
invisible. It is better seen in abstract art works of artists
like P. Klee, V. Kandinsky or P. Mondrian. They were almost
philosophers, with certain written texts and intense concern to
philosophical problems. There are very few abstract artists that
were not visible interested in theoretical concerns. Thus, with
the rejection of journalistic item and promoting the mode item,
the abstract art gives credit to conceptual item which is
embryonically found in the traditional art. The artworks titles
came to be no longer descriptive, as in traditional art, but they
somewhat become more conceptual. Endless Column, Highway and
Byways, Circles in a Circle are unusual titles that the
abstract artists gave to their works. Here is how the influence
of conceptual item has become much more visible.
But the conceptualism was to be born on a different direction
than that of the abstractionism, and even before its emergence,
once with dada and with Marcel Duchamps ready made experiments.
Dadaism has produced one of the most profound cultural changes
in art history by accepting the randomness instead of the story
and of the artistic intentionality. Although originally the dada
experiments intended to be a kind of muse imploring to directly
offer inspiration inside the art objects, still since the first
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dadaist events there was felt the object minimizing in exchange
for the conceptualist assertions that the spectator was first
projecting into the object itself, and then reinterpreted
afterwards. Duchamps Fountain exhibited in 1917 goes even
further with the involvement of conceptual item by exposing an
urinal as art object, and thus leaving the viewer to interpret
it as an assault or as a curse to the traditional art that
fetishistically worships the object or as something else. But
such an artwork is not at all a kind of revolution that used to
happen before in art history. This revolution did not happen at
the level of object form but at the level of how the art object
itself is perceived. Urinals or other such useful objects have
existed before, but there was no idea about the fact that they
could be art and not just simple household objects.
In the same time with this intentional endeavor, in culture there
naturally happened another one with the same destination. In the
history, the household objects that have survived time have
become art in its own right. They are sold at auctions with
amounts similar to those of objects of art and only our
prejudices make them to not be considered art. But they have all
the advantages to be considered art since they concentrate
inside the universe of the age from which they come, just as a
painting contains symbols in which there are concentrated
different microcosms. A urinal found in an old destroyed city
thus takes over the role of art by speaking to the contemporary
people about a once flourishing civilization that became now
ruin. What would be needed for a modern urinal to be accepted
with the same status? The center of gravity of the cultural
revolution that Duchmap proposed relies in this kind of
questions form outside the object.
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Gabriel Baldovin
Marcel Duchamp Fountain
Duchamps Fountain makes us ask more acutely about the

difference between household objects and art, and if such a
difference has coverage in our traditional culture habits and
behavior. Without claiming to be art objects themselves, we
strangely realize that art somehow exists outside them and
inside ourselves and the object itself is only the obiectivation,
just the impulse for this latent art to come to surface.
Therefore, this kind of art is called ready-made, meaning an
object that was previously designed and built by others, with
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its aesthetic forms that became banality even from its birth.
By exposing it as art, the artist brings more than traditional
beauty of the mode and journalism item. Of course, this novelty
relies in conceptual item. Even the pop art ready mades has the
conceptual (self) irony inside. When there is exposed a group
of ready made objects we have the installation. When the
installation is shown in the evolution and the objects interact
with each other under the direct influence of human factor, we
have the actionism known as performance art and happening.
Performance by Joseph Beuys I like America and America likes me
None of the experiments is not genuine conceptualism, although

they are much closer to it than any others in art history. They
are the basis for the conceptualism but also a basis for a new
culture in which it is the most important trend. In my book The
contradictions, the illusions, and the virtues of
postmodernism I named discentrical 6 this culture. I used the
6
The collocation discentrical art is intended to bring a little more
precision to the contemporary art, currently used in the circle of those

involved in this kind of culture. It seems to me that this term does not
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Gabriel Baldovin
word discentric precisely because it rejects not only the
interest center of journalistic item from its semantics, but it
also rejects the very veneration of the object of art as cultural
core and as a fetish in civilization. Before describing the
proper conceptualism there must first be described the details
that revolves around this cultural phenomenon, and which are
grouped into the general concept of discentrical art.
18. The discentrical art forms
There are four major trends specific to discentrical art. The

first is a radical return to immaturity, or the intended
primitive techniques and technologies usage of contemporary art.
This castling is done for revealing the mode item (that can exist
also in the primitive art), or for total or almost total chance
usage in the artistic product (a kind of neodadaism). The second
one is closer to traditional and means bringing to attention
the psychopathological symptoms that the bulk of society still
runs and scares of. The third is the almost obsessive repetition
usage of a certain shape, either geometric (minimalism), either
make a very clear distinction between this kind of art and abstract art and
even consumerist one.
74

consumerist (pop art) or any other kind. Finally, the fourth is
the proper conceptualist one. It is not the place here for making
a detailed analysis of these four big discentrical art
tendencies; here must be remembered that, from this whole
spectrum of phenomena, the main interest for this paperwork is
the very conceptualism. That is why the conceptualism will
receive here a special attention and the others will be only
briefly analyzed.
Jackson Pollock painting
All of these four tendencies came to isolate certain corners from

the reality and simply expose them in a space meant for this
purpose. In fact, this is not an absolute novelty in art because
currents like realism or impressionism used the representation
of this kind of reality corners directly observed in the nature.
From this point of view, the difference between discentrical art
and these two currents is that, in first case, there it has been
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Gabriel Baldovin
shown the painted picture of reality and, in the other case, the
reality itself is presented. The heritage of the Duchamps
ready-made objects latent questions involved in the spectators
mind is clearly spread into the whole discentrical art. Why art
should be only the painted representation of the reality but not
the reality itself too? Does the art really hates the reality
and wants to close it into the protective cage of representation?
These are only few of these latent questions. But, if we go back
in time, we see that the realism and the impressionism used to
put similar questions in their eras. For example, one might be
something like: Why art should be the idealization of reality
only, as the classicism or the romanticism shows it, and the
daily reality would be not?. Or, Were there not the classicism
and the romanticism inspired from the beauty of everyday
reality?.
Andy Warhol - Campbells soup
Since then, the conceptual item and the introspective
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interrogations have changed with the evolution of the human
spirit itself. Andy Warhol said at one point that he could sell
anything as art. Obviously that statement does not mean that the
artist can fool the arts buyer, as trader usually more or less
visible does it. Even if he did not say it very clear, however
Warhol wanted to show that the final product is not the most
important fact in this case but the ideas that such an object
are able to stimulate the viewers mind. Since the objects and
the ideas remain two different things, there is not necessary
that such ideas belong to a certain object only. That is why the
art could be anything.
Christo & Jeanne-Claude Reichstag 1995
This culture rejects not only the journalistic values of

traditional and consumerist culture, but also the mode values
of the abstract art and design. This new culture rejects or is
not very interested in making formal or imagistic revolution of
the object. It simply takes the ready-made forms and objects and
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Gabriel Baldovin
moves them into another context, thus inviting or even forcing
the viewer to create a story and participate with its own
interpretation of the phenomenon. Taking over the forms of
design or of natural, industrial or traditional art, and
reactivating them back in a new context, is the main
characteristic of this culture. Any tendency of the formal
innovation involves rather a new form of abstract art (or design)
and any tendency of technological innovation involves a
traditional art (and a consumerist art by default) rather than
the discentrical art.
Anything can become art if the artist proposes a different way
of perception of some particular object. Of course, the Warhols
previously mentioned statement contains a dose of irony pointed
to art snobs. It was a note of disillusionment about the feeling
of the art and its value death once with the loss of traditional
art that used to fairy tale outbid its value. But, besides this,
his statement contains a very likely even if still incomplete
understood truth. The artist may decide the value of art or
nonart just as a king used to cure diseases with a placebo motion
of touching the one who was sick. This is not about just the lack
of clarity irony of the sick one as suggestibility, but also
the kings gesture overlapping with other previously created
similar gestures. Just as a cognitive representation is
cognitively supported by a mental background, by an experience,
by a gestalt, in the same way the artists previous works are
unconsciously perceived in a certain single one. If Warhol sells
an orange peel and decides that it is art, then we would see in
that peel the portrait of Elvis, Marilyns and Campbells soup
also, as pointed in the first section of this paper.
Although sometimes it used the traditional art itself by taking
over its forms as ready made, yet these are not the essence of
this culture, but a kind of traditional values rejection. And,
at the same time, it continues those who are the most stable and
deeper in it. On the contrary, the consumerist culture looks
closer to the traditional art values only on the surface because
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the similarities are very rare at the deeper levels. Instead of
false promises of spiritual fulfillment through the purchase of
products made by design, or instead the consumerist happy-ending,
this new culture promoted either the simple joy of proximate or
marginal space banality, or the consumerism invisible and hidden
face. This theme namely consists in the mental depression of
those involved in this huge propaganda machine, the authorities
or its own kind abuses and, generally, the lies of the
contemporary democratic society that show itself as free and
fair, but who still, essentially, very little differs from the
previous socio-political models that criticizes and denies.
19. The discentrical art and the consumerist culture
Once with the modern era industrialization, robotics and

digitization the slavery was decreasing. The armed threatening
was replaced by manipulation, PR, marketing or other propaganda
techniques. The slavery became more stressful and harder to be
noticed since nobody is actually forced to make a certain job.
But that does not mean that slavery totally disappeared, as
contemporary propaganda loudly and deceivable says, since the
people are manipulated into agreeing to perform a specific job
that would not voluntarily make without this huge machine of
persuasion. But, on the other hand, the modern wage slavery is
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Gabriel Baldovin
relatively much smaller than the classical slavery considering
the number of people that are proportionally still affected by
it.
But, following this trend, in several decades to a century by
now, fortunately the slavery will disappear for good from the
history of civilization. The robots and automation slowly but
surely will replace the modern wage slavery as this replaced the
classical slavery. Such a technological change will have some
of the most radical cultural consequences ever seen in the human
history. The need for divinity search and for personal salvation,
by identifying with it, will become increasingly unnecessary as
well as the typically need to escape slavery into a better world.
So, the contemporary artist, sometimes ridiculed and condemned
by the mass culture, felt this new spirit. The contemporary
artist felt the nothingness of classical ideals and the
deception of consumerism. His appeal to the banality is actually
an invitation to accept the simplicity and originality of the
proximate world that the contemporary slave and master poisoned
eye became unable to see any more.
If someone wants by all means a hermetical stratification
between people, so that the artist should do something that no
one can do, then that person could only maintain such a
mythological idea about art. Somebody can make traditional art
and may work years to finish a painting that a camera can do in
several minutes. Speeds over 60 km / h were very rarely achieved
in the past but today anyone can travel at such speeds with
vehicles. But someone can also choose running, as he or she
wishes. The fact is that this hermetical classical social
stratification will be useless at that moment, and, with that,
the divine artist, that amazes the world and makes it worship
in front of her or his artwork, will be as useless also.
Some have chosen the easy way of taking over the objects and
reorganizing them in various places. That is why the
discentrical art and has been blamed for its lack of excellence,
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for its superficiality and for its levity after the idea that
anybody could do something similar but without being appreciated
as a great artist. Unfortunately, such an objection suffers from
passeism. The status of contemporary artist is judged in this
case through the glasses of the classical artist status, through
this titanium artist image. Such an objection is the prisoner
of the false perceptions that the contemporary artist is given
a big social status of guru or a classic master only for bringing
a corner of reality into the exhibition room. But such a gesture
is just a brick in the artistic evolution wall. The artist does
not reach the notoriety because of a single one silly gesture
that remains in the publics mind after having filled it with
advertising, consuming and the difficulties related to daily
life information. Of course, on such social and cultural status,
the contemporary artist may seem superficial. But much more
superficial is the availability of such an audience to a genuine
communication. In addition to the element that remains in large
public memory there exists an entire career of trials, failures
and reassessments of its own artistic approaches.
If such a public is dominated by imperialist strategy residues,
that believe that art should hypnotize the spectators and line
them up in an army that goes into a crusade to colonize the rest
of the world, then the contemporary artist will seem superficial
indeed. But this is the contemporary wage slaves problem, as
being persuaded to accept the recruitment into contemporary
trade garrisons with the promises that, at some point, he or she
will become a general in this army. And, unfortunately, that is
what the modern slave expects from art, namely to confirm that
he or she will win this bet with life by submitting the wage
slavery painted in freedom colors. In most cases this bet is lost
from the very beginning, and the art can not make such a false
confirmation. Instead of this, there is an entire consumerist
industry that offers modern slave the needed illusions.
From this point of view, the discentrical art would seem
superficial and boring for the contemporary wage slaves needs
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Gabriel Baldovin
for narcissistic gratification to heal their everyday life
humiliations. Moreover, at one point, the friends, spouse, home,
private car and everything will also appear superficial and
boring. As always thinking of becoming a general dream, the
contemporary slave apathetically isolates away from its place
in the world. As already previously mentioned, the incipient
romanticism of refusal the concrete reality and running away
into ideals (also more or less trivial) can very easily derive
into fascism with its well known consequences. Therefore, the
attention that the discentrical art brings to relatively simple
and mundane things is rather an attempt of social selfregulation
against this newslavery culturalist outgrowth.
Scene from Avatar
The naive contemporary wage slave, dependent by the spectacular

consumerist culture, does not understand that even these
productions, that perfusion her or his illusions, have their own
banality. The mass consumerist cultural products are enveloped
into a divine, supraterrestrial form in order to attract the
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slave into another addiction, besides the traditional addiction
toward master that contortion its mind. They promise the escape
in some kind of Eden of perfect love, of having fun or of
spiritual fulfillment through the classical patterns of
religion or through new patterns. The slaves subscribing to
these productions is more than a matter of preference. It is an
investment in a ticket to another and extraordinary world in
which he or she and wants to escape. But, unfortunately for her
or him, everything is an illusion and makes sense as long as the
she or he does not know the trick. Like any other industry, the
consumerist illusions industry works under a certain routine.
Over the years, the consumers become themselves skeptical and
weary about these variations on the same subject. Knowing the
mechanisms of consumerist productions and having the power of
analyzing these final products lead surely to such a perception.
The consumerist productions stars hate for paparazzi, that tend
to present their banality of life and production to the public,
is due to undermining this illusion. Without this illusion the
sales will decrease and the industry will decline. Paparazzi
shorten the stars life and that is why the industry runs again
and again new other figures that attracts the public needs to
escape into a new world. This obsession for novelty shows a
certain kind of tiredness.
Obviously, the main problem of such a public is its inability

to escape the classical vision of the world with its
metanarratives. As long as the public has such an inferiority
complex then it will project into someone else the superhuman
image, the lord image, and the master image that is positioned
somehow on a stage of closer to God spiritual development.
The perception of the titanic artist, to which there is a kind
of nostalgia even for an educated public, is directly dependent
on the classical slavery societies that clearly differentiate
people into masters and slaves. The titanic status of classical
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Gabriel Baldovin
genius not only comes from the power to move people with its art,
but especially comes from the lords approval and making it a
logo for its own social caste. Rembrandt may have been brilliant
but his genius were not enough to be recognized as brilliant if
the master decided that it was not. So, the preconception of
divine artist is due to the need for divinity projection into
the senior status that the modern slave worker does inside the
depths of its mind, under the natural social selection that
aristocratoid classes have made in the classical age. The
slaves idolizing response to the military aggression and
threatening is the key to its survival. The one who did not obey
was eliminated. This social reality was practiced until few
decades ago in history. The mass deportations and mass
exterminations are eloquent forms of classical slavery that has
survived and could be seen even inside the very core of
modernity.
Francisco Goya The Shootings of May Third 1808
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It is obvious that, if classical slavery specific terror can be
restored anytime, then the modern wage slave needs the classical
art gratification to ensure its survival. In the same way, its
ancestors survived for centuries by keeping voice low, by
selfanathemization and by warrior lord worshipping. Therefore,
such public lives in the past rather than in the present. It would
never taste such a culture because it already has its own
classical culture of surviving, the eternal loving and living
after death.
20. The discentrical art and the conceptualism as

protest culture
Obviously this could be done only by breaking the arts tradition

including the status of art collector which is more or less
linked to the tradition itself. The traditional art mythology
and elitism are simply mystical investment of religious and
political authorities. The purpose of such cultural mutation is
due either to some kind of courtesy towards the primitive spirits
or deities will in the primitive societys case, or for
maintaining dominance over the slaves by the classical society
specific culture and education. The themes of conquest, power
and slaves motivation are the very themes of both traditional
art and modern consumerism that discentrical culture vehemently
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either rejects, disavows or simply banters. All of these cases
show a future ideology, an ideology of peaceful society ideal
where the people no longer physically and spiritually mutilate
each other. These values exist in traditional culture since its
beginning and can be seen as an ambivalence state of mind
including the consumerism slavery attitude. The consumerism
themes of escaping the world and happy ending show the new
masters incipient guilt for the evil of mutilation their thralls.
Unlike the consumerism, that tries to hide this guilt and to
embellish it by investing in a false unimpeachable image, and
thus hypocritical continuing the slavery culture, the
discentrical art assumes it and unequivocally rejects it.
As time passes and as the similarities between the consumerism
engineering and the traditional art geniality look more and
more obvious, there is required a retrial of traditional values.
Beyond the Aristotles catharsis and the beyond the need to
decorate the empty spaces and leisure that art has assumed, we
can understand the traditional art, without much fear of failure,
as a image metacampaign made by advertising metaagency, nearly
invisible in the past but very present and active in supporting,
reasoning and justification for slavery ideology. In this case,
not only that traditional or modern art divinity turns out to
be a lying faade, but it actually hides the greatest crime in
human history, the core of immorality by excellence: the slavery.
It is neither the time nor the place for a debate here, but
slavery is quantitatively worse than genocides of the twentieth
century. That is because it covers a very large majority of
civilized human society as a whole, while the genocides usually
were made against ethnic or cultural minorities. A revolution
against the culture of slavery, partially made by abstract art
and somehow more radical made by the discentrical art, is not
just a cultural whim, but a matter of human specie itself
survival and ecology.
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Cindy Sherman Untitled #153
The dadaism intuited such a perspective and launched the antiart

type events just because of feeling such a hypocritical social
perspectives of traditional art and culture as previously
pointed in this text. The dada antiart means turning against such
radical social status of art. But as I will point out later on,
the dadaism had not the courage and strength to go further and
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explain to public its skepticism. It was only the conceptualism
that had this courage to openly and simply say that the value
of art does not belong to the object itself but to what is
invested in it.
Marcel Duchamp - L.H.O.O.Q
The revolt against the snobbish spread in the whole art world
is an experiment done by the most dadaist artists. Painting the
mustache to Mona Lisa made by M. Duchamp is the best known example.
The conceptualism made a main theme by showing how art ultimately
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reduces to money and the buyer reputation. The elite art snob
differs from the kitsch consumer only through its high based
social position and authority (eventually through the army).
Ridiculing the kitsch is actually a habit of ridiculing and
anathematizing the slave just for covering and axiological
justification the guilt of slavery practice whether classical,
industrial or, newly, digital modern where the slave is given
some certain freedoms.
Such a cultural approach is able to undermine the very
institution of art and the very social status of the artist
itself. If the object itself is worthless, and if only the packed
into it ideas counts, then the art does not justify its mystical
status that the society and the general state traditionally
gives to. In this case, the upper classes divinity value itself
would not belong to themselves as being, but to the lower classes
projection into them through the culture of force, under the
rigors of slavery education. If the authorities overevaluate
their social position (which actually is their own position)
including nowadays hiding behind the (traditional or modern)
myths, then to recognize that the value of art does not belong
to the object itself is the same thing as to recognize that upper
class social status itself is false, exaggerated and
institutionalized, made for the enslave the citizens. The
traditional values slavery rejection means actually the social
rejection of this state. The art divinity (in the traditional
sense) does not exist. It is free and with no cost whatsoever
just like the ideas themselves are.
The conceptualists have assumed the risk that, at first glance,
undermines their own social status. Joseph Beuys received
reprimands from the Dsseldorf Academy of Art leadership, where
he was teacher mainly because of his ideas, rooted in the old
dadaism that everyone is an artist. The USSR Supreme Soviet
leader himself publicly disapproved the conceptualism. Such an
idea undermines the very status of art education in addition to
the general social status of art. For now, the state can not
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support everyones art, but only that made by some that are
declared artists. That is because the state itself works under
the traditional society and ideology principles that divide
people into superiors and inferiors.
With its specific manifestations, the conceptualism did not move
on to a concrete explanation of this phenomenon and kept it in
a kind of esoteric secret, with misanthropic and ironic accents
specific to traditional art. The so called postmodernism took
over this side. Obviously, the ordinary people did not
understand and still do not understand today much from Dadaism
antiart experiments. But ordinary people also have antiart
position when do not go to concerts, do not go to the cinema,
turn off the TV and refuse to visit the museum, after they once
used to be the target of culture as teenagers. The disgust for
that period of naivety has its recoil later in a kind of Duchamp
type nihilism. Heres how at a more detailed analysis the elitist
distinctions begin to spray. Antiart events might have been
manifested in the spirit of low classes long before Duchamps
experiments.
This type of cultural content no longer uses the allusion and
intuition, it no longer uses the sublimation for saying what
is inappropriate and prohibited by official culture. It directly
and bluntly speaks about any kind of subject. The traditional
people can not afford this type of freedom because the
authorities would severely punish such courage. Just as
previously pointed, not even the conceptualism itself was able
to totally escape the allusion and ambiguity in its manifest
content, and this issue is the clearest case. On the contrary,
the theoretical art directly presents some truths that are
insufficient digested yet by social order and causes convulsion
to inadequate and traditional order out-of-dated system for
contemporary people spiritual level. The political side of
theoretical art has often manifested in history in a more or less
visible form. I will analyze these differences further on.
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21. The conceptualism between art and philosophy
At the end of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant published the

Critique of Pure Reason, a paperwork that fundamentally
changed the understanding of the world by analyzing not the world
itself but the mind power of understanding it. Inspired by David
Humes skepticism in relation to the justification of causality,
Kant founded the phenomenology, the language analysis and the
analytic philosophy in general. Kant made a methodological
castling by refusing to accept the magical force that the human
mind was traditionally perceived concerning the understanding
personal and intrinsic nature of things. As previously mentioned
in this paper, he sustained that the mind works by projecting
its own cognitive models into the reality, and then understands
it accordingly.
It had been a while until the artists more or less assumed and
consciously paid attention to such an idea, and used it as a
central theme. However Leonardo said more or less elusive even
long before Kant that art is a cosa mentale. So it was known
much earlier before conceptualism that the art object has no
inner objective value in itself and it is only the human mind
which projective invests such a value. But that was not directly
expressed into a kind of artistic vision. It was only the
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conceptualism who reached the moment of such a revolutionary
courage metainterogation of the art who analyses its own status,
as the philosophy itself had been doing with its own body, since
Kant 7 . As previously pointed, the theme of conceptual element
is the interrogation of art and aesthetics in general and was
opened by Marcel Duchamp with his readymade object exhibiting.
But the first signs of proper conceptualism appeared by 1960s
when the texts started to take place for or be recognized as equal
in importance with the exhibited objects. In 1966 Joseph Kosuth
exhibited text definitions for objects, images or even art
itself. Unlike some texts exposed by some Dadaists, with the
intention to be literature or unite the literature and the visual
arts (see Tristan Tzaras pictopoetry), the conceptualists will
7
Here must be made a distinction between what in philosophy is often
called conceptualism and the conceptualism from art. First thing is that
not everyone accepts these terms. From my point of view the
conceptualism from philosophy is a modern nominalism just as there is a
modern realism (or substantialism). Therefore, the term conceptualism in
philosophy seems useless. Problem of universals is not over yet in
philosophy and, therefore, I do not see why we should give different names
to this secular dispute opposing positions. But if it is considered that
socalled conceptualists as Leibnitz, Locke or Kant would have
fundamentally different positions from that of medieval nominalism, then
it should be made a differentiation between the postrenaissance
philosophical and the contemporary artistic conceptualism. As we see,
between this nominalism or philosophy conceptualism and the art
conceptualism there is some kind of filiation. In arts case it is very hard to
give up the term conceptualism only for the need to protect an ambiguity
from philosophy. On the other hand, the term conceptual art, that is often
used by professionals in parallel with that of conceptualism, I think it
should be used for that art which does not meet the criteria of
conceptualism but still is accompanied by some conceptual problematic,
particularly a philosophical one. I will next return to this issue.
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exhibit the text with the declared intention to replace the
object. They did not totally drop the object but, unlike the
beginning of the twentieth century dadaists, the conceptualists
ceased to give a divine function to art whatsoever, even coming
from chance. Unlike Duchamps ready-made protoconceptualist
experiments from the early twentieth century, the text is a
decisive step here for the appearance of conceptualism, giving
the viewer a hint of the objects perception. Unlike this level,
the Duchamps protoconceptualism used to leave room to mode item
object interpretation, although he himself later complained
that the Pop artists have appreciated its ready-made objects as
beautiful. So, at the launching of ready-made phenomenon,
Duchamp himself was not quite sure about his intention, thus
preserving a traditional rescue loophole, although the step to
conceptualism was clearly made.
The conceptualism does not have this duchampian hesitation any
longer, nor bother to ask preparatory question for viewers
perception of a new possible culture. It unequivocally affirms
from the very beginning its status as new culture for an audience
that is presumed of being already introduced to its theme half
a century before, by Duchamp. Unlike the Dada, even since the
Duchamps protoconceptualism, the intentionality of the artist
became maximal once again and, more than that, it replaced any
kind of help from natures chance. If the object is secondary
to the ideas packed into it, then its form, decided by the
different accidents of building it, is secondary itself just
like the chance itself that dadaists used to focus with their
approach. The idea of conceptualism overlaps the very concept
of concept as mental abstraction and classification of
different groups of objects. This mentalizing is actually a
specific art abstractization of the traditional art object into
a mental form, just as the concept inductive abstracts itself
from the reality concrete objects.
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Gabriel Baldovin
22. The conceptualisms benchmarks
The most important criterion for the conceptualism is the very

criterion for the discentrical art in general, namely that of
inviting the spectator to mentally construct a deconstructive
theory about art, world and society, but not to mentally
construct a journalistic scenario, as the traditional art does.
The abstractionism also invites the spectator to mental
theoretical additions but they are never deconstructions but
rather traditional reconstructions. Such a distinction is able
to bring some more clarity on both the conceptualism and, equally,
the abstractionism. Unfortunately, neither the conceptualists
nor the conceptualism theorists and, especially, nor the late
abstractionists painted in conceptualism did not make this
distinction. Its importance is shown by the fact that it is able
to precisely determine the conceptualism boundaries. The
abstractionism uses a classical, traditional ideology and
philosophy. On the contrary, the conceptualism, just like all
the discentrical art, uses modern theories, especially critical,
those of incredulity toward metanarratives as J.F. Lyotard
said.
A second major conceptualism criterion is the usage of text in
its manifestations, unlike the rest of the discentrical art
which does not use it. As previously stated, Duchamp is the
father of conceptualism as his protoconceptualist works invite
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the viewer to mentally construct a deconstructive theory about
the art objects. The first condition is met for him in order to
be called conceptualist. But at that moment he was not a proper
conceptualist because the object still had an important role
(and sometimes more important) concerning the mental conceptual
construction. When he exposed the Fountain, it is obvious that
the first spectators (and perhaps he himself) were interested
rather by the similarities between a fountain and the urinal as
utility object, than by the conceptualist side of the problem.
But it is certain that Duchamp had also in mind this
deconstructive theoretical side which is typical for the
conceptualism since he had others such deconstructive
tendencies of which the best known is the irony toward Leonardos
Mona Lisa, by painting mustache on one of its copies. Only his
latter refusal to do art of any kind could be interpreted as a
conceptualism as long as he has not done it because of the natural
adult routine that looses the childhood and appetite for art,
but because of an assumed intention.
The fact is that this relation between concept and object
coincides with the absence of text in his most conceptualist
works. Therefore, as many others before me, I think that Duchamp
is rather a protoconceptualist. It would not be a problem if the
conceptualism would be extended to this protoconceptualism. But
I think that the text is simply a necessary condition (but not
a sufficient one, as we shall see in the next section) for to
be conceptualism, as manifested after 1960. It must be clearly
distinguished from its first signs that look like little shy
steps.
The report between the text or mental construction and the object
involves a conceptualism quantitative distinction. After the
quantity, there is a total conceptualism, which uses only the
written text and gives up the object, and there is a partial
conceptualism, which still uses the object or the image, under
the condition that they are discentrical, not insisting on the
mode or journalistic item. If this happens then, instead of
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conceptualism, we would have a traditional or a consumerist art
(for journalistic item) and an abstract art or a design (for the
mode item). There were and still are some conceptualist artists
that cross the border to the traditional art and, especially,
to the design. There is no problem with that. Moving from one
manner to another is not a new thing in the art history; but there
must be understood what is and what is not conceptualism in the
work of a certain artist.
The art values reconsideration and the civilization
narrow-minded ideas rejection is almost a constant of partial
conceptualism. The exposure of canned feces, as the Italian
Piero Manzoni did, shows such conceptualism. The feces could
never become proper art object but a track of focusing attention
on a particular theoretical discourse that transcends the
information the object by itself gives. Given the fact that this
artist has also exposed other parts of his body, including the
artists breath in a bubble, there is suddenly emerging a track
that conceptual imagination of the spectator creates in a way
that figurative art did not used to induce. So the feces, as
external object, are not important in this work but the ideas
that this secondary object forces from our mind.
Exposing feces makes us think of P. Cezannes answer (asked by
Monet what would he exhibit at the salon) that will expose a pot
of feces.... So, the duchampian abhorrence to the object of art
has deeper roots. If Duchamp limited to paint a moustache on
Giocondas face, Manzoni has become much more radical toward
tradition, by recognizing the object of art as dirt. We can not
know for sure if he thought or how he thought about this well
known reply, and if it really influenced Manzoni. But it is
certain that such a reply remains in the mind for long time so
it is possible that it would have been a decisive element in the
genesis of this work.
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Piero Manzoni Merde dArista
In this case we are dealing with an ambivalent situation. On the

one hand we have a highest level contempt about the artwork, as
Manzoni actually dared to do what a Cezanne only planned, still
without the courage to implement such an idea. On the other hand,
by exposing other parts of his body, and by preferring to
preserve the feces in a can and, thereby, by still protecting
the spectator against an olfactory or a visual specific
aggression, Manzoni produced somehow a reparation to the art
object, after initially has destroyed it by presenting it as
garbage.
In the same way that the accident that caught Leonardos
attention became art under the action of gestual abstract
expressionists, the same thing happened with Cezannes
statement taken over (even at the unconscious level) by Manzoni.
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Gabriel Baldovin
Then, the old (maybe a bit outdated) idea of the artist who
sacrifices for creation, and shortens its life with each new
artwork, finds a tender metaphor in such a sharing his body parts
into this series of works. If we see today the deflated balloon
that once used to be filled with air from his lungs, which is
his work Artists breath, and if we think that, in the meantime,
the artist himself died, then we experience a kind of classical
nostalgia about the human being and its art role on the earth.
Heres how some everyday and even disgusting objects can easily
induce pure classical feelings relatively to deep questions
about the lifes purpose.
From the initial aggression against the art object, his artwork
finally became a part of his being. The object not only became
repaired, but it was also reinstated in its traditional sacred
place where, at least in words, the contemporary culture admits
the sacredness of the individuals physical integrity. Even if
at first look it may shock the untrained audience, yet this work
seems to encapsulate the contemporary spirit. On one hand, it
aggress the art and declares its death but then, on the other
hand, finds itself not being able to live without it and reviving
it back to its place. This ambivalence, as coherent mixture of
contradictory ideas, is the essence of art from all times and
places. We must not forget also the Andy Warhols Campbells
canned soup and the general intention of pop artists to make
beautiful objects from Duchamps ready-mades. Coincidence or
not, Manzonis canned feces came to be placed right in the center
of typical for his time theoretical and practical debates, and
thus it is a representative work of conceptualism.
This is the transcendentalist way that conceptualism can be
understood. When Brancusi made an infinite column, we can make
a symbolist interpretation for each column module as part of a
mathematical infinity series. On the contrary, from the feces
there can not directly be extracted the idea of rebellion against
the obsolete traditional art theories. But if we conceptually
deconstructive restore this missing link, then we actually deal
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with the conceptualism or protoconceptualism. More precisely,
if the object is accompanied by some text then we can speak of
partial conceptualism as in this Manzonis canned case. But if
the object is not accompanied by the text, as Duchamps Fountain,
then we deal with the protoconceptualism.
Billy Apple For Sale
The other face is the total conceptualism, where the form and
the object are totally absent. The artist exposes only text, or
only spoken words in more or less coherent sequences. The
nonutilitarian messages made in public like Have you been here
before?, or the intentional absurd theoretical discourse made
by Beuys, can be placed here. The meaningless or the special
meaning text written by some artists on the galleries inner walls
or on the other buildings outer walls, eventually doubled with
drawings / objects, is a kind of random conceptualism. In this
form must be included the descriptive conceptualism, where the
artist minimally describes some reality instead of painting it
or taking photos from it. In this case, the text simply describes
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Gabriel Baldovin
a certain reality, a certain idea, a feeling, a curiosity, etc.,
thus virtually unites with certain forms of experimental poetry.
So, the conceptualism can be extended to simple textualism where
the object is removed in favor of text under the condition that
that text must not be utilitarian, warning, advertising or
object or image explanation. As we will see latter, in these
cases the text and the mentalizing have a secondary weight in
relation to the object. Many abstractionist artists have come
up with so-called theoretical argument of accompanying,
description or decoding abstract signs put in the abstractionist
traditional art object (which still has primacy toward
mentalizing). The text like "Have you been here before?", placed
in a public place, simply dances with the meaning of cold,
impersonal and utilitarian information, turning it into a
personalized, intimate and familiar meaning. Expanding the
intimate space into the public space is also a harsh community
issue that reflects the exclusion and the inferiorization of
some citizens behind cold bureaucratic public space, as much as,
some centuries ago, the peasants who migrated to urban
industrial centers were kept outside the walls of cities.
Robert Barrys work All the things I know but of which I am
not at the moment thinking not objectively awakens each
spectator the ideas that come to his head at that time. What would
be the things he knows, and of which he was not thinking about,
only he would know. But we smell from a mile away that in such
a conceptualist artwork exist that deconstructive attitude
towards the traditional art and ideology. That is why any text
can be extracted from somewhere else and be exposed, thus
resulting a mixture between the dadaism and the conceptualism.
Obviously, the exposure of quotes from books taken at random,
or specific intimate space messages inside the public space
eventually came into old Dada routine and crisis itself,
inflationary repeating the familiarity idea of the street and
community, and deploring the community members foreignness. On
this issue I will focus in the following sections.
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John Baldessari I will not make any more boring art
The partial conceptualism is often more conceptual (as

philosophical meaning) than total conceptualism, that totally
gives up object, since it raises much deeper ideas. If we are
to go strictly by semantics of the term conceptualism this form
is the heart of conceptualism because it involves deeper and more
complex ideas about art, society, universe, etc. Nevertheless,
the conceptualism must not be reduced only to the philosophical
revealing ideas that art can make, but also to the very idea of
releasing and separation out from the object. Such a constant
is almost more important than the fact that some form awakens
and stimulates philosophical ideas inside the viewers mind.
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Gabriel Baldovin
23. What is not conceptualism though looks like one
As stated in previous section, the conceptualism is that

discentrical art that uses text in its manifestations. This is
the most important criterion but unfortunately is too broad for
an accurate definition. Therefore we should gradually eliminate
out of it those parts that are not conceptualism. The
specification binding between the discentrical art and the
conceptualism is very important because, unfortunately, this
trend has been, and still is, mistaken for other of literary,
artistic nonliterary or theoretical scientific manifestations
even by art professionals. I will make latter on a detailed
difference of these. But, at this point, there must be understood
that such a trend helps the spectator some more not to search
for journalistic or mode items in art just like the
impressionists and latter, more clearly, the abstractionists
were inviting the viewer to stop obstinately seeking for the
journalistic item in art, and open for the mode item.
Obviously, not any text attached to an object, installation or
performance art is conceptualism. When the text is an
advertisement message, then it invariably becomes advertising.
Taking somehow the connections between the conceptualism and the
minimalism, many contemporary advertising companies use the
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minimalist decor and the text that may sometimes take an obvious
conceptualist form. But it will remain forever an advertising
exercise rather than discentrical art. The revolution that these
designers think they have done with their campaigns is in fact
the same kind of mannerism that design made once with abstract
art, since the discentrical art started to move away from the
status of vanguard into the mode or even obsolescence, under the
mode item development principles previously described.
The art institution throughout history has had some abhorrence
against trading; as previously mentioned, the commercial
mentality is actually another type of slavery. The political
slogan is actually a metatrade, so it is no very different from
advertising proper trade. The trade is a strategy to enslave the
customers through contractual obligations and the politics is
a strategy of administrating slaves and their products. Neither
one of these slogan types can ever be art and thus much lesser
could they ever be conceptualism. Even the spirit of traditional
art repudiated the slavery, although its specific society
founded it in its various forms. Moreover, the contemporary
spirit is even less inclined to accept them as art, since it is
even bitterer against slavery than the classical one. On the
contrary, every slogan that deconstructs these various slavery
myths, and who believes in the ideal of freedom and human dignity,
will always be art in general. This deconstructivist spirit is
essentially differs form the political struggle, that so-called
Opposition attacks the Power for political marketing reasons,
which is actually another political act. In this case, it is just
plain politicians hypocrisy but not a true intention to respect
the freedom and the human dignity. On the contrary, this type
of simple textual deconstructive speech could be conceptualism
if the text has no scientific allure, or it could be theoretical
art if the text has this scientific allure. In the following
sections I will come back with clarification on this issue.
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Gabriel Baldovin
Roy Lichtenstein Maybe
But not every short and nonadvertising text can become

conceptualism. The ironic texts from Roy Lichtensteins works
are somehow secondary or implicit to the image: they explain and
continue the image but are not more important than the image
itself. In the same way, the text that explains or introduces
information about a photo or object brought from a particular
geographical, cultural, social etc. is not conceptualism
because it is not an extension of the image / object and are
either the same visual and conceptual level of importance or even
below it. Both the conceptualism and the theoretical art see the
image and the object as commonplace or ready made as a bridge
to complete the concept.
Once with the computers development and taking over the
traditional arts production, inside this new technical field has
been developed a few both traditional and discentrical art
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original trends. In the mid 1990s there came up an algorithmic
and computer art, very diverse as the area of expansion, which
sometimes uses the syntax of programming code either with the
intention to follow the rules of programming and express some
ideas and intentions, or with the interest of using the
originality of programming language signs.
IF <condition>
DO action;
ELSE
DO next action;
WHILE <condition>
DO action;
for <variable> from <first value> to <last value> by <step>
DO action with variable;
function <function name>(<arguments>)
DO action with arguments;
return something;
<function name>(<arguments>)
// Function call
These code fragments make sense only in programming languages

(HTML, Java, etc.). Under the conceptualisms criteria we might
be tempted to believe that this type of art is an authentic
conceptualism. There is a very clear separation out of external
physical object and it is presented as a simple text. But yet,
such a text is able to recreate in cyberspace the recognizable
or imaginary natural objects. The exhibited code fragments are
parts of the programming developers language. Thus, these
computerized algorithms are just another type of traditionalist
esotericism that has little in common with the conceptualisms
approach of moving into a new stage of spiritual evolution that
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Gabriel Baldovin
go beyond traditional aestheticist one. If a piece of
algorithmic and computer art would create a lower object in
relation to the concept and conception, and if such an object
would stimulate the viewers theoretical and conceptual
imagination, then such a field could very well become
conceptualism. Until then, the algorithmic art is just another
media, another material which, by coincidence, is expressed in
letters and numbers.
/ \
| |
|.|
|.|
|:|
__
,_|:|_,
(Oo
/ _I_
+\ \
|| __|
\ \||___|
\ /.:.\-\
|.:. /-----\
|___|::oOo::|
/
|:<_T_>:|
|_____\ ::: /
| |
\ \:/
| |
| |
\ /
| \__
/ |
\____\
`-'
ASCII art
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A somewhat similar attempt, but closer to conceptualism, is the
so-called linguistic minimalism. This trend requires the
maximum simplification of the language after the Chomskys logic
model, by reducing everyday language, and other language stiles,
to simplified mathematical formulas. But such language destiny
is somehow paradoxical to conceptualism. As long as it could not
be understood, it might somehow gain something from the random
form of conceptualism. When that language becomes understood,
then it can not be unconditioned conceptualism unless it
synthesizes a conceptualist speech expressed in common language
that wants to simplify.
It also can not be conceptualism a traditional literature long
text (like novels, tales, poetry or something else) placed in
a certain discentrical frame. In this case, the exhibition hall
loses its institutional quality and becomes a utility object for
a traditional literature book (a kind of paper). There might be
a certain connection between that part of letrism which exposes
words (or letters) and conceptualism. But these letters and
words often take a formal abstractionist allure by playing with
sizing or fonts. Much closer to theoretical art are certain
juxtapositions of objects and images with personal scientific
ideas or taken from different areas that Isidore Isou had
experienced in his tumultuous career. There is also a part of
the ASCII art that inserts words among the famous ASCII
characters and the result can be very close to conceptualism.
The conceptualism differentiates from graffiti tags by the
fact that these are simply signatures and very rare use pieces
of text. And when they do, they are impulses for political
incentives of social revolt, slogans and different street
attitudes. If the previously mentioned text was too long for
conceptualism, here, on the contrary, it is too short. As I said,
conceptualism has little in common with these militant attitudes.
When we think of conceptualism we invariably think about a kind
of art ivory tower which it had always been. Although in the
Duchamps time, as protoconceptualism, it had some aggression,
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Gabriel Baldovin
however this type of aggression was more cultural than political
one. The conceptualism world is a future world; it is a world
placed above the trying of solving the political, social, or any
other problems. When conceptualists politically protest or when
they affirm their political interests as graffers do, then they
are not conceptualists anymore but get back down to earth. It
can however say that conceptualism has paradoxically
conservative rather than protesting political attitudes.
Although it totally rejects the traditional myths, still it
shows the civilizations half full rather than its lacks and
suggesting solutions for them. I think this is the main
difference from theoretical art, at least as I thought it myself,
which is redirected to protesting, innovation and
socio-political evolution factor.
Furthermore there must be differentiate the conceptualism and
the graffiti tags as parts of text that can become abstract
images by exaggerating certain parts of it. In this case the text
itself is secondary to such obtained image and the conceptualism
percentage is reduced for the graffitis favor. But I am sure
that the conceptualist messages can be written also in
graffiti-style under the condition that letters exaggeration
and abstraction will make them neither unrecognizable nor
attractive in terms of mode, which would be a superior form of
abstract (mode) to the conceptual side.
The conceptualism also must be differentiated from the
philosophical graffiti message written on walls like:
Nietzsche is dead. (Signed) God. Although the link with
conceptualism is obvious, still such an expression is closer
rather to theoretical art as will show later. The conceptualism
is more relaxed and less involved in street issues, just like
the dadaism used to be. While the theoretical art, as I
experienced myself as an artist, has crossed the border to this
street art area, on the contrary, the conceptualism is more
static and quiet in this regard. It usually does not offends,
not ridicules, not assaults nobody and does not gets too involved
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into theoretical and philosophical issues. Like previously
mentioned, it looks like coming from a kind of supraterrestrial
world, where these problems are overcome, a testimony about a
spiritually and morally more advanced world than the present
one.
Isidore Isou The Gods Diaries
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Gabriel Baldovin
The (art) conceptualism is neither a philosophical polemic, nor
a slogan and nor a possible reply from a famous novel that goes
for the viewers traditional literature feelings. So it is not
the same thing with conceptual item evidence. As previously
noted, the conceptual item is germinal noticeable including the
traditional art in a somewhat lower status than the other two
items, the journalistic and the mode. The pointillism which used
the retina paradigm as a theoretical substrate, or the futurism
that had been launch after the famous manifests published in
large audience newspapers, is not proper conceptualism although
they can be recorded as its roots. Many late abstractionist
artists, especially from the ex-communist countries, wrongly
declared themselves conceptualists just because they had some
theoretical concerns or because they attached various texts to
the object. But, beyond their misleading conceptualism, they
were looking for all kinds of object level technical or
technological innovations, or had no appetite for the
discentrical art whatsoever.
The conceptualism can not be extended to any theoretical or
conceptual spark that exists in the art because, in this case,
it would end up into creating a not unitary, dense and spread
over two millennia current. I think it is normal and honest that
this title remain closely linked to the culture and the names
of those who have launched it for the first time in art history,
as an avant-garde approach that was always the defining element
for art. If artists like P. Klee and V. Kandisnky, which were
the abstractionism major figures (not only as artists but also
as theorists), have called themselves more abstractionist than
conceptualists, I find it normal that their epigones would also
be considered also more abstractionists rather than
conceptualists. Besides that, the term conceptualism is one
of the most descriptive to the phenomenon that refers to in the
entire history of art. I think it is not normal to be so distorted
and inflated only to satisfy the unjustified egos of some
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mediocre artists and theorists 8 .
The conceptualism must also not be mistaken with the script,
sketch or written on paper draft which is proposed to certain
supervisor for objectual achievement, in order to simplify the
artists work. I think the word draft or sketch are good enough
to cover such a stage of artwork evolution. Equally it is almost
8
In fact, the ambition of such delayed artists from the ex-Communist
countries is a classical teaching need to correct. And some of them have

served as teachers in various educational institutions. Well inserted in the
totalitarian communist systems institutions, and totally unprepared for a
new culture, as the discentrical art is, these late abstractionists can be
called new mannerists, or twentieth centurys abstract mannerists, just
like the nineteenth century mannerists or those who were actually named
mannerists at the end of Renaissance. All of them were unable to renew
culture and sterile repeated the roads and techniques previously found by
authentic artists. Similarly, some of the late twentieth century
abstractionist mannerists believed that they could usurp the term
conceptualism, by taking it away from the authentic artists who have
released it, and using it to cover certain interest they had for classical
philosophy. But, just like they could not understand the new spirit in art,
they also could not understand the modern philosophy either, and decide
to tire their mind with readings from the classics. Besides the fact that
these readings were insufficiently digested by their small spirit, they were
also not directly reflected in their art such as Christian philosophy is found
in Byzantine art, for example. In their narcissism, they believed that can
establish through the wild pedagogy specific instruments of totalitarian
systems what they could not create through art instruments, namely the
illusory hope that their spirit will receive a small place in the art history
just like they have been received teaching positions in high institutions
exchange for cooperation with the practices of totalitarian regimes in
former communist bloc. It would have been grossly abnormal that they
would be called conceptualists. Luckily no one has paid any attention to
them beside themselves.
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Gabriel Baldovin
needless to say that, between the conceptualism and the
so-called concept art of consumerist culture, there is also
9
no link whatsoever .
Inside the consumerist culture industry pompous language and often
empty of theoretic content, the concept art means an starting outline and
a sketch needed for the realization of an object, a character, a movie scene
or a video game level. There are graphic designers specialized in this phase
of production that imagine the big picture of these elements of that certain
production, which will be made in detail later by other designers. Equally,
the concept car is a prototype of a car that could be manufactured in
series. The role of these ... concepts is to get an idea to supervisors and
project coordinators about the final product, and help them make
objections or changes before the product get into series production, where
the changes are more difficult to be done. But the term Concept has very
strong roots in philosophy, where means a very wide general notion. And
since these producers are worse in terms readings, being busy with parties,
watching other consumerist productions or playing video games, they kind
of mechanically mistook this concept. We can guess that these people
somehow use by ear the term concept because it phonetically resembles
with the word conceived. In this case, the concept artist is the one who ...
conceive consumerist masterpiece (sic!), as the others finalize it as 3D or
natural objects. In order to hide this level of ignorance, the usage of
traditional culture and philosophy concepts gives these productions fine
intelligentsias allure to an uneducated public that buy them. For example,
the term philosophy has come to be used by some companies in the sense
of marketing strategy. But there is no any way that these corporations
would create any new trend in philosophy whatsoever...
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24. The discentrical arts crisis. On the arts death

idea
The fact that discentrical art in most cases can be very easily
made, by taking over ready-made objects and placing them in the
exhibition hall, led to its explosion. Anyone can make
discentrical art under the condition of showing originality in
thought and action, or the rejection of the consumerist culture
values of digital slavery. Therefore, the number of artists and
artistic productions began to bother including art
professionals. The human mind simply does not have time or
storage space for such information explosion. Obviously, for the
main public, spellbound by the consumerist circus, most of these
productions simply do not exist. The times when the common people
were astounded from the first contact with the art, inside
seniors palaces, seems long gone.
Besides that, in the meantime, the discentrical art have had
become fashionable and even obsolete. The conceptualism is here
the main case. The conceptualist topics about minimizing the art
object, about the interrogation on the art essence or about the
instantaneous personal states expression through words have
become uninteresting anymore. The last one is very significant.
Any few words quote from a novel can become conceptualism. So,
the conceptualism crisis actually repeats the early twentieth
century dadaism crisis, when the randomness indefinitely
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Gabriel Baldovin
continuing had become itself a contemporary mannerism, an art
inflation. Thus, there had been occurred in the minds of art
professionals a terrible phrase: the death of art.
I think the death of a certain current, or of a certain culture,
which has happened throughout all the history, should not be
confused with the general art and history death. In the same way,
at the early nineteenth century, G.W.F. Hegel proclaimed the end
of history from its official philosopher desk. But the history
looked like just beginning. The death art theory shows a special
nostalgia for the past ages and their specific art. Many people
expect the discentrical art to be as amazing and marvelous as
traditional art. But, as pointed into previous sections, the
traditional art is invested with that edenal past halo as well
as with a certain traditional religious dose. They both are
rejected from discentrical art, first because there was not
enough time for that Edenal veil to establish on that particular
contemporary artwork. And then because the spirit of
contemporary religiosity itself has a much lower rate than that
in which the old legends of classical art were culturally settled.
But the art will never die as long as peoples soul will contain
primitive and infantile mentality layers to magically judge the
reality. The theory about the arts death contains the classic
dualism germ. Those who support it have still unfinished
business with the classical ideology. They actually look for an
informal art object religion, a fetishism that seems somehow
inadequate for the contemporary spirit.
The art death is a very tricky cultural issue. Just like an
ambivalent couple relationship, or like the older death of God
theme from philosophy, the art has the same way. We might kill
art or God but soon we will see that can not live without these
realities. The huge numbers of funeral art performances make us
question whether this cultural construction looks more like a
demon with a thousand heads from the fairy tales. Although being
constantly killed, it seems to be more alive than dead or to be
more reviving over and over again than buried. In fact, the
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reasoning in favor or against the death of art is a little absurd
because here we are dealing with a poetic expression. The art
is not an individual being to die or live.
Yves Klein Leap into the void
Taken in the proper sense, the art death would mean the very
humanity death because art itself is a collective phenomenon.
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Gabriel Baldovin
It is this social reality that provides the answer to this
problem; the art will live on and will renew itself as long
as humanity itself will exist and will refresh with new
generations. If a future (closer to todays SF movies than the
todays reality) there would be found another option for human
specie biologic reproduction, so that the childhood and the
child thinking, or a genealogical defused memory would no longer
exist, then probably the art will die. But, until then, the art
will continue. And the theories about the arts death will simply
remain some nostalgic people caprices.
The too radical stratification between people, specific to
consuming and traditional ideologies, involves the arts
mysticism. It sustains that the art object (or product) has some
divine or supraterrestrial qualities. Rejecting this misticism
must not fall into the opposite extreme, by which the art is
nothing or even has died. The art must continue to be that sign
of the human spirit evolution. I am sure that many people are
sick and tired of this evolutionism and darwinism with its
corporatist excesses that attracts ordinary people in the
American dream neoslavery waged ideology. And, on one hand,
somehow, this type of rejection is understandable. Such a
darwinism rejection is a very good thing if it ensures the
liberation out from the corporatist manipulation mental traps.
But, still, the human being and the general life evolves. And
the art is still meant to reflect this evolution.
With that being said, the aesthetics or the arts philosophy
(science) aspect in this work practically has ended. Further on
the text will turn into an artistic manifesto for my theoretical
art. Although the theoretical discourse coherence will be
preserved in the next sections, however, from here on there will
come into spotlight the subjectivity of the artist that I am,
since the theoretical art has not yet officially recorded as an
artistic tendency so that, at least for now, I am its only
theorist.
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25. From the conceptualism to the theoretical art
As I said since the introduction, the theoretical art is that

kind of conceptualism whose text reaches the scientific
coherence. The primary difference between the conceptualism and
the theoretical art is exactly that of between the concept and
the theory. The concept is a maxim synthesis of a theory. But
if it is not related to other concepts, then it can not create
a theory. If the conceptualism asks questions about the art
itself, the theoretical art goes further and offers answers.
Therefore the conceptualism is more compact and more hermetic.
On the contrary, the theoretical art requires as much as concise
concept possible explanation. The theoretical art does not use
insights nor seeks for secondary and projective interpretation
from the public relative to its manifest content. It is simply
a short theory.
The theoretical art needs no further explanation for completing
a journalistic subject type story panorama. Auxiliary
explanations may serve as specialized and clearing up but not
for adjusting the manifest content as it appears in traditional
art. For example, when we first contemplate Raphaels School
of Athens painting we need further explanation to understand
not necessarily the details of the painting itself but its
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Gabriel Baldovin
meaning. Platos character finger rose to the sky does not
conclude his idealist theory of pure, perfect and immutable
forms placed above the concrete things as their origin. Only
after we find out such details we can say that Raphaels
character seems to be a gesture of theoretical significance.
However that picture is not a theoretical but an esoteric
classical art.
The difference between the conceptualism and the theoretical art
lies in this classical esoteric degree that conceptualism can
not escape. The theoretical art is not a scientific art because
the main interest is not the truth but the originality of theory
itself, its novelty and ability to imagine a different world from
the banal and concrete known one.
The theoretical art has emerged from the very general conception
of art, the aesthetics, as far as this term means all theories
about art in general and not just those that focus on traditional
art. For this reason, the theoretical art attempts to understand
both the human need to consume art in general and the theories
about art in particular. It is an aesthetical and popularization
theory.
The theoretical art may have common and innovative themes. The
common theme is using the community widely accepted theories and
it is specific to J. Kosuths exposing definitions. The
innovative theme requires new theories and was done more or less
assumed in particular by those scientists that have discovered
them.
The theoretical art criteria are:
- The esoteric content absence from the presented objects

manifest content.
- The text is shown as a simple summary of a more general theory
even if the object presented can have esoteric connotations
118

- The classical figures of speech are used only for understanding
the theory and not for revealing their expressiveness.
- The lack of a hermetic attitude towards the world and society.
26. The theoretical art as the conceptual factor acme

in art
The most important attribute of the theoretical art is jumping

out of traditional classical art spectrum, which is to
overvaluate a social class above the other ones (mode), or to
make a detailed documentation relating to certain events
(journalism). What matters most in this case is the perception
of a more or less original but not enough community assimilated
certain theory. By doing this the art admits its dependence to
the science. Its role is to simplify the theory and to make it
understandable by common people. The amount of truth to that
theory does not matter and it can also be eventually false. But,
to be recognized as theoretical, it needs to directly use the
consistency and the concepts in its manifest content. Also, for
to be recognized as art, it needs to be simplified, reduced to
the essential items, so to be understood by ordinary people. If
these two conditions are not satisfied, than the artistic
discourse is a mode type but not a primarily conceptual one. So,
the result can not be called theoretical art in the way I see
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Gabriel Baldovin
it.
The main purpose of theoretical art is the decoding and
analytical unmythologizing of classical and post classical
social constructs. The metaaxiological character is essential
for theoretical art whatever option, paradigm or theoretical
perspective is used. Every such way unmythologizes the
metaphysicalist construction of art institution, as it exists
in the traditional society. From this perspective, the
theoretical art pursues the conceptualism. The deconstructive,
skeptical and pulverizing character of a metaphysical value that
transcends the artistic material is a crucial criterion for the
theoretical art. This deconstruction role for art is the same
that psychoanalysis has for the neurosis.
The theoretical art is synonymous with avoiding the esoteric
items that involves the public personal complement to the
manifest content. This is done in the spirit of general modern
art, as authorities pressures on the people have weakened in
recent centuries and the artist does not need to disguise its
speech in esoteric formulas.
The question that rises on is why a theoretical art is needed
since the conceptual speech itself is a developing and a logical
formalizing of an earlier insight, which can be classified as
mode item because of its novelty. But this is art; it complicates
things for the sake of the beauty. On this succession, somebody
might raise the question why one would need for art in general.
We simply need it.
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27. The science remained as art in the communitys

consciousness
The belief that the scientist brain would reject the

relationship with the artistic object and its genesis is a
preconception. It is true that the scientist usually is a
hermetic, isolated person, unable to engage in practical affairs
of the community and immune to cultural life. Such an image
reduces its chances of being perceived as artist, as an opinion
leader or as a community landmark. But there were also cases that
certain scientists had become important figures for their
community and were taken as examples and imitated by their fellow
citizens. Therefore they were more or less artists.
The artists have despised the scientists also because the
politicians used their image for lying and cheating the common
people. The scientist is manageable, discreet and has
spectacular results, the fruit of a life work. The politicians
build up statues and make image for the scientist in order to
maintain political dominance and to steal from its authority and
its value. The artists have smelled that something was wrong with
it and have despised the scientist social range and work as much
as they have despised the politicians.
This social isolation unfortunately has stopped the scientists
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Gabriel Baldovin
power to make art out of his work and express it as such.
Simplifying and customizing its general ideas became the job of
the artists who have taken over and turned them into artistic
currents.
Despites this, the influence of scientific theories over the art
is almost universally accepted. This is a normal fact because
art comes out from the ideology of the artist and crystallizes
through his or her own synthetic experiences with the various
theories that reach its ears. The Copernicuss heliocentric
theory is broadly found in Renaissance anthropocentrism. The
retina cones theory has been decisive to the pointillism as
Freuds psychoanalysis has been decisive for the surrealism.
Famous scientific phrases like E pur si move, the drawing on
the sand made by Archimedes before of being killed,
technological and anatomical drawings (vanguard) made by
Leonardo da Vinci or Newtons apple are works of theoretical art,
well structured in the humanity conscience with a very clear echo
for the traditional art criteria too. If the authenticity of
these things would be demonstrated and would be putted into
auction, then even the financial factor would complete this
spectrum of similarities. These objects placed in the heart of
these theories might get to the point of being evaluated to
millions of dollars and so they would totally identify with the
traditional art objects. So, although the term and concept of
theoretical art was not explicitly used before as I have
described it, however the theoretical art was made long before
me.
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28. Theoretical art and relationship to the object
After assuming the fact that art becomes more and more conceptual
from the renaissance on, a part of the conceptualism has defined
itself through a radical approach by totally giving up the object.
Total object waiving as conceptualism proposed is impossible
because that conceptualist revelation happen after contact with
the object. In the first phase, the art object is a readymade,
an installation or some object, into which are indeed packed
ideas. But they are only later distinguished and the first
contact of public to conceptualist artwork is mediated by the
object. The subsequent digestion and the curiosity to any kind
of information from outside the art object is a reality that has
become more and more obvious today. The public begins to be very
much interested in domestic information about the author, in
her/his ideas and lifestyle, once its mode or its style becomes
mass culture. That is why the specialized magazines and the
tabloids exist. For me, the theoretical art object is the bait
for putting the audience in the front of the text. I use the
object for to incite the curiosity towards that text.
123
Gabriel Baldovin
Leon Ferrari Cuadro Escrito
124

That is why the conceptualist steps could not fully renounce the
object, but they have only marginalized, ridiculed it or even
have exiled it somewhere to a secondary reference. However, the
conceptualism concrete object is the key for catching the public
attention on the ideas infiltrated into it. Sometimes the text
is itself a complex object made of signs by deforming the word
letters or the text lines. The first case is the graffiti, as
the second one is very well illustrated by the work Cuadro
Escrito made by the conceptualist Leon Ferrari.
The literature and the music brought extra problems. So
conceptualism found itself in front of a major dilemma: if
totally rejects the concrete objects then simply becomes
literature. But literature is by definition a conceptual art
because it does not use the concrete object but its mental
representation, the words. Any word, as a grammatical construct,
involves a link between a term and a concept. Therefore, whatever
the theoretical and philosophical concepts depth degree used,
the literature will always be a purely conceptual art.
That happened to some of Japans Nomura Hitoshi experiments that,
on July 6 1970, created some minirapports relative to proximate
urban area, observed from some phone booths chosen at random.
The text of each such minirapport reflects the ordinary life of
the city and barely covers one page. The discourse is sometimes
infantile, which makes it somehow bizarre. In this case, it is
very difficult to differentiate it form the experimental
literature. However, even the literature itself can not totally
separate from the concrete object. The color and the paper
texture, the cover image, the book smell, and so on, are elements
that readers mind associates with the written words meanings
on its pages. The word support might be the electronic screen,
the paper or the human voice but it is still an object, the object
itself that conceptualism can not exist without.
125
Gabriel Baldovin
29. Theoretical art retrospective in the art history
Accepting that the idea itself may be more interesting instead

of object, as happened especially with the conceptualists like
Kosuth or LeWitt, is a certain social level of understanding art.
In his theoretic work Arte colonial contemporneo, Luis
Camnitzer calls the ready-made object as a package (in which)
to communicate ideas. The ideas are as many as the world objects,
no matter if not all of them are very interesting in terms of
art. We can accept that all of them are art, but equally we can
accept that some are more valuable than others, as far as they
produce certain spiritual reactions in our minds.
From my point of view the work of Joseph Kosuth Art as idea,
as idea, that has exposed the dictionary definition for the
words like meaning or art, is theoretical art in the whole
sense that I used this concept. The only objection to Kosuths
work is that its theory has nothing revealing in it. Actually,
the defining of word art or meaning has already infiltrated
into the community collective consciousness. That is why this
work may be included in the theoretical art common form that I
previously pointed. Obviously, it still contains esoteric and
ironic data regarding the fact that the public does not know the
meaning of meaning itself that claims to understand art with.
126

But this can easily be placed in the latent content of that work.
Anyway, as I said, the infiltration of esoteric content in the
theoretical art does not lessen its quality. In this case, the
concrete invitation to purely scientific reflection on the word
meaning is enough to declare it as theoretical art.
Also the Beuyss well-known statement, which he wrote with a
brush on paper, is a genuine theoretical art of innovative theme.
Beuys simply presents a new theory about art in this short
statement with clarity and precision. With several words he
seems to cover an entire theory. And that is precisely the
essence of theoretical art. Although he made a lot of
conceptualist projects, several of them crossed over becoming
theoretical art and this is the most known of all.
Genuine theoretical art by Joseph Beuys
127
Gabriel Baldovin
30. What looks like theoretical art but is not
In 1966, the pop artist Robert Rauschenberg has collaborated

with the engineer Billy Klver trying to find common ground
between art and science. The program was called E.A.T.
(Experiment in Art and Technology). The result was not a
theoretical art but still an esoteric one, since there were not
the theories wanted to be spread in the community, but it was
simply looking for new possibilities of expression of new
materials offered by technology, which involved the mode rather
than the conceptual item.
The theoretical art is not the same with the scientific ideas
collage or the experimental realities from the field research
that creates a surreal, mystical or SF world. The theoretical
art is a simple summary of a broader theory that does not distorts
it but only simplifies it for a better understanding and better
integrating into the ordinary peoples mind. So, it totally
opposed to the traditional art, which tends to complicate and
distort reality so as to be favorable to a specific social class
and unfavorable to another, usually the class of slaves. It is
really interesting that a certain artist does not need to accept
these principles to make theoretical art, just like those
sciencemen who have done it unintentionally simply did not
128

realized its cultural implications, but felt it as a simplifying
talent. I previously pointed out that the theoretical art was
already done in the history of art and stated itself likewise;
if these artists would have been accepted the previously set
principles, then they probably would have been wrote them down
before me... But, when somebody makes a theory about the society
and art in general and when she/he judges the culture by this
conceptual system and when she/he tries to express it in art also,
then that person creates the theoretical art without even
realizing it. If ones theoretical conception, no matter how
extravagant may it be, is directly and concrete reflected in that
person artistic production (without esoterically rebuilding),
then that art is simply theoretical art.
On the contrary, the philosophical or religious classical
theories recovery cannot be called theoretical art due to the
fact that these ideas are obsolete and already spread to the brim
in the community. So something like this can not be called
theoretical art because their basic mentality itself is not
scientific, but mythological one. Then, these ideas show an
obsolete political attitude. They reflect the specific
traditional society needs to enslave other community/social
class, as happened in the case in totalitarian society. These
theories purpose is totally opposed with that of the explanation
for common people. It does not matter how well such theories are
explained by these artistic acts (although they still use the
symbols and ambiguities to be expressed), because their goal is
lost from the start. They are designed to maintain the slave
status but not to develop its capabilities and freedoms, as
happens in a civilized society. High peaks of progresses that
totalitarian propaganda was talking about were just simple
bedtime stories, as the reality was different. Simply approval
and promoting of such social system, or not having the guts to
admit its rottenness, sends somebody out of the spirit of
theoretical art as out of the spirit of civilization. Besides
the conceptualism supervised by the Securitate, usually done
129
Gabriel Baldovin
by Romanian pedagogic elite, with information notes was only
a sterile academism, made with traditional ideas, that are
either uninteresting for modern spirits, or simply long time
before assimilated by the community.
31. My art and theoretical art
When I made my first theoretical art projects, my knowledge about

the conceptualism and the contemporary aesthetic theories were
very low, limited to one semester course during college when I
was as a student. When launched this concept I havent thought
much of conceptualism and had no desire to continue it whatsoever.
I launched the concept because of noticing that my artistic
projects used to decrease as productivity and value when I had
been concerned with theoretical problems. Such theoretical
gaps had spread over periods of several months to several years
in my life. Paradoxically, every such theoretical episode
coincided each time with the beginning of a deep disappointment
towards my artistic work. So I further concluded from this that
there must be a theoretical art that absorbs my previous
nontheoretical art energy. Therefore I simply launched the
concept without too much explanation and clarification, not even
for myself. This reason in addition to the theoretical art made
by some scientists throughout history, and in addition to the
130

deduction made throughout this work. are the main justification
for the existence of such a new trend. Although for some time
this concept was still not quite clear to me, still I am firmly
convinced of its authenticity and I keep developing it.
This is directly reflected in my art made since then. Meanwhile,

many things had become clear to me on this issue. Now I realize
that in the few works exposed by me on the Internet, under the
concept of theoretical art only Art is every thing
(http://baldovin.netai.net/theoretical_art.htm ) meets its
criteria and should be kept within. The readymade picture of the
universe itself contains direct and concrete concept of
totality that the text speaks about. Although most of my art
works are not theoretical art, however, the most controversial
and best known of them, Army is garbage (Armata e gunoi 10 ) can
10
This is a pun almost impossible to translate in English. Armata e gunoi
is a parody over the slogan that Romanian frightened revolutionary people

used at December 1989, in order to make the army reconsider defending
131
Gabriel Baldovin
be recognized as theoretical art because, besides of expressing
a widespread conception concerning the general institution of
army, its manifest content have a brief summary of the theory
expressed in the text, that the army paradoxically end up turning
against the people that actually supports it. In the same manner,
the graffiti stencil Politica directly and unequivocally
contains in it my political outlook expressed in some of my
theoretical writings.
Fortunately, this text helped me find my first my theoretical

art work that I did before, without realizing that. It is the
figure of psychical trunk, a concept launched by me in 1998
through witch I tried to solve some problems raised in abyssal
the communist totalitarianism and its dictator. This slogan was Armata e
cu noi meaning the army stands with us. Finally, the army ceased its fire
on people and fraternized with it. But at the events beginning it has been
firing on people.
132

psychology with the two major topics of Freud psychodynamics,
those arising from the archetypes Jungian theory and other
attempts to describe the mental apparatus, as made by O. Rank,
Winnicott and others.
Psychical trunk
Meanwhile, on my artistic platform on the internet,

http://gabrielbaldovin.blogspot.com/, the theoretical art
works keep becoming ampler. This development and consolidation
process will continue. In concluding this text, as promised in
the introduction, I will present the first manifesto of
theoretical art as I conceived in 2002.
133
Gabriel Baldovin
32. Theoretical art manifesto. Art is every thing
The concept of art is an operational one, made by the fluency

of language just like all the concepts that are not made by the
logical approach. This concept has been made in order to include
inside those who sing, those who decorate buildings, those who
paint faces or those who write poetry or stories. In antiquity
this concept was not so wide, whatsoever. Nobody would compare
a dirty sculptor with a poet, at that time. Only latter this
concept reached this revolutionary generalization.
134

On the other hand, the art is not even an objective issue,
although the object is its nature. Still, in Renaissance,
Leonardo da Vinci talked about the art as cosa mentale. The
human being is the only one who can enjoy the mental subjectivity
of art, although not everybody understands it. But I am sure that
all the people could understand it if they would be educated and
motivated to. That shows how important is art education for the
subjective limits of the concept of art. The human mind: that
is the entire objective and the mystery of art. It gravitates
around this mental reality as the starved hunter with a very hard
to catch prey. That is why the surrealism becomes not just a
modern trend but the most popular modern trend only by copying
psychical phenomena (dreams, delusions, hallucinations).
Something happens inside the human mind; its way of being and
its evolution as a result of social evolution make the art to
be needed. It produces also other domains like science or
religion. People use to see only the differences between all
these, without seeing their common principles and their
similitude. But just because they are made by human mind they
have to be one and the same thing.
The human mind is like a tree. It has leafs who fall down every
autumn, which represent forgettable recent memories. It has also
branches which represent old and deep memories, some of them
coming from childhood, other coming even from previous
generations. These old memories are like the old wine, like
somebody that we had not seen for many years and we are pleased
to see again. That unseen for a long time person brings to life
old memories and it feels just like going back in time. Those
memories might be corrupted or berried by forgetfulness and the
new contact made them live again. It is just like a resurrection
miracle.
This is also the miracle of art, the one of very deep memories
revival, so that most of the time we are not even aware of. The
art objects expressiveness and beauty does not matter, but its
135
Gabriel Baldovin
association with something unexpressed in our minds. The arts
role is to release these forgotten memories. That is why we get
bored by the certain songs, movies or clothes. They have served
as a mental releasing and finally become an empty nest, abandoned
by the offspring that had become adults. But some styles or
trends might come back fashionable again, after being forgotten
for most of the people. They can produce joy as much as the long
time unseen acquaintance. The art history had many such coming
backs. The so called postmodernism has developed a general rule
by getting back to traditions. But it also emerged on art scene
after consuming other different and nontraditional directions.
The originality was one of the most important parts in the work
of an artist in the middle of XX century. There are trends which
are still contested today because of giving up to the traditional
way of making art. Then, they become old themselves just like
that ones that they strongly opposed to.
The memory deep layers (long time memory) have strong
psychodynamic energy which makes their contents to be very
strong printed in mind. They link to the upper layers (short time
memory) trough mind associations networks. But this linkage
might be broken or weakened in time by simply forgetting some
of such links with the deep memories. So these contents are
blocked, thus becoming the minds prisoner. These contents
revival produces psychical satisfaction because the captive
energy releases out to upper memory in order to be active once
more (catharsis, after Aristotle) and the mental tension
disappear. But this is possible only if metal networks become
fluid enough. The psychoanalysis and other techniques of deep
mind investigation have the power to increase this fluidity in
the mental networks by repairing them with their links and by
releasing the deep stocked energy out.
The art does basically the same thing, searching those potential
mental volcanoes and releasing their psychical tension. The art
object is that childhood acquaintance that brings joy when met
again. The art tries to objectively imitate (though not always
136

deliberately) that deep isolated representations inside the
mind abyss in order to get to it trough the memory upper layers
that are responsible for the quality of act of perception. So,
the art makes a kind of drilling the mind mountain for releasing
the mental volcano that is about to erupt. This kind of
perception searches for mental association networks in order to
be memorized and stored. Thus it creates a new mental network
to relate with such isolated deep representations and that
brings releasing their deep hided tension.
The scientific discovery does the same thing also. The word
evrika comes up with the exultation of releasing psychical
tension too. The scientific approach uses particularly the upper
layers of memory and develops horizontal associations in a
logical and methodical way. Nevertheless, this also develops
vertical drillings with resonance for these deep mental diamonds.
Here is the connection between the art and the science. The most
scientists are not familiar with traditional artistic approach
because their deeper layers are covered by the scientific one.
The so categorical separation between art and science is caused
by the traditionalist vision about these two concepts. Moreover,
this artificial difference reflects the traditional idea of
difference between lower classes and the upper ones. But the
addiction of artistic traditional approach to the scientific one
is absolute. Besides the fact that art depends on science and
technology, as regards the new materials appearance (and this
is an external linkage), the art depends a lot on the social
outlook which is made especially by the scientific ideas
applications wide in the social body. Here is the linkage between
the art and the science: the art promotes, makes accessible the
scientific results for people in understanding and applying it
in everyday life. What would be the Renaissance without the study
of anatomy? What would be the art after academism without the
social-democrat political ideas that allowed the existence of
a nonaristocratic beauty? What would be the pointillism without
the theory of cones and sticks? What would be Dada or futurism
137
Gabriel Baldovin
without rejecting the classical deterministic metaphysics and
accepting the nondeterministic theories?
The art is basically theoretical. That is why the concept of
theoretical art is actually a pleonasm. In the 20th century,
the theoretical accompaniment for art became more visible, and
that is caused by the increasing of the contact between the
science and the people. Starting from pointillism and futurism,
the theory supported art phenomena became a rule. This went to
conceptualism who gave up the object itself for good. In fact,
the object does not matter. Now we know that it is only
justification for introspection. The traditional art itself let
us believe that it does not care mach for the object since not
appreciating the copies. If the object itself would be
appreciated, and not its ideas originally packed into it, then
why would not it appreciate also the copies too, since they fit
the original? Well, it is because there it is not the object that
matters but the ideas packed into it. So, the object is just an
interior approach homologue into the material world. It is just
an external authorization for such an interior approach. That
is why art is every thing.
Such theoretical program could be attached to any object in order
to hunt out the mental archetypes. Every thing has links to all
the other objects because it exists in the same world (there is
no isolated system). And any information about this world other
objects can be attached to it. Of course, it is essential for
such an object to be as that mental state homologue in material
world as possible, and to concentrate inside it all the ideas
involved, so to break those profound archetypes doors. So, the
limits of the art concept are melted out once with its evolution.
Nobody is the owner of limits of concept of art.
138

Selective bibliography:
Calinescu Matei
- Five Faces of Modernity
Camus Albert
- The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays
Camus Albert
- The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt
Chomsky Noam
- The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory
Chomsky Noam
- At War With Asia
Chomsky Noam
- Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar
Chomsky Noam
- Counter-Revolutionary Violence:
Bloodbaths in Fact and Propaganda
Chomsky Noam
Policy
- Human Rights and American Foreign
Chomsky Noam
Fascism
- The Washington Connection and Third World
Chomsky Noam
- Terrorizing the Neighborhood
Chomsky Noam
- What Uncle Sam Really Wants
Chomsky Noam
Global Orde
- Profit over People: Neoliberalism and
Chomsky Noam
- Pirates and Emperors, Old and New
Barrett Terry
- Why Is That Art?
Eliade Mircea
Religion
- The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of
Eliade Mircea
- A History of Religious Ideas
Fineberg Jonathan
- Art Since 1940
Foucault Michel
- Madness and Civilization

139
Gabriel Baldovin
Foucault Michel
- Discipline and Punish
Farver Jane
- Global Conceptualism
Freud Sigmund
- Civilization and Its Discontents
Freud Sigmund
- Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Freud Sigmund
- On Creativity and the Unconscious: Papers
Freud Sigmund
- On the Psychology of Art, Literature, Love,
Religion.
Greenberg Clement - American-Type Painting
Groys Boris
- History Becomes Form: Moscow Conceptualism
Hayek Friedrich
- The Road to Serfdom
Hegel G.W.F.
- Phenomenology of Spirit
Hegel G.W.F.
- The Philosophy of History
Hegel G.W.F.
Philosophy
- On Art, Religion, and the History of
Kosuth Joseph
- Art After Philosophy and After
Hopkins David
- After Modern Art 1945-2000
Laplanche J., Pontalis J.B.- The Language of Psycho-Analysis

Levi Strauss Claude
- Structural Anthropology
Levi Strauss Claude
- The Savage Mind
Lyotard Jean-Franois
- The Postmodern Condition
Lyotard Jean-Franois
- Toward the Postmodern
Lopes Dominic
- A Philosophy of Computer Art
Jung C.G.
Unconscious
- The Archetypes and the Collective
Kant Immanuel
- The Critique of Judgment -
140

Kant Immanuel
- The Critique of Pure Reason
Kant Immanuel
- The Critique of Practical Reason
Leung Simon
- Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985
Nietzsche Friedrich
- Human, All-Too-Human
Nietzsche Friedrich
- Beyond Good and Evil
Nietzsche Friedrich
- On the Genealogy of Morality
Nietzsche Friedrich
- The Twilight of the Idols
Fromm Erich
- Escape from Freedom
Sartre Jean Paul
- Existentialism Is a Humanism
Smith Terry
- What Is Contemporary Art?
wikipedia
Wittgenstein Ludwig
-Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
141
Gabriel Baldovin
Index:
abstract expressionism, 58
abstractionism, 26, 46, 57,
58, 64, 70, 94, 111
advertising, 31, 55, 56, 64,
66, 69, 81, 86, 100, 103
aristocratic, 63
Aristotle, 86, 136
art, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14,
15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22,
23, 25, 26, 28, 30, 31, 32,
33, 38, 39, 40, 42, 44, 45,
46, 47, 48, 49, 56, 57, 58,
59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65,
66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73,
74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81,
83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90,
91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97,
98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103,
105, 106, 107, 108, 109,
110, 111, 112, 113, 114,
115, 116, 117, 118, 119,
120, 121, 122, 123, 125,
126, 127, 128, 129, 130,
131, 133, 134, 135, 136,
137, 138
Baldessari, 101
baroque, 26, 28, 58, 60
Beuys, 90, 100, 127
Brancusi, 57, 99
Camnitzer, 126
Caravaggio, 26
Cezanne, 97, 98
Chomsky, 106
classicism, 22, 31, 76
142
conceptual, 26, 47, 68, 70,

71, 73, 77, 92, 95, 96, 102,
105, 106, 109, 110, 119,
120, 123, 125, 128, 129
conceptualism, 5, 7, 9, 70,
73, 75, 85, 88, 89, 90, 91,
92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99,
100, 101, 102, 103, 104,
106, 107, 108, 109, 110,
111, 112, 113, 117, 118,
120, 123, 125, 129, 130,
138
constructivism, 46
consumerist, 45, 46, 48, 49,
51, 52, 56, 58, 65, 74, 75,
77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 96, 112,
113
contemporary, 9, 12, 19, 25,
31, 36, 39, 40, 42, 44, 46,
49, 51, 53, 60, 62, 64, 65,
66, 67, 70, 71, 74, 79, 80,
81, 82, 90, 91, 92, 98, 103,
114, 130
Copernicus, 19, 122
corporatism, 60, 63
culture, 15, 18, 19, 21, 22,
23, 25, 31, 32, 33, 35, 38,
39, 42, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52,
55, 56, 58, 65, 67, 69, 72,
73, 74, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82,
85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 93, 98,
110, 111, 112, 113, 114,
123, 129
dada, 6, 70, 110, 114, 137
darwinism, 116

discentrical, 73, 74, 76, 78,
80, 81, 86, 94, 95, 96, 102,
103, 105, 107, 110, 111,
113, 114
dualism, 114
Duchamp, 41, 70, 72, 76, 88,
90, 93, 95, 97, 98, 99, 109
El Greco, 26
evolutionism, 116
fascism, 60, 82
Ferrari, 125
Freud, 12, 13, 14, 37, 122,
132
futurism, 110, 137, 138
Gestalt, 12
graffiti, 9, 108, 109, 125,
132
Greeks, 57, 65
happening, 6, 19, 73
Hegel, 114
hellenism, 28
Hitoshi, 125
Hollywood, 18, 24, 31, 52
impressionism, 20, 45, 46, 65,
75
installation, 6
Isou, 107, 108
J.J. Rousseau, 70
journalistic, 23, 24, 26, 28,
38, 39, 44, 45, 46, 47, 52,
56, 67, 68, 69, 70, 74, 77,
94, 96, 103, 110, 117
Kandinsky, 58, 70
Kandisnky, 111
Kant, 12, 36, 67, 91, 92
kitsch, 38, 50, 55, 59, 65, 89
Klee, 70, 111

Kosuth, 9, 93, 118, 126
Leonardo da Vinci, 7, 122,
135
Lichtenstein, 104
lord, 32, 33, 35, 36, 83, 85
Lyotard, 23, 95
Malevich, 58
manifesto, 5, 8, 9, 117, 133,
134
mannerism, 59, 103, 114
Manzoni, 96, 97, 98, 99
Marx, 70
Mass culture, 55
Michelangelo, 60
minimalism, 64, 75, 103, 106
mode, 25, 26, 38, 39, 40, 42,
44, 45, 47, 48, 52, 56, 59,
61, 62, 64, 66, 67, 68, 70,
73, 74, 77, 93, 96, 103, 109,
110, 119, 120, 123, 128
modern, 6, 12, 15, 19, 22, 31,
37, 38, 39, 40, 44, 45, 49,
50, 52, 56, 57, 58, 62, 63,
64, 68, 71, 79, 80, 81, 84,
85, 86, 89, 92, 95, 111, 120,
129, 135
modern slavery, 63, 80
Mondrian, 58, 70
Monet, 97
neoclassicism, 64, 69
neoplasticism, 46
Newman, 58
Nietzsche, 70, 109
performance, 6, 23, 31, 73,
103
143
Gabriel Baldovin
Phidias, 57
philosophy, 7, 8, 12, 15, 28,
70, 91, 92, 95, 111, 112,
115, 116
Picasso, 12
Plato, 118
pointillism, 110, 137, 138
postmodernism, 23, 52, 73, 90,
136
PR, 64, 79
Raphael, 69, 118
Rauschenberg, 128
ready made, 6
realism, 65, 69, 75, 92
renaissance, 44, 135, 137
romanticism, 69, 76, 82
science, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 19,
21, 45, 68, 116, 119, 121,
128, 135, 137, 138
servant, 31, 32, 34, 35
SF, 116, 128
slave, 22, 31, 32, 33, 49, 50,
52, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 89,
129
slavery, 31, 36, 39, 52, 62,
63, 79, 80, 81, 83, 85, 86,
89, 103, 113
144
stencil, 9, 132
surrealism, 6, 64, 70, 122,
135
theoretical art, 1, 5, 7, 9,
10, 15, 91, 104, 105, 107,
109, 117, 118, 119, 120,
122, 123, 126, 127, 128,
129, 130, 131, 132, 133,
138
traditional, 6, 7, 12, 15, 17,
21, 22, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33,
34, 36, 38, 39, 40, 44, 45,
46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 56,
58, 61, 63, 64, 67, 68, 70,
71, 72, 74, 77, 78, 80, 82,
85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 93,
94, 96, 98, 99, 100, 101,
103, 105, 106, 107, 109,
110, 112, 114, 116, 118,
119, 120, 122, 128, 129,
136, 137, 138
van Eyck, 62
Wagner, 70
Warhol, 76, 77, 78, 98

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The basics of

In memory of Matei Calinescu

THE BASICS OF THEORETICAL ART.............................................. 1

The basics of theoretical art

This work is both art manifesto and scientific study of art as

The basics of theoretical art

The basics of theoretical art

The basics of theoretical art

1. Psychology of perception and aesthetics

Any perception that we have is due not only to the object we

The basics of theoretical art

2. Art as data center

As a purely psychological phenomenon, the artwork has 2 types

The basics of theoretical art

3. Traditional art as a natural psychotherapeutic

The major problem of human civilization is precisely the gap

That is why we need art. It is made to find the correlation

The basics of theoretical art

4. Art and evolution of the human mind

Art phenomenon is a cultural matter developed in thousands and

The basics of theoretical art

Primitive animals painting

The basics of theoretical art

5. Humanity culture stages reflected in art

The basics of theoretical art

6. The 3 stages of culture that are found in 3 central

The art is shaped by 3 major social-cultural elements. The first

Rembrandt The Feast of Belshazzar

The basics of theoretical art

Gerrit Rietveld Table and chair for the Schroder House

The basics of theoretical art

Francis Picabia- Reveil matin

7. Traditional art as intuitive, esoteric and

The intuitive art involves the ambiguous and esoteric elements

The basics of theoretical art

Leonardo da Vinci Gioconda

8. Understanding the outside world and the level of

The hereditary memory data recovery is done first in the interest

The basics of theoretical art

9. Traditional art criteria

Threatening and convincing the slave to perform labor for the

The basics of theoretical art

Jacques Louis David The oath of the Horatii

Traditional art themes concern human philosophical questions

The love lived with metaphysical overtones is a theme that cover

The basics of theoretical art

Sandro Botticelli Primavera

The basics of theoretical art

Laocoon (late Hellenistic sculpture)

The basics of theoretical art

The basics of theoretical art

Marcel Duchamp Nude Descending a Staircase

The basics of theoretical art

Henri Matisse Blue Nude IV

The basics of theoretical art

11. The modernity and its cultural mutation

As the sciences like physics, psychology, anatomy, botany, etc.

Here is how the traditional art journalistic item came to be

The basics of theoretical art

Scene from Titanic

12. The consumerism as return to the traditional art

When the mode item mainly consists in refashioning, returning

The basics of theoretical art