I always admired novelists and comic-strip artists for their "God-like"
power of recreating realities on any level. In the series of Notes
(1 to 9) I started scribbling a mixture of figures and writing which
gradually became more defined (I did not depart from comic-strips
as I did in my works of the '60's). With the introduction of a completely
coloured background (in the Column series, World Map, etc.), I have
gotten into a sort of historical painting where all kinds of data
and ideas — historical, economic, poetic, topical — are
presented in a unified style. For the sake of clarity, data and
interpretations are both written down and depicted visually. Blue
colors denote USA, violet Europe, red to yellow socialist countries,
and green to brown the Third World.
Propaganda
Like many people, I began to understand during the late '60's
that words like "imperialism", capitalism", "exploitation",
"alienation" were not mere ideas or political slogans,
but stood for terrifying, absurd and inhumane conditions in the
world. Living in LBJ's and Nixon's America during the Vietnam
war — culminating in the Christmas '72 terror bombings of
Hanoi and Haiphong and Watergate — it became impossible not
to deal in my work — once I had the stylistic tools —
with what was going on around me: Guernica, multiplied a million
times.
Picasso, in his painting, reacted to Guernica by sharpening the
emotional impact of his figures with expressionist distortion.
My approach has been to orchestrate data, so people will —
at best — both understand and be outraged. Will the pictures
still function as a sensual and formal experience? Will the lettering
also function as rhythmic percussion patterns? Can the pattern
of facts become poetry? That is for the spectator to judge.
Obviously, most artworks (neo-Dada, Pop-art, conceptual art) use
data that are "non-committal", "unimportant"
per se. Will facts about economic exploitation or torture techniques
destroy the balance and make the works "propaganda"?
If so, are not Goya's war-etchings "propaganda" too?
Radical Chic
Same have criticized me for trying to sell "radical art"
to the rich people and institutions of the West. By the same token
Costa-Gravas should not have made State of Siege as a commercial
feature film, reaching a very large public. Or Peter Weiss should
be reproached for taking in royalties from plays on Vietnam and
Trotsky.
The visual artist in the West can only reach out to a wider audience
via the galleries. Only after becoming known through gallery shows
will he appear in museums, print editions and art books.
Ideally, I would like to be able to sell enough expensive originals
to pay for the manufacture of mass multiples, unsigned very large
editions, available at the price of a record or a book and create
an alternate distribution system. A first attempt in this direction
is my reproduction of (a section of the drawing for) World Map,
on newsprint, 80 x 100 cm, folded and inserted into the May '72
issue of a magazine, Liberated Guardian (circulation: 7000 copies,
price: 25 cents).
Öyvind Fahlström
New York
May, 1973
"Historical Painting." Flash Art (Milan) Nr. 43, December
1973 / January 1974, 14. |
