The Fallabilities of Modernism

The New Assertiveness of atheist speculation (Richard Hawkins, Christopher Hitchens) opens a greater debate over the legitimacy of Modernism in general. On the centennial of Marinetti’s Declaration in 1909, it is wise to assess the state of that Ism and its antecedents. What looked like a brave speculation (get rid of Libraries!) now seems fatuous in the extreme.

If as most assume, the battle for Modernism began in late eighteenth France with Voltaire (Ecrasez l’Infame, i.e., do away with the Catholic Church and all the orthodoxies it legitimized), then Modernism reveals its true colors: it’s a covert theology. Romanticism, then, turns out to be a covert, secular religion which preaches that Medieval Asceticism is a delusion.

Basel’s Art Museum recently organized an exhibition on the magic of Everyday Things. It expressed eloquently that romantic vision: stop worrying about the Eternal Beatific Vision: learn to relish everyday wonders, miracles indeed, flowers, animal, landscapes, everyday rituals as captured “for eternal viewing” in genre painting. On the level of Literature, the new gospel was the secular poem, like Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”.

Walt actually talked about the poet as a secular priest. The trouble is this new covert theology should submit to the same kind of philosophical judgments as the New Atheists render unto God’s truth. Some Modernist genres, like, say, old Dada, or the newly emerging Free Art of the Installation, as in Tracey Ermin’s recent Turner submission of her freshly fucked in bed, complete with her co-creator’s used condom! Bald but boorish.

Like their forefucker, Marcel Duchamp’s Urinal dedicated to one R. Mutt. Or in my opinion most Abstract InExpressivism of the drippy provenance. Once you shout “Ecrasez”!, almost anything goes. And as the art market for new millionaires takes over the functions of art scholarship and criticism, we succumb to the blandishments of Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst. Morons deface our cityscapes with their barbarous “signatures” and aesthetic Op Edifiers bless their blasted soles with praise of their innovative “art”.

One classic move in this modernoid direction was Vladimir Tatlin’s “Monumental to the Third International." We are so used to seeing replicas of his maquette that we begin to think he really made a multitasking cluster of auditoria, moving chronologically, in steel and concrete. Norbert Lynton’s last book about it, “All Wood and Dreams” (Yale, 2009) tells what a real flop it was, even spinning off imitative sculptures like Johannes Itten’s for the Bauhaus.

Tatlin died, shortly before Stalin, dreaming of a bike like airplane. Unlike Alexander Rodchenko, who gave up utopian schemes, the better to master the new art of photography, Tatlin remained a slave to his romanticized Modernism. After a century of Modernist schemes, it’s high time we were more Voltaire-like, disentangling ourselves from the many dead ends of Modernism.

Mind you, this is no plea for a return to medieval theology. It’s a cry for being as Voltaire like as we can as we sort out the gains and losses of Modernism.