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On the Dump of Myths
The mankind lives in the middle of the dump of myths. Our small country is one of those with the greatest concentration of the mythic garbage in the world. I refer to different kinds of myths – religious, historical, political, artistic, national ones. Death and putrefaction of myths is deadly dangerous for the human race – ptomaine causes environmental poisoning, and if we are not going to collect the remains and to create for them proper conditions for afterlife existence they will strangle us with their own dead hands.
The artist sees his goal in re-arranging the appropriate space suitable for the needs of their new lives. All the materials of the city’s dump – every broken fragment of the myths of nice and useful things – are coming to his aid in his holy Opus Magnum. Thus arises the co-operation between the two kinds of refuse – the spiritual offal and the material garbage of everyday life. The slogan “Save billion Chinese Jews” and the crashed vase of red Chinese lacquer collide, some character from the classical Spanish art, perhaps Surbaran, perhaps Murillio, discovers old phials of perfumes that lost their scent decades ago, and the prophet Samuel is introduced to the broken transistor.
A drawer of wardrobe or bureau is the ideal space for the intercourse between shivers of myths and suitable stage for the new version of the original play performed by the veteran actors. It’s more than just “thinking outside the box”, it’s no less than preparing an emergency plan in the perspective of the death of history, of God or even of art. Instead of putting the remains of the glorious past in the coffin the artist places them in the open premises and makes them fit for exhibition, thus fulfilling the project of real Renaissance.
The artist is looking forward, but he also permits himself to cast a glance backwards and to quote among the wide range of classics his own ancient wisdom from twenty years ago, when he called himself The Neo-eclectic:
The idea of non-compulsoriness, of variability as a matter of principle does not permit him to lock himself inside the borders of one style. He creates his multitude of styles while settling down in the history of art refracted in today’s reality. Different kinds of vision turn from visions into apparitions.
Free merging of materials and mediums, one of the consequential achievements of the previous era, being eclectic in its essence, is the most natural approach to the signified.
Kitsch – the highest achievement of the active humanist thought, and the link between art and life – in neo-eclecticism turns into the subject of most intent attention. The exploration of kitsch makes it possible to comprehend the nature of cretinism in the sublime and the causes of the human attraction to cretinism.
Inexactitude of consciousness is the basic principle of neo-eclecticism. From this principle we deduce three assisting rules: 1 ) law of unity and struggle of the founders; 2) law of conversion of quantity into equality; 3) law of reflection of reflections.
While turning the spectator into exhibit neo-eclectics returns to the cabinet of curiosities the dignity of shrine.
(Gali-Dana & Nekoda Singer: Manifest of Neo-eclecticism, 1990)
נקודא על מזבלת המיתוסים
Nekoda and Josef Bardanashvili at the KAYMA gallery
