Only
time has the capacity to endorse a truly genetic approach
to art; the attitude one adopts to art is something more
than a mere attitude; it is more than a gratuitous
gesture, since it harbors within its physiological
structure the genes of continuity guaranteeing the future.
The artist either creates or continues. Any isolated
gesture, which has no bonds with the past, or which fails
to sow for the future, remains a mere pirouette by
definition; however ingenious it may be, it can be called
art.
Now
a pirouette or a gratuitous gesture performed by the
artist may well deceive us by the overwhelming evidence of
its proximity. For although we can always detect a lack of
precedent, we find it much more difficult to guess whether
it will bear fruit in the future or not.
Undoubtedly
avant-garde gestures and attitudes were observed among
some modern Spanish painters, long before Antoni Tapies;
but this early rebellion was not yet a real revolution,
even though it may well have been a sign of the need for
one and actually served as its herald.
The
avant-garde movement, which made its presence, felt around
1956.
The
"first" movement -that of Picasso, Juan Gris,
Miro, and Julio Gonzalez and others- that is more of a
worldwide avant-garde movement than an exclusively Spanish
one is prior to "The Second Spanish Avant-Garde
Movement of the Twentieth Century".
Through
employing a customary manner of interpreting reality,
classical painting was continuing a tradition. Avant-Grade
painting was already committed at birth to a pre-existing
world of reality and for this reason it continues; but it
considers itself free in so far as customary methods of
interpretation establish are concerned. Classical painting
achieves its continuity by focusing upon a methodological
system of interpreting reality. The new form of painting
does away with this interpretative methodology, tackles
reality directly and interprets it in accordance with its
own means or powers of intuition. What happens very
frequently is that in spite of this indifference to an
already established method of interpretation, the new
forms launched by the avant-garde movement -although
unusual- reveal obvious signs, unmistakable family traits,
which relate them to the old way of interpreting reality,
which they were striving to discard. This is because,
whatever happens, any change of reality into art, the
testimonial establishment of reality through the medium of
art, is subject to its own laws, laws laid down not by the
artist, but by the very nature of the reality, which
artist is trying to fix or interpret; so the hereditary
features common to the painting of Antonio Saura and the
most violent of Goya's works are not the result of any
conscious genealogical relationship between the two. They
simply illustrate the survival of a reality, which
remained the same in both Saura and Goya, a reality that
impressed upon both painters the same law of violent
interpretation, when it was expressed through art.
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