ATFlash

Art & the Theory I (the nine wheels),1995
Art & the Theory II, (the nine blind men), 1996
Oil on canvas
2 x 9 canvases (80x95 cm. each)

From its inception, the origin and the title of this work, Art & the Theory, have
constituted a union. An encounter with the book, Art in the Theory: An
Anthology of Changing Ideas, proved of vital importance for its creation.

This book posited a synthesis of the diverse theories about art throughout
history. After a general perusal of it and having read therein some particular
ideas, I suddenly found myself before an impressive theoretical panorama.
Until then, I had only perceived minute views of this theoretical landscape
through the confinement of "small windows", like art journals, books or
expositions.
I knew the magnitude of this landscape, however I had not been able to
experience it. In a fit, I envisioned the innumerable ideas and theories about
art. That is, one's constant preoccupation with defining art and the insatiable
intent to institutionalize the different artistic currents, or drawing borders in an
effort to define what art is or what art is not.

The reason for making the first nine canvases of this work corresponds to the
aforementioned discussion and in particular the need to assure in certain
artistic circles that art, above all, the art of painting, has somehow died.

Nine wheels
The images of the wheels function as a metaphor representative of the vital
necessity and the impulse that any artist feels to create. They represent the
movement, the desire to go somewhere simultaneously taking or transporting
the spectator. The wheels represent an interrogation about the nature of art,
the search for the progress or an evolution. Like the wheels of transport on
Earth take us to different places, so too can the interrogation about the nature
of art lead us to its different areas or diverse forms. New discoveries are
constantly being made and although new currents have emerged, they
nonetheless concurrently revert to the past. The original shape of the wheel
-roundness- has not changed in form since its invention. However, over time,
the materials employed for its fabrication have changed. Likewise, mediums
utilized in creating art have also changed. But in my eyes, art's original
function, i.e. to communicate-- has continued to date.

The wheel coverings depicted in these nine canvases represent the image
destined for the retina in art. The surfaces, I mean what the expectator
visualized, of the diverse currents which followed resulted in the visual aspect
of art.

The conception of this work awoke in me a great curiosity for the bicycle wheel
(ready made) of Marcel Duchamp. I believe my work has a certain affinity with
the work of Duchamp, although not derived from his. In the words of author
Octavio Paz, "Duchamp was a painter of ideas". Duchamp utilized the object
as a metaphor, or rather his reflection upon the object as a meditation of itself.
Each of his works represents a diversity of significations or perspectives.

For the first nine canvases I have chosen wheel covers, which in my point of
view could be associated with a predetermined artistic current. My intention
has not been to simply make an enumeration of these diverse currents
throughout the history of art. I wanted it also to be a painting. Thus, I decided
not to use only the wheel covers and I have also limited this initial composition
to nine canvases, arranged in one frame of three by three.

The following paragraph appeared in The Castle of Purity, a book that Octavio
Paz wrote about Macel Duchamp's "The Large Glass".
"The number nine has an immense prestige. Nine is three times three, and
three is the number in which, according to Dumezil, the vision indo-europea of
the world is concentrated. Nothing more original that Duchamp added one
more bachelor to Ero's Matrix, originally comprised of eight'.

Nine blind men
In the process that emerges between the idea and the realization of the image
a series of esoteric steps exist. Too, I desired to exhibit this aspect of my
work. I searched for texts of artists representative of the different artistic
currents with the idea of forming an image that could relieve it. Once again as if
in a cyclical/circular movement I came head to head with Marcel Duchamp. I
moved passed the writings of the book El Signo y el Garabato, which would
influence the formal aspect of the second tier of canvases, to The Castle of
Purity. In the latter book, Paz, detected a correlation between the book of the
humanist Giordano Bruno, Eroici Furori (1585) and "The Large Glass".

" The hero, the furious lover is multiplicated into nine blindmen. Each
one recites a poem that defines the type of the blindness affliction. The
nine blindmen represent nine of the physical and psychological
limitations of the lover....we see more with our eyes closed than with
them opened."

Actually, these were the nine texts that I had sought.
My doubts subsided when I read the following paragraph in Ann van Sevenant's
Het Verhaal van de Filosofie/The Story of Philosophy.
"The influence of the humanist movement in the development of the spiritual
liberty of artists should not be thwarted. The humanists of the renaissance:
Petrarca, Boccacio, Giordano Bruno...in conjunction with the artists of the
Renaissance..... of the birth of the principal of unity in art such as it is known
today. The culmination of the arts in its plural form to the art in the singular
form dates from this epoch".

With this text in hand, the circle closed itself.

The texts that I utilized in the canvases that form the second frame pertain to
the poems of the nine blindmen by Bruno. Each text corresponds to one of the
nine wheelcovers in the first frame. One could say that half of the totality of this
work is the reflection of the other half.

Again, with respect to the formal aspect of the second part of this work,
Octavio Paz' El Signo y el Garabato, has been of crucial importance for the
fruition of the formal aspect of this work. I intuitively chose a particular
typography for each of the nine canvases depicting Bruno's poems of the blind.
These typographies, in their formal aspects, have a direct association with the
distinctive artistic currents throughout history. As I painted these canvases, I
wanted, among other ideas, to revive the visual with the written, independent of
their contents.

The trajectory that I have followed up until I found the definitive form of Art &
the Theory can be described as cyclical/circular. My intention in having made
a distribution of the images in a number of canvases has been to create an
open painting, one which could be assembled or disassembled- a type of
mobile work. With the opening of this work to the interested spectator I have
wanted to initiate a dialogue or give way to a discussion with the aim of
attempting to find responses to yet unformulated interrogations.

María José Ramírez Ramírez
on her work Art & the Theory, 1995-1996
Amsterdam, May 1996