DEUS EX MACHINA

My ideal postmodernist author neither merely repudiates

nor merely imitates either his twentieth-century modernist
parents or his nineteenth-century premodernist
grandparents. He has the first half of our century under his
belt, but not on his back.

- John Barth The Literature of Replenishment

La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini's postmodern masterpiece, begins with a statue of Christ
dangling from a helicopter. It's being transported to the Vatican. In mid flight the crew and their
journalist passenger pause to flirt with a group of girls sun bathing on the roof of their Roman
apartment building but when they try to exchange telephone numbers their voices are drowned
out by the sound of the whirling propeller. Like the infamous razor sliced eyeball of Bunuel /
Dali's An Andalusian Dog, Fellini's opening salvo is a shot fired above our heads - an advisory
to the unsuspecting viewer that the subsequent narrative constitutes a significant departure from
normal cultural expectations. Whereas the earlier film underscores a requisite "blindness" as a
prelude to insight into the oneiric realms of the unconscious, the great Italian's narrative begins at
the limits of classical resolution, thus the bizarre appearance of a deus ex machina at the film's
inception.

What follows is a disturbing portrayal of the world in free fall - of modernity spiraling into an
carnival of ambivalence. The themes are so familiar that the film could have been made
yesterday: the obliteration of innocence and with it any hope of achieving an authentic
unmediated response to life, the loss of self, the collapse of communication, the worship of
celebrity and the unrelenting intrusion of the commercial media.

Where art stands in all of this is apparent in the disquieting interaction between Marcello
Mastroianni's character and his former university professor, the troubled intellectual, Steiner.
Steiner admonishes Marcello to realize the promise of his youth and replenish the emptiness of
his life by seriously committing himself to his writing, but the way back is virtually impossible.
And when it is discovered that his mentor has committed suicide after putting his own two
children to death, all hope fades for Marcello. By the end of the film the protagonist has
succumbed to the alienating draw of glamour's endless night. The almost iconic presence of the
clear eyed radiant young girl who meets the writer as he tries to resume his work and whose
beautiful face fills the last frames of the film, is the embodiment of a life force no longer
accessible to Marcello. We are left with a gnawing suspicion that we too have lost access to that
life force.
The despair is a familiar theme in our culture. It is, I believe, the central theme in art today. The
conditions of post modernity are linked to the failure of the modernist critical project to bring
about positive social or political change. That coupled with the ubiquity of advanced capitalist
models transposed to all manners of activity have created an almost unbridgeable gulf between
art and any aspiration to its former greatness.

In spite of the plethora of theoretical responses to the issues, we are no closer to a substantial
replenishment of artistic purpose. Nor has the artist risen to the task, choosing instead to bask in
the "radiance of pure and empty form" in complicity with the forces of fashion and
commercialism. In the absence of any overriding purpose "every trait" as Baudrillard claims gets
"raised to the superlative power" and is enveloped in a "vertiginous over- multiplication of
formal qualities." The resulting profusion of values has clogged the channels of meaningful
discourse. We thus dwell in a state of suspended animation incapable of momentum in any
direction. Transfixed by privilege and complacency we can do nothing but gawk at the array of
"ecstatic forms" which inundate us. Slack jawed, in awe, like Marcello Mastroianni finding
Anita Ekberg in the Trevi Fountain, we watch as every mediocrity is raised to the level of
"greatness."

The wide swing of postmodernism's call for the total repudiation of modernism's high aesthetic
code has clearly assumed the central role in todays culture. In regard to the visual arts this has
opened the door to chaos in regard to the substance and value of work itself. What originally
began as a tremendous opportunity for the inclusion of voices previously eclipsed by
modernism's critical authority has turned into a morass of inaudible utterances drowned in their
own solipsisms. To stand apart from these impotent sonorities requires a delicate but purposeful
turn of mind.
Chaos of this nature is clearly an opportunity for those who would benefit most from its
perpetuation - the way that civil wars, social polarization and the general obfuscation of language
and verifiable information benefit totalitarianism. As Habermas and other modernists have
pointed out postmodernism's skepticism of metanarratives is itself a metanarrative - a trap of
circular reasoning. Despite the spectacle of its critical autonomy, the postmodern is the gnomon
of the modern - fundamentally rooted to modernism's theoretical tools, applying the instruments
of reason to its speculative irrationality.

When Baudrillard wrote:" The more art tries to realize itself, the more it hyperrealizes itself, the
more it transcends itself to find its own empty essence" he was speaking from within a perceptual
enclosure that denied him and other celebrated postmodernists access to an exit strategy.
Perceptual prisons of this kind are not unique to the Modernist/Postmodernist conundrum. The
history of painting is famous for "bursting asunder" entrapments of this nature. Painting is, in
fact, a practice that is particularly well suited to this goal. Of course, the fact that it has been
relentlessly denigrated since the rise of conceptualism rendering it all but powerless doesn't help
matters.

The challenge of building a new kind of program for the education artists has preoccupied many
of us for quite some time. If it can be done, I feel that it must be born of immersion into the
methods and practice of the studio. The brilliance of studio thought, when operating at its highest
level of preparedness, offers the greatest hope of circumventing the categorical trappings of these
times. Change will come, as it has before, by the stunning example of individuals who are brave
enough and strong enough to fly in the face of it all and, with a counter intuitive madness, follow
the directives of their hearts.

Vincent Desiderio
New York