Crítica ornamental / Ornamental critique

I have used Daniel Buren's art as an example to address the impossible critical validity of inscribing an artistic oeuvre in the decorative realm. Before moving on, it is time to make an initial distinction regarding the ornamental function of all visible objects. Whilst we started by evoking the bordering nature of the spaces in which the ornament intervenes (Loos spoke of friezes on shoe seams or on the sides of trousers, for instance), we cannot disregard the decorative as a form of connection between things, like a method of inscription in the visible space and not as a group of recognisable objects (such as a frieze). The predominance of the decorative dimension of a given object is linked to the demise of its function, or, in other words, to the disappearance of the difference between what is useful and useless in modern societies. This, evidently, affects the social impact of the work of art and, consequently, its hypothetical "critical" function, and is connected to what Hal Foster, in his essay Design & Crime (2002, a title that paraphrased Adolf Loos' aforementioned article) denominated the generalisation of design. According to Foster, the design world has evolved continuously since the times of Art Nouveau, including its subsequent redefinition by the Bauhaus. "Once upon a time in mass production, the commodity was its own ideology, the Model t its own advertising. (...) Soon this was not enough: the consumer had to be drawn in, and feedback factored into production (this is one origin-scene of modern design). As competition grew, special seductions had to be devised, and the package became almost as important as the product." The superimposition of packages and the corresponding "detachment" from the product brings us back to our previous argument: the problem is not (as the artists of the 1950s complained) linked to artworks becoming indifferent from furniture; furniture itself has lost its function, it is pure ornament and a vector for atmospheric appeal. Like the aforementioned Model t, the artwork is a form of advertising in itself that secretly remits viewers to a specific system of production and visual consumption. This includes, in an unquestionably problematic manner, every work of art with a "political orientation." Should we, therefore, join Buchloh in his consideration of the role of the "critical" artist as the necessary victim of a cultural complot? Or should we acknowledge the artist's necessary cynical collaboration in a game of simulations and frustrations? If by intervening in institutional spaces art ends up justifying its decorative function, the structuring appearance of the political (or revolutionary) reference in artworks will simply turn these pieces into pure examples of "useless furniture."

It is surprising to see that, coated in a cheap post-modern varnish, certain artists still seek to fit into the history of contemporary social struggles, albeit with the validity of mere commentators, by producing artistic objects. One of the most noteworthy examples is British artist Liam Gillick, whose international corporate success best illustrates the superficiality (in the specific sense used above) of his works. His artistic behaviour echoes the actions of an aristocracy that, as they watch the butler shining their shoes, dream nostalgically of the beauty of worker's revolutions. Different parts of his project Construcción de uno (original title in Spanish) illustrate two procedures that are now trademarks of his art: typographic interventions in institutional spaces, on the one hand, and geometric sculptures with a minimalist appearance, on the other. Although, according to Gillick himself, the project Construcción de uno (which encompassed an exhibition and a book in progress) aims to analyse "how to behave once a [car] factory has closed", based on the fact that "the former 'producers' choose to return to their place of work and re-start the construction of ideas rather than car-sized objects", the material and effective formulation does not go beyond mere sentimental illustration. The polychrome steel structure installed in the Parisian Palais de Tokyo in 2005, entitled A diagram of the factory once the workers had cut extra windows in the walls, far from providing a discursive or participative prolongation of the worker narration in question, merely allows for a vague and allegorical consideration. As part of the same project, also in 2005, Gillick installed on the pillars of the Lufthansa head offices, in Frankfurt airport, four large circular text structures (as defined by the artist), entitled Four levels of exchange. According to Gillick, each of the elements referred once again to the development of the book Construcción de uno and, notably, to a specific part of the project: "Where a group of former factory workers creates a series of equations in an attempt to resolve relations of production in a post-productive environment. The texts are as follows: one unit of energy one unit of output; two ideas two actions; three units of input three units of stability; four units of decision four units of operation". What seems to be a manner of infiltrating a "resistant" discourse in a conflictive context of corporate promotion (through a cultural mission) is automatically reversed and acts as a form of "collaborationist" information. The genuine conflict is not only placed on hold, extracted from the operational circuit and transformed into a pure linguistic phenomenon: the aforementioned strategic formulae are distilled like a sort of cultural commodity, which come in handy for tasks such as coaching -a sort of concrete poetry with paralysing effects. If the artwork's commitment focuses on the fact that the patron purchasing or commissioning it should remember the workers movement every time he or she wants to understand it, that does not make it less servile. Quite the contrary: what comes to mind on contemplating these artworks is not the workers movement itself as a creative force, but its failure and its ultimate symbolical servitude. Beyond the work's sarcastic potential, its public presence has no other explanation than to induce airline employees or travellers to undertake an exercise in cold historical self-irony: to talk about the working class and social struggles in this day and age is, if not fallacious, at least dangerously ambiguous. The sphere in which the artwork appears does not refer to a possible empowerment of the collective subjectivity, but to the realisation of what Benjamin criticised, in the dawn of Pan-European fascism, terming it the danger of the aestheticisation of politics -an aestheticisation that is now completed under a liberal, ironic model.