After 1929, the only artistic production is the one expressed by the mass-artist, embodied in his constructive capacity, as though artistic production constituted the form of this capacity. And this is the story which, amid constant experimentation, leads us all the way to ’68. This is the period in which abstraction and production are intertwined: the abstraction of the current mode of production and the representation of possible worlds; the abstraction of the image and the use of the most varied materials; the simplification of the artistic gesture and the geometric destructuring of the real, and so on and so forth. Picasso and Klee, Duchamp and Malevich, Beuys and Fontana, Rauschenberg and Christo: we recognize in them artists sharing the same creative experience. A new subject and an abstract object: a subject capable of demystifying the fetishized destiny imposed by capital.

And then? What can we draw from this? ’68 comes and we reach a moment when contemporary art confronts new questions. How does the event arise? How can passion and the desire for transformation develop here and now? How is the revolution configured? How can man be remade? How can the abstract become subject? What world does man desire and how does he desire it? What are the forms of life taken by this extreme gesture of transformation? [105-106]

[. . .]

Artistic production traverses industry and constitutes common languages. Therefore, every production is an event of communication, and the common is constructed through multitudinous events. Consequently, this is how the capacity to renew the regimes of knowledge and action that — in the era of cognitive labour — we call artistic is determined. [117]

[. . .]

Art defines itself as form of life, characterized by poverty at its base, and by revolutionary will at the apex of the becoming-swarm. [121]

– Antonio Negri: ‘Metamorphoses’

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1977 | Royal College of Art / Winfrith Newburgh

“…a complex assemblage that suggests a virtual interconnection between himself, objects, and the whole interior studio environment” / “…and in contemporary painting there appeared to be scant respect for form (apart from that demanded by the conventional, rectangular boundary).” 

– David Thistlewood: ‘Herbert Read, Formlessness and Form An introduction to his aesthetics’, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984

“The main thing wrong with painting is that it is a rectangular plane placed flat against the wall.” 

– Donald Judd: ‘Specific Objects’, 1965

…the moment when one is no longer able to define what divides art from non-art. Creativity, liberated from disciplinary boundaries and specific know-how, could now be exerted as a ubiquitous agency / the least amount of mediation between artist and materials / everyday world and artistic world = unstable modus operandi = chaos and contingency = “when both being and non-being, existence and non-existence, are encircled within the same form” / …just as work deviates into non-work, so art morphs into non-art…

– Gabriele Guercio: ‘The form of the indistinct: Picasso and the rise of Generic Creativity’, 2013

— — —

1977 Royal College of Art Abbey Minor Scholarship / Florence (Ghiberti / Brunelleschi)

1978 Royal College of Art Travel Bursary / Paris (Leger)

— — —

[21.01.2025]

“We were shifting our role away from traditional teaching on an individualistic and divisive basis, to a collaborative one, in which the sharing of experience created a relationship that, was more positive and productive.”

David Cashman: ”There are those that are the product of participatory processes and communal creative activity, whether it’s with kids or adults — lots of possibility of interaction. There’s another sort, which I’d call an interpretive one where the artist seeks information from the environment or the community where they live and they’ve got a contract with the community to interpret their needs and concerns. Then there’s another kind of artist who isn’t any of those things, who’s projecting an internal image out onto the environment, and that worries me.”

Roger Fagin: “The gallery system is not nourishing, the way our system operates now involves an appalling wastage. [. . .] We are trying to develop our role into a multiplicity of functions, so that our work as ‘artists’ isn’t separated from our educational and administrative function, or the physical labour we do, or our interactions with people with other skills. What we are doing is clearly not original or unique to one individual but to break down those concepts to create something which is the end product of a process which involves the uniqueness, originality and creativity of lots of different people interacting.”

David Cashman: “Our experience is that we get help when we ask for it, and we show there is positive energy on the move. We haven’t said we can’t get on with architects and planners and bureaucrats. We’ve gone out and taken them on. Because there are people who have vision and positive creative energy and they need to give it space to let it grow!”

– David Cashman and Roger Fagin | Islington Schools Education Project, 1975

21.05.2025