Haemorrhaging Codices
Friday, August 28, 2009
The Cryptex is a device made up by Dan Brown in the Da Vinci Code. It's a cylinder with rings around it, vaguely like a bicycle combination lock, in which you store precious things. They are protected by a code. In the book, the protagonists find one, and after twiddling the dials around they crack the code. Inside is another cryptex. This one (you can tell by the sloshing noise) contains a scroll wrapped around a vial of vinegar. If you force it open, the vial cracks and the scroll disintegrates.
This is what it is like looking at the work of Wim Botha.
One gets the suspicion if one were to crack the code on the inner cryptex, the scroll, tea-stained and worn, would read: SKULL, BIBLE, WOOD, BIRD, ALTAR, CRAB in capital letters. Maybe in the font Albus Manutius used to print his first Virgil Octavo. It is possible that by the time you've cracked the thing, these words have taken on a disproportionate significance. All drippy with blood and flayed skin.
But you also might break the thing and be left with a sodden pulpy mess. It might be enough... it depends. Did you enjoy the Da Vinci Code?
posted by Robert Sloon at 2:14 PM
6 Comments:
I read this yesterday and after having a good chuckle found it actually bothered me. Here is the rub: I think that whilst the secretive, over-codified 'hidden fokkol' may be true of Wim Botha's work, it is in actual fact also generally true of most artworks...a bit like saying the sky is blue. Of course if you happen to be a landscape painter this could be quite problematic and despite your best efforts to render the landscape faithfully you may find that you have failed miserably. (This is one of the things people forget about Pierneef - he managed to get the tone of the South African sky just right - that pale, almost dirty white-blue that constantly eluded most colonial painters to somewhat comical effect).
Returning to the big fokkol: that is why I love Warhol's works. They are all surface and no depth (exactly like the glitzy-glammy world that was his subject matter). But I also like Rothko because surfaces in his hands became secrets about secrets - sometimes with great success and sometimes not. Deciding which is which (surface or depth, depth or surface?) is part of the fun and indeed probably integral to our fascination with - and enjoyment of - contemporary art. But overindulging the guessing game could also lead to a form of extreme solipsism (ala the wealthy, suburban 'tannies' who just splashed around paint on canvas well into the 80s). On the other hand, not indulging in it could lead to a puerile form of hedonism. Both have their perils and it seems the real question is to what effect an artist utilizes this tension in their work - what does it do? French philosopher Gilles Delueze often extolled the virtues of establishing 'lines of flight' in life, art, economics, politics etc. What I am getting to is that Warhol, despite his focus on surfaces, actually did just that - tuning the finely tuned mechanisms of consumer society upon itself...a kind of 'google will eat itself' thing. Rothko transports one into a mystic nothing. I always get nauseous when I spend to much time looking at his work (like suffering from vertigo) and spend days afterwards just wondering about the meaningless crap that I keep myself busy with on a day by day level.
So for me the point is not whether or not Wim Botha's work has no has wortwhile substance - opening up into something of real value and the end of your search - but rather, whether Botha manages to do something with this journey? Put in another way: once you have taken the bait where does it lead you?..and I don't mean to another hidden interior that might finally reveals the exact location of a hidden treasure chest. That is just distraction, a wiggling left foot that draws your attention away from the raised hand that delivers a knockout punch. Afterward you rub your jaw and your friends do their best to console you, but you damn well know that things will never look exactly the same again. The memory of that punch will stay with you.
Sadly, I personally think Wim mostly punches like a pussy. His had some knockouts but not enough to make him a champ. But he make one hell of a nice coy-duck. Not too worry: Botha is actually still very young and unlike a boxer does not have to retire early. At present he is doing far better than most.
Dan Brown's writing is all surface. His characters are flat MacGuffins. His investigation of "symbols" is meaningless pulp. But the world is still reeling from that pussy's punch.
His real trick: an exciting plot. And he connects the dots of his "symbols" into coherent narrative. This is his power, and it is a lesson we could all learn. He is a master left foot wiggler.
yeah but the stakes with dan brown are slightly higher or lower depending on what you think: he wants to write a bestseller and make millions in the process. i doubt he really gives a shit about being a 'great author' or making some kind of cultural difference...lol. and, if he does he is indeed a fool. if not: long live the left foot of mr brown!
oh and mr brown punches like a true champ - he made millions while everyone was looking at that left foot.
What is creepy about the Da Vinci code is that it promotes a commercialised mass-media myth of what knowledge is: a bunch of cornily rustic cryptic codes that unlock the secrets of the universe and reveal them to be the very values of corporate America. His book has been so successful precisely because it confirms the cheesy shit that people want to hear. If they knew what actual history professors were thinking about, they'd lynch them.
Isn't this the way of many SA artists, Anon 10.10? Willem Boshoff, Stephanus Rademeyer, et al: there seems to be an interest in talking up your artistic concerns with the vocabulary of science, astrophysics, history and mythology. In Wim's case it is religio-myhtology. As a culture (SA) we seem so intellectually insecure that we require these hyper-academic stamps, these seals of approval to ensure us that our art is adequate.
That's why I loved early Bitterkomix: unapologetically in the gutter, and not even looking up at the stars: rather trying to look up the nearest chick's dress: making art from the position of base drives and motivations, but STILL somehow making something poetic from it all.
Philip Guston is another artist we forget about in this context: he made some of the most compelling work of the 20th Century, with an iconography that closely resembles childish doodles, teenage scrawls and visual afterthoughts.
I think we need to evolve past the point of the showstopper work, the artwork whose aesthetic and conceptual gravitas is calculated to silence criticism, overawe the viewing public. Basically, I'm a Debord groupie...
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