{"id":46159,"date":"2000-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/archivos\/46159"},"modified":"2026-03-10T08:34:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T08:34:52","slug":"critica-ornamental-ornamental-critique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/critica-ornamental-ornamental-critique\/","title":{"rendered":"Cr\u00edtica ornamental \/ Ornamental critique"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Autor:<\/strong> Manuel Cirauqui<\/p>\n<p><strong>Revista:<\/strong> L\u00c3\u0081PIZ Revista Internacional de Arte n\u00c2\u00ba 250-251<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p>La lucha por la depuraci&oacute;n de las formas, uno de los lugares comunes de la modernidad, tuvo uno de sus principales frentes en la negaci&oacute;n del ornamento. Esta negaci&oacute;n se extendi&oacute; por igual en el &aacute;mbito de las artes supuestamente aut&oacute;nomas (pintura, escultura, m&uacute;sica) como en el de las funcionales (arquitectura, dise&ntilde;o). El c&eacute;lebre panfleto de Adolf Loos<em> Ornament und Verbrechen<\/em> (Ornamento y delito, 1908) tuvo a este respecto un car&aacute;cter fundacional. Recordemos que, en uno de sus pasajes principales, Loos argumentaba contra la tendencia pulsional del hombre \u00abprimitivo\u00bb o del ni&ntilde;o a macular su cuerpo o su entorno con inscripciones referentes de un modo u otro a sus pasiones y afectos elementales. Frente a esto, la caracter&iacute;stica del hombre moderno resid&iacute;a para el arquitecto vien&eacute;s en rechazar tales formas de comportamiento como signos de \u00abdegeneraci&oacute;n\u00bb. Llegando al cl&iacute;max de su razonamiento, Loos afirmaba: \u00abHe hallado esta verdad que entrego al mundo: la evoluci&oacute;n de la cultura es sin&oacute;nimo de una desaparici&oacute;n del ornamento en todos los objetos de uso cotidiano\u00bb. Como se sabe, el discurso de Loos es signo de una tendencia a la racionalizaci&oacute;n radical que caracteriz&oacute; el momento formalista de las vanguardias hist&oacute;ricas, y que sent&oacute; acta de defunci&oacute;n, sobre todo en arquitectura, del Art Nouveau (el \u00abJugendstil\u00bb o \u00abModern Style\u00bb, que en castellano se llam&oacute; \u00abmodernismo\u00bb). Igualmente, otras formulaciones de este mismo discurso est&eacute;tico legitimaron la predominancia de la abstracci&oacute;n geom&eacute;trica sobre el resto de manifestaciones del arte \u00abavanzado\u00bb, dando lugar a movimientos como, principalmente, el suprematismo de Malevich o el neoplasticismo de Mondrian.<\/p>\n<p>Pero los representantes de estos movimientos, aun demostrando su capacidad para alcanzar un grado extremo de pureza pict&oacute;rica (el blanco absoluto de Malevich, pura pintura esencial desprovista de ornamento), no consiguieron desembarazarse del residuo subjetivo-narcisista del arte entendido como expresi&oacute;n del genio, lo cual les hac&iacute;a proclives a una suerte de misticismo. Hubo que esperar un par de d&eacute;cadas para que algunas escuelas, en Europa y en Am&eacute;rica, emprendieran la deconstrucci&oacute;n de la actividad pict&oacute;rica en general a trav&eacute;s de comportamientos automatizados y extremadamente r&iacute;gidos que hac&iacute;an referencia a la producci&oacute;n mec&aacute;nica y en masa de im&aacute;genes y objetos y a la servidumbre decorativa de la forma <em>cuadro<\/em> en general. En Francia, el grupo formado por Daniel Buren, Niele Toroni, Olivier Mosset y Michel Parmentier llev&oacute; a cabo, por medio de pr&aacute;cticas pict&oacute;ricas repetitivas y reductoras, un proceso de denuncia art&iacute;stica de este tipo, cuya evoluci&oacute;n hist&oacute;rica resulta interesante analizar al menos parcialmente y en lo que refiere, precisamente, a la manera en que dicha denuncia ha sido asimilada por el contexto art&iacute;stico. La evoluci&oacute;n del primero de estos artistas, Daniel Buren, a partir de la disoluci&oacute;n del grupo en 1967 resulta especialmente significativa si se quiere observar hasta qu&eacute; punto se ha producido una inversi&oacute;n del impulso \u00abcr&iacute;tico\u00bb que parec&iacute;a animar su b&uacute;squeda art&iacute;stica en un principio. Dicho impulso resultaba m&aacute;s o menos expl&iacute;cito en las primeras intervenciones callejeras de Buren, los famosos <em>affichages sauvages<\/em> de carteles cuyo &uacute;nico contenido eran las ya famosas rayas de 8,7 cent&iacute;metros de ancho. La elecci&oacute;n de un &uacute;nico mensaje visual como elemento recurrente en las intervenciones de Buren pose&iacute;a un cierto car&aacute;cter problem&aacute;tico, basado precisamente en la mencionada negaci&oacute;n del contenido pict&oacute;rico y en la referencia a nada m&aacute;s que una mera superficie pintada (y producida, por a&ntilde;adidura, industrialmente). Cada vez que la \u00abmarca\u00bb de Buren aparec&iacute;a en un lugar de la ciudad, aquella no solo tapaba (con cierta violencia simb&oacute;lica) un mensaje concreto ya existente (un anuncio publicitario o propagand&iacute;stico), sino que adem&aacute;s revelaba, en el lugar se&ntilde;alado, el car&aacute;cter estrat&eacute;gico de todo uso del signo en el espacio p&uacute;blico. Pero no se puede olvidar que, de igual modo, el uso que Buren hac&iacute;a de los muros callejeros ten&iacute;a un car&aacute;cter promocional completamente ordinario; era una forma de anuncio, una b&uacute;squeda \u00absalvaje\u00bb de notoriedad que manifest&oacute; una eficacia casi inmediata y atrajo una gran atenci&oacute;n del medio art&iacute;stico sobre este creador. Corr&iacute;a el a&ntilde;o de 1968 -un a&ntilde;o inaugural para la historia de la publicidad postmoderna- y las crecientes solicitudes de intervenciones en galer&iacute;as y museos empezaron a convertir al \u00abrevolucionario\u00bb Buren en lo que es hoy plenamente: un decorador de interiores con una tendencia irremediable al manierismo. Eso no imped&iacute;a al artista afirmar, en ese mismo a&ntilde;o: \u00abTodo lo superficial debe ser transformado constantemente; y puesto que la infraestructura permanece intacta, resulta claro que nada es modificado de modo fundamental&#8230; El arte es actualmente el m&aacute;s bello ornamento de la sociedad y no una se&ntilde;al de advertencia para la sociedad, tal y como debiera serlo y nunca ha sido\u00bb.<\/p>\n<p>A partir de la d&eacute;cada de 1970, Buren empez&oacute; a declinar su <em>motivo<\/em> en todo tipo de espacios museales y urbanos, ocupando tanto las zonas funcionales o intersticiales (pasillos, escalinatas, sillas) como las superficies marginales o la <em>se&ntilde;al&eacute;tica<\/em> (banderas y banderolas, velas n&aacute;uticas, ventanas, etc.). La capacidad espec&iacute;fica de designaci&oacute;n o <em>indexation<\/em> de dichos lugares por medio de la inscripci&oacute;n de un signo identificable permiti&oacute; a Buren especializarse en una forma de presunta \u00abcr&iacute;tica inmanente\u00bb a trav&eacute;s del trabajo <em>in situ<\/em>, una cr&iacute;tica que Buren, con magistral oficio ret&oacute;rico, ha logrado casar siempre con un m&aacute;ximo grado de neutralidad&#8230; Esto explica su &eacute;xito comercial y la confianza con la que todo tipo de instituciones, eminentemente no neutrales, recurren a Buren desde hace m&aacute;s de tres d&eacute;cadas.<\/p>\n<p>En su ensayo titulado \u00abEl Museo y el monumento: Les couleurs\/Les formes de Daniel Buren\u00bb (1981), Benjamin Buchloh establec&iacute;a lo siguiente: \u00abEl trabajo de Buren, puesto que a&ntilde;ade superficies a superficies arquitect&oacute;nicas sin cambiar verdaderamente los elementos de &eacute;stas, entra en el discurso de lo que tradicionalmente se define como &#8216;decoraci&oacute;n&#8217;. Pero el inter&eacute;s de Buren por la &#8216;decoraci&oacute;n&#8217; no proviene simplemente de los or&iacute;genes pict&oacute;ricos de su obra o aun de una debilidad o incapacidad de sus instrumentos de trabajo cuando se trata de abordar cuestiones arquitect&oacute;nicas, sino que constituye m&aacute;s bien una consecuencia l&oacute;gica de su teor&iacute;a est&eacute;tica, que revela una pr&aacute;ctica de la producci&oacute;n art&iacute;stica ligada naturalmente al &aacute;mbito de la superestructura (decoraci&oacute;n, moda, etc.). (&#8230;) La &#8216;decoraci&oacute;n&#8217; en el trabajo de Buren deja as&iacute; ver la tendencia profunda del artista a desmentir en su obra sus propias intenciones: la obra de arte aspira sin cesar a cambiar las condiciones materiales y termina siempre por ser condenada al embellecimiento supraestructural y cultural (&#8230;)\u00bb. Y Buchloh concluye: \u00abEl artista, en tanto que decorador al servicio del statu quo, en tanto que proveedor consciente de modelos est&eacute;ticos e intelectuales, en tanto que productor de cambios supraestructurales, parece darse cuenta con cinismo y resignaci&oacute;n pasiva de la funci&oacute;n a la que su obra ha sido reducida\u00bb. La visi&oacute;n derrotista de Buchloh en este texto no deja de ser ingenua: se trata una vez m&aacute;s de la vieja f&aacute;bula frankfurtiana de un arte animado por un pathos revolucionario que, al materializarse en el espacio social, es corrompido por el circuito y la econom&iacute;a simb&oacute;lica en la que se inscribe, tomando igualmente parte en su \u00abprogreso\u00bb. Curiosamente -y para su fortuna- los argumentos con que Buchloh pretend&iacute;a defender la obra de Buren son ambiguos y reversibles; sirven igualmente para atacarla, en la misma medida en la que el propio Buren, al denunciar el car&aacute;cter \u00absuperficial\u00bb del arte moderno, tiene raz&oacute;n <em>si y solo si <\/em>su denuncia afecta, tambi&eacute;n y primero que nada, a su propia obra. Basta mirar unos minutos cualquiera de las intervenciones de Buren en el espacio p&uacute;blico para comprobar hasta qu&eacute; punto dicha reversibilidad argumentativa le ha permitido llevar a cabo una obra formalista que, pese a su pretensi&oacute;n de inscribirse en los espacios infraestructurales y no en los muros o superficies de exposici&oacute;n, no ha dejado de ser cada vez m&aacute;s superficial&#8230; El profundo manierismo, por ejemplo, de su &uacute;ltima intervenci&oacute;n en el Mus&eacute;e national Picasso de Par&iacute;s deja claro que Buren ha pasado de inscribirse en una l&iacute;nea hist&oacute;rica modernista a asociarse a la tradici&oacute;n clasicista de creadores cortesanos franceses como Le N&ocirc;tre o Le Brun (y no digo que dentro de esa tradici&oacute;n cortesana Buren no sea un creador grande, al contrario). Lo desplegado por Buren en el Mus&eacute;e Picasso contiene los ingredientes ya habituales de este chef, cocinados<em> in situ<\/em>: ventanales y vidrieras que alternan juegos crom&aacute;ticos entre los cristales y las rayas especialidad de la casa, todo ello duplicado por obra y gracia de un inmenso espejo que divide la fachada del edificio en dos, reflejando as&iacute; una de sus mitades y ocultando la otra. Resultar&iacute;a huero atacar esta obra en detalle como si en ella Buren hubiera alcanzado un grado especialmente notable de celebraci&oacute;n o de oquedad est&eacute;tica. De hecho, lo m&aacute;s sorprendente de este charlat&aacute;n e ilusionista ambulante es la constancia con la que vende siempre la misma p&oacute;cima autolegitimadora a la instituci&oacute;n de turno. Demostrando que el arte es no solo una banalidad desprovista de sentido (sin m&aacute;s importancia que un juego floral), sino adem&aacute;s una banalidad <em>necesaria<\/em>, Buren alimenta el nihilismo desesperante que socava la producci&oacute;n art&iacute;stica actual.<\/p>\n<p>Como dec&iacute;amos, tratar de ocupar <em>cr&iacute;ticamente<\/em> el espacio ornamental acaba resultando no solo inoperante, sino tambi&eacute;n <em>apolog&eacute;tico. <\/em>Retomando la obsoleta polaridad, vagamente marxista, entre infraestructura y superestructura, podemos decir que todo trabajo que manifieste efectos de superficie (es decir, \u00abvisibilidad\u00bb) puede ser reciclado como \u00abdecoraci&oacute;n\u00bb por la econom&iacute;a simb&oacute;lica que pretende atacar. La enf&aacute;tica invasi&oacute;n de los espacios ornamentales es ella misma ornamental y requiere, por parte del artista que la lleva a cabo, de un cierto compromiso ambivalente que podemos resumir como \u00abcinismo\u00bb, es decir, una tolerancia jovial y masoquista a aquello mismo que se detesta. Aquello que Buchloh denominaba \u00abla tendencia profunda del artista a desmentir en su obra sus propias intenciones\u00bb, es decir, la tendencia al cuestionamiento de s&iacute; mismo o a la autocastraci&oacute;n, constituye ciertamente un argumento neutralizador de gran utilidad pol&iacute;tica: denunciando la inoperancia de la obra de arte y haciendo de ella un tema, el artista puede participar en el mismo sistema que denuncia con la conciencia tranquila. Igualmente, politizar la obra de arte es una manera de legitimar su \u00abindecencia\u00bb. En este punto, cabe quiz&aacute; citar las palabras que el narrador de <em>Le Tombeau d&#8217;Alexandre<\/em> (El &uacute;ltimo bolchevique, 1993), de Chris Marker, pronuncia en un momento dado de la pel&iacute;cula: \u00abThat year in Moscow the talk of the town was: &#8216;How far had Metropolitan Pitirim collaborated with the KGB?&#8217; -Not <em>had he<\/em>, but <em>how far<\/em>. Like a Welles character, like Kane or Macbeth, how far can you get along with evil. &#8216;Use a long spoon to sup with the devil&#8217;. Did you wear out the length of your lives calculating the length of the spoon, only to discover that there was no supper?\u00bb (Ese a&ntilde;o en Mosc&uacute; hab&iacute;a una pregunta en boca de todos: \u00ab&iquest;Cu&aacute;nto hab&iacute;a colaborado el metropolitano Pitirim con la KGB? La duda no era <em>si <\/em>hab&iacute;a colaborado, sino <em>cu&aacute;nto<\/em>. Como un personaje de Welles, como Kane o Macbeth, &iquest;cu&aacute;nto mal se puede hacer? &#8216;Para cenar con el diablo, conviene usar una cuchara larga&#8217;. &iquest;Os pasasteis la vida calculando la longitud de la cuchara solo para descubrir que no hab&iacute;a cena?\u00bb).<\/p>\n<p>He utilizado como ejemplo la obra de Daniel Buren para tratar de la imposible validez cr&iacute;tica de toda inscripci&oacute;n del trabajo art&iacute;stico en un &aacute;mbito decorativo. Antes de proseguir, es preciso hacer una primera distinci&oacute;n en cuanto a la funci&oacute;n ornamental de cualquier objeto visible. Si al principio evoc&aacute;bamos el car&aacute;cter lim&iacute;trofe de los espacios en que interviene el ornamento (Loos hablaba de las cenefas en las costuras de los zapatos o en los flancos de los pantalones, por ejemplo), no podemos dejar de considerar lo decorativo como un modo de relaci&oacute;n entre las cosas, como un r&eacute;gimen de inscripci&oacute;n en el espacio visible y no como un grupo de objetos reconocibles (del tipo cenefa). La predominancia de la dimensi&oacute;n decorativa de todo objeto tiene que ver con el ocaso de su funci&oacute;n, o lo que es lo mismo, con la desaparici&oacute;n de la diferencia entre lo &uacute;til y lo in&uacute;til en las sociedades modernas. Esto afecta, evidentemente, al impacto social de la obra de arte y, de modo relevante, a su hipot&eacute;tica funci&oacute;n \u00abcr&iacute;tica\u00bb, y tiene que ver con lo que Hal Foster, en su ensayo <em>Design &amp; Crime<\/em> (\u00abDise&ntilde;o y delito\u00bb, 2002, un t&iacute;tulo que parafraseaba el del mencionado panfleto de Adolf Loos) denominaba la generalizaci&oacute;n del dise&ntilde;o. Seg&uacute;n Foster, el mundo del dise&ntilde;o no ha dejado de evolucionar desde los tiempos del Art Nouveau, pasando por la redefinici&oacute;n que de &eacute;l planteara posteriormente la Bauhaus. \u00abEn la &eacute;poca de la producci&oacute;n en masa, la mercanc&iacute;a era su propia ideolog&iacute;a, el Ford&nbsp;T era en s&iacute; mismo su propia publicidad. (&#8230;) Pero muy pronto eso dej&oacute; de bastar. Hizo falta que el consumidor fuera igualmente integrado en el sistema, y que sus reacciones fueran transformadas tambi&eacute;n en nueva producci&oacute;n (esa es la escena primitiva del dise&ntilde;o moderno). A medida que crec&iacute;a la competencia, fue preciso concebir nuevos modos de seducci&oacute;n, y el embalaje se convirti&oacute; en algo tan importante como el propio producto.\u00bb La superposici&oacute;n de embalajes y el consiguiente \u00abalejamiento\u00bb del producto nos devuelve a lo que dec&iacute;amos m&aacute;s arriba: el problema no es que las obras de arte (como denunciaban los artistas de los a&ntilde;os cincuenta) se hayan convertido en parte indistinta del mobiliario; el mobiliario mismo carece de funci&oacute;n, es puro ornamento y vector de seducci&oacute;n ambiental. Como el mencionado Ford T, la obra de arte constituye una forma de publicidad de s&iacute; misma que nos reenv&iacute;a secretamente a su sistema de producci&oacute;n y consumo visual. Esto incluye, de modo indudablemente problem&aacute;tico, todas las obras de arte \u00aborientado pol&iacute;ticamente\u00bb. &iquest;Debemos, pues, asumir, como hiciera Buchloh, el papel del artista \u00abcr&iacute;tico\u00bb como v&iacute;ctima necesaria de un complot cultural? &iquest;O m&aacute;s bien tendremos que reconocer su necesaria colaboraci&oacute;n c&iacute;nica en un juego de simulacros y frustraciones? Si la intervenci&oacute;n lim&iacute;trofe del arte en el espacio institucionalizado acaba funcionando como una apolog&iacute;a de su funci&oacute;n decorativa, la aparici&oacute;n estructurante del referente pol&iacute;tico (o incluso revolucionario) en las obras de arte no deja de convertirlas en puros ejemplos de \u00abmobiliario in&uacute;til\u00bb.<\/p>\n<p>Resulta sorprendente que todav&iacute;a sigan existiendo, gracias a un barato barniz postmoderno, artistas que pretenden inscribirse, con la validez de meros comentaristas, en la historia de las luchas sociales contempor&aacute;neas a trav&eacute;s de la producci&oacute;n de objetos art&iacute;sticos. Uno de los ejemplos m&aacute;s sobresalientes es el brit&aacute;nico Liam Gillick, cuyo &eacute;xito corporativo internacional resulta ser la mejor prueba de la <em>superficialidad <\/em>(en el sentido espec&iacute;fico apuntado m&aacute;s arriba) de sus obras. Su comportamiento como artista hace pensar en un arist&oacute;crata que, mientras deja que su mayordomo le embetune los zapatos, sue&ntilde;a nost&aacute;lgicamente con la belleza de las revoluciones obreras. Distintos momentos de su proyecto <em>Construcci&oacute;n de uno <\/em>(t&iacute;tulo original en espa&ntilde;ol) pueden servirnos para ilustrar dos procedimientos ya caracter&iacute;sticos en sus obras: las intervenciones tipogr&aacute;ficas en el espacio institucional, por un lado, y las esculturas geom&eacute;tricas de apariencia minimalista, por otro. Aunque, seg&uacute;n el propio Gillick, el proyecto <em>Construcci&oacute;n de uno<\/em> (que comprend&iacute;a una exposici&oacute;n y un libro <em>in progress<\/em>) pretende reflexionar \u00ababout how to behave once a [car] factory has closed\u00bb (c&oacute;mo comportarse tras el cierre de una f&aacute;brica [de autom&oacute;viles]), partiendo del hecho que \u00abthe former &#8216;producers&#8217; choose to return to their place of work and re-start the construction of ideas rather than car-sized objects\u00bb (los anteriores &#8216;productores&#8217; decidieron volver a su lugar de trabajo y recomenzar a construir ideas en vez de objetos automovil&iacute;sticos), su formulaci&oacute;n material y efectiva no va m&aacute;s all&aacute; de la simple ilustraci&oacute;n sentimental. La estructura de acero policromado instalada en el Palais de Tokyo de Par&iacute;s en 2005, bajo el t&iacute;tulo <em>A diagram of the factory once the workers had cut extra windows in the walls<\/em> (Diagrama de la f&aacute;brica tras abrir los trabajadores ventanales extra en las paredes), lejos de proporcionar una prolongaci&oacute;n discursiva o participativa del relato obrero en cuesti&oacute;n, apenas permite hacer un recorrido vago y aleg&oacute;rico de este. Dentro del mismo proyecto, tambi&eacute;n en 2005, Gillick instal&oacute; en los pilares de la sede de la compa&ntilde;&iacute;a Lufthansa, en el aeropuerto de Frankfurt, cuatro grandes <em>estructuras textuales<\/em> circulares (\u00abtext structures\u00bb, seg&uacute;n su propia denominaci&oacute;n), bajo el t&iacute;tulo <em>Four levels of exchange <\/em>(Cuatro niveles de intercambio). Seg&uacute;n Gillick, cada uno de los elementos hac&iacute;a de nuevo referencia al desarrollo del libro <em>Construcci&oacute;n de uno<\/em> y, en particular, a un momento espec&iacute;fico del proyecto: \u00abWhere 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\u00bb (En el que un grupo de antiguos trabajadores crea una serie de ecuaciones para intentar resolver relaciones de producci&oacute;n en un entorno postproductivo. Los textos son los siguientes: una unidad de energ&iacute;a, una unidad de producci&oacute;n; dos ideas, dos acciones; tres unidades de aportaci&oacute;n, tres unidades de estabilidad; cuatro unidades de decisi&oacute;n, cuatro unidades de operaci&oacute;n). Lo que parece ser un modo de infiltraci&oacute;n de un discurso \u00abresistente\u00bb en un contexto antag&oacute;nico de promoci&oacute;n corporativa (a trav&eacute;s de una misi&oacute;n cultural) se invierte autom&aacute;ticamente y funciona como un modo de informaci&oacute;n \u00abcolaboracionista\u00bb. El conflicto real no solo es puesto en suspenso, extra&iacute;do de su circuito operacional y transformado en puro fen&oacute;meno ling&uuml;&iacute;stico: las mencionadas f&oacute;rmulas estrat&eacute;gicas son destiladas como una especie de mercanc&iacute;a cultural, muy &uacute;til en tareas de <em>coaching<\/em> -una suerte de poes&iacute;a concreta con efectos paralizantes-. Si el compromiso de la obra estriba en que los patronos que la compran o encargan se deban acordar del movimiento obrero cada vez que quieran entenderla, esto no la hace menos servil. Al contrario: aquello que se recuerda al mirarlas no es el movimiento obrero en s&iacute; como matriz creativa, sino su fracaso y su servidumbre simb&oacute;lica &uacute;ltima. Por encima del potencial sarc&aacute;stico de la obra, su presencia p&uacute;blica no tiene otra eficacia que la de inducir a los empleados de la empresa a&eacute;rea o a los usuarios del aeropuerto a un ejercicio de fr&iacute;a autoiron&iacute;a hist&oacute;rica: hablar de clase obrera y de conflictos de clase resulta hoy, si no falaz, al menos peligrosamente ambiguo. El &aacute;mbito de aparici&oacute;n de la obra no es el de un posible <em>empowerment<\/em> (capacitaci&oacute;n o autonomizaci&oacute;n) de una subjetividad colectiva, sino el de la realizaci&oacute;n de lo que Benjamin ya denunciara, en los albores del fascismo paneuropeo, como el peligro de estetizaci&oacute;n de la pol&iacute;tica -una estetizaci&oacute;n que se completa ya hoy bajo un modelo liberal, ir&oacute;nico-.<\/p>\n<p>El uso del mencionado tipo de dispositivos textuales es, como dec&iacute;amos, recurrente en la obra de Gillick. En ellos el discurso es sistem&aacute;ticamente utilizado con una <em>distancia acr&iacute;tica<\/em> que mide la ineficacia de este y su fragmentaci&oacute;n en un espacio social de no-discusi&oacute;n. Es, por ejemplo, el caso de instalaciones como <em>Exterior days<\/em> (D&iacute;as exteriores).<em> <\/em>Aqu&iacute;, las inscripciones \u00abok, I&#8217;m sitting now on a ridge\u00bb (Pues bien, estoy sentado sobre una elevaci&oacute;n) y \u00abok, I&#8217;m standing now on a ridge\u00bb (Pues bien, estoy de pie sobre una elevaci&oacute;n) pretenden operar, seg&uacute;n el propio Gillick afirma en su \u00abvisual archive\u00bb, como \u00aba critique of the tendency of dominant cultures to nominate a space of occupation, and then go and occupy it without thinking through all the consequences of this action\u00bb (una cr&iacute;tica de la tendencia de las culturas dominantes a designar un espacio de ocupaci&oacute;n, para luego ocuparlo sin pensar en todas las consecuencias que tendr&aacute; dicha acci&oacute;n)&#8230; El nivel de elaboraci&oacute;n de su explicaci&oacute;n de la obra da buena cuenta del alcance \u00abcr&iacute;tico\u00bb que &eacute;sta pueda tener. Es tambi&eacute;n el caso de <em>Negociated\/ Double<\/em> (Negociado\/Doble), una larga frase extra&iacute;da de un texto indeterminado de Pierre Bourdieu y tratada como elemento de una conversaci&oacute;n de pasillo: \u00abUmneoliberlismkindofy ouknowpromotessorto commetialisation-uhitstrengthensumtheyouknowcommercialkindofpole&#8230;\u00bb. Otra de sus estrategias \u00abcr&iacute;ticas\u00bb es, como dec&iacute;amos, la construcci&oacute;n de esculturas met&aacute;licas policromadas, similares a vallas o jaulas, con (de nuevo, vagas) referencias a los conflictos obreros en la &eacute;poca <em>postfordista<\/em>. Como el propio Gillick afirma a prop&oacute;sito de <em>Buffalo Structure, <\/em>un encargo privado de similares caracter&iacute;sticas realizado en la hom&oacute;nima ciudad americana: \u00abThe work is designed to reveal itself slowly within the landscape and constructed specifically for the location. (&#8230;) The work reveals <em>a critical interest<\/em> in the legacy of painted metal sculpture and the way such work shifts meaning and potential when produced while reconsidering notions of production in a post-industrial environment such as Buffalo\u00bb (sic) (La obra ha sido dise&ntilde;ada para revelarse lentamente dentro del paisaje y ha sido construida espec&iacute;ficamente para el emplazamiento. (&#8230;) La obra revela un <em>inter&eacute;s cr&iacute;tico <\/em>en el legado de la escultura de metal pintado y en la manera en que dicha obra trastoca su significado y su potencial al haber sido fabricada reconsiderando las nociones de la producci&oacute;n en un entorno postindustrial como Buffalo). Resulta intrigante plantearse de qu&eacute; modo puede una escultura \u00abrevelarse lentamente en un paisaje\u00bb y de qu&eacute; modo llega a generarse por s&iacute; sola una norma de lectura pl&aacute;stica \u00abevidente\u00bb de la obra, a partir de un elemento tan ambivalente como una valla met&aacute;lica (la mera descripci&oacute;n de un modo de producci&oacute;n no conlleva necesariamente una toma de posici&oacute;n dentro del juego de fuerzas antag&oacute;nicas que anima dicho modo de producci&oacute;n). Si intentamos hacer una lectura fenomenol&oacute;gica de esa supuesta revelaci&oacute;n espont&aacute;nea del objeto, comprobaremos que esta se encuentra con el obst&aacute;culo de su propia forma de codificaci&oacute;n -una codificaci&oacute;n cuyo funcionamiento Gillick est&aacute; lejos de ignorar-. Lo que se revela, pues, es m&aacute;s bien la predominancia de la forma (integrada en una econom&iacute;a de intercambio estetizante) sobre el contenido. Las relaciones entre el modo de codificaci&oacute;n de la obra y su referente concreto son relaciones de sumisi&oacute;n -la forma (es decir la apariencia sensible), lejos de estar informada por la referencia, la aplasta, la ahoga-. La necesidad, para hacer legibles tales obras, de un dispositivo de mediaci&oacute;n cultural de tipo muse&iacute;stico restringe, por otra parte, el potencial comunicativo del objeto a un modo de transmisi&oacute;n perfectamente institucionalizado y, por supuesto, <em>filtrante. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Lo dicho hasta ahora sobre Buren y Gillick nos aproxima ya al centro neur&aacute;lgico de esta argumentaci&oacute;n. Como dec&iacute;amos, resulta ingenuo afirmar, como suger&iacute;a Benjamin Buchloh en 1980, que obras animadas por un presunto \u00abproyecto cr&iacute;tico\u00bb simplemente <em>fracasen<\/em> por culpa de la econom&iacute;a simb&oacute;lica y el sistema social de circulaci&oacute;n en que se inscriben. Puesto que ambos no solo acogen las obras, sino que asimismo, y antes que nada, las generan, los artistas responsables de su producci&oacute;n no pueden simular una posici&oacute;n de v&iacute;ctimas manipuladas. No estamos ante el fracaso de un proyecto cr&iacute;tico o negativo, sino ante el \u00ab&eacute;xito\u00bb de un proyecto tan <em>afirmativo<\/em> como <em>perverso<\/em>, relacionado con la incorporaci&oacute;n de la pr&aacute;ctica cr&iacute;tica al repertorio ornamental de un sistema simb&oacute;lico en el que la acci&oacute;n pol&iacute;tica solo puede hacerse visible como simulacro. Tal y como lo ha demostrado brillantemente Juan Luis Moraza, es necesario pasar de una concepci&oacute;n emp&iacute;rica o material del ornamento a una concepci&oacute;n estructural, pues no hay elementos ornamentales en s&iacute;, sino una <em>funci&oacute;n ornamental<\/em> del objeto e incluso de la acci&oacute;n art&iacute;stica -una funci&oacute;n ornamental potencialmente activa dondequiera que las relaciones entre los sujetos y su entorno est&eacute;n mediatizadas institucionalmente por un modelo espectacular-. \u00abSolo una complicidad social puede permitir la realizaci&oacute;n aun parcial de un proyecto de fusi&oacute;n entre arte y vida. Y es la inexistencia de esa complicidad social lo que conducir&aacute; al confinamiento disciplinar del arte, o a su traducci&oacute;n estrictamente formal. As&iacute;, la ret&oacute;rica vanguardista se vuelve m&aacute;s m&iacute;stica o m&aacute;s radical conforme desaparece la complicidad social, o la implicaci&oacute;n real en los acontecimientos. La fiesta revolucionaria y gozosa se ofrece como medio y m&eacute;dium para una reconciliaci&oacute;n (&#8230;). La extensi&oacute;n de lo ornamental se corresponde con la desvitalizaci&oacute;n de lo ornamental, que se ejemplifica en la sutileza de un papel de seda de Tatafiore, en la supuesta procacidad perfeccionista de Jeff Koons, como en el m&aacute;s crudo proyecto de Wodiczko sobre los indigentes que mueren de fr&iacute;o en las calles. La legitimidad de todos ellos es la trama del espacio liminar, ornamental, legal. La postmodernidad conlleva una asimilaci&oacute;n de todo como ornamento, y la admisi&oacute;n de la ilegitimidad de la ley&#8230;\u00bb (J. L. Moraza, <em>Ornamento y ley, <\/em>Cendeac, 2007).<\/p>\n<p>Con lo dicho hasta aqu&iacute;, hemos tratado de exponer con cierto detalle uno de los muchos malentendidos que siguen circulando en el medio art&iacute;stico acerca de la validez \u00abcr&iacute;tica\u00bb de ciertas pr&aacute;cticas, un malentendido que forma parte, sin duda, de una estrategia de legitimaci&oacute;n del entretenimiento y el simulacro como funciones principales de la cultura. Se reparar&aacute; r&aacute;pidamente en la paradoja que afecta por igual a este texto en cuanto que objeto \u00abcr&iacute;tico\u00bb, por muy literal que sea: su capacidad de dar lugar a un comportamiento consecuente en el lector est&aacute; limitada no solo por las condiciones de difusi&oacute;n del soporte en que aparece, sino m&aacute;s todav&iacute;a por la dificultad de toda reacci&oacute;n del espectador frente a un r&eacute;gimen normativo institucional extremadamente r&iacute;gido, cuya labor principal estriba en disimular permanentemente sus crisis. Perm&iacute;taseme, pues, concluir citando a Boris Buden, quien, tomando como base el nefasto legado de la sociedad estalinista, afirmaba recientemente en su art&iacute;culo \u00abCr&iacute;tica sin crisis, crisis sin cr&iacute;tica\u00bb (ver: http:\/\/transform.eipcp.net\/transversal\/0106\/buden\/es): \u00abLa cr&iacute;tica -bajo la forma de la autocr&iacute;tica comunista- fue utilizada (o abusada, si lo prefer&iacute;s) no para revelar la crisis y sus antagonismos e intervenir en ella (lo que hubiera constituido un acercamiento marxista cl&aacute;sico), sino, por el contrario, para ocultarla y, de esta manera, convertirla en permanente, esto es, para transformar o traducir las crisis en una suerte de normalidad. Esto es t&iacute;pico de la situaci&oacute;n actual: ni somos capaces de experimentar nuestro tiempo como crisis ni intentamos devenir en sujetos mediante el acto de la cr&iacute;tica. En tiempos de la modernidad cl&aacute;sica, la crisis siempre se experimentaba como una posibilidad concreta de ruptura y la cr&iacute;tica, como la ruptura en s&iacute; misma. Hoy, obviamente, ya no somos capaces de realizar esta experiencia. Ya no hay ning&uacute;n tipo de experiencia de interacci&oacute;n entre crisis y cr&iacute;tica. (&#8230;) El resultado es una cr&iacute;tica permanentemente ciega ante la crisis y una crisis permanentemente sorda frente a la cr&iacute;tica; en suma: &iexcl;una armon&iacute;a perfecta!\u00bb (traducci&oacute;n de Marcelo Exp&oacute;sito).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ornamental critique<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The battle to purify forms, one of modernity&#8217;s most common gestures, was fought mainly by denying the concept of the ornament. This denial unfolded both in the field of the supposedly autonomous arts (painting, sculpture, music) and in the realm of the functional arts (architecture, design). In that sense, Adolf Loos&#8217; famous essay, Ornament and Crime, from 1909, had a foundational character. In one of the main passages, Loos defied the <em>pulsional<\/em> tendency of the \u00abprimitive\u00bb man or child to tarnish his body or surroundings with inscriptions that in one way or another referred to his passions and elemental affections. According to the Austrian architect, the modern man was characterised by rejecting said forms of behaviour as signs of \u00abdegeneration.\u00bb As the climax of his reasoning, Loos proclaimed: \u00abI have found this truth that I give to the world: the evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects.\u00bb Loos&#8217; discourse clearly advocates a trend that verges towards the radical rationalisation that characterised the formalist period of the historical avant-gardes, and certified the death, especially in architecture, of Art Nouveau (\u00abJugendstil\u00bb or \u00abModern Style\u00bb). Likewise, other formulations of that same aesthetic discourse legitimised the predominance of geometric abstraction over other manifestations of \u00abadvanced\u00bb art, giving way to movements such as, first and foremost, Malevich&#8217;s Suprematism or Mondrian&#8217;s Neo-Plasticism.<\/p>\n<p>However, the representatives of these movements -albeit demonstrating their capacity to achieve an extreme degree of pictorial purity (Malevich&#8217;s absolute white, pure essential painting bereft of ornament)- were not able to rid themselves of the subjective-narcissist residue of art taken as an expression of genius, which made them prone to a certain type of mysticism. After a few decades, some schools, in Europe and America, undertook the deconstruction of pictorial activity in general through automated and extremely rigid behaviours that referred to the mechanical and mass production of images and objects and to the decorative servitude of <em>painting <\/em>in general. In France, the group composed by Daniel Buren, Niele Toroni, Olivier Mosset and Michel Parmentier used repetitive and reductive pictorial practices to develop a critical artistic process. It is interesting to analyse the historical evolution of said process, at least partially, precisely given the manner in which said criticism has been assimilated by the artistic context. The evolution of the first of these artists, Daniel Buren, after the group split in 1967, is especially relevant if we observe the extent to which there has been a reversion of the \u00abcritical\u00bb impulse that seemed to encourage their artistic quest from the upstart. Said impulse was more or less explicit in Buren&#8217;s first street interventions, the famous <em>affichages sauvages<\/em> of posters bearing his now famous 8,7 cm-wide stripes. By choosing a single visual message as a recurring element in his interventions, Buren revealed a slightly problematic character, based primarily on the aforementioned denial of pictorial content and on the reference to nothing but a mere painted surface (which was, in addition, produced industrially). Each time Buren&#8217;s \u00abtrademark\u00bb appeared somewhere in the city, it did not only cover (with certain symbolical violence) a specific pre-existing message (an advert or propaganda), but also revealed, in the specific location, the strategic character of the use of signs in public spaces. However, nobody can escape the fact that, by using those walls, Buren was falling back on a completely ordinary promotional tool; it was a type of advert, an \u00abunruly\u00bb pursuit of notoriety that demonstrated quasi-immediate effectiveness and attracted a great amount of attention from the art world towards this creator. It was back in the year 1968 -an inaugural year for the history of post-modern advertising- and the growing requests for interventions in galleries and museums started to turn the \u00abrevolutionary\u00bb Buren into what he is today: an interior decorator with an irremediable penchant for Mannerism. That did not stop the artist from asserting, that same year: \u00abEverything superficial should be transformed constantly; since the infrastructure remains intact, evidently nothing is modified fundamentally&#8230; Art is actually the most beautiful ornament in society and not a warning sign for society, as it should have been and never was.\u00bb<\/p>\n<p>As of the Seventies, Buren started to decline his <em>motif <\/em>in all types of museum and urban spaces, occupying both functional or interstitial areas (corridors, stairwells, chairs) and marginal surfaces and <em>signaletics <\/em>(banners and flags, nautical sails, windows, etc.). The specific capacity for designation or <em>indexation<\/em> created in these locations by implementing an identifiable sign within allowed Buren to specialise in a form of so-called \u00abimmanent criticism\u00bb through his onsite work, a critique that Buren, with masterly rhetoric skill, has almost always managed to combine with a maximum degree of neutrality&#8230; This explains his commercial success and the trust that all types of, eminently not neutral, institutions have placed in Buren for over three decades.<\/p>\n<p>In his essay entitled \u00abThe Museum and the Monument: Daniel Buren&#8217;s Les couleurs\/Les formes\u00bb (1981), Benjamin Buchloh established the following: \u00abAs Buren&#8217;s work adds surfaces onto architectural surfaces without actually altering the architectural elements, it enters the discourse that is traditionally defined as &#8216;decoration.&#8217; However, Buren&#8217;s concern for &#8216;decoration&#8217; is not simply the result of the painterly origins of his work or an inherent incapacity of his tools to come to terms with architectural issues, but it is a logical consequence of his recognition that art production is innately bound to the realm of superstructure (i.e., decoration, fashion, etc.). (&#8230;) &#8216;Decoration&#8217; in Buren&#8217;s work therefore reveals the inherent tendency of the artist&#8217;s production to falsify its own intentions: the work of art perpetually pretends to alter material conditions and always ends up condemned by being reduced to a superstructural or cultural embellishment (&#8230;).\u00bb Buchloh concludes: \u00abThe artist as deliberate decorator of the status quo, as a conscious purveyor of aesthetic and intellectual fashions, as a producer of superstructural changes, seems to realise cynically and with passive resignation the functions his work has in fact been reduced to.\u00bb Buchloh&#8217;s defeatist vision in this text is positively naive: once again it is the old Frankfurtian fable of an art animated by a revolutionary pathos which, on materialising in social space, is corrupted by the circuit and the symbolical economy in which it is inscribed, although it takes part in its \u00abprogress.\u00bb Funnily -and luckily for him- the arguments which Buchloh aimed to use to defend Buren&#8217;s work are ambiguous and reversible; they can also be used to attack it, to the same extent that Buren himself, by condemning the \u00absuperficial\u00bb character of modern art, is right <em>only if <\/em>the condemnation also affects, first and foremost, the work itself. After spending a few minutes looking at any of Buren&#8217;s interventions in public spaces, it is easy to realise the extent to which said argumentative reversibility has allowed him to create a formalist oeuvre which, despite its desire to be shown in infrastructural spaces and not on the walls or exhibition surfaces, has not stopped growing in superficiality&#8230; The profound Mannerism, for instance, of his latest intervention at the Mus&eacute;e National Picasso in Paris reveals that Buren has gone from falling within the modernist historical line to being bound by the classicist tradition of French courtesan creators like Le N&ocirc;tre o Le Brun (although that does not mean that Buren is not a prominent creator within this courtesan tradition, quite the opposite, in fact). The art Buren has displayed at the Mus&eacute;e Picasso contains the chef&#8217;s staple ingredients, cooked <em>in situ<\/em>: glass windows that alternate chromatic elements between glasses and stripes, his speciality, all duplicated by an enormous mirror that splits the building&#8217;s fa&ccedil;ade in two, thus reflecting one of its halves and concealing the other. It would be vacuous to attack the work in detail as if Buren had achieved with it a particularly relevant level of aesthetic hollowness or celebration. Indeed, what is most surprising about this travelling illusionist and charlatan is the perseverance with which he always markets the same self-legitimising potion to the corresponding institution. By proving that art is not only a meaningless banality (without further importance than a floral print), but also a <em>necessary <\/em>banality, Buren fuels the exasperating nihilism that undermines contemporary artistic production.<\/p>\n<p>As we were saying, the attempt to <em>critically <\/em>occupy the ornamental space results in an effort that is not only ineffective, but also <em>apologetic. <\/em>Returning to the obsolete, vaguely Marxist, polarity between infrastructure and superstructure, we could say that any work that manifests a surface (i.e., a \u00abvisibility\u00bb) can be recycled as \u00abdecoration\u00bb by the symbolical economy it attempts to attack. The emphatic invasion of ornamental spaces is, in fact, ornamental and forces the artist undertaking it to embrace an ambivalent commitment that could be summarised as \u00abcynicism,\u00bb or in other words, as a jovial and masochistic tolerance of something he hates. It is the notion that Buchloh defined as the \u00abinherent tendency of the artist&#8217;s production to falsify its own intentions,\u00bb that is, the propensity to question himself, or to support self-castration, is certainly a neutralising argument that enjoys major political efficacy: by criticising the ineffectiveness of the work of art and by making it an artistic theme, the artist can take part in the system he is actually criticising with peace of mind. Similarly, politicising a work of art legitimises its \u00abindecency.\u00bb At this point, we should perhaps quote the words that the narrator from Chris Marker&#8217;s<em> Le Tombeau d&#8217;Alexandre<\/em> (The Last Bolshevik, 1993), pronounces at one point in the film: \u00abThat year in Moscow the talk of the town was: &#8216;How far had Metropolitan Pitirim collaborated with the KGB?&#8217; -Not <em>had he<\/em>, but <em>how far<\/em>. Like a Welles character, like Kane or Macbeth, how far can you get along with evil. &#8216;Use a long spoon to sup with the devil&#8217;. Did you wear out the length of your lives calculating the length of the spoon, only to discover that there was no supper?\u00bb<\/p>\n<p>I have used Daniel Buren&#8217;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 \u00abcritical\u00bb function, and is connected to what Hal Foster, in his essay <em>Design &amp; Crime<\/em> (2002, a title that paraphrased Adolf Loos&#8217; 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. \u00abOnce upon a time in mass production, the commodity was its own ideology, the Model t its own advertising. (&#8230;) 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.\u00bb The superimposition of packages and the corresponding \u00abdetachment\u00bb 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 \u00abpolitical orientation.\u00bb Should we, therefore, join Buchloh in his consideration of the role of the \u00abcritical\u00bb artist as the necessary victim of a cultural complot? Or should we acknowledge the artist&#8217;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 \u00abuseless furniture.\u00bb<\/p>\n<p>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 <em>superficiality <\/em>(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&#8217;s revolutions. Different parts of his project <em>Construcci&oacute;n de uno <\/em>(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 <em>Construcci&oacute;n de uno<\/em> (which encompassed an exhibition and a book <em>in progress<\/em>) aims to analyse \u00abhow to behave once a [car] factory has closed\u00bb, based on the fact that \u00abthe former &#8216;producers&#8217; choose to return to their place of work and re-start the construction of ideas rather than car-sized objects\u00bb, 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 <em>A diagram of the factory once the workers had cut extra windows in the walls<\/em>, 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 <em>text structures<\/em> (as defined by the artist), entitled <em>Four levels of exchange<\/em>. According to Gillick, each of the elements referred once again to the development of the book <em>Construcci&oacute;n de uno<\/em> and, notably, to a specific part of the project: \u00abWhere 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\u00bb. What seems to be a manner of infiltrating a \u00abresistant\u00bb discourse in a conflictive context of corporate promotion (through a cultural mission) is automatically reversed and acts as a form of \u00abcollaborationist\u00bb 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 <em>coaching<\/em> -a sort of concrete poetry with paralysing effects. If the artwork&#8217;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&#8217;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 <em>aestheticisation<\/em> of politics -an aestheticisation that is now completed under a liberal, ironic model.<\/p>\n<p>Gillick recurrently uses the aforementioned type of textual devices in his art. In these artworks, the discourse is systematically used from an <em>acritical distance <\/em>that measures the ineffectiveness of the work and its fragmentation into a social sphere of non-debate. That is, for instance, the case of installations such as <em>Exterior days<\/em>.<em> <\/em>Here the inscriptions \u00abok, I&#8217;m sitting now on a ridge\u00bb y \u00abok, I&#8217;m standing now on a ridge\u00bb attempt to function, as Gillick himself states in his \u00abvisual archive,\u00bb as \u00aba critique of the tendency of dominant cultures to nominate a space of occupation, and then go and occupy it without thinking through all the consequences of this action\u00bb&#8230; The level of elaboration of his explanation of the work demonstrates its \u00abcritical\u00bb scope. It is also the case of <em>Negociated\/Double<\/em>, a long sentence extracted from an unfinished text by Pierre Bourdieu which he uses as an element of conversation in a corridor: \u00abUmneoliberlismkindofyouknowpromotessortofcommetialisation-uhitstrengthensumtheyouknowcommercialkindofpole&#8230;\u00bb Another of his \u00abcritical\u00bb strategies is, as aforementioned, the construction of polychrome metal sculptures, like fences or cages, with (once again, vague) references to workers conflicts in the Post-Ford era. As Gillick himself stated about <em>Buffalo Structure, <\/em>a similar private commission undertaken in the homonymous us city: \u00abThe work is designed to reveal itself slowly within the landscape and constructed specifically for the location. (&#8230;) The work reveals <em>a critical interest<\/em> in the legacy of painted metal sculpture and the way such work shifts meaning and potential when produced while reconsidering notions of production in a post-industrial environment such as Buffalo\u00bb (<em>sic<\/em>). It is intriguing to consider how a sculpture can \u00abreveal itself slowly within the landscape\u00bb and how a norm for the \u00abevident\u00bb artistic interpretation of the work can be generated spontaneously, based on an element as ambivalent as a metal fence (the mere description of a mode of production does not necessarily involve taking a stance in the balance of conflicting powers that encourage said mode of production). If we attempt to undertake a phenomenological interpretation of the so-called spontaneous revelation of the object, we see that it encounters the obstacle of its own codification -a coding whose operation Gillick does anything but ignore. Instead, what it actually reveals is the predominance of the form (integrated in an aestheticising exchange economy) over the content. The connection between the way in which the work is coded and its specific referent are based on submission -the form (i.e., the sensitive appearance), far from being formed by the reference, squashes it, drowns it. The fact that these works only become legible by means of a museum-based cultural mediation device in point of fact reduces the communicative potential of the object to a form of transmission that is perfectly institutionalised and, obviously, <em>screenable. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>These considerations on Buren and Gillick bring us towards the neuralgic centre of this line of argument. As aforementioned, it would be na&iuml;ve to say, as Benjamin Buchloh suggested in 1980, that works brought about by a supposed \u00abcritical project\u00bb simply <em>failed <\/em>because of the symbolical economy and the social system of circulation they fall within. Since both do not only accommodate the work but, also, generate them, the artists responsible for their production cannot simulate the position of manipulated victims. This is not the failure of a critical or negative project; instead, this is the \u00absuccess\u00bb of a project that is as <em>positive <\/em>as it is <em>perverse<\/em>, which is linked to the incorporation of the critical practice into the ornamental repertoire of a symbolical system within which political action can only become visible as simulation. As Juan Luis Moraza has brilliantly demonstrated, there needs to be a shift from an empirical or material conception of the ornament to a structural conception, since elements are not ornamental in themselves; they have an <em>ornamental function <\/em>or even an artistic action -an ornamental function that is potentially active wherever relationships between subjects and the environment are influenced institutionally by a spectacular model. \u00abOnly social complicity can allow for the, albeit partial, realisation of a project based on the fusion of art and life. The non-existence of that social complicity will lead to the disciplinary confinement of art, or to its strictly formal translation. Thus, the avant-garde rhetoric becomes more mystical or more radical with the disappearance of social complicity, or through its involvement in events. Revolutionary and content festivities appear as a medium for reconciliation (&#8230;). The extension of the ornamental corresponds to draining the life from the ornamental, and is illustrated in the subtlety of Tatafiore tissue paper, or in Jeff Koons&#8217; supposed perfectionist lewdness, or in Wodiczko&#8217;s crude project about homeless vagrants dying of cold on the streets. Their legitimacy is the scenario of a preliminary, ornamental, legal space. Post-Modernity involves the assimilation of everything as ornament, and the acceptance of the illegitimacy of the law&#8230;\u00bb (J. L. Moraza, <em>Ornamento y ley <\/em>[Ornament and Law],<em> <\/em>Cendeac, 2007).<\/p>\n<p>These ideas have attempted to expound on one of the many misunderstandings that currently circulate the art realm on the issue of the \u00abcritical\u00bb validity of certain practices, a misunderstanding that is, obviously, part of a strategy that strives to achieve the legitimisation of entertainment and simulation as the main functions of culture. Readers will soon notice the paradox that equally affects this text as a \u00abcritical\u00bb object, however literal: its capacity to trigger a consequent behaviour in the reader is limited not only by the conditions of the dissemination contributed by the support on which it appears, but also, and more importantly, by the difficulty of the reaction of each viewer when faced with an extremely rigid normative institutional regime, whose main task lies in permanently concealing its crises. Thus, I would like to conclude by quoting Boris Buden, who, basing his writings on the disastrous legacy of the Stalinist society, recently stated in his article \u00abCriticism without crisis, crisis without criticism\u00bb (see: http:\/\/transform.eipcp.net\/transversal\/0106\/buden\/en): \u00abCriticism -in the guise of communist self-criticism- was used (or if you like misused) not to disclose the real crisis and its antagonisms, and to intervene in it (which would have been a classical Marxist approach), but on the contrary to hide it and in this way to make it permanent, that is, to transform or translate crisis in some sort of normality. This is typical for today&#8217;s situation: neither are we able to experience our time as crisis nor do we try to become subjects through an act of criticism. In the time of classical modernism, crisis was always experienced as an actual possibility of a break and criticism as this break itself. Today we are obviously not able to make such an experience any more. There is no experience whatsoever of an interaction between crisis and critique. (&#8230;)The result is a permanent criticism, which is blind for the crisis, and a permanent crisis, which is deaf for the criticism, in short -a perfect harmony!\u00bb<\/p>\n<p align=\"right\">Translation: Laura F. Farhall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Autor: Manuel Cirauqui Revista: L\u00c3\u0081PIZ Revista Internacional de Arte n\u00c2\u00ba 250-251 La lucha por la depuraci&oacute;n de las formas, uno de los lugares comunes de la modernidad, tuvo uno de sus principales frentes en la negaci&oacute;n del ornamento. Esta negaci&oacute;n se extendi&oacute; por igual en el &aacute;mbito de las artes supuestamente aut&oacute;nomas (pintura, escultura, m&uacute;sica) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[444,351,400],"class_list":["post-46159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articulos","tag-arte","tag-articulo-html","tag-lapiz-revista-internacional-de-arte"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48384,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46159\/revisions\/48384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}