If you have been a faithful reader of this rambling since the beginning, or if you have dug through it to see what indiscretions against the required thoughts of this fifteen minutes I have committed in my past, you may remember that forty years ago I chose St. Chad as my patron because he had been educated in a great tradition that was making way for the big new thing, and he made his way through the birth pains of an entirely new world. In Chad's case, his education had been in the oral tradition of the Celtic monks, and the big new thing was books imported from Rome. In my case, my education had been in the bookish tradition, and the big new thing is instant electric connectivity. I am trying to make my way through the birth pains of another entirely new world, but the changes have been greater, as often have the pains, that I could imagine forty years ago.
My other guide, Virgil through what sometimes seem eight layers of the inferno, sometimes Beatrice through what seems like at least potential levels of paradise, has most often been Marshall McLuhan. I have tried to pay attention to McLuhan's advice that to understand the future, we need to look at art. The past few days I have been reading Pierre Cabanne's Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, and I have come more than ever to appreciate McLuhan's guidance, and to realize that we indeed are living in Duchamps's 1917 future.
R. Mutt's Fountain was entered in The Society of Independent Artists' show that year at the Grand Central Palace in New York, but was never actually seen at the show. Duchanp later said he thought that was the best thing that could happen to it. Duchamp was, or claimed to be, a fan of chance. But Fountain was famous enough to be photographed by Alfred Stieglitz, and 'duplicated' for the Tate Modern. And in an interesting but perhaps prophetic twist, some critics have claimed that it was really the 'work' of an unknown female artist, because of course it must have been. Duchamp said it could be considered art because he had 'chosen' it, but he signed it with a pseudonym because it came from the Mott Ironworks, and also because it was a kinda of play allusion to Mutt and Jeff, since Duchamp was tall and thing.
Whatever the origins of Fountain and the other 'ready mades' that made Duchamp readily famous, they made the way for an understanding of art as 'chosen' rather than 'made', of function rather than ontology, of accident rather than essence.
There are few things new under the sun. Christian sacramental theology had long worked with such changes in categories, changing the ontology of a man by ordaining him priest, changing the substance of wine to the substance of blood, even though the accidents remained the same. Just as Christians had undergone a catechesis to be able to receive the sacrament,so art critics and collectors needed some initiation to understand the new art. Like theater, it sometimes required a certain suspension of belief.
Who now is an artist? Some one who either makes or chooses art. (Duchamp abandoned art and played a lot of chess.) I have had a little experience in this game myself. For years I was a serious journaler, and I illustrated my journals with a lot of different media. I usually worked in coffee shops, and people would ask me if I were an artist. I would say, no. But then I would occasionally want some money, and I would make 'art' and sell it as an 'artist'. I'm no Duchamp, but he sometimes did the same thing. And some of his works were done with the pseudonym Rrose Selavy, which sounds in French like 'eros, such is life.' (Few things in my life have been so confusing as eros.)
The road from 'choosing' a urinal and declaring it art has had many branches. Few are so weird as that taken by Gordon Matta-Clark, who cuts up buildings. But we are in a post-modern, deconstructionist time, aren't we? Or is it that we were until a few moments ago?
Once water becoming wine and urinals becoming fine art were part of a fairly small category of transformations. But now one pretty much choose to transform anything with no discernible change in function. I have friends who on Facebook are 'activists'; their activities consist of choosing memes to post. In the new global village, tribalism is once again important, but people are no longer born into tribes. They choose them. It's an odd thing that the tribes with the loudest chants are not those who add anything to the world, not the Mott's who actually make useful plumbing fixtures, but the Mutt's who make lists of the injustices their tribes have suffered, of signaling virtue by claiming oppression.
The more Virgil side of McLuhan said that in the electronic age we would once again become tribal. It's, I suspect, rather dangerous to speak of tribalism glibly, since there have been and are so many complicated variations of tribes. I don't want to be so presumptuous as many 'anthropologists' have been, but I would suggest that one of the major differences between electronic tribalism and pre-modern tribalism is choice. One needed to be born into or adopted by the Ojibway, or at least that's what one of my favourite childhood books, Ojibway Boy, claimed. I liked to pretend when I was ten that I was an Indian, but it was only a pretense. No one would lose his job if he said that I wasn't a real Ojibway even if I chose that as my preferred identity/pronoun. In the electronic age we choose tribes, often oddly enough on the levels of presumed oppression they have as their privilege. (Oddly enough, there was a bit of that sort of thinking in Ojibway Boy. The Ojibways were oppressed by the Iroquois, and that seemed to make the Ojibway boy more noble. I had hoped to find it and reread it, but it doesn't seem available at the usual sus outlets.) Alas,despite what some anthropologists have said about tribal societies, they are very often very warlike. Like deadly warlike. Like liking on Twitter or burning on Twitter warlike.
Many folk claim that we now live in the world or Orwell's 1984. But Big Brother has been atomized, replaced by thousands of droplets ready to report anyone who lets his mask down, especially if that one is from another tribe. Lilliputian fact checkers made it a Brave New World.
And what a Brave New World it is indeed. Dr. Moreau would be impressed. Now we not only 'choose' art, and 'choose' tribes, we 'choose' gender. I am not in any way dismissing or condemning people who really feel that they are another gender than what they appear outwardly. Indeed I have some very dear friends who are 'trans'. But it is important, I think, to recognize that they feel their gender is not a choice. But in the Brave New World, it is a choice. One can choose a chemical concoction to become whatever one wishes. It brings a whole other level of complexity to the question of nature versus nurture, or of free will versus determinism. It makes for many interesting questions to ponder, among which is if a woman won the olympic gold medal for the decathalon in 1976.
I included the part about Jenner's preparation because I suspect it points to what can so easily make our participation in the Brave New World in which we find ourselves: a dystopia, guided by Virgil, a noble understanding from the past, rather than in a paradise, guided by Beatrice. The past of Virgil has a sort of reality and universal accessibility that is not available for the potential future of Beatrice.
While writing this I have had a conversation with the parent of a young trans-gender friend who has always thought that his outward appearance as a female did not match his inward nature, but who is not anxious to add chemicals or surgery to the mix. I admit to having enough insufficient for much of an opinion about our brave new world. I keep trying to look at that world from a variety of perspectives. (Cue Cubism.) But if I have an opinion, it is that my opinion should not be forced on someone else. I can see R. Mott's urinal as a urinal, and I can see R. Mutt's Fountain as at least one of the most important art works of the twentieth century. This sometimes gives me a tribal dysphoria for which I am poorly prepared. Once again, the modesty of St. Chad, who did not choose to impose his privilege on others, nor to complain about the injustice imposed on him, seems to be as important a guide as any. I might choose to be the Archbishop of York. History might not even recognize me as the bishop of Litchfield.
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