Form and Communication in My Art Work

Leonardo, Vol. 2, pp. 279-282. PergarnonPress 1969. Printed in Great Britain FORM AND COMMUNICATION IN MY ART WORK Norman Narotzky* Art is a means of communication between men and always has been since its origin. But it is communication by plastic means. My own ideas and emotions are formed in visual terms and I must use visual means to communicate them. That is why I paint. Art has the sensuous power to directly affect the feelings, but, I believe, it must go beyond this. It must engage the intellect at the same time and affectthe emotions through the mind. Today, much of art is withdrawing from this engagement with man’s intelligenceand retreating into a mere play of technical effects. As technology dominates it, it is becoming less human and some of the current creations seem almost to have been made by a machine rather than a man. Individual personality is disappearing as is the influenceof the human mind and hand on the raw material to be shaped. Art is becoming a non-human object that exists without reason or a machine to dazzle the senses without further implications [l]. It does not engage the viewer as a complete human being because his intellect is not touched or because only his intellect is touched. When art is interested merely in pure formal relations-art for art’s sake-it becomes manneristic , a problem of style or technique. When it provokes the intellect without regard to form, it ceases to be art and becomes pure communication or language. In my own work, I am trying to synthesize these two indispensable qualities of art: form and communication. I want it to reflect my ideas, my personality. I also want it to be beautifully fashioned and to look as if it could only have been created by a human being. It should be well made, elaborated lovingly by hand. An important aspect of the artist is the artisan, the craftsman. To eliminate the artist’s personal touch is to eliminate one of the fundamental values of a work of art as an object constructed by man. My work must reflect the human process by which it was made. I will use whatever materials are necessary to express my ideas but these will be manipulated and transformed by me. The collage will be cut or torn, wrinkled or smooth,pasted down and painted over. The paint will be carefully built *Artist living at Corcega 196, Barcelona 11, Spain. (Received 12February 1969.) up in layers of transparent and opaque color to give it the depth, richness and texture that can only be achieved in this way. Or it will be laid on freely and spontaneously if the theme so demands. All this gives the painting a human quality which is part of what I want to communicate. I use machine-made images-photographs and reproductions-when they are necessary. The photograph has a certain presence different from that of the painted image. The photograph objectively reproduces reality, it is like a piece of the real world introduced into the composition. The painted picture, on the other hand, no matter how realistically rendered, is always a subjective reflection of the artist’s personality. These different types of images confront the observer with a contrast between pure objective reality and a subjective interpretation of reality. When I employ these means, it is not through a desire to shock by the disparity of technique, but because I need this contrast of image to express my meaning [2, 31. In ‘Isabel la Catolica’, photographic and painted images are combined to create an a-temporal and intrarealistic vision of events. Past and present, space and time are integrated in a plastic denunciation of racial, religious and political persecution, centered in the queen who installed the Inquisition in Spain. Images of Adolph Hitler, anti-negro rioters, Senator Joseph McCarthy, neo-Nazis in America, arejuxtaposed with those of the Inquisitor, his tortured victims and a view of an Auto de Fe with burning heretics. Among these, wearing the yellow robe of the condemned, burns the crucified Christ, one more victim of man’s intolerance and persecutions-many carried out in his...