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After several negotiations with the Department of Comedy at the court
of NordRheinRegion and in coordination with those in London, I have succeeded
in making the treatise at hand - a fictive interview with the once highly
acclaimed, but now deservedly long-forgotten writer, painter and purveyor
of the court Sir von Delmont - accessible in all detail and in a limited
edition, solely for study purposes.
Delmont wrote this 'conversation' with an imaginary son at the turn of
the year 2017/18 and shortly before his flight to exile. As if this were
a last rebellion against the already impending social ostracism, he had
also been putting himself out to the fringes of the court financially
with the counter-economy of his fashion company. And he sold us all an
idea which he had once stolen from his friend Dillemuth, as has been proved
by a manuscript which recently surfaced after long being lost.
In order to shed light into some dark episodes of the past, this publication
may thus be an informative example of how thoroughly false and coarse
so-called 'critical' art was prior to the turn of the century for all
impresarios, art-mediators, curators, house and court tutors, and masters
of ceremony of the institutes. Only through objectifying distance and
the healing effect of time do we reach historical awareness of the extent
of the derisive nastiness to which our dear art was still subject to at
the turn of the century, with what bitter irony and deliberately biased
account of history our courts were ridiculed in face of their patronage.
THE SPIRIT OF THE WHOLE
Isn't art, nature like the tree, a second nature parallel to the tree?
Is it not exactly art's independence from the changing political and social
methods of our fast-moving age, it's inner calmness, its outward growth,
it's imminent rhythm which makes it become nature, so that art becomes
the nature of contemplation? Hasn't the artist turned it out of himself
and thrown it into this world, innocent and only meaningful within itself,
before the systems created by man?
And like the tree reaches for the sky and grows out of the earth, art's
destiny, too, is to aim high. And still, how worldly art is! But beauty
is sublime above all purpose, and only he who reveres it can embellish
himself with it.
Well then, he is properly advised!
For isn't it the tree's destiny, too, and equally fine, if the planks
cut from it cover a war ship or a table of a circle of happily drinking
friends?
And don't our houses and courts preserve and nurture these two natures?
It is they who create reserves and offer protection with a mighty hand
for the good of mankind. Spaces of art and nature for recreation of the
hard-working, for erudition of the sensible, for education of the minors!
And their role as patrons and fostering friends should again be emphasized
here, because the tolerance of COIN towards the enemies of all kinds of
sophisticated culture is indeed necessary. May the marauding gangs, the
pest to business locations and the economies of resistance finally bow
their heads in humility and thankfulness!
But let's proceed: How many banks have since then made their treasures
available to the public as well? Here, the virtues of the old democracy
finally become real! The people create for themselves the medicine they
need; or at least they grope for it. In the diversity of art we desire
to discover the diversity of nature for the benefit and for the health
of the community. Because, how many do not have the chance to ever enter
the reserves of the great mother, which we guard and preserve!
Wasn't it thanks to the circumspect influence of COIN that all progressive
powers of economy and theology were once brought together and the idea
of one prospering world was carried to all countries? Wasn't it precisely
COIN that, at the turn of the century, did so much good by consolidating
its body and thus distributing the wealth of the first world to all worlds?
And only the people misguided by false hopes grumbled because they were
asked to give - but nonetheless, today the gardens blossom!
Alas! Delmont was wrong!
But COIN demonstrated even toward the agitator its magnanimity and forgave
him, because at the time only few dared to project their weary thoughts
into the future.
Because now, the autonomy of the fragmented and unorganized societies,
which Delmont demanded, has become a natural right in the multicultural
realm of COIN. It is only in art at court, however, that this autonomy
finally becomes real! This is not least the achievement of out great court
artists who are ennobeled in all their civic freedom, chosen to cast their
weaving lines and ameliorate the taste at the courts each season.
Thus, within the differentiated locations, our beautiful culture has established
its own independence, its subjective and individualized houses: What would
the London Court be without the capricious frivolities, expressive jokes
and drastic charades? What would NordRheinRegion be without the subtle
attention given to the sensitive stroke, the seismographic line, and the
highly-differentiated gestures? What would the Rhein-Main location be
without the representative glitter, the entertaining banter of bankers'
and king's children?
Alas! In this respect, too, Delmont was wrong!
An aging actor of the 20th century! And hasn't he himself succumbed to
blatant cultural pessimism with his works? For far too long, the always
only worried educativo-criticismo had taken on the role of being the conscience
of history! What boredom situated between the ignorance of artistic practice
and narrow-minded impatience! And then the melancholic dissatisfaction
of the so-called 'Autonomous Societies'! Why are they so envious of any
pleasure at court? Perhaps these fanatics of a hundred and fifty percent
faultless life are aggravated when our artists accomplish something totally
meaningless, totally beautiful?
And should I now again hear the word 'Africa'? As if, since the first
resolution of the year 2021, everyone was not free to pack their bags
and search for the anarchy of freedom as they understand it in the desert?
He who wants to leave can leave!
But let us remember that it was thanks to the divine mercy of COIN that
all debts of this poorhouse were remitted and all contracts are now terminated!
Delmont's ashes, too, were asked to be brought there by his relatives.
But we passed them to the winds! As an example of the ridiculous resistance
of an old system which is dispersed and only held together in these loose
leafs serving each new generation as an instructive warning.
It is only because we today recognize the truth of COIN that we do not
become frightened when reading the 'little stage play' at hand. For, how
drastically this sinister propaganda painting depicts a rule fantasized
as threatening! Nothing but sick fears, distorted faces at the turning-point
in history!
We are therefore thankful after reading it that this nightmare is only
the evil product of a rotten brain, that the better system has in the
end prevailed due to the wisdom and circumspect of COIN and the beauty
and liberal power of its money which brightens up our age.
DÜRER AS LEADER
Today's arts and crafts have, in their hunting through styles, well-tried
all ages and peoples. "We have the pieces in our hands, but alas
the spiritual bond is banned", Goethe already said in his day. But
as long as a people are still vital, they cannot withdraw from the necessity
of great mental shifts on their inside, as the days of objectivity are
again nearing an end, with subjectivity, instead, knocking at the door.
One turns to art!
It therefore does not suffice that Germans newly discover themselves as
corporate citizens and consumers in a European house. They should also
discover themselves as humans: Germany, which advanced above all other
European and non-European nations in the field of military and social
reforms should now also be a forerunner in the field of artistic and spiritual
reform; and it can only do this if it acknowledges theoretically and practically
what the content of its being, what the content of art, what the content
of the world is: INDIVIDUALISM
Just like one can discern the dominating direction of the wind by looking
at a blade of grass, the spiritual change of climate taking place in spiritual
Germany shows that the 'intellectual' as type is disappearing from Germany's
stage of art as well as from the German arts sections in newspapers, making
room for the 'artist'. It is only the artist that makes use of the royal
right of subjectivity.
"He who does not know where he is going will get the furthest",
Cromwell declared, thus expressing the fundamental essence of individualism.
To possess individuality means possessing a soul; the individuality of
a human is his soul. This is the crucial point from which all artistic
efforts must commence.
A character that does not contradict itself is no character. The German,
too, will have to contradict himself, as it were, to meet the demands
of his higher vocation. He will have to make his individuality - the seemingly
free and lawless - a law; he will have to construct himself. Because individuality
only has a useful effect when it is no longer subject to personal arbitrariness,
when it is fitted in to the large structure of a people and of world events;
when it serves. Thus, the artist shall now serve.
His program means lacking a program; and this is the most artistic of
all programs, it is basically the only true artistic program. That it
is also a good, and perhaps the only good political program is something
Cromwell proved with his quoted statement, as did a number of other statesmen.
It is, foremost, in the true sense of the word a German program; it is
therefore suitable to let the bell screech not only for a coming age of
art but for the entire German spiritual life of the present.
Only the spirit can conjure up the spirit; Faust descended to the mothers;
the present-day German must ascend to his fathers - to find the key to
the future.
Dürer as leader, Rembrandt as educator, Baselitz, Richter, Kiefer,
Kirkeby and their school of the turn of the century as examples. They
shall be models, but not only for those who know but for those who are
adept, not only as food for the gourmet but for the core of the people.
In political times we had to look to political heroes, in artistic times
we look to artistic ones.
It will, time and time again, depend on imitating these men not only in
regard to what is fleeting, to their special achievement, but to what
is lasting, to their inner convictions.
An artist or an art movement can be imitated as little as an apple or
a pear can be produced chemically; both categories of things grow only
out of themselves.
"He who is missing himself can only be cured by prescribing him his
self", the deep-thinking and deep-feeling Novalis states; translated
into modern German this would read: "He who suffers from objectivity
can only be cured by prescribing him subjectivity".
Triviality, too, has its rules; and they run, harmonically enough, parallel
to the rules of geniality. In this case both proclaim only the good, they
promise deliverance from the digital age, they announce a return to color
and zest for life, to unity and refinement, to intimacy and inwardness.
REMBRANDT AS EDUCATOR
The scholar is essentially international, the artist national,
and this is the basis for the supremacy of the latter over the first.
The battle between spirit and letter is very old, the battle between image
and letter is newer and every German European should take sides here,
as our hereditary culture is about to ramify, book or picture is the motto,
with a third excluded. One is inclined to say that the decision is already
contained in the word "Bildung" itself. Any correctly understood
education is shaping, forming, creative and therefore artistic.
"Humanity, nationality, peculiarity of the tribe, family characteristics,
individuality form a pyramid, the tip of which is closer to heaven than
its base", Paul de la Garde states. This great and far-reaching principle
is the starting-point and the goal of present-day, as well as past and
future, spiritual life, because the human is opposed to the barbarian.
It therefore became necessary in view of the loss of individuality in
a global structure to understand regional characteristics of the locations
as precondition for identity and individuality of values, people and goods.
The aim was to produce regional uniqueness and act globally; after all,
what would Regio be without artistic Actio, what a detail without a more
comprehensive cultural coherence embedding the individual in a tradition
of language, emotions, and thought?
Has the course been properly set for this? Is it not the administrative
unit Germany, the country with the highest number of locational advantages,
where the wage-earnings-ratio is the most favorable and the local color
of cultural heritage still shines the brightest? In competition between
the houses and due to our positive relations to the Japanese courts, to
the locations in Austria-Hungary and Italy, this new Germany has not only
gained supremacy in the European House but attained global fame.
Therefore, the true artist cannot be local enough. A healthy and truly
flourishing development of our German cultural life can only be expected
if it separates and structures itself into most clearly distinguished,
geographical, regional, local and natural schools of art. Decentralization
is what is needed, not centralization.
Wasn't it the family genealogies and the recipes of the workshop and of
taste passed down from generation to generation that played such an important
role in the fine ramifications and expansion of our artist tribe? It is,
for example, also a family of tachists imaginable which reproduces itself
over the centuries passing on their family myths, family trees, secrets
of the brush stroke, of hatching and of color etc.
Don't the notorious critics perceive that the schools of a Dürer
and Rembrandt flare up anew again and again over centuries and in their
tradition of craftsmanship (on the one hand) and sensibility (intuitive
vastness of emotion) prevail over short-lived styles and fashions because
they were always capable of shining up again in the darkness of the art
of the day?
And then, wasn't it just more than a century ago that art freed itself
from the corvée of objects and, like a phoenix, rose out of the
restraints of contentualism of an old world to weave its abstract EGO
into the fabric of modernism, up to this very day, in which this art shines
at court and in all its houses?
Thus, in each and every season, it is possible for our new arts to embellish
with the various styles and patterns the yearly collections, discourses
and policies and give them the respective topical elegance. Just like
a certain perfume delights from season to season the social field of the
courts anew with novel and secret mixtures of aromatic essences.
Alas! And so Delmont was wrong.
Marienburg, July 2034
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