Document généré le 28 sept. 2021 19:53 Vie des Arts Texts in English Volume 18, numéro 72, automne 1973 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/57808ac Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) La Société La Vie des Arts ISSN 0042-5435 (imprimé) 1923-3183 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer cet article (1973). Texts in English. Vie des Arts, 18(72), 90–102. Tous droits réservés © La Société La Vie des Arts, 1973 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ and confusion, yet it is a dramatic necessity in McLUHAN'S AESTHETIC EXPLORATIONS the way he approaches the problem of trying TEXTS IN to record the process of art in act rather than By Donald F. THEALL making the usual descriptive or analytical critical statements about it. Probably his first sensitivity to the way When Marshall McLuhan succeeded in that the arts and the world of everyday objects erasing the imaginary line which many thought and mass produced entertainment are inter­ ENGLISH existed between the arts and the mass media, locked came from a British artist, Wyndham he achieved the feat by using the insights of Lewis, whose critical writings related together artists and poets who had created the such diverse aspects of the life of the Twen­ contemporary aesthetic revolution. Ranging ties as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the length through McLuhan's works the reader dis­ of women's skirts, the films of Charlie covers references to Dadaism and Surrealism, Chaplin, the music hall, the Russian Ballet, the Bauhaus, Klee, Kandinsky. Picasso and Joyce, Stein, and the philosophy of Bergson. Le Corbusier — to select only a few of the Lewis held the view that all great art is satire many names and movements which suggest and McLuhan's way of seeing art as counter- THE ARTS AT THE TIME to McLuhan probes into how modern man environment, dialectical opposite or as break­ OF SIMULTANEOUSNESS can cope with his universe. These artists and through from breakdown is closely related to their insights are rooted in representatives of the way that Lewis saw the artist as enemy, By Andrée PARADIS other arts, especially writers and critics, like satirist, colossus attacking the pigmies. But Mallarmé, Valéry, Joyce, Eliot, Pound, and McLuhan elevated the hints of Lewis into a Beckett. McLuhan's chief inspiration, sym­ We learned recently of the appointment total vision of a media world and a world of bolism, leads to his artistic tastes and to his of Canadian professor and writer Marshall objects which could themselves be viewed conviction that the new arts would encom­ McLuhan by Pope Paul VI as special advisor as media being placed on the same level as pass the new technology, as Mallarmé had to the Vatican on communications. Once the works of art produced for the museum, attempted to encompass the effect of the more, following great societies and govern­ the record player or the library. In fact, he mass-produced newspaper and its headlines. ments, an appeal was made to the famous constantly hinted that these might well come His whole commitment to the artist is en­ expert who, without hesitation, predicted the to replace the others. meshed, however, in a historical knowledge coming of an electric liturgy for electric man. The result was that McLuhan became the and awareness of the arts — visual, verbal His short, striking formulas charm vast prophet of the art movements of the 50's, and and aural — which include the Gothic cathe­ audiences and have been heard around the 60's and 70's. When this phenomenon began dral, Renaissance iconography. Romantic land­ world for twenty years. A new sage of the to reach more popular consumption in events scape and a multitude of other historical present time who, from his headquarters, the such as Expo 67, McLuhan came to be des­ styles. Cultural and Technological Centre of the cribed as the father of the new multi-media University of Toronto, fulfils the duties of an His metaphors come from the arts, particu­ revolution. Yet his major achievement had original thinker, very personal, McLuhan, larly his most effective ones, such as his been to elevate the object and the pop enthusiastically followed by some, opposed peculiar use of mosaic for the effects of interests of a mass audience to a level of by others, draws from the arts (poetry, visual contemporary electronic technology. Mosaic, illumination that they could create a conflict arts) the greater part of his thoughts on the sometimes close to being confused in his with what had previously been considered evolution of western awareness, and, on the usage with both collage and montage, is a legitimate art. If, as in McLuhan, fashion, other hand, exerts a predominant influence on flat, tactical, iconic form that creates a type of comic books, ads and the like are analyzed as many contemporary artists. In this respect, he involvement similar to that which is supposed if they were works of art, the line of demarca­ particularly interests Vie des Arts. Since the to occur in television or contemporary multi­ tion between art and non-art becomes blurred authoritative interview he granted a few media exhibiting of the kind that the Czechs and uncertain. The uncertainty so created months ago to Jean Paré for the magazine carried out in their cubed-screen and other becomes itself a kind of counter-environment Forces, as well as the one that appeared in media exhibits at Expo 67. But far more which permits these artistic insights of the L'Express last year, we have come to ask than metaphors, the arts for McLuhan are the 10's, and 20's and 30's to assume a more ourselves certain questions about the thought index to contemporary survival. He sees the crucial place in the vocabulary and style of of McLuhan concerning art, nature and free­ artist as the person who must be in the the new. Pop becomes Dada revisited, but dom, which our contributors have tried to "control-tower" of society, for only in the revised as Harold Rosenberg has pointed out answer. ability of the artist, especially the contem­ with a difference — the Pop artist has a kind McLuhan's most outstanding contribution porary artist, to deal with changing perception of "love affair" with his objects and even at to the examination of western thought has is there a hope to achieve the maximum value times romanticizes them in a way not en­ been to make him aware of the blind alley in out of the potential which may be implicit in visioned by Duchamp and his "Fountain." which it is at present. The whole problem of contemporary society. The artist, according Klee's quest for the fundamentals of an art formal logic is questioned in a world of to McLuhan, creates a counter-environment of motion, for the elements and the processes sound. which elevates the unconscious aspects of the which would create a way of coping with a Electrical time is no longer the hour of the environment to consciousness. He appears to new world of change become transformed analysis of elementary processes, of deduct­ believe that once Andy Warhol takes a poten­ into the quests of the minimal artists, the ive reasoning. It is that of the simultaneous, tial piece of junk such as a Campbell Soup conceptual artists and others who lose them­ therefore of reflection on the sequence and can and turns it into a work of art, this act selves in the process, losing simultaneously the ensemble of allied problems. The up­ releases elements in the environment for the stress that Klee, like Focillon, placed on heaval in the media throws into confusion the conscious recognition which have previously conceiving art as form-making, as opposed idea of environment, the sense of perception, gone without notice. Pop art, for example, to conceiving art as form. Yet in this process the ability of assimilation and the conception makes us see the world of ads, of comics, McLuhan is not only influenced by the artists of the arts in general, painting, sculpture, of film, of fashion, of the personality cult of the first half of the century, but he is architecture, cinema, which are becoming old with new eyes and consequently in the influencing the artists of the second half of forms of art in relation to the new ones, process has taken account of the phrase that the century. radio, television, video. Are the old forms of Pound borrowed from Confucius and quoted This influence is complex, sometimes art, which seem no longer productive of the incessantly, "Make it New." direct, sometimes mediated through other avant-garde, sentenced to disappear? Or are McLuhan presents a world in which art is critics. Barthes, for example, wrote his they now undergoing still badly defined trans­ a process and a process which is dialectical Mythologies after McLuhan's early work, and formations? Doubtless it is necessary to know in nature. The very dialectical nature of art either through knowledge or the accident of what passion will animate the dynamism of in its operation of illuminating or bringing to parallel influence communicates many of the the successive changes that the artist fore­ light aspects of the everyday which have been same attitudes and concerns.