LUND OPUS - 7217.12.1971 - 05.01.1972

lund opus –72

Reflections on the conditions of art today and in the future.

Artistic creation is today, as we all know, subject to economic speculation. This means that the artist often no longer works for the sake of art itself but for personal gain. Speculation in art, especially within the unique easel painting tradition, a remnant from the Renaissance, has led many artists to seek new means of communication more frequently, in order to avoid profiteering and fashionable trends.

For some years now, a kind of cultural guerrilla has been active, despite constant and harsh resistance. (Daniel Buren banned at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Jiří Kolář refused in Prague, Freddie censored in Copenhagen, Mathelin whose two paintings were confiscated at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, etc.). This guerrilla aims to break with the structures of the capitalist market, to place itself outside of it. The architectural, cold character of the immense geometric figures in, for example, the United States, reveals only a desire to fill space. Modern creators no longer present their works for profit, but as symbolic objects to be owned by all.

When the socialization of the aesthetic function is fully accomplished – to mention just one thing – the artist will appear as a researcher enriching daily life. He then becomes the architect of leisure, of that immense, endless festival of which our life should consist. Today’s artists will not be numerous enough to create this new joy of life.

Such humanism is not as distant as we might think. Therefore, we must already do our best and definitively break with the romanticism of earlier centuries.

Galerie S:t Petri presents in its sixth exhibition 22 artists from 11 different nations, almost all of whom have been confronted with contemporary Sweden.

In this way, the gallery, despite its limited resources, wishes to remind us of the universality of artistic creation, to offer artists – often lacking means – the opportunity to inform us about their efforts, their tendencies.

All these painters, graphic artists, and sculptors, at various stages of their development, with more or less strength, appear as an essential contribution to the cultural development of Sweden.

raymond mahout