Art Lies, Volume 66, Summer 2010 Page: 55
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present and future. Per Kwinter, it's not this at all: "Ur-forms were not at all
'originary' forms as is frequently thought, but rather the foundational pro-
grams that families of forms share with one another and which determine
both their visual kinship and their irreducible differences" (92-93); they
are "the active genetic forces that operate inside of forms," the recurring
sets of rules that when applied to matter produce specific morphologic
families. They are, for instance, what determines that all snowflakes are
six-sided, even if none are identical. Camouflaged beneath conventional
readings, the Ur-form model remained a latent intelligence that only now
is able to shed light on the generative algorithms that shape undifferenti-
ated matter into specific form. Along with the adoption of the computer
as a design tool, this more nuanced understanding of Ur-forms has stim-
ulated a branch of design practice that has shifted from directly devising
objects (as in traditional architecture) to scripting systems that are them-
selves capable of generating increasingly complex tectonic forms.
5
e.g., Lygia Clark's "cannibalization" of Max Bill. With more "concrete-
ness" than even Bill, Clark read useful propositions into the behaviors of
formal elements within abstract-geometric compositions. For Clark, Bill's
Mbbius strip, for example, was capable of emblematizing the paradoxical
nature of communion between any two entities. In 1956 her tendency for
such speculations led her to "discover" the concept of the "organic line,"
a line formed not by drawing or brushing paint on canvas, nor by drip-
ping, cutting or gouging, but by placing two objects alongside each other,
such that the empty space between them creates the Gestalt of a line
[see Ricardo Basbaum, "Within the Organic Line and After," in Alexander
Alberro (ed.), Art After Conceptual Art (Generali Foundation/MIT Press,
2006)]. Throughout the 1950s and '60s, this conceptual device informed
a series of innovations that generally predated analogous developments
that unfolded in New York. It would continue to underpin her experiments
from the 1970s and '80s, which anticipate the relational practices that
today continue to evolve internationally. One imagines that Bill, the his-
torical cul-de-sac-the dumb option-would have felt vindicated by the
emergence of such prescient blossoms from within the same territories
that had abstained from marginalizing his legacy.
6
Marlys Harris, "The Lifestyles of the Rich and Heinous," Money, November
1, 1989: "[Well-known drug trafficker Jose Santacruz Londono's] Casa
Noventa, which sits on a manicured hillside in suburban Cali, looks more
like a small hotel than a home and has just as many amenities-a swim-
ming pool, a clay tennis court and a 100-foot satellite dish. The living
room, with its velvet sofas and mahogany balustrades, screams money. Yet
only one painting, by the noted Colombian artist Fernando Botero, might
be recognized in international art circles as an important acquisition; itis worth about $150,000." Although early on Botero produced paintings
that engage in pointed social criticism and that evince a "meaty" han-
dling of paint, he quickly moved on to a refined academic style, revisiting
traditional genres in the process of establishing his trademark iconogra-
phy of obese characters. While the social criticism continued on and off,
it was couched in such a conventional way of making paintings that his
work was drained of much of its bite. With the emergence of the New Left
and the spread of politicized conceptual practices in Latin America in the
1960s, Botero was relegated to a condition of irrelevance. And yet, the
consolidation of Botero's signature style within the market was far from
irrelevant vis-a-vis the parallel growth of the narco trade in Colombia. The
unprecedented amount of capital that flowed into the country as a result
of the new industry flooded certain cities with expensive cars, extravagant
homes, exotic animals and so on. It quickly became obvious, however, that
such artifacts made fluid money terribly sedentary. One couldn't get up
and go with them when it came time to run (as it happened on a mass
scale in 1984 and 1989, when the police and the military launched aggres-
sive operations against drug traffickers; see "Commentary No. 13: Terrorism
and the Rule of Law: Dangerous Compromise in Colombia" released by
the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in October 1991). A demand
for small and expensive but easily liquefiable objects emerged, inevita-
bly intersecting with visual art [see Rensselaer W. Lee, The White Labyrinth:
Cocaine and Political Power, Transaction Publishers, 1991; 42: "After an enor-
mous bomb exploded in 1988 in front of one of Pablo Escobar's buildings
('Monaco'), police discovered in the wreckage a veritable treasure trove
of paintings, including works by Botero, Obreg6n and (according to an
informed U.S. source) Van Gogh"]. The large amounts of capital invested
in portable paintings could be cashed out in Miami, or wherever else their
owners would flee. This intersection rendered Botero's "stupid" paintings
smart in a different way: as vectors through which money could be moved.
7
Neither stupidity nor intelligence, then, is a one-dimensional, unidirec-
tional force in the world. Each is fluid, bifurcating and repeating, spreading
in multiple directions, leaping over geographical boundaries and across
fields of knowledge. The potential for an object/concept to be smart or
dumb is not innate but contingent upon its specific interface with the
material culture in which it is contemporaneously entrenched. It is not a
quality inherent in things so much as a relation between them. Stupidity
and intelligence are each immanent, always everywhere, and they are
unwittingly locked in competition; each lies in wait for the chance to pry
itself into the thin, interstitial space between a problem and its solutions.55 ART LIES NO. 66
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Gupta, Anjali. Art Lies, Volume 66, Summer 2010, periodical, 2010; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228031/m1/57/?q=%22Puleo%2C+Risa%22: accessed June 8, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .