Ekaterina Belinskaya’s international success offers a pretty good argument that innate talent can sometimes be more important than experience. At the young age of 24, this Moscow-based artist is already one of the foremost fashion and artistic photographers in the world. In 2012, Belinskaya won the Best Photographer Award 2011 (first place in Advertising Photography Awards).
photo by Ekaterina Belinskaya
Originally trained as an ecologist, she was nevertheless drawn to the arts, particularly photography. Legendary photographers such as Tim Walker and Helmut Newton have inspired her, but her style is her own. Each image she creates begins to tell a story, often staged as a fairy tale, that the viewers continue in their own imaginations. As is the case with most fairy tales, there’s both beauty and danger in her photos.
photo by Ekaterina Belinskaya
Belinskaya’s images usually feature strickingly beautiful women, in period costumes often reminiscent of the Gothic era, yet so tastefully staged and designed that they suggest a timeless elegance. As is apparent in theRaven series, the symbols of danger create the tension and the drama in the image. The beautiful woman is not depicted, however, in a stereotypical fashion as a victim that needs to be saved by a courageous prince. She’s a complex and dual creature: feminine, beautiful and strong, yet containing within herself the danger and lure of the bird of prey beside her.
photo by Ekaterina Belinskaya
The Raven series alludes to Edgar Allan Poe’s famous narrative poem by the same name, which was first published in 1845. More intricate and complex than a fairy tale–as is, in fact, Ekaterina Belinskaya’s photography itself–this symbolist poem traces a man’s gradual fall into madness as he converses with a raven about the loss of his lover, Leonore. Rather than consoling him, the bird of prey incites his despondency in various ways, including by repeating the word “Nevermore,” to reinforce the idea that he’s separated forever from the woman he loves.
photo by Ekaterina Belinskaya
While Belinskaya’s (poe)tic photography is even more open-ended in possible interpretations than Poe’s poem, it evokes similar feelings: the darkness of danger embodied by the bird of prey and the stark, somber surroundings; an atmosphere that combines great beauty and implicit menace, which is subtle and rich enough that it can’t be stereotyped as “Gothic” or any other genre, for that matter.
Each of Belinskaya’s series of images tantalizes not only the senses but also the imagination. I believe that, like the artists who inspired her, this young photographer will be a legend in her field. You can view more of Ekaterina Belinskaya’s art on her website, below:
Like his magnificent statues, for Romanians, the artist Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) is a national monument. To extend the metaphor, he’s also one of the pillars of Modernism. A favorite in his host country, France, he even has, like his mentor Auguste Rodin, his own museum in Paris. Like many art lovers, I’m a big fan of Brancusi’s sculpture and, like many native Romanians, I also take a certain pride that one of my compatriots has made such a big impact on art and culture. It seems obvious why so many people appreciate Brancusi. But as an art critic and aesthetic philosopher, I’m tempted to examine in greater detail answers to the question: Why do we love Brancusi?
1) He’s got Fame
This question of why we love Brancusi might not even come up if people didn’t know about the sculptor and weren’t exposed to his art in museums, galleries, and books about Modernism and the history of art. One of the most famous Romanians—up there with Mircea Eliade,Emil Cioran (in philosophy and the history of ideas) and Eugen Ionesco (in drama), Constantin Brancusi is well known and much appreciated internationally. Almost every major museum in the world exhibits his art nowadays. But Brancusi achieved both fame and notoriety during his own lifetime.
He studied with the legendary sculptor Auguste Rodin but was smart enough to leave his famous teacher after only two months to seek recognition in his own right, famously stating: “Nothing can grow under big trees.” Soon he became one of the “big trees” himself, becoming known throughout the world for his sculptures The Kiss (1908), variations of Bird in Space (1928) and, of course, his chef d’oeuvre in Tirgu-Jiu, Endless Column (1938). Wealthy investors, including John Quinn, bought his sculptures. He exhibited his works in prestigious places, including the Salon des Indépendants in Paris and the Armory Show in New York.
One of the premier Modernist artists and a bohemian at heart, Brancusi kept company with some of the most influential artists, poets and writers of his time, including Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Amedeo Modigliani, Ezra Pound, Guillaume Appollinaire, Henri Rousseau and Fernand Lèger. His list of acquaintances and friends reads like a Who’s Who of famous Modernist artists, poets and writers.
2) He’s got Personality
The artists that make it big often do so not only through their artistic accomplishments, but also through their magnetic personas and promotional antics. It’s difficult to say if Pablo Picasso would have had such an impact without being able to manipulate art deals and shape the public taste or if the Surrealist movement would have become so prominent without Salvador Dali’s zany antics, which weren’t completely random. For instance, to underscore the lobster motif in his art, Dali gave a talk in New York City with his foot in a bucket and a lobster on his head.
Similarly, Brancusi stood out from the crowd through his quirky combination of bohemianism (his free-spirited thirst for life, women and parties) and severe asceticism. The apparent contrast between his simple, Romanian peasant roots and his sophisticated tastes and wide-ranging intellectual curiosity (he was interested in mythology, art, craftsmanship, music and transcendental philosophy) also drew attention. Furthermore, sometimes retreating at the pinnacle of your success can be a good career move. After creating the monumental Endless Column—which marked the apex of his artistic career—the artist became reclusive and created very few works of art.
While prolific and sociable up to then, during the next 19 years of his life Brancusi created fewer than 20 works of art, all of them variations upon his previous works. The former bohemian socialite also retreated from public view, while, paradoxically, his fame continued to grow. In an article in Life Magazine (1956), the artist is described as an eccentric hermit: “Wearing white pajamas and a yellow gnomelike cap, Brancusi today hobbles about his studio tenderly caring for and communicating with the silent host of fish, birds, heads, and endless columns which he created.”
Years earlier, Brancusi also attracted attention through the shocking novelty of his art: particularly his sculpture called Princess X (1920), a phallic sculpture representing Princess Marie Bonaparte, which created such an uproar at the Salon of 1920 that it was eventually removed from the exhibit. In a clever and rather accurate pun, the art critic Anna Chave even suggested that it should have been named “Princess Sex” rather than “Princess X”.
Brancusi found himself again in the limelight in 1926, when he shipped a version of Bird in Space to the American photographer Edward Steichen. Not viewing the sculpture as a work of art, which would be duty-free, the customs officials imposed taxes upon the piece for its raw materials. Although both of these incidents got Brancusi international attention—or notoriety, depending upon your perspective–artistic magnetism goes beyond mere shock value or even publicity stunts.
Such magnetism is perhaps best described by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche when he urges every person to live his or her life as a work of art: “For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.” Artistic fame happens when both the artist and the art are able to intoxicate us, as Brancusi clearly does. A peasant and an erudite artist and intellectual; a bohemian and an almost saintly aesthete; a socialite circulating in Paris’s most elite artistic circles and a recluse, Brancusi’s paradoxical and enigmatic personality attracted almost as much attention as his truly innovative art. Which brings us to the next—and most important– factor: Brancusi’s talent.
3. He’s got Talent: Brancusi’s Originality, Exemplarity and Inimitability
a) Brancusi is Original.
Although this doesn’t always happen in the history of art, I’m not alone in believing that Brancusi’s fame is very well deserved and that he’s a very talented artist. However, it’s tough to dissect or explain talent philosophically: usually people say they know it when they see it. Sometimes we need to appeal to aesthetic philosophy to understand more closely the reasons behind something that seems obvious or intuitive. In this case, I believe that Immanuel Kant’s second aesthetic criterion from The Critique of Judgment (1790): namely, his definition of artistic “genius” (or what we would call today, somewhat more modestly, “talent”), offers us helpful ways of evaluating the merit of Constantin Brancusi’s art. This brief digression into Kant’s aesthetic philosophy will help us understand why Brancusi’s art is original, exemplary and inimitable or, simply put, why he’s got talent.
Kant defines artistic talent as “the innate mental aptitude through which nature gives the rule to art.” (The Critique of Judgment, 225) In other words, talent is partly innate, not just acquired by training and practice. Moreover, producing a work of art is an inherently creative endeavor that requires talent. It’s never just generating a mirror image of reality, but rather a creative interpretation of that reality (or what he calls “nature”). Furthermore, Kant maintains, not all artistic creations are equal. Some stand head and shoulders above the rest, even generating new artistic movements. He offers three main criteria that distinguish artistic talent. First of all, for a work of art to show real talent, “originality must be its primary property” (The Critique of Judgment, 225).
Brancusi is, without a doubt, original. His first major work is The Prayer (1907), a minimalist sculpture that reflects the artist’s unique and eclectic mixture of influences: Romanian folkloric peasant carvings, classical sculpture, African figurines and Egyptian art. A very talented craftsman and woodcarver, Brancusi also innovates a new method of creating sculptures: carving them from wood or stone as opposed to modeling them from clay or plaster, as his mentor Auguste Rodin and many of his followers were doing at the time. Most likely deliberately named after Rodin’s The Kiss (1908), Brancusi’s second major sculpture (by the same name) effaces the realism of the lovers, as they embrace to form one rounded, harmonious monolith: quite literally, a monument to love. Years later, in Bird in Space (1928), the artist conveys movement, altitude, aerodynamics and flight rather than the external features of the bird itself. The pinnacle of his career and the logical conclusion of capturing feelings and concepts through essential forms, Endless Column (1938) represents the soaring spirit and heroism of the WWI Romanian civilians who fought against the German invasion. It’s a monument for which, incidentally, Brancusi refused to accept payment.
One of the most innovative aspects of Brancusi’s art is that his sculptures capture the essence rather than the form of objects. Relying upon the Platonic and Aristotelian definitions of forms, the artist distinguishes his minimalism from abstraction. Brancusi protests: “There are idiots who define my work as abstract; yet what they call abstract is what is most realistic. What is real is not the appearance, but the idea, the essence of things.” For Plato, Forms are the original, essential perfect models—such as goodness, virtue or humanity–for concepts and objects. Aristotle transformed this Platonic notion of Forms, distinguishing between the essential and the contingent, or essence and accident. The essence of the object defines what it is no matter how much it changes its appearance or state. Relying upon this Aristotelian concept, Brancusi was one of the first and best known Modernist artists who sought to capture the essence of the emotions and objects he conveyed: be it love and sensuality or heroism and courage.
b) Brancusi is Exemplary
But originality–in the sense of producing an artifact without imitating other artifacts and without learning how to produce art–does not suffice to qualify an artist as a genius (or talented). An artist may create, as Kant puts it, “original nonsense” that nobody cares about or likes. Taking this possibility into consideration, Kant argues that, secondly, artistic objects must also be “exemplary; and, consequently, though not themselves be derived from imitation, they must serve that purpose for others, i.e. as a standard or rule of estimating.” (The Critique of Judgment, 225) When one produces truly innovative works of art, other artists tend to follow suit. Brancusi set the standard for Modernist sculpture, influencing tens of thousands—if not millions–of artists, many of whom continue his tradition today.
c)Brancusi is Inimitable
Yet there is only one Brancusi. As an anonymous art critic writing for the art website Brain-Juice.com aptly states: “The sculptures of Constantin Brancusi blend simplicity and sophistication in such a unique way that they seem to defy imitation. Yet it is impossible to think of an artist who has been more influential in the twentieth century. Almost single-handedly, Brancusi revolutionized sculpture, invented modernism, and shaped the forms and concepts of industrial design as we know it today.” (Brain-Juice.com on Brancusi) This brings me to the third criterion of aesthetic value that Kant offers to explain artistic talent: inimitability. Although good art is exemplary—in motivating other artists to imitate it—it is also difficult to copy because each talented artist has his own unique style. Brancusi has a signature style that many may emulate, but nobody can replicate.
His host country, France, has long recognized his genius and set up an Atelier Brancusi at the Centre Georges Pompidou. Many of us who love Brancusi’s monumental art are eagerly awaiting a Brancusi Museum in his native country, Romania, as well. In the meantime, we’ll continue to enjoy the Brancusi exhibits throughout the world and his newly restored Endless Column in Tirgu-Jiu.
There is something other-worldly about the paintings of the French-American painter Georges Yatridès. Although the artist was influenced by Gaugin and the Fauve movement, Yatridès’ work stands apart, on its own. Painted during the height of modernism, it also seems very contemporary in feel, prefiguring Japanese pop art influenced by comic books.
Luminous, colorful and evocative, these mythical, fantasmogoric paintings bring to mind classical heroism in a modern pictorial translation. They straddle the divide between pop culture and high art, fitting in perfectly with both.
There are several unique artists in the history of modern art that defy categorization–such as Mondigliani and Balthus–whose works are enjoying a contemporary revival. The time has come for a look back at the forward-looking artistic legacy of Georges Yatridès.
By chance, I was fortunate enough to come across the photography of Alin Mocanu, whose wedding pictures stand out in their capacity to evoke the poetry of commitment. Alin Mocanu’s images are synecdoches (small yet significant fragments) in picture form that capture the hope, the innocence and the beauty of our dreams of love when we first embark upon a lifelong commitment and promise to love and cherish each other for life. Alin’s photography, which you can view on his website below, brought out the poet in me.
World-renowned dance photographer Richard Calmes captures the elegance and poise of dancers in his breath-taking images. His new photography albums, Dance Magic and Water Dance, will make any art lover’s Christmas dreams come true. Dance Magic is mysterious, dramatic and captivating. Water Dance flows with energy and radiates beauty.It will be tough to choose between them. You can see sample images from both albums on Richard Calmes’ website, http://richardcalmes.com/. Happy Holidays!
Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com
Christmas Is Coming!
What better gift than page after page of beautiful dancers caught at the peak of their expression? Your holiday shopping was never easier! Two books are available: DANCE MAGIC and the new WATER DANCE. Stunning images will inspire everyone from dance students to those who simply love dance or those who love photography. Editions for every budget!
Creative Photo Sessions this YearIt’s been quite a year for experimenting with both new lighting techniques and unusual shoot locations. From a classic car graveyard to a fabulous town center fountain, my dancers always give me more than I expect. See for yourself!
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About Richard Calmes Photography
Richard is available for photographing live dance events, publicity work, and studio work. His goal is not simply to photograph but to create art. Creativity and new ideas are always the priority. Please call us today to discuss any needs, or any wonderful ideas, you might have.
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Ever since I was a teenager I’ve been a big fan of pop music. As I grew older, I retained a certain nostalgia for 80’s and 90’s bands like U2, who seem to have made it through the generations and even have echoes in the music my teenage daughter Sophie now enjoys, such as the songs of David Guetta (particularly the new hit single, Without You). Granted, I lean more towards Amy Winehouse and Katie Melua than towards the contemporary club music and hip hop hits my daughter prefers. Since she’s become a teenager a little over a year ago and began monopolizing the radio, however, I’ve grown used to today’s pop music, including songs by Lil Wayne, the New Boyz, Pitbull and–of course!–Lady Gaga.
Although I may not listen to most of their music on my own, my teenage daughter and I found unexpected common ground in singers like David Guetta, Maroon 5 and–especially–Adele. As I began to listen regularly to her radio station, two songs struck me as contemporary but also somehow different, out of the norm: Stereo Love and Mr. Saxobeat. Once I looked them up on the Internet, I found out that both were sung by fellow Romanians: Edward Maya and Vika Jigulina (Stereo Love) and Alexandra Stan (Mr. Saxobeat). I thought to myself, not without a note of national pride: Those Romanians did it again! The truth is that Romanians have always been wonderful at adapatation. To my mind, the best kind of adaptation is when you manage to simultaneously fit in with whatever’s popular at the time and, somehow, still stand out as unique, by retaining a certain Eastern European flavor.
Perhaps this trace of uniqueness explains part of the international success of hit songs like Stereo Love and Mr. Saxobeat, which isn’t easy to come by, since the competition is tough and so many millions of singers want to become international pop sensations. Of course, the huge success of some Romanian songs is attributable not only to the talent of the singers, but also to the video production capacities and international market connections of MediaPro Pictures, Romania’s largest TV and music video production company, which is part of CME (Central European Media Enterprises).
Once I found out from my publisher, Editura Curtea Veche, that my first novel, Velvet Totalitarianism, will be launched in Romanian translation (under the title Intre Doua Lumi) in September of 2011, I began exploring the possibility of collaborating with talented Romanian composers and musicians for a music video/book trailer of my novel. Via LinkedIn, I met the Romanian singer, composer, director and producer Andy “Soundland” Platon, who ended up doing a wonderful music video based on my novel, called Velvet Love:
Andy Platon is a Romanian pop music prodigy. I say “pop music” only because that’s what he excells at best. But Andy has enormous range both in terms of the scope of his talents–as a composer, music video director and producer and singer–and in the versatility of his musical abilities, from classical music to pop music and everything in between. Andy made his debut while still only a teenager in 2009 with the song Lost Without You, which became a finalist in the competition Battle of Songs. This show was featured not only in Romania, but also in France, Russia and Turkey. Lost Without You was also nominated for the Shockwave NME Music Awards 2010. More recently, he’s known for his collaborations with Troy Lynch – The BeatBoyz (T.I., Gucci Mane, 112), Loredana Groza and Marius Nedelcu featuring Alexandra Ungureanu, Irina Popa, Xonia, Anthony Icuagu (ex. Insane), Ianna Novac (ex. ASIA, Ladies).
His new single and music video, Velvet Love, performed by the talented singer Marcel Lovin, captures with feeling and sensibility some of the most poignant scenes of my novel Velvet Totalitarianism, including the complex dynamics between the main characters, Radu and Ioana, as they struggle with the tension between their love for each other and harassment by the Secret Police. As an art critic I found the video to be very artistic–almost photographic in feel–showing clearly Andy’s eye for capturing each scene in a single image, as well as the talent of his Director of Photography, Anthony Icuagu.
The main actors–Ioana Picos as Ioana and Mihai Marin as Radu–did a wonderful job playing the romantic couple in the novel, whose risky love for each other may be saved by their parental love for their son, Lucian, played by Alia Anastasiei. Given Andy Platon’s versatility, range and many talents–as well as the excellent actors, singers and producers he collaborates with–I expect that soon his songs will be heard on the radio all over the world; maybe even here, in Michigan, U.S.A, on my daughter’s favorite radio station, 98.7 Kiss F.M.
When I openened a twitter account a few months ago, it wasn’t difficult to find the phrase that best captures me: “Born in the wrong century, a would-be salonnière.” Ever since college, when I first learned about Marquise de Rambouillet–the refined hostess who led the most talented artists and writers of her day in scintillating intellectual discussions in the elegant alcove of her drawing room–I knew that I had missed my opportunity and true calling in life. Sure, women may be able to be and do whatever they want today. Society is less sexist, more democratic. But in an era when entertainment news outdoes even socio-political news in popularity and readership, what hope is there for placing art, literature and philosophy at the center of public attention again?
The main problem I encountered in being a contemporary salonnière was: Where are the salons? Most academic discourse struck me as too technical and specialized to draw a large audience. Fortunately, while an undergraduate at Princeton University, I had the enormous privilege to study with scholars who epitomized the salon tradition of worldly intellectuals: Professor Robert Fagles, translator of Homer’s epic poems, and Professor Victor Brombert, a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, who encouraged my love for world literature and culture to the point where I decided to pursue Comparative Literature for both my undergraduate and graduate studies. Many years later, I discovered quite a number of online salons, where writers, artists and intellectuals converge to discuss their works, in a clear, interesting and sophisticated fashion. I’d like to share with you some of my favorite contemporary salons.
Litkicks.com. I discovered Litkicks ( http://www.litkicks.com/) in October 2009, when I found on the internet an article about a fellow Romanian-born writer, Herta Müller. The article was called “Herta Who?” by Dedi Felman and it was about the dissident writer’s recently awarded Nobel Prize in Literature. At that point, the founder of Litkicks, Levi Asher, also wrote a brief note on the blog about my recently published novel on similar themes, Velvet Totalitarianism, 2009/Intre Doua Lumi, 2011. We got in touch by email and I became a regular reader and occasional contributor on the blog. Litkicks features articles on literature, poetry, art, philosophy, music, cinema and politics.
Levi was a software developer (and culture lover) on Wall Street when he started Litkicks.com in 1994, which became, along with Salon.com, a pioneer culture blog. The website was originally launched to support Beat Generation poetry and experimental fiction. Over the years, it has expanded its scope to include contemporary literature in general, essays on nineteenth and twentieth-century French poetry and fiction (including Michael Norris‘s excellent essays on Proust), lively political articles, and Levi’s top-notch Philosophy Series. Litkicks includes articles on established authors published by the big publishing houses as well as reviews about talented independent writers published by smaller presses. The blog has thousands of readers a day, but thanks to a loyal following of regular contributors and commentators, it retains the intimate feel of a community of friends engaged in intellectual discussions and debates.
Catchy.ro. Founded in 2010 by the Romanian journalist Mihaela Carlan, Catchy.ro (http://www.catchy.ro/) is quickly catching on as Romania’s premier blog. Discussing all aspects of art, entertainment, politics and culture, Catchy.ro is inspired by the highly successful The Huffington Post, founded by Arianna Huffington in 2005 and recently acquired by AOL for a whopping 315 million dollars. Part of The Huffington Post‘s enormous success stems from Arianna Huffington’s pull and connections with wealthy investors. To offer just one notable example, in August 2006, SoftBank Capital invested 5 milliion dollars in the company. However, its success can also be attributed to the high quality of its articles and the popularity of its over 9000 contributors. Without question, The Huffington Post gathered some of the best bloggers in every field it features. Moreover, the blog has not merely adapted, but also stayed one step ahead of the curve in its use of technology, recently introducing “vlogging“–or video blogging–which is taking off and making journalism even more multimedia and interactive.
If I mention Catchy’s precursor in some detail, it’s because I believe these are also some of the features that have helped the Romanian blog grow so quickly during the past year, since its inception. Catchy “like a woman” targets primarily a female audience. But ultimately its panel of excellent journalists–with expertise ranging from art, to literature, to philosophy, to music, to fashion to pop culture and, above all, to the most fundamental aspects of human life itself, like health, love and marriage–draws a much broader audience of both genders and every age group. Like The Huffington Post, Catchy.ro also treads perfectly the line between intellectual writing and pop culture, providing intelligently written articles for a general audience. As some of the more traditional Romanian newspapers have struggled and a few even collapsed, the up-and-coming blog Catchy.ro shows that in every country adaptation is the key to success.
Agonia.net. Started by the technology expert and culture promoter Radu Herinean in 2010, Agonia.net (http://english.agonia.net/index.php) is a rapidly expanding international literary blog. It includes sections on prose, screenplays, poetry, criticism and essays. Agonia.net has the following assets: a) it publishes well-regarded writers and intellectuals, b) it’s contributor-run so that it can grow exponentially and internationally (with sections in English, French, Spanish, Romanian and several other languages in the works) and c) it has a team of great editors that monitor its posts and maintain high quality standards. Agonia. net improves upon the model of online creative writing publishing pioneered by websites like Wattpad.com, which are contributor-run but have no editorial monitoring. Because of lack of editorial control, Wattpad.com has not been taken seriously by readers and publishers despite its vast popularity with contributors. Any literary blog that has a chance at being successful has to have the capacity for handling a large number of incoming contributions while also maintaining reliable editorial standards. Agonia.net seems to have mastered this delicate balance.
In participating in these exciting artistic, literary and intellectual forums, I’m starting to feel like my calling as a 21st century salonnière might not be an anachronism after all. I invite you to explore each of them and see which ones fit your talents and interests best.
There are several great novels associated with the dystopic utopia tradition, but without a doubt four of the most notable are: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Such novels distinguish themselves from both fantasy and science fiction. In an interview, Atwood stated that she prefers the name “speculative fiction,” a term coined by Robert A. Heinlein, to describe A Handmaid’s Tale (NY: First Anchor Books Edition, 1998): “Science fiction has monsters and spaceships. Speculative fiction could really happen.” (“Aliens have taken the place of angels: Margaret Atwood on why we need science fiction,” The Guardian, June 2005). Speculative fiction has become an umbrella term that includes utopian and dystopic fiction as well as apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, some of which may also be considered to be science fiction or fantasy. The best speculative fiction, I believe, reveals what has already begun to happen and extrapolates with amazing lucidity how social and political ideals can turn into our worst nightmares. Every utopic ideology, from Marxism to eugenics and from primitivism to technocracy, has within it the seeds of its own dystopic undoing. Each one shows part of what has happened in our cultures and how things could get a lot worse.
Margaret Atwood’s novel illustrates what could take place in any culture or society where the women’s movement joins forces with the radical right to create a “purer” society. In such a world, “freedom to” (dress as one wants, choose one’s profession and life partner) becomes “freedom from” (being a sex object, having too many choices of partners, location or profession). But “freedom from” is only a euphemism for lack of civil rights, for constraint, for invisibility itself (as women are enshrouded in a veil and even wear blinders on top of their heads, so they can’t see or be seen). It is a dystopic utopia; a contradiction in terms. Some societies have already implemented such a “freedom from” in the name of various religious or political ideologies. However, as Atwood underscores, no society—even the most seemingly open-minded and liberal–is immune to it. Totalitarian constraints can happen anywhere, even in the U.S, which, in fact, is the setting for her novel.
While Margaret Atwood envisions a danger that could happen, George Orwell describes a social experiment that did happen. To many who have lived through the totalitarian phase of communism in Eastern Europe, as I have, Orwell’s 1984 is, in many respects, a historical novel: one that goes hand in hand with Robert Conquest’s monumental history, The Great Terror. Newspeak, thought police, brainwashing; the physical and psychological torture of political prisoners to confess to nonexistent crimes and the show trials were all part and parcel of how the NKVD and other Secret Police organizations ruled with an iron fist during communist dictatorships. O’Brien, the Thought Police agent in the novel, states the open secret of totalitarian regimes: “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.” (1984, NY: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1949, p. 272)
Perhaps the only speculative aspect of Orwell’s utopic dystopia is, as O’Brien himself points out, that those put on show trials die purified of their thought crimes and convinced of the righteousness of the new regime. They often are not, as were the victims of Stalinist purges, the embittered martyrs of a lost freedom. O’Brien promises Winston: “I shall save you, I shall make you perfect” (251). Perfection in 1984 is a world with no objective parameters of truth and falsehood or of right and wrong. It is a world in which the past is a convenient fiction for the present; a world where the difference between fear and blind trust is obliterated. The Thought Police aims not merely to oppress man, but also to gaslight him: to get him to accept relativism without question. “We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him,” states O’Brian (263). He pursues: “We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him…. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him… Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation” (263).
By their very nature, utopias are ideological and dogmatic. They often represent a reaction to one form of constraint or dogmatism with an equally strong reaction in an opposite direction. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (NY: HarperCollins, 1932) probes another aspect of ideological dreams that could easily turn into nightmares: the social experiments of eugenics and the supposed biological justifications for social hierarchies and castes. Written during a time when the Nazi party was already starting to implement eugenic policies—described, in some ways, in the novel–Brave New World doesn’t spare democratic societies its sharp social critiques either. Huxley describes the dangers that capitalism and industrialization, if left unchecked, can pose for humanity. Human beings are reduced to little more than automatons, consuming mood altering drugs and engaging in ritualistic sexual activities to compensate for lack of thought and the superficial and impersonal nature of their emotional ties.
Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (NY: Random House, 1953) issues a powerful warning against censorship: books are burned because of their dangerous, potentially conflagrating ideological effects. However, as the author states in an interview in the late 1950’s, the novel also touches upon the alienation among people caused by an excess of information and too much exposure to the mass media: “But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog… The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. … There she was, oblivious to the man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap opera cries, sleepwalking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction” (quoted by Kingsley Amis in New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction, NY: Ayer Co. Publishing, 1975). Obviously, the author’s critique can be exponentially multiplied today, when most of our human contacts are mediated by ipods, computers, twittering, Facebook and other technological gadgets and social/mass media networks. The future is already here. Each of these speculative novels not only predicted it, but also critiqued it in a way that remains very current.
Why are these speculative novels still relevant and important today? I’d like to explore this question by using as my point of departure a few famous quotes by leading writers and intellectuals.
1.“Our business here is to be Utopian, to make vivid and credible, if we can, first this facet and then that, of an imaginary whole and happy world.” H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia
Any society is flawed; any political institution, no matter how inclusive or democratic, has some corruption, inequality and unfairness in it. Utopian visions hone in on those weaknesses and injustices to imagine a better world, a world without these flaws. They function, in some ways, as a magnifying glass that allows us to see better the problems with our societies and institutions and as a mirror to imagine their obverse side.
2. “The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Almost every speculative novel is, in many respects, more multidimensional and more lucid than any political ideology was or ever could be. It captures both sides of the coin: the utopic vision and its dystopic, more realistic downsides. As Hawthorne puts it: both the ground you build a better society upon and the place you segregate its outlaws and its casualties.
3. “All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.” Toni Morrison, Online NewsHour interview, March 9, 1998
Utopic visions offer the best vantage point for social critiques. As Morrison points out, they are almost always correctives for hierarchies and injustices in the real world of the have’s from the perspective of the have not’s. Since each society has so many distinctions and hierarchies, the have’s and the have not’s are not a binary dichotomy (between races or classes), but more of a fractal of many social and cultural dichotomies.
4. “Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache… Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.” George Orwell, Why Socialists Don’t Believe in Fun
Utopic visions will always exist because nothing in our world can ever be perfect. We will always suffer from the “toothaches” Orwell alludes to. There will always be something wrong with our social and political institutions, no matter what they are. The need to imagine a world without whatever specific flaws we choose to focus on in our societies is therefore also inevitable. We will temporarily see in those utopic visions a better society. However, as Orwell points out, in reality, we might only be exchanging a toothache for a headache, or one problem for another.
5. “In the next few years the struggle will not be between utopia and reality, but between different utopias, each trying to impose itself on reality… We can no longer hope to save everything, but… we can at least try to save lives, so that some kind of future, if perhaps not the ideal one, will remain possible.” (Albert Camus, Between Hell and Reason)
As a counterpoint to Orwell’s cynicism, we can safely say that not all utopias (or dystopias, depending upon your perspective) are equal. Some hells are hotter than others; some political and social structures worse than the next. Utopic visions offer a horizon of possibility. They enable human beings to at least try to aspire to creating better social institutions and governments.
6. “Life without utopia is suffocating, for the multitude at least: threatened otherwise with petrifaction, the world must have a new madness.” E. M. Cioran, History and Utopia
A world without utopic visions is a world deprived of imagination, where one only sees what is and remains blind to what could be. Utopias enable us to dream and envision another way of life, perhaps a better world. They are healthy fantasies and necessary regulative ideals: as long as we remember their dangers and undersides, as each of these great writers reminds us.
The photography of Jeanloup Sieff epitomizes class, sensuality and elegance. Born in Paris of parents of Polish origin, Sieff’s interest in photography began very early, at the age of 14, when he received a camera as a birthday gift. He quickly developed a knack for photographing women, which would continue to be a favorite subject. Sieff studied at the Vaugirard School of Photography in Paris and the Vevey School in Switzerland. In 1956, he started shooting fashion photography, developing a signature style in capturing women’s beauty with classic elegance . His black and white images, where shadows seem to emphasize rather than hide fluid curves, offer voyeuristic peeks into women’s sensuality as well as dramatic hints of their personalities.
Very popular with the American market, Sieff moved to New York during the 1960’s, where he worked for the top fashion magazines, including Esquire, Glamour and Vogue. He’s best known, however, for his captivating images of celebrities, including Jane Birkin, Alfred Hitchcock and Yves Montand. In the video that features his photography and the song Je t’aime moi nonplus, performed in a sizzling duet by Jane Birkin and her lover Serge Gainsbourg, the video artist Elia Iglesias captures Sieff’s intoxicating mixture of eroticisism and elegance.
Sieff won many hearts and several prestigious awards for his images, including the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in Paris (1981) and the Grand Prix National de la Photographie (1992). He is the blueprint and inspiration for postromantic photographers today, whose works you can view on our website http://postromanticism.com/
Alex M. Bustillo is an international artist par excellence. Born in Miami, Florida and of Cuban origin, he currently resides in France. Alex has lived throughout the world, however, including the United States, Puerto Rico, Latin America and Italy. It’s not only his diverse cultural backgrounds that shine through in his photographic collages, but also his keen interest in all aspects of culture: including philosophy, literature, music and film.
Pablo Picasso is credited with having invented the artistic collage, made up of sketches, painting and newspaper cutouts. Bustillo transforms this modernist tradition into a postmodern artform that includes overlapping materials as diverse as digital photography, plexiglas and aluminum foil that somehow work together to create a striking and unique artistic whole. Not limited to the visual arts, Bustillo has even collaborated with the American musician Garland Jeffreys to incorporate musical ideas in a visual context.
Bustillo doesn’t shy away from anthropology, philosophy or even erotic fiction. His collection Story of the Eye (above) offers a visual interpretation of Georges Bataille‘s famous erotic and philosophical collection of vignettes by the same name, which was published in 1928. Bataille is best known for his anthropology of pleasure, Eroticism (1957), which studies human sexuality in terms of religious sacrifice and cultural taboos.
But it’s Bataille’s erotic tale that captured the imagination of artists, literary critics and film producers. Written in the tradition of libertine fiction made popular in eighteenth-century France by the Marquis de Sade, Story of the Eye describes the erotic passion between an adolescent male (the narrator) and Simone, his main partner. The couple have a menage-à-trois with Marcelle, a mentally ill teenage girl, engaging together in various exhibitionist acts (in front of Simone’s mother) and other taboo sexual behaviors.
Simone and the narrator are the original Bonnie and Clyde–or Natural Born Killers, more like it–manifesting their penchant for transgression through their increasingly violent sexual bond. When Marcelle breaks out of the mental institution, she becomes suicidal and hangs herself. The sociopathic lovers have sex next to her corpse, suggesting necrophilia, a recurrent theme in the book. This seedy story seems to be taken right out of pulp or pornographic fiction; however, it’s become a favorite allegory of taboo and transgression among French (and Francophile) intellectuals. Both the American feminist critic Susan Sontag and the French structuralist literary critic Roland Barthes wrote about it.
In Bustillo’s interpretation, Bataille’s tale of sexual liberty and libertinism takes a dystopic turn. His dramatic images are atavistic yet historical (in the photograph above you can see superposed images of an Egyptian bust, an American Indian chief and a Roman soldier); disembodied yet carnal (one slim leg appears, suggesting death rather than desire). Rather than glorifying transgression, they tell the story of what (and who) is sacrificed by the individual and society when the sadistic and perverse are allowed free reign and gain power over others. At once elusive and allusive, the photography of Alex M. Bustillo provides a tantalizing peek into the world of culture. You can view more of Alex’s portfolio on the link http://www.saatchionline.com/alexmbustillo.
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