A great melting pot of the arts and senses
About four major sensory events at the Philharmonie de Paris, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen, the Serpentine Gallery in London and the Fondation d'Entreprise Martell in Cognac.
Is the total work of art the grail? The composer Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001), to whom the Philamonie de Paris is devoting an exhibition until 26 June and who mathematically composed his works from the sounds of nature and the street, regretted that he did not live in the time of Greek Antiquity when everything was mixed together: But Wagner and the avant-garde of the twentieth century also passed through this period! The spectator is no longer content to watch. He must (re)feel. And it is precisely in order to make us feel the works of art with our five senses that artists compete in creativity by drawing on the infinite toolkit of digital technology. Even if it means putting our heads in a cloud of exhaust fumes to plunge our noses into the problem of pollution, like Peter De Cupere with his "Smoke Cloud".
At a time when virtual experiences are invading museums, when the great immersive thrill is setting up its careers of light all over the world, Daphné Bétard devotes a fascinating special report in Beaux Arts Magazine to polysensory art. And she draws up a panorama of ultra-sensitive and desirable creations that revive the idea of a total work of art. From the Wagnerian opera as the embodiment of the fantasy of the total work of art capable of bringing together all disciplines and stimulating our five senses, to the very disturbing audiovisual sculpture by the Visual System collective, which recently plunged visitors to La Gaité Lyrique into the heart of a futuristic forest with luminous trees rustling with strange sounds, to Oppenheim's surrealist feast served on the body of a naked woman in 1959... the journalist lists the countless attempts by artists, each as different as the next, to bring all the arts together.
So we pick and choose. Here is a little review of synesthesia by Vassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). "Colour is the touch. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which, by the appropriate use of this or that key, sets the human soul in vibration. Here is a very interesting little clarification from Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, a video and visual artist born in 1965 in Strasbourg, who tried her hand at virtual reality at the 2019 Venice Biennale with "Endodrome", and who believes that "everyone is capable of having synesthetic experiences" as long as they are sufficiently stimulated. When one enters the "rooms" of the contemporary artist, one does not only appeal to sight, hearing, taste, touch or smell, but to what Aristotle already referred to as a sixth sense: intuition. For as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari explained in "What is philosophy? We paint, we sculpt, we compose, we write with sensations. Of course, but what about the viewer? He too apprehends the work of art with his sensations. With his intuition. With his vulnerability.
To the delirious abstractions that are transformed before our eyes by the play of light, movement and optics, to the new technologies that make us applaud robots, to the sometimes unbearable and sometimes pleasurable stagings, are added today all sorts of experiences that question the limits of contemporary art. It's like a form of one-upmanship that proves at least one thing: the quest for the total work of art is infinite.