Crossing The Atlantic by Dusan Bogdanovic

While maintaining a residence here in Hawaii, Dusan Bogdanovic recently relocated his other home, from San Francisco to Geneva. He was a teacher at the Conservatory of Music in San Francisco from 1990 through 2007. Now he is Professor of Guitar, at the Geneva Conservatoire de Musique. Having divided his life between Europe and America, Dusan offers us perspective on aesthetic orientation from Old World to New.

The quasi-religious status of classical Western art in Europe is a reflection of the literal power of religious and cultural institutions developed through centuries. All the places of cultural worship – museums, concert halls, conservatories and art academies share in this reality. That is why in Europe (as well as other areas of strong historical cultural influence, such as Asia or the Middle-East) there are no real dilemmas concerning traditional arts in general; the immutability of their theory and practice is something that requires obedience and an absolute faith.

In the United States, the perception and praxis of traditional Western art are much more ambiguous and complicated. There, it remains a distant memory of the glory of the elect and powerful, but since there has been a wide breach with the European tradition, it has been invested with an extra value; it is a symbol of education and social prestige (les nouveaux riches of the New World)[1]. As in Japan (a country that had an indirect way of absorbing European culture), classical Western art is strongly perceived as a symbol, since it is imported and lacks its contextual historical dimension.

After having spent twenty-five years in the U.S., it looks to this writer, that the linear concept of cultural progress and evolution is still "alive and well" in Europe, while it has almost disappeared on the American cultural horizon. Contemporary classical music, for example, follows the same idea of cultural progress inherited from the enlightenment, (more complex or more scientific is better etc.) that has been in action for centuries. Spectral music- the "last word in musical progress", finds its security and value in scientific, therefore verifiable spirit.

Even though Americans are infatuated with every new technology, it is always a statistical, pragmatic reality that is the measure of value.[2] Therefore, it does not really matter if something is historically based, conceptualized, or whatever ethnic or cultural origins it has – as long as it sells, its virtues are extolled[3]. In Europe, in order to prove your worth, first you have to twist yourself into a cultural pretzel and prove your compliance to the established (culturally inherited) aesthetic postulates. Not so in America. There, first you have to be successful, then you can be valued; in Europe, first you have to be valued, then you can be successful.[4]

The influence of religion on any culture is self-evident. If European traditional Western art shows close dependence on Christianity, so do the Asian cultures in their adherence to Buddhism and Confucianism. European and Asian concern with formal coherence and unity seem just like another reflection of their respective religious and social order. America, by contrast, because of its coexistence of many different sects and ethnicities, does not rely on cultural idealism in a monotheistic fashion: it is rather an eclectic mishmash more resembling polytheism than any other belief system.

The influence of religion on any culture is self-evident. If European traditional Western art shows close dependence on Christianity, so do the Asian cultures in their adherence to Buddhism and Confucianism. European and Asian concern with formal coherence and unity seem just like another reflection of their respective religious and social order. America, by contrast, because of its coexistence of many different sects and ethnicities, does not rely on cultural idealism in a monotheistic fashion: it is rather an eclectic mishmash more resembling polytheism than any other belief system.

Even if American commercialism – like a cultural hydra – sprouts a new head with every cultural mutation, the idea of creating a new revolutionary set of postulates needs a space and a time, literal and conceptual. In Europe creating new, revolutionary movements tends to be blocked and paralyzed by the power of cultural institutions; in America, it is paralyzed by the overwhelming presence of commercial channels and routes. In Europe, cultural revolutions happen despite institutions, in America, despite the lack of them. [6]

An interesting situation is that of cross-cultural and transcontinental artists. Here is a letter of Marcel Duchamp to Hans Richter, from which we can clearly see the confrontation of the European and the American way of handling art. "This neo-dada", he wrote in 1962,"which now calls itself new realism, Pop-Art, assemblage, etc. is a cheap distraction which lives off what Dada did. When I discovered ready-made, I was hoping to discourage this aesthetic carnival. But neo-dadaists use ready-made to discover an aesthetic value. I threw the bottle rack and the urinal on their heads as a provocation, and here they are admiring its beauty..."[7] If irony can sell, it becomes yet another valuable object of commercial consumption.

While the distinctions of "high" and "low" art remain categories upon which to judge the value of an art work in Europe, it seems obsolete or dated in the U.S. Jazz, Rock, Classical, Pop and other terms refer to individual orientations, marketing preferences or stylistic constraints. This is partially due to the statistical nature of systems of value (as explained above) and partially to the typically egalitarian way of handling aesthetic categories in America. Since "high" and "low" art are no more than sociological terms, the art world has been made egalitarian and fully relative.

Even though academia remains precariously safe in its ivory tower in Europe, the powerful undercurrents of postmodern cultural egalitarianism threaten to dissolve its foundations. In reality, authentic inauthentic California-style "cool Stalinism"[8] shows up in most countries of the European community, but in its second-hand version. The most extraordinary incarnations show up in unlikely places; a uniquely European invention – a coffee shop – which has been parodied in a uniquely American way (decaf-double-latte), reappears as Starbucks in downtown Geneva. What the enlightened 60s and 70s created in the U.S. is quite visible and apparent in its "soft" version all across the European continent.

As opposed to the cultural egalitarianism of the U.S., the new European version seems somehow self-conscious and artificial. As a person who, by accident and design, belongs to both camps, I am struck by how deep prejudices are on both sides. It is still very un- (mid-) American to be intellectual, just as it is very un- (West-) European to "just do it". Nevertheless, the opposites do meet with an underlying sort of nostalgia and longing that can be seen beneath the cultural veneer. We might well be witnessing the aftereffects of European cultural middle age infatuation with American cultural teenage vitality and vice versa.

[1] "Le bon goût devient un signe sans détour, immédiatement compréhensible, dont dispose les bourgeois-à travers le vêtement, l'art ou la décoration intérieure-pour signaler leur position sociale." ("Good taste becomes an unmistakable sign, immediately comprehendible and available to the bourgeois through clothing, art or interior decoration, signaling their social standing"). Assouly, Olivier, 2008, Le capitalisme esthétique. Les Editions du Cerf, Paris, p.45.

[2] The most important aspect of any new Hollywood movie (to cite the most obvious) is its financial revenue.

[3] Andy Warhol's: "Buying is more American than thinking".

[4] "...It is not conceptualizing reality, but realizing concepts and materializing ideas, that interest them." Baudrillard, Jean, 1988, America, Verso, London, p.84.

[5] "From the beginning, the sects played the major role in the move towards an achieved utopia..."ibid, p. 90

[6] It is arguable that, while many modern revolutionaries such as Picasso or Stravinsky had to fight the European academic establishment, the American, such as Cage or Rothko, had to work in a much more diluted and unencumbered cultural milieu. Perhaps this is one the principal reasons why American cultural revolutionaries tend to be more independent and extreme than the European. Morton Feldman expresses this in his inimitable way describing a letter of Pierre Boulez to John Cage in 1951. "I must know everything in order to step of the carpet" says the composer (Give my Regards to Eighth Street, Collected Writings of Morton Feldman, 2000, Exact Change, Cambridge). Not that there is no carpet in America; it is just not as strongly glued to the floor as it is in Europe.

[7] "Ce néo-dada, écrit-il, qui se nomme maintenant nouveau réalisme, Pop Art, assemblage, etc., est une distraction à bon marché qui vit de ce que Dada a fait. Lorsque j'ai découvert les ready-made, j'espérais décourager ce carnaval d'esthétisme. Mais les néo-dadaïstes utilisent les ready-made pour leur découvrir une valeur esthétique. Je leur ai jeté le porte-bouteilles et l'urinoir à la tête comme une provocation, et voilà qu'ils en admirent la beauté..." Letter cited by Hans Richter in Dada: art et anti-art, Bruxelles, Ed. De la Conaissance, 1965, p.196.

[8] Baudrillard, 1988, p.102