Absurd Shapes

 
SURREALISM could not prevent the war from happening again even though the movement, together with Dadaism, held in their manifestos certain self aggrandising political ambitions to rid society of bourgeoisie values and to redefine the role of art. It was taking a lead from Marx and Engels with their wordy Communist Manifesto which started a fashion thinking that society's problems could be solved by identifying villains within it who were the causes of all the great injustices. Being philosophers, M&E didn't really believe that their thoughts had any practical use but Stalin and Mao had other ideas. There was of course a humane side to communism but that got pickaxed rather quickly - poor Leon Trotsky.

Seeking creative freedom does not necessarily remove the strictures of arts economics, that is, the need for paying patrons. In this sense art has to convince buyers with notions that go outside of what is merely beautiful into the zones of what is actually powerful, that is, since art patronage is not a charity, the question is how a work can merit, or more to the point, justify the financial investment. In order to sell, art must perforce seem to be more than just the work itself. It must represent motivations and notion of 'value'. Thus out of the necessary economic calculations, the desire to create becomes politicised, Riefenstahl on one hand and Buñuel on the other.

Move ahead to the late Zaha Hadid, whose signature became an object of desire to many a clientele. Her work was seen as the vanguard of radical-chic, the cutting edge, the new frontier, wherever people wanted to be except on solid ground. Just as ephemeral as modern capitalism, absurd shapes can appear anywhere, seemingly out of nowhere, representing nothing more than the will and the power to build in that manner - standing out like dog's balls - as they would say in Oz - to mean 'vulgar'. There are many wanna-be Zahas just busting to show off their talents for absurdities, knowing how easy it is now to build such shapes through advances in structural steel and carbon-fibre technologies. Others love the nudity of glass. It is thin and it shatters on impact. Transgression is inherent in the material. "Manage my thrills", the media tycoon's son pleads to the business suited engineer at the toy factory for grown-ups.

 
Latter day classicists and aesthetes would feel that the general public is being short changed, being that architects are fooling around with the look of cities as if they owned them but the worst suffering is in a surprising place. The brunt of the ideological confusion is being taken by the students in the sad spaces of architectural schools where the mediatic image of architecture has become the standard. Young adults, attracted initially by the gleam are not told that the only pre-requisite is a talent for whims. Thus many untalented but otherwise hopeful people are daily humiliated by peers and professors alike because of their of inability to serve up the 'look'. Since absurdities cannot possibly emerge from the truth in the hearts and minds there is nothing really there that has anything to do with knowledge or art. Yet, nothing is done by educational authorities about this academic antithesis. Somehow to certain individuals, perhaps luckily, other faiths prevail and only then is it apparent how abuse functions.