Raison d’Etre
by R.C. Webb
I began my study of painting and printmaking at East Carolina College in Greeneville, North Carolina, in the summer of ‘62. I had no interest in drawing or painting tobacco barns or other local color. Instead, I was drawn into the metaphysical paintings of deChirico, the critical paranoia of Dali, the visions of Tangy, and the automatisms of Miro, Klee, and Masson.
Intellectually, I was not involved with theory and made little sense of what Breton was telling the world about Surrealism. Being visually oriented, absorbing the power, form, and content of the painters--the Veristic wing of the Surrealist movement--came easily to me. I was seduced by those early mentors in the process of Surrealism, which became my life-long Raison d’Etre. My first Cause.
In 1970, I entered the so-called visionary cloisters of the San Francisco Art Institute. California in the early seventies was a hotbed of political and artistic upheaval against the Vietnam War. With activist roots in the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-War Movement, I was no stranger to these radical manifestations. The Visionary School, besides being archaic, boring, and irrelevant to current events soon collapsed in the exciting drama of street riots, inflammatory speeches, and guerilla art actions.
A new critical criteria for the advancement of Revolutionary Art theory was put forth, which, in essence stated that revolutionary art must have content which accurately represents the relationship between Victim, Enemy, and Solution, or V.E.S., in any given situation. It was discovered, in the course of training the propaganda wings of certain organizations, that lessons had to be created that did not require any artistic talent, per se, on the part of the group members. It was then discovered that, by cutting images out of Class-oriented magazines, such as Better Homes and Gardens, Harpers Bazaar, Vogue, etc. and putting them in a layout with images from the Black Book of Hunger, NACLA publications, and other radical sources, elements of syntax, such as tension, context, and proximity created intense psychological agitation. The addition of the Solution principal, depending on how violent or finite it was, was left to the particular group’s philosophy and added the final touches to the work.
The V.E.S. principal soon had a following and evolved through dialogue, experimentation, and criticism into the School of Attack Surrealism. Although not a formal movement, more underground than not, kindred spirits were known, and not always to each other (for safety’s sake), to be proliferating around the urban landscape from Los Angeles to Seattle, infiltrating and upstaging unworthy events, publishing violent manifestos, and most importantly, creating art in the V.E.S. genre.
The traditionally Surrealist technique of randomly combining seemingly obtuse visual elements to create a syntactical collapse to be replaced by a more powerful artistic idea served the propagandists well. By not signing up for any particular “Solution,” it was possible to avoid being sucked into ill-fated plots, all night arguments about content, and political correctness. The resulting works, built around Cezanne’s Composition, were concise, forceful testimony both to our Movement and ourselves, and to the unhappy recipients of our ideas.
All through the remaining war years, and even into the 80s and 90s, I continued, almost in a vacuum to create hard-hitting, issue-oriented imagery (Anti-Nuke, AIDS, Religious Right, etc.) to continue illuminating the processes of my Surrealism.
My belief in the philosophical core of a socially virulent Surrealism has never waned. The politically caustic image in its Surrealist trappings or “The Surrealism in service to the Revolution” (a cult classic) had, for the most part, run its course.
The “Attack” principle, like the Phoenix, has risen from the ashes of the Left in a more psychological form, and the “Victim,” as well as the “Enemy” are also back on line. The only difference between the old and the new is the context. For example, the original “Victim” was a socially recognized entity. Now, the “Victim” is the viewer, with all their hysterical dysfunction and sexual hang-ups. The “Enemy” is nothing less than the sum total of the Artist’s own megalomaniacal need to divide and conquer the rational intrusions of the viewer into the destructive/creative cycle.
The “Solution” is entirely plausible as the view is confronted with the sardonic, sarcastic, and satirical non-factual truth of Veristicism; a politically challenged set of sexual assumptions; and a virtual, user-friendly alphabet of psych-iconography stewing in a post-psychotropic universe easily pilfered by the confused and vulnerable observer for their own perverse titillation or for self indulgent pathos in a bloodless, non-violent context.
Attack Surrealism has put teeth back in the words of Breton and who-knows-what in the pantaloons of Dali. The important thing is that, as members in good standing or not, they have reached immortality together, sniggering like whores in a butt-rash clinic who, in spite of their incredible discomfort, know things could be a hell of a lot worse!
As for me, I will always push the Visionary envelope, as part of the New Surrealism or not, to bring the contradictions between our radical history and the egocentric reality of our artistic lives into some type of historical focus, both as artists/humans and citizens of the World.
A new critical criteria for the advancement of Revolutionary Art theory was put forth, which, in essence stated that revolutionary art must have content which accurately represents the relationship between Victim, Enemy, and Solution, or V.E.S., in any given situation. It was discovered, in the course of training the propaganda wings of certain organizations, that lessons had to be created that did not require any artistic talent, per se, on the part of the group members. It was then discovered that, by cutting images out of Class-oriented magazines, such as Better Homes and Gardens, Harpers Bazaar, Vogue, etc. and putting them in a layout with images from the Black Book of Hunger, NACLA publications, and other radical sources, elements of syntax, such as tension, context, and proximity created intense psychological agitation. The addition of the Solution principal, depending on how violent or finite it was, was left to the particular group’s philosophy and added the final touches to the work.
The V.E.S. principal soon had a following and evolved through dialogue, experimentation, and criticism into the School of Attack Surrealism. Although not a formal movement, more underground than not, kindred spirits were known, and not always to each other (for safety’s sake), to be proliferating around the urban landscape from Los Angeles to Seattle, infiltrating and upstaging unworthy events, publishing violent manifestos, and most importantly, creating art in the V.E.S. genre.
The traditionally Surrealist technique of randomly combining seemingly obtuse visual elements to create a syntactical collapse to be replaced by a more powerful artistic idea served the propagandists well. By not signing up for any particular “Solution,” it was possible to avoid being sucked into ill-fated plots, all night arguments about content, and political correctness. The resulting works, built around Cezanne’s Composition, were concise, forceful testimony both to our Movement and ourselves, and to the unhappy recipients of our ideas.
All through the remaining war years, and even into the 80s and 90s, I continued, almost in a vacuum to create hard-hitting, issue-oriented imagery (Anti-Nuke, AIDS, Religious Right, etc.) to continue illuminating the processes of my Surrealism.
My belief in the philosophical core of a socially virulent Surrealism has never waned. The politically caustic image in its Surrealist trappings or “The Surrealism in service to the Revolution” (a cult classic) had, for the most part, run its course.
The “Attack” principle, like the Phoenix, has risen from the ashes of the Left in a more psychological form, and the “Victim,” as well as the “Enemy” are also back on line. The only difference between the old and the new is the context. For example, the original “Victim” was a socially recognized entity. Now, the “Victim” is the viewer, with all their hysterical dysfunction and sexual hang-ups. The “Enemy” is nothing less than the sum total of the Artist’s own megalomaniacal need to divide and conquer the rational intrusions of the viewer into the destructive/creative cycle.
The “Solution” is entirely plausible as the view is confronted with the sardonic, sarcastic, and satirical non-factual truth of Veristicism; a politically challenged set of sexual assumptions; and a virtual, user-friendly alphabet of psych-iconography stewing in a post-psychotropic universe easily pilfered by the confused and vulnerable observer for their own perverse titillation or for self indulgent pathos in a bloodless, non-violent context.
Attack Surrealism has put teeth back in the words of Breton and who-knows-what in the pantaloons of Dali. The important thing is that, as members in good standing or not, they have reached immortality together, sniggering like whores in a butt-rash clinic who, in spite of their incredible discomfort, know things could be a hell of a lot worse!
As for me, I will always push the Visionary envelope, as part of the New Surrealism or not, to bring the contradictions between our radical history and the egocentric reality of our artistic lives into some type of historical focus, both as artists/humans and citizens of the World.
