prayer
For a disobedient and disengaged art
Camillo Langone
June 15, 2024
The ideological installations at the Venice Biennale recall an essay by Dave Hickey on surveillance. The hope is that we go in the opposite direction to the one traced
“Obedient children of the panopticon, so devoted to the cause of commitment, of surveillance.” It is the definition that he provided for his contemporary artists Dave Hickey, anti-academic, anti-doctrinaire, anti-censorship American art critic, in a 1993 book now translated by Johan & Levi: “The Invisible Dragon. Four essays on beauty”. Today it is as it is. “Sons obedient to the cause of commitment” are the countless artists who, obviously pro-Palestinian, published “All eyes on Rafah” on social media at the end of May. “Devoted to the cause of commitment” are the many artists who at the anti-Western Venice Biennale (until 24.11) stamp their ideological stamp with installations, flags, videos, embroidery, watermelons and the writings “Hearts united against genocide”. I therefore dream of the beauty praised by Hickey, I dream of disobedient and disengaged artists, I dream of non-virtuous, vicious paintings, with women without veils and veils, freely, impolitically naked.
