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Preterist Manifesto (Artist’s Statement)
The purpose of Preterist Art is to use retrograde techniques and philosophies that exhume and display the corpses of the height of art and aesthetic correctitude that walked hand in hand with man’s long past golden age of civilization. I have defined this as of yet unworked aesthetic philosophy “preterism” because it acknowledges the fact that we are living in an age beyond the end. The great experiment called civilization lavishly bestowed upon man the gifts that it promised, and now it is in the process of slow decay. However, the gifts remain for those bold enough to seize them! “The beauty of the present is that the rest is past.” It seems that the current thrust of the art world at present (if there is such a thing as the present in our postmodern age) is divided into two particular endeavors: Namely “concept” and “design”. The conceptualists hold higher esteem in the avant-garde art world. Their work seems radical and new; they posses an anti aesthetic that displays the condition that those living under the burden of late-capitalism suffer. Their work, per say, is essentially ritual, and it is meant to metaphorically capture the transient nature of all things through the act of NOT capturing it, but of simply calling attention to it. They try and involve their audience in the ritual and make them a part of it. Their work is a sort of sham occultism, their rituals empty. Why? Because if their rituals had any lasting effect it would be contrary to the purpose of the ritual in the first place which was to call attention to the fact that nothing is lasting. Their acts and devices slip from memory as quickly as their patrons leave their galleries (usually abandoned or condemned spaces) and the process is short circuited in its very design. If they held or captured the audience’s attention and produced a lasting effect or artifact of any sort their ritual would be a failure. Even their artifacts are generally disposable, or are composed of disposable objects without craftsmanship or regard to beauty to guarantee that they will in the future decay, or be indifferently destroyed. Their art is a celebration of what they hate, because they offer no alternative. The conceptualist deals primarily with TIME and its effect upon perceived SPACE. Those that deal with design, or create what is called “figurative” art are generally obsessed to a degree with photography. Photography is a means to capture for all time visuals that are instantly erased from reality. A photograph is proof positive that a moment existed, and through the image the space it represents will live forever. The space or object is given immortality. Or is it? In as much as this art is attempting to make concrete the transitory, when the moment has passed and all of the moderninity of the image (i.e. all the objects in the image that date it) has become ancient history the image seems like an exhumed corpse, a ghost of a time no one remembers, a monument to a moment that no one cares about any longer. In this way it seems that the image, rather than grant the object or form immortality, unnaturally binds its spirit to the Earth, and it is cursed forever to be unrelieved of the life that was meaningless to it. Even the current popularity of erotic photography and art will in the next few decades seem to the viewers of that time the way the old black and white photographs of flappers from the 1920’s in various stages of undress seem to us now. Ghostly and otherworldly, and hardly worth our concern despite a documentation for the sake of posterity of what once was. These effigies do not create permanence, they only reinforce the fleeting nature of all things. The modern figurative artist deals primarily with SPACE and its effect upon perceived TIME. I propose a new philosophy in art, which I call Preterism. I will use the remainder of the page to quote from Salvador Dali’s “My Struggle”. Against simplicity, for complexity. Against egalitarianism for hierarchization. Against the collective, for the individual. Against politics, for metaphysics. Against music, for architecture. Against nature, for esthetics. Against progress, for perenniality. Against revolution, for tradition. Against modern art, for the art of the renaissance.
~Christoph Wilke~ 2006

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