The object has no attributes. Rather. Function.
There are no eternal values. Nor are there any in art. The thesis of the eternal value of the work of art is a prejudice. Of the past. So too is the belief in the existence of the single work of art. There is no secluded, isolated work of art. Nor has there ever been. It was never made at all. Therefore not even the assumption is needed that it could have. Been. Or. That it could be. Made. Art can be understood only within the closest social relations.
Only as activity. Related activity. Never as a separate act. A single “Picasso” does not exist. On its own. A “Picasso” exists exclusively in relation to the others. To other “Picassos”. What constitutes artistic value is not the individual work but the activity itself. Grounded in its own relations.
Museum value is not artistic value.
The most decisive human relation is the relation to matter. History has taken place upon this relation. The history of man. History unfolds within the relation matter–material. The history of art has taken place within the same relations. On this plane, two phases in the history of art can be distinguished. Instinctive art. Then functional art. The attachment of instinctive art to the single technique of oil on canvas is not a flaw of instinctive art. It is merely its historical characteristic. The relation to matter determined the qualities of instinctive art.
In the first place. Matter. Or rather. Material. For the same reasons, functional art is carrying out a technical revolution.
The technical revolution is historically the most decisive revolution in art.
It is the task of historians to explain the narrow range of materials used by classical art. But it is the task of contemporary artists to extend their investigations to the widest possible range of “living” materials.
Functional art, emerging from new relations (material, economic, social), faces the task of investigating form-giving possibilities in the artistic domain. Its relation to society is positive. This quality of the relation brings to an end the historical conflict between society and art. As a result, the quality of art itself is changing.
Functional art’s relation to matter has produced a new understanding of space. Not an imaginary, but a real three-dimensional space. The relation to the qualities of matter has brought forth the next dimension. The fourth. Time. What is at stake is movement in space. In contrast to instinctive art, it deals not with the illusory value of space but with its real value. This moment brings about the abolition of metaphysical categories and, on the other hand, the introduction of research methods, the rational control of repeatable procedures and, finally, the group system of work.
At the very moment in the past when the idea that technology would destroy art was first voiced, the path to functional art was opened. If technology helped to destroy one art, the instinctive one, it helped to create a new one. The functional.
The discovery of new materials has removed the aesthetics of instinctive art from the agenda.
It is by no means a correct assessment that the third dimension in classical painting contains a lie because it suggests that something non-existent exists. Space. The entire art of a historical epoch was built upon that imaginary dimension. One cannot, in the name of the present, condemn the limited capacity for understanding of a historically less developed consciousness. The past remains the past, and relations to the past can only be sentimental. There are no others.
The experiences of tradition are valuable only so that they may be overcome.
Functional art is no longer a picture of the world. It does not represent the object. It creates it.
The artist is not a medium but a creator. A researcher.
Functional art does not recognize a transcendental meaning of forms.
Art is primarily concerned with examining forms. A system of forms. Where. In the materials themselves, which are for it (art) the concrete qualities of matter.
Artistic activity is based on objective information. Instead of subjective (the relation between the two arts).
The artist does not run ahead of his time. He creates his time. Or, more precisely. He takes part in his own time. He is not a prophet. Nor a forerunner.
The relation to serial products and to the system of multiplied originals points to the democratic character of functional art.
The aesthetics of instinctive art is of no use to functional art. False art can be recognized by the fact that it is not formed upon its own relations. The language of functional art is universal. There is no longer any local or regional art.
The vast quantity and objective quality of information are factors that, for the first time in the history of art, allow us to take part, in an entirely experimental way, in the development of something that is by no means an experiment.
New Tendencies 3, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, 1965