The art of dying
Óscar Rodríguez de Dios

Poetics Fernández Mazas

And hurry indecision is annihilating: Top latter.
Matisse was born from this destruction.

In the background, or in the shape, we look footprint; what is really an artist in his work. Their concerns, their life paths. A pulse, a heartbeat, a way to proceed in reality. If we stuck only his graphic work, his drawings, engravings or paintings, despite the discontinuous vocation of his work, of missing parts of it, we would have the possibility of a plausible portrait of Cándido Fernández Mazas.

Pero junto a ello se anuncia una presencia inquietante, la certeza de que hay algo más que nos rehúye. Algo que tiene una importancia determinante y que, por más que lo intentemos, desenfoca una y otra vez el retrato. Mazas fue, sin duda, un extemporáneo. Una pieza singular que descoloca cualquier proyección histórica sobre el pasado. La impresión es que nos encontramos con un artista que procede a la manera de Richard Serra, cuando dispone sus placas de acero e invita al paseo. A cada paso, el paisaje varía, mientras que ninguna mirada por encima permitirá dominar nunca el conjunto.

We try to jot down some ideas about the relationship between aesthetics and plastic Fernández Mazas, to visualize in counterpoint to the stranger who dwells in his work, and endures beyond it. The first difficulty arises immediately classified separately expressive multiplicity to dissect in a series of disjunctive disciplines. The second difficulty is to round above, and decide the hierarchy between them is part of the problem comes from the multitude who lives behind the work. Despite all this, we will not doubt the existence of a creative will, or the unit of a vital project.

Collection of texts that have scattered through different means and at different times a spirit emerges critical: They are reflections that emerge with a strong vocation for questioning about the conditions of possibility of art as something objective, universal.

At the same time, (but exactly the same), a melancholy vein is manifested openly.

In this sense his work is largely what debunks just an impossible, or at least have to consider whether that universal aspiration is not in the most fantastic proposed the theoretical challenges program. Anyway, we would like to retain an idea: creation, as such, operates a betrayal.

La paradoja que enfrentamos hay que ubicarla en un artista que no sabe buscar el éxito, ni el reconocimiento, sino que, precisamente, fracasa cuando gana. Y esa cualidad, ese gesto perverso, nos parece, aquello que vuelve a Fernández Mazas más classic. Se vale de una doble traición, puesto que muy inconscientemente sabe que el éxito fracasa en lo fundamental: esto es, en fracasar. La permanencia de la obra significa la muerte de su creador. Así, el precio que ha de pagar es el abandono de una obra que ya no le pertenece, repitiendo ese gesto, una y otra vez, para apostar nuevamente a la realización de la idea. Un planteamiento así, de una coherencia tan inobjetable, no es por acaso suicida. Pero lo que está en juego no es la muerte personal del autor, su vida; sino su muerte simbólica, la eternidad de su creación. La obra de Fernández Mazas se convierte así un acto fallido, porque, sin pretenderlo, ha creado un camino al buscarlo.

For our part we will add to that double betrayal: will betray him by declaring that his work can not be forgotten. This will snatch his work to make it our own, to transform it into something different from the intentions of its author, unknown in last instance, it is a alienate, we become a stranger to her.

– I –

First we will try to locate the theoretical background to which approaches seem to allude Mazas when trying to find a theoretical framework on which to move their thoughts on art.

Un posicionamiento ético desde un punto de vista teórico, por decirlo rápidamente, no tenía mayor porvenir dentro de los movimientos artísticos de vanguardia. Siempre hay excepciones claro, pero precisamente lo “absolutamente moderno” implica una ruptura con lo establecido. Las reflexiones de Mazas, sin embargo, muestran una clara avidez por un inscribir ese vanguardismo en un marco filosófico más amplio. La terminología conceptual que utiliza en algunos de sus textos (noúmeno, síntesis, noema, etc.), hereda, en parte, las huellas del debate entre las corrientes filosóficas de la época, esto es fenomenólogos y neokantianos.[1] Presumably Ortega y Gasset exerted a fundamental influence on the intellectual landscape of the time and there could find no little common ground.[2] Although it is already symptomatic that the question of values, feat of the time, it is formulated in its case from a combination of aesthetics and ontology.

En su determinación por dotar de un fundamento propio a la estética, de una objetividad, comprende Mazas que no se trata de los valores absolutos que los “neokantianos” proponen. Es decir, al menos intuitivamente, como una construcción teórica que se impone sobre la realidad. En el otro extremo se encuentra con la romántica exaltación de la subjetividad, que ignora el problema como tal. Este marco conceptual, sin embargo, tenía que dejarlo insatisfecho por la total ausencia de referencias al mundo griego, y que Mazas incorpora como una de las constante en su obra. Por pura afinidad, sus planteamientos estéticos toman muchos elementos de algunos lugares propios de la Classical Germany will emerge between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a fortunate collision between Kantian philosophy and a return to Greece.

If something is clearly in the spirit and the letter of Kant, it is much more that we can think about what we can actually know objectively. This in principle also meant big problems on a practical level, he found the solution with a refined formalism and postulating some necessary truths. However, when Kant published Critique of the faculty of judgment (1790), he intended to bridge the gap between understanding and reason through imagination, not only with regard to the question of beauty or taste, but what makes the conditions of possibility of such experience.

Interest for our approach can be summarized as follows: how is it possible to establish some kind of relationship between aesthetic and moral domain without calling into question the autonomy of the first. The difficulty of an adequate solution to this problem is perceived whenever Kant wants to establish a link and transit enters the aesthetic sphere and morality. This dual requirement of respect and autonomy can only be fulfilled in the form of a indirect link. This indirect link is provided by the concept of symbol is for Kant the key that can operate transit between aesthetic and moral world. In proposing a conception of beauty as symbol Kant morality can, at the same time sustaining the autonomy of aesthetic judgment and its relationship to the moral domain. And this is possible because, finally, beauty is not intended to express directly the moral world, but symbolically, that is, by analogy. From the indications of the famous §59 Critique of Judgment( "Of Beauty as a symbol of morality"), according to which freedom is to be expressed in nature by the symbolic function of beauty, Schiller then try to establish the aesthetic objectivity.

Cuando Mazas reflexiona sobre los signos plásticos, parece aludir a la autonomía de los signos artísticos, a la especificidad de los mismos dentro de una ley propia. Es decir, la aspiración a una expresión universal del arte que supere el carácter artesanal de la producción, por un lado, pero también la expresión cultural del entorno propio, se encamina hacia una búsqueda obsesiva de la encarnación de unos valores estéticos. En los textos que escribió entre Enero y Julio de 1935 para la revista P.A.N bajo el epígrafe “Información sobre arte” se impone de nuevo una respuesta ante el dilema que enfrenta a Fauves Y fire department. Attitude is not essential What is it then? Science, a scientific art: measurement.

"A scientific order is one whose last conquered truth, always under reference systems, is ideal within larger orders, Ontological. (...) In life there are men of science and the rest is landscape. " [3]

The measure is not given a priori, we can not understand in this sense that there is foundation of aesthetics as a practice, it is rather an anticipation of what will appear in the course of creation, experimentation. The risk is addressed in the uncertainty of finding the synthesis between automation in the execution and timing of the decision, knowing when and how to stop the line. It is not the existence of absolute values, therefore. The game is much more subtle, is the execution of the work which transgresses a framework critical and it provides some autonomous signs.

A partir de ahí de esa certidumbre es posible retomar su producción plástica y ubicar sus críticas de arte. La llamada de atención sobre los caminos de los surrealistas, el abandono de los problemas estrictamente pictóricos, o en relación a la sobrevaloración mercantil del cubismo. (No así de Picasso, “tome Ud. un metro y mídala”). La indecisión de los impresionismos y el salto de Matisse. La experimentación, la investigación no se puede basar en el capricho. El signo plástico requiere un orden, una medida, si la vanguardia quiere hacerse cargo de un camino por explorar debe resolver el problema de las dos dimensiones en una dicción clara y precisa. La obra plástica de Mazas en sus diversos formatos, especialmente en aquello que se conserva en mayor número, sus dibujos, grabados y viñetas humorísticas, atestigua una excepcional pureza de formas. Esta expresión plástica le acompaña desde sus comienzos y se mantiene fiel a un estilo, una economía expresiva fundamentada en la ejecución de la línea, en la búsqueda de los perfiles. En el rasguño como poéticamente se ha señalado. [4]

– II –

And yet, in all this, there is a strange economy. An inordinate theoretical effort, does a visual artist? Or put another way: what does classicism, but the desire for eternity?

The text "The Work," which Mazas dedicated precisely to the work of Manolo Mendez points out how the playfulness of art is manifested in the tendency to capture an unattainable truth and departure. It seems as if the alibi us from falling suddenly into the game, when desire that comes to life as a tendency to move from one target to another, keeping tension efforts to seek a horizon that remains distant.

Sólo que la economía de ese viaje no se sostiene sin algún tipo de intercambio. La posibilidad de un encuentro remoto con la belleza induce a un trabajo resuelto, desinhibido, arriesgado, que puede responder libremente a un planteamiento autónomo y que mira a la realidad desde otro plano. Como contrapartida se incluye una desconexión intermitente de la realidad, y una tendencia a trasladar problemas de un campo a otro. La retribución consiste en un pequeño espacio de libertad para desarrollar un trabajo personal, para devenir algo o alguien. Una dificultad añadida sobreviene cuando la voluntad del artista reacciona ante el medio encerrándose sobre un bucle repetitivo:

“No se dan pues, en arte, más que dos fenómenos: Cuando el artista es un producto del medio; -medio temporal- cuando el medio es producto del artista –medio universal-.[…] Dase el segundo fenómeno, cuando el artista, reconcentrado ante el medio, ve la exigua realidad de las calidades. […] Una vez hallado el noúmeno parte el artista hacia la síntesis. De la complejidad de su no-yo, retira, como elemento anamórfico, todo lo de anecdótico tienen las cosas.”[5]

We are here with the other side of the theoretical game. Sublimation answers, etymologically, to the idea of ​​lifting purification. From an economic point of view indicates a diversion of energies, channeling of the drive to a different company from its primary objective is none other than their feedback. Displacement allows vicarious satisfaction and a creative opportunity where there was a blind impulse only.

He commented on the fragment entitled "And we exiles in the adventure" says Mazas:

“En el momento mismo de aparición de la libido el hombre ya no le demanda a la vida la belleza: ya no le demanda más que la belleza química; y el arte no es otra cosa que el esfuerzo por demandarle a la vida la verdadera belleza, la belleza pura, sin mezcla”.[6]

La contraposición entre libido y belleza, entre la infancia y lo otro, se suma a aquella otra oposición entre sentimiento y medida. El intercambio termina cuando se devuelve a la sociedad aquello que se ha creado, se enajena la obra para recuperar el espacio, para comenzar de nuevo la recreación. Diríase que entonces que el juego responde a unas reglas propias y no se deja llevar por otros intereses ajenos. El carácter lúdico de la búsqueda parece haber sido un paso dado más allá por recobrar una autonomía estética, que tiene que pugnar entonces por establecerse como creación frente a la realidad.

But this is where the Kantian classicism has left us a legacy problem as an infinite task, the moral imperative of a search. A work of mourning impossible, the enormity of the desert that we can never cross. Or to put it a more appropriate metaphor in the universe of Mazas, an immeasurable ocean. A pietistic rigor that is hardly compatible with artistic creation. And some have suggested that Sade has only to take Kant to its implicit consequences.

Two texts in "Regardless of gay life" that Mazas published in La Zarpa in 1926, "Paganism and Christianity" and "Ethics and Aesthetics"[7] contrasts the aesthetic paganism of the Greeks and their cult of beauty, with the absolute ethics of the New Testament.

"Christ does not see, not eying the beauty in his ethical doctrine may be aesthetic, but few times aesthetics can be ethical. Magdalena redeems your life, not because it was beautiful (...) but because he dwells loved; This love of Magdalena, basically, is a way of lavishing good. "

Something later, in "Martha and Mary" and "The word and the miracle"[8]The contradiction seems sweetened: Love could be the bridge that mediates between ethics and aesthetics, between the cult of life and death cult. Also at the dawn of German idealism in the early nineteenth century, Hegel and Hölderlin thought they could retake the Kantian critical project, and give it the vitality of lacking social basing a civil religion, with one foot in the Greek republican ideals and one in the purity early Christian. Even then, romanticism seemed endowed them with a pathos exultant unable to create a stable and universal community, and to promote such longed reconciliation. Hegel developed his thought by less Utopian roads, while Hölderlin remained faithful to those ideals in his novel synthesized Hyperión (1797-1799).

We have not even an idea that might suggest a hypothesis to understand the reasons Mazas effort in the development of dramatic writing. except perhaps the suitability of dramatic enactment for the representation and evolution of a complex conflict. The Hölderlin himself had to fail after several attempts to delve into that abyss transfigured Death of Empedocles. The purity of childhood love, the renunciation of vital passion, melancholy, the banality of earthly interests and the final ignorance about the meaning of life, reemerge in full force Santa Margorí (1930). It is true that the multiplicity of characters allows the conflict to be enriched by a larger set of nuances. But the drama is again represented in terms of sensuality, acceptance of the passionate nature of human beings, against the ascetic renunciation that aspires to immortal purity. Sister Margorí becomes holy at the time of his resignation and, at the same time, a martyr of worldly religion of love.

It seems, finally, as if the feminine manifest by a genuine ambivalence. On the one hand, it is transformed into the ultimate temptation against the desire for eternity, and at the same time, the sublimation of that desire. In that indecision in the double bind which it is the desire as such is where the beauty suddenly appears. Only gives a minimal chance to be touched, and come out alive; there is only a single moment to execute the stroke. Indecision is something hasten the sublime. Little death. Best latter, of course.

© Oscar Rodriguez of God

Adrastea. illustration for Santa Margorí. 1930.


Bibliography

ALLOUCH Jean: Against eternity. Ogawa, Mallarm, Lacan. Literal editions, Buenos Aires, 2009.
BOUZAS, José Manuel: "Fernández Mazas" in new Pulido, A. (ed.): historical avant-gardeNew Editions Galicia, Vigo, 1998. P. 301-333.
BOUZAS, José Manuel (coord.): Cándido Fernández Mazas. Vanguard, militancy and oblivion. (1902-1942).Catalog of the exhibition held at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid in 2002. Caixa Galicia Foundation-Circulo de Bellas Artes.
FERNÁNDEZ MAZAS, Armando: The aesthetics of Fernández Mazas, Swallow, Ourense, 1992.
--The journalism Fernández Mazas, swallow, Ourense, 1990.
FERNÁNDEZ MAZAS, Cándido:
--Dibujos Paris 1925-1927, Swallow, Ourense, 1993. With texts by Santiago Arbos, Granell, Carlos Gurméndez, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester and José M. Bouzas.
--The legend of Don Juan. Comedy 400.- Work IncompleteEditions swallow, Ourense, 1994.
—– Santa Margorí. (1930). The disparate horns (1931). Do Castro. Sada-A Coruña, 1981.
FREUD, Sigmund: "Those who fail when they succeed" in Various types of character discovered in analytical work. (1916). New Library, Vol. 2. Madrid, 1968.
Gurméndez, Carlos: Fernández Mazas. Do Castro, Sada-A Coruña, 1981.
KANT, Immanuel: (1790) Critique of Judgement, Works in six volumes, Volume 5, Scientific book company, Darmstadt 1,983th
SHORT, Gerhard: Indirectness and association: On the relationship between poetry, reflection and. Revolution Hölderlin, Metzler, Sttugart., 1975
SCHILLER, Friedrich (1795) Letters on the aesthetic education of humanity. Kallias. Anthropos, Barcelona, 1990.


Notes

[1] Husserl (1859-1938) was founder phenomenology; and turn Hermann Cohen (1842-1918), and Paul Natorp (1854-1924) were the masters of the neo-Kantian Marburg school where Ortega y Gasset study.
[2] The privileged formation of Ortega in Germany occurred at the height of the debate between Kantians and phenomenologists. Despite playing an active role within it, it was an intellectual horizon that he himself was forced to pass. Vine. "Prolog for German" preface to the third German edition of The topic of our time. The famous conference on the block referred to by Fernández Mazas, by the way, was immortalized by Luis Martín-Santos in his novel Time of silence.
[3] Fernandez Mazas, Candido: "De superrealismo complement" P.A.N. No. 2, Feb. 1935. Collected in Fernández Mazas journalism, p. 127.
[4] Copón, Miguel: "Scratching" Bouzas, José Manuel (coord.): Cándido Fernández Mazas. Vanguard, militancy and oblivion. (1902-1942). pp. 81-91.
[5] Fernández Mazas, Candide: "The new art and Manolo Mendez", Galicia, Vigo newspaper, 1923-1924. collected in Fernández Mazas journalism, p. 108.
[6] Fernández Mazas, Candide, "" Et nous dans l'aventure exiles ", collected in BOUZAS, José Manuel (ed.): Cándido Fernández Mazas. Vanguard, militancy and oblivion. (1902-1942). P. 235.
[7] Fernandez Mazas, Candido. "Regardless of gay life", La Zarpa, September 19, 1926. Gathered in Fernández Mazas journalism, pp. 32-34.
[8] Fernandez Mazas, Candido. "Systole and diastole", Galician People, March 28, 1929. Gathered in Fernández Mazas journalismPp. 59-60. (Diastole sístole y, p. 59-60 EPFM)