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The Art Resort

The art center functions like an art resort: well-known artists, shooting and fleeting stars, show their work without context: its a museum-window, a controlled view of international art; exhibitions drift from one art center to another without touching the reality of these places; a wide selection of recreational activities are offered to the visitor in an isolated enclosure; public art is an excursion –there is movement and interaction but no connection. The art, in the art resort, is the tourist that enjoys the local customs without touching the reality of the place; the tourist doesn't expose himself to the risk of the journey, he exhibits himself. Two subjects that coexist without coming together are protected but do not enrich each other. Isolated, art loses its nutritive properties, it does not inform the city, it breathes in an urban context that suspends progress.

The art resort is a model of art production. The skin is separated from the body when the animal is dead and re-structured for production. The center, the production, the agent...all military and mercantile language that refers to control. Perseus kills Medusa using his shield as a mirror. The beginning of artistic creation is related to ambiguity and reflection. Separation: the work, the piece, a part of a machine...the project, a method that art has appropriated from architecture, separates the creative process into conception and realization...Present time deferred to the future loses intensity. No real exposure, just show rooms. The works of art continue to be viewed live in the galleries, but lie in state. The present, as in a gift, is defined by its “presentness”– its consummating act of being given or received, not acquired.  Unlike the fetish object, in a gift there is no projection. Compared to a product, the gift is ambiguous and uncertain, it has an objective cost and an uncertain value, it is valuable but not in a quantifiable way. Compared to a production model, the gift is indirect and not linear, it is based on mutual recognition and implies indebtedness and even if it is a response to an invitation, it is a surprise. A gift requires interaction.  It is given or received.

The “Art Resort” has modified the understanding of cities and art. To stay within the limits of the known–away from strangers–is not simply a personal choice, that of sacrificing excitement, richness and adventure for fear, but is a political act in as much as it avoids the identification with the other and allows for the distance required for cruelty and injustice. Beyond family bonds, the city allows for significant exchange between strangers. Art understands reality as a whole, unifying form and content, presenting facts without separating them from the affects they are bound to and, in this way, resists the loss of humanity. The impulse to found centers of art and culture may be a response to the intention of creating cities through art. But like the vacation resorts, that separate the tourist from the local reality, it actually works against cultural exchange. An art center, by isolating art within its discipline and separating it from real life, does not create city.

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