russTHE PRAISE OF LAZINESSMLADEN STILINOVIC
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Artists from the East were lazy and poor because the entire system of insignificant factors did not exist. Therefore they had time enough to concentrate on art and laziness. Even when they did produce art, they knew it was in vain, it was nothing.Artists from the West could learn about laziness, but they didn't. Two major 20th century artists treated the question of laziness, in both practical and theoretical terms: Duchamp and Malevich. Duchamp never really discussed laziness, but rather indifference and non-work. When asked by Pierre Cabanne what had brought him most pleasure in life, Duchamp said: "First, having been lucky. Because basically I've never worked for a living. I consider working for a living slightly imbecilic from an economic point of view. I hope that some day we'll be able to live without being obliged to work. Thanks to my luck, I was able to manage without getting wet". |
Malevich wrote a text entitled "Laziness - the real truth of mankind" (1921). In it he criticized capitalism because it enabled only a small number of capitalists to be lazy, but also socialism because the entire movement was based on work instead of laziness. To quote: "People are scared of laziness and persecute those who accept it, and it always happens because no one realizes laziness is the truth; it has been branded as the mother of all vices, but it is in fact the mother of life. Socialism brings liberation in the unconscious, it scorns laziness without realizing it was laziness that gave birth to it; in his folly, the son scorns his mother as a mother of all vices and would not remove the brand; in this brief note I want to remove the brand of shame from laziness and to pronounce it not the mother of all vices, but the mother of perfection". Finally, to be lazy and conclude: there is no art without laziness.
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Work is a desease - Karl Marx.Work is a shame - Vlado Martek. |
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Mladen Stilinovic
Born in 1947 in Belgrade (Yugoslavia). Member of an informal group "Six Authors", which had a significant impact on the development of radical Croatian art in the second half of the seventies. From 1982 heading the Galerija Prosirenih medija. Lives in Zagreb (Croatia). |