Dear Friend,

Here are a few concepts I am trying to grasp as a result of the fuss made by the Vlaams Belang (one of the largest parties in Belgium and on the far right). The confusion of concepts comes naturally to the Vlaams Belang. The fact that people who have never shown the slightest interest in art suddenly have an opinion about it is quite grotesque. But the intellectual elite who react to it are thoroughly confused too.

- Experiment: an experiment is a means to an end. Artists are always experimenting. And experiment is an intermediate stage. If it leads to nothing, it is meaningless and doomed to failure. The important thing is that it be a beautiful failure.

- Beauty and consolation: art is always about beauty and consolation. What could give you more beauty and consolation than the devastating ideas of Marcel Duchamp? Or Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock: a black man, dressed as an Indian, playing a distorted version of the stars and stripes?

- Elite: I consider myself an elite man. I refuse to give in to the tastelessness of the masses. I shall always try to understand this tastelessness and if possible undermine it. As an artist, that is my task.
This is why I consider myself an elite man. In a democracy an elite is a necessity.

- Subsidies: in a democracy, subsidies are a means of protecting the minority from the dictatorship of the majority. To safeguard freedom of thought.

- Social mix: what is the social mix like in, let’s say, the European Parliament? If politicians took the social mix seriously the underground railway in Brussels would be a safe place. But at present it is only the lowest classes who by necessity travel on it. No, in the arts one uses the notion of the social mix purely and simply as a stick with which to beat what one does not understand.

- Freedom: the higher up the social ladder one is placed, the greater one’s freedom, and the greater one’s responsibility. Freedom without these consequences amounts to laziness. And since art is right at the top of the social ladder, the responsibility borne by artists is huge. (Pistoletto)

- Separation of Art and State: it has taken us several hundred years to persuade the Church not to interfere in the State. It has only been partially successful and the consequences are disastrous. Should we ask the same questions about Art and the State?

- Art: let’s use more and more words like hysteria, mysticism and trance. Any art that burns flags is bad art. Any art that advances political propositions is entertainment. It is as a result of far right bullshit that we do this. Art is always mutilated by extreme political ideas.

I will kill anyone who says that art is superfluous.

Regards,
Jan Lauwers