Touchstones by Mario Vargas Llosa

Author:Mario Vargas Llosa [Llosa, Mario Vargas]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A dogmatic vision has tragic consequences in politics, because dogmas restrict and distort human reality, which is always more subtle and complex than ideological schemata and Manichean world views. But such a vision can be a marvellous stimulus for creating a work of art, which is always a fiction, that is, a condensation of reality. When a schematic view of humanity – and here we think of Grosz in art and Brecht in literature – is expressed with great technical and formal skill, then it can become a powerful and persuasive reality, an alternative world to lived experience. And although it is a fraud, it can often impose itself on reality and become that reality. Grosz produced his best work when he hated and wounded without compunction, when he dreamed of crimes and the apocalypse, when he divided the world into devils – soldiers, priests, prostitutes, bureaucrats and capitalists – and saints – revolutionaries and workers – and expressed all this in seductive and deceitful images.

In the worlds of art and literature – the worlds of fiction – people sometimes discover that their own secret utopias have been expressed, their deepest cravings have to some degree been satisfied. I find this with Grosz, above all the Grosz of the Berlin years. To admire his work, I do not have to burden it with ethical and political considerations, or psychological readings, because although these aspects might well be important, they do not address the central issue: that Grosz used all of this material to construct his own world, based on his own creative egotism.

Great artistic works are always mysterious and complex, so it is always risky to gauge them in ideological, moral or political terms, although not to do so would be to avoid something that is also undeniable: that a work is not created and does not resonate in a void, but rather within history. Some works can be understood quite easily and thus lend themselves to different interpretations. Other works, like those of Grosz, are much less easy to read, which is why critics often seem uneasy with him. Some critics analyse his work purely in artistic terms, talking about form and colour and composition, ignoring the ferocious distortions and violence of his world. And those that merely explore the content are often loathe to accept that his images are contradictory, at once a violent attack on, but also a celebration of, a world with which – doubtless despite himself – he closely identified.

Grosz was not a ‘social artist’. He was a maudit. In today’s shifting and superficial definitions of art, all original works must be described as maudit, eccentric and marginal, and so the term seems rather meaningless. But this was certainly not the case when Baudelaire used the word. What I mean is that Grosz’s work is absolutely authentic, and expresses an unrestrained freedom. His fantasies stirred the bilge of society and the human heart, and his invention of reality has, over time, become more powerful and truthful than reality itself.

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