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Transformative Attitude, 1972

Until recent times it was fashionable to emphasize uniqueness, incidentality, and exceptionality of the work of art. The absurdly extreme example to that attitude was a photoreporter’s years lasting expectations for an unusual and frequently macabre event because its registration provided him and his work with artistic value. I definitely disagree with such simplified views which want us to see an artist among all seekers of macabre rummaging with both hands in flowing guts of necrotic corpses.

Art is in the process of becominy in every instant of reality: to the individual every fact, every second is fleeting and unique. That is why l record common and trivial events like eating, sleeping, copulation, resting, speaking etc. Moreover each activity of a man being a component of his reality is absolutely equal in evoking mental reaction in a man who watches the notation. That is why l can transform a regis¬tration of one activity into another one. It is not substance and a for-mal appearance which are essential but an effect, that is meaning.

I leave all contestations about the appearance and formal clearness of the sign to soured theoretical impotents. Concept art apart from drawing attention to the essential function of artaffecting mental an intellectual sphere of a manis beneficial also for the reason that it gives much needed is beneficial also for the reason that it gives art as well as theory of art, healthy and much needed air. At the moment that airing is changing into a strong draught throwing all monartistic gestures and poses out of the window of reality.

Natalia LL, 4 November, 1972

Translated by Henryk Holzhausen „Heute Kunst”, 1975, no. 9, Düsseldorf