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man’s community normalizations– created apedagogical illusion that thewhole of humanitywouldbe educated, but this is the thing that isn’t true.What we call culture, or spirit, that thing that humans havedesigned, has always been theproduct of aminority. Government by themajority is respectable, but spirit has always been aminority thing: thiswas the casebeforehand and it still is today. People confusemorality and ethics.Morality is judgement about people’s behaviour, whereas ethics is the constructionof one’s own self. Democracy and freedom are similarly confused. Freedom is something individual. One is freebecause they can choose, to in- vestigate, to look intooneself. Freedom is internal and is essentially manifested though acts of external courage. Democracy is not a collectionof freemen, but rather themost free of the organiza- tional models the human animal has been able to find. Democracy doesn’t automaticallymean aprosperous periodof freemen. Is toomuch informationdisconcerting? Before I quotedHeraclituswho said ‘much teachingdoes not teach understanding’, which iswhat is happening to us, 2500 years later. There ismass informationbut noquality. People are continually informed, but not about themost crucial elements thatmight decide the fate of humanity in the times to come –for example in thedeep layers of what is happening inSyria.We have avalanches of information, but it isminimal inquality. Do you thinkwemight be coming to a new rebirth? We can’t know if we are in theDarkAges or about to see a Renaissance. On the topic of art, I’d say that I refuse to talk about art unless it is understood as creation. I’m not interested in the commercialismof art, nor in the sociology or phenomenology. Everyone that has used art tomake especially grotesquemontages and soon…they don’t interestme. Art is amediator betweenmen and their enigma, and has been since cavepaintings. There arepeoplewhowork towards creation spaces ofmediation, verbalizing them andmaking them visible. But thiswork is done in solitude, with sacrifice and celebrations, as I used to say. In this sense the artist that fulfils this function is, in part, an artisan in theEgyptian, Byzantine, orMedieval sense…but an artisanwith freedomof expression. That, forme, is an artist. Those that havebelieved the rather stupid legendof the artist in themodern ages have no interest forme at all. Artists unable to confront their ownworkwithout their work being thatmediation towards the aforementioned enigma are of no interest tome, and the confusionbetween art and the artmarket isn’t either. If we start out from these radical functions of art, we can seewhy one of the greatest art historians of the 20th century, Gombrich declared just before his death, ‘I am ashamed tobepart of a centurywhosemost emblematicpiece of work appears tobe a urinal’. AndDuchampwas an extraordinarily creative and intelligent manwhomade aparody of this entireworldwith the urinal – and an interested army of thousands of idiots (includingmany prestigious university lecturers) believed it was art. For these reasons, this ceremony of confusion has blindedour potential approach towhat the artistic act is. I knowwhat it is perfectlywell. When themore or less amusing urinal joke turnsmacabre iswhen Duchamp’swork ismore relevant thanMichelangelo’s Last Judg- ment in university syllabuses. This is easier to understandwhen you take into account the fact that it’smuch easier for a lecturer, journalist or critic to explainDuchamp’s urinal than it is to explain Michelangelo. It’s infinitely easier toget into Jeff Koons’smindset thanBach’s or Titian’s, for whom you need a lifetime of study. The comparisonbetween a largepart of art criticism and the current art market and true art is as clear todraw as thedifferences between a low-budget reality show and aworkbyOrsonWelles, for example. Is therebeauty in current art? Yes, of course there is. I think that if we hadOsiris toweigh the sensitivity and intelligence of eachgeneration, the scaleswould alwaysweigh the same. I think that humangenerationsmaintain the sameproportions, but they canbemore or less hidden, andgoon to createmore or less esoteric languages. There aremany artists that seekbeauty, not just as a canonical beauty, but as somethingmulti-faceted. The thing is that sometimes, for complex reasons, this search is overwhelmedby a hegemony ofmechanisms of simulation, spectacle and impact. But yes, it does exist, andwhen it is discovered it gives us aparticular satisfaction. At any rate, whenwe talk about the great names of art history theywere surroundedbywhat are now forgotten names, but perhaps in their day theywere great names too. History is a great filter and so I only draw up canons and createmuseumswith thedead, thosewho havebeen filtered for their value. Now, inour time and thedemystificationof theworld, there is an evengreater confusionbetween success andglory. It seems that the only thing that is on the table is success, not glory, the latter understood almost as something theological that wouldbe the celebrationof art. The young artist often considers the sale of artmore frequently that its celebration. The important thing is respectingone’s own truth: I would even say that one canbe evil but if one’s truth is respected thenone is a coherent artist. The artist’s sellingof their soul is the sale of their own truth. Does the artist always live submerged in light and shade? All humans live like this, butmaybe the artist ismore sensitive to the enigma, which I understand as a continual covering and uncovering.We could say the artist is thepersonwho travels along theborder betweenwhat is covered anduncovered. The most sensitiveman is not the artist or poet because they have to cool and fossilize evocations into the formof apoem, paintingor sculpture, andone has tobe sensitivebut alsoparticularly hard to be a taxidermist of one’s own emotions. You have to understand anddo exercises of voluntary solitude, the thing that forges the free manbecause it is then that the great thoughts of ideas arise, and when emotions can come to transform intoworks of art. You have a theoretical side and another creative one. From an epistolary point of view, what would you say to artists? Tobe aware of internal freedom, and not somuch to external freedom. This iswhat wouldmake their work reflect their own truth. Freedom, truth and a goodbalancebetween avant-garde ingenuity and artisanmodesty. Theorists havebeenmere spectators, and art can’t be left in their hands. Itmust growout of theperspective of the artist. I am in favour of a unionbetween theory andpractice, between contemplation and action. I am against thedictatorship of the theorists although I havemy reservations about those artists who are unable to explain their ownwork. And as an artist-creator, what do you expect from the theorist? A theorist has to essentially be someone educated andgenerous and has to have a good eye for exploration, and can’t bedogmatic or sectarian, or corrupt. There is a long history of corruption in art theory throughwhich artisticmovementswere constructedout of financial interests in the second half of the 20th century by theorists for whom artists are sheermercenary hirelings. FineArts training inmodern schools is fairly centredon conceptual art. Do you think this is appropriate or would it bemore interesting togoback to academicism? I don’t thinkwe shouldgoback to academicism, but I think that FineArts is affectedbywhat is happening in all other kinds of teaching.We’vebeen losing the grand traditions as abasic reference, and there has been a lot of negative confusion in believing that avant-garde is contrary to tradition. The avant-garde is a continual anddaring reformulationof tradition. The great avant- gardists of the early 20th centurywere verywell-trainedmen. Just as in humanities and science I am in favour of educating students in the great traditions togive them theweapons to subvert them. I am also in favour of FineArts students knowing the techniques of artistic languages, otherwise they can’t subvert them. If awriter doesn’t know the rules of linguistic construction, it’ll be hard for him to have his own style. That is applicable to everything. 11