Tony Lowes: Works

GIVE UP ART – AN INTRODUCTION

Tony Lowes — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 21:19:15 +0000

GIVE UP ART SAVE THE STARVING

An Introduction

The GIVE UP ART SAVE THE STARVING manifesto was written in 1986 and launched through the Mail Art network distribution system with badges, balloons, and stickers as an idealist attack on art from Tony Lowes’ remote cottage in rural Ireland.

It continues a tradition of an ethical critique of art that can be traced back at least as far as Calvinist iconoclasm. Dadaism, which sought to abolish art without realizing it; the avant-garde Surrealists; the post-Situationists; Futurism, the Neo-Dada Fluxus, Neoism itself, Mail Art, and Punk – are all in many ways a return of the repressed, the re-emergence of Protestant iconoclasm in a post-Christian world where art serves as a secular religion justifying the activities of a “murderous ruling class”. It is part of the endless debate — from the early 20th century avant-garde to the more recent “relational aesthetics” — about what qualifies as art and non-art.

The exclusive status of visual art works is a product of its emancipation from the crafts to the status and notion of fine art. This status has also been the reason why art, as a whole, has been fiercely attacked by activists and critics such as Henry Flynt — who coined the slogans “Down with Art” and “Demolish Serious Culture” in the context of the 1960’s Fluxus movement.

Guy Debord’s 1967 thesis declared that the modern decomposition and destruction of all art was “the last great offensive of the revolutionary proletarian”, declaring its positive significance in the fact “that the language of communication has been lost”. Marxist Roger Taylor’s 1976 book was simply entitled “Art, an Enemy of the People”.

The Manifesto – and the exhibition of an empty GIVE UP ART room as part of an alternative exhibit to “Documenta VIII” in Kassel in German in 1987 – was a prime mover of the ART STRIKE 1990 – 1993. Promoted first by Steve Perkins and Scott Macleod’s Art Strike Action Committee (ASAC) in San Francisco, it echoed the first 1970’s Art Strike – the “New York Art Strike Against War, Repression and Racism”. Lowes’ manifesto was persistently used by breakaway neoist self-promoter Stewart Home – “the art terrorist’s art terrorist” – with his creation of Karen Elliot as a plagiarist multiple identity.

Ironically, if the GIVE UP ART campaign is viewed as an attack on individualised creativity (“that unique place inside us where we possess art”), the work effectively addresses those in the art world most given to such tendencies. Using a language which is accessible to those who might not be artists, but perceive themselves as such, the Manifesto is firmly placed in a long intellectual tradition. Reappearing here are all the contradictions of anti-art, unresolved since Pere Ubu made his stage debut.

Lowes’ work suggests a further resonance, quoting within the Manifesto the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: “Seeing and creating are the same activity”.

Monty Cantsin, San Francisco, December, 2011

GIVE UP ART MANEFESTO

Tony Lowes — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 21:04:43 +0000

GIVE UP ART
Imagine a world in which art is forbidden! Art galleries would close. Books would vanish. Pop stars would shed their glamour overnight. Advertising would cease, television would die. We could refocus our vision not on a succession of false images but on the world as it is. A stillness would fill the air. Art has provided us with fantasy worlds, escapes from reality. For whatever else it is, art is not reality. Soap operas, novels, movies; concerts, the theatre, poetry. None of these are real as a starving child is real, as a town without water is real. Art is the glamorous escape, the transformation that shields us from the world we live in. Injustice, endemic disease, famine, war. Those are real. Art has replaced religion as the opiate of the people just as the artist has replaced the priest as the spokesman of the spirit. Once men reached inside themselves to find God. Now they find art. We are regulated by our addictions and art has become an addiction. We struggle through life in a drugged dream, searching for escape, for brighter fantasies, longer voyages of the imagination, louder music. Another man’s life is always more interesting than our own. It is only those who have given up art who can experience the true nature of creation. Now, a self-perpetuating elite market art as a commodity for the wealthy who have everything while making the artists themselves rich beyond their wildest dreams. Art is money. It is ironic that the myth of the artist celebrates suffering while it is those who have never heard of art, the poor and wretched of our earth, who truly suffer. To call one man an artist is to deny another the equal right of vision. Paint all the paintings black and celebrate the dead art: there is no booze in hell. We turn away from mountains of food that rot in storage while across the globe men grow too weak to eat because it is time for our favourite TV programme. We live up to our knees in blood, wasting not only hours but days – whole lifetimes – in the blind belief that art is good, art is pure, art is its own justification and a nightmare scourges our planet. Until we end famine there will be no peace. Artists are murderers! Artists are murderers just as surely as is the soldier who sights down the barrel of a gun to shoot an unarmed civilian. Without art, life would be unendurable! We would have to transform this world. Overnight, one man’s dream can become a nation’s future – but we do not seize power because we are enchanted by art. Forbid art and revolution would follow: the withholding of creative action is the only weapon left to men. Seeing and creating are the same activity. Those who create art are also creating the starving. In a world in which art is forbidden the deserts would flower. Give up art. Save the starving.
SAVE THE STARVING

A WITTGENSTEIN PRIMER

Tony Lowes — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:06:05 +0000

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s (1889 – 1951) influence has been felt in nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences, yet there are widely diverging interpretations of his thought. His position as one of most important philosophers is evident by the way his works continue to influence contemporary philosophers, especially those studying mind and language. His later works suggest that conceptual confusions surrounding language use are at the root of most philosophical problems.

Quixotic and enigmatic, funny and chilling, at times impatient and irascible – even ecstatic – these excerpts bring alive the strange and rigorous Austrian philosopher who resisted the publication of his own works in his lifetime.

Drawing on what is now recognised as his central work, “Philosophical Investigations”, and the filing box of index cards he left behind on his death (since published as “Zettle”), these 139 short excerpts contain enough philosophy, wisdom – and poetry – to keep the reader thinking for a lifetime.

As Wittgenstein remarks in the Primer, “I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking but, if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of their own.”

The Mikey Joe Stories

Tony Lowes — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:03:28 +0000

Published 30 years ago, the Mikey Joe Stories is a both a children’s book and an adult fantasy. Mikey Joe is raised in the remote hills of the Irish coastal countryside, his family ostracised through his father’s environmental championship. Puppy Dog is his only companion until he meets the Magic Donkey, who reappears through the book.

Losing his parents and his own leg in a traffic accident, he ends up orphaned in hospital where his strange journey is populated by characters like The-Girl-Who-Couldn’t-Talk, The-Boy-Who-Couldn’t-See and the Girl-Who-Couldn’t-Remember (including a Person-All-In-Bandages) and a Day Nurse who sings Happy Birthday every day because it’s always someone’s birthday.

Just as his journey begins again, an evil Train Conductor overcomes the honest thief Light-Fingered-Eddie leading to Mikey Joe’s the unjust jailing. Identification number tattooed on his wrist, he experiences terrible scenes that reflect the horror of man’s inhumanity to children.

Sheltered by a kindly Judge – and his ever-generous cook and housekeeper – before his unjust sentencing, Mikey Joe and his new best friend Yin-Yan see the streets of The City decay around them against a background of flaring violence. The Judge tells Mikey Joe. “The President can not help us. He is a good man, but he is surrounded by bad men who care only for wealth and power. There are evil times, and we must endure them in silence…’

Mikey Joe’s roller-coaster emotional journey transcends time and history, echoing the message that being ‘strong and brave and honest’ can free us from eternal suffering. For children, the Mikey Joe Stories are a timeless tale of loyalty and love; for adults, The Mikey Joe Stories are an allegorical world of universal significance.

CLICK HERE TO SAMPLE OR BUY THE MIKEY JOE STORIES ON KINDLE BOOKS

The Works of Tony Lowes

Tony Lowes — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:26:24 +0000

NEW! THE KINDLE EDITION OF

THE MIKEY JOE STORIES, 1984, illustrated by Laurence Bicknell €2.99

Click HERE to sample or buy

also now available on from Amazon’s Kindle Shop

A WITTGENSTEIN PRIMER, 1986,

UK Amazon €0.77

USA Amazon $1.22

GIVE UP ART. The 1986 Manefesto. With a new introduction by Monty Cantsin.

AND COMING IN 2012

FIXED OILS, the 1982 experimental novel set in Western Ireland in the 1970′s, in the American mid-west in the 1880′s, and in India in the 1970′s and 1840′s.

Most widely held works by Tony Lowes

A Wittgenstein primer by Ludwig Wittgenstein( Book )
4 editions published between 1984 and 1991 in English and held by 10 libraries worldwide

Oil spill : contingency plans & saving oiled sea birds by Taisce( Book )
1 edition published in 1999 in English and held by 9 libraries worldwide

The Mickey Joe stories by Tony Lowes( Book )
1 edition published in 1984 in English and held by 8 libraries worldwide

Elephant book : P.S. don’t laugh at all the new Chinese restaurants, or How the elephant made it through the psychedelic symbol by Tony Lowes( Book )
1 edition published in 1971 in English and held by 7 libraries worldwide

Fixed oils by Tony Lowes( Book )
1 edition published in 1987 in English and held by 4 libraries worldwide

47 parables by Tony Lowes( Book )
in English and held by 4 libraries worldwide

Elephant book by Tony Lowes( Book )
1 edition published in 1971 in English and held by 3 libraries worldwide

The universal living room by Tony Lowes( Book )
1 edition published in 1986 in English and held by 2 libraries worldwide

A Wittgenstein primer : comp. and ed. from the later works by Ludwig Wittgenstein( Book )
1 edition published in 1984 in Undetermined and held by 1 library worldwide

Aktivitätsbericht der Versuchsanstalt Ijmuiden für das Jahr 1973 by T Lowes( Book )
1 edition published in 1974 in Undetermined and held by 1 library worldwide