Digital variations : Wall 205 is online

The complete gallery of 256 digital variations that compose wall 205 is online.

Here under are a few samples from this collection. The size of each of these variations is 60 x 90 cm and the complete wall is 9.6 x 14.4 meters. 

 Click on the images to get a larger size at 1200 x 800 px. 

The 2nd batch of 256 paintings of wall 202 are online

Pushing the envelope to 19.2 x 28.8 meters ...  (continuum of 1024 digital paintings). 

This second batch represents the second quarter of 256 paintings...  The print size of each digital painting is 60 x 90 cm.

The complete gallery of this second quarter of wall 2-02 is online (Gallery B = 256 paintings).

Here under are a few samples from this collection of 256 digital paintings.

Organic art = the patterns of life (3)

2.   how did Modernity emerge in Europe

Why is understanding the emergence of Modernity so important ? Well, in order to survive in the 20th century, all countries on earth were forced to convert to the quasi-worldview of Modernity and to the reason that is at work within capital. What ensued was a radical departure from the past that thoroughly impacted the ways of thinking and the behaviors of the individuals in all third-world nations. And this resulted in a blow-back of monumental proportion on their worldviews, culture, art, and societal governance.

I observed first hand how – the art world in Beijing during the eighties was mesmerized to ape Western productions, rock and punk music, the modernist avant-garde painting, – and how this resulted in three decades of sheer insanity. Things have certainly evolved since then but the blow-back resulting from aping the first world has still not been completely digested...

Having said that the fact of the matter is that the blow-back on the 3rd world is nothing compared to the chaos that was unleashed on the first world.

Today we come to suspect that Modernity and capitalism have cursed humanity. And nothing could liberate us more thoroughly from this curse than by gaining a clear comprehension of why and how Modernity emerged in Western Europe in the first place and how things then evolved toward Late-Modernity.

Restarting to blog

To my regular readers "welcome back" and to new readers "welcome".


Recapitulation

Since I stopped blogging over a year ago let me start with a recapitulation of my past blogging activity.

From Modernity to After-Modernity. (27)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations 

Summary sketch of part 2.

Life is one of the applications installed in the operating system of the universe and it emerges eventually in those of its sub-sets whose context contains all the ingredients for life to emerge.

Humanity is one of the youngest species to have evolved from such a process of emergence on earth. As all species humanity is subservient to the application of the principle of life. By that I mean that we can’t escape its rules; we are merely dancing to the tune of its music.

From Modernity to After-Modernity (22)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations 
Chapter 5. About the arts

5.2.3. From biological evolution to societal evolution

What I propose here is that biological evolution has been a first mover in the process of the evolution of life. It has bestowed on us our biological characteristics in a process of natural selection that operated over hundreds of millions of years. Furthermore the near infinite chain of its successful mutations have imprinted patterns in our biological code that act as a predisposition of the individual to prefer beauty over ugliness, love over hate, cooperation over competition, winning over losing and so on.

From Modernity to After-Modernity. (21)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 5. About the arts

5.2. The origins of the arts.

It is my contention that to have a valid conversation about the arts we have first and foremost to understand how and why they emerged in the first place. The arts are indeed not a given and they also did not fall from the sky. Nature has no patience with things that are of no use to it and very fast it discards such un-useful things. So logic implies that a human demand must have arisen, sometime and in a given context, for the usage of the arts. They must indeed have emerged as a valid answer to a human necessity in a given context. That’s what I want to address here.

From Modernity to After-Modernity (about chapter 5)

 Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 5. About the arts

Hello to my regular readers and to everybody else,


As of my post last Friday my writing this winter already generated 560 book pages.  I started working on the last chapter, this chapter 5, but will pass this week's publication because I was exhausted and needed some time to put my ideas together. This chapter should be the culmination of this winter's writing so I feel I need to get it right.

This is how I presently envisage the architecture of this text:

Can anyone actually define what a "True Artist" is? (2)

This is a follow-up on my last post here on Crucial Talk and completes the transcription of my posts on the thread "Can anyone actually define what a "True Artist" is?" on the LinkedIn forum

Can anyone actually define what a "True Artist" is?

(This is a re-publishing of the content of my postings in a discussion started by Ron Croci on Linkedin under the same title as here above.)

The term "artist" in visual art has been in use for only a relatively short time. Before the Renaissance the "picture makers" were considered being craftsmen of very low social standing put in charge of illustrating the story of the Christian creed.

Etymology to the rescue of sense in art.

My friend Mark from New Delhi sent me the following comment about my post "About the ways of seeing reality":
The word 'idea' has its roots in the Ancient Greek word 'idien' which means 'to see'.
The root word for 'technology' is again an Ancient Greek word 'techne' which to the Greeks meant 'art'.



That's very interesting indeed. The etymology of the words I write about seems to reinforce my argument:
- to see = idea about reality
- art = the technique to put out the idea about reality for all to share.

The real question then centers on our way of seeing. And that is at heart what differentiates civilizations and the different epochs within civilizations.

Modernity has its "way of seeing" that is basically ideological: the reign of individualism and private property. This ideology develops as an outcome of a few centuries of plundering by the European aristocracies and merchant adventurers. From those accumulated "richnesses" develops a logic of rationality (the logic of capital) and the individuals who own those richnesses want to experience the prestige that comes with them. So we'll have portraits. landscapes and stills on the walls of their mansions and for a few centuries painting will be exclusively about that.

Coming out of the first world war "thinker-artists" reject that model but they don't succeed in finding a new "way of seeing" that could be validated by their societies and the story will end later in "whatever" being presented as being art. (a certain shark for exemple, is it not Mr. Saatchi?).

We sense today that a new "way of seeing" is there somewhere out of the door waiting to be shared by the whole world. I mean that the world, the whole world for once, is searching for sense out of the chaos wrought about by the fast changes induced by science, on one side, the impact of globalization on another side and finally the side-effects of modernity that day after day appear to become a greater threat to the survival of life on earth. All this is happening simultaneously on a worldwide scale and at an accelerating rhythm due to the multiplying interactions between those 3 factors!

What I refer to here is a new "way of seeing"and understanding reality that is shaping as a postmodern "way of seeing" but I sense that there are some conditions for this search for sense to find a successful outcome. Post-modernity emerges indeed out of the completion of the expansion of modernity to the 4 corners of the world! Let's remember that the process towards modernity implies economic change that brings social change that in turn brings cultural change. It's this complete process that guarantees the capitalistic strength for a nation to strive in modernity and it's only after the completion of the whole process in all nations that postmodernity could possibly strive.

But we artists can't wait for this outcome. It is our role, it seems to me, to materialize in visual signs what the etymology of the words "idea" and "art" could possibly represent in postmodernity:
- to see = idea about reality: science and the philosophies shared by the majority of the people on this earth (China, India,...) will somehow fuse to give us a paradigmic new vision about reality that redresses all the ill side-effects of modernity.
- art = the technique to put out the idea about reality for all to share.

To give visual signs that will make sense 50 or 100 years from now artists better dig into science and philosophies in order to represent substance in their works.

Crucial Talk: Table of content

Browse the 164 most important posts in Crucial Talk's table of content.

The second stage of my ARTSENSE adventure, "The way things are", shall also be published on Laodan's blog and on my Saatchi blog.

My daily clippings of what I find of interest in the media and on the net are posted on my new blog with StumbleUpon.


Technorati tags: art, modern art, art theory, visual art, worldviews, painting, fine art

Publication of Crucial talk's "adapted" content into a book: ARTSENSE.

I'm now, entering a new phase of my work, preparing for the writing of "The way things are" or "About the emergence of a postmodern realism".


I shall be publishing the first drafts in the form of posts on this blog and other web venues.


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What is ARTSENSE about?

ARTSENSE is an adventure of mine that started beginning of 2004. It includes a collection of some 50 acrylic paintings, 600 digital variations and 2 books!

ARTSENSE is also the title of the first of those 2 books that gives a summary of my ideas about reality about the societal functionality of visual arts throughout history and of my understanding of the changes that are setting our present-day globalizing world on the road of the future.

Crucial Talk is a tool that I used to bring online the first drafts of the material that I would later use in assembling ARTSENSE. I'm now, entering a new phase, preparing for the writing of a new work "The way things are" or "About the emergence of a postmodern new realism".

Where to find ARTSENSE?

Check here for the best pricing of Artsense
or go directly to Amazon

Technorati tags: art, modern art, art theory, visual art, worldviews, society, power,