One of the best presentations of the science surrounding global warming-induced climate change I've ever seen
Global Warming Facts and Our Future, by the National Academy of Sciences.
2004-06-11
Art under the gods
The transition to the human creation of gods takes place at different times for each center of civilization. China and Sumer invent their first gods sometime 5-6,000 years ago or earlier. Other centers will follow up later on. Some ethnic groups are even living in animist cultures till today. All that shows us a deep differentiation between the people of this earth in their levels of societal development.
So the historical phase of religious domination of the minds starts some 5-6,000 years ago for the most advanced societies of that time, China and the Middle East. This movement reaches its zenith and starts to decline around 1000-500 BC in China while we have to wait for the 18th-20th centuries in Western Europe. Most other societies remain firmly entrenched in their religious beliefs as of today.
In religious times, art and design over time came to serve as PR, advertisement techniques for the religious powers. Visual arts, in societies under religious ideology, are a non stop succession of images illustrating the content of religion. Architecture and music serve to impress the population, that is largely uneducated, in order to instill fear in the small individual for the power of those representing those grandiose architectural constructions and the music served in them. In other words, grandiose religious architecture has to serve the grandeur of the religious authority. The same kind of reasoning is valid equally when applied to the palaces of the aristocracy. The architectural target was to make individuals feel very small.
In the period that leads to the formation of capitalism in medieval Europe, the Roman church kept the upper hand and the secular power sought to use its relation with the religious authorities to affirm itself. Religious belief during this period appeared in two forms. The educated were studying illustrated latin sacred books copied from Roman golden times and the majority of the people who were illiterate received the message of the little few who were educated in the form of painted and carved images. Such images constituted the exclusive subject of the artists of this epoch who, with the distance of passed time, appear to us today having been a lot more like propaganda craftsmen than artists.
Production by the craftsmen and commerce of their goods was exercised under the principles defined by the church. Each craft was under the supervision of its internal “police”. The “guild” or corporation regulated all aspects related to production and sale in compliance with the edicts of the priests. In such an environment, market competition was excluded. The only area not restricted was the work of the craftsman himself, he had to offer goods complying with the minimum quality standards set by the guilds and as such, the quality of the goods, their finishing touch appeared as a natural way for craftsmen to differentiate themselves from one another. Competition in Western Europe has long been limited to the quality of the goods on offer. Not surprisingly this induced a very deep care for the details in all productions and craftsmanship reached the level of an art.
Click here to view very good religious art in the 'Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry' which is usually referred to as 'the king of the illuminated manuscripts', it is a pinnacle in the entire history of painting. Commissioned by Jean, Duc de Berry in 1413, it was painted by the Limbourg brothers who left it unfinished at their (and the Duc's) death in 1416. The Duc Charles I de Savoie commissioned Jean Colombe to complete the painting of the manuscript between 1485-1489”.
So the historical phase of religious domination of the minds starts some 5-6,000 years ago for the most advanced societies of that time, China and the Middle East. This movement reaches its zenith and starts to decline around 1000-500 BC in China while we have to wait for the 18th-20th centuries in Western Europe. Most other societies remain firmly entrenched in their religious beliefs as of today.
In religious times, art and design over time came to serve as PR, advertisement techniques for the religious powers. Visual arts, in societies under religious ideology, are a non stop succession of images illustrating the content of religion. Architecture and music serve to impress the population, that is largely uneducated, in order to instill fear in the small individual for the power of those representing those grandiose architectural constructions and the music served in them. In other words, grandiose religious architecture has to serve the grandeur of the religious authority. The same kind of reasoning is valid equally when applied to the palaces of the aristocracy. The architectural target was to make individuals feel very small.
In the period that leads to the formation of capitalism in medieval Europe, the Roman church kept the upper hand and the secular power sought to use its relation with the religious authorities to affirm itself. Religious belief during this period appeared in two forms. The educated were studying illustrated latin sacred books copied from Roman golden times and the majority of the people who were illiterate received the message of the little few who were educated in the form of painted and carved images. Such images constituted the exclusive subject of the artists of this epoch who, with the distance of passed time, appear to us today having been a lot more like propaganda craftsmen than artists.
Production by the craftsmen and commerce of their goods was exercised under the principles defined by the church. Each craft was under the supervision of its internal “police”. The “guild” or corporation regulated all aspects related to production and sale in compliance with the edicts of the priests. In such an environment, market competition was excluded. The only area not restricted was the work of the craftsman himself, he had to offer goods complying with the minimum quality standards set by the guilds and as such, the quality of the goods, their finishing touch appeared as a natural way for craftsmen to differentiate themselves from one another. Competition in Western Europe has long been limited to the quality of the goods on offer. Not surprisingly this induced a very deep care for the details in all productions and craftsmanship reached the level of an art.
Click here to view very good religious art in the 'Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry' which is usually referred to as 'the king of the illuminated manuscripts', it is a pinnacle in the entire history of painting. Commissioned by Jean, Duc de Berry in 1413, it was painted by the Limbourg brothers who left it unfinished at their (and the Duc's) death in 1416. The Duc Charles I de Savoie commissioned Jean Colombe to complete the painting of the manuscript between 1485-1489”.
2004-06-09
Pining For The Melting Pot
Roger Kimball is Managing Editor of The New Criterion and an art critic for the London Spectator. Let me be very clear, I do not agree at all with Kimball's conclusions, but I respect his work. It is thought provoking and as such it is advisable reading material.
My principal concern, with his arguments against multi-culturalism and his defense of the Euro-centric melting pot, is that this goes against the tide of evolution, against the present tide towards "one world". Kimball is just setting his sight on a too narrow band of the 21st century cultural reality. "Multiculturalism and affirmative action are allies in the assault on the institution of American identity. As such, they oppose the traditional understanding of what it means to be an American..".
Today, the world extends further then the shores of the US Mr. Kimball, your limited vision leads you to debate past perspectives, you are missing the present and thus the future will wipe you out of the intellectual scene.
China, India and the rest of Asia represent nearly 60% of the world population. For the last 500 years, those countries have been largely left out of the workings of our Eurocentric economic system and the world view that it vehiculated. Their societal systems were not wiped out, during these last centuries of European invasions, simply because they were too developped. To put it otherwise, they were drawn in a position of dominated that was then exploited (cotton to opium).
Let's remember that Europe grew out of its medieval backwardness only because it stole from other societies what became the substance of its primitive capital accumulation which gave European nations the substance from which to develop the capitalist system. The result for many societies around the world has been devastating: from pure disappearance (mostly American societies) to total dislocation (mostly African societies). As such the conclusion imposes itself that capitalism is the natural outcome of European violence, brutality and greed.
Asian societies largely subsisted because their very old and refined civilizations were no match for European brutal primitives. But comes the 21st century and the moment of truth. After much observation and analyses, Asian societies are taking on the West frontally at its own game. Playing according the rules devised by the West, Asians are well on their road to beat the West economically. This, unmistakably, has cultural implications.
The brutal encounters of Europe with the rest of the world during the crusades and the 16-17th centuries discoveries conducted Europe to develop the system of capitalist-rationalism. The 21st century encounter of Western capitalist-rationalism with Asia seems leading the West out of dominance and Asia towards command. OK, this is a crude summary. I push the enveloppe a little far or perhaps a little early, my intention is simply to push you, the reader, to think at the implications of what is going on today.
The Western Eurocentric cultural worldview is going to be engaged into a cultural shock without precedent. Two factors are going to shape the depth of this shock:
- the scale-population (in the sense of economies of scale). The Western Eurocentric cultural worldview is shared by roughly 15% of the world population versus the Asian worldview that is shared by around 60% of the world population. The economic impact of those figures is not missed by Western big capital that only cares about the "logic of capital" but does not care a damn about the West itself. We should all be conscient about this fact.
- the scale of importance or of refinement of the Asian cultures versus Western cultural primitivism.
The conclusions that one can draw at this point are purely prospective, but an effort at thought shuld be instructive...
Institutionalizing our demise: America vs. multiculturalism
My principal concern, with his arguments against multi-culturalism and his defense of the Euro-centric melting pot, is that this goes against the tide of evolution, against the present tide towards "one world". Kimball is just setting his sight on a too narrow band of the 21st century cultural reality. "Multiculturalism and affirmative action are allies in the assault on the institution of American identity. As such, they oppose the traditional understanding of what it means to be an American..".
Today, the world extends further then the shores of the US Mr. Kimball, your limited vision leads you to debate past perspectives, you are missing the present and thus the future will wipe you out of the intellectual scene.
China, India and the rest of Asia represent nearly 60% of the world population. For the last 500 years, those countries have been largely left out of the workings of our Eurocentric economic system and the world view that it vehiculated. Their societal systems were not wiped out, during these last centuries of European invasions, simply because they were too developped. To put it otherwise, they were drawn in a position of dominated that was then exploited (cotton to opium).
Let's remember that Europe grew out of its medieval backwardness only because it stole from other societies what became the substance of its primitive capital accumulation which gave European nations the substance from which to develop the capitalist system. The result for many societies around the world has been devastating: from pure disappearance (mostly American societies) to total dislocation (mostly African societies). As such the conclusion imposes itself that capitalism is the natural outcome of European violence, brutality and greed.
Asian societies largely subsisted because their very old and refined civilizations were no match for European brutal primitives. But comes the 21st century and the moment of truth. After much observation and analyses, Asian societies are taking on the West frontally at its own game. Playing according the rules devised by the West, Asians are well on their road to beat the West economically. This, unmistakably, has cultural implications.
The brutal encounters of Europe with the rest of the world during the crusades and the 16-17th centuries discoveries conducted Europe to develop the system of capitalist-rationalism. The 21st century encounter of Western capitalist-rationalism with Asia seems leading the West out of dominance and Asia towards command. OK, this is a crude summary. I push the enveloppe a little far or perhaps a little early, my intention is simply to push you, the reader, to think at the implications of what is going on today.
The Western Eurocentric cultural worldview is going to be engaged into a cultural shock without precedent. Two factors are going to shape the depth of this shock:
- the scale-population (in the sense of economies of scale). The Western Eurocentric cultural worldview is shared by roughly 15% of the world population versus the Asian worldview that is shared by around 60% of the world population. The economic impact of those figures is not missed by Western big capital that only cares about the "logic of capital" but does not care a damn about the West itself. We should all be conscient about this fact.
- the scale of importance or of refinement of the Asian cultures versus Western cultural primitivism.
The conclusions that one can draw at this point are purely prospective, but an effort at thought shuld be instructive...
Institutionalizing our demise: America vs. multiculturalism
New MOMA
Designed by the Japanese architect Yoshi Taniguchi, the new museum (MOMA)is an elegantly minimal building of black granite, dark gray, clear and etched glass with about 63,000 square feet of new and renovated spaces on six floors. The exhibition space alone has grown to 125,000 square feet from 85,000 square feet with galleries clustered around a soaring 110-foot-tall atrium.
MOMA reinstals its collection! "You have to think what to leave people with." said John Elderfield, the Modern's chief curator of painting and sculpture,
Making Over the Modern
MOMA reinstals its collection! "You have to think what to leave people with." said John Elderfield, the Modern's chief curator of painting and sculpture,
Making Over the Modern
2004-06-04
Art market obcenity and more
Some good articles today about the art market, technical discipline and policies leading to an aseptic art form.
Art market 'a cultural obscenity'
Drawing is a vital part of every creative process
Why Does Government Prefer Bland Art?
Today Lund University launched Phase 2 of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). From the press release: "The new version of DOAJ now includes records at article level and a search functionality allowing users to search articles in potentially all Open Access Journals. The directory now contains information about more than 1100 open access journals, i.e. quality controlled scientific and scholarly electronic journals that are freely available on the web. As of today 270 of the 1100 journals are searchable on article level and both numbers are growing. Researchers can now search almost 46,000 articles through the Directory of Open Access Journals and be sure to get access to the articles". By By Peter Suber in Open Access News, Fri, 4 Jun 2004
DOAJ launches article-level searching
"Around 540 million years ago, life on the earth underwent a profound growth spurt: during the Cambrian explosion, the planet�s multicellular life diversified rapidly. Scientists writing in the journal Science say that they have identified in rocks from China what may be the beginnings of this revolution. According to the report, the fossils are the earliest evidence of animals with a two-sided body plan (as opposed to a radial one) and date to around 55 million years before the Cambrian explosion".
Tiny Fossils Could Be First Complex Animals
Generally speaking I don't like to post here about politics but those 2 are must reads. Frightening eye-opener...
27-Year CIA Vet Ray McGovern On George Tenet's Surprise Resignation
Before 9-11, al-Qaida trainee told agents of terrorist plan to hijack passenger planes
Art market 'a cultural obscenity'
Drawing is a vital part of every creative process
Why Does Government Prefer Bland Art?
Today Lund University launched Phase 2 of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). From the press release: "The new version of DOAJ now includes records at article level and a search functionality allowing users to search articles in potentially all Open Access Journals. The directory now contains information about more than 1100 open access journals, i.e. quality controlled scientific and scholarly electronic journals that are freely available on the web. As of today 270 of the 1100 journals are searchable on article level and both numbers are growing. Researchers can now search almost 46,000 articles through the Directory of Open Access Journals and be sure to get access to the articles". By By Peter Suber in Open Access News, Fri, 4 Jun 2004
DOAJ launches article-level searching
"Around 540 million years ago, life on the earth underwent a profound growth spurt: during the Cambrian explosion, the planet�s multicellular life diversified rapidly. Scientists writing in the journal Science say that they have identified in rocks from China what may be the beginnings of this revolution. According to the report, the fossils are the earliest evidence of animals with a two-sided body plan (as opposed to a radial one) and date to around 55 million years before the Cambrian explosion".
Tiny Fossils Could Be First Complex Animals
Generally speaking I don't like to post here about politics but those 2 are must reads. Frightening eye-opener...
27-Year CIA Vet Ray McGovern On George Tenet's Surprise Resignation
Before 9-11, al-Qaida trainee told agents of terrorist plan to hijack passenger planes
2004-06-02
About complexity theory.
Short report on the Fifth International Conference on Complex Systems. The theory of complexity is the ultimate in interdisciplinary scientific approaches.
About complexity theory
How do we view the complexity of our world? I think we fail to integrate the China factor in the equation. Here is an article helping to do just that.
Great Wall of Unknowns
About Visual complexity in the Santa Fe Institute Bulletin.
Picasso and Perception
As illustration of the content of this article see Lao Tze' text n#11:
Chapter 11 The thirty spokes unite in the one nave; but it is on the empty space (for the axle), that the use of the wheel depends. Clay is fashioned into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness, that their use depends. The door and windows are cut out (from the walls) to form an apartment; but it is on the empty space (within), that its use depends. Therefore, what has a (positive) existence serves for profitable adaptation, and what has not that for (actual) usefulness.
Tao Te Qing
About complexity theory
How do we view the complexity of our world? I think we fail to integrate the China factor in the equation. Here is an article helping to do just that.
Great Wall of Unknowns
About Visual complexity in the Santa Fe Institute Bulletin.
Picasso and Perception
As illustration of the content of this article see Lao Tze' text n#11:
Chapter 11 The thirty spokes unite in the one nave; but it is on the empty space (for the axle), that the use of the wheel depends. Clay is fashioned into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness, that their use depends. The door and windows are cut out (from the walls) to form an apartment; but it is on the empty space (within), that its use depends. Therefore, what has a (positive) existence serves for profitable adaptation, and what has not that for (actual) usefulness.
Tao Te Qing
2004-06-01
Where has freedom of expression gone in the US?
Lori Haigh, San Francisco owner of the Capobianco gallery was threatened, spat upon and, most recently, punched in the face after May 16 when East Bay artist Guy Colwell made an addition of a painting of torture to his monthlong showing.
When people are punched in the face for showing a painting it is an attack on the princip of art itself. The 19th and 20th centuries saw art emerging, in Europe and then the US, as the lightning rod of creativity in total liberty. This came both as a reaction against past illiberties (commissionned art) and present economic needs of free consumerism.
What happenned in San Francisco is a sign of the times in the US. Such acts do not bode well for freedom of expression, for creativity in general. Today the victim is a gallery owner, yesterday it were hospital doctors what about tomorrow? Will scientists be attacked because of the topic of their research activities? Will everyone who accesses specific internet sites (not only pornography but also news) be suspected of god knows what?
Are we really going back to illiberties of old times?
Are we going to accept this or are we going to bow our heads down and wait for ... Just imagine for what.
Attacked for art, S.F. gallery closes
When people are punched in the face for showing a painting it is an attack on the princip of art itself. The 19th and 20th centuries saw art emerging, in Europe and then the US, as the lightning rod of creativity in total liberty. This came both as a reaction against past illiberties (commissionned art) and present economic needs of free consumerism.
What happenned in San Francisco is a sign of the times in the US. Such acts do not bode well for freedom of expression, for creativity in general. Today the victim is a gallery owner, yesterday it were hospital doctors what about tomorrow? Will scientists be attacked because of the topic of their research activities? Will everyone who accesses specific internet sites (not only pornography but also news) be suspected of god knows what?
Are we really going back to illiberties of old times?
Are we going to accept this or are we going to bow our heads down and wait for ... Just imagine for what.
Attacked for art, S.F. gallery closes
2004-05-31
Playing god creating your own universe.
"Was our universe created? That is, was it brought into being by an entity with a mind? ... It is the fundamental issue that separates religious believers, ranging from Deists to Gnostics to Southern Baptists, from nonbelievers."
Read the amazing creationist theory of Andrei Linde, physicist at Stanford University but attach your neuronal seatbelts... and discover that nonbelievers can also be creationists.
playing god
Read the amazing creationist theory of Andrei Linde, physicist at Stanford University but attach your neuronal seatbelts... and discover that nonbelievers can also be creationists.
playing god
2004-05-28
Painting is back
Here is an excellent article about painting. It goes around the arguments developed in this blog.
"We're living in an extremely fruitful and exciting time for those captivated by contemporary art," says Dan Cameron, senior curator at New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art. "I've been in the trenches for 20 years, and there's more good art being produced in more places than I can remember at any one time. We're in a sort of Golden Age."
Yes that's it. We seem to enter the first marches of an artistic renaissance. Painting again is at the forefront of "making sense out of it".
I'am presently deeply engaged in the painting of 30 works and I can't thus spend much time writing but I'll be back at it intensively sometime during the coming fall. My project is to terminate a book based on what I have written as of today in this blog, a book that will act as an introduction to the paintings I'am working on presently.
Can an art form that's been around for centuries still express the zeitgeist? Or "Is it a vampire, feeding off the blood of its history?" as John Weber, curator of education and public programs at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, puts it.
In other words, is the new painting more about nostalgia - a throwback to a time of greater stability - or is it vital and original, shaking up one's assumptions and forcing the viewer to feel and think about the present?
This question is of the uttermost importance and is the reason why this blog is titled "Crucial talk". It makes absolutely no doubt to me that human perception is foremost visual. In one of the last articles that I recommended a scientist was expressing how scientific thought was as flowing along visual representations in the head of the scientist. Visual representations are behind the values and thinking of all of us, most generally unconsciently for sure. Thus goes my personal thinking: visual arts are about making or giving sense to our reality. Presently, to grasp some sense out of our reality, the brush has to follow a brain that is aware simultaneously of 2 forms of knowledge: traditional philosophies and modern sciences of complexity, there is no escaping this in painting. And this is the secret to leap over the following observations:
"They are not tackling very difficult issues, although they are first-rate stylists," Robert Storr, professor of modern art at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, says of the new painters.
Professor Storr sees none of the younger generation attacking social injustice like the established painters Gerhard Richter or Leon Golub. "New narrative paintings by younger artists are not addressed to large world problems. The new work is much more antiheroic or deliberately modest in ambition."
In the meantime, see the following article.
Painting is back
"We're living in an extremely fruitful and exciting time for those captivated by contemporary art," says Dan Cameron, senior curator at New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art. "I've been in the trenches for 20 years, and there's more good art being produced in more places than I can remember at any one time. We're in a sort of Golden Age."
Yes that's it. We seem to enter the first marches of an artistic renaissance. Painting again is at the forefront of "making sense out of it".
I'am presently deeply engaged in the painting of 30 works and I can't thus spend much time writing but I'll be back at it intensively sometime during the coming fall. My project is to terminate a book based on what I have written as of today in this blog, a book that will act as an introduction to the paintings I'am working on presently.
Can an art form that's been around for centuries still express the zeitgeist? Or "Is it a vampire, feeding off the blood of its history?" as John Weber, curator of education and public programs at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, puts it.
In other words, is the new painting more about nostalgia - a throwback to a time of greater stability - or is it vital and original, shaking up one's assumptions and forcing the viewer to feel and think about the present?
This question is of the uttermost importance and is the reason why this blog is titled "Crucial talk". It makes absolutely no doubt to me that human perception is foremost visual. In one of the last articles that I recommended a scientist was expressing how scientific thought was as flowing along visual representations in the head of the scientist. Visual representations are behind the values and thinking of all of us, most generally unconsciently for sure. Thus goes my personal thinking: visual arts are about making or giving sense to our reality. Presently, to grasp some sense out of our reality, the brush has to follow a brain that is aware simultaneously of 2 forms of knowledge: traditional philosophies and modern sciences of complexity, there is no escaping this in painting. And this is the secret to leap over the following observations:
"They are not tackling very difficult issues, although they are first-rate stylists," Robert Storr, professor of modern art at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, says of the new painters.
Professor Storr sees none of the younger generation attacking social injustice like the established painters Gerhard Richter or Leon Golub. "New narrative paintings by younger artists are not addressed to large world problems. The new work is much more antiheroic or deliberately modest in ambition."
In the meantime, see the following article.
Painting is back
2004-05-27
About anarchy.
Take away all the rules and let people behave.
"This surprises many people, although mathematically it's not surprising," Hamilton-Baillie says. "The reason for this is that your speed of journey, the ability of traffic to move smoothly through the built environment, depends on performance of your intersections, not on your speed of flow between intersections." And intersections, he says, work much more efficiently at lower speeds. "At 30 miles per hour, you frequently need control systems like traffic signals, which themselves mean that the intersection is not in use for significant periods of time. Whereas at slower speeds vehicles can move much more closely together and drivers can use eye contact to engage and make decisions. So you get much higher capacity."
Well it seems to me that anarchy is nice when few people are present but becomes a headhache when you are among a crowd. If you want to experience what I'am speaking about, no need to refer to mathematics, go to Beijing and drive a car...
"Woonerf" - Anarchy the Key to Safe Streets?
"This surprises many people, although mathematically it's not surprising," Hamilton-Baillie says. "The reason for this is that your speed of journey, the ability of traffic to move smoothly through the built environment, depends on performance of your intersections, not on your speed of flow between intersections." And intersections, he says, work much more efficiently at lower speeds. "At 30 miles per hour, you frequently need control systems like traffic signals, which themselves mean that the intersection is not in use for significant periods of time. Whereas at slower speeds vehicles can move much more closely together and drivers can use eye contact to engage and make decisions. So you get much higher capacity."
Well it seems to me that anarchy is nice when few people are present but becomes a headhache when you are among a crowd. If you want to experience what I'am speaking about, no need to refer to mathematics, go to Beijing and drive a car...
"Woonerf" - Anarchy the Key to Safe Streets?
2004-05-23
Where to Get a Good Idea: Steal It Outside Your Group
Creativity, creation are becoming fashion subjects for sociolologists nowadays. A few days ago I gave a link to an article about MIT's take on invention versus innovation. This time it's a link to an article by Ronald S. Burt, a sociologist at the University of Chicago about innovation through stealing the ideas present in other groups.
Where to Get a Good Idea: Steal It Outside Your Group
About cubism and the new look at reality that cubist artists brought to their societies. "Habits of perception and assumptions about the nature of things that had been stable since the 17th century were falling away. ... Picasso was a very physical, emotional man, and his cubism is not an attempt scientifically to account for the world so much as to experience it more fully."
Fragments of the universe
Where to Get a Good Idea: Steal It Outside Your Group
About cubism and the new look at reality that cubist artists brought to their societies. "Habits of perception and assumptions about the nature of things that had been stable since the 17th century were falling away. ... Picasso was a very physical, emotional man, and his cubism is not an attempt scientifically to account for the world so much as to experience it more fully."
Fragments of the universe
2004-05-21
Debates about art.
Realism versus conceptual, an old debate that still rages.
In the 20 May 2004 edition of the Independant Tom Lubbock addresses the question of Real Painting at the occasion of an exhibition by eight young British artists who persist in painting from life. Lubbock's central argument goes as follows: "this kind of figurative painting is indeed old hat, and what old hat means is that not only has someone done it before, but that someone has done it much better before and there really is no point in doing it again worse. And whenever someone speaks up for Real Painting it always means painting that's a pale and wonky imitation of something else".
The argument is right I guess but what a pale reasoning.
The real point of debate is not realism versus conceptual but what is art: content + technique. Content is the subject of an art work. Is a portrait or a landscape still worth the act of painting in the 21st century? Honestly I don't believe. Other techniques are better adapted to this kind of content than the brush. Also portraits and landscapes as message of a painter about his vision of reality, well a pale vision indeed. The 21st century is all about knowledge, understanding of reality. Science and philosophy are at the forefront of our understanding and they analyse our reality as being a global and complex system reaching from the macroscopic to the microscopic. Portraits and landscapes seem vain for the least in such a complex system.
Is The Tide Turning Against Conceptual Art?
Are the very well to do out of opportunities in the world of business? Or is art part of their business?
Irrational Exuberance
In the 20 May 2004 edition of the Independant Tom Lubbock addresses the question of Real Painting at the occasion of an exhibition by eight young British artists who persist in painting from life. Lubbock's central argument goes as follows: "this kind of figurative painting is indeed old hat, and what old hat means is that not only has someone done it before, but that someone has done it much better before and there really is no point in doing it again worse. And whenever someone speaks up for Real Painting it always means painting that's a pale and wonky imitation of something else".
The argument is right I guess but what a pale reasoning.
The real point of debate is not realism versus conceptual but what is art: content + technique. Content is the subject of an art work. Is a portrait or a landscape still worth the act of painting in the 21st century? Honestly I don't believe. Other techniques are better adapted to this kind of content than the brush. Also portraits and landscapes as message of a painter about his vision of reality, well a pale vision indeed. The 21st century is all about knowledge, understanding of reality. Science and philosophy are at the forefront of our understanding and they analyse our reality as being a global and complex system reaching from the macroscopic to the microscopic. Portraits and landscapes seem vain for the least in such a complex system.
Is The Tide Turning Against Conceptual Art?
Are the very well to do out of opportunities in the world of business? Or is art part of their business?
Irrational Exuberance
2004-05-17
The impact of technological change upon our response towards visual arts.
An article that illustrates the impact of technological change upon our response towards visual arts.
"It gives consumers access to a wide number of images from around the world that would otherwise only be available on their screen [on a museum's Web site] or in a book. It engages the viewer directly by giving them something they can make their own."
Having a famous painting at home might be as simple as hitting `print'
"It gives consumers access to a wide number of images from around the world that would otherwise only be available on their screen [on a museum's Web site] or in a book. It engages the viewer directly by giving them something they can make their own."
Having a famous painting at home might be as simple as hitting `print'
2004-05-11
Invention versus innovation.
The May issue of MIT Technology Review is all about invention and the distinstion between "invention" and "innovation".
" 'invention' is the creation of radical new ways of saying and ways of seeing; 'innovation' is the preparation and packaging of those ideas to connect to an audience; 'diffusion' is the final delivery of that innovation and the economic models that keep it flowing. "
Invention, innovation, and the arts
" 'invention' is the creation of radical new ways of saying and ways of seeing; 'innovation' is the preparation and packaging of those ideas to connect to an audience; 'diffusion' is the final delivery of that innovation and the economic models that keep it flowing. "
Invention, innovation, and the arts
2004-05-10
Remembrance about what this blog is all about.
Art is the expression of one's understanding and vision of reality in a technique of his choice (technique that he masters). Technique and content are thus the two components of whatever art form. This was true in the past, remains true today and shall remain true in the future.
Mastering a technique does not mean having been schooled, mastering a technique means virtuosity in the practice of a technique. Schooling can help someone to master a technique but it is the individual who in the last instance will exercise and as such, the exercise, the practice of a technique is what after some time will give the individual the mastery.
Speaking of art, we know for a sure fact that technique and content are inseparable. Good technique with poor content results in shallowness and poor technique with interesting content results at best in unfinished works. Thus technical mastery + rich content is what gives art works.
With the 20th century came an accelerating rhythm of technical changes that led to an overflow of information. Humans were gradually plunged into a maelstrom of noise and images. Total confusion resulted, art lost its meaning and we humans lost our way.
Observing this reality is not enough, we have to understand it to be able to orient ourselves in order to find back our way.
This blog is about my understanding of our human reality (total confusion) and my own search for our human WAY. Surely enough my thinking centers on visual arts, to be more precise painting for this is what I spend the most time at. In my first sentence I wrote "Art is the expression of one's understanding and vision of reality in a technique of his choice". So my work centers on my understanding and vision of reality. But this is not given by the movement of the brush or by my painting technique. My vision of reality comes from the effort that I consciously make at understanding this reality through reading and searching for answers and this passes through the study of history, culture, economics, politics and science.
Our human reality is made of total confusion and thus it is only natural that the arts have been for some time now mired in confusion. But when it is clearly established that confusion reigns what becomes paramount is the search for a way out of this confusion. Knowledge of the confusion is not enough, we have to give sense to our lives and this is only feasible through knowledge of our human histories and civilizations. Modern sciences do not bring sense they only make sense when they come as an extension of historical and civilizational understanding.
In other words, I believe that the artists' mission in the 21st century is to bring sense to our reality and thus it ensues that artists have to be thinkers and philosophers.
Mastering a technique does not mean having been schooled, mastering a technique means virtuosity in the practice of a technique. Schooling can help someone to master a technique but it is the individual who in the last instance will exercise and as such, the exercise, the practice of a technique is what after some time will give the individual the mastery.
Speaking of art, we know for a sure fact that technique and content are inseparable. Good technique with poor content results in shallowness and poor technique with interesting content results at best in unfinished works. Thus technical mastery + rich content is what gives art works.
With the 20th century came an accelerating rhythm of technical changes that led to an overflow of information. Humans were gradually plunged into a maelstrom of noise and images. Total confusion resulted, art lost its meaning and we humans lost our way.
Observing this reality is not enough, we have to understand it to be able to orient ourselves in order to find back our way.
This blog is about my understanding of our human reality (total confusion) and my own search for our human WAY. Surely enough my thinking centers on visual arts, to be more precise painting for this is what I spend the most time at. In my first sentence I wrote "Art is the expression of one's understanding and vision of reality in a technique of his choice". So my work centers on my understanding and vision of reality. But this is not given by the movement of the brush or by my painting technique. My vision of reality comes from the effort that I consciously make at understanding this reality through reading and searching for answers and this passes through the study of history, culture, economics, politics and science.
Our human reality is made of total confusion and thus it is only natural that the arts have been for some time now mired in confusion. But when it is clearly established that confusion reigns what becomes paramount is the search for a way out of this confusion. Knowledge of the confusion is not enough, we have to give sense to our lives and this is only feasible through knowledge of our human histories and civilizations. Modern sciences do not bring sense they only make sense when they come as an extension of historical and civilizational understanding.
In other words, I believe that the artists' mission in the 21st century is to bring sense to our reality and thus it ensues that artists have to be thinkers and philosophers.
2004-05-09
Creativity versus borrowing and rearranging.
Forget the hard-won solitary labors of the artist who doesn't pirate or sample. That model just doesn't fit anymore. Lessig considers culture itself to evolve through variants on piracy.
(Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, in his new book, "Free Culture: How Bad Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity" Penguin)
This is a thought provoking article that artists and thinkers need absolutely to read.
Liberty, Technology, Duty: Where Peace Overlaps War
(Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, in his new book, "Free Culture: How Bad Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity" Penguin)
This is a thought provoking article that artists and thinkers need absolutely to read.
Liberty, Technology, Duty: Where Peace Overlaps War
2004-04-29
Painters and the market.
Here is an excellent article about painters and the market.
Is fame the art world's biggest lottery?
Is fame the art world's biggest lottery?
2004-04-23
New York's flirt with the past.
So I'am not alone to think about New York's design scene as a swim in a minimalist bath. See my post of Tue Aug 12, 2003.
Minimalist Oases in a Bustling Manhattan
Minimalist Oases in a Bustling Manhattan
2004-04-22
Art ...and its function in society.
Here we are again, art and ideology and commerce. Art as a public relation tool at the hands of the ideologues and the merchants. In earlier times, the ideologues were the priests, today they are the merchants.
"...fine art's conceptual leanings are increasingly difficult to distinguish from the facile surfaces of advertising, this ironic fusion of art and commerce is perhaps an inevitable progression. ...the all-important products and logos are deleted, leaving only their surrounding associations hanging in the air like conceptual perfume."
Death of the gallery
"...fine art's conceptual leanings are increasingly difficult to distinguish from the facile surfaces of advertising, this ironic fusion of art and commerce is perhaps an inevitable progression. ...the all-important products and logos are deleted, leaving only their surrounding associations hanging in the air like conceptual perfume."
Death of the gallery
2004-04-10
Art with sense or accountancy of works.
What is culture and art all about ?
Is it to collect all that is realized under the sky without any selection or is it to select from all those creations the ones that offer meaning about the times we live in ? In other words, is there sense in art or are all productions equally interesting and thus deserving collection?
Read in spiked-online 04/09/04.
"The pursuit of aesthetic or historical understanding, of attempting to distinguish good paintings from bad or correct interpretations from false ones, is deemed impossible. Instead, all cultural institutions can do is to revel in 'diversity', by promoting different kinds of art and competing judgements. Today's cultural policy rejects the ways of the traditional cultural elite, and presents itself as far more enlightened. However, if we examine the legacy that cultural diversity policy has rejected, we find that some valuable principles have been lost by the wayside."
"Cultural diversity policy is founded upon the collapse of traditional cultural policy. The celebration of 'diversity' for its own sake expresses the disorientation of the cultural elite, once belief in standards of cultural value had waned. But the same policy is also a response to this disorientation, providing a new logic and role for cultural institutions".
The latest attacks on multiculturalism in Britain have been coming from the left. "An elite that is unwilling to make judgements about why any one cultural practice is better than another, to set universal standards about what role individuals should be expected to play across society, and to promote a distinct set of values that a society should agree upon, finds a useful tool in multiculturalism. This is why it has been so well-suited to Western societies in the past few decades, increasingly disorientated by the erosion of cultural and political certainties. Clearly, the official promotion of multicultural policy has not provided any solution to this disorientation - indeed, by actively encouraging expressions of difference and divisions between communities, it may well have fuelled the process of fragmentation."
Art for inclusion's sake
Facing up to the M-word
Is it to collect all that is realized under the sky without any selection or is it to select from all those creations the ones that offer meaning about the times we live in ? In other words, is there sense in art or are all productions equally interesting and thus deserving collection?
Read in spiked-online 04/09/04.
"The pursuit of aesthetic or historical understanding, of attempting to distinguish good paintings from bad or correct interpretations from false ones, is deemed impossible. Instead, all cultural institutions can do is to revel in 'diversity', by promoting different kinds of art and competing judgements. Today's cultural policy rejects the ways of the traditional cultural elite, and presents itself as far more enlightened. However, if we examine the legacy that cultural diversity policy has rejected, we find that some valuable principles have been lost by the wayside."
"Cultural diversity policy is founded upon the collapse of traditional cultural policy. The celebration of 'diversity' for its own sake expresses the disorientation of the cultural elite, once belief in standards of cultural value had waned. But the same policy is also a response to this disorientation, providing a new logic and role for cultural institutions".
The latest attacks on multiculturalism in Britain have been coming from the left. "An elite that is unwilling to make judgements about why any one cultural practice is better than another, to set universal standards about what role individuals should be expected to play across society, and to promote a distinct set of values that a society should agree upon, finds a useful tool in multiculturalism. This is why it has been so well-suited to Western societies in the past few decades, increasingly disorientated by the erosion of cultural and political certainties. Clearly, the official promotion of multicultural policy has not provided any solution to this disorientation - indeed, by actively encouraging expressions of difference and divisions between communities, it may well have fuelled the process of fragmentation."
Art for inclusion's sake
Facing up to the M-word
2004-04-09
No meaning, only agit-prop. Is it art ?
They do not build "meanings," "messages" or "symbols," they nevertheless know how to trot out agitprop... Ah, yes...it's subversive.
Unreasonable Art
Unreasonable Art
2004-04-08
Change: our earth is breathing.
The earth seems to breathe. Its magnetic field appears to flip from North to South for very long periods. Its last flip from South to North appeared some 780.000 years ago...
Quick flip of Earth's magnetic field revealed
Magnetic Field Flip-Flop Clocked
Our Growing, Breathing Galaxy
Quick flip of Earth's magnetic field revealed
Magnetic Field Flip-Flop Clocked
Our Growing, Breathing Galaxy
2004-03-27
The creative frenzy of art in the Middle Age.
An excellent article about what seems to be an excellent exhibition of Middle-Age artistic creations. In one word, it's about a creative explosion in all fields. "So many works in such a short time: the concentration is amazing. All the disciplines are at it. In these works, it is the history of painting which starts. To follow it a little more, it is necessary to go to the exhibition of "Primitive French". Its goal is not exhaustiveness but the commemoration and research. Commemoration because an exhibition of the same name at the Louvre in 1904 was a decisive event: the recognition of a long time scorned period and its revelation with the visitors - among whom Matisse and Derain".
In one of the works, "the bed is scarlet, in a room with tended walls of ultramarine blue and gold. The window with the background is of a perfect geometry. The beams of the ceiling are red and green. What does this invoque? The red Workshop of Matisse. And what does one think in front of the drawings of the metal point on the boxwood shelf of a notebook, is it not Dürer? However these drawings allotted to Jacquemart de Hesdin date from the years 1380".
The article is in french but Google or other search engines can give you an internet translation of sufficiently good quality for you to get what it is all about.
La frenesie creative de l'art au Moyen Age
In one of the works, "the bed is scarlet, in a room with tended walls of ultramarine blue and gold. The window with the background is of a perfect geometry. The beams of the ceiling are red and green. What does this invoque? The red Workshop of Matisse. And what does one think in front of the drawings of the metal point on the boxwood shelf of a notebook, is it not Dürer? However these drawings allotted to Jacquemart de Hesdin date from the years 1380".
The article is in french but Google or other search engines can give you an internet translation of sufficiently good quality for you to get what it is all about.
La frenesie creative de l'art au Moyen Age
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