painting and thinking

2004-09-14

Modern art 29: ARTSENSE 004

Acryl004. A transformation..

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Harmony is the general state of our universe, of our cosmos that's why we call it the prevailing harmony. It is not something static, all the contrary, it is permanent change. It is transformation from one state to another state.

These last centuries, western artists and thinkers concentrated on the idea of an absolute truth. They lost themselves in this sisyphean act of the snapshot FOR truth leading more often than not in the deap valley of certainty where they drowned under the passions arising from those very certainties.

We should now make the jump to a superior level and discover how to fabricate snapshots OF truth.

As I understand it, visual artists have a mission and this mission is to give a visual representation of the "Zeitgeist", of the vision of reality in the forming in society at large. Such has been the role of artists under animism, under religions and under early capitalism, in other words from the beginning of mankind until sometime at the end of the 19th century. Since then much confusion has flowed in artistic waters. This ARTSENSE serie is all about the sense of visual arts at the down of the 21st century.

I firmly believe that to keep in tune the princips of life at work throughout our cosmos, we have to concentrate on the sequences between the snapshots while freeing our SUBJECTIVITY of our greed and glory driven ego. For the observer, the sequencing of changes is what ultimately is making sense of each particular moment. The same goes for the art observer. It is indeed the sequencing of changes between colors, between sounds or between ideas and words that ultimately makes sense of those same colors, sounds, ideas and words.

Here lies a unique chance to leave the heights of our past searches for certainties. By their very nature, changes don't let us the time to focus on certainties, indeed, the best we can do is to try to surf on the waves of changes, to try to be IN the reality of the situation or to say this otherwise, to try to be in the reality of each moment.

In this painting, I represent my vision of the transformation of material particules and gases into energy.
We humans are the result of an extremely large mass of such kinds of transformations, from gases to material particules to uni-cellular organisms to multi-cellular organisms leading to the very complex beings that we are, humans and other 'animals'. But we should alsways remember that our stage of evolution as complex beings is only one moment on the time scale of our universe. As such, we are thus bound to be transformed further down the road and eventually to disappear one day....

Make no mistake, an image is not a scientific explanation. An image only gives the representation of the artist's vision of reality that he intents to share with his contemporaries. Now, for this vision to make sense, for this vision to have an impact upon society, the artist better have a good culture, a vast acquired knowledge base. This is in essence the message that I convey in the book that I write in parallel with my ARTSENSE series of acrylics.

2004-09-12

Modern art 28: ARTSENSE 003

Acryl003. Turbulence.

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"Turbulence is common in nature -- it is found in weather patterns, river flows and many astrophysical environments -- and is also important for many industrial processes. However, the way in which turbulence arises and then sustains itself is still not understood, despite being a subject of research for more than a century."

Researchers in fluid dynamics at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, under the leadership of Bjorn Hof, observe that:
"Stability theory predicts that the flow of a fluid through a straight pipe should remain smooth or "laminar" regardless of how fast the fluid is flowing. However, in practice it can become turbulent even at moderate speeds. "

Might turbulence emerge along the patterns explored by Stephen Wolfram in his book "A New Kind of Science"? Wolfram writes that "Despite attempts from approaches like chaos theory, no fundamental explanation has ever been found for randomness in physical phenomena such as fluid turbulence or patterns of fracture. A New Kind of Science presents an explanation based on simple programs that for example predicts surprising effects such as repeatable randomness."

The fact is that disruptions caused by turbulences occur in any stable processes and that through the disruptions they provoque, turbulences are responsible for the emergence of destabilizing new paths that eventually lead to later stable environments.

2004-09-11

Modern art 27: ARTSENSE 002

Acryl002. Emergence of life..

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This work pictures the dynamic of life creation or to be more precise of the emergence of uni-cellular organisms also called prokaryotes.

"Prokaryotes are the original inhabitants of this planet, the first successful would have looked very like some of today's Archaea. Both Archaea and Bacteria evolved somewhere between 3 or 4 billion years ago as far as we are able to tell from the fossil record."

"At least 2 billion years ago, ancestors of two diverse prokaryotic groups fused their genomes to form the first eukaryote, and in the processes two different branches of the tree of life were fused to form the ring of life" .

"Emergence of life" is my vision about the emergence of prokaryotes from where all the cycle of life is derived.

2004-09-10

Modern art 26: ARTSENSE 001

Acryl001. Expansion and opportunities.

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""""
1. "The big bang is best thought of not as a singular event but as an ongoing process, a gradual molding of order out of chaos."
2. "From the perspective of life on Earth, cosmic history started with inflation--a celestial reboot that wiped out whatever came before and left the cosmos a featureless place. The universe was without form, and void. Inflation then filled it with an almost completely uniform brew of radiation. The radiation varied from place to place in an utterly random way; mathematically, it was as random as random could be."
3. "Gradually the universe imposed order on itself. The familiar particles of matter, such as electrons and protons, condensed out of the radiation like water droplets in a cloud of steam. Sound waves coursed through the amorphous mix, giving it shape."
4. "Matter steadily wrested control of the cosmos away from radiation. Several hundred thousand years after inflation, matter declared final victory and cut itself loose from radiation. This era and its dramatic coda have now been probed by high-precision observations of the fossil radiation."
5. "Over the ensuing eons, matter organized itself into bodies of increasingly large size: subgalactic scraps, majestic galaxies, galactic clusters, great walls of galaxies. "
6. "The universe we know--a set of distinct bodies separated by vast expanses of essentially empty space--is a fairly recent development, cosmologically speaking. This arrangement has now been systematically mapped."
7. "Starting several billion years ago, matter has been losing control to cosmic acceleration. Evidently the big bang has gotten a second wind, which is good for it but will be bad for us. The ever faster expansion has already arrested the formation of large structures and, if it continues, could rip apart galaxies and even our planet."
"""""
My post of February 1st, 2004. (Summary of the present status of our scientific knowledge on the formation of our universe: Scientific American: Four Keys to Cosmology [ SPECIAL REPORT ].)

2004-09-08

Painting and writing.

While painting these last days, I was thinking about reworking and ordering my writings. Painting has always been a kind of free thinking refuge for me. Busy with the colors, my spirit is kind of set free to surf over an ocean of ideas, impressions and feelings and inexplicably, a selection of ideas establishes itself that answers my concerns of the moment.
I was feeling unsatisfied with the absence of a clear thread through the texts. Here under is the result of my last days of free thinking in the form of a table of content.

I terminated 24 of my ARTSENSE serie of 31 acrylics and the last 7 are already in an advanced stage. My plan is to terminate the acrylics and the book by year's end....

Table of Contents

Introduction.
By way of setting the general content of our inquiry.

PART 1: IMPOSED ROADS ON CREATIVITY
1.1. Until recently art production was commissionned.
1.2. From the roads of the gods to the roads of capital.
1.3. Atomization and the role of the artist.
1.4. The roads of capital leading to the jungle.
1.5. Form and content: the social dream that suggest mimicry.

PART 2: INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE WITHOUT FREE WILL
2.1. Perception of reality is reality.
2.2. Civilizational foundations.
2.2. The opening of the gates.
2.4. On post-modernism.
2.5. Form and Content.
2.6. Content of art works in the 21^st century.

PART 3: THE JUNGLE
3.1. Coming from the roads of no free will.
3.1.1. Animism.
3.1.2. The gods.
3.1.3. Capital and the early modern age.
3.2. Entering the jungle of total freedom.
3.2.1. Economic and technological changes.
3.2.2. Memories of the past.
3.2.3. Abandonning the past.
3.2.4. Great confusion.
3.2.5. The awakening
3.2.6. Europe versus the US.
3.3. The great atomization.
3.4. Post-modernism.
3.5. Art sense.

PART 4: FOURTY WORKS BY LAODAN.
4.1. Three oils of 1979/1980
4.2. Four gouaches of 2001
4.3. Three tapestries of 2002.
4.4. Thirty acrylics of 2004: the artsense collection.

2004-08-22

Gaudi

Gaudi started the construction of his cathedral in Barcelona in 1883. He died in 1926 and his cathedral was only 15% completed. Work restarted in 1952 and today the cathedral is 40% completed.
"""The Junta Constructora del Templo, which oversees the project, optimistically predicts that it will be done in 30 years.
Toni Meca, 41, a Barcelona advertising executive and film producer, was not willing to wait. "I wanted to finish the cathedral virtually because I knew it would be the only way for many people to see it completed," he said in a recent interview here. "It is the most important building in the world. Even a child can respond to it because Gaudí based his designs almost solely on forms found in nature."""

NYT Article

Cathedral today

Cathedral terminated

2004-08-20

Acrylics: On my way of painting

The next images are about my 2004 production, a collection of 31 acrylics.
(size 17 x 22" = 43 x 56 cm)

Paintings are subjective renderings of the creator's feelings and ideas but we often forget that viewing a painting is as much subjective as the act of making it.
In order to let the viewer have a more objective approach, I give here a detailed textual description of my way of painting.

My way of painting 1
My way of painting 2
My way of painting 3
My way of painting 4

Modern art 25

POST PSYCHEDELIC PRINT COLLECTION
1-04-01 (1/25 limited edition)
ROADS TO MODERNISM 01

2004-08-19

Modern art 24.

POST PSYCHEDELIC PRINT COLLECTION
1-02-06 (1/25 limited edition)
Mystic fish 06

2004-08-18

Modern art 23.

POST PSYCHEDELIC PRINT COLLECTION
1-05-04 (1/25 limited edition)
Mindscape 04

2004-08-17

Modern art 22

POST PSYCHEDELIC PRINT COLLECTION
1-05-12 (1/25 limited edition)
Mindscape 12

2004-08-16

Modern art 21

POST PSYCHEDELIC PRINT COLLECTION
1-05-02 (1/25 limited edtion)
Mindscape 02

2004-08-14

Modern art 20

POST PSYCHEDELIC PRINT COLLECTION
1-01-09 (1/25 limited edition)
Tree of life 09

The Fractal Art Manifesto by Kerry Mitchell in Fractalus

"""As a genre, Fractal Art (FA) has been around for approximately 15-20 years. Its first major public display may be considered to be an article about the Mandelbrot Set published in "Scientific American" in 1985. Since then, many advances have been made, both in fractal rendering capabilities and in the understanding of fractal geometery. Perhaps now is an opportune time to make a defining statement about what is (and what is not) Fractal Art.
Fractal Art is a genre concerned with fractals—shapes or sets characterized by self affinity (small portions of the image resemble the overall shape) and an infinite amount of detail, at all scales. Fractals are typically created on a digital computer, using an iterative numerical process. Lately, images that are not technically fractals, but that share the same basic generating technique and environment, have been welcomed into the FA world.
Fractal Art is a subclass of two dimensional visual art, and is in many respects similar to photography—another art form which was greeted by skepticism upon its arrival. Fractal images typically are manifested as prints, bringing Fractal Artists into the company of painters, photographers, and printmakers. Fractals exist natively as electronic images. This is a format that traditional visual artists are quickly embracing, bringing them into FA's digital realm.
Generating fractals can be an artistic endeavor, a mathematical pursuit, or just a soothing diversion. However, FA is clearly distinguished from other digital activities by what it is, and by what it is not.

Fractal Art is not:

	Computer(ized) Art, in the sense that the computer does all the work. The work is executed on a computer, but only at the direction of the artist. Turn a computer on and leave it alone for an hour. When you come back, no art will have been generated.
	Random, in the sense of stochastic, or lacking any rules. Being based on mathematics, fractal rendering is the essence of determinism. Apply the same image generation steps, and the same result will follow. Slight changes in process usually lead to slight changes in product, making FA an activity which can be learned, not a haphazard process of pushing buttons and turning knobs.
	Random, in the sense of unpredictable. Fractal Art, like any new pursuit, will have aspects unknown to the novice, but familiar to the master. Through experience and education, the techniques of FA can be learned. As in painting or chess, the essentials are quickly grasped, although they can take a lifetime to fully understand and control. Over time, the joy of serendipitous discovery is replaced by the joy of self-determined creation.
	Something that anyone with a computer can do well. Anyone can pick up a camera and take a snapshot. However, not just anyone can be an Ansel Adams or an Annie Liebovitz. Anyone can take brush in hand and paint. However, not just anyone can be a Georgia O'Keeffe or a Pablo Picasso. Indeed, anyone with a computer can create fractal images, but not just anyone will excel at creating Fractal Art.

Fractal Art is:

	Expressive. Through a painter's colors, a photographer's use of light and shadow, or a dancer's movements, artists learn to express and evoke all manner of ideas and emotions. Fractal Artists are no less capable of using their medium as a similarly expressive language, as they are equipped with all the essential tools of the traditional visual artist.
	Creative. The final fractal image must be created, just as the photograph or the painting. It can be created as a representational work, and abstraction of the basic fractal form, or as a nonrepresentational piece. The Fractal Artist begins with a blank "canvas", and creates an image, bringing together the same basic elements of color, composition, balance, etc., used by the traditional visual artist.
	Requiring of input, effort, and intelligence. The Fractal Artist must direct the assembly of the calculation formulas, mappings, coloring schemes, palettes, and their requisite parameters. Each and every element can and will be tweaked, adjusted, aligned, and re-tweaked in the effort to find the right combination. The freedom to manipulate all these facets of a fractal image brings with it the obligation to understand their use and their effects. This understanding requires intelligence and thoughtfulness from the Artist.

Most of all, Fractal Art is simply that which is created by Fractal Artists: ART. """

2004-08-13

Modern art 19

POST PSYCHEDELIC PRINT COLLECTION
1-03-11 (1/25 limited edition)
Explosion of colors 11

About fractals.
Fractals are images generated by mathematical formulas that can be downloaded from public formulas databases on the internet. After launching a formula in a fractal program, an image results that can be modified in basically 2 ways:
1. tweaking the formula + the coloring algorithm + the transformation formula.
2. Zooming into the image. In the words of Fractalus, "a fractal is a shape that, when you look at a small part of it, has a similar (but not necessarily identical) appearance to the full shape. Take, for example, a rocky mountain. From a distance, you can see how rocky it is; up close, the surface is very similar. Little rocks have a similar bumpy surface to big rocks and to the overall mountain". Fractal programs let you zoom in the image as many times as you want, every time one step deeper.
You can then tweak the parameters of this new image and zoom into it until you find a selection that is visually attractive for you. The best of programs let you cut out from the image the part that you wish to retain instead of having to rework the whole displayed image.

Are fractals art works?
Again I'll refer to Fractalus:
"What seems so plain to fractal enthusiasts—that fractals are a form of art—doesn't appear to be quite so obvious to other people. The assumption seems to be that since fractals can't really be produced without software, which does all the calculations, that the "artist" must just be punching in some random numbers and seeing what results. This couldn't possibly be art.
Well, it just doesn't work like that. It really isn't that simple. Yes, anybody can download some fractal software, play with it for a few minutes, and produce a picture or two. But then, anyone can buy Photoshop, play with it for a few minutes, and produce a picture, too; is that art? What about if someone buys a canvas, some paints and brushes, and whips out some simple painting? Is that art? Does it matter what tools are used? "

2004-08-12

Modern art 18

POST PSYCHEDELIC PRINT COLLECTION
1-02-12 (1/25 limited edition)
Mystic fish 12

It is an unquestionable fact that Prints fade. Two factors explain this:
- paper quality and longevity
- Ink quality and longevity

Wilhelm Imaging Research, Inc is the world leading specialist of those matters relating to prints durability.

Eina BEMS, the company distributing my prints, uses one of the best combinations presently available on the market for its art prints:

1. EPSON Enhanced Archival Matte paper: a beautiful flat finished heavyweight paper, with no texture surface; popular for fine art use
- Features:
* Flat matte surface
* Instant drying with Epson inks
* Excellent color reproduction
* Highest resolution output
* Photo thickness
* Excellent Hightlights
* Fine shadow detail
- Detailed Specs:
* Weight: 45 lb. (192 g/m2)
* Thickness: 10.3 mil
* Opacity: 94%
* Pounds/Ream 51#
* Base Material: Paper
* Surface: Flat Matte
* Lightfastness: 62 years.

These ratings are based on accelerated testings of prints on specialty media displayed indoors, under glass. Actual print stability will vary according to media, printed image, display conditions, light intensity and atmospheric conditions. For maximum print life display, place all prints under glass or lamination or properly store them. Ratings based on tests conducted by Epson and Wilhelm Imaging Research Inc.
For more about the subject, visit Inkjet Art Solutions

2. EPSON UltraChrome inks.
Pigment-based, the ink is water-resistant, resists running or smudging, with any paper type, though the papers may not be waterfast. These inks resist fading from light in framed display condition for over 60 years. These ratings are based on tests conducted by Epson and Wilhelm Imaging Research. PC World cites a Display Permanence rating of 92 years for the EPSON C80-82 inks as used by Eina BEMS for printing its 8x10' formats.

2004-08-11

Modern art 17

POST PSYCHEDELIC PRINT COLLECTION
1-02-08 (1/25 limited edition)
Mystic fish 08

My "Post-Psychedelic Print Collection", to this day, comprises 60 "digital paintings" that I created in 2002. I plan to give in this blog's "Modern art" series a selection of 8 of those prints as an illustration of my digital work.

Those works are realized with the following FREE programs:

- Fractals: I used successively the following tools: Fractint, Chaos Pro and Ultra Fractal. All 3 programs can be downloaded free. Ultra Fractal is clearly my preferred. You can for example cut parts of a fractal image and then zoom in those parts... After reaching an interesting fractal image, I transfer this image to an imaging program for changing contrast, intensity, colors and details.

- Imaging: Adobe photoshop7 and The Gimp. I worked with Photoshop since the mid-nineties but after working extensively with The Gimp recently, I find that the Gimp works perfectly for me. Technically, you get the same functions on both programs, the real bonus of The Gimp is that it is Free while Photoshop costs hundreds of $ that you have to give out with each new version. The finalized image has then to be transferred to an editing program for printing.

- Editing and printing: I now use Open Office for A4 (letter) or A3 sizes (a free program that I find very stable and user friendly). I used to work with Page Maker which I continue to use for larger sizes. I discovered Scribus (free) recently, critics say that it is comparable to Page Maker but I need more time to familiarize with this program.

2004-08-10

Modern art 16

DREAMSCAPE. Tapestry n# A-001-4x6'-1/1
(photo of a 1 Design Unit = 120 x 180 cm)
Artist unique edition tapestry: 1 on 1 piece in total, available in
2 different sizes (1, 4 design units)
Here follows the design of a 4 Design Units

Tapestry n# A-001-x4psd.jpg-1/1

I have been commissionned in 2002 to design a collection of tapestries for Eina BEMS llc.

Traditional tapestries and rugs are based on the weaving of yarns. Eina BEMS' material as well as the manufacturing technique were new (assembly of leather-wool parts) and nobody had ever designed rugs for this technique.

Eina BEMS' finally selected 13 designs, in 2 color versions, among some hundred designs that I had proposed. In total that gave them a collection of 26 different tapestries.

I give here a sampling of 7 of those tapestries as illustration of my designs. For more on those tapestries, visit www.einabems.com

2004-08-08

Modern art 15

THE INFINITE A. Tapestry n# D-014-A-S-1DU-../30
(photo of a 1 Design Unit = 120 x 180 cm)
Limited edition tapestry: 1 on 30 pieces in total, available in
6 different sizes (1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 design units)
Here follows the design of a 8 Design Unit