From Modernity to After Modernity. (02)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations

1. About the formation of human knowledge

1.2. The historical context

Notwithstanding what believers in empire say (1) we do not create reality. We have to discover it. In other words the reality of the universe is not a creation of humanity. It exists independently of humanity.

From Modernity to After Modernity. (01)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations
1. About the formation of human knowledge


1.1. Introduction

The notion of being, of being human, is not a given – nor a universal one - nor a historical one. It is a work in process.

Biological evolution lays the ground work in which an evolving materiality gives form to life and life evolves then a multitude of biological forms – plant and animal.

From Modernity to After-Modernity

Hi guys,
Have been blogging on Weebly for some time now and in the meantime I neglected my Blogger account (this was a mistake). Since I encountered some problems with Weebly I'm remaking Crucial Talk my first blogging platform

During my absence from Blogger I have been writing "From Modernity to After-Modernity" a series of articles that divides in 3 parts and time willing I'll edit them as 3 books addressing different angles of a same subject. The subject relates to the transition from Modernity toward a new historical era that I simply call After-Modernity.

A second life.

What is sticking out, in my view, from my writing over the past 10 years can be summarized as follows:

1. The general economic and societal reality in Late-Modernity:

• Late-Modernity is the age of an over-indebted capitalistic globalization that threatens the collapse of nation-states that in turn could collapse the "Economy-World"

The great modernist bungle

The modernist avant-garde, at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, was very clear about its mission. That mission can be summarized as follows:

1.  rejection of all past ways. In visual arts that meant first and foremost the rejection of the "3 imposed subjects"(1) that had been imposed as replacement of religious representations during "Early-Modernity".

Art and science

In my last post I concluded that we observe the following, today, in Late-Modernity:

1. Artists have reached a plateau of confusion and absurdity. Henceforth most everyone thinks that art is "whatever" one decides it to be.

Worldviews versus propaganda or art versus advertisement.

My last series of posts dwelled on "the meaning of art", "the great Modernist bungle" and how scientific visualizations came to surpass visual artists' productions in their role at depicting the views of the men of knowledge of the day about what reality is all about.

Before jumping in the fray of contemporary art creation and what it entails to be a real artist,

About the meaning of art.

"Long distance history" finds its roots, most often, in chance archaeological discoveries. Those discoveries, at least regarding art productions, relate to objects that go as far back in time as one hundred thousand years (very rough approximation based on the present state of our knowledge). This distance could well be pushed back further down in time after more chance discoveries in the future. But objects spanning one hundred thousand years of artistic practice should suffice, for us here, to come to valid conclusions regarding what is art.

Art and design Collections of links on Delicious

Collections as of April 21st 2012.



Art

30 ART links by blackopscharlie
18 "art is hard" links by thisismesmiling
96 "Cultuur Arts & Musea" links by vdcastroX

Pleasure and the polarities of humanity.

I'm firmly convinced that the premise of a healthy thinking resides in the recognition that the societal and the individual are the two polarities of humanity. They are interdependent. They need each other. But at the same time their interactions are fraught with conflict and that conflict acts in a similar fashion as the collisions between the polarities of electricity. The result is a burst of energy that powers the movement forward of their constitutive unity. That means that change in human affairs is powered by the collisions between the societal and the individual.

Art and beauty

Beauty is found in the patterns of the near infinite chain of successful biological mutations that led to us being here today and the memory of that near infinite chain of successful biological mutations is stored in the biological memory of humanity hidden from the consciousness of its individual particles.

What went wrong in modernity?

Visual signs have been around since 100,000 years or more. From the down of time till sometime around 1900 visual signs were giving meaning for all to share and that meaning was contained in the worldview of the men of knowledge of the day. Going back in time we can trace 3 periods:

On environmentalism

Environmentalism is an idealist vision at the end of the game of modernity: modernity for all, democracy, interchangeable individual specialised roles... and this idea of a clean-up of the grains of sand falling from the dirty clothes of unconscientious individuals in the gears of this perfect system. Shaming unconscientious individuals for their dirty clothes is now the politically correct talk in town. But it is nevertheless a short-sighted answer.

Beauty is a trick deeply buried in the nature of life.

What is it that attracts people to art? Some say it is "the soul of the artist" in his art that moves them. But what's the soul?

Whatever one likes to call that mysteriously deep gut feeling of the artist for what is beautiful I firmly believe that it relates to something that we are not conscientious of but that nevertheless resides in ourselves.

The Chinese contemporary art scene

Contemporary China is undergoing a maelstrom of changes in all fields of life and the intensity of those changes is difficult to grasp if you don't live daily amidst the Chinese. I mean not bathing in the privileges offered in the Western ghetto in exchange for New York like rents but among the Chinese where they live. I have been living in Beijing from 1986 till 2002 on a permanent base and at least half of my time from 2002 till today.

About the meaning of art.

Long distance history finds its roots in chance archaeological discovery. Those roots, at least regarding art productions, go as far back as one hundred thousand years approximately. Perhaps this distance will be pushed back further in time after more chance uncovering in the future. But one hundred thousand years of artistic practice should suffice, for us here, to come to valid conclusions regarding what is art.

On the idea that beauty is something objective

Scientific studies regularly appear whose conclusions are validating the hypotheses that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder but instead is an objective reality that is inscribed in the biology of life.

Here are links to the two last stories that capted my attention:

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.

Question: Can We Design The Next-Evolution of Community?

Nova Spivek had an interesting post on Twine:(a smarter way to keep up with what you’re into) that I could not resist commenting on.

Nova Spivek diagnoses:
- Loneliness, social isolation, and social fragmentation are huge and growing problems
- Our present communities are not working and most are breaking down or stagnating.

What now in painting? Part 2: The visual form of meaning.

Summary of Part 1:
= Art as an illustration of the worldview of the men of knowledge of the day:
........... but who are the men of knowledge in late modernity?
........... artists have to build up their own knowledge base
= Knowledge as the outcome of:
........... an accumulation of knowings by scientists.
........... a philosophic vision of the human atom as particle of an unattainable whole.

What now in painting? Part 1: The meaning of what to represent.

The central thesis that runs through my rumblings about visual arts is that they are no more than the visual representation by artists, of the worldview of the men of knowledge of their days, for all to share. Under Animism they represent the worldview of the shaman, under Religious times they represent the creed professed by the priests and under Modernity they represent as many signs of the value system of the triumphing aristocracy and new rich merchants.

Nourished by the sap bubbling from our civilizational roots.

It's like a given for all of us that people of different civilizations are and behave very differently. We all inherited stereotypes about "the other" but once we start to better know people from another civilization it seems that those differences are fast melting away. In "the other" we discover a human as ourselves. But is this the real thing happening or is it only a mirage given by the picture of our perception in our heads? In this post I posit that civilizations imprint a subtle code of behavior within societies that reflects upon individual attitudes.

Loss of certainty and the purpose of life?"

This post is a follow-up of my commentary in StumbleUpon about Christianity finds a fulcrum in Asia by Spengler that was published by AsiaTimes.
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"Christianity is the great liquidator of traditional society, calling individuals out of their tribes and nations to join the ekklesia, which transcends race and nation." writes a proud Spengler.

My last 4 paintings

I write much about the meaning and societal sense of visual arts but how does my painting relate to my writings? Take a peak at my last 4 paintings they foreshadow the content of my next post.

Acrylic on canvas. Size: 24" x 30" (61 x 76.5 cm)

Acrylic on canvas. Size: 20" x 24" (50.5 x 61 cm)

Acrylic on paper glued on hard wooden panel. Size: 17" x 22" (43 x 56 cm)

Acrylic on canvas. Size: 36" x 24" (92 x 61 cm)