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.
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
2004-03-05
Cosmic life imitates art!
Central to my views about the present day evolution of the visual artist's creations is space. It makes absolutely no doubt to me that looking to oneself, to oneselve's world from afar is bound to change our view of the world. Speed of movement, of transportation on earth has been since the 19th century the central shaker of our visual perceptions. Let us forget for a moment the visual art absurdities of the 20th century and try to reconnect with the evolution of painters' visions. We now can envision the radical revolution that space will unleash on us all in terms of our vision of the world. It's not only the brutal acceleration of speed that tortures our vision. From afar we somehow reach a state of plenitude where speed is abolished and discover the mirror in which we are looking at ourselves on earth... This experience has been described by some astronauts in terms of a religious experience. But the recourse to religion is a one way street, a no drive through street where one lands in ideological land.
I firmly believe that visual artists did not go as far as the road of space. We all have been overtaken by the photographic images of and from space. And space in an outwards direction, the cosmos as macrocosm, is but one of the dimensions. What about space in an inwards direction, the microcosm. Both directions somehow converge in the sense that they force us out of our traditional visual certitudes.
The philosophical implications are absolutely staggering and, to put it in soft words, I'm amazed at how our societies have only been mildly shaken as of today. Often I have this odd feeling that scientists' photographs make better art than most visual artists' creations.
"Cosmic life imitates art "
Here are some more links, have a good time with those artists who are been called scientists:
"Dee Breger"
"Ken Musgrave"
"Loes Modderman"
"Tina Carvalho"
"Olympus America Inc., and The Florida State University"
I firmly believe that visual artists did not go as far as the road of space. We all have been overtaken by the photographic images of and from space. And space in an outwards direction, the cosmos as macrocosm, is but one of the dimensions. What about space in an inwards direction, the microcosm. Both directions somehow converge in the sense that they force us out of our traditional visual certitudes.
The philosophical implications are absolutely staggering and, to put it in soft words, I'm amazed at how our societies have only been mildly shaken as of today. Often I have this odd feeling that scientists' photographs make better art than most visual artists' creations.
"Cosmic life imitates art "
Here are some more links, have a good time with those artists who are been called scientists:
"Dee Breger"
"Ken Musgrave"
"Loes Modderman"
"Tina Carvalho"
"Olympus America Inc., and The Florida State University"
2004-03-02
Collectors and art history
A must read. Where should art productions be today if it were not for the "small circle of dealers, scholars and collectors who become interested in unfashionable or unfamiliar art".
" What have dealers ever done for art history?"
" What have dealers ever done for art history?"
2004-03-01
What is art ?
I started this blog one year ago approximately with the ambition to write about art and design. I was , and I must say I remain, very unsatisfied with today's blabla about art in magazines and papers.
My idea is that art (fine art) is a societal answer to the questions and needs of the individuals for sense. Viewed in such a perspective, the artist is someone who is perpetually in searching mode for sense. By sense I mean the philosophical interpretation of reality or to put it otherwise the lightning of the elements that give sense to reality at a given point in time. Our perceptions evolved, very fast those last decades, and thus our questions today are indeed very different from what they were at other times in history.
The following 2 articles by Michelle Marder Kamhi are somehow focusing on the same approach that I personally try to develop. Her conclusions nevertheless are pole apart from mine but that is not of such a huge importance. Another layout is a chance to reflect...
So good reading.
"Debating The Visual Culture "
"Where's the Art in Today's Art Education?"
My idea is that art (fine art) is a societal answer to the questions and needs of the individuals for sense. Viewed in such a perspective, the artist is someone who is perpetually in searching mode for sense. By sense I mean the philosophical interpretation of reality or to put it otherwise the lightning of the elements that give sense to reality at a given point in time. Our perceptions evolved, very fast those last decades, and thus our questions today are indeed very different from what they were at other times in history.
The following 2 articles by Michelle Marder Kamhi are somehow focusing on the same approach that I personally try to develop. Her conclusions nevertheless are pole apart from mine but that is not of such a huge importance. Another layout is a chance to reflect...
So good reading.
"Debating The Visual Culture "
"Where's the Art in Today's Art Education?"
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