Modern art 42: ARTSENSE 017

Acryl017. The pianist.

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My wife Xiaohong is a professional pianist. I often paint while she plays classical music. Listening her play is relaxing, it helps me to forget everything else.

In this composition I try to relate in visual terms my feeling of her at the piano.

Modern art 41: ARTSENSE 016

Acryl015. Organic life in primitive soup.

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The theory of evolution is universally accepted in Europe and in China, the two places where I spent my initial 50 years. I had never seen someone seriously questionning this theory and I also had never read a study questionning the wisdom of this theory. So my surprise was not small when after living in the US, one of the first shocking things I discovered was that a significant portion of the population rejected this theory for creationism. I had never heard of creationism nor in Europe nor in China so my surprise was great indeed.

In other places along this book, I approach the differenciation between the Greek and Chinese civilizational building blocks and conclude that the Chinese were in no particular need for a logic of the gods. The axioms founding their civilization contain an ample body of logic explaining what reality is all about and how things change. Civilizations that find their foundational building blocks in the Middle-East don't have this luxury, they need to recourse to an outside mover in order to explain reality and change. For Aristotle holds it as an axiom that there cannot be an infinite regress of causes and effects. "That which is the logical starting point of infinite change must be an unchanging substance, causing change but not being subject to change". From this point in the reasonning there is no escape, the "unchanging substance", the "ultimate mover" will be called god.
This is for the conceptualization of Western civilizational building blocks but the "Great Enlightenment" or the rationality of capitalism, after shaking those civilizational building blocks to their roots, threw them overboard and replaced them.

For sure, the rationality of capitalism is only functional, it never defined how to handle the ontological question of Aristotle's "ultimate mover". This is without any doubt the most fundamental weakness of rationality but I believe that being only a functional system of thinking, it had never the conceptual tools to answer that question. Only recently, has science progressed to the point that an epistemological answer is becoming possible to this question of the "ultimate mover". And what is absolutely amazing, in my eyes, is that this becomes possible just at the moment when Western rationality rejoins the Chinese civilizational building blocks.

Science now conceives of reality as a process of transformations. The big bang is seen as the explosion of concentrated energy of a passed universe. This is then followed by a continued expansion of the resulting universe. Life emerges later in the form of unicellular organisms as the result of chemical reactions ignited by "accidental" energy that will expand their complexity by uniting into multi-cellular organisms. My piece "Organic life in primitive soup" is my vision of multi-cellular organisms in competitive growth and lurching towards more complexity.

Modern art 40: ARTSENSE 015

Acryl015. The snake.

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"The snake" is a follow up of "Hot summer landscape". It's the vision of a nearby, very close "scape" on a rapid, with a snake, in the mountains of Yanching 100 miles west of Beijing.This painting is a vision from my memory of an unforgetable moment. I was jumping from stone to stone down a rapid when suddenly I saw a snake crawling in parallel at a distance of 2-3 meters. Suffice to say that my jumping had instantly been frozen. I was there trying to keep my balance in the middle of the roaring water, the snake had mimicked my freezing and was staring at me. What to do?

"The snake" is my vision of that particular moment, me and the snake frozen and staring at each other. I did not panic, I was not afraid, I was frozen trying to detect what were the intentions of the snake and I had a crystal clear sense that the snake also was not afraid, only waiting to see what would be my intentions. How long a time this starring at each other took, I don't know, I never wear a watch, but I remember the feeling that it was not a very short time. The snake was head-high pointed in my direction, her eyes in mine. She was projecting peace, power, beauty and harmony. I did not detect any aggressivity, only power and also a kind of pharaonic beauty. In my mind I had a clear certainty that if I made only a slight movement in her direction, I would be injected her venom.

Frozen, at a very slow pace I succeeded to drag one foot towards a stone on my back and amazingly, at the same pace as mine the snake retreated. We both continued our synchronized and slow retreat always facing each other without an instant ralaxing our staring at each other and when we were at a distance of 8-10 meters, we both turned our backs and left the scene.

Aggressivity is not pervasing in nature. It is a reaction of protection of one's territory and of one's family. And attacks by one specy on another are limited to food collection. Animals don't kill for the pleasure, they strictly limit their killing to their needs for food or to the need for their protection. Only humans kill for other reasons than food collection and protection. It should thus come as no surprise that animals are weary of human actions. I have this gut feeling that animals are able to sense our intentions and are thus capable to preempt them by biting us in self-defense. I experienced this feeling with the snake but I had already experienced it many times earlier with dogs. If you have no intentions to harm them and if you are not afraid, they will not be afraid and they will not harm you. I experienced the same in reverse once in the Dallas zoo. A great ape in front of his showcase was looking at us and at a given moment he started to drum his chest in front of us. I answered him by drumming my own chest. I never saw faster reaction, the ape was pounding the window with all his might, as if he wanted to kill me. Later I learned that apes drum their chest to show that they are the strongest and answering them by drumming your own chest is like saying, no you are not the strongest, I'am the strongest. I had caused the anger of the monkey and had he bitten me, I would have been responsible of ignorance.

Modern art 39: ARTSENSE 014

Acryl014. Hot summer landscape.

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Landscape painting in Western Europe appeared roughly around 1550 after the first gold and silver loated from South America started to circulate on the old continent. This period saw an incredible increase in means of payment that were put in circulation following the plundering of the treasures of the incas and other American societies. It's difficult for 21st century minds to imagine how big the impact of this plundering has been on European societies. What is for sure is that it changed the face of Europe and its future road.

For one, the ownership of immense material richnesses escaped the coffers of the religious hierarchy and orders. The immediate consequence of this central fact has been that the newly assembled private fortunes began spending lavishly on mansions and castles. The new rich wanted to show off their richnesses, bricks and stones assembled for eyes to see. This simple and basic economic reality engendered one of the most important cultural shifts in all the history of the European civilization. Private propriety, private ownership appeared indeed to shape the appearance of the individual in the other people's minds and thus the perception developed and generalized that individual well being was intimatelly related to material possessions. The cult of individualism was born that would ultimately overtake the cult organized by the church.This newly born individualism created the desire to acquire the symbols of religious power for private individual pleasure. The mansions and castles were a first shadowing of the cathedrals and palaces and once there, they had to be filled. Within the span of less than a century paintings, sculpures, mirrors, tapestries, rugs, and so on became all highly praised luxury commodities.
Those new rich wanted paintings representing the immediate environment of their mansions in a realist style at the image of the religious paintings that were hanging in the cathedrals and painters delivered thus for centuries in classical realism.

New technologies and the deepening of rationalism eventually called for the overthrow of the classical realist forms. Van Gogh, Gauguin, the impressionists, ... answered that call. Finally, after the 1st world war, painters wanted to overthrow the first degree reality given by our eyes. But what to put instead. Three quarters of a century later, this question has still not been answered satisfactorily.

My personal view is that visual arts need to go back to their founding "raison d'etre": representing the signs of our society's worldview in the making. "Hot summer landscape" is my vision of a landscape with its internal life and its external connections to the vaster world. This is surely not the representation of a first degree seeing. But seeing is far more than the image attained through the lenses of the camera or of the eyes. Seeing is that image + a lot more. It is not as if we were empty machines only seeing what our eyes-camera give us to see. Far from that. We are indeed the result of our culture, of our accumulated knowkedge and thus what we see is far more than the first degree image reflected in our eyes.
What we see is a visual perception by our complete being: camera-eyes + culture + knowledge + feelings.

Modern art 38: ARTSENSE 013

Acryl0013. Competitive growth.

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The urgence for more complexity is the strategic principal that life is tricked to follow for perpetuating and developping itself. This concept is recent for sure, we have indeed been more accustomed to hear about the tactical principle of competitive growth.

Life survival is based on the tactical principle of competitive growth and its development is based on the strategic principle of complexification.

In human life, we know for a fact that life preservation is based on the tactical principle of competitive growth to satisfy the need for:
- food and air for preserving the individual bodies.
- sex for preserving the specie.
Life development results from the urge for more complexity that results from the interaction between the tactical principle of competitive growth with the following interacting factors:
- the complexification of the structure and code of the individual bodies.
- the complexification of the social, economic and political systems.

Artblogs readers survey

A the behest of Todd Gibson from the blog "From the floor", a small group of art bloggers have been chatting via email, and have come to a conclusion. Site stats are great, but we don't know enough about our readers to be sure that we're writing what you want to be reading.

We're curious about several things. Why, for example, would you choose to be reading art blogs instead of watching Simpsons re-runs? Or are you reading art blogs while you're watching Simpsons re-runs? What sorts of content (reviews, opinion, art world gossip, pointers to articles in the mainstream press, etc.) do you find most valuable?

Here's the deal.

You give us five to seven minutes of your time and honest answers to a few questions about your preferences, and we'll give you sites that you'll enjoy reading even more than you already do. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

To participate (and you are participating, right?) follow this link and get to work. The survey will be online through October 11, 2004. I'll post a few of the more interesting findings when the survey is complete.

Modern art 37: ARTSENSE 012

Acryl012. Nature's urge for more complexity.

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I'm very much interested in the sciences of complexity, a multi dimensional approach towards knowledge. To be more accurate I should have written that it is a multidisciplinary collaboration in pursuit of understanding the common themes that arise in natural, artificial, and social systems and that the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an institution that was created as a new kind of scientific research community devoted to those sciences of complexity.

To me the most intriguing aspect of knowledge is how life emerged. This question has been at the centre of the philosophical debate of our Western civilization. Aristotle posited the question in the following terms:

"In all change, Aristotle says that neither the matter ("to hule") nor the form ("to eidos") comes into existence ("Metaphysics"). His point is that for something to change it must already be something, in which case the matter of the process of change pre-exists its change. In other words, that which changes, the matter, must already exist for it to be capable of change. The form is that into which the matter changes; as such, it likewise must already exist for there to be change. (That by which change occurs is the immediate mover.) Because change presupposes matter and form (and an immediate mover), the process of change will regress to infinity, because every change presupposes matter and form, which pre-exist the process of change. It follows that there must be a terminal point in the process of change: "Therefore there must be a stop" ("ananke de stenai") ("Metaphysics"). But this is not a temporal terminal point, because change or motion is eternal; rather it is a logical one. Aristotle holds it as an axiom that there cannot be an infinite regress of causes and effects, movers and the moved. That which is the logical starting point of infinite change must be an unchanging substance, causing change but not being subject to change."

Arriving at that point of his argument, Aristotle and in his footsteps all Western philosophers had only one recourse: god as the ultimate mover but I never could make myself follow this road. I always tought that the principle of change as being our reality at work would one day open for us a better avenue of understanding. At long last, I discovered the sciences of complexity that are opening a window on this understanding with the concept of emergence.
Those interested in this idea can go to my weblog THE air of the times and see the post titled Cold Sugar in Space Provides Clue to the Molecular Origin of Life dated September 25th, 2004.

When the idea of the emergence of unicellular organisms is established, how then to explain the evolution towards more complexity, towards we, humans?

It seems that starting with the emergence of uni-cellular organisms also called prokaryotes a code, the genetic code, has been inscribed in our dna, a chemical substrate that contains the order to incessantly search for more complexity. It seems as if life, the conscience of its preservation has been conditioned since the start by this need to go further, to stretch the limits.

That is the idea that I was thinking about when painting Nature's urge for more complexity.

Modern art 36: ARTSENSE 011

Acryl011. Sound waves.

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One of my preferred visual art forms are micro and macro photographies.
Micro photography zooms towards the infinitely small through the lenses of a microscope and macro photography zooms towards the infinitely large through the lenses of a telescope. Those images are generally stunning even if they are taken by scientists. Beautifull in visual terms and as intriguing as they might be, they represent images of our reality. Those interested to see some good scientific images can go to my weblog "The air of our times" and go to to the post titled "Science art of seeing" dated September 25th, 2004.

Here we discover that our reality is far wider than what our eyes give us to see. This should be an awakener for the proponents of realism in arts. The realists want first degree pictures at the image of what our eyes give us to see. But what our eyes let us see is only a tiny fraction of what there is to see. So their proposition is to limit our description to a tiny fraction of reality. In other words, they want us to stay in the past.
No thanks my friends, I want to be here today because what happens today gives me the instruments to see deeper and to better understand what reality is all about.

Art is the representation of the signs of that better understanding of reality. It always has been so and we have all interest to come back to that understanding if we don't want to remain stuck in total confusion.

A few months ago I saw a program on the net that transforms musical pieces into visual representations but I found the images very much unidimensional and very poor at meaning something. This, I guess, is what made me realize this "Sound waves". Those interested to see some "music images" can go to my weblog "The air of our times" and go to to the post titled "Graphical music notations" dated September 14th, 2004.

Modern art 35: ARTSENSE 010

Acryl010. In the realm of lofty thoughts.

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I postulate that the substance, the content of art works can only be the sense of reality as it forms in the times we live in. (the worldview or Zeitgeist in the forming today)

It has been so since the dawn of ages, from animism (primitive painting) to religious art (images about the story of the gods) to early rationalism (the new paradigm of private ownership and individuality.

This principle remains universally valid today.
But we went through a period of total confusion starting in the early 20th century about the question "What is art".

In the beginning of the 20th century, the avant-guarde affirmed that "the great prostitute was reason" but as Andre Masson wrote in 1941 in "Painting is a wager", ".. The tendency to allow oneself to be swamped by things, the ego being no more than the vase which they fill, really only represents a very low degree of knowkedge. In the same way, a casual appeal to subterranean powers, the superficial identification with the cosmos, false 'primitivism' are only aspects of an easy pantheism."

Our worldview or Zeitgeist is evolving fast and its evolution goes in sink with the discoveries of scientists and philosophers. In other words the only way out for artists, to be in the reality of this world and to appear as such for viewers tomorrow, is to represent the signs corresponding to today's knowledge base .

Thus knowledge is paramount for the artist. But the big question is how to represent the signs corresponding to this knowledge. I guess here is no universal answer. My personal approach is three phased:
- first phase is unconscient play with colors
- second phase is conscient discovery of sense into the result of the first phase
- third phase is visual harmonization. We should never forget the saying of Delacroix : "... a visual art work must first and foremost be a feast for the eyes".

Modern art 34: ARTSENSE 009

Acryl009. Wind and waves.

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Flatland is quiet, the sun is blue and the leaves on the trees are immobile. This is a time of tranquility, time passes without ripples. Then for no explicable reason the air rises and soon swirls. Flatland vanishes, making place for a storm. Masses of air come and pass. The movement is clearly not regular. Now the sound is soft like a melancholic gypsi song but the next moment the rythm accelerates into a wild frenetic pounding on the chords of a skywide guitar. Bodies shake in awe. Trees are uprooted. Houses are flattenned. Then the wind quiets down for an instant as to take a full breath for blowing a new salvo more powerful than the last.

I have always felt that the rythm of the winds is like the rythm of life. Up, down, flat, unending change. You just can't stop it, better accept and adapt yourself to the rythm of reality and surf with it. Better never resist, you are powerless indeed. Let go and follow the movements, learn the dance and discover harmony in non resistance. Surfing the waves of live is acceptance of life, is discovery of the way of life. This is exactly what the Chinese masters at "shieyi" painting try to attain: the representation of the "way of life" of their subject.

Modern art 33: ARTSENSE 008

Acryl008. Concepts and signs

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After meditation comes the sign. Having sensed reality we want to share our perception with the others around us. Generally words fail us and we recoursce to signs, simple mental images conveying the sense that we want to share.

In animist societies, shaman, men of knowledge were initiated by their benefactors to the art of seeing reality. With the help and under the influence of psychotrops, they learned to reach out to the ONE for gaining understanding of the working of the daily realities of their tribes. Their initiation was completed when they could enter into contact with the ONE at will at which time they used signs to share their worldview with the other tribe members. Carvings, paintings and decorations of those times integrate the signs of the worldview spread by the men of knowledge.

In the religious times of the gods, priests and monks were initiated to the creed that they would later preach to their brethren. The spreading of their worldview was realized through signs and words (manuscripts with illiminations), painted images, sculptures,...

In the early stage of capitalism, paintings are commissionned to represent the new notion of individual property. The new rich and entrepreneurial aristocracy want to adorn their walls with the local landscapes of their mansions and castles and also their portraits. Those paintings become the signs of their property and individuality.

By the end of the 19th century, the signs start turning to the individuality of the creator himself and by mid twentieth century we all had lost the meaning, the sense of what signs are all about.

Here we are now, entangled into this perplexing and troublesome situation of total absence of meaning. But I think that we should rejoice at the knowledge of our conscience of this absence. This is indeed I believe the point where, or should I say when, we start to search for the sense to give to nowadays signs and meditation is a great way to find ourselves and to make sense out of our reality and thus discover the signs of our times.