Much noise but very little sense coming out of the visual art world. I know my words will be interpreted as being very very pretentious. But what to do? How to answer those who live in the realm of lofty thoughts?
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".
|
|
