A RAPID SKETCH OF MY VISION ON ART, ITS MEANING AND ITS FUNCTION.
Since the beginning of mankind, as far as human history goes, art has been at the service of society. Art and most importantly visual arts served as diffuser of the worldview of society's "men of power and of knowledge" to the members of society at large.
- in animist times, shamans, sorcerers or whatever they are called were the ones who shaped the worldview of the members of the group. Their vision of reality was that the sun was at the heart of life, a male (yang) power of creation to be revered. Animals and plants used in daily life were respected for their human life maintaining power. Art served to illustrate those ideas. We moderns have come to call this form of art "primitive arts".... it flourished for tens of thousands of years.
- in religious times, I mean the historical phase of human development that comes after animism, humans revere gods (in the 3 religions of the word a unique god). The men of knowledge, in those societies governed by religions, are the priest, the monks or howerver they are called. They study the religious creed in their teens to diffuse it to all in their adult life. Art in that period describes the stories of the creed and gives images of the gods and their inner circle, angels,... Religious art flourished for hundreds and in some religions for thousands of years.
- starting with early capitalism in Europe around the 16th century, power in society will shift from the clergy to the new rich merchants and the entrepreneurial aristocrats. Richness in terms of gold and silver possessions are now what procures power, The search for more gold and silver will gradually shape a new worldview made of the ideas of material possessions, private property, individualism and rationality... By the end of the 15th century, art starts to represent landscapes and portraits and by the 16th and 17th century, those subjects represent the majority of all art productions. This will go on and on and is still true today for many people but something fundamentally new happenned in between.
- starting after mid-nineteenth century, I believe under the impact of new techniques of transportation introducing the notion of speed, some artists bring changes in their style of representation of portraits and landscapes. Vangogh, Gauguin are the best known precursors of this stylistic change. The impressionist movance, later the expressionists, the cubists, the futurists and other schools continue to depict portraits and landscapes, or to say this otherwise, they continue to depict reality or at least what is considered as being reality in their days. But sometime after the 1st world war, here and there artists begin to question the wisdom of that reality, they think, they write about the need to reject that vision of reality for something new. (Breton, Duchamp, Ernst, Miro, Masson, Chagall,...) This debate and trials at painting something different will go on from the 1930th without interruption until today. The approaches in creation after the 2nd world war can best be described as a search for individuality. Everyone tries something different, originality takes central stage and very fast "what has not been done before" becomes the sacred graal of artists. BUT in this process total confusion becomes pervasive. Everything has been called art, has it not, from a slashed canvas to a toilet seat.
- starting around the year 2000 (very arbitrary dating) some artists begin to express the need for SENSE in visual arts. Debates are going on but no firm conclusions have been accepted yet.
My personal conclusion is that art works have to return to their traditional function, the making of images that illustrate the worldview of present day "men of knowledge", the scientists and the philosophers if some remain. But we are not in times of art commissionning anymore, when the commissionner fixed the content of the art work. Today the artist has to come up with his own content. So I think that artists need to build up a strong base of knowledge in science and philosophy in order to be able to derive a good understanding of our reality. Their understanding is indeed the only possible valid subject of their art.
The present day worldview is fluctuating, we are on the road of shaping a new worldview but the images are still not very firm, or should I say not very firmly accepted. My painting is to be understood as an essay at rendering my vision of the forming of the coming worldview in post-modern societies. In other words, knowledge (scientific and philosophic) is what drives my image making.
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