Reviews
does art have the intrinsic power to heal us? or rather...are all artists bad before they become artists?
yes, yes, i know.....the snobbery that that exists betwixt the 'professionals' and those suffering from mental illness (art therapy) is clearly evident...but why I ask you?
surely, if we are all honest with ourselves, hasn't being artists helped us to avoid:
1)prison
2)the sanitorium(nuthouse((U.K.))
3)suicide
4)wallowing in our own little puddle of self pity
5)poverty
6)office jobs(links back to 2))
7)becoming stale, boring, subservient gits
8)outrageous drug abuse
etc etc
Personally, I'm intrigued......the world could implode any minute but there'd still be an artist there to document it! to either rationalise or irationalise it of course!
surely, if we are all honest with ourselves, hasn't being artists helped us to avoid:
1)prison
2)the sanitorium(nuthouse((U.K.))
3)suicide
4)wallowing in our own little puddle of self pity
5)poverty
6)office jobs(links back to 2))
7)becoming stale, boring, subservient gits
8)outrageous drug abuse
etc etc
Personally, I'm intrigued......the world could implode any minute but there'd still be an artist there to document it! to either rationalise or irationalise it of course!
Tags: anti, art, healing, holistic, recovery, reprobate, therapy
Replies to This Reviews
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Permalink Reply by joe kelly on -
i agree noel, to be anecdotal about the fundamentals of the aesthetic is similar to saying "I've just won the lottery but I'm not bothered!".
I despair daily about the lack of conviction I come across within the art-world and other worlds too....(don't worry I'm not from another world, although, when I speak to some peers I feel very alien!)
From my own experience, I have learned to appreciate and assimilate relevant information, as and when neccessary. Sensory or intellectual overload is a risk, with so much info to plough through, but I do take heart in the fact that pearls of wisdom do materialise occasionally and thankyou for that.
In fact I'm still catching up on some of the references you used in your previous arguments.
I have been drowning in influences for some time now, but still retain my integrity and direction despite the pressures exerted by media, the establishment etc
The more input I get, the better I become at sifting through the pseudo-intellectual detritus.
Its a skill I hope more artists can develop.
Anyway, nice to talk to you again dude!
I'm off now to look up Panurge Sheep and Epinal Images, because I haven't got the foggiest idea what they are, but I'm intrigued.
A demain peut-etre
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Permalink Reply by Noel Fignier on -
Bonjour, Joe,
To help you not to waste too much time in your research:
"Panurge"( A kind of clever "Jack of all Trades" a man who has the know-how of all ) is a character from 15º-16ºCentury French writer François Rabelais's principal writing, "Pantagruel".
I am not sure but I think this character's origins may come from Hebraic texts. Rabelais's life is extremely interesting.
French language assimilated the expression "Moutons de Panurge" (Panurge's Sheep) to describe people who very often, follow without thinking. Number is the justification of reason.
Les Images d'Épinal are popular imagery printed from th 16Century until 19th Century to educate masses, sometimes with text notes for those who could read, telling historic events, learning "savoir-vivre", (social living conventions), dressing fashion, medical councils, health care, politics and cartoons for children) under the shape of small rectangular prints on paper, first from etchings, and later from lithographic stones. In the early beginning, they were black and white. From mid-17º till the end, they were polychrome printed.
They were meant to facilitate teaching.
By the way, thank you for interesting you to the references I launched. Just like you, I am tired by pseudo intellectualism. I feel saturated.
A plus tard,
Noel
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Permalink Reply by joe kelly on
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Respect to the human version of the internet......the oracle.
I appreciate not having to spend too much time on this blasted computator thingymajig. It denies me time with the mallet and chisels. bless you
bon nuit
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Permalink Reply by mike hinc on -
Dear Katerina
Bunkum. Context is everything. Time informs context. How we see art from other centuries is not and cannot be how people in those centuries saw it. We've lost the codes. Art is many things but "timeless" it's not. Take a look at the clock. Championing Abstract Expressionism as an art for today makes about as much sense as championing Cave Art. Mind you, the same could be said about Pop Art but I think you do Noel a dis-service. His art is not a nostalgic wallowing in a dead genre. Yes, it contains it's own past - as any viable art form must - but it also it also transcends it. To his credit Noel makes a contemporary art - even if I'm still looking for the irony.
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Permalink Reply by mike hinc on
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Noel
I think Pop artists were taking their "cultural references" from the world around them - as artists do. Were they so patronizing as to even want to "to reach the mass and to have Art getting out of its intellectual ground "?? I think not and hope not. They were the "mass" or at least part of the "mass" and their "intellectual ground" was that of the "mass". Which to my mind, should not be dismissed so lightly.
Anyway, how are the Vorticists? How is your manifesto coming along?
I have mine, I think.
Best
Mike
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Permalink Reply by mike hinc on
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I extended my comment. It was Abstract Expressionism you were championing so vehemently not "abstract art" that "also has a new edge". My response was to that. You are now talking about something else. I think you habitually use words loosely and that undermines what argument you might have.
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Permalink Reply by Enrike on -
I think not everybody is called to make art... may be some are just called to enjoy it? anyway, those who are called to do art, I think, is not that art is healling them, but rather, you are literally dying slowly when you stop doing art, so when you do art, you are honouring your gift, hence living! literrally living. I think art is not just an skilled usaje of the technique or the media... it is a comunion between the artisit and the creation. It is this creative process what the artist soul celebrates. I was born artist, I know that, but my environment kept me from doing art for countless years... I had to arrive to a criticial moment in my life and re-examin what is worth in life for me, to re-discover art in an Artistic way.
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Permalink Reply by mike hinc on
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If you read the thread, "mass" was Noel's term not mine -which is why I put it in quotation marks. That said, yes each person is an individual but a mass of individuals remains a mass, even as snowflakes turn into snowdrifts. Aaaah.....
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Permalink Reply by Noel Fignier on
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Mike,
Thank you for your comprehension. You said "their "intellectual ground" was that of the "mass"." it is true. Expressionism and Abstract Expressionism were becoming academical because they were not representative anymore of the new current context of economic boom, at the end of 50' beginning of 60'. A style of Art cannot be alive unless it can give back a projection or anticipation of the society's behavior: It is the reason why it is contested or criticized, because it is the mirror of the so-said intellectual culture. Without these elements, I think we reproduce a dead art, with complaisance to the existing culture. Art is a conscience-taking in the moment and where it is expressed. In the current moment of mass cultural reference, which reflect the level of the whole society. It is the witness of its History. Pop Art is not dead for the only reason that consumption society only grows and that technological means, being part of this rise, letting to the mass a part of impossibility of access to it. It is as much alive, without speaking of energetic sources from which this system depends. Art only can bring something when it anticipates and is a witness in history. It is why I join a part of Abstract Expressionisn, combined into a Pop line, where image, through its abstraction and pop iconography, throws back in the subliminal I think a concrete image without definition, which for me represents the question mark of our future society. And your artwork, Mike, is in the line. You chose irony: maybe shall I manage to insert any? The moment did not appear yet...
Sweet dreams,
Noel
PS:
I did not Vorticized yet, but I shall exorcise this problem very soon. It is pendent and next to be published.
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Permalink Reply by Deirdre A. Fox on -
Let me be the one to champion cave art ... seriously, I don't know what that means. We guess and hypothesize at the context in which cave art was created, knowing only the materials and that it has survived a long time, largely because it was hidden from view; yet, it can still inspire, be interpreted, reinterpreted, etc. (and periodically does and is). Once before discovery of caves like Alta Mira and LasCaux, we (speaking of society and experts collectively, with its biases...) didn't even think such art was possible in those "primitive" times, did we? I'm probably not up as much on art history and theory as some, but looking back, even what we sometimes classify as linearities in art historical development (in broad strokes) aren't so linear. Yes, we may have lost "codes", but that does not preclude past work and ideas from having relevance. Everything is necessarily framed and put in context from the point of view of hindsight, except perhaps what happens and is experienced in the moment (even that can be gerrymandered by biasing perceptual lens).
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Permalink Reply by mike hinc on
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Oh joy! Noel, you write with such passion and better yet - we agree!
Forgive my jibes on irony. It is a common feature of, not a prerequisite to contemporary practice but beauty will be conceptual or it will not be at all!
Happy vortex!
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Permalink Reply by mike hinc on
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Which nobody can deny, Deirdre. That we can all take something from Cave Art (or Abstract Expressionism) - even if its not the same "something" as it's practitioners and contemporaries - is uncontroversial. But that's a long walk from demonizing Warhol as Rasputin and proselytizing Abstract Expression as a blueprint for contemporary practice.
Yes, we can take something from Cave Art and Abstract Expressionism because the past is still in us all but neither is able to address the issues and concerns of this 21st century digitally manipulated consumer society and nor can we expect it of them. As Noel says, without this
"we reproduce a dead art, with complaisance to the existing culture." Context is key. Art is not timeless.
