Opinions about onions
Onion one. As a strong visual artists that likes to explain and discuss printmaking paintings and drawings as tools in a post modernist intellectual research into the dark side of humanity. I find myself in my workshops lecturing on some well-defined ideas that firstly put art in an interesting perspective. And secondly, I am talking to the students about the many intricate concepts in visual culture, in relation to their personal work. Although not all students like to be involved in the reflections and questioning that takes place when evaluating and discussing art in general. The majority find it useful and refreshingly difficult and none threatening. In fact many tell me that it helps them come to realize that art is not only about creating its also more complex than they thought. They come to realize that art is about showing explaining promoting and defending various visual principles.
That art speaks for itself maybe is true but not very useful it often promotes confusion but a more reasonable approach is that we must speak on behalf of our art.
A work of art has some attributes, here are some of them. There always is an artist involved in the creation of an artwork. The problem here is how many artists. This can be resolved by classifying the artwork according to the number of creators. That is a simple theory to follow. It solves the following confusion. Art made by animals such as elephants and monkeys is not art. We can refer to these objects as interesting objects. Why make these distinctions. The answer is a simple one art encompasses all and only human activities. We cannot pretend to understand what we are not.
I often introduce the following ideas if there is no artist involved then the work is known as an artefact. This helps to explain why a tree in the forest is not a work of art, but sometimes people insist that it is a work of art. To deal with this we introduce the following ideas. To make art requires making choices and to reflect on art requires to reflect on the choices that we perceive to have made. We are well equipped with skills to understand other people. We can only comprehend and understand choices made by other artists.
I often argue that we can understand new art instantly. The one principle that I always is that some choices are better than other. This is based on the idea that we can say that an artwork “works better this way than another way”. This looks like a subjective criterion that cannot be used. Let me remind the reader that rigor is the end result of an activity, it is not a manifestation of the practitioner it’s the result of her creation. Now present day explanations of “it works” are a relativistic notion that undergoes minor changes with respect to the artwork position in its environment.
Onion two. The mind body problem is my way of understanding some of my artistic problems dealing with evaluating and some issues in art comprehensions
Because people copy art and paraphrase ideas, the repetitive use of these visual tools changes. For examples we see in music that a hit song is better then some other songs and that after repetitive listening people get tired with that song. In fact there are instances when the song is declared unlovable and thus a bad song. Note that bad songs are synonymous with music that does not work.
What works in a work of art has many components. The first component is implied in the question of whether the artist is smart. This I call the mind or head issue of the concept of the work of art. Artists are concern with their image in visual culture they don’t like to be perceived as stupid. The second component is what I call the body component. This issue deals with the physical and cultural norms of the work of art. For example paintings are more important in present day Canadian culture than works on paper.
Onion three. As a Canadian visual artist resigned to the fact that art is a business I have stopped arguing with my business friends and the public in general that art is a research and that this intellectual activity is the most important contribution to Canadian visual culture. I have come to realize that there are gains to be made if we talk and think and act from only the point of view of the business component of art.
It is understood that artists must make an effort to explain, exhibit and promote discussion of themselves and of their art if they are to succeed in the business world, galleries know that. Therefor it is not wrong to argue that soliciting for shows is similar to looking for contractual part time employment. So why am I writing this? Is it not true that all exhibiting institutions have the same polices? That’s what I thought. In fact a little investigation reveals that Artist run centers have the most transparent and thus fair system. They have a selecting committee of more than one or two people they inform the Canadian public in a timely fashion on the nature of their needs and they respond in a civil and timely fashion. On the other hand museums and some universities and even other organizations are completely unreliable they have no or improper selecting committee. From my experience they hardly read or consider proposals. They bypass the public and they misinform the artistic community, everything is done in a partially mysterious and often in ways that are perceived as unfair.
In the last ten years I have written at least five hundred proposals. Most were rejected but many were selected. As a result all my shows are in artist run and all are based on proposals and not on invitations. Further more as an artist who has devoted more than thirty years to drawings and print making I would have celebrated the ability to apply to various shows dealing thematically with drawings, printmaking or narrative art. For me a missed opportunity to apply is regrettable. I will give only one example; it was the 2002 Montreal biennial dealing with drawings. That show was held in the summer of 2002 and all artists were selected privately. No calls were ever published. There are many other examples. This I feel is wrong. It ruins the perception of fairness in Canada and handicaps my career. Because of this I feel the need to make the following demands that all grant-supported institution publicize and advertise all activities dealing with contemporary art. That they treat these as job opportunities for interested visual artists and that they put in place proper selection comities. After all its not who you know but how good your art is .The present day museum and university gallery system is inadequate when it comes to being accountable when an artist is chosen. In our multicultural visual community we demand moving away from the present day seemingly corrupt and inadequate system to a more open and just one. What has happened to the concept of equal opportunity organizations? Surely we can ask for a more accountable and uniform polices.
Onion four. The other day I found out from a CBC story that the Einstein estate is making five million dollars from licensing fees. Canada has advance copy write legislations. Why are visual artists not able to collect license fees from the Canadian government? Or maybe I should ask why Canadian visual artist is collecting so little money from licensing fees?
The other day I talk to a first nation artist that has sold work to the Canadian government. These works are now decorating some offices somewhere. He told me that he has never received anything for licensing payment. Come to think about it I have some work with the Art bank in Ottawa and I also received nothing. With over eighteen thousands artworks in the Art bank for rental this should generate at least one million dollars in licensing fees per year (if they rent all the artwork), that goes directly to the artists who created the artwork. Where is that money? Why can’t we get the government to pay for all the art that they display in their offices? The movie industry operating in Canada has got it right, for them showing a movie at home requires no license showing it anywhere else requires a license. Why can’t we have the same for visual artwork?
I assure you that lack of clear thinking in Canadian visual culture is that culprit. When it comes to estimate the amount of money owned to Canadian artists, we find this concept is poorly understood by both CARFAC and RAAV in Quebec. When I tried to explain to the membership of these organizations that a significant amount that is not been paid by governments and corporate collections they say that this amount of money is peanuts. Here is another example. Loto Quebec is active promoting Quebec visual art. Yet they don’t pay some artists for some services because they make some artist sign away some of there rights as a condition of sale. With a collection of more then three thousand artworks they refuse to pay an additional fifty dollars per artwork for the license to show in there offices. This represents more then one hundred and fifty thousand dollars per year that is owed to Quebec artists. Year after year I am reminded that I understand nothing and that it’s best to do nothing about this issue. We call this situation in Montreal the Loto Quebec problem.
Onion five. It is obvious that if we look at what is known as good art we will find that there are many reasons for this. If we call these reasons attributes. We will find that some of these attributes contradict themselves and some are independent of each other. We thus suspect that not all good artworks have the same attributes. We can safely argue that a good artwork possesses some of these attributes but not all.
We now introduce the following basic idea that an artwork is good if it works and it’s bad if it does not work. We then are free to look at creating an artwork as an activity or an experiment whose purpose it is evaluated under the principle that it is desirable to produce art that works instead of anything else. Thus we can explain that certain artwork can be made that, while adding nothing to new art, still helps us to understand art without being considered a serious artwork. To publish oral history about art is a way of increasing the importance of the artist activity and our understanding of the value of the produced artwork.
Onion six. Artists like to describe and discuss their projects. What they don’t like to do is evaluate their projects. Furthermore any evaluative discussions are suspect because artists feel that they have nothing to gain or loss. However comparing the artwork with the claim that artists make is after all part of perception and thus art evaluations.
We finally see that present day visual culture needs some strong reawakening because we find ourselves in a process of abandonment and neglect confusions and failure. In a culture that has argued for two generations that everyone is an artist and that art is therapy for cowards it is refreshing and exhilarating to be present in front of the work of a contemporary master.
I just heard someone say that whenever they hear of a tragedy they make a picture as a way of coping with reality. It makes them feel good like a flower should.
It is now almost thirty five years that I know Mark Prent all those years the believe in strong visuals and good engaging and difficult art where the engine that has propelled Mark to create and excel
The belief for some times now, is that artists exhibit concepts. Furthermore, the prevailing view is that these “concepts” we must accept and celebrate and never question. If by some unfortunate reason we find ourselves not interested by the art or the correct concepts then we must confess to the need for some academic or historic help or simply roll over and play ignorant or dead.
I have also noticed for some time now that to argue over art is a bad thing it reveals the critic as an outcast. We cannot argue that a show is weak insignificant ordinary or a joke. We must say nothing. As a result it feels that Canadian culture has turned its back on visual art.
Onion seven. With my large drawings I remind the public that there is hope in strong visuals. Ugly and painful artworks must challenge “polite political art”. I also argue that critical thinking is the only salvation that’s left for visual culture, if it wants to prosper and live a long and healthy life without the threat of disappearing as is happening today. I began my large drawings in 2002 as a celebration of Impact Art. Showing these mural size drawings that measure ten meters or more is problematic because I am dealing with issues of taste and space. Fortunately a small selection of these thirty feet drawings have already been shown in Edmonton, Quebec City and Ottawa hinting on the magnitude of my project. Presently I am working on a one hundred and forty meter long drawing. It’s very difficult and I consider it as a work that bridges the Hard Edge art of the sixties with present day contemporary practices. This work answers the question of what happened to Hard Edge by saying that we appropriated it and it became part of our narrative based art.
The core of some of my resent work deals with some aspects of savagery such as but not exclusively confining an individual to a room with hungry rats or other small animals with the intention of having the animal eventually ending up eating the victim. You can find out about the morality of torture in the book the history of torture by Daniel P. Mannix
One of my resent work is called “All over the world they are killing all the young men (the artists)” .It is part of a large body of work interpreting Kenneth Rexroth famous 1954 poem called Though shall not kill. So far I have drawn a book containing 135 drawings interpreting this poem. I then went and did 500 dry points again giving a post-modern interpretation of this very strong and still relevant poem. This artist book will be printed in the summer of 2007. Twenty numbered copies will be made.
Onion eight. Here is my opinion on style. I have no understanding of my style. I am interested in some art but not all. The art that interests me I call strong visuals or simple what I refer to as impact art, or simple Iart. I define an artwork as Iart if it meets the following conditions. One, an artwork must have a subject matter that is multi-narrative. Two it deals with human issues. Three it deals with serious subject matters. Four, it must have a strong presence. In short my art must be shockingly dramatic with an attitude without being preachy.
In my work I question the cornerstone of modernity as expressed by Clement Greenberg in the well-known Edmonton Interview. Greenberg has argued that a good work of art depends on how you do the art and not on what you do. Here he represent the most important cannon of modernity, which claims that the subject matter in art is not important but the style, is more so.
This kind of culturally learned belief is not based on observations. It has become the cornerstone of an extreme right wing oppressive and censored driven culture that Canada is unfortunately adopting. As I see it the following three false beliefs are the essential axioms that are unchallenged and are making inroads into our visual culture and these are makings it impossible for strong visuals to exist in Canada. The first belief is that there is too much violence in visual culture. The second is that there is too much sex in visual culture. And the third is that all strong narrative is opportunistic and propaganda, and cannot be tolerated because of community standards.
I protest the fact that it is difficult and extremely rare to exhibit strong and shocking art in Canada without some sort of a warning. Look for the photo that I posted on my internet sit called www.danielerban.com. That the opportunity to celebrate strong visuals is obviously getting harder with each day, and it appears to be getting virtually impossible in Canada.
Onion nine. I work with some principles here is a short list. Artist should depend only on one evaluative principle. It is called the principle of positive response. A simple explanation of this is the need for a positive response to the question of whether the art in question works or not to be considered good art.
The second principle is called the principle of visual doubt. It is always there. The nature of this principle can be used to frame all debates, discussions and the never-ending evaluative processes that must take place.
I don’t like to make decorative art. All abstract art is decorative. Over time every artwork becomes decorative. This is because the subject matter evaporates and losses its importance.
Onion ten. The trivial approach to my art. Here are my principles
1 Art is not divided into two camps abstract and figurative.
2 There is not enough violence in art.
3 There is not enough sex in art.
4 Narratives in art is important it is not driven by propaganda.
5 Artists don’t have to be modest.
6 Art criticism is not subjective.
7 Artists are not the vanguards of visual culture.
8 Cutting edge art is not always good.
9 If an artwork is not cutting edge then it is not necessarily traditional.
10 Traditional art is not useless.
11 Important art is sometimes important.
12 Cutting edge artists must always drink milk.
Furthermore here are some of my visual beliefs
1 Good art does not always survive.
2 The artists must never stay silent.
3 Artist are not ahead of everyone.
4 My art is accessible.
Onion eleven. Observation based visuals is the bases for a serious discussion of art. Evaluative processes must be based on observations and not only on theories.
Visual based activities that capture the essence of visual culture a priory must be accountable when we are handling strong visuals.
Over the years we noticed an unwillingness to come to terms with strong visuals we constantly avoid it. We claim its existence is based on sensationalism of the artist but not on the public. We claim that anything goes in the name of opportunism. As a result any contribution made by strong visual artists dealing with political subject matter is avoided at all costs. In order to be noticed as artists in Canada you must be symbolic, boring or non-visual. There is hardly any Canadian artist who is known for their social commentaries aside of some landscape or animal based artists.
There are many reasons and functions in contemporary visual culture that precludes us from claiming a deep understanding of the history and the working of visual techniques or an encyclopedic knowledge of personalities and movements in visual culture. Therefore my remakes must be interpreted as personal and anecdotal.
We are familiar and we agree with the post-modern principle that says that if you think that my art has infinite meanings than my art has no meaning at all. We actually find it interesting and interpret it as a call for evaluative processes and not the opposite. We don’t see it as a proof of the impossibility of art evaluation and criticism because of the subjective nature of interpretation and thus of art. In face, it points to the spiritual values of all the various visual art activities, and the need of reporting and serious examination of historical and evaluative critical thought. If we stay silent art will die. A sure way of harming art is to partially ignore it.