| A work of art has no value as a "thing". Its value is in the experience
it evokes. Artists have no privilege as artists ; the work must
be the source of its own merit. what response do we seek ? I think shock as sentimental as the insipid. Consolation and exaltation are difficult ; but valid. Mystery, eudaimonia ? Whatever is wonder beyond the literal. Revelation at the price of pain ? Always. Complimentarity is my point of reference ; my philosophical "position". Interchangability and gradation clarify process. Limit is restraint but also identity. We are identity in process. When I use the term spiritual it is in the sense of the French word esprit, meaning the whole mind that includes the analytical, emotional and intuitive - the experience of the whole greater than sum of parts. In this sense I work to evoke a spiritual experience that is independent of belief. Wait for the echo. ************************* The haboku painters of Japan are my "model"..... sometimes the road ahead requires a 400 year trip back in time..... and place. Abstract art does more than present a fait accompli. It engages the whole mind and takes me where I haven't been - I find it appeals to people who enjoy both adventure and their own independence. A referential abstraction ? Why not ? The "philistine" is no danger to art-they live and die in their bank-notes (The real threats are teachers, decorators and theoreticians). Nothing can end art except the apathy of artists. All ideologies become blind creeds. Artists have no need of creeds-they see the world of sense as spirit - (real, in other words). Let cows follow leaders over the cliff - art is its own direction. It participates by being apart. Art need not reach all the people all the time. Conversely it certainly should not be satisfied with the thin applause of a self-appointed elite. Art reaches an elect of sensibility, not one of power, position or popularity -its influence is felt slowly but certainly through all the layers of society. Art leads by being. My basic criteria for art : Show me something I don't already know Give me something I don't already have and one more : Keep me alive -"change" my life If art doesn't do that, I don't care how much applause it gets from others or how important it is in anyone's history ; to me it remains wallpaper. I've found art in all styles, periods and media that does this.... and most of the art I've seen doesn't...... |
||||
|
|
||||
