...so we beg the question, what is art or painting in particular...now I sound pretty serious in all this and I am but its 3 years since I wrote this and I am a bit more forgiving now...just a bit tho'!
So I’m going to try to put sense back into art. We have got to have order, steps and a grid to advance. We saw in the previous section that to construct an assembly of marks(=painting) with merit, we need to do it such that it has a clear capacity to connect in a logical, rational and understandable way.
The science of art is like any other discipline. There are rules to be followed, skills to be learnt and challenges to be overcome. Same as learning to drive a car or studying to become a brain surgeon.
Becoming an artist is no different. Imagine applying the methodology of ‘new’ vision art which has as its fundamental starting mandate -‘expression through emotion’ to the surgery of removing a tumor on the brain.
Situation in hospital operating room:
Doc, “Wow, I feel good today, Sally found her lost ring and the little green frogs have returned to our pond and the cat ran such funny circles this morning…I think I’ll try this surgery with my new fishing knife rather than the old scalpel as I’m feeling sooo.. good, and maybe go in thru the ear rather than the regular way because its more exciting and I feel so up and away….and so much part of nature and in touch with the throb of life….and”
..and…well that’s sort of where these people are! And I don’t care what they say to defend themselves-that is where they are and what they are. Away from reality and all bullshit!
To counter that and to put you on the right track I’ll dismantle that big fog machine that the wackos have been using for the last 80 years and show you a clear, uncluttered and easily understood way forward.
I’ll show you and how to build a painting-step by step.
Plus I’ll show you how to make it grab the passerby. Grab attention through logical rational human behavior rather than through exploiting sensationalism, extremism and the way out. I’ll show you how to put ‘connection’ back into painting.
As I review this now, 3 years after starting this book, if you want to see the translation of this notion of 'connection' from a written assembly of words to a video take a look at the romantic
That these people have been allowed to get away with this nonsense for so long and have it included in the school systems of the world amazes me. Art based on dysfunction, the weird, the outrageous, the crazed has its place(?) but to institutionalize and embrace it as the mainstream is a distortion and a fraud on the masses.
If our ancestors of the caves of France or our modern day aborigine artists of Australia were taught this as the fundamental for image making they would see it for what it is-absolute rubbish. Image making to them(=painting), and the many others who have such passion, is a serious business with important spiritual and philosophical fundamentals.
Human emotions and behavior is closely linked to stimuli. To distort or discard the rationality and logic in the stimuli is to distort the direction of individual life and, in a wider sense, the community. The aborigine never approached the process of making marks-whether it be on cave walls, bark hangings or body decorations with confusion. Every mark had a meaning anchored solidly in who and what they were as projected through their rich and unique mythology together with their recent life experiences. Art, or the making of marks, is as important a part to the life of the aborigine as the air they breathe.
When an aboriginal artist paints a kangaroo or fish he does so with deep reverence and respect. It is given acknowledgement and origin. It is executed with care and deliberation. Subjects have meaning. They connect at many levels and over time beyond the artists’ life. The artist is part of the philosophical and evolutionary process and respected for this.
The greater his skill at giving imagery to the processes and meaning of life the greater his stature and memory.
That art has been hijacked by a band of ‘Johnny come latelies’ is a travesty of order and an insult to the present generation and an even deeper insult to the past generations and every other artist who has approached the craft with ‘due respect’.
The ‘Bullshit Brigade’ of ‘Johnny come latelies’ claim to embrace the noble origins of imagery with lengthy wordy analyses and appreciations of the past art while at the same time extolling the great virtues of emotionalism in art. On the one hand they recognize and acknowledge the importance of philosophy and spirituality in art while on the other singing great praise and celebration for fleetingly transparent quirky imagery that has roots non-other than, ‘how I feel’! Hypocrisy, of the extreme. And it doesn’t matter how many times I look at a hole cut in a roof of a State Museum and titled ‘ Passing Clouds’ it is flimsy, childish, irrelevant imagery and an insult to the public.
So we are going to go back to some basics in imagery or mark making and try to communicate with honesty, reverence and respect with the imagery we produce. For if we don’t base our art on these criteria we are no better than the fakes with the fog machine! Touché!
………this is where we are heading...........
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