please see my painting mystic landscape. is it surrealist painting anyway?
Archive for April, 2008
is the future of chinese art bright? – by Rajesh Shukla
April 29, 2008chinese artist say its a new cutural revolution that has come togather with its matterialist development. its more about propaganda then art. The art that is on move is not beyond Rene Magritte’s art . Specter of Rene Magritte is haunting chinese art. China Avant-Garde is just a hype there is no reality in it regarding language of art. Its language lacks originality. Its not postmodern art as often many artist tend to understand and propagate; its just a new kind of realism. Postmodern art has not arrived ; it is yet to come. only new and original can endure in the stream of time.
LAIRS – by Cassandra Gordon-Harris
April 29, 2008
"Whenever God closes one door he always opens another, even though The days are warming but the nights stay cold, into the 20’s. It killed the tulips and hyacinths that tried to come up fooled by the warmth. Forgetting, I left the germanium pots out and by morning, they were mush. The wind still kicks around but not as strong as before although it is enough to fan the wildfires in the nearby Manzano Mountains. We are so very dry. The warming days allow the dogs and I to take more walks and so we discovered the lair. I have come to the logical conclusion that these past 10 months have initiated a karma event. This has happened several times before, always a growth experience, once it nearly killed me. Time tends to stand almost still and awareness becomes more acute. This time, it is forcing me to question everything, humbling my ego or what is left of it, and giving me an opportunity to view life as if I was in the back of that lair looking out. I know things move very slowly in the mountains. Earthy, potential, magnetic energy rumbling like Merlin’s dragon beneath our feet… is so enveloping. Unlike the beach, where the kinetic flow is quite fluid and energized by words. Here my words still create but now they are made of adobe and must formed carefully, died and baked; this takes infinite time. Caught in this karmitic reality, all I can do is keep on trudging though the molasses of a road that leads to that open door I can see at the end of the hallway. Toss the continuing rejections over my shoulder because I know the grandfathers have given me permission to proceed. It is just the waiting, filling my days with creation colors on my canvas until I reach that far portal, take out my cracked pot and offer it to the world. It is very hard. Not just for me, but for anyone who would choose this path. I have no choice. Something waits on the other side of the door and I will find it.
sometimes it leads to hell in a hallway" Unknown
Sweet Calico Goat and Orphan Works Act – by Lynda Lehmann
April 28, 2008
This sweet animal has a beautiful calico coat and an engaging and unwavering gaze. My sense of awe and reverence for animals grows, as their soulfulness and apparent ability to feel and even think, become more evident to me.
If you’ve seen the video that’s been going around the Internet, of an elephant painting his self-portrait, no doubt you have felt the same exhilaration that I did, when contemplating how this giant mammal seemed to "think" about the accurate placement of each brush stroke. Even if he was prompted by his trainer, by touch or visual prompts, his behavior is still deliberate in a way we humans have not historically attributed to animals.
I posted the video of the elephant painting his self-portrait in my last post so you can watch it, if you haven’t already seen it. It stands apart from the other videos we have seen, in which elephants "paint" to music. In the other videos, the elephants seem to be enjoying themselves but the viewer is not sure whether there is much volition or deliberation behind the seemingly random and free movements.
I think we all have enjoyed many of those inter-species, "love-and-relating" email forwards, as well. The bottom line is that we all want and need love, and it’s sometimes easier to find animal behaviors to stand in awe of and applaud, than it is to find laudable human behaviors. Predators in the animal kingdom hunt and kill to survive, just as we take animal life, as part of the food chain. But lacking our level of critical thinking, they don’t have all those nasty defense mechanisms that are borne of our human propensity for self-doubt. In my opinion, our self-doubt projected outward leads to a lot of unnecessary tangles and confrontations for many people. Imagine the time and resources we waste being angry at strangers. We may sneer behind their backs or scold them either tactfully or rudely, or we may walk away silently, puzzled by a suspect behavior that we disapprove of, yet vesting our energy in it.
Yesterday while driving on a busy secondary highway coming home from an art show, I signaled to move from the left to the right lane, to exit onto another parkway. The guy behind me not only sped up so I couldn’t move over, but he flipped me the bird as he passed me. I was astounded at his random act of free-floating hostility. I’m glad I’m not that angry!
Animals vie with each other for supremacy, but in a more direct way: for physical dominance of habitat or available territories, or for the attentions of a fertile mate. Yet we humans vie with each other on so many more levels and with so much more at stake. What’s at stake as a result of the culmination of competing human behaviors is nothing less than the survival of Earth and all her inhabitants!
I think it would be a good idea for us to ponder the interactions of animals and begin to evaluate our institutions and behaviors from a survival standpoint. I’ve seen squirrels, robins, blue jays, and a baby rabbit, all occupying the same meagre footage of my back yard, all foraging for food while ignoring the others who are doing the same thing in their own way. They are different species, living a peaceful co-existence. Their truth may be "to eat or be eaten," but they are not tied to status issues, political correctness, or supremacy issues. They don’t vie over ideologies. Maybe they are lucky, to be at a "lower" level of intuitive and intellectual functioning. As for peaceful coexistence, maybe we humans can do a better job of using our intuition and intellect in more constructive ways.
ORPHAN WORKS ACT
Some of the members of Worldwide Women Artists Online, of which I’m a member, have brought the Orphan Works Act to trhe group’s attention. As I understand it, this act was defeated in Congress several years ago, but is currently under consideration again. If passed, this law would drastically reduce your control over your ownership of your creative works, especially images posted on the Internet. I’m not an expert on it, nor on legalese, but I’ve read enough to know that the outcome of this proposed law is very important to artists and photographers, as well as writers.
Here’s a link to a site where you can sign a petition against it. Why not sign and pass it on? This is so important to all of us!!!
Let’s make our voices heard. We should all blog about it, too, or we’ll become just another casualty of corporate greed!!! (If you want more information on the bill, just Google "Orphan Works Act," as I did, and numerous sources of information will pop up. Spend ten minutes reading, and be your own judge!)
HIGH ON A HILL IS BOTH A DRAWING AND A PAINTING ON CANVAS – by Edward Longo
April 28, 2008The original painting depicting a house High On A Hill was created on canvas during 1988. The framed artwork is currently on sale at a private exhibition mid-town New York City for $1,200. 00
A Glossy Print of This image will be printed on Glossy HP Photo Paper and delivered matted for $50. A professional Giclee print will cost $70 . . . Multiple prints are available Upon Request. Send the artist an email if more information is needed about the print, or the original painting.
Review HIGH ON A HILL The COLOR PRINT – Click Link Below:
http://www.original-art-paintings.com/highonahill_print.jpg
Artists Website: www.edwardlongo.us
indian contemporary art situation – by Rajesh Shukla
April 27, 2008indian contemporary art situation is not good at present since many artists those who were welknown and auctioned in many online auction houses have lost ground and almost dead. investors have not taking interest in the artists works. market is slow no gallery is able to sale works of welknown artists. abstraction has sufferred a lot because there were trends of reproduction and repetition. those who have invested in many abstract artists artwork for future gain have lost and may not recover. even the new realism that is on move is not doing well because in it there are lot of copies. what would happen to the art of india god knows. the painting i sale in $800 many gallery sale more inferior works more then $5000. in their art craft is more art is less. Among them many artists are illiterate and having no formal education. many big Galleries are run by india’s industrial class ladies those who never had any exposure to modern art but since they have already clients because of the class they belong they were able to sale art works. but how long one can befool the investor? who invests in art for future gain. galleries invent any artist and by putting his work in auction houses thus making him master make people fool and cheat them. later when critic started evaluating their worth of artwork they start criticising and they vanished from the art arena. many investors have toled me this truth. i wrote a monograph on an artist and because of that she raised her prices, earlier she was saling in less then $4000 now in more then $20000. There were demands and she started producing more and more same kind of work and galleries started saling to the investors that artist is going to be great; invest you have an opportunity to earn big money. but since there is no essence in the production investers lost their money. there are many cases that i can tale you. In my magazine " the enlightened world’ i wrote an article on artist and spiritualist "ADI DA Samraj" (see his works on www.daplastique.com)many artist asked me with wonder the kind of art he makes but galleries did not love because they feel danger of losing the game they are playing. With me there is a problem of being truthful and not cheating to the art lovers. I know that many artists paintings can not stand infront my painting but they sale six times higher then me. Being author of five books and editor of the magazine is sufficient to put more value in my work of art then those who have nothing like this.
Art in india art is losing the ground because it is not truthful to itself. indian galleries sale Souza’s drawings in more then $20000 whose many drawings are just copies of picasso . for reference see book ‘Ars Erotica’ BY Edward Lucie-smith page no 79 where Picasso’s drawing has been published. in his lot of drawings this you can see.
to read artcle on adida go here>>>http://www.theenlightenedworld.org/enlightened/adida.pdf.pdf
Crossroad: The Liminal State of Light and Dark – by Fernando Ferreira De Araujo
April 25, 2008Everything is on track for the Solo Show of the Brazilian, New York based artist, Fernando Ferreira de Araujo in Miami. The show will take place at the trendy Artemide Showroom in the heart of Coral Gables. Fabio Villas, the curator of the event, estimates over 200 guests will attend to the opening reception – first Friday of May, 2008. Among them, art collectors, interior designers and fashionistas will pack the venue from 5:30 to 9:30 pm. The exhibition will be open until June 6.
The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. Ones sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed – a situation which can lead to new perspectives. For this exhibition, we will have 15 paintings of Fernando Ferreira de Araujos latest expressionism figurative and cityscape series. Each and every painting is personal, every stroke opens a concealed wound showing the artist bare soul and his strive for self-discovery. Through contrasts of light and dark and a remarkable bleeding hallmark, hes trodden a path in which were guided by a strong Chiaroscuro Abstract Expressionism influence. (Fabio Villas, Curator)
This series -Crossroad The Liminal State of Light and Dark – represents the comfort I now find in contrasts, in being vulnerable to changes, finding new paths through adversities. Ive always been attracted by B&W movies, by rainy days, by the silence I relate to darkness. Most and foremost by the contrast of light and dark found on Chiaroscuro. Its fascinating to tread the dark, shaped by rays of light and the new dimension Im able to discover amid forms that inevitable become my abstract expressionism interpretation of my memories. (Fernando Ferreira de Araujo)
Venue: Artemide – 277, Giralda Avenue – Coral Gables, FL 33134 – From May 2 to June 6, 2008
www.artistshowdown.com
www.fernandoaraujo.net
the inspiration of the birds – by Alkistis Wechsler
April 25, 2008Wild birds such as robins and blue tits made our mornings joyful with their cheerful singing. Wild birds in Great Brittain are dangerously reducing in number. Therefore few months ago we installed a bird feeder in our back garden, where our cats have no access.
Now a neighbour came back to her Lonon flat and we received the complain letter of the house-administrator. The bird’s food attracted also doves of love and grey squirels. Now we shall be missing them soon… How sad is that?! Being in my new painting it’s just not enough !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Join me – by Hans Mertens
April 23, 2008Create Dear fellow artists, I have quite an ambitious plan.I want to found the greatest network all over the world for artists.What’s my plan? I want to give you all my free websites ( about 30) for starters. There’s no catch; it’s for free! What do I want to achieve? Being an artist is a rich but not an easy life.So we can share our muteral contacts from all over the world. Just a plan; let me know your opinion if you’re intested. Send your messages to hansmertens@versatel.nlwww.absolutearts.com/portfolios/a/aragornwww.hansmertens.nyour blog in this textarea.
Ramkumar Asceticism and His Landscapes And Modernism – by Rajesh Shukla
April 22, 2008"What he paints now is not what the eyes sees in the ancient city, it is rather the response of the soul to the visual impacts. This impact has released the city scapes of the artist’s inner world, a world build into the emotional psychological complex of the artist’s personality, the only true world"-J.Swaminathan
"An artist shows the entry point to his creative world and the rest depends on the onlooker, what he sees, feels and interpret. He has to make an effort to find for himself what he is seeking and what artist wants him to see" – Ramkumar in his notebook
When one takes recourse in painting through a discipline, a certain ethics to paint and focuses more on structure and form than one is very rational and can not escape structuralism. Ramkumar is such a rational artist of our Indian modern art. Through discipline and painterly ethics he has been very much engrossed in the creation of forms perhaps it haunted him since force of life he could not see. He says, ‘when one is young and beginning, one’s work is dominated by content, by ideas-but as one grows older, one turns to the language of painting itself.’ What is language of painting in Ramkumar’s thinking? Isn’t it form without substance; form that could be structured and restructured in isolation through meditation and discipline. Derrida says, ‘form fascinates when one no longer has the force to understand force from within itself. That is, to create’. Formalization is subject of spiritual experience for Ramkumar it is form which is all powerful since art is all about visual effect nothing more as for as Ramkumar’s thinking goes.
Through discipline in isolation Ramkumar organizes him self to create structure properly, here structure of painting is also a form since it is conceived as an effect of color, strokes, and geometrical shape. And for this a discipline is needed, a gesture and emotion is needed. Discipline itself is a gesture capable to express life. Isolation and feeling of loss is the gesture of Ramkumar which he forms through discipline -another gesture. Both are needed for experience in painting; discipline is needed to intensify the feeling of isolation and loss and the feeling of loss and isolation is needed to meditate on the form of painting. He is very honest to his feelings of loss and isolation since when one is grown old one must take recourse to this at least in order to have some confrontation to one-self. In European romantic tradition this kind of trend was existed it was called bohemian tradition. In this tradition it was believed that art can be approached only by being ‘platonic’.
This sane undertaking was not irrational it had its own reason; it puts value in art work if not artistically than in market. Kermode gives a beautiful account of a British artist M.Bernard Buffet, about his exhibition a London evening news paper wrote in 1955: "three years ago you could have bought a Buffet for the cost of a meal but now the Buffet price is 300-500 pounds. He has just been voted France’s leading young painter in a ballet run by a gloss art magazine…. Which says; one of the reasons of his success is that he painted the miseries of youth after war. Only 27 now he was 18 when critics first acclaimed him. At that time he was living the real, un-glamorized bohemian life, going without food to buy canvas. … He works entirely from memory and imagination, and by electric light. The house he has built in Basses Alpes is specially designed to exclude the beautiful views that other people dote upon. Nothing must disturb his imagination." This recourse to eccentricity of artist is regarded by western bourgeois society. This estrangement enchants people too; see how a fakir is regarded in Indian society. To get the truth one must be a fakir, a self centered beast.
Modern artist often tends to proclaim them selves seers through estrangement and eccentricity. Ramkumar too falls in this pit. His loneliness, his cravings for going far away from his surroundings and absolute isolation has its own logic. It was deliberately constructed destiny if not for art’s sake than for people who like this estrangement. He believes that through painstaking discipline of painting he could experience peace in painting. This peace which is the self of Ramkumar which has been lost (by what reason no one knows) can be found through ‘absolute isolation’.
In absolute isolation he does not want to isolate desire to paint since it is desire of painting through which peace is achieved. And you would see how his painting escapes human situation which was always considered against peace. In his figurative phase there was already this craving of ‘far away from this surroundings’. Remember those gray, black, and white human figures surrounded by gloomy environment of the cityscapes. In the development of industry, technology and metropolitan culture man was depicted lonely and lost. Ramkumar’s man could not move with the progress of industrial development and society since he perceived the danger of being lost so his man became reactionary and bid good by to the human situation and craved for an isolated place-the nature.
Ramkumar’s resort to nature was in reality not in nature as a whole rather barrenness of nature. Since in nature he found celebrations of life, trees were green laden with flowers, creatures were doing what they do, and there was life in movement. It was heavily populated by living beings so there he found limited possibility of peace which had to emanate from his constructed concept of isolation far away from the surroundings.
In his imagination surrounding means ’surroundings of beings’ which he considers anti peace. He was against life force; the mystery of his landscapes lies here. His dull colors, his grays, black and whites evoke deadly peace which he might have been experienced. May be, in Laddak He wrote in his note book, "Laddak- barren and rugged. No vegetation, grey mountain ranges and black rock like bas reliefs jutting out of them and white monastries…..the landscape haunted me for quite some time. Later when I tried to paint my impression on canvas, I could not imagine any color to be used. Even blue sky and crystal blue water of the Indus had to be in black and white. The eternal silence of a wasted, barren earth which refused to compromise with man could not be visualized in any other color except grey and white and black …". In his landscapes Laddak’s barrenness and ruggedness found permanent place even when he painted Benaras landscapes. His image of Benaras is not live, he took his sadness there too, his sad memories through which he painted therefore the image of Benaras that appeared on his canvases has feelings of Sadness.
An artist has all freedom to see anything in anything to express as he thinks but there should be an authentic experience. Only authentic experience transforms nature as in Kafka’s short story metamorphosis experienced truth of the writer transforms the protagonist. Ramkumar may have experienced a dead and illogical but not the reality of Benaras. Benaras is liveliest city it may look illogical for outsiders but it has its own logic of life. To see Benaras you have to enter in the illogical logicality of Benaras. It is Puranic city; Puran means always existent with the same spirit. Benaras is the city of Lord Kasi Viswanath the only God who’s every deed looks illogical like an Avadhoot . But since Ramkumar was seeking form for his landscape he could not see Puranic form of Benaras, the aura of ancient in which something immortal has been flowing unbound. His longing for form led him far away from life and led him towards feeling of sadness. He became stranger to beauty of life thus stranger to himself. The stranger Ramkumar became sentimental in the longing of form. And this sentimental longing of form could be satisfied in creation of harmony of form and color. Peace is found in harmony of form, in a strange lyricism which excludes the entire world with all its actions and events. In the harmony of form and lyricism longing finds rest and reduced to silence. It is a tragic end of longing of form. This elevation of artistic consciousness through depreciation of life is Ramkumar’s achievement.
In his dull and lifeless landscapes there is peace captured, you feel it in order to elevate your consciousness which has lost peace. Ramkumar landscapes gives you hope that amidst unbound development of materialism peace still can be found in the aesthetics; aesthetics of asceticism which rejects life and liveliness. This aesthetics considers that truth is inside and can be found by negation of life (out side) as orthodox religions do believe. Most of our abstract painters do follow this aesthetic approach. Inside enchants us because we don’t want to see expanse of truth outside. We have been taught for centuries that truth is inside of outside therefore for a valid experience we escape from outside. In this inside-outside duality an estrange conception of life is formed this that for a divine life which lies hidden inside desire must be renounced. Where there is desire there is unhappiness we proclaim. We don’t consider desire as an opening and freedom. We believe that with desire relationship with ‘other’ can not be formed. Relationship with other arises from the depth of solitude and this solitude is always found in the inside of soul. Naturally this leads us to the philosophy of eschatology whose first step is the feeling of sadness this that in this world of desire since desire is the world there is no possibility of ecstasy in truth.
This metaphysics has been always our light. Aesthetics of mystical revolves around it, even after the dawn of modernism which rebelled against theosophical way of life and art it was growing there mystically. It came out in open with the aesthetics of expressionism. Enlightenment which was based on rationalism saw truth outside, it said there is no inside though it never left believing in inside. Adorno rightly said, ‘enlightenment is always accompanied by the fear that truth, which sets enlightenment in motion, is going to be sacrificed in its progress. Thrown back upon itself, enlightenment moves farther and farther away from its goal, which is some kind of objective certainty. Hence under the strain of its ideal of truth, enlightenment is forced to retain what it tends to discard in the name of truth". Modernism’s return to inside was already inherent in modernity’s consciousness of freedom that showed confident belief in reason and it’s method of truth.
It is because that modernity could not resolve the dialectics of inside-outside, particular-universal, individual and social. This dichotomy is also evident in modern art. Ramkumar is a one victim of western modernism. Ramkumar seeks freedom in asceticism which contradicts modernity’s consciousness. Modernity’s consciousness is defined by being in the world (being in surroundings), only by being in the world Being finds its immanence. Modernity conceives transcendental not in subjective consciousness rather existential-ecstatic temporality of Being here as Heidegger would say. Art finds its immanence not in asceticism rather in temporality, in ‘now of time’. In Indian metaphysics it was considered most important, it rejected past and future. Indian Vedanta philosophy situates it self in the ‘Now of time’ since only Now is in hand and only in this ‘Now of time’ one can find transcendence. Those philosophies that put life above any thing reject memory since memory is always in the past. Concept of awareness in Buddhism and Vedanta is about ‘here and now’ that is in presence in present. It was considered most original than any kind of cognition.
Ramkumar’s landscapes do not attract us much because his landscapes are lifeless. He escaped from the immanence of life therefore from his canvases life fled. it is true and no one can reject it that the modes that a human being is consists of exist within the ‘ attributes’ of thought and extension.
