A mad junky in the name of art (Part 1 of 2)

Should being an “artist” automatically excuse for immorality and capriciousness?

The joystick of attitude
When someone is established in a path of spiritual awareness, in faith, he realizes his essence and uses every daily doing as a lift to spiritual enhancement, to personal growth, to the aspiration to all that which is noble, pure and luminous. It’s a question of attitude and attitude is an expression of the freedom of choise which God gave us, Humans.

A deep and intense spiritual awareness to the existential suffering of oneself and of mankind is a gift, but awareness which is not accompanied with equilibrium of the mind begets fear which might result in hatred, rather than a balanced and aware mind which begets love and faith.

Art can also be created out of love and faith and it will be as deep, impressive, creative and colorful as art emerging from the darkness of the artist’s psyche. Again, it’s a question of choise and once you do believe that God indeed contains everything – including the devil – because everything is within the boundaries of His Creation and His Providence governs all with absolute and infinite awareness, than the logical outcome of that realization, is that art which is lofted by the creative forces of the mind can soar much higher and further than art which stems from the rotten roots of the destructive forces of the mind.

Asceticism
Those artists who choose to create art out of self-hatred and conflict do so on their own, but by no means because it is necessarily the way of nature. Perhaps they choose to believe that if and when they will stop suffering they will also stop being unique. Perhaps it is the rooted belief that being miserable is being deep and that happy people are superficial and stupid. But that depends on where from this happiness flows, and of course when I say happiness, I mean true and profound blissful joy and not that unaware vapid hypocritical charade posed by most of them “happy” people.

Now, the happiness of sensual pleasures may indeed be superficial and stupid, but nevertheless it is an expression of the human nature just as much as stubbornly uncompromising and haughtily pretentious debatement concerning ‘deep’ philosophical issues. At the ultimate level of reality, enjoying a good steak like a beast isn’t more superficial than embittering your life with asceticism and self torture, as did certain artists of the past, since it does not indicate spiritual greatness but rather the greatness of the ego and it’s arrogance and the illusion that shields them and then turns them into a distorted and dangerous belief, that it is indeed for a higher cause – Art – nonsense.

Happiness
But there is true joy, what which we call ‘Happiness’ – that which derives from the knowledge that in any situation and at all times there is something unfathomably bigger than us, which is aware of us into our entire depths, which knows the purpose of our existence and tries to guide us through a universal scene of illusions and misery which he created for us.

From within those short moments of the happiness of faith and the experience of the radiance of truth, art is born which is not the outcome of misery and indecisive conflict, but rather one that, for a start, expresses all those objectively and impartially. Perhaps at a later stage an art emerges that is all of the nature of radiance, happiness and faith – art which is the embodiment of the divine, the exalted and the complete.

Attraction of similarities
As an incidental remark to the above and as a side effect of the suffering human, the frequencies we generate draw to us those people who generate the same frequencies. A magnet will not be pulled to or by glass or wood but only to iron. It is the law of nature. A man – an artist, a cook, a teacher, a driver or a cashier – who generates frequencies of self destruction draws to himself other people of the same frequency.

Someone who, in the name of art and out of deep soul affinity for art, generates frequencies of self destruction, will attract ‘artists’ or those with ‘the soul of an artist’, who ruin the lives of themselves and of those who surround them, without any aware striving towards the origins of all phenomenon and the real solution to their personal despair. This is also a law of nature.

And that is all I had to say about that. Thank God for the wisdom, the insight, the pride, the journey and the conflict.

Created by findigart On 04/16/09 At 08:09 AM

My earliest recollections are of an elaborate grate that covered an air shaft in the house where I was raised in Brooklyn. The pattern of swirls-the positive and negative space-the completeness of the Victorian design captivated me. The vent went out into a back yard and because the brass plate so fascinated me, I created elaborate visual images in my mind that incorporated the polished plate, shadowy shaft and the leafy garden beyond. I sketched the grate and used black Crayola crayons to block out the negative space. One day, I discovered a way of looking at the plate and my sketches through the viewfinder of my Dad’s Kodak Brownie. It was magic! So began my passion for architectural elements that define and augment visual space and my desire to create own art from these masterworks of stone, metal, glass and wood.

As an adolescent, I began to discover and appreciate architectural details that adorn buildings in New York City. The early photographs that I took were purely to capture the visual. Each time I saw a flower carved in stone, an interlocking and intricate geometric design created by ironwork, an enchanting or fierce marble face over a doorway, I had to capture it on film. I would wait anxiously for the photographs to come back (this before my education of the darkroom and the infinite possibilities that chamber held) from the camera store. Opening those envelopes was an experience filled with all the wonder of childhood: the images of art poured forth. I cropped the artful architectural details to create my own art and frequently drew or painted elaborate illustrations from those photographs. Some of the drawings and paintings were taken from one architectural image; others combined several ornaments into one composition. While my contemporaries in art classes were studiously copying the works of the masters, I was replicating and interpreting in my own way the often unsung artists who had sculpted masterpieces that ornamented buildings right in my own neighborhood. I did not need to look in art books to find statues and paintings that were housed in European museums to find my inspiration: all I had to do was look around my Brooklyn street or take a subway to my personal Oz: Manhattan. The artworks were all around me on the buildings I passed every day.

As a photographer of details of architecture, I am still enthralled by the magnificent art and meticulous craft that went in to the creation of ornamentation of architecture in the past. When I plan a day of photographing architecture, likely as not, I will be amazed by the details that I discover-even now. Throughout my travels, I have photographed vine covered lampposts, grim faced gargoyles, beatific angels, elaborate serpentine designs and elegant art deco relief I first photograph some of the area in which the detail exists. For example, on a recent shoot, I found inspirational subjects in Grand Central Station. Before taking photographs of the details to which I was drawn, I took pictures of the entire building from numerous angles. I then isolated the details of architecture that I wished to photograph. I always work with natural light to emphasize the characteristics of the detail of architecture and the way in which it was initially created. After I am satisfied that I had enough photographs of the architectural detail, I shoot the surfaces of the detail and the surrounding area up close so that I can understand the original medium: sandstone, marble, brass, oak, et al. Later, I look at the images for hours before selecting the very best way in which I can preserve and enhance the art of the architectural detail. The images of Grand Central Station’s magnificent architectural details gave me weeks of creative energy and a passion to return there often to seek out new details and further refine the previous photographs I took there.

My quest in seeking out architectural details from which to create my own art has given me a profound appreciation of the beauty and history of New York. The art of creating art from art can be a humbling, yet empowering experience. I have, on the one hand, the great artists who created these marvels of ornamentation to live up to as I incorporate their art into my own. On the other hand, I am mentored by some of the best possible teachers. It was and continues to be a wonderful way to express myself through art.

Created by Ellen Fisch On 03/31/09 At 09:05 AM

Should being an “artist” automatically excuse for immorality and capriciousness?

Triggering questions
Who said that art must gush from misery, struggle with God and misanthropy until the inevitable conclusion of insanity, catatonic apathy or a lonesome death in some filthy one-room apartment filled with dirty needles? Who said that art is a spring of all that which is incomplete, conflicted and chaotic? What is the value of art created by such artists? Is an artist who walks around whole and happy in the street of Berlin (or Cairo for that matter) will create shallower art than one who sits all day long and occupies himself with forcefully finding reasons to cut off his ear, or one that lives a wild and hallucinative lifestyle, consequent of a morally unrestrained mind, swept away blindly by destructive instincts and urges?

Must an artist destroy himself in order to create art? And what’s the relationship between art and the essence of life? And who even said that art is a means for the realization of this essence?

The purpose is destiny
I believe that art is not a purpose and not even a means; it is simply another thing that one does in life, same as cleaning the house or eating an apple. There is a higher encompassing purpose to life, which can be attained (perhaps and no doubt) only by some sort of practice for spiritual awareness practice and lucid intent. From that trunk, when its roots are deep and healthy, may sprout all sorts of branches, twigs, leafs and fruits, as much as the imagination is capable of.

A good blacksmith is also an artist. Everyone whom is granted with inspiration based upon deep concentration with the base of morality is an artist. It could be that the life of the plasterer, who fixed the walls in my house, carried him to a position that in terms of the consensus and the acceptable stigmas, is lessened of that of Jim Morrison or Picasso, for supposedly there is no reason for his ego to bloat. But indeed this is merely a stigma, because an ego can be bloated for no “real” reason at all and it is indeed bloated as a balloon for no real reason, except for it being itself. That is the ego’s sole purpose: to distract from the real purpose.

Façade of success
Jim Morrison, for example got a few successful years, which were merely a karmatic realization of the sub-conscious contents of his mind, and was captured in an abundantly sensitive and intelligent whirlpool of self-hatred. Out of this mental state he produced art – profound and intention-propelled words from the depths of the psyche, words that particularly in those days were a challenge over what is acceptable to say and how its acceptable to say it. He pondered in deep questions concerning death and turned his inability to find answers into a voyage of self-destruction, supposedly in the name of art, with the full realization that he is doing so.

I believe that even Morrison did not really believe Morrison’s bullshit and if he did than he was less sensitive and intelligent than that image that he bothered so to construct regarding his personality. Jean-Michel Basquiat is another fine example of a clearly intolerable relationship of a man with himself and with his place in the world.

The dawn of stigma
I sense that during the Renaissance era, when artists already started receiving a status of intellectuals rather than that of “plain laborers” or craftsmen at the most, a certain perception started to intensify within the collective sub-conscious, which defined the artist as a necessarily tormented creature, patently condescending, misanthropic, closed, hostile and captured in whirlpools of intense emotional outbursts. Of course as a result of all these he would necessarily be much deeper, extremely more sensitive and much more special than all others – The Chosen One. And of course the effect of that result the artist might probably be completely lonely, poor, miserable, dirty and dark.

For example, I don’t think that Van Gogh would have been less of an artist had he been less miserable and more optimistic and faith driven in the belief and recognition that art is not the purpose of his life and neither is his niece, his brother or his closest friend, but only Divinity and death, and that he among others, was chosen to become a lonely painter in this life, the same as his mama was chosen to become a housewife who makes great strudel and someone else in the Byzantine Roman empire – as a result of purification or defilement, ignorance or wisdom – was chosen to become a great archer or a mediocre tailor…

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To be continued…

Created by findigart On 03/02/09 At 03:11 AM

Painters working on the streets of Montmartre in Paris may soon become a thing of the past with the introduction of cheap, soulless Chinese paintings done by the painters equivalent of a battery hen in a small steal cage.

Many of the 300 officially registered artists working on the streets are now competing with souvenir shops selling mass produced Chinese oil paintings for a fraction of the cost that local Paris artists can afford to sell them for.

David Chazan wrote some more on this topic at the BBC here.. “When I visit some of the souvenir shops and question the owners about the origin of their pictures, at first they deny that they are imported. But after a few minutes, some admit that they do buy imported pictures or prints – and even touch them up themselves.” Continue Reading..

My first opinion would usually be to let the fittest survive, but not in this case. Mass produced Chinese oil paintings are anti-art and any artist or art lover that supports them should hang their head in shame. Go buy an art poster if you must, but don’t encourage the abuse of featherless battery hens that pop out countless empty blobs of colored mud parading as art.

If the uncreative junk that they turn out day after day isn’t enough to change your mind, think of the working contemporary artists around the world that constantly have their images stolen by battery artists in China. Van Gogh may not mind having his sunflowers ripped off and reproduced thousands of times each year, but emerging and mid-career artists probably Do mind.

On a somewhat related note, this week I have tried to buy some shorts and shirts without a “Made in China” label on it and have been unsuccessful. I will keep trying, but at some point I have to buy clothes, which will mean that I will have to submit to buying products from the world’s mega-factory (a factory that is hungry for coal fired power plants and has little time for silly things like an ecosystem).

End rant on China here.

Phew, sorry you had to hear that.