frida kahlo & recognition as an artist

frida kahlo, self-portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird

a few days ago, i spoke a good friend. and she said she admired my persistence in my artistic endeavour. because, she said, she would find it very hard to keep up the necessary motivation in similar circumstances.

to summarize: her perception is that i'm not getting so much recognition as an artist. and for her personally, the lack of such recognition would be a good reason to chuck it all in.

a double-edged compliment if ever i saw one :-) ! lucky for me, i have a different perception of recognition. as i wrote many times before, i'm not so impressed with the 'upper echelons' of contemporary art. that world is so much driven by fashion, money, competition, name dropping, and `entartainment', that real artistic merit often becomes irrelevant.

recognition for me comes in the many many people who have expressed to me personally that they were touched by one or more of my works. and also in the numerous fellow artists who have expressed their wonder at my themes and techniques. but it also comes from what my friend called aptly my inner compass. for me, i'm very content to be at a stage where things have been coming together for many years. for the first decade of my artist life, i was often frustrated by my lack of sufficient capability to create what i wanted to create. especially when painting, since drawing and sculpting mostly came reasonably naturally.

now, instead of frustration i'm often amazed at what comes out of the creative process. of course, on a different level i still lack all sorts of capabilities. but the difference is that this lack does not hinder me in creating works that evocate what i want them to. and that often amazes me, especially since a large part of this is beyond my conscious control. anyway, the gist is: i have enough inner compass to see that what i am doing has more quality than i could have hoped for twenty years ago...and that alone is enough recognition for me.

what in heavens' name does this have to do with frida kahlo, you wonder. well, you may not be aware that she garnered relatively little recognition during her lifetime. she was often seen primarily as the wife of the then-acclaimed artist diego rivera.

also this week, i borrowed a book from the library on 20th century latin-american art, wishing to expand my horizons a bit. only to find that frida's works were the only ones to really impress me. especially (but not only) her self-portraits are simply astonishing. [i restrict myself to showing only the above painting from wikipedia, since they are all copyrighted, and hope that its use is covered by the same fair-use policy as wikipedia's].

so, to sum it up for this post: recognition during one's lifetime is a happy circumstance for an artist. but let us be thankful that many artists have other considerations to create art as well.

art, zen, inner compass & bioaesthetics

hakuin ekaku, mount fuji and eggplants

so what makes the above painting/drawing tick? i'm not sure it even ticks for me. must see it for real. these internet reproductions definitely fall short. am i strange to notice a large similarity with matisse?

somewhere, i think many famous `modern' artists (say past 1900) have been striving to attain some purification/simplification, the results of which have zenlike qualities (imnsho).


henri matisse, music

zen, experiencing of reality and quality before rationalization sets in. art...can also be experiencing of reality and quality before rationalization sets in.

but what does this have to do with bioaesthetics? i think it depends on points of view, definitions also (always the definitional problem which has to be dealt with if you are limited to words). but modulo that, there is much to be said for the idea that certain visual effects/images/colours/symbols/... work on our limbic system, pre-rationally or at least para-rationally.

but is this a static phenomenon? i'm convinced this is not so. developing visual sensitivity, developing visual libraries, developing visual emotionality...is both an ongoing cultural process as an ongoing individual process.

an insect reacting differently to different colours of flowers already shows us that bioaesthetics has a solid basis in biology. by solid i mean, verifiable and easily understandable. to skip to the human level, one only has to look at movie stars...they are invariably quite above average handsome/attractive/beautiful. well, according to what handsome/attractive/beautiful means i suppose. but bioaesthetically, there is quite some knowledge at what human beings consider to be handsome/attractive/beautiful. and again this knowledge is solid in the above sense. symmetrical face, good physical shape, good sexual shape. all is usually explained in terms of the current ideas of `offspring optimization' or `the selfish gene' and similar.

but you and i know that beauty is just skin deep...or is it? what about beauty of the heart, the mind, the soul? many artists appeal to the bioaesthetic kindergartenlevel. nice face, nice tits, nice ass & pussy, even the abundance of the naked female torso in art (headless! limbless! to me associating mostly with brutal crime) which can only -is there another explanation?- appeal to our reproductive sex bioaesthetical level. yet a stiff dick is taboo, and explicit sexual imagery is labeled pornographic and shunned.

one would not believe, i really mean this, how much an artist who addresses higher levels (although, what is higher, but see this in the light of higher mind functions, higher emotions etc) of bioaesthetics has to explain to `lay' people, in comparison to artists who produce yet the next mutilated female body.

so, inner compass? yes, of course. it is not in any sense objectifiably better (by its nature!) than generalized pagerank - outer compass, but the balance in modern society between inner and outer compass to me seems very much in need of restoration.

quality & art 7: bioaesthetics & neuroaesthetics

ok, i googled a bit on the theme of the previous post, and whaddayaknow, my thoughts fit in with an emerging branch of science called bioaesthetics. a quote from martin skov on http://brainethics.wordpress.com/2006/09/ :

Neuroaesthetics can be thought of as a part of a more general study of art and aesthetics as a biological phenomenon. I will follow other proponents of this view (such as Tecumseh Fitch) in calling this broader approach bioaesthetics. The overall goal of bioaesthetics is to answer the three basic biological questions – what?, how?, why? – in regard to aesthetic behaviour in humans: what is art and aesthetics?; how does art and aesthetics spring from the brain?; and why did this cognitive ability evolve in humans? Neuroaesthetics is predominantly concerned with question number 2. In the list that follows below I will also mention a number of books that discuss the other two questions.

martin skov's piece makes for good reading, and is relevant to the thought train here. please take the time to read the link!

but pirsig's thoughts on quality and art also merit more thinking. i'm still reading zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance and its views are surprisingly recognizable. in fact pirsigs defines art as a high-quality endeavor. (quality comes before rational thought, quality is zen-like, being the source of everything we experience, and more relevant remarks i would like to cite here but it really is better to read the book. still, the passage coming before some of these conclusions is a must:)

[zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, end of part ii:]

Quality...you know what it is, yet you don't know what it is. But that's self-contradictory. But some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality. But when you try to say what the quality is, apart from the things that have it, it all goes poof! There's nothing to talk about. But if you can't say what Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn't exist at all. But for all practical purposes it really does exist. What else are the grades based on? Why else would people pay fortunes for some things and throw others in the trash pile? Obviously some things are better than others, but what's the "betterness"?...So round and round you go, spinning mental wheels and nowhere finding anyplace to get traction. What the hell is Quality? What is it?

i've been finding some traction -i believe- in the juxtaposition of generalized-pagerank quality vs. inner-compass quality.

[i also believe that many people who pay a fortune for certain art works do so more out of gpr-motivation then out of inner compass motivation. i believe many art `experts' wouldn't dare rely on their inner compass, waiting instead for enough gpr-buzz to base their valuations on. its a rembrandt, therefore it must be a wonderful painting!]

but pirsig's approach yields a more fundamental result: motorcycle maintenance can be art also. this at least goes a good way in explaining the difficulty for modern art to be sharply defined.


hakuin ekaku, mount fuji and eggplants


frank waaldijk & unknown artistbuddha, enlightenment, nature, 2006

quality & art 6: inner compass, art, music

still not done, but time nears for other thinking.

recap. quality...is an elusive quantity. to me, inner compass is preferable to outside gpr. but how does this inner compass function? [perhaps it would be better not to know?]

an interesting comparison to music has been keeping me occupied lately. music for the billions, it seems: music & movies & tv comprise the games in the modern version of old rome's `bread and games for the people'


pop star (own work, 1982)

there must be some explanation for the fact that music keeps so many people in thrall, whereas visual art seems to touch most people much less. look only at how pop stars are idolized...what visual artist is idolized? (not that idolization seems a desirable state of affairs, but it marks a very sharp difference in the appreciation of music vs. visual art). if we look in the visual realm for idolization, where do we end up? exactly, with movie stars.

i suspect it has something to do with the impact of music on our amygdala or `reptilian brain': the part of our brain which roughly equals the brain of a reptile and which scientists believe to have come first in our evolution. this reptilian brain of ours is responsible for our emotions and (primitive) basic feelings such as anxiety, joy, stress, relaxation, anger, agression etc [please bear with me as i'm not a neuroscientist].

perhaps along with the evolution of the human voice, much of our emotions seem to be capable of being communicated by and tied to certain sounds, musical lilts even. the soothing voice of father/mother but also the angry voice of father/mother...the roar of a lion vs the trickle of a clear stream with drinkable water...

therefore i (completely out of the blue, i know, i should probably check this first, and come back to you after some googling) suspect that music is capable of reaching the amygdala pretty directly, resulting in a profound emotional experience.

then what about art? --> next post

quality & art 5: where to turn

ok. more positive now, as promised. cup half empty is cup half full etc.

somehow, art & quality cannot be about two completely different things. (will you grant me that feeling, then the following train of thought hopefuly will make sense.)

robert pirsig describes (in zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance) a meeting that phaedrus (his overintelligent former self) has with a visual artist. a very interesting meeting, because it breathes that art has an intrinsic, pre-logos quality. even the book title `...& the art...' makes clear that this intrinsic quality is what we're looking for. in art, yes, but in life perhaps even more.

the question then becomes: where to find this quality. phaedrus tried to find it by thinking. in what one could call a quantum leap, the post-electroshock phaedrus - pirsig himself- finds it (at least by my standards) in zen-like experiencing.

although not in one-one correspondence, it reminds me of the duality: look for quality by outside criteria (generalized page-rank, gpr, see previous posts) or look for quality by intrinsic criteria: what does my heart tell me.

for me it has been difficult to recognize this dilemma and the potential behind it. i wouldn't be surprised if this is similar to the dilemma that phaedrus was grappling with (i'm currently rereading the book but haven't gotten to that part yet, perhaps i will be seen to have been simply repeating it only less compelling...!)

let's have some positive yadiyada: i believe that -for me and many others- wonderful art develops when an artist chooses for intrinsic quality. when the heart and head are open, like a sensitive antennae/dish array, to many many signals, and where the inner compass of the artist then is given as much rein as possible. this inner compass, inner light, whatever...i think it is only confused by gpr.

obviously, this view of art is personal, although it is probably shared by many and also by many `experts'. this holds for probably any more or less coherent view on any subject, i only repeat this to emphasize that i do not believe in one view of art for all. i would like to share some of my thoughts on gpr and intrinsic quality, especially with artists who like myself struggle to find a sense of direction because they feel that the gpr-approach isn't what they want. this can be a lonesome struggle, because by gpr's nature, the gpr-aficionados drown out other approaches.