man woman spirituality 7: rembrandt's jewish bride

rembrandt van rijn, the jewish bride (around 1667)



rembrandt van rijn, the jewish bride (detail)

an interesting site on rembrandt's technique: northern light studio.

tft monitors bleach out art pictures, especially paintings

a short post today about thin film transistor liquid crystal display monitors (tft monitors).

the thing is, almost everywhere i go, i see this type of flat screen monitor being used. but when i view my artist's site on such a tft monitor, it all looks awry. the colours and lighting of especially paintings and drawings are horribly distorted, making many works seem as if they are simply bleached out by having been in the ocean for extended period of time.

i tried to see if other pictures of artworks suffer similarly, and yes they do. it really hurts my eyes to look at pictures of paintings on these monitors. (sculptures generally come out ok, normal photographs also are acceptable.)

yet noone seems to be complaining. i remember returning a brand new tft monitor of a well-known quality brand a few years ago (i couldn't stand the way it rendered the colours of my own paintings) and that the salesperson told me that yes, colour was known to be an issue, but i was the first one to complain. i had to say that i'm a visual artist, which convinced them to take it back and refund me.

my dilemma is now becoming acute. should i buy such a tft monitor and try to limit the damage by spending enormous amount of time to readjust my art photographs? or should i just stay with my old iiyama vision master, in the knowledge that the majority of people looking at my sites will get to see something horribly different from what i see (which are usually strong, well-lighted colours).

i cannot express how stupid i find this type of problem. one does one's best to create faithful pictures (this is hard work, because photographing paintings and drawings is not easy), and then supposedly better technology comes along, and all the hard work is for nothing. simply because to most people, faithful colour representation of art works is not so important.

oh well. there goes the neighborhood. sorry to grump on you. please, if you visit my site, try to do so on a crt monitor or something comparable in colour /lighting quality.

woman, man 6: postpostmodernism & spirituality

ralf kwaaknijd, man woman ii (2008, polystyrene on wood)

so let's connect the two running themes (postpostmodernism & man-woman spirituality) for a moment, returning once again to dutch visual artist ralf kwaaknijd. kwaaknijd obviously kicks against the ruling postmodern art structures with this work, which is so small that one must squat to see it properly. (an ironic reference to the in kwaaknijds eyes unpalatable and unimaginative postmodern sculptures which borrow their legitimization purely from their absurdly large size). yet this irony could be construed as postmodern, were it not for the fact that kwaaknijd also carefully chooses his subject, materials and sculptural form. man and woman here are engaged in an abstract entanglement which can be viewed both as dance and as struggle, as embrace and as fight, as opposing and together. made from the same materials and forms, man and woman are -somewhat fiercely perhaps- completely equal, thus shattering any `romantic' but discriminatory notions one sees so often in prepostmodern art. but what about sex?



ralf kwaaknijd, man woman i (2008, polystyrene on wood)

in the same man woman series, kwaaknijd comments on the -in his view absurd- role of sex in postmodern art. since postmodernism cuts away `meaning' and `sense' and even `morality', what is left in terms of human motivation? often sex is the answer. largely of course because sex still has some power to shock the general public, making an artist who uses explicit sex somewhat of a controversial figure, which is 3/4 of the thrust of the postmodern establishment. shallow for those who see through this marketing technique, but then again that is a seldom heard minority.

but also because in the absence of any `higher' or `spiritual' values, people really start defining their `realization' in terms of sex.

kwaaknijd's sculpture above tackles these issues rather blatantly, in the familiar abstract sense. looking closely one sees an abstract representation of male and female genitals, engaged in sex. yet once again, male and female parts are made of the same materials and sculptural forms, closely resembling their parallel embryonal genesis (for those of you with a working knowledge of embryology). the reduction of `man woman' to their genitals is both scornful and yet, in its simplicity also defusing. sex is simple, from nature's abstract point of view. there are no higher values in sex, unless we add other values...and for this we need some form of spirituality - a simpler conclusion is: we need some form of spirituality (which is a decidedly unpostmodern view).

kwaaknijd however still uses postmodernist techniques, he exaggerates them, distorts them, but he is still a child of his times. this to me suggests the term postpostmodernism. and i wait impatiently for a truly different ism to shoot up. come, daring fellow artists, whither shall we go?

meeting on the quai of the stream of subconsciousness

meeting on the quai of the stream of subconsciousness -- with passerby walking dog, seagull, trees and cloud of unknowingness (own work, 2008, 21 x 30 cm, mixed media on paper)

yeah, today's drawing...and don't even have the time to comment on it. sorry. maybe sunday.

woman, man 5 (spirituality, eve & adam continued)

park encounter iii (own work, 2005, 15 x 24 cm, mixed media on paper)

just to keep the blog rolling a bit...i would like to do `a drawing a day' also, but i find that all this internet activity costs an amazing amount of energy, which i frequently don't have.

above a rather shy encounter...man woman noticing but not really acknowledging each other, although aware that each is aware of the other...

woman, man 4 (spirituality, eve & adam continued)

park encounter iv (own work, 2008, 20 x 30 cm, mixed media on paper)

well, not to lose the thread on spirituality, man and woman altogether in the storm of (post)postmodernism...

much of the famous art on man & woman seems to center around sexuality (i think i will visit sexuality also specifically, somewhere to come on this blog). but for me `woman & man' is even more reflective of a certain spiritual bond which -especially if humanity would evolve along lines that i deem spiritual progress- could also quite naturally exist between any two given people regardless of sex.

but in my experience it's usually that in the framework of `romantic love', which allows woman and man to come real close to each other, this closeness is acceptable, even sought after. whereas in other frameworks, people shy away.

a detail of the above drawing:



park encounter iv (detail, own work, 2008, mixed media on paper)

maybe i will find some time to go into this `mixed technique' and subject later on. the thread will be continued.

postpostmodernism & postmodernism 3: meaning

francis bacon, study for a bullfight no 1 first version

perhaps i should start by saying that various sources have confirmed me as being very `postmodern' in my opinions and even in my artwork. this could explain why i compare postmodernism to puberty: i never really got over puberty either, but life goes on anyway. one cannot undo puberty, likewise i feel we cannot undo postmodernism. because postmodernism is just the reflection of a (to me higher/deeper whatever you wish to call it) insight that we have gained in the nature of truth.

to be more precise: we have found out that there is no absolute truth, and that the previous quests for absolute truth have brought countless wars and social disasters. [and also infrequently, somewhere, on the sidelines, some remarkable works of art/literature/philosophy/science/...]

in the visual arts, likewise there is no absolute aesthetics. previous quests for absolute aesthetics have brought countless mediocre works and museums filled with them. [and also infrequently, somewhere, on the sidelines, some remarkable works of art...]

so the resistance, the rebellion, whatever. let's show everybody how relative everything really is. let's deconstruct the ignorant people's preconceived notions of art, let's become societal prophets by creating art that educates society about its postmodern predicament.

but this means a shift in the `meaning' of art. `meaning' is redirected, transposed from the work of art to include the onlookers. and `meaning' can also be: to show these onlookers that there is no absolute meaning. [sorry to be so obscure, can't help it, that's what you get on the meta-level of meaning, and that's the mess postmodernism has justly gotten us into.]

for me, this type of meta-meaning isn't enough. at least, not in the long run. to kick against absolute truth is one thing, but to find personal truths is another. and although the first certainly is useful, imnsho, the second should not suffer from it too long.

so take a moment to consider the above painting by francis bacon. does it not capture a lot of this `relativity of meaning'? it also distorts space, spatial links between event and onlookers, temporal links between bullfight crowds and the second world war,...but what makes it a great painting imnsho is that it is painted in a painstakingly developed personal style, it is a personal painting expressing some personal truth...not meant solely or primarily to educate me about my ignorance on the meaninglessness of meaning...

and then consider francis bacon's second version...where the onlookers have all but vanished...:



francis bacon, study for a bullfight no 1 second version