brave new world 3: prenatal genetic screening

coincidental or not -the subconscious picks up on more things than one would guess, i believe- one of the current political debates in the netherlands is about prenatal genetic screening.

the fundamentalist christian party christenunie, which is minority part of the cabinet, has blocked a proposal to legalize the prenatal screening of embryos used in IVF w.r.t. the carrying of a specific breast-cancer gene.

this is not a political blog, but the debate shows a lot of what i meant about where humanity is going, when i started the first brave new world post.

of course, getting breast cancer -or any life threatening disease- at a young age (this is what happens often to female carriers of the gene) is a terrible thing. but the real question in this debate is of course where to draw a line with respect to prenatal genetic screening. i believe prenatal genetic screening already occurs with respect to down syndrome (even in vivo; i have to look this up) and possibly other genetic defects. so quite likely part of the debate has already been outdated by current medical practice.

the brave new world perspective that i see taking shape indicates that yes, we will have extensive prenatal genetic screening and even genetic engineering in the future. if i want a girl, then why spend my time money energy on a boy infant? why settle for slowwitted when i can have intelligent? you may think this extreme, but it is the logical continuation of the reasons for which genetic screening already take place.

because, just to give a different type of example, depression is also a serious disease with a strong genetic component. who wants their child to get depression? (or a psychosis? schizophrenia?) why, when it is no longer necessary once we identify the responsible genes?

too bad for art, music etc....i'm certain. because there is a high correlation between artistic creativity and depression, for instance.

please don't think i'm a religious person. there is not one religion which appeals to me, it seems to me that religions are intolerant movements based largely on rules and dogma's instead of spirituality. but i do think it is time this debate is being held.

(and yes, to remain true to this being an art blog, these things also reflect on art and vice versa --> some subsequent post)

brave new world 2

The World Circus Proudly Presents!: The Genetic Engineers with their Quantum Crossover Acrobat Act!!! (own work, 2007)

[ehm, sorry, it seems i'm being too ambitious, since i wasn't done yet with the brave new world thread, and already i'm opening a new thread for personal fabrication. pf will have to wait a little, i suppose]

so what themes of brave new world are relevant imnsho? i think the idea of genetic engineering (in the book it is more environmental conditioning) of human beings is coming closer and closer. but also the role of sex as opium of the people, and the idea of total-experience shows -movielike theaters that cater to all the senses through some sort of neurolinks...meaning in essence that one feels, hears, smells, sees, tastes what the movie actors feel hear etc.

this multisense-appeal of art is coming closer and closer. linking to the previous posts on amygdala, music, neuroaesthetics: there seems to be far more popular attention to great movies and pop/rock concerts / dance events / music clips etc than to traditional visual art. also look at the success of youtube. as for the role of sex: look at the ongoing permeation of porno and sex throughout western society.

if we are moving more to a society resembling brave new world, then `traditional' visual art will become (has already become?) a marginalist affair for the elite (the alpha's) whereas the boundary between visual art for the people and entertainment for the people will become (has become?) blurred. titillation of the senses, that is what society wants and that is where it is headed, to put it in black and white.

who are the real visual artists and visual-arts stars of the people? movie makers, actors, television, pop stars in video clips etc. and the visual culture is influenced far more heavily by them and eg. glossy magazines then by `traditional' visual art.

i think.

where that leaves visual art which aims at slower, underlying levels of reality? i'm afraid it will snow under, for better or for worse.

art & quality 11: the personal fabricator

so let us continue with science a little bit more.

already we discussed science giving us some insight into what we might perceive as quality in art, through the field of bioaesthetics.

but there are other developments in science which ultimately could change the art world dramatically - so i believe.

one of these developments is called `personal fabrication' (or digital fabrication, fab lab, rapid digital prototyping, whatever). let us suppose for a moment that there is such a thing as a personal fabricator (called a pf, for sure) at our disposal. in the following posts i want to explore some of the remarkable consequences for the art world that i see arising out of the pf.

these consequences also shed a light -i think- on the discussion on art & quality today.

but it is really past my bedtime, will be continued, good night (to myself, is the most sensible interpretation i realize)

brave new world

aldous huxley, brave new world (front cover first edition, 1932)

lately i'm reminded regularly of a book i read when i was 16: brave new world by aldous huxley.

its relevance to what i'm pondering on is multiple in character, i believe. so perhaps i will be able to weave its themes into this art chautauqua (a word robert pirsig uses for his story in zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. indian word, beautiful, world of difference with the anglo-american word `blog'.)

summarily, i think brave new world tackles the issue of where modern society wants to go and is going. what drives human beings and societies? where does this logically take us, if there are no direct hamperings?

if i as an artist want to reflect on human values, societal values, spiritual values, then the question is whether i can do so completely from within, or whether i am always part of a group, many groups, this society.

probably not only my way of sharing/touching deeper layers will be co-determined by these groups, but also that what i perceive on some (sub-, semi-, or fully conscious) level to be the most relevant issues.

and, to continue partly with the previous thread on quality and art, generalized pagerank etcetera, it goes without saying that the societal appreciation of my art endeavours also influences me and my creation process.

[all this in my not so humble opinion...i feel better repeating from time to time that my insights are just that: personal insights, not overwhelming general truths].

famous artist or not: take this test

ok. test yourself here: http://reverent.org/great_art_or_not.html . with pain in my heart i reveal that i only scored 67%. missed out on 2 famous ones and 2 infamous ones...

but the question would have been better put differently, since there are many works by famous artists which i do not consider great, which probably explains the 4 mistakes above (all the 4 paintings that i missed out on didn't impress me very much, all the paintings that i thought interesting were by great artists)

still, why not do tests like these regularly, i like to take them even though i'm often mistaken. of course, one would have to look at the real works...

[but still, i remember seeing works in the dali museum in figueres which were exquisite, hanging next to works which could have been painted by any 15yr old with a rushed assignment for art class. to me famous is no guarantee at all.]

semi-anonymous art: just a painting

just an artist, lago

enjoy.

quality and art legitimization: anonymous art

anonymous artist, mare de déu amb el nen

anonymous art is exempt from artist legitimization. it speaks for itself mostly in terms of what i would perceive as quality. [but see the previous posts on quality & pirsig]

as promised in the previous post, i see 2 obvious ways to prick through the excesses of art & artist legitimization which seem so abundant in the current art `scene'.

the first way is to take an artwork, and present it stripped of any additional information such as who made it, when was it made, what is the price etc. then let people take a shot at valuating the art work.

the second way is to forge a work, supposedly by a well-known `master' artist. and then again let people take a shot at valuating the work.

both ways have been done, with interesting results (works by chimpanzees hailed as profound, forgeries disputed until the forger gave demonstrations...)

i get the impression that modern artists are marketed like brand names. the artist's name comes first, then the work. this influences what type of art is being made. if art were to be presented anonymously, i believe we would get other art works. better art works? i don't know. what is better? it's an even more difficult question than `what is good?'.

but the purpose of this post is mostly to express why an artist need not worry about legitimization, if (s)he knows her/his `stuff'.

if you know your stuff, the inner qualities are bound to come out. it may take a while, a long while sometimes, but i do believe that the appreciation of inner quality is something sufficiently shared by people to allow recognition in the end.

what remains for the artist to be done? deepening inspiration, approach, technique, ambition maybe - ambition in the expressive sense i would say, but perhaps ambition in the social sense is a good motivator too. personally i get very tired of all the competition mechanisms that modern society seems to embrace with such abandon and without much reflection. but you reader will have guessed as much if you read more than one of these `quality & art' posts.


co ngo, untitled

quality & art: artist legitimization

so what can one do. sure, there are a lot of interested open motivated people out there in the art world. still, probably also because of the oversupply of artists wanting to claim their 15 square meters of exhibition space, there is an issue -to say the least- with what i call artist legitimization.

here we have all these important people in art, busy communicating their views, busy selecting important artists, busy buzzing or doing something worthwile (yes i know, terribly subjective, i know i know i really know...but still). and what on earth will induce any member of the art elite to spare time and attention to an artist?

`send me your resume please. i cannot begin to look at work of every artist wanting to show in my gallery. a good resume is essential.'

so i'm looking at artist legitimization from the opposite direction. does the artist know what (s)he is about? suppose so. then don't hide your light under the bushel. who knows how to paint? how to sculpt? how to draw? in such a way as to open doors and windows to the heart? don't let gpr-driven people put you down.

still, noblesse oblige, as they say. it may not be necessary to become as adept with art historical references, language, knowledge of (modern) art (hypes) as the people who claim to be able to judge an artist's work. but it certainly doesn't hurt to look beyond one's own work, it doesn't hurt to be able to put one's own work in some perspective. and it doesn't hurt to be able to prick a needle through the many balloons that are blown up around art.

what makes a rothko so valuable? mostly gpr (although i'm quite a fan myself). there are ways to expose much of this gpr-balloon. and this has been done, clearly, shockingly, more than once. artists can benefit from knowing these ways, i think. if they sense their legitimacy within, then they will be less easily subjected to gpr-legitimization blues. will address this in the next post.


anonymous artist, mare de déu (detail)

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.

kunstweek / art week (quality & art 4)

(this post is really a short postscript to the previous one, as illustration. new positivity follows right after this one!)

since about 5 yrs in the netherlands there is an initiative `kunstweek' (art week), which more or less out of the blue claims an election of `dutch artist of the year' (kunstenaar van het jaar).

of course, this has to be a joint effort from `public' (read internet) and `experts'. this year's expert panel contains some 100 names, with ... 0 visual artists among them. i am not joking, but it is al the more funny!

this is just to illustrate my point that artists have been manouvered to a secondary position when it comes to valuation of art. museum directors, journalists, curators, gallery owners, art historians...pull the strings.

can one expect alternative insights from such an election? or will it all be about artists already `discovered' getting some extra gpr...i leave to the reader to guess and smile.

quality & art 3

imnsho a key issue with human (e)valuation of quality in art is that we lack `objective' and common (= sufficiently shared) criteria / perspectives / touchstones / communication handholds even.

is it so strange to say that art creates its own quality?

historically (if we stick to a societal definition of quality, meaning generalized page rank, see previous posts) this seems to be the case, YET -just like the situation where e.g. christ would come to modern society and proclaim himself, who would believe him today?- we seem to wish to judge art by existing gpr standards.

most people -including (yes terrible) art `experts'- even want this judgement to take at most a few seconds, preferably less, because... well i suppose because time is money or you might miss out on some other wonderful painting or something like that.

also interesting is that today the quality of art is often judged from the gpr-fueled perspective of what the role of art should be in society. therefore some moral-philosophical viewpoint of `art-derived experts / power brokers' co-determines the gpr-valuation of a given artwork / artist. there seems to be little (self-)reflection by these brokers on the situation. some art curators seem to hold beliefs -i'm serious- that one cannot leave art to the artists, since they lack overview and insight in the role of art. artists are useful for providing the building stones of a much grander artwork: the curators' collection / exhibition / statement.

so one can come across statements that modern art `should be' (i'm parafrasing but not off the mark) about the basic human struggle with life, like sex, death, misery, joy etc. or it `should be' to show / tell/ educate the viewer about some profound aspect of modern society which the viewer hadn't yet (couldn't of course) discover[ed] without this particular art work.

the new clothes of the emperor: who gains from saying they might be less than the gpr-buzz would have us believe?

i know i probably sound mighty negative here! but once again: honestly, do you hear this kind of sound often? or are you ususually drowned in the gpr-buzz? oh, this artist is so wonderful! this art is so profound! it shows the gallery visitor that a gallery can have a completely different meaning! the locked door symbolizes the difficulty one can experience with understanding modern art, and one's own heart. so one has to climb the stairs on the opposite building, to see -with a telescope!- the exhibited art works inside. the artist makes us feel the impossibility of communicating directly, the loneliness of the artistic existence, the longing to be with the ones we love but who stay out of close reach, so that we end up with just some peeks in their true treasures, etc etc etc.

so, let me end on a positive note with an artwork i really appreciate, `even' if it already has high gpr...! ;-)

panamarenko, scotch gambit

i promise to make the next posts on a different and more positive note!

quality and art 2: hype, fiction, pirsig & page rank continued

(ok where was i. my problem with a blog like this one is that i cannot begin to write as fast as what my thoughts should like for speed, and also i cannot write for any spells due to rsi. so i have to cut it up in pieces, but then the train of thought becomes one of those public transportation misadventures...)

so if i cannot determine quality (even restricted to art) consistently even for myself, how should i be able to communicate to others what i mean by it? does it even have some sort of meaning or ... are we all just fooling ourselves and each other? is quality just fiction? [just justifying the mystifying title of these blogposts explicitly]

i can however look at the mechanisms which cause some science, art, music, cars, bridges, food,... to be given the predicate `quality' by ... `experts' - and from the experts the general public soon follows / or by the general public - and from the general public the `experts' soon follow...

in the end what it boils down to, in my not so humble opinion (imnsho), is that we humans have not got a better `objective' concept of quality than what i would call generalized page rank. consider each human to be like a web page, having some page rank. consider some humans to be expert, these get a high generalized page rank (gpr). then see what kind of buzz (=gpr) a certain subject (for instance an art work, or an artist) generates to determine its `objective' quality.

[i apologize to those readers who do not know how google calculates page rank, but the web overflows with info on this]

obviously, there are many snags behind this way of determining quality. it yet is the current practice in almost all disciplines i know of. one obvious snag is that this gpr-business leads to hypes: things that create a buzz because they create a buzz because everyone is busy buzzing about it...until the hype moves on and people wonder: why was anybody ever truly interested in this for longer than five days?

and this is where i believe pirsigs approach is valuable, on the personal level. because if i drop the prerequisite that i should be able to communicate objectively what quality is, then i can explore quality on the personal, probably non-verbal level.

as an artist, i feel this is what i should do - disregarding gpr- mechanisms and especially hype-like buzzing. to be continued.

quality and art: hype, fiction, pirsig & page rank

many things. many things i've been thinking, about quality. quality being half of my current life motto, the other half being love. (is there any real difference between the two? spiritual love can be seen as quality in human relations, quality can be seen as love of what is good. but what is good? what is spiritual love?)

this weekend i visited the rijksmuseum in amsterdam. took my children there to see some art treasures, only to find...that even on a personal level i cannot consistently experience let alone define quality.

the paintings that i was especially looking forward to enjoy: rembrandt's de staalmeesters and the jewish bride and the milkmaid by johannes vermeer. in de staalmeesters i was happy to find once more my admiration for the red tablecloth: a true and wonderful abstract painting hidden in a group portrait. but the jewish bride left me less thrilled than on earlier visits. and the milkmaid didn't hardly touch me at all.

rembrandt, de staalmeesters

a self-portrait by rembrandt on the other hand i enjoyed for something perhaps strange; it gave me the following feeling: a man looks at me, knowing i will look at him-on-canvas when he is long gone and also knowing that he is a master far ahead of his contemporaries - not per se in skill alone, but especially in vision, in artistic feeling and experiencing reality, and therefore also in rendering reality - and knowing that i will appreciate this where most of his contemporaries lack the necessary depth of development of visual/philosophical issues.

rembrandt, self-portrait as the apostle paul

ok, i've hardly begun touching on what i want to say, but this post is long enough, will be continued.

quality open source threatens existing elites

sorry to harp on just a litle more. but last week there was some kind of media coverage in the netherlands on wikipedia. the strange thing was that it was largely negative publicity, allegedly stemming from questionable quality, as determined by `experts'.

i'm actually quite in favour of recognizing expertise. as a visual artist, i'm confronted an awful lot with people who do not recognize even the occasional need for expertise - let alone the expertise itself.

however, ever since i discovered wikipedia, i have been very enthusiastic about it (notwithstanding that in certain (limited!)areas of my own knowledge i can see it does leave room for improvement, but this is the case for any subject that one knows more than the superficial about).

one can look up all the arts and their artists - even contemporary-animals, history, science, well, actually it is staggering what wikipedia contains and it is MUCH more effective than the paper encyclopedias in terms of spreading of knowledge. it is open source, rendered freely by individuals who like to contribute to this spreading of knowledge.

in most (99%) cases i find the quality of the articles very very high. especially considering that anyone can change articles, so `vandalism' also has to be corrected. it proves to me that this community-like building does really work. rather than saying that therefore we don't need experts anylonger, i would think: experts, please join the effort and share your knowledge on wikipedia.

this can be difficult at times however, since how to recognize the expertise of the one and the non-expertise of the other? (this is a problem in all the sciences as well - usually resolved by peer reviews (of articles), which also mostly are anonymous, also for obvious reasons but since the authors of articles are not anonymous, this can give strange effects.)

so wikipedia struggles with the same problem that google struggles with, and the arts, and the sciences: quality. i remember from long ago that i was absolutely charmed by robert m pirsigs book zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. (please read these linked articles from .... wikipedia. isn't it absolutely marvelous that i can immediately refer you to a good source describing what i mean? i read the book three times, and reading the wikipedia article i see that it doesn't cover the book as well as it could, but it doesn't do it injustice either.)



robert m. pirsig, zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance

however, i also remember finding pirsigs concept of quality ... vague in its definition. but the very fact that he devoted his thinking to its importance was what touched me and still touches me. stuff for the next post.

art & generalized open source (2)

king, 1982-2001

just having written about images being publicly available, i was contacted by an image research studio, working for a major educational publisher. they want to use a picture of the above sculpture in a textbook on art for secondary school, in a paragraph where chess-pieces-as-works-of-art are examined.

so this touches immediately on the current discussion. however, (especially since the sculpture has not yet been sold) i think few will disagree that in order for artists to pay their bills, they should ask for some (pecuniary) recompensation for the use of their art work, at least for commercial use.

still, wouldn't one want to give everybody the opportunity to see any (worthwile) work of art, even be it only a reproduction? a less elegant solution is to make available freely (and still restricted by copyright- the necessity of which i will comment on later) only low-res images. this is widely practiced, see most artists websites. better in my eyes would be to have generalized open source: high quality images available freely to the non-commercial public. but then the artists would somehow need to be assured of income in some other sense.

actually, a similar situation occurs in university science - or does it? well, at least university scientists generally are employed by government(-funded institution). their income therefore is mostly reasonably assured. and in this way much of science is paid for out of the public's pocket. but nonetheless, most current science results are not really freely accessible. scientific publishers like kluwer, springer, elsevier etc. charge quite highly for access to scientific articles. but they don't pay scientific authors a dime (really). scientists are supposed to be happy when their article is accepted for publication, since this gives (peer) ranking. as anyone who follows the news can gather, the profits of these companies are often staggering. universities pay heavily to have subscriptions (both for their libraries and for electronic access for individual researchers). the general public wishing to access scientific results which it already paid for, is left with a significant financial barrier.

the moral of this to me seems that closed source gives power to a small number of people (in this sense usually some sort of elite) who are naturally extremely reluctant to `open up'.

and, letting some art cat out of my bag as promised: this seems to describe to me extremely well the situation with modern art and its curators, be it museal or gallerial or institutional.

is generalized open source the future?

can one envisage a world society in which generalized open source is standard practice?

perhaps i should first explain what i mean with generalized open source. it's a (suitably vague) generalization of the open source approach in software, the interpretation of which is already disputed...;-) . (recognize the tower of babel theme from my starting posts?)

to me `generalized open source' means that knowledge (broadly interpreted) is shared freely. this means that the (knowledge) source of things/products/... is open to all. so in a world with total generalized open source, music is freely downloadable just as art, books, videos, plays, performances, dance, all science, technical designs, software, etc. etc.

time for a long list of objections to such a world? yes probably, but ... does not the idea merit some consideration? how many objections are really insurmountable?

but let me turn to art first -in my next post- , otherwise one might feel cheated in having been attracted to an art blog only to find it's just another philosophy rag... ;-)

open source & images & david hockney

just to not forget that i want to write about `open source' as a way of bringing humanity further.

i as reminded of my thoughts on this because i encountered david hockney's official website. i do not link to it for this reason: on its home page one is asked to agree by clicking a button that no images on the site are to be used anywhere without prior permission.

well, this is taking mistrust a bit far i feel. besides, i hardly think that people wanting to misuse the images are going to be stopped by this button. but it does raise an interesting question about author's rights and copyrights where living artists or recently living artists are concerned.

but i will stop for now, having too little time to write enough, i will come back to this shortly.

art & communication

as an example of modern art issues in relation to communication, i give what i came across just now: the experimental art foundation.

The Experimental Art Foundation was established in 1974 as an initiative by Adelaide artists and theorists to encourage new approaches to the visual arts, promoting the idea of art as 'radical and only incidentally aesthetic'.

The EAF's current MISSION STATEMENT is:

To assist, promote and develop, through production, exhibition, distribution and the encouragement of debate, art and art practices that are analytical, critical and experimental, which challenge established thinking and expand cultural languages and discussion.

The EAF's current OBJECTIVES are

To actively assist, develop and promote new and investigative art practices; To promote discussion, understanding and appreciation of contemporary arts issues and to provide a forum for critical debate; To encourage and support the production and the exchange of ideas by South Australian, Australian and International artists through production, exhibition and dissemination; To respond to artists and arts community initiatives; To develop new and informed audiences through advocacy, education and information strategies; To support emerging artists; To foster strategic partnerships; To maintain a high profile city location; To practise access and equity principles; To maintain sound financial and organisational management

behold above one of the reasons that i consider myself to be a very old-fashioned artist. i don't think of art as radical and only incidentally aesthetic, i don't see art's primacy/duty/charge to lie in societal communication of `new' ideas. new newer newest: the world of advertising and fashion is encroaching on the world of art, if one can even tell a fundamental difference at all.

to me a lot of modern visual art becomes entertainment / performance / advertisement / fashion. however, who am i to say that this is an unwanted development? i can only state how art `works' for me: strongly when quiet. when universal themes (humanity, nature, (non)beauty, patterns, life, death) are explored in a profound way, which can be as varied as light itself.

still, i think the experimental art foundation is a good thing. and probably a lot of things coming about from its endeavors i will consider quite interesting and worthwile. it's just not really my way of communicating, like i said i feel more traditionalist by simply painting, drawing, sculpture.

shelter from the storm, 2008

suddenly i turned around and she was standing there / with silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair/ she walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns/ come in she said i'll give you...shelter from the storm from bob dylan: shelter from the storm

art about life, life about art?

what drives human beings to communication? what is communication anyway? (coming back to the tower of babel theme) what happens when i communicate something to you? who are `you' anyway, who&what am `i'?

so much about communication seems to me taken for granted, where in closer look the above questions might help us understand better why so many troubles arise out of communication.

but even if restricted to art, what drives an artist to make art? what drives others to look at it and try to `get' whatever is `in' the artwork? for me about my own work, a few things are clear.

first of all, making art is a way to communicate with myself, comparable on some level to making music. second, its communication is on a semi-conscious level and nonverbal. third, i most often strive to make the communication broader than just for me. some part of me wants to share with others, for this i try to make things visible in such a way that at some point i get the feeling: yes, an interested `listener' can hear/feel somewhat what it emanates.

so then what are these communications about? to me art is about life, but also about beauty/nonbeauty/patterns/nonpatterns (i don't know how to put it into words really sharply, this is makeshift). and strangely enough, i feel life is about art too, in the sense that to live one's life in a spiritual way to me seems like working on a painting, step by step, correcting errors & superficial patches etc., in order to arrive at more depth, luminosity, compassion.

but the dark sides of life then? are they to be ignored or what? what to depict? holocaust images or soulful serenity? or both? human folly & debauchery, human misery, some of it selfchosen...or hollywood happiness and clichés and beautiful landscapes and harmonious abstracts...or just anything looking `cool' that hasn't been done before for the sake of artistic originality?

enough questions here to merit one of my favourite gauguins:

paul gauguin, where do we come from? what are we? where are we going?

st francis

st francis at night, 2008

i've been drawing st francis a number of times in the past years. my reason for this is not religious - to me spirituality (human compassion, kindness, love) needs no religion and is often confined by it. i'm specifically touched by the idea that st francis loved animals so much, that they came unto him soft of heart and without fear.

to me the science fiction idea of `gaia' - a world where all living beings are one, and also (on some level) aware of this oneness - appeals as high ideal for which we could strive on earth.

but is it so high as to be a tower of babel? this seems very likely, especially considering what people are willing to do to animals not even out of misunderstanding or malice, but simply out of economic gain. i believe that anything we do to animals is something we will also be willing to do to humans if the circumstances are just a little tight.

i'm not saying that we are automatically responsible for solving the moral problems that nature faces us with once we start looking at animals as fellow creatures(cruelty, survivalist savagery, etc.). but i think we can lift ourselves to a level where at least the heartless human exploitation of animals which are obviously a lot like us in feeling and even understanding is abandoned.

responsibility for the innate cruelty of nature...this is where i think human understanding is vastly too limited. this is where i can understand people needing a concept of things which are way over their head. too bad these concepts to me often look as if turned into a fairytale. but perhaps we all need fairytales to make our lives meaningful.

st francis, 2003

millais & van gogh - realism & more (monet also)

how looks can be deceiving. knowing millais primarily from reproductions, my expectations were enough to visit the current exhibition in the van gogh museum amsterdam. unfortunately, i found millais' paintings to be little or nothing more than photographs, sometimes attractive, agreeable, but often a bit cloying, too sweet to my taste. and i couldn't find anything lifting me to a level beyond what the eye can see at first glance. the use of paint i found very traditional and limited, no experiments, no texture/brushstrokes/layering expression...etc.

john everett millais, portrait of louise jopling


of course, in the van gogh museum there is plenty to enjoy so it wasn't a wasted trip. i am always (i never use the words always or never since they are so absolute as to contain no real meaning) inspired by van gogh. i don't need to consider every painting of his to be a masterpiece, for me to be uplifted by his clear intention of looking beyond what the eye can see at first glance to what the heart feels when the eyes are looking soulfully.

vincent van gogh, self portrait

[postscript 1 dec 2008:] somehow i added `monet' as a label to this post...and i now see from statistics that people looking for monet come to this post... so let me add a little from and about claude monet.

claude monet, the seine at argenteuil

monet here is a true impressionist, with a realism that is still very sharp, but already coming under attack from the brushwork and the colour enhancement. the painting already wants a bit to break free, to go beyond what the eyes see at first glance. later, monet throws off many previous shackles, but still retains a ever weakening link to depicting reality. abstract art is a fingertip away.

claude monet, waterloo bridge (one of many from an ever light-changing series)

more nature realism

just some more pictures in the nature realism vein by edward lear and john james audubon. their art i largely admire, perhaps since i still remember being fascinated as a 4 yr old by drawing birds. i used to draw finches, tits, sparrows, small birds anyway. then i forgot mostly about drawing until it suddenly gripped me again when i was 15.

edward lear, egyptian vulture in john gould's birds of europe

john james audubon, california vulture

maria sybilla merian

in the question what art can bring, when discussing with others i tend to discount so-called realism (which is a difficult term to me, philosophically speaking). this discounting is due more to balance -i have to come back to that term also- than to my personal appreciation.

because, frankly, there are many artists working `realistically' who in some way spark resonance in my heart.

but on the other hand i'm quite fed up somewhere with the general attitude that art depicting `reality' (whatever that may mean) in a more or less photographic fashion needs no explanation, deeper motivation, ... just because, according to our culturally determined value, transferring 3d to 2d (or other 3d) using something similar to straight-line projection requires enough skill to be art.

maria sybilla merian, cayman with false coral snake

how did i get to maria sybilla merian? well, she is one of many artists who depict nature, especially flowers and animals, in a very precise `realistic' way. see also john james audubon. i doubt that these names are known anywhere nearly as well as velazquez, say. but i'm amazed and pleased at their incredible detail, the precision, the colours.

so the question `art: what, why, for whom?' seems to have so many answers that towers of babel are inevitable. my own rather ivory tower looks out on art bringing more than `realism in the flat sense'. reality to me is more than what a disspirited camera captures in pixels. we add dreams, visions, feelings, emotions, associations to whatever our eyes tell us that they see. in fact, i believe we only see what our brain/heart allows to pass, and this heavily photoshopped by our preset value system.

and, talking about photoshop...compare the above image to the one on the website of the british museum:

maria sybilla merian, cayman with false coral snake - british museum

and tell me honestly, which version do you prefer? and what is realism in this version-issue?

jan cox - a painter's odyssee

saw the documentary jan cox - a painter's odyssey yesterday, on belgian tv.

[i forgot to mention: it was made by bert beyens and pierre de clercq (bert was kind enough to mail me an interested & interesting reaction, here you can see a short work on youtube kamera kussen with artists danny devos and anne-mie van kerckhoven) - postscript june 08]

interesting and inspiring to see, but non-findable on the web, so i add a fragment from belgian news tv below (in dutch, sorry):

clearly to me, jan cox was an artist looking for visual depth, spiritual depth. it always warms me to encounter such artists. he was also manic-depressive. this combination of artistic soulful talent with a serious mental illness is unfortunately seen in many of my favourite artists. another such artist who also took his own life is mark rothko.

in one fragment of jan cox - a painter's odyssey his wife yvonne van ginneken says: `he was suffering also from the fact that the people who could afford his paintings, didn't take the time to really look at them. whereas his work needs time. it grows on you.'

another quote (freely on my part): `suffering from depression, he yet did not want his work to be negative. he wanted to bring also hopeful perspective'


jan cox, blood rain

don't miss the current exhibition of his work in the royal museum of fine arts in antwerp (15 march-15 june 2008)

searching for visual depth

in my humble opinion:

looking for visual depth, developing layers of visual communication, is a different endeavour than creating fashion. although i'm sure fashion designers would disagree. to me the contemporary world of fashion exemplifies everything which i find so difficult to palate in the art world (and beyond).

fashion. as well as money-intensive extensive advertising. it seems we care about little else. in dutch they say: if only your hair looks good. (then all is well, is implied). keeping up and creating superficial appearances, preferably based on age-old clichés especially about gender, sex, age, influence, affluence, happiness.

women fall for the bmw swat, 2005

what then could art be? so often i see art which is little more than the above sentence. and this art is then proclaimed by art gurus to be profound. well, i apologise for sounding like a character out of the emperor's new clothes, but most often i don't see it!

for me art should not divulge everything immediately. let it simmer on the boilerplate of your sub- or unconsciousness. let it change the way you see, feel. not by some vague philosophical `concept' but by the visual imagery itself. these things take time.

hm. there i go sounding all grumpy again...sorry folks. but then again: how often do you hear someone complain about the superficiality of fashion, art, advertisements,...? not to mention the societal costs involved.

advertisements especially: it is comparable to the tropical rainforest. since everybody is advertising, everybody must advertise more and more, else one does not catch any sunlight. this means that we as a society are spending (energy, effort, creativity,...) increasingly on advertising, instead of on better ideas/products/care/cooperation.

and this same blablabla phenomenon pollutes the art world, i think. artists & art must be pimped up more and more and more, to justify the fashion-like overattention and overpayment.

it seems we all need fairy tales to give our life meaning. for this no price is too high. please do not rupture our soap bubbles of self- or other importance, be it in the context of religion, way of life, music, art, whatever. if you do so, then we will close ranks on you, decry you, ignore you, whatever is most effective.

not to say that i would truly know better. but i feel the balance is missing. fine, repeat all the old clichés with a modern icing. they are not clichés for nothing, and some icings can be interesting. but why not also give generous room to non-clichés? or why not bark ferociously at many of these clichés which are not helping us any further since primitive mankind became, well, non-primitive enough to in principle look further than first instincts.

is art meant to be affirmative to: we are monkeys with a thin icing of civilization, and even thinner icing of spirituality. or can art also explore a deepening of civilization, spirituality? does anyone care, anyway? does this matter? etc.

(oh, i know, there is no doubt some clever art-historical term for this question perspective, and the perspective itself is no doubt considered outdated. superseded by postmodernism or postpostmodernism, or part of it and therefore ... well i'm no art critic.)

comparison of artists - how? who? owh!

today a friend compared my work to that of leon adriaans, a dutch artist (1944-2004). because, according to my friend, he worked so directly from his feeling, intuition, subconscious, or similar phrasing which i don't precisely recall.

be this as it may, i looked at pictures of his work on the internet...and found myself wondering yet again at the way we all look and experience so differently. i do not see any real similarity in adriaans' work and mine, in fact he seems to have worked in a style which is no doubt contemporary but which does not appeal to me at this superficial first webglance. i will come back to it however, since i don't trust my first judgments in these matters.

(you see that i'm following the tower of babel thread from bruegel, previous post).

i'm often left with a feeling that there are ravines as well as distorting static between what i wish to communicate and many -even interested- observers. is this what leads many artists to oversimplification? `if i put something new but not trivial in it, my message becomes open to ambiguous interpretation' ?

gypsy girl, 2007
there is a video women in art by philip scott johnson showing a merged-together sequence of women-in-art. the one thing that immediates strikes me in this video is that the extreme majority of these women are `pretty', doll-like, young...and that the painters use rather conventional realism to communicate the conventional message of conventional beauty...like the so manyth hollywood feature where dashing handsome brave & strong man saves world & pretty (no more qualification necessary) woman from mishap.

(somewhat by quantum association:) it appears to me artists are expected to create visually unambiguous messages, quickly assimilated in existing patterns for judgment. so that it doesn't unduly tax the energy of the casual observer.

in the netherlands, if people do not like a painting, they say: it doesn't resemble anything. as a very negative qualification (this is really true, believe it or not).

so what room does this leave for developing new visual foundations? well, that problem probably holds for many disciplines. writers are supposed to write books with a certain not-too-difficult format, style and characters. composers/songwriters idem.

reading about brueghel

as first entry in what will undoubtedly be an erratically upkept blog, let me note that i'm reading rudy rucker's book as above, so below which is about pieter brueghel the elder - one of my favourite artists.

in my humble opinion:

profound art is a form of philosophy, much of it wordless. it touches us where words cannot reach. an artist striving for depth needs to think, feel, dare, experience and experiment. with as much energy as the physical creating itself.

reading about artists' backgrounds, lives, etc. to me is a bridge to understand more about their works, to regain inspiration that art is a worthwile undertaking, the general public's insensitivity or should i say indifference notwithstanding.

brueghel (or bruegel as he simplified his own name later) paints humanity in a not so flattering light, which strikes me as timeless in its understanding of la condition humaine.




pieter bruegel, tower of babel