Here in Los Angeles we have large landscapes by Constable and Hockney in two separate venues. It invites comparison:
and I pose this as a question.
The photograph has replaced and diminished that part of painting which craves verisimilitude, and left only the role of verisimilitude of feeling. (Constable, painting before the widespread effects of photography, had both parts).
Consequently painting, today, seems less true if it is 'photographic', because artists copy photos and the criteria of a contemporary work has become more restricted, limiting it to the verisimilitude of feeling.
Constable, however, was also beyond photographic in the sense of the eye as a camera of imagination. Hence, the magic of his representation, is, in a sense, a bonus. And contemporaries may have lost something in all this, namely, they are restricted* to abstracted inventions of feeling, whereas Constable had an inseparable amalgam of representation and feeling.
Anything wrong in all this?
*Some say this is not a restriction
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The great painting may be about something in decline, but may not be itself a thing in decline. For instance, it may be about pornography, but not be only pornograhpy. If it is percieved as decadent, it will not be held to be great, except by the prurient interests of the decadent.
" Does this really ring true for me? "
Besides clarity, let's examine broadness.
I rarely think, "This looks interesting, perhaps I should initiate myself to what is is about". If I do, I know I am looking at a work that will require some education to appreciate, some erudition.
The self-evident work, on the other hand, rings true without erudition. It has 'universality', has something readily apparent to anyone. Where as the erudite work has appeal to the initiated, is great only to the initiated, which, by that token, is an elite.
Elitism has no place for me in art. It makes art "regional", in a sphere with only those initiated. I am inclined to include universality as an element of the definition of the great painting, because it contains more.
Therefore, another key in the definition of the great painting is that it imparts, in it's potential interpretations, easily understandable and universal clarities.
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The great painting must be more than ambiguous, it must readily allow interpretations which ring true and have clarity.
Somewhere along the line of art history, artists split into two groups: those who use art to contemplate and explain existence and those who use art to play games. This probably happened about the time of decorative and theatrical scene painting, when trompe l'oeil painting was invented, since most painting before this referred to existence and non-existence. Berries on vines were painted on the proscenium that were so real, birds would come down to peck at them. Or so the legend goes.
I always ask myself when reacting to art, " Does this really ring true for me, or is the artist just giving me berries to see if I will peck at them? "
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Making art things matter, whether staid or flip, takes a certain seriousness, a need for truth, seeing the beauty in things most important, as opposed to inventing beauty from something previous, or from something decadent, or from something irrelevant.
A friend warned me about moral truths a few days ago, what one believes as opposed to what is. But just because our belief systems aren't doing the job, doesn't mean there is nothing which could. Simply and humbly, I propose that what is primordial to man, what he was before concocting his various beliefs, is so basic to him that it's true, and therefore would serve him best, if he re-applied it as an advanced approach.
I like an approach to life that says "just be in accordance with what you are". No religion can supplant that. And what each man is, is in accordance with all other men. Man is because he is, not because he thinks. Consciousness is not thinking up stuff. That's erudition. Consciousness is accepting what you are..at the core, a natural being in a whirl of other nature. (One thinks of Constable's concept of nature as an organic, interrelated, changing thing).
This whole thing coming about conserving the planet is a manifestation of where we're to go. Man doesn't want to conserve, but the underlying principles force him to. It means facing up to a reality that just is, not some concoction of our imaginations. It means furthering the work of nature rather than ignoring it or seeing nature as cruel and against us. That's what most people think. So they invest in an illusion, a saviour, nirvana, money, a lifestyle, or the biggest illusion of all, transcendental freedom. Man's not suited to lots of freedom. He conforms readily while believing the illusion of freedom. He prizes "freedom" so he can get away with shit. He lets the sound of his own wheels drive him crazy. in the end, he's part of something bigger than he wants to admit.
But this, my idea is not an illusion. It's right in front of us whenever we're not encased in our man-made bubbles, trapped in tumbling skyscrapers. It's in the face of my dog. The wind in the trees. The moon crossing the sky. It's wherever there is a natural element. It's Eastern in origin. Frank Lloyd Wright tapped it. Bucky Fuller applied it. It's a primordial consciousness in connection to nature. By nature I mean.... how all things work, the oldest of all ideas and still the best. But man, in his designing ways, thinks up too much other stuff (for various and sundry reasons). Now he's totally out of whack. Nearly all his ideas and systems have crashed in mere centuries. All except what he was thousands of years before known history. That continues.
Early man knew nothing of the down-side of agribusiness, manufacturing pollution, etc. For him, nature was alive. And when at his best, he existed with nature better, in the ways that concern us, than any system we have since dreamed up.
I'm not looking into any mysteries. There's nothing mysterious about it. It's a set of cues, not clues.
There's an excellent example of what man should do on the Nature Channel. It's a documentary about the thousands of kinds of fig trees in Africa.. and a wasp. The fig and the wasp further each other involving many other living and non-living things, and have been codependent for millions of years. Millions. It's the perfect lesson for man.
At this point, partially-civilized man needs some more failure before he decides to go with it as an advanced, more beautiful, sublime idea. We need to do more than just look at nature or photograph it. To make art matter, we need to apply the way it works to our lives, regain our relationship with it, use our art to teach ourselves how to live better in the light of everything around us and beyond. Just as Rubens painted his deepest Catholic myths, I think these things are what our art should should be doing right now. And that art could help us come to new life.
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These conditions have changed my view of spirituality:
The rules of man's evolution have changed, in that man, himself, now has responsibility for its positive continuance.
The difference between now and then is that now we have enough science to provide for every human being to the extent that paradise could now be on Earth.
The challenge for business and enterprise is to shift from competition for dominance to competition to provide.
From here forward, "survival of the fittest" is an anachronism, incongruous in the present.
For millennium it was survival of the fittest. Now it is survival of the strongest. And the weak do whatever they can. Next, it should be survival of the just, or at least something better than strongest.
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The great painting must throw open windows of the mind.
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Man is a game-playing animal and art is another opportunity to play games.
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"Tranquil beauty is clarity within, quiet without. This is the tranquillity of pure contemplation. When desire is silenced and the will comes to rest, the world-as-idea becomes manifest. This is the world of art, when, in this aspect, the idea is removed from the struggle for existence.
Contemplation of the forms in existence makes it possible to shape the world. However, contemplation alone will not put the world to rest absolutely. It will awaken again, and then all the beauty of form will appear to have been only a brief moment of exaltation".
Book of Changes
Of the great painting it could be asked, can this moment of exaltation be brought back, experienced again in the manifestion of form?.
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Lao Tzu (Laozi) lived hundreds of years before Christ, in the period of Hundred Schools of Thought and Warring States Period . He is credited with writing the seminal Taoist work, the Tao Te Ching.
Laozi became an important cultural hero to subsequent generations of Chinese people. Ostensibly, Lao Tzu's wise counsel attracted followers, but he refused to set his ideas down in writing, worrying that written words might solidify into formal dogma. Lao Tzu laid down no rigid code of behavior. He believed a person's conduct should be governed by instinct and conscience. He believed "simplicity" to be the key to truth and freedom. Lao Tzu encouraged his followers to observe, and seek to understand the laws of nature; to develop intuition and build up personal power; and to wield power with love, not force.
Laozi worked as an archivist in the Imperial Library of the Zhou Dynasty. Hearing of Lao Tzu's wisdom, Confucius travelled to meet him and browse the library scrolls. According to this story, Confucius and Laozi discussed ritual and propriety (cornerstones of Confucianism ) over the following months. Laozi strongly opposed what he felt to be hollow practices. Taoist legend claims that these discussions proved more educational for Confucius than did the contents of the libraries. Lao Tzu perceived that the kingdom's affairs were disintegrating, so it was time to leave. He was travelling West on a buffalo when he came to the Han Gu Pass, which was guarded. The keeper of the pass realized Lao Tzu was leaving permanently, so he requested that Lao Tzu write out some of his wisdom so that it could be preserved once he was gone, Lao Tzu climbed down from his buffalo and immediately wrote the Tao Te Ching . He then left and was never heard of again.
The great man continues the work
of nature in the human world.
Book of Changes
People dwell in being to seek its boundaries.
People dwell in non-being to seek its mysteries.
Being and non-being give birth to each other.
Text, Notes, Comments
That which is full is made empty.
That which is empty is made full.
Book of Changes
Every ending is a new beginning.
If one wishes to create a new beginning,
he must take hold energetically.
Book of Changes
True greatness depends on
being in harmony
with what is right.
The superior man is careful
in the differentiation of things,
so that each finds its place.
The great man sets
incomparable standards
for the future.
No material is unproductive
in the hands of a master.
Adversity is useful
for self development.
If we wish to know what anyone is like
we have only to observe on whom
he bestows his care and what sides
of his own nature he cultivates
and nourishes.
Pay heed to the providing of nourishment
and to what a man seeks
to fill his own mouth with.
Attraction is the essential principle
of relatedness.
Pleasure shared is pleasure doubled.
If a man busies himself with inferior things
he draws down misfortune upon himself.
If he meddles in affairs and controversies
that do not concern him, he loses his resting place.
The superior man stirs up the people
in order to strengthen their spirit.
Those who exalt the mouth, are finished.
Text, Notes, Comments
Opening the apertures, the mouth, leads to erudition,
laws, decrees, and chaos.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lao_Tz
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The artist who's message is pleasing has a fortunate fate. The artist whose message is other than pleasing must deal with censorship and have an income other than sales of his art.
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"The majority want to deny the negative attributes that makes up their human persona and to be reminded of those attributes is too honest and therefore not in high demand".
Ron Rampolla
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Most people prefer art that they themselves would want to make if they were artists. This has nothing to do with what is good and absolutely nothing to do with what is great.
Critics, like most people, often take what is interesting to them and say good art is that. This is an error.
A great painting may reveal something about the artist that is universal, but that need not be present nor important to the power of an idea.
Quite possibly, that contrary to popular belief, it may be that only when an artist gets outside himself, removes himself from the work, and creates something bigger than himself, is a great work possible. Many of the greatest works of all time, show little to us about the artists themselves. If you doubt this, remove what you know about da Vinci, for instance, and see what the Mona Lisa tells you about the man, himself.
The power of an idea may come forth no matter who the artist, but comes forth best from the one who has sufficient skill to express it powerfully.
A great painting must have a sincerity which rescues it from remaining merely a worthless object of monetary value.
The contemplative act of painting can carry a man along the path of understanding to his spirituality, his individuality, his basic nature in symbiosis with eternal laws which determine the purity of his moral imperative and determine whether or not he is as he should be, as nature is, without blame.
The great painting can carry a viewer along that path of understanding to the same goal.
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The contemplative act of painting can carry a man along the path of understanding to his spirituality, his individuality, his basic nature in symbiosis with eternal laws which determine the purity of his moral imperative and determine whether or not he is as he should be, as nature is, without blame.
The great painting can carry a viewer along that path of understanding to the same goal.
It can be viewed from different angles.
It has significance for more than a moment.
It presents incomparable values.
It strengthens one's character, removes stagnation, and takes one to a new level or a higher plane.
It doesn't bother to tell us what we already know.
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A great painting may reveal something about the artist that is universal, but that need not be present nor important to the power of an idea. That is, the power of an idea may come forth no matter who the artist, but comes forth best from the one who has the highest level of skills necessary to convince us powerfully.
em·bar·rass
1 a : to place in doubt, perplexity, or difficulties b : to involve in financial difficulties c : to cause to experience a state of self-conscious distress
2 a : to hamper the movement of b : HINDER, IMPEDE
3 : to make intricate : COMPLICATE
4 : to impair the activity of (a bodily function) or the function of (a bodily part)
A big-time New York critic recently brought up skill, saying it is of far less importance than willingness to embarrass oneself publicly. To say the above definition is important to art, is pretty much limited to the critics own interests. It's not a criteria of art.
Instead, I think we should examine how important really, are such things in a great work. Most often the significance of an artist's pecadillos are more about self-therapy and catharsis, and not great in a universal sense. An artist must judge correctly whether his personal life is of sufficient interest to many people. I would point to one of the most outstanding works of art ever, Munch's Scream. Is Edvard himself very obvious in that piece? It would be a stretch to say so. No, it's not exactly an embarrassing self portrait. It gets us to the place of where the artist should be in the work.
Recently, in Budapest, I got great joy out of the national museum, marveling at the pure skill and virtuosity of their top academic painters in their captures of depth of feeling. It was like Dvorak on canvas. The Hungarians had a romanticism that is really quite modern, reminding me of Hopper, Ryder, Bellows, and Eakins. Underestimated too, is the depth of feeling these skillful artists put into their religious and historical subjects. People like to imagine that art today has more in the department of feeling, while downplaying the skill required (because they haven't got time to acquire it). But I'm often reminded instead of Woody Allen's scene in Sleeper, where the bad poet's emotion becomes a silly, ranting self-centered indulgence, of no significance to anybody.
It's apparent the Hungarians had great depth of feeling AND were adept at sheer magic of mood and lighting and expression. That magnitude of ability is swept aside by people who can't imagine its worth because they could never imagine themselves achieving skills like that. I think that's what it really comes down to. One has to have an imagination about something in order to appreciate it enough to give it it's proper due, perspective, and respect.
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"The best artists are tightrope walkers".
Zarathustra, Thus Sprok
Interesting, but what exactly does that mean?
A well-known art critic recently wrote, " 'skill' shouldn’t just mean being competent or being able to render the figure realistically; it’s nowhere near as important in art as originality, surprise, obsession, experimentation, the willingness to publicly embarrass one’s self and something visionary".*
"Willingness to publicly embarrass one’s self "? The words jump right out of the sentence! When did this become important criteria for great painting? Why would a New York critic recommend this to budding, struggling artists who are dying to please him? This is probably interesting to him, so he says it's important to art. Probably he's bored and something tabloid-al spices things up, stirs the turd a little, makes the scene hot, would give him and New York the center of attention.
For me, the polarity set up by this is the difference between importance and entertainment, art that moves man forward and a carnival. I know it doesn't matter to a lot of people if art moves forward. They want a bit of fun out of life. With the pressures of business and all, in New York, what's more fun than dirt? Embarrassing stuff? And something risque, which reveals too much, is itself an important, risky, tight-rope-walking idea in some circles.
It's dubious attention seeking in others. I think if art can be fun, great. But it's not a criteria. Fun pleases, then it dissipates. It's a consumable, used and gone. Fun in a work is less fun each time you revisit the work.
The critic said,,"Willingness to publicly embarrass one’s self" is MORE important than skill. That can't be right. There are elements AS important as skill, this is not one of them. By his choice of words, he sets up embarrassing subject matter as a criteria. One construes it to be an encouragement to go public with something embarrassing to the self as an element of importance in a work.
Even if educated, people prefer art that they themselves would want to make if they were artists. In his case, he would make art that is embarrassing to himself. He projects that into his critiques. He therefore thinks that art should reveal the artist in this way.
But great art doesn't HAVE to reveal the artist. It can be about something other than the artist and be even greater. But some contemporary administrators of doctrine don't think so, and continue to insist on their own entrenched ideas. They are still working out of college texts they learned in the Sixties. They are due for a new set of books.
Catharsis, purgation, are important in art. Maybe he meant cathartic, but embarrass means something more. Furthermore, very little great art is cathartic. Sometimes an artist realizes he, himself, is not a great subject to communicate a powerful idea. In that case, his skill is the only personal thing that comes through in the work, the particularity of his hand in craftsmanship, his brushstroke, his word smithery.
Great art is never an embarrassment in any way. Take Bosch for example. What in Bosch is embarrassing to Bosch? And Michelangelo, who painted the ceiling of the chapel with 'naked' nudes. The pope, asshole that he was, deemed the work obscene and censored it, and had the privates painted over by Michelangelo's assistant. But Michelangelo didn't see nakedness that way. He saw it as natural beauty, more true than religion and papal doctrine. In this he revealed himself as a devout disciple of beauty and the question of willingness to reveal something publicly never came up at all as far as he was concerned.
Except there was potential embarrassment for the church and the Pope, who, as powerful critic, had to administer the principles the church was established upon. Then for many years art went through a revolution against all that. Now, the critics of this newest, materialist, church, one of money, must have something debasing or it isn't edgy enough. It must be crass and shock enough to be new, i.e., successful and sellable. That's a dictum, today's insidious doctrine, to see how far we can take this, to use art to shock, just as the Pope used art to preach.
And while their pendulum swings, we artists never vary our ideal, beauty and the quest for it. This runs deep within the brotherhood. But we have to put up with these damn Popes of Art, who now tell us we must be willing to embarrass ourselves if it is to be good. Why don't they make up their minds? And as in all of time, while we're busy honing our craft, they're busy controlling the purse strings and power of censorship (through the media).
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/featur
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"How do you define true individuality? Is it possible not to
borrow anything from any of the existing fraternities and create an
identity that is as individual as a snowflake? And even then, aren't
you still just another snowflake"? Bill
Good point. I think it comes down to consciousness. When someone knows that not far from the surface they are something solid, it's not a problem. But when the person is crying for attention, competitive, serving only a commercial process, acquiescing to every emotion, wearing a uniform, etc., it can be a liability. I've been tying all this stuff to the discussion in my head about spirituality which, for me, is the basis of individuality.
You, Bill, for instance, are very much a unique individual, because no one has exactly your combination of nature and experience, and no one will act on it exactly as you will. And your consciousness strips away the illusions that make life, and especially its restrictions, a joke.
I'm doing all this to bring something needed in my art. I've stripped spirituality down to one's basic nature, which is like your fingerprint or a snowflake, a design that is part of the larger patterns, the scheme of nature. For a man to be spiritually superior, he must be in touch with his basic design. Only then, is he unique in the whole universe, as that awareness then gives him a power to act independently in accordance with his true nature, in turn, able to live and evolve freely within the laws of nature. This as opposed to not living free within the culture of man. In this regard he is different from the other animals. They do this naturally. We must always strive to be like nature, self-evident and without blame. It requires monk-like contemplation, though. Monks as distinguished from priests. Priests are in conformity, as ministers of the word and image.
In my art, it must express itself in the beautiful. In your art, Bill, it expresses itself in humor and irony. Either way it's sublime, conscious, socially responsible, and respondent to the nature in the self. That in turn, empowers us to remove the stagnation by stirring up public opinion and then strengthen and tranquilize the character of the people. That's our job as creative artists who possess consciousness.
None of this is effete nor high-minded to me. It's just good sense that keeps one's art from being flabby. And meaning in art is needed now.
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When a great painting becomes a valuable object, the sincerity of its intent is lost, until a viewer recognizes and appreciates this inherent quality. Therefore, a great painting must have a sincerity which rescues it from remaining merely a worthless object of monetary value.
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Spirituality is the state or quality of healthiness and cleanliness of a man's nature, as it exists between two poles of light and dark, and is inevitably linked to all of nature, the cosmic structure or order. That is, spirituality is in symbiosis with eternal laws of nature which determine the purity of a man's moral imperative and determine whether or not he is as he should be, as nature is, without blame. To possess a truly spiritual nature is to act from the deepest understanding of the universe in reverence to it and in accordance with it. A man can reach this deepness of understanding through contemplation and concentration.
The contemplative act of painting can carry a man along that path of understanding.
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I'm just back from Germany and Eastern Europe, where I had a few striking relevant revelations among the top of the heap, the old 'super' masters, in particular Rubens (the heaven and hell pieces) and related artists. Also, I closely noted Cranach, Bosch, and Correggio's Jupiter and Io, one of my favorite works of Fantastic Art. Also of my particular interest was the Kathe Kollwitz Museum, Berlin. With some interest in von Stuck's, Villa Stuck, Munich.
In the work I saw on this trip were the super masters who dealt with the prevalent themes of their day. Most served up ideas of the church or literature and mythology, in the same way art today serves business and our media age myths. Their art declined as the church declined and today's art will succumb to the same fate when new myths supplant the current. Yet, within their themes, in various areas of their canvases, the super masters anticipated and injected glimpses of nearly every later painting movement, impressionism, the awkward perspective of cubism, pointillism, expressionism, fauvism, deconstructivism, magic realism, surrealism, mystical symbolism, fantastic art, etc. In other words, they employed many new painterly devices and original images, which later developed into, or spawned whole schools of approach. From their perspective, painting effects and ideas were wide open.
Compare it with today's art. Is there such complexity of material to spawn multitudes of new areas? Or is it just me who thinks we are being handed well worn, one dimensional ideas? Why did the Supers handle so many styles and painting concepts in their canvases? Well, for one thing, the Baroque and Rococo included variety in combinations and it carried on older schools of imagery. And I AM astounded by the spirit of exploration in their art. So is it, I ask rhetorically, because there was so much ahead of them to imagine?
They had no TV screens to tell them what to see, no camera lenses to determine how to see, no short memory of visual devices, no lack of training in what painting can visualize? My favorite super masters took everything from nature and churned it up into something fantastic in vision that relied upon nearly every possible way to represent with paint. They were painting madmen. And they were busy inventing European art. They carried painted art to it's highest potential, which isn't analytical. It is lyrical. It is to illuminate and convince with illusion, passion, and vision. And the array of imaginative effects they employed is staggering.
Rubens still has the ability to drop your jaw. He's untouchable. When todays artists can't muster that kind of power, they put their tails between their legs and go to the photograph. In the first place, the WOW factor in his work exceeds all painters past or present. I think Michelangelo might agree that Rubens was the most mind blowing painter ever. (Since Mikey didn't consider himself a painter). Impressive to this day are the fantastic worlds these artists created for the public's wonder.
From a purely painting standpoint, I think they blew everybody away so completely, it's taken more than a century to come to the fact. Examine huge Rubens canvases closely, and you will see he and his atelier, did everything there is to do in painting, somewhere in his paintings. That is, there are small areas in his work where he instinctively employed almost every later 'new development' in painting. From photo realism to mystic impressionism to reductive simplicity, it's all there, rendering and abstraction anticipating every later style, as well of genre - still life, landscape, reality, unreality, the high and low in life. Move a one foot square frame across a big Rubens and you will see what I am saying.
And best of all, they are unbelievably organic. They are essentially nature based in design, which heralds the new direction, the new geometry of nature, the basis of tomorrows truths.
"The straight line is godless". (I picked up that Hundertwasser quote in Vienna).
Because many of the super master themes are timeless, I was alerted anew to the current urgency of some of their ideas. It isn't to be found where they glorified things in service of their audience. No, I went straight to their images of grotesqueries, the human condition, behavorial truths, everyday life, scrutinous observations, and my favorite, images of punishment (in hell).
And I searched like hell for some anticipation of a new spirituality, which was hard to find because of the myopic trance of religion these painters had to deal with. Then, I envisioned the nobility of the individual and his nature, in place of the figure Jesus. Take Jesus out of all those grand visions and substitute a superior man, such as Lao Tzu's idea of a man. It sounds kitschy, could be a bad idea. And it would be in the hands of 99,999,998 out of 100 million artists working today.
The Alte Galerie, Munich, was barely attended despite the one Euro admission the Sunday I stood in the large galleries. But the young attendees who were there were enthralled with intensity. The ones I saw were studying painting, studying their roots. They had the intensity of young painting professionals. I took it as proof that great art is still there, lying in wait, for the few to understand and create and the many to absorb, not the many to create and the few to absorb - as currently is the fashion.
www.dennisart.com
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"Westerners don't care about "those vague, 'oh-what-a-beautiful-color' kind of impressions, as Japanese do, they 'enjoy intellectual 'devices' and 'games' in art. That is why one must "contextualize [his work] in the world's art history." That from Takashi Murakami, designer/artist, show organizer, and art manipulator/contestant, who's work is as cold as his quote.
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