They should have an international competition to see who can do…
They should have an international competition to see who can do the best “Christian-Bale-as-Batman-voice.” I don’t even think Christian Bale would win.
This is funny as hell. mikeindustries: A nicely done british…
This is funny as hell.
A nicely done british parody of 60 Minutes style video journalism. It’s easy to miss how formulaic our news is sometimes. (via B-Tizzle, originally via E-Chizzle)
“Confidence is 10% hard work and 90% delusion”
“Confidence is 10% hard work and 90% delusion”
– Tina Fey (via kapi)
Kitsch and the Modern Predicament by Roger Scruton, City Journal Winter 1999
Kitsch and the Modern Predicament by Roger Scruton, City Journal Winter 1999:
Kitsch and the Modern Predicament
by Roger Scruton
In a celebrated 1939 article, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” published in Partisan Review, the New York art critic Clement Greenberg argued that figurative painting was dead. “The alternative to abstraction,” he wrote, “is not Michelangelo but kitsch.” Every attempt to make the painted image vie with the photograph, he believed, would lead to disaster, as clichés took charge of the canvas. Henceforth painting must provide its own subject matter: it must be self-sufficient, pure, uncontaminated by the figurative image. The future of painting lay with the “abstract expressionists,” as Greenberg described them: the artists who treated painting like music, as a medium for expressing emotion through the use of abstract forms. Greenberg was perhaps the most influential art critic of his day. His essay set the agenda for an emerging school of New York painters and also set the price tag on their works. Vast sums of public and private money have since changed hands to stock American houses and American museums with works that, to the ordinary eye, have nothing to recommend them apart from their attempt to be abreast of the times. The avant-garde ceased to be a realm of caution and experiment and became, under Greenberg’s tutelage, a mass industry. So long as you avoided the literal image, so long as you defied all figurative conventions, you, too, could be a modern painter. You, too, could establish your credentials as a pathbreaking artistic genius, by doing something—no matter what, so long as it left a permanent mark on a purchasable object—that no one had done before. And if you got lucky, you could be rich and famous, like Cy Twombly, on account of images that look like accidents—and might even be accidents, like the numbers that win on the lottery. Of course, some painters refused to take this path—painters like Edward Hopper, who worked to purify the figurative image and to see again with the innocent eye. But critics and curators remained skeptical; they had invested too heavily in the avant-garde to believe that it was, after all, only a fashion. Hopper’s success was therefore viewed as a freakish thing—a last-ditch survival of an art that elsewhere had been killed off by the march of history. For all truly modern people, the critics went on saying, Greenberg’s maxim still held good: don’t touch the figurative image, or you’ll land yourself in kitsch.
“Making art My definition of art contains three elements: Art is made by a human being. Art is…”
“
Making art My definition of art contains three elements:
Art is made by a human being.
Art is created to have an impact, to change someone else.
Art is a gift. You can sell the souvenir, the canvas, the recording… but the idea itself is free, and the generosity is a critical part of making art.
By my definition, most art has nothing to do with oil paint or marble. Art is what we’re doing when we do our best work.
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination….”
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.””
– Jim Jarmusch (via fakenicebitch) (via afterimg) (via goo22) (via electronicalrattlebag)
First Dip: Kathy Honey's Painting aquired by David Lynch Foundation
A Child's First Exporation into Meditation
My good friend Kathy Honey created a painting titled “First Dip” a while back.
It’s about a child’s first exploration into meditation. The painting is autobiographical: Kathy studied Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi from a young age. (The same man the Beatles studied with in India.)
The David Lynch Foundation promotes teaching meditation to kids in school to cope with stress and improve their lives. They provide scholarships for kids to learn transcendental meditation and to go to schools, colleges and universities that provide a consciousness-based education.
Kathy got in contact with the foundation because they would provide a great home for “First Dip.”
The foundation was happy to acquire the work.
Update: 6/16/09
They showed David the picture of Kathy’s painting, and here’s what he said:
PLEASE TELL KATHY HONEY THAT I LOVE HER NAME – AND PAINTING !!! ….. WE WOULD BE HONORED TO HAVE IT IN OUR COLLECTION OF ART INSPIRED BY MEDITATION …… THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT DLF.TV IS ALL ABOUT ….. SUPER COOL!!! ….. JAI GURU DEV ….. DAVID
Email ends:
Thank you very much for sending us your beautiful painting!
–
I love David Lynch’s movies, so this makes me really happy for Kathy. (And a bit envious.)
Reminds me to see “Inland Empire” soon.
Tags: Art, Artists, Figurative Art, Meditation
On Symbolism
Symbolism
From Wikipedia
Symbolism was a late nineteenth century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts.
Precursors and origins
Symbolism was largely a reaction against Naturalism and Realism, movements which attempted to capture reality in its particularity. These movements invited a reaction in favor of spirituality, the imagination, and dreams; the path to Symbolism begins with that reaction.
//
Distinct from the Symbolist movement in literature, Symbolism in art represents an outgrowth of the more gothic and darker sides of Romanticism; but where Romanticism was impetuous and rebellious, Symbolist art was static and hieratic.
Movement
The Symbolist Manifesto
Symbolists believed that art should aim to capture more absolute truths which could only be accessed by indirect methods. Thus, they wrote in a highly metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. The Symbolist manifesto (�Le Symbolisme�, Le Figaro, 18 Sept 1886) was published in 1886 by Jean Mor�as. Mor�as announced that Symbolism was hostile to “plain meanings, declamations, false sentimentality and matter-of-fact description,” and that its goal instead was to “clothe the Ideal in a perceptible form” whose “goal was not in itself, but whose sole purpose was to express the Ideal”:
In this art, scenes from nature, human activities, and all other real world phenomena will not be described for their own sake; here, they are perceptible surfaces created to represent their esoteric affinities with the primordial Ideals.
//
In painting, Symbolism was a continuation of some mystical tendencies in the Romantic tradition, which included such artists as Caspar David Friedrich, Fernand Khnopff and John Henry Fuseli and it was even more closely aligned with the self-consciously dark and private movement of Decadence.//
The Symbolist painters mined mythology and dream imagery for a visual language of the soul, seeking evocative paintings that brought to mind a static world of silence. The symbols used in Symbolism are not the familiar emblems of mainstream iconography but intensely personal, private, obscure and ambiguous references. More a philosophy than an actual style of art, the Symbolist painters influenced the contemporary Art Nouveau movement and Les Nabis. In their exploration of dreamlike subjects, symbolist painters are found across centuries and cultures, as they are still today; Bernard Delvaille has described Rene Magritte’s surrealism as “Symbolism plus Freud”.
I love Symbolist art the most out of any genre, and though I’m not sure about the aims of those artists to “clothe the ideal in perceptible forms” which is “only accessible through indirect means,” (that sounds almost dogmatic) I am interested in some of the more esoteric topics, but simply put, I love art that depicts fantasy worlds.
It comes down to that. That whether it’s a few of Dali’s paintings, or Magritte’s, or Jacek Yerka, I love dream worlds, fantasy worlds, the inexplicable, painted in a way that looks as if you could almost walk into that reality.
To really get into that sort of work I have to feel like there’s something below the surface; a girl with fairy-wings in a forest may look nice, but I have to wonder about it. When you really get curious about a picture and want to know more about that world, you’ve hit the “hook point.”
It’s analogous to the hook in a good song, or a bad commercial. You get the melody in your mind and your brain starts to play it over and over. I’ve heard that referred to as “brain-itch.” But that sounds like someone needs some ointment or at least a different description for that.
In a good picture it’s that part where the artist gives you just enough that you want more but not too much that everything is explained.
And then the artist gets the question; “…but what does it mean?” I haven’t found a good answer to that.
Recently I’ve been alternating between:
- If I could say it, I wouldn’t have to make the picture.
- What do you think it means?
Often artists make pictures because we don’t have the words.
If you can think of any other good answers to “what does it mean?” let me know.
Tags: Art Criticism, Contemporary Art, Drawing, Dreams, Fantastic Art, Figurative Art, Figure Drawing, New Media, Surrealism, Symbolist Art, The Art World
