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Mostyn Bramley-Moore - Painter

29/8/2014

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PictureMostyn Bramley-Moore - 2012 Gregory Jessup
Every artist has a list of his/her own favourite artists and more than likely these people have influenced what they do to a fairly high degree. I'm no exception to this and have a bevy of artists past and present that i admire or to some degree emulate. The thing that an aspiring artist must do fairly quickly is form a philosophical base from which to work and studying favourites provides a perfect opportunity to do that. Failure to do this results in an art that is conceptually shallow and blandly mimetic in a derivative way. This may not be a hindrance at first, in the storm and bluster of young ambition and is forgivable but it inevitably leads to a vacuous, repetitive art practice and an art that fails to make the leap to "exceptional." Believe me, there are few artists that don't want to be considered as "exceptional," this being the affirmation that leads to personal and economic success. The artists that are important to me develop interesting work from an openly inquisitive mind, clear vision and a wide understanding of the theoretical issues inherent in making art. There is a sense that they are engaged in a lifelong project of the utmost urgency and that they are unearthing the next revelation step by step through innovation and systematic engagement with a core of uniquely personal painterly concerns.

PictureCap And Well - 1992 Mostyn Bramley-Moore
Mostyn Bramley-Moore is such an artist. He is a painter working away at the edges of a very personal form of lyrical abstraction where a range of recurring motifs have been regularly materialising and fading from our view for some time now. These paintings, in many ways owe much to Cy Twombly's elegant, flowing method of painting and drawing. There is also a debt owed to artists like Ken Whisson, Ian Fairweather, Tony Tuckson, David Rankin and Judy Watson among others who also paint in a less literal sense. Make no mistake though, the ease with which Mostyn's paintings seem to be executed is only possible because of decades of scrupulous attention to his practice. What appears as simple or childlike yet so precisely balanced is the end result of sustained investigation and observation in the studio and out. This painter knows his forms and reinvigorates them with a fresh energy in every new painting he executes. He has become what all good painters are, an agent of transmogrification "par excellence." Colour, line and forms combine "alla prima" lending a scumbled and somewhat "grungy" sensibility to each composition. This is far from accidental and in fact has become the painters trademark signature almost immediately recognisable from a distance. The painter has nurtured a lyrically flowing narrative and poetic approach to his subject matter over a lifetime of engagement with painting. The images are fresh, direct, honest and highly allusive to a world of fecund organic shapes and ghostly entities swirling and roiling together across the picture plane. One gets a sense of imminent storm or the threat of the breakup of reality as we know it; "sublime" snapshots, if you like! Mostyn states emphatically that he is "a narrative painter" so each work becomes a small part in the grand fiction that is being and has been written, for many decades now.

Township - 2010 Mostyn Bramley-Moore
Unwrite - 2007 Mostyn Bramley-Moore
Dollface - 2009 Mostyn Bramley-Moore
Mostyn Bramley-Moore is a "painters painter" who probably says it better "visually" in paint than any other way. The urge to picture is idiosyncratic but not exclusive to a select type of creator individual. This is clear to see with the explosion of digital happy snaps posing as art, now choking the internet portals. It is clear that everyone is now an artist; just point and shoot; what freedom we have! It is also abundantly clear that the sensibility to produce artworks that evoke strong poetic feelings of nostalgia, mystery and joy all at once is uncommon and one to be treasured and appreciated. Artworks that cause a sense of dislocation, reflection and wonder in the viewer are accomplishing their task, namely the task of pointing the viewer towards presence and absence and the question of "that" which is beyond ourselves. 

The paintings and drawings of Mostyn Bramley-Moore initially may appear to be antiquated, arcane, maybe even primitive in the face of the slick, clinical, digital multi-media tide deadening our sentient capacities but they are solid anchors in the face of the flood and can bring us back to an aesthetic "ground zero." If there was ever a time for artists to reclaim a link to the ineffable qualities embodied in the manual act of painting, it is now. The commercial culture machine is incessantly grooming clones for the market and let me tell you, the product is the same; it is the Machiavellian triumph of homogeneity over cultural diversity. Mostyn Bramley-Moore is holding his own patch of ground in defence of the efficacy of imagination and the painting project.    
Southbank - 2001 Mostyn Bramley-Moore
Liner - 2001 Mostyn Bramley-Moore
Brisbane - 1999 Mostyn Bramley-Moore
Some of my favourite pieces are displayed here in this gallery of images. These pictures were created on various grounds including polyester, linen, canvas and paper. Most were executed with paint as the sole medium but some include elements of collage. Whether wielding graphite, pencils or brush the placement of elements within the space of the composition is orchestrated by the artist with a high degree of finesse. There is such certainty in the order of motifs within the work, as if they are suspended and held still by some invisible force waiting for the moment of release. This tension is present in all the works whether achieved by the use of colour, line or open space and gives each image a certain kind of sensual gravitas. 

It is evident with further observation that humour is involved in the interplay of elements but it is a fragile one verging on apprehension and disbelief! There is an enveloping sense of "nature" but at regular intervals people, buildings and machines attempt to insert/insinuate themselves into this environment but always tenuously as if repudiation or obliteration is just a breath away. A sense of impending "threat" seems to be waiting around the corner and this could be read as a commentary on the fragility of human existence in the face of nature's mighty forces. Decorative, beautiful, quirky? Whatever way you choose to receive these art works they are in fact anything but simple.   
Grassland - 2014 Mostyn Bramley-Moore
Forest - 2014 Mostyn Bramley-Moore
Paris - 2012 Mostyn Bramley-Moore
There are times when painting lends its sensibilities to the "organic" and "curvilinear" and other times to the "hard edged" and "mechanical." The artist finds his/her identification in the way they use their materials in order to coerce from them the hidden forms that correctly reveal his/her intentions. Mostyn's "forte" is mastery of the elemental in the use of paint, motif and concept giving rise to works that embody a timeless, "universal" quality. They are windows on an imagination masterfully at play, discreet mirrors of possibility, endlessly deferred and we want them to be so we look and turn away and look again, the suspense is intoxicating! 

I admire Mostyn's persistence with his painting project, his devotion to developing an "aesthetic" rather than being railroaded by the politicising agenda of contemporary art. In this hybridised world art culture where all identity and difference is being churned up by capitalism it is heartening to see "pure" painting take such a majestic stand resisting subsumption into the "one."

Learn more about Mostyn Bramley-Moore here.   
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Lyotards Sublime

23/8/2014

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A few questions first in order to  broach this expansive subject.

Q: What or who is Lyotard?
A: Jean Francois Lyotard was a French philosopher/theoretician who wrote about post-structuralist thought, aesthetics, politics and attempted to explain Postmodernity and the sublime.

Q: What is a (the) Sublime?
A: The Sublime in general terms is an effect on the mind usually experienced in the face/knowledge of a force or event that first overwhelms it, threatening annihilation and terror only then to abate and give way to euphoric relief. 

Q: Why care about it?

A: Philosophical concerns seem tedious and extraneous to regular life and its problems but they underpin systems of belief that mould and shape societies so should not be ignored or treated with indifference.The ideas embodied in post structural philosophy have made their way into the mainstream consciousness through advertising, art, literature, politics and education systems.
PictureTin Can Artists Shit No: 004 - 1961 Piero manzoni
There is a need to periodically examine the ideas that percolate down from the rarified academic stratosphere of thought into the morass of ordinary life. While people get on with their daily business, social constructs and value systems are under constant evaluation/modulation and ideas that are challenging perceptions and values shared by the many are seeping in through transgressive cultural activities everywhere. Ideas such as deconstruction, appropriation, death of the author and the sublime permeate every strata of modern life and yet most of it goes unnoticed as if pedestrian in value. 

I should say rather, when an idea is finally accepted as "normal" or "everyday" then it is no longer visible or subject to scrutiny. Some ideas "shock" initially and then with persistent re-presentation are eventually subsumed by the mainstream power structures. I cite for example here Piero Manzoni the Italian artist who produced 90 tins of his own excrement as art in 1961, each of which was to be valued at the price of gold which was $37 at the time. Sothebys sold a tin in 2007 for 124.000 Euros proving that a precedent once established carries enormous power over time. 

Since then we have seen artists simulate or actually perform acts of socially transgressive behaviour in public including but not limited to, piercing, hanging, humiliation, rape, masturbation, defecation, menstruation, murder and cannibalism with a numb public nervously giving assent or pretending not to see. Manzoni's tins of shit are the little stones that, once thrown at art, released the avalanche of detritus, which followed soon after. This stream of "performance art" wasn't what Jean Francois Lyotard had in mind as examples of the "sublime" but they serve to demonstrate that not all "art experiments" are legitimate  or even beneficial though they might provoke shock or intelligent discourse. This kind of art is in fact anti-sublime because after the initial controversy the art points back to the artist (the known) and stasis, instead of the "unpresentable" the unknown, which then leaves us in a perpetual state of "frisson." The power of ideas to change the world is staggering and the "sublime" as a mode of feeling and experience is a "tour de force" capable of altering our perception of life. 

PictureLe Dejeuner Sur L'herbe - 1863 Edouard Manet
The form of "sublime" being described here is an event that disables the normal relational function between "reason" and "imagination." The mind is incapable of grasping the enormity of an event/object and in its attempt to define the borders of such object there is a sudden awareness by reason of its limitations and the imagination then comes into play. Lyotard accords this aesthetic effect one of the highest honours because he believes it is the thing that continues to make art vital in a time when "grand narratives" such as "absolute freedom" or "historical progress" have become invalid. He states in, "What is Postmodernism?" "I think in particular that it is in the aesthetic of the sublime that modern art (including literature) find their impetus and the logic of the avant-gardes (experimental artists) finds its axioms." What does he mean by this? Simply, the tradition of making and then judging art by the same strict set of (language) rules had finally been disqualified by capitalism and the marketplace by the late 19th century. Art had represented life, the world, the "visible" and followed a mimetic mandate formulated by governmental elites until artists began to break free, think here, Manet, Delacroix, Turner etc. Newfound freedom released the artist to paint unorthodox subject matter in a myriad of styles. The final break with representation of the "real" probably occurred with Malevich's square paintings slamming open the door for "abstraction"  and the opportunity of "presenting the unpresentable." Lyotard states that, "art has the best potential for demonstrating the sublime" and that this in turn is our best hope for maintaining "indeterminacy," which he defines as a "differend," which is simply a term for the "gap" where reason and imagination fail to meet and comprehend their object. 

Simply put, where the art object no longer bends itself to predetermined models (modes of mimesis) it tries to present the fact that there is an "unpresentable" and no longer imitates nature but according to Edmund Burke, "the actualisation of a figure potentially there in language." What does this mean? We see something, (a painting) we don't know what it is, we look and look but we only see colour and form, maybe line. We start to frame the artwork but conceptually it escapes us! We don't really know what we're looking at. Frustration and maybe anxiety set in and we either dismiss what we see or we continue to wrestle with making meaning. We swing between pain and pleasure as we stand before the art object. This is the "sublime" feeling and it offers hope because it always alludes to the never ending arrival of the thing that is "happening." This is good because it assures us that something is in fact always "happening" which allays our fears of the "last moment" or the time when nothing will happen again! This we intimately know is when obliteration occurs and is an all subliminal pervasive fear. So then, the "sublime" is a majestic aesthetic intervention allowing us an ongoing, open ended dialogue with artworks. This in turn guarantees freedom by perpetually deferring the closing down and control of language systems which can and do subordinate whole societies to terror and extermination. That sounds crazy but don't believe me, check out Hitler's Germany, Mao's China or Pol Pot's Cambodia. Art was the first thing to be destroyed or come under control for devious purposes.

Black Suprematic Square - 1915 Kazimir Malevich
Vir Heroicus Sublimis - 1950-1 Barnett Newman
The Rothko Chapel - 1964-7 14 paintings Mark Rothko
The question then is, what "relevance" does the "sublime" have to contemporary lives in a modern technological world? In attempting to answer this question we can identify the links to modern experience through multi faceted, multi media societies. Take a good look around and see what influence modern art has had on your life. You may not recognise it at first but soon you'll see all the major art styles represented in advertising, print media and fashion. A thousand different variants of Impressionism, Expressionism, Pop and Op abound in soft edge, hard edge, Colourfield, Neo and NeoGeo in every space and on every product you could imagine! Everything gets consumed by a tireless commercial system that continually re-processes things ad infinitum. The world is threatening to drown in a sea of commercial mediocrity where everything gets endlessly re-hashed and sold. This in itself is creating a  form of sublimity where the pain and pleasure of choice is becoming a major problem for many consumers. Lyotard writes that art can continue to provide the experience that acts as a salve or tonic to the banal and mundane. He championed artists like Cezanne, Kandinsky, Duchamp, Newman, Rothko, Adami, Buren and Ettinger because in their work he saw the conceptual limits of man displayed and this for him was a lesson for anyone who felt too high minded about the possibilities of the humanistic Enlightenment project.         
The "sublime" can be encountered wherever great art brings you to the place where words fail, the imagination flounders and the mental task of delineating the edges of what you can understand grinds to a halt. If this occurs don't panic, don't run, just enjoy the anxiety and failure of intellect and find pleasure in the thing that is "presenting" the ever deferred "unpresentable" because this is what great art does! A wild  and stormy landscape will always be just an imitation of reality that you know is an illusion but a brooding, expansive abstract with mysterious eliding forms will captivate with its contiguous push pull sense of presence and absence and will always seem to bring you back to the deliciously and inexhaustibly deferred point of arrival!!


Read more of Lyotard's writing:
 
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge pdf

Lessons on The Analytic of The Sublime

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Painting: The Serial Urge

13/8/2014

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PictureUntitled 200414, Untitled 220314, Untitled 070514 - 2014 - William M Boot
If we are to look at paintings in an intelligent way then the first thing to consider is, "what are we looking at?" and second, "what is the painting(s) saying to us?" The first question deals with the form, or "mode" of presentation of the work. The second deals with the content or meaning implicit in the artists' intention for making as well as meaning arising from the elemental structure of the work whether 2 or 3D in format. To look at a work of art and simply say "i like it" or "it makes me feel good" or "it's exciting or boring" is simplistic and naive at best. It is incumbent upon the viewer to seek out in an intelligent fashion "what is going on here?" The onus is not on the artist to provide all manner of explanation about the work but on the viewer to engage further with the work and do some thinking. This does not absolve artists from responsibility to intelligently frame their work, when asked, on multiple levels. A painting will "speak" to our emotions at an aesthetic level but to fully understand the work we must get past the "clever technique" and peel back the layers of the work compositionally and conceptually.

Paintings are constructed using a visual language code and this functions in a similar fashion  to the "codes" used in speech, music, dance or film. Language requires the use of symbols and images to create shapes and patterns which when combined give birth to meaning and understanding. Meaning is implicit in the compositions created by the artist whether with sound, movement, text, images or a combination of any of these. A failure to recognise or read the "code" results in a simplistic experience of the artwork and usually at an emotional level only. Language is "complex" and demands "attention" and "effort" by the viewer to crack the code (s) and get the correct "meaning." 

There are essentially two ways in which these codes are shared. Joseph Greenberg in his "Essays In Linguistics" states, "language can be approached as a set of culturally transmitted behaviour patterns shared by a group or as a system conforming to the rules which constitute its grammar." Essentially this means, people learn and understand (make meaning) from what they have learned from their group (society) or skilled arts practitioners using the rules (grammar) of creative systems such as (sound, images, text or movement) devise objects (works of art) that conform to their own internal code. These codes must be grasped in order for the viewer/participant to receive multiple levels of meaning. Failure to engage at a deeper level renders the power of the art object impotent, unable to mediate deeper truths to the viewer.
Having provided a basic background to the essential working of language i want to introduce here the notion of "seriality" and its opposite, "asynchronicity." What is meant by the first term is, "artworks created in a "series" or "group" where the subject or central idea is developed through multiple works and conversely, in the second, artworks created as one off, "standalone" works. Serial "praxis" is not a "stylistic phenomenon" but a "methodology" where rationale is employed to tease out the deeper implications in an idea using a body of works. These works if executed skilfully form a powerful statement concerning a core idea and sub-grouping of associated ideas. 

Not all arts practitioners work in serial fashion for various reasons but i wish to demonstrate that "asynchronous" artworks usually curtail the cohesion of a lifetime body of paintings. The final judgement of an artists oeuvre  may in fact be judged as "eclectic," "indiscriminate," "conservative," or worse "substandard" and unfairly relegated to obscurity with relation to art historical "significance." No artist welcomes obscurity after a lifetime of contribution to the arts. Recognition, reward and success are sought to varying degrees by all arts practitioners. The obscure, wilful genius in the attic pumping out asynchronous "masterpieces" with no desire for recognition would be an "extremely rare" phenomenon these days with so many avenues open to artists to make their work known, although the "gifted savant" regarded by most as an anomaly, sometimes makes an appearance.
Picture32 Campbells Soup Cans - 1962 Andy Warhol
Okay, what does this "serial" methodology consist of?, you ask. Firstly, it is not "modularity," which is "the repetition of a standard unit." This means that all the pieces in a set are the same size, colour and shape etc. According to Mel Bochner, serial art occurs when a group of works are constructed that follow 3 basic rules. 

Firstly, "the derivation of the terms or the interior divisions of the work is by means of a numerical or otherwise systematically pre-determined process (permutation, progression, rotation or reversal).
 
Secondly, the order takes precedence over the execution.
 
Thirdly, the completed work is fundamentally parsimonious and systematically self-exhausting."
 
What this means is, the serial work of art is pre-planned using predominantly numerical systems to set up the interior components of the work. The individual works are usually distinct as works in themselves but are also distinctly synonymous with the group they belong to. This is different to "repetition" which is synonymous with "sameness."


PictureModular Four Panels #1 - 1969 Roy Lichtenstein
Serial methodology is concerned with the "plan" rather than the "obsession with technique" and the idea of "clever" or "genius!" This doesn't mean that the serial artist isn't interested in "technique," it simply means that "idea" or "concept" has usurped prominence in the artists' strategy for "making" or "inventing" new forms of artwork. The serial artist pursues pictorial strategies that enable a deeper coherence of a theme and a robust poetry that develops out of the multiplicity of angles afforded by the grouping of works. Quite simply, one painting is a paragraph but ten paintings comprise a book with each work playing the part of "chapter." The power of "seriality" shouldn't be underestimated and the potential for innovation and invention multiplies with the different facets that a serial group of works brings to the viewer.

PictureUntitled Painting (In 9 Parts) - 1988 - Cy Twombly
Mel Bochner titled his informative essay on this subject, "The Serial Attitude (pdf)" because he recognised that this method of working is first and foremost a "way of thinking." Many modern artists have adopted this approach to invention but we can see the precursors of serial thinking going back to the renaissance. Maybe the first modern serialist is Claude Monet who would furiously paint a number of canvases simultaneously in order to catch the changing light conditions from minute to minute. His more than 30 "Rouen Cathedrals," the "Haystacks" or "Water Lilies" (see L'Orangerie) all demonstrate beautifully the power of serial painting. Other painters of note include Thomas Eakins, Alfred Jensen, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Larry Poons, Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg. There are also artists working in a 3D format like Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt who created powerfully visual art using serial methodology. Maybe Edward Muybridge was the first to introduce the possibilities of the serial image using photography. His experiments with multiple, parallel strips of time-lapse images greatly influenced other artists and musicians such as Arnold Schoenberg and Milton Babbit and later John Cage and Philip Glass. If we go back a few centuries earlier we find Bach and later Beethoven using serial compositional devices to create music that is now universally acknowledged as "classic" and "timeless." Where would we be without Bach and his timeless inventions? 

Serial thinking is a big part of how i innovate and construct paintings. I am greatly inspired by artists who have invented "timeless" works of art with serial thinking strategies. There are so many creative people who employ this way of thinking that it is impossible to mention them here as the list is extensive. Seriality has proved to be an iconoclastic mode of thinking and making that has widened the fissure between traditional (archaic) and contemporary perception and indelibly changed the face of modern art.  

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Seeing Clouds

8/8/2014

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PictureClouds at 35000ft - 2006 William M Boot
Clouds must be the ultimate symbol of freedom. Omnipresent in the skies overhead anywhere, anytime they remind us, if we remember to take time to look up, of what it might be like to be totally free. Evanescent in nature, they enter our view for a short time only to fade away as we watch. Clouds remind us of nature and its power and our insignificance in the face of it. They are in themselves pure poetry whether seen on a bright, calm, sunny day or in the violence of a wild storm. It seems also that clouds have become subject matter in themselves, for painters and in particular over the last 50 years. This has not always been so.

Taking a quick look back into history it is surprising to find that in fact clouds and the sky have been excluded from pictorial representation both "East" and "West" in most cases. I was wondering about this because for most "cultured" or "advanced" societies, art making was a central occupation and the representation of nature at the core of it. Animals, birds, insects combined with plants, mountains, lakes and rivers became the subject matter of often exquisitely detailed pictures and objects. Portraits and genre painting seem to have filled in the other areas of focus. Yet, the sky paintings/objects are missing, with the majority of focus apparently on essentially earthbound subjects. If you do happen to find an artwork with sky in it then you'll find the sky is a narrow piece of mist serving only as  contrast or outline to the subject which was usually mountains and rivers in China and genre or religious scenes in Europe.

It's apparent that clouds were not "seen" or considered worthy of the attention given to highly visible geographical features. This absence in painting continued unabated for thousands of years until the early "renaissance" when suddenly the "window" approach to painting by the Italians begins to include and occasionally highlight  "sky" in certain paintings. The 1st century Romans had painted mostly drab skies in their murals and "frescoes" depicting "mythological" scenes but they were merely backdrops to the foreground figures in the drama. In the early to mid 15th century there are suddenly brightly coloured skies with clouds appearing in pictures by Southern painters like Mantegna, Fra Angelico and Bellini in Italy. In the North, painters such as Jan Van Eyck, Hans Memling, Robert Campin and Rogier Van Der Weyden also began to paint in beautiful skies that although still only background fill, nevertheless seem to be initiating a groundswell of attention back to the heavens. The outstanding example of a stand alone sky painted by Palladio in 1585 simply as a "sky with clouds" in its own right, is in the "Teatro Olimpico" in Vicenza. Prior to this amazing event, sky and clouds really took a distant back seat for the most part in the making of an artwork.

Iphigeneia Sacrificed To Artemisa "fresco" - C1st century - Imperial Roman
Camera Degli Sposi "fresco" - 1464 1475 - Palazzo Ducale mantua - Andrea Mantegna
Ceiling of The Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza - 1585 Palladio
View of Dordrecht - 1653 Jan Josefszoon van Goyen
Late Afternoon With Numerous Skaters Near a Town - 1843 Barend Cornelis Koekkoek
Nightfall Near Olana, Hudson, New York - 1872 Frederick Edwin Church
Gradually, sky began to take on more importance in the pictorial scheme of things and by the 17th century the Dutch are painting beautiful land, sea and skyscapes revealing both the majesty of nature and the diminutive stature of man before its power. These paintings also showcase the skill with which the Dutch painters such as  Jan Van Goyen and Barend Cornelis Koekkoek could render fleeting atmospheric light and colour. Many of these paintings were purchased in Britain and inspired important English painters such as John Constable who painted sweeping English vistas around his home county. His paintings in turn, were admired and sold well into France and then inspired what became known as the "Barbizon School" of painters led by Millet, Daubigny and Rousseau. This group in turn inspired greatly the younger generation of Parisian artists who would later become the "Impressionists." The rest is history and the evolution of landscape and the importance of sky and clouds begins to push strongly into the frame throughout the 19th and into the 20th century until modern "utopic" visions fuelled by progress and possibility arrested its advancement.
Clouds (Window) - 1970 Gerhard Richter
Cloud Composition - Ken Bushe
Atmosphere No 50 - 2014 Ian Fisher
PictureStormy Dusk - 2010 William M Boot
In the last forty years or so "sky" and "clouds" have surged back into paintings as a renewed engagement and fascination for nature emerged with the "environmental" or "green" movement! It seems like this infatuation with "nature" in art has mirrored the ideological underpinnings of the green agenda for some time now. This same tendency also occurred in the early 1800's with the "romantic" nostalgia for the exotic and primitive form of tribal cultures beyond Europe. Worshipping nature is a knee jerk reaction to a century of philosophical reasoning on existence and purpose  and the increasing angst and emptiness felt from 'evolutionary theories" and "existentialism." Modern man began to feel the isolation and fragmentation of urban life and yearned for an "arcadian paradise" where nature and man were "one" again. It is little wonder that this "paradisical idyll" yearned for, should turn up in the "green" movement and especially in the work of artists wholly sympathetic to the "primitive." For, after all, primitive in the minds of many is synonymous with "natural," "pure," "innocent" and more importantly "spiritual." This is an interesting phenomena and linked closely with contemporary art that lays claims to "sublime content" and in particular "abstraction."

PictureClouds at Dusk - 2012 William M Boot
Clouds are ephemeral biomorphic agents simultaneously materialising and dissolving before our very eyes, sometimes within minutes. They trigger within us feelings of delight and awe causing us to take flights of fancy in a space overhead that is pure, natural theatre. There is a reason for the torrent of photographs, paintings and video, recording clouds from all over the world. With digital technology as pervasive as it is, there is greater opportunity than ever before to "capture" those magic moments and make nature a "personal" experience to keep in the digital file and look at over and over as desired. Make no mistake though, as poetic and figurative as clouds may seem, they are in fact highly abstract forms especially when separated from any reference to "land" or horizon. Clouds and abstraction go hand in hand then and reference that which is "beyond," "out of sight," and "above" our experience of the "world." Clouds set the stage for "contemplation" and "reflection" re-imbuing in us a sense of transcendence and a "heightened sense of "being." It is this power invested in the abstract that directs us past what is familiar and "knowable" to that which is strange and "knowably unknowable."   

PictureClouds Over Melbourne - 2012 William M Boot
I'm inspired in particular by clouds as agents of change. Everyone knows that certain types of clouds herald certain types of weather conditions. "Red sky in the morning is a sailors warning and conversely, a red sky at night is a sailors delight" as the saying goes! Clouds are implicit in this ever unfolding drama in the sky for they provide dimension or form to the "formless" sky. They are a scaffold upon which nature paints it's endless loop compositions except that the loop is miraculously tweaked from day to day preventing a repeat from ever occurring. Clouds abstract our day to day lives, relieving us of the weight of Earths seemingly endless atmospheric wasteland hanging over us and reminding us of infinity and our corresponding mortality. Looking up, the oppressed dream of release, lovers dream a sea of possibilities and the oppressor deludes himself with dreams of clouds obscuring his actions from judgement. How is it possible that all see something different? This is the enduring majesty of clouds and all the things they symbolise and every culture has its own stories and mythology about these transient ships of the sky.

It's encouraging to see such widespread interest in these magical sentinels that sweep overhead moving to the Earth's pulse because as long as we look up there is the constant reminder that everything "must" change and there is a comfort in this complicity of clouds and men!

Here is a bit of my favourite "cloud" sound.

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Art: Career or Calling?

2/8/2014

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Once upon a time, long ago, before the dawn of the "modern" age, art was created for totally different purposes. You can debate me about when this so called "modern" age is supposed to have begun and your view might be right. There is much dispute about this but most experts agree "modernity" at least in the "West," began sometime in the 16th century and i tend to agree. The reason i'm honing in on this period of time is that for me it's a dividing point between the "Medieval" period and the "Renaissance" where new thinking about systems of knowledge began to shift from the shadows into the open. Gradually, a rediscovery of classical Greek knowledge began to proliferate and then infiltrate the dominant Catholic sacred knowledge system which had been used to imprison and control populations through "fear" and "ignorance." It is in this period of "Enlightenment" between 1400 and 1800 that massive changes occur and the explosion of knowledge begins to shake "traditional" European societies to the core.
PictureThe Better Path
Okay, this period of upheaval is where art is essentially liberated step by step from its servitude to religion and its hierarchy of control. Prior to the modern age, art could only be created by the "clergy" and this strictly for the purpose of religious instruction of the "ignorant faithful." Pictures, (think here "Ikons") and statues were often fashioned by monks as objects of "veneration" used to deflect the faith of the poor and uneducated away from direct, personal relationship with "God" and instead to an intermediary object or relic that had been invested through endless indoctrination with great authority. These "idols" masqueraded as portals to the "Divine" and deviously concealed the understanding that " all men are individuals free to worship or not, as they see fit." As the "Roman Catholic" church began to lose its autocratic power to competing systems of truth, eg. philosophy, science and christianity, art and its manufacture were gradually freed from religious control and began to find expression in the secular realm.

Art had to wait a long time for its freedom though. During the middle ages artists were bound to observe strict conventions for object creation. Today we can look back and study the history of art made during this long period. Not much changed for many centuries. Suddenly, following the "renaissance" explosion in Italy, there was a creative groundswell as artists and craftsmen from all over Europe began to learn from each other innovating and experimenting with new ideas in pictorial and spatial conventions. Also, the move away from agriculture toward urban centres of education and manufacturing accelerated the wave of artistic innovation and the wealth created from trade financed artists and centres of art production. Not all artists enjoyed the support of the wealthy and for the majority, making a living from art proved to be tough going unless you had connections. This is the period where the "myth" of the genius artist starving in his garret arose and still makes the rounds today in the minds of many. 
Lady With an Ermine - 1489 - 90 Leonardo Da Vinci
Narcissus - 1597 - 99 Caravaggio
St Martin and The Beggar - 1597-99 El Greco
Having set the background for art and its production in the modern epoch, we now posit the question, is art a "career" or "vocation?" and what is the difference? you may ask. Well, career is defined as, "a work path leading to opportunities for progress" and comes from the Latin root "carrus" meaning, "wheeled vehicle." Vocation on the other hand comes from the Latin root "vocare" meaning, "to call" and denotes a "worthy" occupation requiring "considerable" dedication to an "ideal". If the difference isn't clear to you then let me clarify. "Career" is a term used to define a contemporary mode of employment, the goal being financial remuneration, eventual promotion and then retirement. "Vocation" defines a life coterminous with a calling (vision) where financial remuneration and the idea of retirement are not contingent to the "calling." When this is understood, it is easier to separate the "careerist" from the "visionary" who works out of "internal exigency" not "external opportunism and remuneration."  
Rembrandt Laughing - 1628
May 3 1808 - 1808 Francisco Goya
Starry Night Over The Rhone - 1888 Vincent Van Gogh
Simply, there are artists who make art for money and there are those who make art because they are compelled to do so by an inner urge or vision and sometimes there's a fine line between both groups. Finance and maybe status are sought by the first group as the marker for success. The realisation in concrete form of a personal compulsion/desire to "make" is the foremost concern of the second group. Financial reward and status are low on the priority list, although not necessarily disdained, nevertheless, often this group have indeed "suffered for their art."


It should be understood here that i'm not advocating some form of "ascetic" existence for artists where hardship should be sought and embraced. I'm also not advocating systems of support for inept, wannabe individuals ready to ride on the coat tails of philanthropic handouts from a private or public purse. Quite simply, great art takes time, sometimes decades and before it's ready to appear many artists are often derailed simply by the pressure of working to survive. You know the rest of the story, history is replete with examples of lost or wasted talent! Who knows what could have been? In fact, we're lucky we have what we have after all the barbaric onslaughts that have destroyed so much.
The Painter of Sunflowers (Van Gogh) - 1888 Paul Gauguin
Rouen Cathedral at Sunset - 1893 Claude Monet
Red Room Harmony - 1908 Henri Matisse
In light of all this, artists today have a responsibility to be "visionary" making art that arrests the downward spiral i believe we are in. Making art that deals with "trifles" like jokes, puns  and the banality of low-brow culture debases life instead of enriching it with higher purpose. I'm not moralising here, just calling for a return to poetry, to art that challenges who we are and how we see and maybe even inspires hope, faith and greater art than before. Artists should reconsider their "careers" to pursue "vision" and if they can't find one then my advice is to down tools and spend some time "in the desert" until they get clear of "money" (the market) and see the art "imperative."
Postmodern and in particular, conceptual art have accorded high value to "game playing" in contemporary art but in truth art isn't about "games," momentary distractions or amusement for bored spectators. This viewpoint has done enormous damage to the understanding of art-making as the highest form of human endeavour and produced a commercial system where art and entertainment are hopelessly entangled and packaged as mere commodities. To denigrate the art making function in this way is just another indication of where we are as a profligate culture placing first emphasis on inane pleasure and banal activity (making money) rather than philosophical enquiry and inner growth.

Composition 7 - 1913 Wassily Kandinsky
Girl With a Mandolin - 1910 Pablo Picasso
Campbells Soup 1 - 1968 Andy Warhol
Here are some proven "vocational" artists for whom it is now possible to look back and see their achievements in totality, as "visionary" due to their impact on successive generations of artists and culture. My list of examples isn't exclusive but is a demonstration of what artists "do," regardless of fleeting fame or fortune. Twelve artists that i believe were not careerists are, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo Caravaggio, Domenikos Theotokopoulos (El Greco), Rembrandt Van Rijn, Francisco De Goya, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. I have chosen mostly painters here simply because painting occupies much of Western art historical development. Some of these artists died young, some experienced minor success then rejection, some achieved great success, honour and then ignominy while some died rich and or famous. Whatever judgement call you make, artists like this changed the world in a way that's hard to fathom and often in the face of incredible difficulty. They had "integrity of vision" and pursued a passionate "calling" or "ideal" first, not "money!" They left behind an art that continues to challenge, astound and inspire us!

Maybe, at this point, you're ready to take me to task over Andy Warhol's supposedly famous obsession with celebrity and money as reason enough to disqualify him. Yes, Andy worked the ropes publicly and we have the photographic legacy to prove that. Yet, behind the scenes he was an incredibly hard worker always looking for ways to innovate his art. Andy understood the power of celebrity having grown up as an outsider and used it to leverage his chance of success but he never forgot that it was art that had taken him to the heights of success. His need to create was always the driving force in his life and he was able to surround himself with talented individuals that contributed or facilitated new ideas. Love him or hate him his art legacy is enormous both in the work produced and his profound influence on generations of artists and he is applauded for instituting almost singlehandedly a new 20th century art paradigm. 
I'm inspired greatly by "timeless art" created by artists who make art as an essential priority in their lives no matter what is happening to them. That takes grit!!! It's often during the malaise/hurdle that significant art is birthed and history can testify to this. 
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    William M Boot

    An eclectic compendium of artistic and philosophical musings on ideas that have fired my imagination and inspiration over many years.

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