Soft icecream Plumwine flavoured - in a bonsai dish for three :)
I received an email asking me to vote for an artist for a prize - at a reputable Provincial Gallery. I looked into the links, its a new way of doing press work - through personal linkage from one email list to another - its publicity at grass root level.
There is a linkage of the artist and the "advocate", through email, the diffusion network reaches a body of specialised general public.
I look for vitality of art work. Vitality today seem to be linked to meanings beyond the artists savoir faire. It has much more to do with giving meaning and readings from what the artist offers to the viewer. To make an impact, it has to click in the viewers mind.
Art works today seem to work around these poles in no order of priority: 1/beauty, or 2/revelations, or 3/social criticism, or 4/cynical reverse jokes (like a certain shit-making technology machine), 5/reversing previous manifestos, giving new definitions to "envelopes" of an artistic language, 6/concrete actions to save the earth - practical scientific measures.
Of all these poles, I think beauty is the most long lasting, even though standards of beauty varies, even though beauty is fragile. All it takes is someone who has had it with not-having beauty, when they come across it, one swipe of the arm, its destroyed.
Marie Antoinette, if she didnt leave behind her playful beauty centric focus, what else could she have had thats precious for her descendants, her people?
If Fine Art is no more than a treatment of ordinary things/not so ordinary events in a "fine artist treated way" wouldnt you prefer to simply live the original first hand event in real time?
Maybe todays fine arts, the greatest esthetic pleasure we might hope for is an event. Organising a collective action where everyone has a role, that they wish to play. The event itself generates something, gives something to the participants.
Not just rock concerts, not only fancy tea parties, sex orgies (free or conditional), extravagant movie making, but some kind of event that moves people that somehow makes a difference in the before and the after event... if the Art of today can do this - it will be be vital again.
Chinese art is in vogue and powerful, vital - thats because in real life, the machine is turning and millions times more vital and powerful, its culture+money related.
Everyone complaints about the market flooded with Chinese products and taking away the local jobs, from Elle magazine editorial page, to news papers to any number of blogs - but i also hear, not from the general Elle magazine readers who are happy to get a "cheaper cashmere" sweater for pleasure, but many families who are happy to be wearing a clean soft good t-shirt and not have to pay 30$ for it!
This reminds me of Ai WeiWeis work in Documenta 2007, the 1001 people tour of Kassel from China, and each one brings a chair with him/her. And these are beautiful Chinese antique chairs, not exclusively the ones you buy in a shop which has been re-buffed to be in a salon - but all these chairs which has been worn, wind burnt, bleached by the sun, aged through human use, they are truly beautiful. At first, I wasnt sure if I could sit on them. And everyone wanted to sit in them and have their pictures taken. I did too. :) This chair+person+travelling action is so powerful, I can imagine, for people who long to see what the outside world looks like, this gift is so magnificent. I wonder if these 1001 people tell about their before and after experience? See what Ai WeiWei - sons of National treasure poet Ai Qing (from 30s) - has to say, and his blog. Presentation at DLD, Munich. Next one will be in 2009
Every project takes millions of small steps. This entry is becoming like a little tree... each little leaf reaches for water somewhere deeper. :)
The great artistic people are people like Oprah, she wants to share something of her vitality in life. She makes a Reality show, and its call the "Big Give" (online right now) - this is about doing something that initiates a change - not the miserable charity good religious reasons. Its more about enjoyment. Introducing enjoyment for everyone. Because if only I enjoy while you look at my plate full of goodies and you dont have anything, that makes me not enjoy so much. I prefer you to enjoy too. :)
Too much Art today has a lack of vitality - mainly packaging and re-presentations of real world data from the side line.
Great art today has too much discourse - after all people cant read meanings, if you didnt say it outloud - we cannot guess just from the appearance...
The most exciting esthetic experience is one lived first hand - is that why people travel so much today? But that doesnt do much, becasue most tourist destinations has been repackaged to become a 3D immersive real world. :)
Due to multiple points of views, we are able to make some private/not so private movie in which everyone plays the star role - star in the sense that you are the important one.
Everyone finds, and be in, the important role they want. Whether its being the valedictorian of your highschool, or becoming a mother, or catching the girl you want, whatever.
The one who achieves this in any scale will find some esthetic satisfaction - even though they might just call it simple happiness in life.
Now, if they could share this happiness - or sadness (sharing of sadness should be viewed as a path onto happiness, because the person talking essentially wants to feel happier afterwards and not sadder) then, this act/event is artistic in a great way.
Maybe thats what the Secondlife platform offers, this small stage for happiness which could be achieved in a microscopic way (the rl participants can stretch it to their preferred scale in magic sl) - regardless of how high or low quality the graphics, how clever or clumsy, original or banal the interchanges... the ones who comes back have found some echo.
Some wiseman once said, no one would choose the wrong lover for herself/himself.
Happiness!
:)
1 comment:
You opened my eyes & heart!
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