Dear Adem,
Because of people like you the old art history paradigms are breaking down more and more. Like I mentioned before, I'm coming to believe that the ancient artist drawing squares with a stick in the dirt is fundamentally no different than Frank Stella drawing squares on canvas with paint. And the caveman drawing bison on his rock wall is not fundamentally different from Chardin painting one of his still lifes. I know that they have different training and different materials and different paradigms, but the head and heart is the same.
The older I get, the more I believe that the idea of "progress" in the arts (as art historians tend to define it) is an illusion. Traveling to Turkey and seeing the ancient Anatolian art and the spectacular Ottoman architecture and design made me more sure than ever that art has always served the same intellectual and emotional needs. BUT! without a doubt something is greatly changing and that,I believe, is how we as artists see ourselves. For example, in my opinion you can, and do, draw inspiration consciously or unconsciously from thousands of years of art. One day you might do a completely abstract painting, the next day it might be from nature, the next day it might be both. Believe me, I know how annoying this can be to collectors and art critics. And here is the point - I think that the terms realism, abstract, modern, international, local, old fashioned, progressive, etc., etc., are all mistaken because they are based on the assumption of art evolving, like Darwin's theory of evolution. Darwin may work well for biology but it's meaningless as a way of describing art.
Today (in my opinion) artists with many gifts like you are now free from all labels that in the past have been useful to historians but actually have nothing to do with what you actually do and why you do it. This is a wonderful thing that has never been possible before, but it does imply a new danger. If you don't make a point of defining yourself and setting your own agenda, then critics and dealers will rush in with new categories to explain you, and the whole cycle will start again. This is one of the things I meant by turning the entire chess board over. I think we have no choice. We are the first and only generation that will have the possibility of doing this. If we don't do this, mark my words, in our life time "art" will become more and more trivial and artists like us will wind up being cranky old men muttering to ourselves by the seashore and thinking, "I should have done something, they got the labels all wrong."
Adrian
Because of people like you the old art history paradigms are breaking down more and more. Like I mentioned before, I'm coming to believe that the ancient artist drawing squares with a stick in the dirt is fundamentally no different than Frank Stella drawing squares on canvas with paint. And the caveman drawing bison on his rock wall is not fundamentally different from Chardin painting one of his still lifes. I know that they have different training and different materials and different paradigms, but the head and heart is the same.
The older I get, the more I believe that the idea of "progress" in the arts (as art historians tend to define it) is an illusion. Traveling to Turkey and seeing the ancient Anatolian art and the spectacular Ottoman architecture and design made me more sure than ever that art has always served the same intellectual and emotional needs. BUT! without a doubt something is greatly changing and that,I believe, is how we as artists see ourselves. For example, in my opinion you can, and do, draw inspiration consciously or unconsciously from thousands of years of art. One day you might do a completely abstract painting, the next day it might be from nature, the next day it might be both. Believe me, I know how annoying this can be to collectors and art critics. And here is the point - I think that the terms realism, abstract, modern, international, local, old fashioned, progressive, etc., etc., are all mistaken because they are based on the assumption of art evolving, like Darwin's theory of evolution. Darwin may work well for biology but it's meaningless as a way of describing art.
Today (in my opinion) artists with many gifts like you are now free from all labels that in the past have been useful to historians but actually have nothing to do with what you actually do and why you do it. This is a wonderful thing that has never been possible before, but it does imply a new danger. If you don't make a point of defining yourself and setting your own agenda, then critics and dealers will rush in with new categories to explain you, and the whole cycle will start again. This is one of the things I meant by turning the entire chess board over. I think we have no choice. We are the first and only generation that will have the possibility of doing this. If we don't do this, mark my words, in our life time "art" will become more and more trivial and artists like us will wind up being cranky old men muttering to ourselves by the seashore and thinking, "I should have done something, they got the labels all wrong."
Adrian
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