Dear Adrian,
Your letters arrived while I was away. Thank you for your extraordinary comments. I felt in a way as if my physical sensibilities were discovered in my work. I am an aged artist but I find my ideas of art have been constantly renewed. Our generation of artists grew with Herbert Reads' On the Meaning of Art. He says, "all art is primarily abstract," so I think that as he defines it, art creates an empathy that transcends reality. Getting my Doctorate on a Fulbright in the U.S. taught me a great deal. I'm now convinced that my core ideas concerning painting will never be accepted in Turkey, only internationally, if at all.
As you stated in your letter I, too, believe there is no progress in art. Art changes but does not evolve. The evolution of technique has never been the focal point of artistic interpretation. But concepts, for example; religious, ideological and philosophical, play an important role in human creativity.
From the point of art evolving, your work does not fit nicely into any sort of category or art movement, and I do not think that that should disturb you at all. You are not a postmodern "genre" painter although it is obvious that you admire 17th century still life's and history painting. No matter how classical your technique and no matter how traditional your work may appear to a superficial viewer, no matter how deeply you study history, your work is not "historical'. Rather, you constantly read, re-read and revise the background of American civilization. What A.C. Danto called, "The transfiguration of the commonplace."
In a way, all artists are storytellers. While you were in Turkey I believe we had a conversation about Marquez and his book Vivir Para Contarla (Living for Telling). We live to make stories, constructing meaning, constantly revising the significance of things. If we do not, we cannot survive.
Alles Gute fur Sie und Ihre Familie mein elemental Freund.
Adem
No comments:
Post a Comment