NOVOREALISM

THE NERDRUM AFFAIR and THE UNSUPRESSIBLE ART

2011-12-13T19:36:00.000-08:00

Odd Nerdrum, Self - Portrait

On August 3, 2011 one of the greatest realist artists of our time Odd Nerdrum was much like Ai Weiwei of China convicted to two years in prison without the right to paint on a trumped up and highly politicized tax evasion charges.

AmericanArtist Magazine in its February/March issue runs an article The Nerdrum Affair by Allison Malafronte with contributions by great artists Nelson Shanks, Joakim Ericsson, Richard Thomas Scott, Daniel Graves, and Brandon Kralik describing events surrounding this shameful case. I was privileged to be part of this project and am deeply grateful to the the editorial board of American Artist for its support in this and for helping our voice to be heard. Yes, American and International Artists stand by their colleague and a great ARTIST, who belongs to the world much as he honors Norway!

Here are my thoughts on the issue.

I still remember an enormous impact Odd’s “Namegivers” had on me upon my arrival from the Soviet Union to the U.S. in the early 90s.

As I was consumed by figuring out the place for realist tradition within a modern society, his works were bright examples of the extraordinary possibilities this long neglected Art Form had offered in our time. They still are.

The recent shameful campaign of suppression by the government of Norway against this influential visionary, a cultural icon and one of my favorite true Masters amounts to nothing less than a government purging of intellectual independence.

I do not remember anything comparable to this travesty since the days of communist persecution of Joseph Brodsky or when communist party bosses were conducting similar campaigns against my Dad.

The unprecedented severity of sentence the Norwegian government rendered upon this great Artist is entirely disproportionate to any actions incriminated to him. For the country priding itself on liberal leniency and civilized fairness toward real and violent criminal offenders, Odd’s sentence amounts to nothing less than a capital punishment.

The glaring disconnect between the severity of punishment and incriminated actions, the questionable evidence and deeply flawed judicial process that would never stand the scrutiny of U.S. justice system - all smacks of Stalin’s infamous “show trials.”

When the leading governments of the world are collectively implicated in perpetration and cover up of the largest financial heist in the history of mankind; when through almost two decades they were enabling and now actively shielding from justice the gang of international banking criminals who deliberately impoverished nations and got away with it - for the Norwegian government to be throwing the full wrath of its fury for whatever financial infractions they accuse him of at the Artist and the international cultural treasure is shameful, unconscionable and despicable.

Odd Nerdrum’s case also brings to mind a social persecution and eventual imprisonment of Egon Schiele by the Austrian government on the trumped-up “pornography” charges.

Odd Nerdrum is another misunderstood artistic genius brutally victimized by the inhumane and immoral totalitarian bureaucracy permanently suspicious and threatened by the free spirit of an individual it is incapable of controlling.

Odd Nerdrum is a true ARTIST, and the true ARTISTS can never be silenced by the power.

Three Namegivers 1990, 226 x 207 cm

Twin Mothers

The Waterprotectors 1985, 153 x 183 cm

Self-Portrait

Michael Klein’s “Moment In Time”

2011-09-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

Withthe exciting phase the newly vigorous and subversive Serious ContemporaryAmerican Realism is entering rapidly and inevitably, and with the “official”art world having neither ability nor credibility to contemplate it - it isbecoming increasingly important for artists themselves to fill the intellectualvoid and to give the insights to their thinking behind their constantlydeveloping work.

Ithink it is of a crucial importance that the points of view from the significant to our movement figures are presentedadequately, and that the artists have an ability to deliver their unpolluted messageand to describe their position in the most authentic personal voice backed bytheir work, life-long reputation and experience.

Always fascinated with theviews of artists whose work I admire and whose thinking I consider particularlyrelevant, evenwhen they disagree with each other or with me, I am enormously happy to welcome a great friend and, in my opinion, oneof the most sensitive and elegant artists alive today – Michael Klein - to sharehis current views on ART and to unveil his recent work, a complete masterpiecethat can be at peace next to any work in any museum – his breathtakinglybeautiful “Moment In Time.”

There are millions of stilllives and thousands of flowers of various qualities painted every day, yet inrare instances this genre acquires all traits of my beloved figurative ARTform.

Separating “trick” fromknowledge of nature, exercising restraint and intensity within remarkablydelicate, yet firm and grounded color range, Michael physically slows the flowof time as we start realizing the rarefied complexity of his tonal definitionsin this seemingly mundane objects.

As we do – they gain soul andshare it with us. The pots that smell of earth, their emptiness inviting thecool glow of the Rose that is all at the same time real and ethereal like anIdea of Beauty itself, in his “Moment In Time” Michael delivers a sense ofnoble embrace of Life-As-It-Is reconciling it with the one he believes in.

Authentic and refined voicecoming straight from the heart - it is a cheer aesthetic pleasure to witnessMichael deliver a work of such main caliber.

Alexey

Michael Klein "Moment In Time" oil on paper 20" X 24"

The Importance of Art and Beauty

Michael Klein

When observing art, we look through a context ofsomething other than the art itself. Essentially every person will end up deciding what they believe art isand what function it serves. Thequestion I ask myself is, "Is there a basis we can judge artby?" I've come to the beliefthat there is. I will attempt inthis article to clarify my position on what I consider truly to be"Art."

I must first point out that individuals are FREE topursue whatever form of expression they choose and this liberty is completelyunlike any other time period in history. Nonetheless, due to the absence of some external standard, chaos hasoccurred in the art world and now everyone is scrambling to find a way out ofan "everything is art" philosophy. Essentially if EVERYTHING is art then NOTHING is art, and Ican't agree with this position. I believe there is a necessity to find a commonlanguage to unite and guide us that allows for freedom of ideas withoutdestroying the craft of painting.

We can observe nature through many different"conceptual" lenses and it will essentially remain the same. Therefore, I believe that everythinghas to be tied into "natural law." The only concrete thing that connects us back to great artfrom different time periods is the physical world in which we exist. A piece of wood from a tree is visuallyidentical today as it was a thousand years ago.

Furthermore, our minds have the capacity to be ableto contemplate our very being. There is no other creature in existence that canstop and admire the beauty of something so profound as a sunset. There are few things in our daily livesmore fascinating than watching the sun rise in the early morning or set in theevening. So how did this subjectbecome one of the most despised forms of art to the modern thinker? It can't be true that a modern artistdoes not want to contemplate the sunset. I think it is a deeper philosophical or psychological issue. Yet another example would be the humanfigure; the human figure is one of the most breathtaking subjects in art muchlike the sunset.

Let's take a recent example of a modern artist suchas Jackson Pollock. There are manyinteresting things about what Pollock did in his career and what his life'swork represents. Eventuallythough, one always comes back to the simple fact that his art is literally justpaint thrown on the canvas. Thisartist was passionate about something and I agree that his spirit of freedomdid come through in his art. Therewas no other artist in our history that dripped paint on a canvas. The thought probably never occurred toanyone that something so basic could have any importance at all. The innovation within his process wasthat it broke a pattern of thinking about what art is and why it matters.

I believe that a form of exceptionalrepresentational painting is closer to science because you have a fixed truth,which is the external world around us. Making art is a series of personal decisions based on that true source,which is the natural world. We canrefer to it as natural law because it doesn't change; the law of gravity is thesame now as it was before it was discovered. From the beginning of time the gravitational pulls ofdifferent parts of the universe have existed.

This brings us to painting and how it has evolved,or gone through changes, throughout the different eras of our existence. These are important issues to discussbecause they have a profound effect on our understanding of art. We can observe just about any otheractivity and there is always a set of limits that the person participatingcannot violate. Take for exampledoctors; they must work within the limits of how the human body functions toadequately do their job. They must respect the fact that our brains need oxygenthat is carried through the blood stream and if that flow is altered we willeventually die. A tennis playermust respect the law of gravity when contemplating where the ball will land andat what speed, etc. He must alsorespect the specific rules of the game or it ceases to be tennis and may becomeping-pong. The examples go onforever, in every activity except that of our beloved representational art.

The modern-art world has completely missed thepoint of what painting is and why it is important. Painting is a subset of something much larger. It is a sort of homage to humanexistence and the joy of life as we know it. When I observe nature while painting, it is a long processof discovering many infinite subtle changes that make up a larger human experience. If I spend a month on a project, it isa month of my life poured into the study and eventually artistic reaction to mysurroundings in paint. If you spendtime with anyone that long, you will become acquainted with that person’scharacter, their spirit or their individual personality. The same is true with art. Painting is a reflection of thephysical and metaphysical world. The artist is confronted with the immense task of trying to capture thehuman spirit within a few ordinary objects such as a linen canvas and groundpigments.

When we intentionally turn our backs on natural lawor nature, then we are dismantling the very foundation of everything that isthe only true thing in the universe. Popular trends come and go, but the same torso that was sculpted inancient Greece strikes a chord and resonates equally profoundly today because itwas based on a truth. When weenter into the realm of representational art, we immediately are confrontedwith the complexities that exist. What has previously been a respectable pursuit of human intelligence hasalmost been entirely neglected by certain institutions for their ignorance towhat art really is. My hope isthat eventually people will turn back to the world around us for theirinspiration.

More new works by Michael Klein

"Boat Dock" oil on panel 5.5" x 10.5"

"Karina's Rose II" oil on panel 44" x 24"

"Las Sababs" oil on panel 4.5" x 7.5"

POWER OF ROMANTICISM IN THE EMERGING ART OF THE 21ST CENTURY: The NOVOREALISM gang is part of The New Romantic Figure show at CLU

2011-08-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

Paintings by
Michael Lynn Adams, Peter Adams, Jeremy Lipking, Cyn McCurry,
Michael Pearce,Tony Pro, Alexey Steele and Mia Tavonatti

August 20 - September 30, 2011

Kwan Fong Gallery
California Lutheran University

On a spring day of 1805 with two haunting and soul-steering abrupt opening chords of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony No. 3, Romanticism forever etched into our collective consciousness and greatly changed the world we live in.

Manifesting deep-rooted revolt against social and political norms of the previous era, it waged a rebellion against regimented and ordained of the classicism, against impending Industrial Revolution and over-rationalization of nature. It did so through unambiguous and unapologetic engagement of the personal putting an individual ahead of the sanctity of the world’s order. It made its stand on an unshakably deep faith in the ability of an individual to challenge the course of pre-ordained destiny and proclaimed liberation of deep personal emotions. The notions of Love, Destiny, Service, Sacrifice became a propelling force of this heroic drive.

While severely broken by the horrors of the 20th century beginning with WWI, then emergence of Communism and Fascism followed by WWII, Romanticism still manifested itself even in the complete and violent rejection by modernist movement of any Romantic notion entirely and which eventually were purged from any prominence in the cultural field in the second half of the 20^th century.

Today as we experience a new dramatic change in the flow of global events and rapid shifts in the ways society used to function through the last century, the Romantic notion of liberating of Personal once again destined to shift the course of cultural history.

A peculiar aspect of the official post-modernist establishment is that it largely reminiscing later day classicism with its regimented prescription of how appropriate art shall look like. In this part modern day romanticists are continuing on the freedom of self-expression notion of their artistic fore-bearers.

Another inherently Romantic view is a sense of Purposeful Seriousness in the Act of Being. Y es, there are things in life worth living for outside of consumption, greed and glee promoted mercilessly by the official main stream.

Liberating true emotions from the suppression of both - the entrenched precepts of the official post-modernist establishment which delegitimizes any human feeling in Art just as much as from the clutches of commercialist packaging pushing mass consumed goods for the purpose of corporate bottom line - Romanticism of our day seeks re-affirming the humanistic sanctity of Personal Truth, Meaning, Beauty and Purpose.

Truthfulness in complexity of Image and Character as opposite to stereotypical convention, found in the works of serious leading artists of our days is exploring the depths of what is Real and True, piercing in a constant search into the very mysteries of the Visible.

As all social declines precipitated by apathy and convenient relativism – the trail blazing Romanticism once again flares its flames as an expression of wide public discontent with the forces of hyper-greed, injustice and corruption within society and affirmation of human ability to overcome any emerging challenge.

The all-powerful opening bursts of Eroica are striking a chord with humanity in flux once again.

Jeremy Lipking "Evening Light" oil 40" X 30"

Jeremy Lipking "Nude In Repose" oil 12" X 20"

Tony Pro "Thoughts Of Whistler" oil 24" X 18"

Alexey Steele "Madonna Of The Storm: Unia and Wolf.

The Storm is Comming" oil 80" X 36"

Alexey Steele "Rising: Jaboy, Christian, Derron, Michael, Luis"
100" X 80" charcoal, pastel pencils, mixed medium on paper

Opening reception:
Saturday, Aug. 20, 7 p.m.
Artists' reception:
Saturday, Sept. 10, 7 p.m.

The Arrival of ART Spring: Pope John Paul II statue by Oliviero Rainaldi debacle and public revolt against “Official Modernism”

2011-05-23T12:29:00.000-07:00

The lame excuse of work being “modern” does not justify “ugly” any more as public outcry over newly erected with all “official art” approvals John Paul II statue by Oliviero Rainaldi in Rome clearly shows. Times DO change!!!!!!!!

Lets be absolutely clear it is “ugly” not because it attempted to be modern, it is ugly because it is soooooooo utterly bad.

The abstract shape of the cloak simply does not work. From a purely abstract point of view there is not a hint of spatial or compositional dynamics or tension in it. There are neither lines of tension nor volume of austere stillness. There are neither unity, nor motion. It is neither severe, nor it is whimsical. It is simply dull and yawningly boring visually, while being intolerably bulky. That is what makes it seem ridiculously out of place and monstrously oppressive. That is what makes it truly “ugly.”

The stated attempt of a heavily stylized open robe to convey “embrace” is just as “original” in its idea as it is “compelling” in its execution. It actually resembles more a 125mm shell distorted by misfire.

Then there is an issue of a conspicuous head rendition of much admired world wide JPII. The nakedly obvious to any Italian or anyone even slightly versed in the painful history of 20^th century visual reference to Benito Mussolini while might’ve tickled someone’s fancy and get some giggles out of “enlightened elite” does not stand any intellectual scrutiny what so ever and shall be considered plain stupid! Claiming “ignorance” wouldn’t cut it.

So much for “tong-in-cheek” requirement for any “officially approved” by cultural politburo art. There are clear limitations to the extent and effectiveness of dumb-down mockery.

If this guy has some beef with Roman Catholic Church/despite making his living of it for 30 years it is/ – he has every right to express it, but than he should’ve declined the commission and do a memorial for victims of clergy abuse instead. The current opus is too hideous and incoherent for that either. So not only the reference to Mussolini is stupid, it is a dishonest one too.

The only defense by the sculptor is that “he wanted to create something contemporary rather than realistic rendition in the style of the 19^th century” is just as lame of an excuse as it betrays the totally conformist and disingenuous mindset. Simply decrying 19^th century art while producing something hideous does not qualify for "modern work" it only brings to light the overriding desire to fit “lucrative stylistic criteria” which is a definition of commercialism.

Any attempt to pull an old dusty “genius, un-understood by vulgar public” line of defense is just as laughable in this case as it is deeply pathetic.

Yet, the main issue here is the aspect of “official approvals” as the work went through all “appropriate channels”. We witness the inevitable bankruptcy of the very concept of the “official art form” – the only one sanctioned, demanded and enforced by authority, which modernism had sadly become at the end of last century. The most fascinating part of the report in L’Osservatorre Romano is that it acknowledged the sculpture being a “modern work” and therefore felt obliged to call the city’s initiative “praiseworthy” - oh, but of course, in order to be “officially” progressive, one has to proclaim allegiance to “modern” /much like there had to be ritualistic references to "genius of Lenin and leading role of the communist party" in the old Soviet Union/ and in order for anything to be “modern” it just has to be “ugly”…well these guys are desperately stuck waaaaaay in the last century.

No, it does not have to be “ugly” to be “modern”, the prime of this notion has gone alone with virginity of summer of love bra burners.

Yes, there is a need for a coherent unity of Content Clarity and Formal Integrity in any style to be “modern.” That Formal Integrity shall come directly as a genuine desire to deliver that Clarity of Content regardless of any expected judgment of high priests of an outlived its usefulness establishment cult.

A really instructive lesson of this debacle is yes, one can bull shit his or her way out of a failed “conceptual” work and no, same is impossible with the figurative work.

It is so sad, yet poignant that it had to be a venerable legacy of a beloved John Paul II desecrated by the much removed from current cultural reality art apparatchiks in the midst of infinitely inspiring Eternal City to spark the outrage and the revolt of the public sick of being treated as “vulgar mob.” The public had head it with permanent visual water boarding of ugliness on our streets under the banner of fraudulent “modernity”. It is the season of not just Middle East Spring – it is a season of ART Spring as well!!!

AWAY with the “official art” of a required “ugliness”!!!!!!!!!!!

VIVA NOVO!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110520/ap_on_re_eu/eu_vatican_pope_s_sculpture

BREAKING NEWS: Sept 28, 2011: The Pope Statue will change! But how?
http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/controversial-pope-statue-to-change-26767346.html#crsl=%252Fvideo%252Fworld-15749633%252Fcontroversial-pope-statue-to-change-26767346.html

NYT is calling into question the entire term “contemporary art” – a tectonic shift for the Art World!

2011-02-25T13:08:00.000-08:00

In the most staggering for NYT manner SOUREN MELIKIAN in his February 24, 2011 article

questioning the validity of the entire term "contemporary art"
calling contemporary art "contemporary rejectionism"
establishing the lack of financial security in the art based on negation
calling into question the financial sanity of its hyper-inflated price tags
stating the necessity to define the style of the artist and the shared aesthetics within the group of artists
and, oh, havens, openly sarcastic of an untouchable Koons!!!!!!

isn'it what NOVOREALISM is all about!

“The feverish debate goes on about contemporary art, causing considerable angst among its many new fans. How safe a haven is it for those in search of tangible assets for their liquidities?” he opens up with a really big, couple of billion bucks worth question.

He questions the reasons for volatility in price swings: “One reason is that it is often impossible to define the style of the artist”

Then he offers a refreshingly open, sarcastic view on Koons noting on his "work" that “neither was made by the artist using his hands” upon which point duly proceeds to laughing at a resell of household and hardware store items on the “art” auctions.

Yet the most staggering and consequential part is this:

“The day has yet to arrive when someone comes up with a clear definition of just what contemporary art is/emphasis is mine, AS/… Works by long dead artists are sold under the “contemporary art” banner…At Sotheby’s in November, 36 of 55 lots were credited to defunct artists, and at Christie’s 52 out of 76. Arshile Gorky died in 1948, Mark Rothko in 1970, Andy Warhol in 1987, Roy Lichtenstein and Willem de Kooning in 1997, to mention but a few among the most famous and expensive.”

This is one of the central points of concern I have been raising on this pages and in my public talks - the gross inappropriateness of using outside of its proper commonly shared meaning of a clearly defined in the dictionary word to market a very narrow, arbitrarily picked items of vested interest while implying that everything else is not "contemporary." The word "contemporary" does not have any qualitative meaning attached to it and can only be used to describe anything or anyone present concurrently in our time. Any artist working and alive today is a "contemporary artist" while long dead Andy Warhol is most certainly not.

Then while observing that “the absence of shared aesthetics is glaring” within what is sold under “contemporary art” brand Souren addresses its main unifying quality:

“..But while the works dubbed contemporary are as disparate in visual terms as they vary in their material execution, they can be said to reflect the same cultural reality: one way or another, they proceed from a violent reaction against the century-old tradition of Western art as it developed until World War I”

From this he concludes that “the only binding characteristic is they all “form of rejectionism.”

Then he goes to the root of Marcel Duchamp factor “The French intellectual, contemptuous of the establishment, wanted to bury the ancient culture of Europe.”

And he calls him a grand father of “artistic nihilism that much of the contemporary art promoted on the auction scene represents.”

Than Souren makes an important analysis:

“If there is one thing that cannot be guaranteed to be financially rock solid, this is an art based on negation.” Now that’s really BIG – Wall Street dirty handed hedge-funders, Russian social climbing oligarchs and Chinese Nouveau riche better pay good attention.

From that sound financial advice Souren proceeds to giving the best definition to what is now pushed on us as contemporary art – it is“contemporary rejectionism” bravo NYT!!!!!

It’s a really great term all the way around that really shall be adopted by the institutions as it finally defines what it is that they so fervently, adamantly and narrowly represent!

The closing of the article is really worth pondering for many in every corner of our great and diverse truly contemporary ART world - the ART world of our days:

“The day one of the pundits discovers that the king has no clothes on, all the glib talk of marketing teams telling investors how savvy they are will not prevent tens of millions of dollars from melting like butter in the sun.”

Thanks NYT! Finally!!!!!!! Thanks Souren!

here is the link to the whole article

VIVA NOVO!!!!!!!!!

Time for ART REVOLUTION!

2011-02-01T13:13:00.000-08:00

On December 8, 2010 a group of some of today’s remarkable Realist Artists, thinkers and supporters gathered in New York for a heavy dose of ART insurgency plotting at an undisclosed location. Never liking prepped or written speeches, this time around this is exactly what I did.

So here it is.

***

We are an enormously fortunate generation; we live at the era of across-the-board exhausted old and still emerging new. We live at the moment in ART history that only happens once in 70 – 80 years.

We are grateful to those who carried the torch of our ART before us in the darkest hour, to the generation of Richard Schmid, my Dad Leonid Steele, Burt Silverman, and others.

We are grateful to those, who should have been here with us today, but whom I consider fallen as soldiers on the battlefield of our ART. I am talking first and foremost about my friend and inspiration Frederick Heart, whom I invite everybody to remember… as he is certainly with us today.

We are an enormously fortunate generation who have an ability to establish ourselves independently. We witness this generation to enter Art - life prime collectively creating a Serious Realist Art.

We are the first great and genuine movement of the 21st century. Genuine Movement by no means is a “certain look” or gimmick; genuine movement is a codex of certain principles and judgments based on shared Ideas and World view that drives a multi-faceted and diverse face of today’s Serious Realism.

Now, as the reality of our movement is closing in – we have a new set of responsibilities and obligations as artists. First and foremost I deeply believe it is to come up with works that reflect this new-found position, second and just as important is to self-reflect, self-examine, self-define and to convey it to the public. Cut away from public, ART suffocates as interacting with a viewer is just as much part of making it as paints or clay.

Logic is incontrovertible, logic is beyond interpretation. Where we start is as important as where we want to end.

It is time to think about ourselves – who we are and what is it, that makes us who we are, what is it, that connects us while clearly separates from other valid expressions of our time.

It is also crucial to define our audience and the message we are to convey to them. I believe our audience is not just “art shoppers,” but the society and the public at large.

We have to deliver to the public a compelling ART and the compelling message about it, which reflects this new reality.

I. So the first great Issue is who are we and what is our ART?

In my absolutely firm belief based on a culture I am from, ART is not a product, but an Idea, ART is not a product – it is a Cause. It means that Intangibles of this objects that we create generate more value than objects themselves.

That is why ART is not a retail product, but eventually a financial instrument, based on these Intangibles. Modernism is not a product, but an Idea and you cannot fight Idea with a Product.

It is this shared Idea of ART that gives a cohesion to an enormously diverse group of some of today’s greatest talents, that chose consciously a specific language and set of tools based on this Idea as a vehicles of their expression.

We are enormously diverse within itself group, yet there’s something despite all the variety of approaches that exists as a common thread and that clearly distinguishes it from other diverse forms in today’s ART.

That distinction I believe shall be established with all clarity as this exact distinction is an Idea worth spending your life pursuing and fighting for and which defines the Intangibles that ultimately create the cultural value of our movement.

This overriding, across the board distinction I believe is the Spirit of the work being the Spirit and the World View of a Classical Humanistic Ideal and representing anything less within our format would be throwing a baby alone with the water. I believe our most common thread is the innate quality of work that derives only from the deeply embedded, revering experience of studying life and working live.

This overriding Idea that fuels systems most of us deploy is the persecuted by a Modernist and post-modernist establishment concept of Humanistic Beauty, which is no, not in the eyes of a beholder any more – relativism is just as dead as shock or deconstruction in the era of suicide bombings. What we do I believe is based on the concept of Beauty, which is understood as innately residing within unalienable qualities of a beheld.

To that extent what are the boundaries of our movement?

In my view the buck stops at photorealism, because where the Photorealism starts, Realism ends. Photorealism is a perfectly valid and widely accepted by the establishment part of post-modernist canon and we only can be that happy about any and all of its distinguished practitioners. But this is not what we do.

Photorealism is a recreation of techno-experience, reflecting last century’s fascination with technological revolution and mass consumption. In the 21st century we live with the consequences of this fascination in extinguishing our resources and seeing the humanity beginning to rebel against the rule of corporate monopoly induced consumerism.

The relationship of Photo and Serious Realism is somewhat reminds me the relationship of Solzhenitsyn and Soviet Interior Minister/Chief of Police/ a wonderfully educated man who tried quite courageously to plead Solzhenitsin’s case to Politburo obviously to no avail. Despite all personal affinity Soviet police state system and Solzhenitsyn turned out to be incompatibles.

Contemporary Humanistic Realism, as a trained, human perception based method stands ready to reflect this new cultural transformation.

It is why the distinction between techno experience driven photorealism and human perception driven realism cannot be clearer or more vital.

II. As we talk about our future and future of what we do in every practical sense – it is impossible to ignore the issue of our position toward existing modernist and post-modernist Institutional Art Establishment and about their position toward us.

I know, some people who seen the worst say, well modernist rule was predicted to fall for so long that its never going to happen – well, it is exactly what very informed and intelligent people were saying about Soviet rule…a few short years before its inevitable collapse.

There is no more single righteous aesthetic system of the day in the modern world, the way it existed for millennia. There are a number of established, sometimes mutually exclusive, even completely opposite aesthetic systems coexisting in the cultural field of our time and functioning based on the set of their own complex rules and principles. Each of them has an undeniable historic and cultural validity regardless of anyone’s personal preference.

Based on this notion the existence of Institutions, exclusively dominated by a single aesthetic system is not only an “old model” that is outlived its usefulness, it is a criminal model that is an affront to a modern principles of diversity and equality.

What we collectively call “modernism” or “post-modernism” is one of the historically important aesthetic modes, yet modernist dictatorship and totalitarian control of institutions is unacceptable violation of modern principles of fairness under any circumstances.

Never and under any circumstances would I accept a second-class citizenship status at the back of the ART bus imposed upon us by the “official” art authority of our day.

I consider it an affront to any perception of modern values for bright young talents who would choose to learn in the accredited institutions based on a worldview that I happen to share to be denigrated to the status of “illustration” and most certainly not a “fine art”. This is the crime of “Institutional Prejudice” perpetrated by the totalitarian dictatorship of a single aesthetic mode authority.

SO:

• We are not a group that is making “good” art while wining and complaining about a group that is making “bad” art, we are unfairly marginalized by the authority group that fights for equal rights. We are against ANY group ever to be in a position to suppress another – therefore each group shall be judged only by its peers and according to its internal rules, principles and criteria – anything less is “Institutional Prejudice”.

• We fight for “De-privatization” of the ultimate public asset, our common language, we fight for de-privatization of term “Contemporary” as marketing description of a single, arbitrarily chosen by the authority group – any publically funded institution claiming representing “contemporary” art process shall adequately represent the diversity of an actually existing cultural contemporary reality

• We are not fighting to replace current totalitarian aesthetic establishment with totalitarian rule of our own – we are fighting to replace the outlived totalitarian institutional model all together, we are fighting for the aesthetic diversity and objectivity of the publically funded institutions for their own viability and longevity sake

ß Realists have no competence to judge modernist expression; Modernists have no competence to judge realist expression

• Serious Contemporary Realism shall be equally represented in all institutional venues claiming objectivity: Museums, Art Criticism, Accredited Educational Facilities, Academic Research – anything less is “Institutional Prejudice”

• We fight for an equal public access as an institutional establishment cannot discriminate against an existing and viable art movement

• We are standing firmly on the position of the Artistic Freedom of Expression that is being presently suppressed, stymied and inhibited by the institutional authority

• Until that happens - American Realism is a newest form of American non-conformism suppressed by Institutional Prejudice and Discrimination of a modern day “academy”

ß Serious Humanistically driven Realism of our day, based on the concept of inalienable rights of BEAUTY - is a true “Modernism” of our day heralding the new wider stage in ART history that could be called “Post-Post Modernism” or “Super-Post Modernism.” It is now the flag bearer of the very anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian Spirit upon which the MOMA was founded, but which it is now wholly betrayed. This movement now occupies the same position Modernism had 100 years ago, this movement is charting the course for the Art of the 21st century

Now this is the message worth carrying as credo in our work and for public to be excited about, this is the message Rick Heart would’ve been proud off.

Thank you.

***

Realist Revolution and Critical Relevance: The Most Memorable Panel Discussion at PSOA

2010-09-06T11:12:00.000-07:00

After enormously intense and exciting Spring of our fantastic PSOA adventure in DC and the “Hottest Summer” on record with three concurrent shows and quite a bit of painting it's great to come back and to reflect on most fascinating intellectual exchange and sharing of ideas we had at the Realist Revolution panel. Good times are timeless and not soon-forgotten! Here are my thoughts, notes and comments on it in three parts.

Part I

These were my thoughts going into that most memorable panel:

We live in a corrupt world that in so many ways has lost its way, regardless of good intentions it might’ve had at the beginning of its most recent dead end. It happened many times before: oppressed rebels taking reins of absolute power, indulge in it, becoming corrupt oppressors themselves and running the whole thing in their hands to a ground. Human nature is ever the same. Yet, this is exactly at those junctions when the new turns happen. We are the lucky generation at such a turn.

This is the only reason we are all at the point we find ourselves today. There are many words to describe what we all experience, yet the most crucial thing that makes it all possible I think and gives meaning to any words is the very simple and exciting fact – we have a critical mass of highly developed talent hitting their prime while united under very similar views and practices. Just look at events like PSOA, Masters, our Classical Underground, rooms where these greatest talents share their views in panel discussions or show what they can do in demos and lectures are packed with truly youthful vibrancy and excitement. In any classic definition – it is a movement!

There is definitely much to reflect upon for everyone and that is what I think about it.

One important thing to understand – we are not a “preseravationist society” or certainly not any more, we are contemporary artists and an inseparable part of the overall multi-dimensional and diverse “Greater Art World”. There is in a sense no more of what used to be called “Art World” as very narrowly defined and much in-bread closed circuit. We are a community and we are part of a greater community.

Insuring the knowledge transfer is the great duty of anyone I think who takes his or her participation within an unbroken chain of tradition seriously. It is in a way our sacred duty and those who did it before us in a darkest hour with greatest of commitment and sacrifice have a permanent place in history. We and everyone after us - are and will be forever grateful to them.

Yet, the noble tradition that we for whatever combination of determination and fortune have managed to acquire is just a tool at our disposal – we have to use it accepting all responsibility for a remarkable time in history we are so fortunate to be part of.

It is the extent to which we will manage to apply this noble tradition which we represent that will secure its place in the Future – the Future that we can all be part of shaping now and the place that will be much different from what it was throughout last century, particularly its second half.

Art that we love is a Force, we have to master it through understanding of Great Tradition and not to simply ensure that knowledge transfer, but to use this Force to answer the deeply personal calls of our times… times of our own and of our viewers.

Through the knowledge transfer we are given the power of our artistic ancestors. Through us their Force lives on in our time, speaking to hearts of our people.

Soldiers use the “Lethal Force to Kill” on a battlefield - We, the artists, are in a possession of a “Vital Force to Heal”… to recreate Life itself.

We have to be conscious of this power to wield it. And wield it we shall. One brush stroke at a time. The Spirits of Great Ones before us are smiling upon us today. We are the first genuine movement of the 21st century.

We better be worthy of the honor… and damn the torpedoes!!!

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Part II

On Friday April 23rd, 2010 my comrade-in-brush, a truly great artist Jeremy Lipking and myself put together a panel discussion at the PSOA conference in Washington DC titled

Contemporary Art:
Realist Revolution
And
Critical Relevance
Is mainstream media missing an important cultural trend?

Firmly moderated by Jeremy the panel’s distinguished members were:

Jacob Collins

One of the most accomplished realist painters of our time, founder of influential and in my view the closest to the ideals of Academic educational tradition Grand Central Academy in New York

Vern G. Swanson, Ph.D

Director of Springville Museum of Art in Sprinville, Utah, an authority on the Academic Art of the 19th century with major books on Alma Tadema and John William Godward among many others as well as on Russian Realist School of the Soviet Period. I had a privilege contributing to his authoritative “Soviet Impressionism” book that recently went through its second edition.

James Panero

Writer and Managing Editor of intellectually formidable The New Criterion, one of the sharpest pens and minds around, who is still willing and able to thrust both with fencing precision

and…

what was I doing in this esteemed company?

So here is the program of the panel starting with that great Alfred Barr quote Jeremy dug out:

An actual “battle of styles,” as for instance between realism and abstraction, is desirable only to those who thrive on a feeling of partisanship. Both directions are valid and useful—and freedom to produce them and enjoy them should be protected as an essential liberty. There are, however, serious reasons for taking sides when one kind of art or another is dogmatically asserted to be the only funicular up Parnassus or, worse, when it is maliciously attacked by the ignorant, the frightened, the priggish, the opportunistic, the bigoted, the backward, the vulgar or the venal. Then those who love art or spiritual freedom cannot remain neutral.
—Alfred Barr, 1949 first director of MOMA

Premisis

Along with its own topic the panel is intending to continue on some fascinating themes and topics raised by a recent important panel “Future of Art Criticism” held at MOCA on Thursday, March 25, 2010 and organized by Annenberg School of Communication at USC;

Our aim is to encourage the much needed dialog within the greater Art community.

The extensive report on the panel could be found at www.novorealism.com

Questions to panel participants:

Q. Should same journalistic standards be applied to art criticism?

Q. How appropriate is the use of a term “contemporary” to describe just an “officially” sanctioned by establishment singular part of cultural process?

Q. What aspects of newly emerging Realist movement are the most fascinating to you?

Q. What are the limitations to the currently ultimate power of critic to ignore and how do you see the future of Art Criticism?

Q. Do you believe that institutions claiming to be representative of contemporary process in Art shall be reflecting existing aesthetic diversity on the ground?

Q. At the MOCA panel Bennett Simpson stated: “It is not Art Criticism’s Job to move Art Forward, it’s Art’s Job to move Art Forward. It used to be in the past – not any more.” For all that it means coming from such representative of the establishment, what kind of Art do you think will move the Art forward?

And here the fun began…
gotta tell you, outside of a few particular moments in life including some most memorable painting sessions, this was the most exhilarating experience:

See for yourself in this finally edited thanks to tireless Tom Bunning version with much more audible sound than it was on a live-stream

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Video 4

Video 5

Video 6

Video 7

Video 8

Here the links to what James wrote on the panel

http://www.supremefiction.com/theidea/2010/04/realist-revolution.html

http://www.newcriterion.com/posts.cfm/Realist-Revolution-6246

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Gallery-chronicle-5331

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Part III

In addition to the program and videos I am also posting the notes to my own answers as well. Sorry, they are as raw as toro ever gets

Q. Should same journalistic standards be applied to art criticism?

I believe as moderator on that MOCA panel put it that “ anybody writing anything commits an act of journalism,” essentially I believe that anybody associating with institutional voice has a responsibility and shall adhere to principles of impartial observation of reality.

I do not believe that “journalism” is just a form of a “classified” or a “calendar of events” - it is silly to reduce journalism to recitation of “what, who and where”, so the personal choice, call and opinion are inherent to journalism. Yet journalism does stand for a credibility of an impartial description of reality particularly as a voice of institutional authority to a wider public.

Much of establishment criticism was for a long time and still remains anything but “intelligent impartial observer” it implies to be, it largely became an integral part of an essentially a special interest group.

As it is now most of official art criticism in media lost any of its credibility as an intelligent, competent, unattached observer. As it stands now, art criticism is primarily involved in a business of propaganda and advertisement, pushing very expensive goods for special vested interest. Blowing air into a Koons/Hirst bubble is a very sad example.

Koons and Hirst are a sub-prime of the Art world - an un-substantiated by any underlying value artificial asset, hyper-inflated through blatant push on the levers of power.

Q. How appropriate is the use of a term “contemporary” to describe just an “officially” sanctioned by establishment singular part of cultural process?

“Contemporary” as defined in Wiki dictionary is “someone or something from the same period” any other limitations on its use shall be considered an act of naked privatization by special vested interest of an ultimately public and shared asset – our common language.

It is an action of the same kind as putting penalties on using rain water in one of Latin American countries by a multinational corp. or privatization of industrial giants built by slave labor of Gulag prisoners in the Soviet Union by the descendants of those who sent those prisoners there in the first place.

This very simple and logical realization shall have massive implications as either the content or the name of every collection claiming being “contemporary” would have to be dramatically altered to maintain any legitimacy.

Q. What aspects of newly emerging Realist movement are the most fascinating to you?

Realism has perhaps 30 to 35 000 year old history, it is enormously diverse and it obviously went through many periods of drastic transformations. Yet our stage in realism’s development is I think enormously exciting and unique, particularly because of modernist and deconstructionist experience of the last century.

It is the first time in at least few centuries that the widening appreciation of Realism happens not as a matter of habit but as a matter of a clear choice. Personally I am grateful to modernism for that. It is a deeply “re-constructionist” movement today. Positive, forward looking and bringing hope to the world in crisis. It starts from afresh and it is enormously exciting.

I believe that American Realism is the most current form of American Non-Conformism

Q. What are the limitations to the currently ultimate power of critic to ignore and how do you see the future of Art Criticism?

Power to ignore is a formidable beast, yet it only works when you have the total control on the information flow either through exclusive grip on media channels or exclusive grip on credibility. Modern criticism has lost both. Blogs took away the medium while Koons/Hirst -credibility.

In this precarious situation ignoring real and exciting trends on the ground dooms any “official arbiter” to irrelevance. They are simply missing the train, as the train of ART does not wait for anyone.

I do believe in the Future of Art criticism much as I believe in the Future of ART itself. We do need critics’ perspective unbiased by anything except of their knowledge, competence, and brilliance. Criticism shall have various voices reflecting the richness in true ART diversity of our time and as same event in ART could be viewed from multiple viewpoints. They just have to be represented equally and no single point of view shall be in a position of an “officially sanctioned” opinions. This outlived mode simply cannot sustain any longer, as it is not reflecting a true scope of contemporary reality.

Art criticism of the future I believe is in a unique combination of artist’s passion and journalistic integrity coming through brilliant writing. This criticism will always have a future as long as there is the last Artist and the last Viewer in the world. Critic is an ultimate and passionate viewer who just knows what he or she is looking at.

Q. Do you believe that institutions claiming to be representative of contemporary process in Art shall be reflecting existing aesthetic diversity on the ground?

Absolutely, without it they don’t have a moral or intellectual right to exist. The entire content of every contemporary art collection shall be dramatically reexamined to reflect the actual diversity on the ground. It is an enormously exciting process of rethinking of the basics. Yet how else the true modern Art can ever expect functioning?

This realization came to me after I conducted what I came to call a “Utah Experiment." In a process of judging an annual show at the Springville Museum of Art instead of following the usual safe way of picking middle-of-the-road works, at my suggestion the jury went on to picking the most extreme examples in the entire range of works submitted. The result was unexpectedly fabulous. The best of realist paintings looked surprisingly good next to best abstract, conceptual and extreme alternative works, everything looked fresh and strong next to each other, the routine of same old was broken.

I believe that this historically inevitable rethinking will actually give a new life and purpose to the institutions in deep crisis, extending their lease on life - more new projects, new comparative exhibitions, new catalogs, new conversations, new debate and primarily and mainly – a new connection to contemporary audiences.

Q. At the MOCA panel Bennett Simpson stated and it’s a quote: “It is not Art Criticism’s Job to move Art Forward, it’s Art’s Job to move Art Forward. It used to be in the past – not any more.” For all that it means coming from such representative of the establishment, what kind of Art do you think will move the Art forward?

I believe in a Great Art, in a pinnacle of achievement whichever form it will take, in every individual case. Just averagely good won’t be enough. If history of ART is a case study and it certainly is to me, the whole spectrum of extraordinary - from Vermeer’s direction of a profoundly close look at the ordinary and intimate to Michelangelo’s epically all-encompassing look at heroically human… There are no limitations to greatness.

Yet from my perspective, and again, if we take history as a case study, I believe in a rise of real multi-figure composition as an inevitable next step of deeper fascination with a figure. Composition and big symphonic visual form is what is missing in our ART life. Composition gives visual purpose, as we shall not fall pray to infinite “etudism” as we called it in Russia. The purpose of etude or study is just that – study for a complete work and a process of making yourself better as an artist to accomplish it. At some point you got to use all that.

in ART we trust!

“The Future of Art Criticism” and the most symptomatic panel @ MOCA on Thursday, March 25, 2010 Critiquing the Critiques – RIDE the coming wave!!

2010-04-15T18:50:00.000-07:00

A big disclaimer in order first – all of my personal prejudices/”editorial positions” not withstanding, this is the most thorough and honest description of what I was enormously fortunate to witness that I can master picking on what I found to be most fascinating to me personally. If you’d been there, you’d have your own take, if you in fact were there – you have. Also, it is long - sorry.

funeral of Art criticism

AS WE KNOW IT

Anybody who ever wondered just how bad things really are in the formerly mercurial Arts Valhalla of fate of the art and artists weighing in their divinely guided hands demigods - just had to attend that panel.

Curious and excited about the forward looking premises of the panel, a really top-notch level of participants and primarily the uniqueness of the fact that the panel was sponsored and initiated by the venerable Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism of USC, no less, Jeremy and I just decided, yeah…we gotta see that and just jumped into our cars to dive into the pain of LA’s rush hour. What wouldn’t you do for a freebie. What we came to experience was nothing short of shock…well nothing less could be expected from MOCA after all…yet likely not in a way participants intended.

Instead of a welcoming party for the new, it turned out to be a funeral for the old.

On the other hand, don’t get me wrong(unless you really want to and that’s fine too) it is precisely the sky-high level of participants that made the totality of this experience possible….like the never scoring soccer match of equals, don’t expect goal after goal – that’s mostly for light-weights, but enjoy the swift and unnoticeable subtlety of moves.

To say that the mood was far from joyous excitement of welcoming that strange “new”, is to say nothing. In fact it was so heavy, you could cut it into bricks and it had the feel of a press conference of a short-lived August Putsch at the end of a Gorbachev era that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union or as we say in Russia “the flies were dying”…yet below this apparent dullness of dead water, I felt a tectonic shift of plates in the ocean floor of ART. Nothing less. Exciting – you bet, at some point, I wanted to jump up from my seat screaming “yeah!” Almost did. Cannot really believe some were leaving half way through.

First the panelists:

Andrew Berardini - a cool very young dude, wearing black, of course in super-cool glasses

Sharon Mizota – a sharp as a tack, calm and concise heroine of Tarantino movies

Bennett Simpson – now…that was a surprise…but that later…solid, polished, refined corner stone of the establishment…he really did carry the panel in so many ways.

And, the best for last, moderated or rather “inquired” by an enormously intelligent

Sasha Anawalt of Annenberg – booooooy what a lady…. gotta love democracy and its so very few remaining despite all journalists.

And here IT began.

After a short introduction by Richard Hendrikson of Annenberg who somehow off-hand reminded us of the “high standards of ethical behavior in journalism” to which Annenberg is solely dedicated, Sasha went right in to setting the premises of looking at past, present and future of “art journalism.”

Every word and thought, uttered, blurred or avoided from that point on – had its weight in gold--big league indeed.

Sasha’s Intro

Describing the self-identification of the audience to “art” and to “journalism” done at the request of Mr. Hendrikson at the beginning, she noted “there’s part of a cross-over...there are some that probably merged quite a bit.” This sparked my self-reflection right off the bat as it was something I never thought of before that very moment.

Proposing a quick overview of past and present, Sasha asked us to keep ours and the panelists’ minds on the future.

“If we look backwards at criticism, at journalism really honestly, things were not that great in criticism somewhere until 1965 to 1970s. Around that period of time when the alternative press got going…this is when the incredible chime of voices from critics in all forms of ART came and people began to stand up to authority and begin to push back and make their own way and to create their own alternative press” (that alone was worth the traffic pain!!! The parallel to what we have going on now is obvious…Sasha, you got me onboard right there!!!!!!!)

“I wanted to frame this idea of how good journalism has been up until now and what we are looking at as we go ahead… because there is a tendency to say that it was all so faaaaabulous in the past and there are things that are happening in the future and things that are happening now that are kind of interesting and exciting” (well if you choose to see them or ignore them in order to push the same old, same old, sos, AS)

“As we move into the Future, I look at this time right now as if we were a post-shock generation” (what a perfectly huge statement for all it means to all of us coming from the place we were in - was arguing the official time in the “coroner report” for Death of Shock being the Habacuc dog, AS)

When Sasha turned to the panelists – this is where things started to get really juicy:

Art Writing and Journalism

That was really a key topic of discussion and… here the fumbling began…these are not people normally known for fumbling, or lack of words, or lack of informed opinion, yet here it was… you are not gonna believe this… as little as the panelists agreed with each other on lots of the topics, apparently none of them believed that “art writing” (they also often tried to avoid the term “criticism”, interesting, ah?) is “journalism” !!!!!

I really gasped for air when I realized this and all its implications. I turned to Jeremy whose response was, “yeah that’s one thing they agree on”

It is perhaps after realizing this too and after thinking a split-second that Sasha seemed to reduce this big question in her mind to absolute self-evidential simplicity:

“I am a journalist – are you?”

Quotes:

Andrew: “funny term…don’t like hyphenated titles… “independent critic” - I am not independent of anything, I am a writer, someone who simply writes …I will unlikely be hired by a newspaper, …critic writing in a paper needs a definition in terms of what is journalism…(what “is” is defense, A.S.)

“I have many friends…they all write for papers and they are not journalists… “

“there are no publish ethics on art”(!!!!!)

“…internet is a strange beast eating everything on its way – general consensus among journalists that it eats everything on its path”

“journalism has its history and tradition – I’m not part of that tradition” he was even sliding back at being called a “critic” – (come on man, what’s that fumbling all about with glasses that cool, you are bound to stand for something)

Darn that very smart guy mumbles a lot…and its not that its Andrew’s inherent inability to form his thought, it is a complete lack of any desire to stand by it, that struck me…strange for a guy his age…I wanted to tell him, dude…shake it up…you are too young for this shit, don’t dangle both sides of the argument at the ends of a mumbling string, strategic ambiguity may be good for the Taiwan issue, certainly not for Art writing!!! Make a stand, damn the torpedoes – you’ll do good…like your glasses.

Andrew’s chronic fumbling, quite pathetic at times, was contrasted by solid unstoppable thinking process by Bennett…agree or disagree, you cannot not respect the guy

Bennett:

“why should we identify as journalists?” of critics in the past “they never were journalists..”

“the most visible part of art writing is not in papers, but catalogs, blogs increasingly…”

“it is easy in a way to write on art – you don’t even need to write very well”

“no offense to journalists, but there’s a lot of unreliable opinion in arts journalism too...there is a lot of unreliable opinion in the curatorial class”

and here’s another great one from Bennett

“ in the Art World everyone legitimizes everyone”

Yet Bennett was the only one on the panel who pointed out:

“There is a severe lack of understanding about facts, about deep reporting – we could take a bit from journalistic protocol…like no conflict of interest”

Sharon: – “I am a part time journalist” (being a full time newspaper writer it is…what’s the other part Sharon?)

Sasha – “You are younger my dear…what do you care about, what does it matter to you...as the thought is that those youngsters don’t care about the facts and integrity…and even the fact that you don’t want to be called a journalist, as it is almost a dirty word”(!!!!!!!)

“anybody who writes anything about anything is committing an act of journalism” (obviously covered by the rules of journalism, AS…) “Journalism does stand for credibility and pursuing the truth” (oh, that strange for the world of power word…power always needs to cover it with a mud of ambiguity…its easier to “do business” in dirty waters, AS)

It was big. It was astonishing to me – yes, by virtue of writing these words, I am myself bound by all high standards of journalism. If in any way I fail them, please forgive me…I’m green at that.

My Take: Why are they so afraid of this noble name…is it because not much nobility is left in a corrupt world of institutionalized Art Power…or willing defenders of any entrenched Power cannot really be called “journalists”? There are different words for that “Propaganda” or “Advertisement.”

Is “journalism” really just a recitation of “what”, “when” and “where” given as “facts” as some panelists seem to imply to put their distance from it?! Come on, you can’t seriously believe that in a country of Fourth Estate, eroded as it is.

Was there ever a really investigative journalistic looks at all those connections? Was there ever an attempt to prove or disprove the rumors of certain big time New York galleries with their contractually guaranteed buy back practices shut down by the SEC, for essentially fixing the markets by guaranteed buy backs...who cares about the quality of the object changing hands if the money will be paid back with fixed interest? How many of “those artists” were spun over by “king makers”?

Are the widely quoted by media “analysts” so instrumental in blowing air into the tech and sub-prime bubbles covered by the higher ethics of journalism? Wouldn’t they be reluctant in calling themselves that which would imply adherence to “High Bar”? Weren’t so many “official” art critics not more than such “analysts” blowing air into financial bubbles of Koons and Hirst for essentially hedge funds? Were they willing or unwilling participants of that Anderson – Enron style “model”?

In a way one might argue this “model” was first tested on a modern art market and than the tech bubble, sub-prime and such were just span out as “modern art”…unsubstantiated by any inherent quality assets with a subjectively perceived value created and inflated by all mighty class of a middle man usurping all levers of power. Now we all are victims of it. The disease killing its host.

Oh, Sasha, I doubt that “journalism” will ever be cheered there. The only consolation here is this: that the corruption of power leads to its demise, which we are “there enough” to witness. The revived ethos of journalism though might be that lifeline. We shall now preserve the very existence of those institutions. It will otherwise remain an aloof, self-gratifying, proper etiquette adhering gathering in the grand ballroom of the Titanic.

Art, Criticism and propaganda

It was not an extensively covered topic, but this fascinating theme surfaced a few times and in the most interesting connotations

Andrew: “propaganda” as image or text used for a political purpose…part of ideological trickery of wanting to convince somebody to join a cause is a derogatory term”

Sharon:

“in some sense there is no neutral position, you come from position”

In the course of discussion she brought up a view of one “multi-hyphenated” Italian curator who wanted to call everyone, journalists, artists, curators, whatever – “media workers” (shit, that sounds outright Orwellian-scary, AS) who than went on to say that “advertisement is a form of journalism”(oh yeaaaaaaaah, Sharon, lots of Wall Street guys would loooooove to see that happening)

“….so, the newspaper industry needs to get out of this traditional idea that you can be objective or that you can be a most well informed or authoritative voice and try to acknowledge the inherent biases and subjectivity of whatever it is they are covering…” (wooooooooooow who would’ve thought of that depth of institutional crises…with stakes that high for any remains of a free society still out there…that argument could go either way – as evidence of loss of institutional power and also as main stream media becoming a much softened target for corporate interest take over… oh yeah, we can learn a lot from this woman)

Bennett:

“art writing is a realm of persuasion” (well I’d agree with that!)

and another great one

“opinion is a nicer word for agenda” (hopefully my “agenda” is crystal clear, what about theirs?)

“reviews are inherently about making judgments, they are meant to be persuasive”

My Take: If the “journalism” aspect of art writing has such vehement opposition and the defenders of the existing power are by default engaged in “Propaganda” and “Advertisement”, this shall give tremendous insight into the true nature of the establishment’s Art Writing of yester-years still carried on today meaning they are pushing goods. We are talking about a multi-billion dollar businesses here and of its “special interest”. I am not aware of any other such group, yet given a so thoroughly unchecked voice under the cover of institutional credibility and “high press”. Is this what’s coming?

The weapon of last resort

and limitations of power to ignore

Gotta say something about Sharon. That hyper-intelligent woman is never lacking a substantive opinion on anything and has a capacity to mint these opinions into firmly solid formulas, yet that night she was as tight-lipped as an eternally smiling Giza Sphinx with all her mental might attempting to say as little as possible in so many words. As always, she succeeded. But why, really?!

Because if she says something – its something better to pay attention to:

Sharon: “If we don’t like it, we just don’t write” (!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Essentially they are knowingly and self-admittedly wielding the formerly ultimate and unchallenged power to ignore till death…thank you, Sharon, I am grateful for your dosed candidness, it is not the first time I heard you say that and it had a huge impact on me…after all critics do matter.

Now, here comes the rub though and the ring begins to destroy its bearer – ignoring relevant trends on the ground based on personal “dislikes” wherever the source of the “opinion” might be coming from all while losing the exclusive grip on channels of information will inevitably doom that foolish “clinger-to-the-old” to… irrelevance.

This is a classic asymmetric warfare of cultural insurgency – institutional power becomes an insurmountable liability. There is certainly nothing new here, it is always been that way on the big intersections of history and that is why the future of culture has always been decided by undergrounds. The new reality only accommodates it even greater than ever.

This is a democratization of a cultural plane.

Rise of blogs, amateur criticism

and the Loss of the position of a singular power

In a sense hugely looming in a room were…blogs

Sasha:

“We know we are in the age of the internet and we know that it has spelled certain things to various large main stream organizations and certainly affected a lot of journalists who lost their jobs...”

Then she gave an interesting quote from one of her colleagues, a well known journalism scholar: “Even if there had been no recession, no craigslist, no overleveraging - newspapers would still be letting go of many, many writers- the reason is the internet”

“We are all becoming visually more literate…we get an idea of who is a good writer…

there is the blurring of lines between amateur and professional journalism…there is a new journalism”

“its all about writing, more people are doing it – museums are paying attention…”

And again Bennett’s quote in blog connotation:

“the most visible part of art writing is not in papers, but catalogs, blogs increasingly” (our firm POV, as best as we can master, our standing ground to the best standards that ever were – does mater now, AS)

My Take: This is not a point of gloating now...there’s nothing to gloat about…but poor, poor “fitter-inners” – those who desperately try to fit into a system that no longer exists.

WE TOOK THEIR POWER – revolution as a radical change in distribution of power is raging in the land….Thank GOOOOOOOOOOGLE!!!!!!

Issue of income and making a living by writing

Aaaaaaa the eternal question...the pay check is disappearing and so is the power and the perception of it….follow the money…and as new sources of money apparently emerge, there is an issue of conflict raised by one keenly sharp member of the audience with whom I had the privilege of a lovely chat afterwards.

Andrew: in 60s critics writing for important publications would not be paid, which actually was disproved by Bennet who pointed out that those critics were indeed paid…

Sharon: likes her paycheck …it is a substantial part in her considerations for writing

Sasha: “journalists make less money that they did…it was never that much and it is much less now”

“No one knows the new business model”…

Insightful Audience Member: “…you can only write a critical review if your editorial layer protects you from retaliation. If they partly pay your salary directly, you do not have that insulating layer….

My Take: so no one knows where money is going to come from the next time around, but some “creative solutions” it seems are already starting to be tested…universities could start paying for critics…it would be really funny if soon critics would be paid by the art departments of certain schools that push their “products” through the rusted pipes…power will do everything to remain just that, even if its suicidal, that’s how all revolutions happen…so Sasha’s suggestion to look at the human rights watch as a model for hiring art journalists might have a serious point… the ”journalist” part of this equation is crucial, I think in bringing to criticism any institutional credibility ever again…the Koons/Hirst over-leveraging effect is way too severe.

Who charts the course of art

Here comes Bennett full height…gotta tell you…anyone who knows my views on the establishment shall chuckle, contrary to all my expectations, this man totally gained my trust not through what he thinks, but through the way he thinks, don’t even know or care whether he himself realizes the massive implications of his clarity in thinking on the planes of ART…at the end of the day, we were at MOCA.

So here it came. It came in the course of answering a question by poor newly minted “product” of the official modernist art education system. That “young and bright” essentially appealed to Art critics’ power “to promote artists”(meaning the “right kind” of artists) and was begging to enact some kind of art critical censorship on blogs…that hiding space of those villains obviously not educated enough to know “what was already done from what never was done… and who just (foolishly obviously) describe what they like”(kid you not, guys…so the critics for him are kinda patent bureau, where you suppose to register you next “innovation” in order to get a proper officially stamped “certificate” of it being “art”…everything that was happening, that is happening and will happen in the world of establishment's “official art”, are in this self-revealing question of the unsuspecting youngster)…To the panel’s great credit, that plea of desperation for divine interference by the authority of a critic-centralized and all-mighty was flatly denied by all.

But the real BIG ONE came again from Bennett:

“It is not criticism’s job to move Art forward, it’s Art’s job to move Art Forward…It used to be in the past – not any more.” (!!!!!!! That Bennett Simpson quote will be carved on the walls of my studio)

Don’t anybody tell me “it was always like that”, it was not. Yes you could do whatever you wanted…permanently doomed to the Judecca of obscurity by the critic’s formerly indisputable power to ignore. Not any more.

Andrew described the basis of this “old power” quite firmly at another point (again, for a guy so young to be so keenly aware of THIS aspect….):

“Art has a very difficult time attaining Art status unless it’s written about…”

so, no one shall think its an easy road forward, and still, here it is:

Sasha:

“We as journalists are looking at artists to moving things forward”

Is this also why critics are so leery of being asked to be “journalists”?

They would have to observe and describe, not choose and prescribe.

Critical distance and intimacy of view

Throughout the discussion, the issue was raised a few times.

How far or close could and shall the critic be from his or her subject? Does this really matter?

The bigger question here would be is there a system that could be imposed on the writing individual to prevent corrupting indulgence of power?

In my post panel conversation with Bennet, he seemed to be of an opinion that there is really not….and I would agree with that - if a person is a crook no “distance” between him and a subject will ever help…if a person is honest, no closeness will prevent from his/her truthful observation, its something I came to call “clarity of intent” and that is where true journalism can get handy – if it is there, the truth is served, if it is not – it will be raped.

Without that clarity of intent, how could anyone presume to connect to his or her viewer, listener, reader? Once it’s lost, why shall anyone wonder seeing their world shrunk? Something else or something new will always come in its place, as this is the rule of vitality and of natural selection.

Future of Art Criticism…that was lost in words

As for the exciting title of the event, The Future of Art Criticism and Sasha’s initial request to keep our minds on that future – as hard as the moderator was pushing in that direction - it did not even register by the panel and was not covered by it…its simply not part of their thinking…guess they are just stuck in the past…engaged in its protection and hopelessly afraid it seems of the wave that is coming…instead of a celebration party welcoming the new – it really was a funeral for the “good’ol ways”….that much for self-described "modernism"…

As in a very narrowly defined exhibition shown upstairs – they were stuck somewhere, like in the immortal Eagles tune, in “ ninnteeen sixty naaaaaain…”

They did not answer Sasha’s call…they never got to the future…the panelists didn’t have a single word about the future and the gloom of their responses was their answer….they simply didn’t see it…I was awe-struck…people I grew up not to like very much suddenly showing their humanely fallible side…they do think of themselves as doomed, Valhalla indeed…oddly, right on the spot and the more I think about it now – they are wrong yet again.

They were wrong to usurp that power, wrong to indulge on their power, they are wrong to presume it’s the end just because it’s the end of their power…they just too much identify what they do with the comfortable position of power they no longer possess. They do have the place in the process that will shape the future, it’s just not the place of power.

Or rather the power, as a life force is always there and the new power lies not within an institution whose official stance they came to get used to representing, but with the power of their own brilliance, knowledge and conviction checked only by their own standards of conduct and clarity of intent that they cannot not apply to themselves. The reader, just like the listener or the viewer will relate to it and know the difference.

This is the Power of ART, which is the ultimate power.

And then Sasha threw in a truly heart wrenching question…

“In a discussion with various art organizations…we asked what you would do if papers went away…what would you do? Do you care as artists that people are writing about you?”

Shit, guys…this is a question to us!!!!!!! I’m sorry…I care…I care enough to spend, what, already five days of my life writing this…and it is not my job…I care so much.

I WANT TO KEEP READING PAPERS if for nothing else than to have something to bitch about…but its gotta be interesting…and constantly recirculating highly politicized crap of how really faaaaaaaaab Jeff Koons or Demian Hirst or whatever the next pushed on us product of their “approved” machine might be - is not!!!

Where was a discussion on Habacuc’s dog, I am asking you?! Just don’t back-peddle like it never happened – it did. Cover-ups never work. It raised profound issues for the future of ART and culture questioning very premises upon which current system is built and for all it implies, it was an Art Hiroshima like event, that yes might’ve been hard to swallow for some. Yet, by avoiding topics like that you marginalize your cultural relevance. You don’t want to go down with the house.

The Elephant in the Room

The Elephant in the room was actually not in the room, but the menacing figure of the formidable dean of LA’s art criticism was still looming large. Chris Knight, too mercurial or too smart to be pinned in a crossfire of any panel was popping his insistent shadow time and time again, his coverage of MOCA and Getty troubles as well as his dual status of reporting on facts and giving his opinion duly noted by everyone.

Sasha: “you will have to wait till Chris Knight dies before even thinking of doing something…not any more”(interesting observation)

The Liberation of CritiCism

Somewhere in the middle Sasha gave a question that also fell on deaf ears with the panel and was never elaborated upon, maybe because it’s so much connected to the issue of the future:

Sasha

“so is that a form of freedom that the age of the internet has allowed/art writers/?”

and yet again:

“I’d like to know, what we’ve gained in freedom at the moment?”

That fell on deaf ears.

Yet the question is great.

Speaking of Chris and of the future of Art Writing.

Lets take a look at the disastrous Chris Knight review of the unprecedented showing of Leonardo’s drawings at the Italian Cultural Institute.…when he trashed, the incredible for so many reasons “Angel In A Flesh”. He called it “one ugly drawing.” THAT late Leonardo…He farther praised Queen Victoria for getting rid of it from the British Royal collection. ” Maybe Vickie was just acting on an opinion of aesthetic dismay” he said. He did it for one simple reason – a complete lack of any comprehension of the life in a studio of a figurative artist, of which this drawing is a product of and for which it stands as its most fascinating evidence…according to me, it is.

Ok, if you didn’t see it - it’s the most magnificent rendering of a head and shoulders in Leonardo’s late full sfumato power, a highly developed study for incredible St. John The Baptist in the Louvre…there is an unsettled issue of a foreshortened right arm only started with a thin outline and that as it is now, feels short slightly, but I’m quite certain, had he developed it further – he would have proved that it works…various degrees of development and settling specific visual problems is always one of the most fascinating aspects of a drawing and the source of an endless excitement of looking at it.

So, the head is the point of pure marvel, the right arm is an example of most engaging and satisfying mental exercise…and now comes the total fun…at some point and for whatever reason things heat up for the old man – he suddenly adds an enormously excited manhood to his drawing! The paper’s too short, it never meant to be a full figure, Leonardo was…ehhhhh, sort of ok with proportions…so to connect IT, he shortened the torso - I just physically hear the roaring laughter of whomever to whose delight he did it.

It was a joke, for Gods of all no good’s sake. It was a studio prank!!! Who doesn’t have a stack of those?! This is just Leonardo’s prank…calling that a “one ugly drawing” is just as much of a plain dumb pompous buffoon act as to de-assess this jewel from the Windsor collection in the first place for, oh…”suuuuuch impropriety”.

That said….I think that was one of the most effective reviews ever…Chris wrote what he thought. Given the fact that Leonardo’s standing will hardly suffer from any “highest disapproval” weather its HM Granny of Europe or HM grandpa of LA’s art critics – its funny, its interesting…gives me something to read and chuckle over, to disagree with and to write about…

It’s not worth not saying what’s on your mind, guys. If a big enough of a carrot can always and will always be used as a stick – yours just shrunk – shoot away! We’ll love it, we’ll read it!

This is what the future of Art Criticism is I think at the end – the dia-tria-quadro-log of interesting voices in all informational mediums…with no pretense to finality, as such does not exist. Wasn’t THAT called “dialogue” once upon a time? At the age of the “founders” and before the arrival of “profiteers”? No more monologues to, as in the famous ending to Pushkin’s Godunov, “the people are silent.” Its just one of the opinions, it had better be an interesting one to be regarded…and yes, I do want to read it, physically in a paper.

So, don’t worry too much over your future guys…just make it!

Recap

So what is that strange mix that makes art writing and how does journalism fit into it?

Yes, I’d agree with Bennett, art writing undoubtedly has its distinction from journalism features, and that, yes, Andrew, makes it close to literature and poetry…yet, the ever-menacing role of unchecked arbiter in a very real, special interest laden micro-world – screams of a need for higher journalistic standards. You are artists at heart and journalists by social function as your word has massive institutionalized implications.

That is what makes true Art Writing of the future so distinctly special – It Shall have the passion of ART and credibility of Journalism…high bar indeed, yet how can anything less be expected if the future of 21^st century culture is at stake?!

So, what about the future?! The Future is great in my book...as it always is!!!

Artists liberated from the burden of fate-sealing critics…

Critics liberated from the prison cell of their own former much misplaced power

ART thrusting on its eternal course, unconstrained by institutional weight

Down with the old thoroughly totalitarian, system of Arts establishment – it does not reflect the world of a newly democratized cultural plane, it cannot see new realities around it as it thinks they are beneath it, it’s incapable of transforming its function into a newly multi-polar aesthetically world. Down with it. Let the river of ART flow.

We received two enormously important gifts:

Sasha gave us a blank check as journalists, so we have to hold ourselves to higher journalistic standards, basically saying exactly what we think, observing events around us and of which we are part of to the best of our positive, forward looking intent and to the fullest of our ability.

Bennett gave us a blank check as artists (don’t try to pin me saying we don’t need anyone’s permission, i certainly don’t) yet understanding of an Artist as a driving force of the Art world…no, it was not like that in the “official” art world…just as NYT of last Feb put it – its back to Artists now to define ART – not to critics as much as they liked this position and not even to curators…and that’s exactly what Bennett said and that’s exactly what it means…it is ALL back to us now…not to gloat, but to work…

That is what future Art is all about and as long as Andrew is right in thinking of himself as just a writer who writes, there will be writers, who will write on what they fall in love with, on what is going on in the real ART world around them …because they cannot do otherwise…as long as we as artists paint our hearts out!!!!

There is no more “structure” to tell us that what we do is “wrong” – ITS ALL UP TO US NOW.

The BRUSH has the final word.

VIVA NOVO!!!!!!!!

Big Quotes:

“we are a post-shock generation” Sasha Anawalt

“criticism shall be a part of literature” Andrew Berardini

“if we don’t like it, we don’t write” Sharon Mizota

and the quote of the night:

“It is not criticism’s job to move Art forward, it’s Art’s job to move Arts Forward…It used to be in the past – not any more.” Bennett Simpson

BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD The amazing timing of a seminal BBC program “Why Beauty Matters” featuring Roger Scruton

2010-04-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

Volume I. Issue #2

“Beauty will save the world” - this famous as it is mysterious Prince Myshkin quote from Fiodor Dostoevsky’s human-psyche-deep-diving record holding “The Idiot” stayed with me my entire life as the single greatest idealistic metaphor of all times. The more we travel a remarkable journey of a mind-bogglingly changing world, the more I start taking it at face value. Yes, BEAUTY quite literally is a force capable of altering the disastrous and self-destructive course of a militant consumer civilization on the loose. Whether it “will” or will not largely depends on our actions as servants of this cause – BEAUTY.

I say, yes, it will!!!!!

The recent phenomenal BBC program “Why Beauty Matters” featuring reasoning and contemplation on this subject by philosopher and writer Roger Scruton, raised some fascinating questions in a most impassionate and soul-searching way that generated a swell of response evidently touching on something centrally important to our collective state of being called culture.

Roger Scruton sees BEAUTY as “ a value as important as truth and goodness” and that “losing BEAUTY is like losing the meaning of life”.

Most of Scruton’s argument is obviously not new and this is not the point; after all, as he puts it: “BEAUTY has been central to our civilization for over 2000 years”.

There is not much new about the argument against BEAUTY either.

The truly amazing thing that the program conveys brilliantly, I think and the response to it proves how all those very old arguments are perceived in this split second in the arch of our historical existence. It is truly amazing how fresh in the moment and vital the Scruton argument so brilliantly presented by the BBC team really feels.

It’s just as amazing how out of touch and trite and quite downright pathetic at times all well-known arguments against BEAUTY suddenly sound. May be it is because this is the sealed fate of any attempt to preserve the status quo now collapsing in front of our eyes….

This is the most fascinating aspect of this stunning BBC program’s phenomenon.

In my view, we owe this newfound freshness of BEAUTY as a central philosophical precept precisely as contrast to a fully explored anti – BEAUTY argument presented by the modernist experience throughout the last century.

We are indebted to modernists. Because of the experience of willfully rejecting it, we now go with Beauty not as a matter of habit, but as a matter of clear choice.

Make no mistake about it though: the return of BEAUTY is a revolution in our collective priorities for society first put forth through ART.

Deconstructivism is Dead.
Shock is Dead.
Total-Relativism-as-Norm is Dead.
BEAUTY is alive.

When “the eye of the beholder” cannot take anymore the pain of numbing ugliness thrown at us, desensitizing all our senses that ever make us alive and mark our belonging to our own species – then the realization comes – oh, yeah, I guess BEAUTY does lie within “the qualities of the beheld.”

It is simply our choice of what to see in this “beheld”. We can choose to see ugliness in the most beautiful and we can choose to see BEAUTY in something otherwise perceived ugly. Yet this personal choice is going to be solidly based within various sets of undeniable “qualities of the beheld”.

BEAUTY is a choice of life over death that leads to life. It is a part of a self-regenerating life force.

Down with all-consuming relativism run amok– it is too easy of a harbor for mediocrity.

We are sick and tired of the continuous miserable whining of a choice to see the ugly as a customary “bon tone” of the establishment’s “official art.” We are sick and tired of their oh, so deep “tongue-in-cheek” game that is not much more than a cover for ultra-commercialist kitch. Both are just plain ugly. It is ugly because ugly is easy.

BEAUTY is not. The “easy beauty” is anything but BEAUTY.

BEAUTY is always merit based and this is why it is so feared and detested, at times persecuted, by mediocrity – it holds a mirror to their inabilities.

“Ugly” is anti-merit and consists largely of a lack of merit to the point that the degree of lacking quickly becomes a merit of its own.

That leads to the emergence of two opposite merit systems which we call aesthetics. In a new democratized world, no independently existing system shall be judged by the rules of another, particularly by the “official” institutional establishment.

We are deeply indebted to modernism for our newfound thirst for BEAUTY.

We developed two systems of looking at our single shared world from two opposite perspectives and any personal preference aside, no picture of this world will ever be complete any more without “the other view”. This is the central message of NOVOREALISM. This is what we call a newly multi-polar aesthetically world.

We are heralding a new vibrant, inclusive and diversified culture in which BEAUTY is emerging as newly equal stakeholder.

BEAUTY is called upon by a society this time around in a truly revolutionary way; not as a force of “wiping out the old” as modernism did before it, but to replace this totalitarian approach all together, thus perhaps even preserving the institutions from complete collapse under their own totalitarian weight.

BEAUTY is needed once again. BEAUTY is relevant. BEAUTY is an instinct central to our survival and self-preservation as a species.

BEAUTY is a life-long pursuit, a selfless service, an ever-doomed quest for a so-unattainable perfection where the road is just as enthralling and self-constructing as the ever-elusive destination.

This is where the enormous social function of BEAUTY comes shining as an un-vandalized Mona Lisa smile.

This is a short comment on my posting of this program received from my newly true FB friend Jeremy Betancourt:

“Awh beauty! It has surely changed my life. I was once nearly prison bound, and then there was the beauty of traditional impressionism and the friends that teach me the ways of the impressionist. I was saved, and now I see a different kind of beauty in everything around me. I wish everyone could see this way. It would be a much more beautiful world. Target the youth!”

Kiowa Grasslands by Jeremy Betancourt 3x3 acrylic on paper

What could be more perfectly unambiguous and straight-forward than this truly BEAUTIFUL personal story and than showing life as it is?

That’s really I think, what we do as artists is all about, at the end of the day. It’s not about the galleries selling more, not about critics who write more of what sells for most, spanning it out with every lever of their dwindling yet still formidable power. This entire system as it is today is going down anyway. It is about somehow and in someway giving something lacking or needing deeply in their soul to those kids on the streets and their families by us the artists.

From my perspective, I can say that some of the most gratifying moments of my professional career were when new Latino laborers came on the site of my work on the “Circle” and the otherwise constantly annoying, teasing construction workers would take them around and show them what I do. Their un-polluted and direct response and reaction was worth more to me than piles of politicized “criticism.” Or at my joint show at the counter-commercial experimental IGM gallery of USC when I collaborated with a very young and super-talented illustrator Raymond Carrillo(when would I ever do a show with an illustrator?!) who turned his jail-bound gang infested life around through his own personal pursuit of ART and TRUTH that somehow perfectly resonated with everything I ever hope of doing.

Because of Raymond, I met a remarkable group of young guys all of whom are charting their “way out” through pursuit of ART just like Jeremy B. did.

Gang-bangers. Taggers. Visual Talents.

They don’t have much in their lives, but the one thing they do have is the sense of what’s real and what’s bull shit…and its huge…

How many ARTISTS like them do we lose daily in senseless inner city shoot-outs, gang crap?!

I’m privileged to know them. They are my friends.

They feel and know more about ART than any pompous and corrupt art establishment’s critic ever will.

They are fed up with the crap. They need BEAUTY as a shining light on their own way out…and up.

The official establishment’s creed and tyranny of “ugly” is attempting quite pathetically to fake the real-world ugliness. Victims of this real world ugliness know exactly what it is and not through those cocktail parties and “oh, so intellectual conjunctures.” They courageously want out. Don’t dare anyone keeping them down saying it is “good” – it is not.

Jeremy Betancourt now has a dream of starting a youth center in his town to share his path through BEAUTY. Shouldn’t we all think of anything we can do? Shouldn’t we all find a way to share our main asset, the best work we can ever master, with this BEAUTY hungry audience if the world of institutional power failed in this?

BEAUTY has a clear social function right now – it heals the wounds of modernity.

Yes, “BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD”…if we are daring enough to will it!!!!!

Viva, NOVO!!!!!!!

Revolution That Came

2010-03-19T21:11:00.000-07:00

Volume I, issue 1.

Revolution is raging in the land. There was no name worthy of it until now. Yet here it is: “NOVOREALISM."

It is a description of current and present, widely spread artistic movement functioning as a set of specific tools, philosophy and practice. As any major art movement in history - it is a common visual language based on a common worldview. As any language, it has its own rules – without knowing them you can still appreciate the music of the language but without comprehending its true meaning.

Yet, it is enormously democratic language. Realism is democratic in its understanding by being elitarian in its practice. That makes it direct opposite to modernist mode in art, which is democratic in execution, but pointedly and exclusively elitarian in its understanding that requires the authority of an “interpreter”. In modernist visuals the sacred cultural function is placed squarely within an “interpreter” or middle man, giving him power over both – artist and audience, creating inherently “oligarchic” system. In Realism – the sacred function placed firmly within an ARTIST and within the level of her or his abilities as a distinction between good and bad is quite clear to the audience in principle. Obvious populist pitfalls aside the primal difference lie within this self-evident nature.

We are witnessing the potent rise of “democratic” perception over “oligarchic” upon which the entire system of current art establishment is built. Therefore NOVOREALISM is inherently REVOLUTIONARY movement of our day, radically altering the function of the status quo.

NOVOREALISM is not a retrovert vision by any stretch of imagination. It is a forward-looking cultural thrust that chooses to stare in the eyes of reality and to reflect it in various forms. It is based on a civilization-long combined experience, knowledge and practice in understanding of human’s abilities to perceive the visual world. Its advance manifests the passage of techno-fascination in culture as rapid development and wide decimation of high technologies turning what used to be an act of “prime possession” into an endless and routine update of discardable household items. Their use became necessary if annoying. Nothing less, nothing more.

NOVOREALISM reflects a new-found fascination with the pinnacles of human’s own capabilities. The ultimate fascination with the most advanced and sophisticated system known to mankind – the human itself. NOVOREALISM is a hyper-humanistic movement at the age of disturbingly wide technological dependency. It is a defining edge in a cultural thrust of today.

Advance of Novorealism reflects the rising awareness of downsides to rapid modernization in our world designed for infinite consumption. As such it is a tool of human self-preservation.

NOVOREALISM is deeply rooted within sanctification of natural world under all out assault of modern consumerist society. In this way, much like important art movements of the past, it is an early reflection of the shifts in priorities for the society at large.

NOVOREALISM is a firm, essential and significant part of contemporary process in ART; it is a firm, essential and significant part in the ART of the FUTURE.

As a revolutionary movement why is it “altering” and not “changing” the status quo? It is because the entire cultural premise upon which the art world exists today has shifted.

NOVOREALISM is not striving for totalitarian aesthetic domination as every major /as opposite to local/ Art movement of the past did. Not only do we recognize, but we thrive on the new reality that there is no single, “one and only righteous” aesthetics of the day any longer. This new reality makes our existence possible. We collectively entered an inherently democratic aesthetically multi-polar world. This is the reality that will have to be inevitably realized by any institutional voice claiming credibility in observing objectively the actually occurring, contemporary shifts in today’s ART.

“CONTEMPORARY” itself, as a linguistic asset, cannot be used any longer as definition of any specific aesthetics, but only as a reflection of any relevant cultural process in present. Anything else shall be considered an improper “privatization” by vested financial interests of an ultimate public domain – our common language and an expression of a publicly inappropriate statement of cultural prejudice.

“CONTEMPORARY” by definition cannot be stack in the past. Calling Rothko and Warhol “contemporary” with all due appreciation of their historic significance is at present preposterous. They are dead.

Yet, this very multi-polarity is perhaps the single most important factor of our moment within cultural infinity, reflecting most significant change in our fundamental perceptions.

There is no single collectively righteous doctrine that somehow makes any of its participants automatically better than the rest; there are only individually righteous creators across the aesthetic board. Not recognizing that is self-serving act of cultural, not professional, exceptionalism, which is entirely inappropriate within our modern society. In this sense NOVOREALISM is an inherently modern movement.

There are plenty of hacks under any banners. We detest Kinkade as much as any modern museum curator does, may be even more so as it is much more personal for us. We cannot be blamed for his or for his kind’s commercialist sins just as much as true inner-city rebellious pushers of the medium cannot be blamed for super-commercialist hacks of Koons variety. Koons is a Kinkade of the official establishment.

Much the same, under any banner there are plenty of good middle ground participants and there are few “odd balls” sticking out by sticking stubbornly to what they truly believe in and by excelling in what they do way above and beyond average.

“Modernism” has lost its exclusivity on a cultural plane, not its place in it all together as both reflect the need for a sustainable balance within modernization - preservation - development equilibrium.

NOVOREALISM reflecting our contemporary reality – a major current aesthetic movement not claiming its cultural exclusivity and superiority, on the “ashes of the old”, but simply stating its being.

We, the Artists and Practitioners of our Religion, can and shall convey the rules of our language, its heritage and its future. We shall do it with all we’ve got, as ART does not stand half-measures or safe harbors. We shall do it in our thought, our word and our deed, the last one being the only thing that ultimately stands. We, the Artists of NOVOREALISM, shall paint first and foremost, worthy of an incredible place in history we find ourselves NOW.

Let’s wage the Revolution, lets wage True and Great to our very own measure ART!

Here is what I mean:

"Homebound" oil on canvas 60" x 72" by Steven Assael

"Maasai Woman" oil on canvas 36" X 24" by Scott Burdick

“Anna and Arturo” oil on canvas 42” X 60” by Jacob Collins

"Fragile Rose" Oil 44" x 68" by Rose Frantzen

"Man in Limited Palette" oil 12" x 12" by Ignat Ignatov

"The Last Sticks" oil on canvas 32" x 55" by Michael Klein

"Danielle" oil on canvas 40” X 30” by Jeremy Lipking

The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy: September 11, 2001 96” X 216” oil on canvas by Graydon Parrish

“Moonlight Dance” oil on canvas by Tony Pro

“The Persistent Dream of Youth” oil on canvas 120 x 72 inches by Christopher Pugliese

“Photographer. Lemuel” oil on canvas 60” X 36” by Alexey Steele