What is relevant in Art today
OUR STANDPOINTS AND QUESTIONS
van Chapman -Philosophic Community Projects -
www.naturestudio.net
If one is concerned with the style of frames on a painting, for example, if they are modern or not in style, is that relevant to the world today?
It is not because a form is modern in style that is true in the spirit. But if an art is timeless, the other way around is true.
If a work is true and beautiful in spirit and form, it is always actual.
I am not prejudicing a work because it is modern. That is in fact the meaning of my Abstract Waterforms 1 video, to convey how abstract can be an aspect of nature, and a work based on abstract forms like this, can be spiritual in the sense that it can help people to see what is. See the overwhelming beauty and richness we have in nature, which the world is destroying if it does not see. Can you guarantee me that modern art is not prejudicing fine spiritual works ( like those of Myriam Vandenberghe), simply because they are not modern in style??
Is it relevant to the world, for example, a work , even if modern in style, when it only adds to the existing pollution and insensibility of the world ? For example producing Cloacas, for example, excrements out of good food, as art, in a world where people are dying of hunger, or tattooing pigs in a world animals like these live in dungeons only for consumption, without the right for a life, is this more spiritual and relevant to the world today?
I am here to listen and try to understand, because as I see, for someone to label a work which expresses a profound state of communion with nature and life as a 'mere decoration', simply because it is not modern in style, is indeed an unjust, tragic-comic projection.
A true, just or kind spirit is still good, without a form.
But what is a form, however modern, without a true spirit?
If a work is about form, or a style, and never mind the spirit, the justice, the truth, never mind the health the life or peace in this world, even though it is modern, is it relevant contemporary art?
Without the sensibility which true love gives to us, is any work relevant to the world?
When a true spirit takes form, no matter the style, it is art.
Once I heard the question: -" Can Art save the world ?". What can save the world is not a matter of taste but of consciousness. It is Not a mode, a style of Art, but to unite a true, kind and just spirit in action, in whatever work we do. To be humble enough to see what is, and not prejudge anyone, anything; not even out of belief.
There is nothing substantially new in a work of art, or revolution, when you substitute one vanity of power for another, one prejudice for another.
van Chapman
-Philosophic Community Projects -
True angels destroy not men, but the falseness in them.
www.naturestudio.net
A DIALOGUE ABOUT ART
TO CANVAS TV
www.naturestudio.net.
Since Marcel DuChamp, with his urinoir, we have noticed, it seems modern artists spend a lot of time in the toilet!
They never seem to be tired to look in there for things to exhibit in museums,- from the metal tube structures and toilet accessories, furniture to bodily matter, sex organs, bones, tissues, fats, fluids dirty baby napies, to the very Cloaka of Delvoye, apparently fascinated by excreting activities, for all that, with a solid CONCEPT backing it, yes, is modern.
Similarly, most expressions of graffiti or rap-pop-contemporary artists are as the body language of those teen agers seduced by the tough guys of a street gang, proud of their insensitive, arrogant attitudes and foul language, mostly copied from the others, expressions from the excrements of language as 'fucking' with every other sentence, 'shit', 'God damn ' ('Godverdomme'), or 'fuck off', because that is 'COOL" or 'IN'.
And like these teenagers, many contemporary art exponents turn their nose up at, and look down upon those who do not follow them.
If I would think artists to be pioneers, seeing the often cold and gloomy expressions of many of the 'Avant Garde' artists today, like sculptures of bodies smashed inside building materials we saw on Canvas TV, the future would look somber indeed.
Myriam Vandenberghe and I agree that only through the consciousness of love one can see the beauty of Nature and also the ugliness and stupidity of vanity, of greed, arrogance, which to the immature mind is so 'cool'.
A brief exchange with a guru of modern art
van Chapman,
Philosophic Community Projects
www.naturestudio.net.
Once on a brief exchange, Jan Hoet, the creator of SMAK museum of modern art in Gent, without even knowing me, said to me he that 'he could never be my friend'.
I disagree with him: -Not to have the same view on Art is not a reason not be friends.
To project our prejudices on another, on what is, and want no discussion, is the main cause of disruption in any relationship. Jan Hoet has prejudiced me simply because of some post cards of Myriam Vandenberghe's nature paintings he saw in my hand.
(You can see MYRIAM'S WORK at our site www.naturestudio.net in : [Nature photos-Myriam Vandenberghe] and [Nature paintings-Myriam Vandenberghe] ).
We can understand each other if we want, if are not too proud to want understanding, if we are not too proud to be questioned.
On another occasion, I came with one of his friends to a dinner of shell fish mussels he gave in honor of Mossel-pot, from a modern art Belgium artist Broodthaers'.
( Miriam Vandenberghe probably would not have come to eat mussel shell fish, as she is a vegetarian out of compassion for animals).
At a certain moment I stood before all his guests and asked him: -"What is more important to you: Love or Art? He answered that -'Art cannot compete with neither Nature nor Love".
After the dinner, according to the person who took me, Jan Hoet said in Flemish to him: -"God damn!, -("Godverdomme"!) Who did you bring with you !?..".
Before I left, I told Jan Hoet that one day I would make his portrait.
Here at least, is a philosophical view of our brief exchanges.
Once on TV during an interview, we heard Jan Hoet declare he was a Catholic and a Jew.
Such monotheistic doctrines have evolved from an unquestioning loyalty to religious authority. does this have to do with the idea of someone as an unquestionable authority in art??
So is there a modern Art Guru, to whom we must follow in the world today?
Not for me. I see Jan Hoet is in contradiction when, in one hand he affirms the superiority of love and Nature over Art, and on the other, snobs an extraordinary expression of love for nature and all living beings as mere 'decoration'.
I have some questions for him and his followers: If a work only adds to the insensibility of humanity and pollution of this planet, is about form, and never mind the health, life or peace in this world, even if it is modern, is it Art? Is it relevant to the world today?
We cannot be friends if we are too proud to be questioned, or to want understand each other.
REACTION ON CANVASCOLLECTIE
PRESELLECTION
Oostende 27January 2012
In Oostende MU-ZEE, when I first placed my works on the floor, I put them facing the wall, showing only the backside of the mounted works, asking the jury to tell me which side was the real art work.
One at a time, Myriam Vandenberghe and I were briefly interviewed by a young and friendly female jury.
I explained that I had joined Canvascollectie selection out of sympathy for the cultural- humanitarian approach of TV sender Canvas (from where Canvascollectie was promoted), and that even if my works were not selected, I had come to contribute to a dialogue about Art.
I have admiration for journalists who can write under stress, because I cannot. I make faults.
I apologized I had not slept whole nights for days, and that for practical problems I could not come in time, but fortunately, for the Organization in place, that was no problem.
I gave the jury my thoughts on Contemporary Art, printed out in a hurry before I came, inviting them to respond, and said I would publish their reaction on the web of Canvas, and my website (naturestudio.net ).
After that we looked at my video Abstract waterforms 1 from Mysticwater (which by of some incompatibility in their laptop computer was very unstable), And they had to speak to each other alone.
When I was invited to return to hear their decision, one of the jury spoke to me and said the dialogue on art had interested her.
She suggested me to work on these water forms individually, because she found them worthwhile, but I think she found the constant changing forms were too overwhelming. And she sent me off the selection.
I asked them to react on my invitation for a dialogue, and smiled, and left, having fulfilled my purpose for coming.
I can understand she found the images of my video too overwhelming: in Belgium we don't have mountain cascading rivers as those in Brazil I had photographed. But for me, such overwhelming abundance of Nature as I showed in my video, contrary to what it did to her, had the ability to quiet the mind.
My friend Myriam Vandenberghe tells me they were astonished by her paintings of nature, and even people from other sectors came to admire the beauty of them, curious about its unique fine technique, but the jury at last considered them as 'decorative' works, however of a very high standard, in their fine frames, not in their concept of what art has to be today.
So she was also sent away from the selection. (That was how we thought they might react, as Jan Hoet once did, and why I was willing to confront the modern art concept in a philosophical way.)
After that, walking along the beach of Oostende, I smiled at the soft dune patterns on the sea shore in the sun, and frowned seeing the debris of plastic which poison the sea life and birds, here and there half buried in the sand. Those recalled images one can find in contemporary art.
I contemplated the incompatibility between the" computer programs" of those of us who vibrate in harmony at the a glimpse of the pure nature, and those of us who are so estranged from nature, that the trash of civilization, the cola plastic bottles, the soup tin cans, the plastic rags polluting the sand and the sea, are what inspires them, and what they are touched by as subjects of art.
A DIALOGUE ABOUT ART
van Chapman,
Philosophic Community Projects
www.naturestudio.net.
Naturestudio
Year 2012
since 2010 officially a VZW, a non-Governmental, non-profit organization
Goals of Naturestudio vzw:
To promote the spiritual self-awareness as a counterweight to the spiritual poverty of the time.
b. To sensitize people to the beauty of nature and of good heart, the soul, through art and philosophy.
c. More peaceful solutions to world conflicts
d. More equitable social and interpersonal relationships through supporting the creation and realization of philosophical, cultural and artistic works, projects and events
