Cubist art has had a great influence on my aesthetic. I recall standing in the Prado Museum of Madrid on Picasso's 125th Birthday, taking in all of his work...and crying. Being in a room with the most significant pieces of an artist's body of work is like gazing through a window at the artist himself. Picasso's view on the world was so revolutionized through his art.
Picasso may have reinvented anatomy in art, but Piet Mondrian's De Stijl also had some invention in mind that is worthy of looking at. Mondrian took the idea of abstract art and made it into simple geometry, claiming it to be the end all be all of artistic expression.
I see similarities in the ideas of Picasso and Mondrian and their two camps. They reinvented expression by stripping down the form of something to its naked truth. The tragedy of Mondrian is that his truth is a truth of calculation and numbers. The duality of relationships that he expresses in his manifestos and artwork are mere crossing lines. Picasso, on the other hand, strips down the form to something more abstract and perhaps rough, but this is a worldview closer to the truth than the sterile landscapes of Mondrian's canvas.
Due to my interest in the world of nostalgia, I find both fragmented styles to be of great intrigue, however, Picasso achieves the best of both worlds by giving an accessibilty of meaning to the viewer. Mondrian, however, claims no meaning.
Picasso wins the battle absolutely. He has brought me to tears and brought me to this, a place where the abstract is still beautiful and accessible. Filmicly and through my paintings I hope to achieve the same naked truth and absolute beauty that Picasso conveys in his work.
31 January 2010
27 January 2010
Declaration of Principles
Writing this manifesto will not be something done overnight. After all, it has taken me 20 years to get to a point in my life where I feel the itch to write such a thing, and it has taken just as long for me to start to understand the implications of art to an artist. Don't subscribe to this blog. The sentences will be run-ons, the ideas will be unfinished, and the grammar will be depraved.
And so, a Declaration of Principles:
1) Nostalgia is a disease, not a novelty. The truth has to be revealed. This does not mean a detachment of the past, but a mourning of the past and a celebration of the future and a celebration of the past but a mourning of the future. I fail to mention the present because it just passed.
2) No artist can thrive within a vacuum. Artistic community is vital to every artist because without it, a refinement of craft and concept could never be achieved.
3) I am art. Through the constant objectification that I have gone through at the hands of many, I have been made into an object. I cannot escape this role. I can, however, redeem the object I have become. Don't go thinking you have me pegged. I'm more than my mustache and social evasiveness.
4) Every day is the best day ever.
And so, a Declaration of Principles:
1) Nostalgia is a disease, not a novelty. The truth has to be revealed. This does not mean a detachment of the past, but a mourning of the past and a celebration of the future and a celebration of the past but a mourning of the future. I fail to mention the present because it just passed.
2) No artist can thrive within a vacuum. Artistic community is vital to every artist because without it, a refinement of craft and concept could never be achieved.
3) I am art. Through the constant objectification that I have gone through at the hands of many, I have been made into an object. I cannot escape this role. I can, however, redeem the object I have become. Don't go thinking you have me pegged. I'm more than my mustache and social evasiveness.
4) Every day is the best day ever.
22 January 2010
Welcome and Gallery Crawl Review
Hello,
My name is Sam Perry and earlier today I began to delve into an independent study on the artist manifesto. This study has been something stewing within me, nebulus. I am giving it some plasma through the tangled world wide web we weave and I have to provide this disclaimer: I am not exactly an advocate of blogs as effective dissemination of truth. I fondly refer to this vast network as the blogosfear not because it is yet another one of my clever puns but because I truly believe that people blog out of a fear of being no one. After all, if you're not on The Google, you don't exist.
At any rate, no artist can exist in a vacuum and the hard drive of my computer is shotty, so putting my laundry out to dry on a blogger account seems like a smart move.
I would like for this first post to really showcase what I am all about, and that is a continued creation of my art but at the same time a continuous discovery and critique of other artists' work. I was provided an opportunity to do so earlier tonight at The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's Gallery Crawl in the Cultural District. I am an avid patron of the city's gallery crawls, but was presented a whole new experience through the every changing art community.
Artist Adam Welch's exhibit at 709 Penn Gallery, "A Few Objects-On a Theme of Contradiction" was the first stop for my group and it was also a look into the tone of the whole Crawl. The works ranged from sculpture to mixed media and painting, however, the sculpture at the entrance of the gallery totally overshadowed any of the beauty or truth that I could have found within "A Few Objects." This sculpture, entitled "F*cking Archetypes" was an almost literal take on the phrase. The sculpture moves, slamming against the blue back drop which evokes a blue print. However, upon further examination, one can see that the object slamming the back drop and invoking the metallic rattle is in fact a purple dildo.
My name is Sam Perry and earlier today I began to delve into an independent study on the artist manifesto. This study has been something stewing within me, nebulus. I am giving it some plasma through the tangled world wide web we weave and I have to provide this disclaimer: I am not exactly an advocate of blogs as effective dissemination of truth. I fondly refer to this vast network as the blogosfear not because it is yet another one of my clever puns but because I truly believe that people blog out of a fear of being no one. After all, if you're not on The Google, you don't exist.
At any rate, no artist can exist in a vacuum and the hard drive of my computer is shotty, so putting my laundry out to dry on a blogger account seems like a smart move.
I would like for this first post to really showcase what I am all about, and that is a continued creation of my art but at the same time a continuous discovery and critique of other artists' work. I was provided an opportunity to do so earlier tonight at The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's Gallery Crawl in the Cultural District. I am an avid patron of the city's gallery crawls, but was presented a whole new experience through the every changing art community.
Artist Adam Welch's exhibit at 709 Penn Gallery, "A Few Objects-On a Theme of Contradiction" was the first stop for my group and it was also a look into the tone of the whole Crawl. The works ranged from sculpture to mixed media and painting, however, the sculpture at the entrance of the gallery totally overshadowed any of the beauty or truth that I could have found within "A Few Objects." This sculpture, entitled "F*cking Archetypes" was an almost literal take on the phrase. The sculpture moves, slamming against the blue back drop which evokes a blue print. However, upon further examination, one can see that the object slamming the back drop and invoking the metallic rattle is in fact a purple dildo.I honestly cannot recall the rest of Welche's work throughout the room because every thirty or so seconds, the banging and slamming would produce the same sound that was now tied to an image so distracting and vulgar.
This raised a debate among friends as we continued to other galleries: How could that be art? I think the answer is very simple, it was created with the intention of being art and conveying a meaning, and many people may see beauty in it. But how can it be appreciated? I certainly would not call it good art, but other viewers may. What I can respect is that Welch was after a concept and took time to showcase the concept of contradiction. Unfortunately, that meaning was lost to me. I don't want to create art that spoonfeeds meaning to the masses, but I don't want to create something that is so ambiguous that it can be taken by the viewer and given meaning far from my intended truth.
All in all, the Crawl gave me contradiction and some poorly conceptualized spaces, however, the whole event was largely redeemed by Do You Understand?, Urban Tree Forge, the Space Gallery, and Shaw Galleries.
After taking in new ideas and artists' works, I am refreshed and ready to create SamSamLand, a gallery installation/performance art/film/fashion creation that I am about to eat, live, sleep, smoke, drink, eat, and hopefully not choke.
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