Why do you do what you do as an artist or a human?

The answer will take time to emerge.  Most people live on autopilot.  They neither try to make things better not worse.  They find a formula, and hibernate. 

Here is a simple test.  List a few answers such as

I want to be a celebrity

I want to be rich

I want to be respected

I want…

Now take any pair of them and decide which one is more important.  Give it a score of 1.  At the end of paring you will have a true motivation emerge?

When I ask artists why they do what they do I often hear a waterfall of the words.  There is nothing wrong to be financially motivated.  There is nothing wrong with having two answers: one for public one for you.  The important is to think it through.  It is also important to review answers every so often.  The world changes and so do we.  It is common for people to move to another creative field or start a new career.  It is fun to have more than one life.  It is fun to say “in my previous life as a poet…” 

When someone says “I do it because of the internal conflict” that sounds interesting to the psychologists.  It’s too broad, too loose and undefined.  Or when someone says I do it because it is my style and I always did that.  Not true.  You did not do it when you were a child.  So why do you what you do?

Knowledge is elitist and ignorance is democratic! December in Miami with Art Basel 2014

I just returned from Art Basel Miami 2014 where I spend 3 action packed days. What a blast!  I visited Art Basel, Miami Art, Miami Project, Art Scope, and Untitled.  It was great stimulation.

.

What came to my mind as that three smells describe good life in Miami: smell of ocean, smell of sweat and smell of fine perfume. 

When it came to the art I kept thinking that many artists create objects like children create sounds.  

Children make sound so they can hear themselves, their diapason, volume etc.  They are just learning about themselves and their “creative” capability.  There is no other intention.  With artists there is one more – sell art!

On the other hand there are artists that not only have something to say, but also it is important what they say.  And in additions they can say it in a manner that is clear, elegant, shocking, seducing and/or understandable.

Murray Frum, a prominent Canadian collector

Frum sums up his collecting and through it, I think, his life. “Invention separates art from craft,” he writes. “A new juxtaposition, a modulation of form, a creation using associations of contradictory materials—these are things that excite and fascinate me. I am not gifted as a creator, so collecting is the closest I can come to making works of art.”

Art by women and other absurd by women

A few days ago I had a conversation with the woman acquaintance of mine. Enthusiastically she reported that she attended a conference on women business networking. That really touched a string in me. Why is that women business networking is good but men networking is bad? Why is that gay, black minority business networking is good? But that was not all. She reported that one the speaker propagandists overjoyed to the fact that when her mother from Ireland came to the USA she could get a job only as a child attendant, housekeeper, secretary or a waiter. And now it was different… Was it really?- I replied. If you stop the motivational rush and look at the reality… the same places still employ unskilled immigrants. Then she shared with me a call from the same propagandist inviting women to help and to hire more women. That was an exercise of the freedom of speech but surely an absurd one. Should it be just as absurd to hire a female just because of the gender as not to hire the same for the same reason? Should both of them be illegal?


And now coming to “art by women”… Buying art just because the artist is woman is the same absurd as buying the art because the artist is gay, male, disabled, etc. I understand political correctness as self-censorship strategy to avoid hurt feeling of others. Sure you are free to spend money the way you fit.

Virtual reality is becomming dengerous

It is interesting to know that humanity was always interested in virtual world: legends, myths, tails and paintings. Art had its own way of serving this demand by portraying gods, angels in the past. In early 20th century art discovered an abstract world, as well as surrealism to free human imagination and expression of human experience. Since then the virtual world grew and gained new ground in computer virtual reality. That is where from an extension it became a limitation.

The fundamental difference is that games and social games are highjacking human experiences instead of expanding. Games became addictive and mechanical. They became playgrounds for a few and limits for many. Yes I am against computer games that offer fighting and concurring particularly in virtual reality. By breaking a link with reality and replacing it with virtual reality we limit humanity within us. When action game becomes addictive it becomes a drug equal to any mind altering substance. The virtual reality (as it is used in art, literature, music) allows us to become creators, while games and social games turn us into addicts, zombies and consumers. 

Now virtual games became dangerous. Virtual flirt is one of them. As recent “scandal” with democratic congressman (I do not write the name as it is not important for this article) sending a photo of himself to someone he never knew before over the social network communication. Virtual flirt can destroy a career as well as a physical affair in the USA. Europeans may look at such behavior with a sense of humor. But puritan at heart Americans view such conduct as a moral decay. In fact online flirt is more dangerous than in person.

One can wonder why computer games are not tested for addictive properties? Well because the entire idea of such game is no longer in the “winning the game” but in keeping a player engaged for as long as possible. Social aspect of such game is also changed. The idea is no longer in socializing but rather in peer pressure of engaging in the game. Parents are worried that a child does not pay a particular game he will loose friends. And they are missing the point that such games do not promote friendship. One can not loose something that one does not have.

New paintings for the restaurant.

The new Okinawa space was decorated with three of my paintings.

Good thing to say

"Good contemporary art confronts the problems, the issues of today," Kaldor says. "And really good ones point towards the future, give some clues and give some direction. That's why, for me, contemporary art is the most relevant. But art is never in isolation. Even great masters like Titian or Tintoretto or whoever you want to name built on previous ones. So it is a continuum. So I hate defining art by periods."
-Kaldor