is it for money that an artist is driven to work ....?
but I cannot speak for all artists. and everyone is different. all artists are different.
of course there are many artists whose interest and only aim is to satisfy the current trends. whose purpose to work is to produce what will be a sure sell. (But will be forgotten in less than five years)
I don’t care to judge them, I don’t like to judge. I just don’t look at their work. it bores me
I am just not one of those
like I have said, Van Gogh is a word in my dictionary; he stands for something symbolic to me
he did what he did; his style was unheard of and thought primitive and without talent. but a great artist expresses moods, emotions, and so many infinite things without a single word. To only see unmixed colors, the visible brush stroke, the crudeness of the thickness of paint you can see is raised right off the canvas as if smeared by a palette knife and it is as if you could touch it just to look at it there on the museum wall; you’d know what it feels like. It looks still wet as if he stands right over your shoulder as though he just painted it. ~It is not my style, but when I saw his works up close, I felt personally touched by them and —moved. This was the thrill I felt standing in that museum in Amsterdam.
today when we look at Starry Night, it is impossible not to feel the magic of the stars and even be in his moment; it is universal; it is infinite
So, you see, he stands for something to me; call it my poetic license
in his times he was not respected. he was not in fashion; not trendy. he was thought of as a bum. People wondered why didn’t stop wasting his time
some may have wondered why he even kept at it
in our ‘modern’ times he is seen as a kind of icon which would be ironic to him. But I think, like Kurt Cobain, it would have appalled him to have become a trend
as Cocteau said, about the nightmare for an artist is to be admired through being misunderstood
only, I think in Van Gogh’s case, he reset the bar on what is classic
why did Van Gogh keep painting? .... it was his tenuous grip, I think.... on life. I think it was all he really had. his love. his validation. to remind him he existed .... and even though he saw what Rembrandt painted and knew he did not paint the way Rembrandt did, I believe he felt that what he himself was painting came from something true within him and this drove him because it was his own personal expression, his language and it expressed what his soul ached to express.
I think in this way he was a poet but then, aren’t all artists really?
what is my passion for the humanities, where does that come from?— the arts; visual, literature, the performing arts (i.e. Sophocles, Shakespeare —another two who carried a conversation), a commentary about life (maybe cautionary) to be continued on .... they are the humanists who document history through all the common emotions with their reactions to life and the times they lived in. They tell a truer history than the events, I feel. They don’t lie or bend facts. I think when Socrates came around to “practice the arts” at the end of his life he saw this.... I feel the arts are the only true reality that can be depended on
I guess I am quite quirky and have been long resolved to accept this, I don’t really know what drives me unless it is my own tenuous grip and still —it is more than this, like a faith and a loyalty to remain attuned to the conversation
even as I may not seem at the moment to have the means, the power, nor the backing to create what I envision, given these times such as they are, I can’t stop envisioning; it is just who I am, I regret to say. why do I do it? I don’t know. I have always thought in scenes where I tuck my most coveted secrets. screaming undercover of alluring diversions. but still they will not bend to adjust to the fashion, they simply cannot on principle —because that is not where the ideas are born from
....but I promise, it will be very very pretty, like a film noir* (with the secrets blaring and all neatly spelled backwards to release the demons to the light and they will know)
3 comments:
We have now, more than ever, a possibility to be ourselves. To be one with outself. To question what the self is. And yet our species is concerned with being current and 'now'. We are 'all different' is an oxymoron. We have the ability to watch what we want, and when, and yet people must watch what is hyped and new and immediately. It is a feeding frenzy and is consumed.
What is good is always good and what is different is always different. In 2000 years people haven't changed. Reading Xenophon's B.C accounts of war and turning the news on to watch the same thing live A.D in High Definition.
When I find someone like you, a resistance to the flow of others, I have nothing but admiration. Your art is a wonderful as your words.
I wonder what your thoughts are of the Van Gogh murder theory?
Kurczak—(WJ) interesting reference to Xenophon (we become our names —xenophobic?—or misinterpreted curse of an artist of sorts, if we may include philosophy as art; I would). Lovely. &“To question what the self is” you suggest; another lovely. That would require another post up here, unless that is mostly what I paraphrase all through my blog, so maybe superfluous. Still, I repeat myself anyway, don’t I? like an old saga. Bears repeating, no doubt, as it needs constant affirmation. I guess. Reaffirmed. That said, I betray myself, I’m sorry! but, have to admit, I shudder to stand out of the crowd! for being too obviously visible and different; the embarrassment of walking in the wrong direction of a march when mostly you want no notice and desperately just wish for acceptance, but ....finally, have come in my old age to accept I am different; guess I am just wired differently in how I think (must be from being dyslexic and was meant to be left handed and forced to learn to write with my right—how ‘gauche!—I still do everything else with my left, that’s how confused my coordination is; owes to why I’m always thinking cart before the horse)....painful years in early childhood trying so hard to be ‘normal’ just to fit in (I only surrender now to embrace my oddity because I realize there’s nothing I can do but accept who I am). No regrets anymore.... well, life would be easier if I could be more like the crowd, a blissful pig in the mud and glad of ignorance (not really)—maybe everyone should be forced to think backwards. Do you think the brilliant Xenophon wanted to go to war? And yes, it is the same war, isn’t it? Maybe Socrates was trying to tell him that, never mind the brilliance of good strategy.
I am mostly sad by how too many of the general decide that it is safer to join the crowd and then group against the oddities and harass and humiliate them. Is it they fear their own difference? Like the swing of acceptance of open gender bending, sexuality, could be the need to find a better middle ground. As much as it seems not much has evolved because didn’t the Greeks already do it all? Except female equality but I should suggest not that we should strive for equality between men and women but to celebrate our beneficial differences and to ask for equality of importance for the contributions that our differences offer. The feminine nature would not go to war. But we would fight brutally in other ways with more practical and less bloody means—not to say the feminine mind would not kill to protect her own, we can be even more deadly.
Your other question about Van Gogh— was it murder? Of all parts of the body to shoot, the gut? I’m not convinced that one was suicide, no. Did he botch it—no, I don’t see that. I’ve had some experience with les gendarme (ask me about that story some day), and I love the French, don’t get me wrong, but it is not a stretch to imagine a total cover up between them and the doctor —for what? Politics? I’d be willing to bet on that. Easy target: a penniless mad —foreign—artist causing a nuisance in the village, look the other way.... Wow look here! my comment grows long....see, I said deserves its own a post
Writing this in Stratford upon Avon. My own self, I've learned, is limited to brief moments in time. Even this thought, which now seems right, might be repugnant to me in a week- a year from now. Clothes I liked, I may now hate. It's difficult for me to define what my self is. Like saying what the shape of a cloud is.
Your being different and certainly accepting that, makes you unique. It's easier to fall in place but that is a sure way to lose your self.
I think Xenophon treated war as natural as work. It's interesting how men in those times wrote about it so matter of fact. 'X people were slain, x person was brave, x slaves were captured'. Unlike now where we try to make sense of killing. Like it's beneath us but we still do it anyway.
I would love to hear your story. What is also interesting about Van Gogh is that there is such reluctance to even admit he may have been killed by scholars.
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