Page 99 - TOP 10 CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS - Volume I

or sculpture separates its form from its original mastership of the artist, its market value on the skill
matter. Ore, stone, or wood turns into a human body.
Abstract, non-figurative art can take us to the realm of
imagination.
• Liberation from gravitation, which the artist can,
seemingly, revoke in paintings and sculptures.
• Liberation from colour. The coercion of this modality
to always having to see something in a certain colour,
can be mastered by the painter through deliberately
changing the colours of objects or turning them into
shades of grey.
• The knowledge about death is an internal modality
which only human beings have. Depending on his topical
focus, it may occupy the painter/sculptor during the
(long and often tedious) process of carving, chiselling,
and modelling. He will try to bring his emotions into the
sculpture, being inwardly shaken – and sometimes with
tears in his eyes.
It is obvious, not every attempt of liberation from a
modality which is perceived as tormenting will result in
convincing success. Often, the work lacks originality,
creative power, or accuracy. And yet, it is art! Perhaps
art innate to the so-called primitives, or children.
It becomes clear that ready-mades are no real works of
art according to my theory, since they have not been
worked out by the artist. (Thus a real cowpat presented
as “ready-made” in an art exhibition would not be a
piece of art. Drawn, painted, or cast in bronze, it would!
The artistic value of this object depends on the
of the marketing agent). The true value of a work is
inherent, hidden and permanently attached, even
beyond its destruction. The market value of the artistic
work may temporarily be nil, it is established by a kind
of syndicate of those sharing in a possible profit of sale,
independent of the artist.
Whereas the arts are free in the design of their
products, other disciplines such as technology and
science endeavour to overcome any problems resulting
from the above modalities by using objectives to get a
grip on issues. Religion and philosophy, for instance,
can be regarded as further attempts to deal with
the modalities of life. They use ratio and discourse.
Here they differ fundamentally from the visual arts,
music and dance whose expression is non-verbal.
Critics should describe works of art and emphasize
their particularities, but they should restrain from
verboseness and torrents of shallow words, which might
extinguish the sparks that could flash over from the
artist’s work to the viewer in silence.
So I believe that the arts (visual, musical, poetry, and
narrative, etc.), religion, philosophy, and sciences can
be regarded as parallel attempts to make the modalities
of human existence somehow more tolerable, to cope
with them in different ways and by using different
methods, but focussing on the same goal: to create a
richer life for man.
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