Romanian masterpieces at the Grimberg Gallery

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Adam Baltatu, aesthetic philosophy, aesthetics, art history, art in Romania, Arthur Danto, Aurel Tar, Claudia Moscovici, contemporary art, contemporary painting, Doru Moscu, Grimberg Auction House, Grimberg Gallery, Ioan Stoenescu, Ion Dimitriu Barlad, Iosif Iser, Mihai Zgondoiu, modern sculpture, Pablo Picasso, postromanticism, Romanian art, Romanian masterpieces at the Grimberg Gallery, Romanian painting, Romanian sculpture, Romanticism and Postromanticism

 

Mihai Zgondoiu – Artist’s Golden Hand Triptic

Romanian masterpices at the Grimberg Gallery: Balancing originality and autonomy with tradition and patronage in contemporary artistic styles

By Claudia Moscovici, art critic, founder of the postromantic art movement, and author of Romanticism and Postromanticism (2007)

Since the modern era the notion of “artistic style” has become synonymous with “originality”. Originality represents a step beyond individuality. It traces each artist’s unique fingerprint, setting his art apart from the works of other artists. This understanding of “style”, however, is relatively new in the history of art. Before the nineteenth-century, originality and individuality were not the most highly prized qualities of art. As for autonomy, or regarding art as separate from social functions, this notion didn’t even exist before the modern period.

During the Renaissance, the artist emerged as an individual assumed to have a unique talent that was in some way useful to those in power. Artists helped elevate the status of the Church or the State through their masterpieces. They were also considered useful to society in general, by providing works of rare and incredible beauty that the educated public could enjoy. Despite, in fact, being “original”, Renaissance artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo perceived their paintings and sculptures as a means of elevating and preserving the social order of their times not only as a mark of their individual genius. No doubt, both Leonardo and Michelangelo could afford to select among patrons and to aggravate those they did serve by postponing deadlines to perfect their masterpieces. In this way, they created the blueprint of the temperamental and independent “artistic” personality that would emerge more fully with Romanticism. Despite the increased prestige of masterful artists, however, Renaissance art contributed to the glory of the patrons and the community (or the nation) it was created for. In other words, art’s undeniable beauty was inseparable from its social usefulness.

As artists’ prestige increased during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, so did their relative power and independence from patrons. Romanticism marked this transformation by explicitly declaring the artist to be a creative genius and by regarding individuality and originality as the supreme qualities of true art. Yet for most Romantic poets, writers and artists, as for the Renaissance masters, art was still bound to its social function. The artist or writer imagined by poets like Wordsworth, Lamartine and Hugo spread to the public, through his unique aesthetic sensibility, imagination, discernment and talent, not only aesthetic pleasure but also a heightened and more empathetic moral and political consciousness.

While earlier forms of Romanticism couple social utility and beauty, late Romantic and Modern art and literature would come to disassociate them. As early as the 1830’s, the autonomy of art from society was proclaimed by Théophile Gautier’s phrase, “art for art’s sake” (l’art pour l’art) and by his criticism of the notion that art had to be in any way useful to society.

postmodern philosopher, Arthur Danto

Postmodern art resurrects the notions of art’s utility and individuality, but usually only to critique them. Gautier’s well-known polemic in his 1834 preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin—“the most useful place of a house is the latrine”—seems to have turned into a twisted prophecy almost a hundred years later, when Marcel Duchamp, under the pseudonym R. Mutt, exhibited a urinal as an objet d’art at the 1917 Independents’ Exhibition in New York City. With this partly joking provocation, art took a seemingly irreversible conceptual turn. As the philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto convincingly demonstrates, what constitutes art can no longer be discerned visually.

Ion Dimitriu Barlad – Enescu

Contemporary Romanian art, however, seems to distinguish itself through a partial return to the worthwhile aesthetic values of the past. And it’s about time. The Grimberg Gallery features some of the best contemporary Romanian artists, each of whom has a unique style; each of whom pays homage to the artistic past rather than only turning away from it. To offer only a few examples, among many talented artists: Ioan Dimitriu Barlad’s masterful sculpture is perhaps the most explicit homage. His bust of the composer George Enescu (1881-1955) captures the musician in a realistic style and paradigmatic pose: a particularly expressive moment of sensibility and contemplation.

Ioan Stoenescu – Icoana cu medalioane

Ioan Stoenescu’s Christian icon, “Icoana cu medalioane”, evokes the now lost art form of medieval “illuminations”: smaller oval portraits of revered saints surrounding the central depiction of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, painted with great delicacy and skill. A gilded foil illuminates the composition from within, giving it an otherworldly aura.

 

Adam Baltatu – Nuduri in peisaj

The painter Adam Baltatu reawakens our interest in figurative art, which is, indeed, after decades dominated by abstraction and conceptual art, becoming popular once again. His “Nuduri in peisaj” (“Nudes on landscape”) shows the beauty of the countryside enhanced by the beauty of feminine forms. The artist conveys the two women with a sense of harmony, balance and muted colors reminiscent of post-Impressionism, particularly of the paintings of Gauguin and Cézanne.

Iosif Iser- Odalisca

Iosif Iser’s “Odalisca” (“Odalisque”) also evokes post-Impressionism in style, although the odalisque was a favorite theme of Neo-classical and Romantic painters (particularly Ingres and Delacroix). Iser’s odalisque holds a relaxed, modern pose, displaying her half-veiled body in an almost defiant manner reminiscent of Manet’s Olympia.

Doru Moscu – Alfred’s dream

Doru Moscu’s “Alfred’s dream”, painted with broad brushstrokes of blues, grays, browns and greens, is more Expressionist in style. In this painting color assumes extreme importance, suggesting a somber mood, as furtive and enigmatic as the shadowy man on the right side of the canvas.

Mihai Zgondoiu -Artist`s Golden Hand Triptic

 

Surrealism has experienced a contemporary rebirth as well, as we can see in Mihai Zgondoiu’s “Artist’s Golden Hand Triptic”. In this monochromatic composition the artist’s hand, in a golden cast, stands out in poses suggestive of classical sculptures yet truncated, headless, and fragmentary: like the pieces of a disjointed dream that assume great symbolic significance.

Aurel Tar – Lectura

Aurel Tar’s “Lectura” carries the legacy of Impressionism forward, into the relatively new field of digital art. A painting reminiscent in theme and style of the works of Morisot and Cassatt–a mother reading to her tired, sleepy daughter as they wait together at the train station—has a (paradoxically) new feel through its explicitly retro look (the newspaper print-like pointillism of digital art).

Why is it is it so important for contemporary artists to reinvent, in their unique and original styles, some of the greatest traditions in art history? I think, first of all, because no art exists in a cultural vacuum. Complete individuality is an illusion. Originality, when pushed to an extreme, risks degenerating into mere shock value. Just as contemporary artists can’t reject the influence of the artistic movements that came before them, they shouldn’t underestimate the importance of their patrons: the critics, the viewers, the buyers and the lovers of art.

Picasso and Gilot

For, to conclude my introduction with a citation by Picasso—arguably the most subversive and original modern artist—even subversion cannot exist without tradition, nor can originality exist in the absence of sound aesthetic standards:

“Today we are in the unfortunate position of having no order or canon whereby all artistic production is submitted to rules. They—the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians—did. Their canon was inescapable because beauty, so-called, was, by definition, contained in those rules. But as soon as art had lost all link with tradition, and the kind of liberation that came in with Impressionism permitted every painter to do what he wanted to do, painting was finished. When they decided it was the painter’s sensations and emotions that mattered, and every man could recreate painting as he understood it from any basis whatever, then there was no more painting; there were only individuals. Sculpture died the same death. … Painters no longer live within a tradition and so each one of us must recreate an entire language from A to Z. No criterion can be applied to him a priori, since we don’t believe in rigid standards any longer. In a certain sense, it’s a liberation but at the same time it’s an enormous limitation, because when the individuality of the artist begins to express itself, what the artist gains by way of liberty he loses in the way of order, and when you’re no longer able to attach yourself to an order, basically that’s very bad.” (My life with Picasso, Françoise Gilot, 21)

Returning to some shared artistic criteria and reclaiming art’s role in society doesn’t mean reverting to the rigid criteria of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, which can be respected but not revived. It means revitalizing the importance of art today. As we’ve seen in my brief perusal of Romanian contemporary art featured by the Grimberg Gallery, individuality of style can coexist with respect for past artistic traditions and artistic freedom is entirely compatible with an appreciation of art’s patrons: us, the viewing public.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

Shaking Things Up in the Art World: The Biennale de Paris and the Salon des Refusés

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aesthetic philosophy, aesthetic standards, aesthetics, Alexandre Gurita, Alexandre Gurita's Biennale de Paris, André Malraux, art, art blog, art history, Claudia Moscovici, conceptual art, contemporary art, controversial art, Déjeuner sur l'herbe, Edouard Manet, Emile Zola, fine art, fineartebooks, fineartebooks.com, history of art, Impressionism, la Biennale de Paris, le Biennale de Paris, Le Salon des Refusées, pluralism in art, postmodern art, Romanticism and Postromanticism, Shaking Things Up in the Art World: The Biennale de Paris and the Salon des Refusés, the Biennale of Paris, the Impressionist movement

André Malraux the founder of the Biennale de Paris by Gisèle Freund in 1935. © Agence Nina Beskow

As an inherently subjective field despite (or perhaps because of) its many changing standards, art has been surrounded by controversy (at least) ever since the Impressionists changed the aesthetic standards of the Academy in the nineteenth century. What was at stake then in the heated debates surrounding the official Salon is similar to what is at stake now in the controversy surrounding the Biennale de Paris: an understanding of art, its forums, its distribution and its cultural value. The Biennale de Paris was launched by Raymond Cogniat in 1959 and set up by the writer André Malraux, who was at the time the Minister of Culture. Its role was to showcase creative talent worldwide and to provide a place where artists, critics, gallery owners, and others involved in the fields of art could share their work and exchange ideas. But ever since Alexandre Gurita took over the BDP in 2000, this forum has been plagued by debates that get to the core of the meaning and place of art today: should it be a place or places? Who counts as an artist? What is art? What counts as an artwork? Who should give it value or cultural meaning?

Will the real Biennale de Paris please stand up?

According to Gurita, the controversy surrounding the Biennale de Paris “would make a best-seller”. The BDP originally directed by Malraux was abandoned by the Ministry of Culture in 1985. Between 1985-2000, there were debates and investigations concerning the ways in which to modernize it and how to relaunch it. In 2000, Alexandre Gurita took over this project and changed it radically, from within. Through the notion of  « invisual art »⁽¹⁾, he broke the sacred law that says « art = art objet » which creates an automatic dependency between art and work of art. He asserts that art can express itself otherwise than through art objects and declares : « There is no proof  that art is depending from the art object. For that reason we can assume the contrary ». In a move that the sociologist of art Pierre Bourdieu would have been proud of, he also challenged the hierarchies imposed by all the mediators – art critics, gallery owners, museum curators – between artists and their public. In so doing, he also disposed with the idea that some artistic spaces – like museums of contemporary art or posh galleries – are privileged spaces to exhibit artwork. Some of the French officials and art critics were up in arms, even though many of them had applauded Bourdieu, one of the most highly consecrated philosophers and sociologists of art, for proposing exactly the same ideas. Gurita just put them into practice.

In his ground-breaking book, Distinction, Pierre Bourdieu argued that society uses “symbolic goods, especially those regarded as the attributes of excellence, […as] the ideal weapon in strategies of distinction” that shape various hierarchies, especially class hierarchies. The art world is still filled with such social distinctions, which aren’t only class-based, by the way. As I’ve argued before, most contemporary artists–no matter what class or place they come from–don’t have meaningful access to the public. Aside from a handful of (mostly postmodern) artists, most artists find it impossible to showcase their art in museums of contemporary art or in the most prestigious galleries. In turn, this means that collectors don’t get to see and buy their artwork and that critics don’t view it and discuss it. To change this hierarchical system of distinction, Alexandre Gurita dispensed with the mediators (gallery and museum curators) between the artists and the public. The participants set themselves the dates and the places for their own activities. On its official website, http://biennaledeparis.org  the reinvented Biennale de Paris includes the following tenets, a true Manifesto of a new aesthetic pluralism:

« The Biennale de Paris was launched in 1959 by André Malraux with the purpose of creating a meeting place for those who would define the art of the future. After a hiatus of several years, the Biennale was relaunched in 2000. Since then it has not ceased in its efforts to unravel art from institutions. The Biennale de Paris rejects the use of art objects, which are too alienated by the market. It does not confine itself to a framework that would hinder its present actions or its political, economic and ideological evolution. By acting upon everyday life and its unfolding realities, the Biennale seeks to redefine art by using criteria which rejects the idea of the artist as the sole protagonist in his work. Simply stated, the Biennale de Paris refuses to participate in today’s conventional art world. By mixing genres, exploiting porous frontiers and practicing the redistribution of roles, the Biennale de Paris allows art to appear precisely where it’s not expected. Furthermore, the Biennale de Paris has its own guidelines⁽²⁾.

"Déjeuner sur l'herbe", Catherine et Jacques Pineau, Biennale de Paris 2004

In a personal interview, Gurita told me that he perceives undermining the system of distinction as “an instrument of liberty placed at the service of art. In 2000 my act created an enormous scandal and enraged certain representatives of the system. Others, however, liked the idea that an artist combats an institution.” Not everyone in France greeted this radical overhaul quite as enthusiastically. Government officials initially disowned the Biennale de Paris, claiming that the real Biennale was moved to Lyon. Even art critics–who generally can’t praise enough the cutting-edge and avant-garde art–weren’t too flattering. Did the Biennale escape them? In the Editorial of Beaux-Arts Magazine, for instance, Fabrice Bousteau referred to the project as “the regrettable Biennale de Paris, mixing expos, concerts, performances, conferences, and accomplish with the creators of the whole world in several areas of the city” (May 2007). The critic for France’s elite leftwing newspaper, Libération, adopted the official government position that the Biennale de Paris has been transferred to Lyon: “Since 1991, France itself has its Biennale in Lyon. The latter picks up the slack from the defunct Biennale de Paris, which had its last meeting in 1985.” (Libération, April 2006)

The objective of the new Biennale de Paris is nothing less than changing the idea of art as a unified domain of cultural production and rigid, hierchical distinctions. More than that, it proposes an art “without pieces of art, an art without exhibition, an art without spectatorship, an art without curatorship, authors without authority.” As for when it happens, don’t set your calendars, since that’s also relative. “The Biennale de Paris takes place when it happens. It exists in real time. Each biennial begins when the previous ends. Associated practices evolve over the course of successive editions.” Where does it take place?  “The Biennale de Paris takes place where it happens. Relocating itself, it looks for a reciprocity with the practices locality, in order to ponder over and modify social, economical, political and ideological backgrounds.

The Precedent of Impressionism and the Salon des Refusés

"Déjeuner sur l'herbe", Edouard Manet, Wikipedia Commons, Warlburg.edu

Before you conclude that you’re finding yourself in one of Eugen Ionesco’s absurdist plays, I’d like to remind you that the art world has often been subject to radical redefinition from within. To stick to the theme of French culture, I’ll use the Impressionist movement as an example. The Biennale de Paris is not the only one to be rejected by the establishment. It finds itself in good company, since the Impressionists –  are arguably still the most popular artists in the world–were rejected as well.

If any art collection can be said to have a profound impact upon the history of art and aesthetics, the paintings exhibited at the Salon des Refusés in 1863 would certainly be on a top ten list. This collection of paintings marks both a change of views about what counts as good art and a liberating shift in the institutions that consecrated French art to begin with. Before this crucial moment, the production of good art was heavily regulated. From the seventeenth-century, when Colbert instituted the first Salon that would display the art of the painters of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in the Salon Carré of the Louvre, the Salons and the Academy largely determined artistic standards. Even when the Salon was opened to all artists in 1791, the rules by which they were judged did not become less rigid, even though the number of artists who could display grew substantially as did the public patronage of the arts.

When in 1863 the official Salon rejected 3000 pieces out of the 5000 submitted by artists, with hindsight we can safely say that it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In a half-mocking, half-appeasing gesture towards the rejected artists, Napoleon III authorized a Salon de Refusés in a space that was distinct from the prestigious Salon sponsored by the Académie.

Like Napoleon I, the Emperor utilized art to express the glory of the French empire. The standards of the official salon were set by the traditional Count Nieuwerkerke, who was the Intendant of the Beaux Arts. He lived in a seventeen room suite in the Louvre and regulated all artistic life at court. By the 1860′s, however, artists and intellectuals–especially in more liberal newspapers– began to object to the rigid standards of the Academy and the Salon. Many of them demanded inclusion in the Salon for a wider range of talented artists.

Napoleon III paid a visit to the Salon and told Nieuwerkerke–perhaps in part to clip his wings–that many of the works rejected were just as good as those accepted. He then ordered that all the works rejected by the Salon be shown in the Palais de L’Industrie in its own show that would be called, condescendingly, the Salon de Refusés. This created the opportunity for new artists such as Manet, Pissaro and Whistler –the generation that had a profound influence upon modern art and especially upon the Impressionist movement–to become more visible in the public eye.

Manet also proved to be a key factor in the dissolution of the Salon de Refusés, however. Once the Emperor saw his Déjeuner sur l’herbe, he was shocked by its undisguised sexuality and agreed with the Academy that the first Salon de Refusés should also be the last. Nonetheless, the controversy stirred a heated debate over the nature of modern art and eventually opened the way for the Salon des Indépendants, galleries, and other institutions that soon rivaled and eventually exceeded the official Salon’s influence upon art. In fact, in a reversal of aesthetic values, less than twenty years after the Salon de Refusés, the artists associated with this controversial exhibit, particularly Manet, would be enshrined as the founders of modern art. Conversely, the official Salon art would fall into disrepute as mechanical, uninventive, formalistic: in short, l’art pompier, a pejorative term used to describe David’s Roman headgear, which resembled the helmets of firefighters (pompiers). As it often happens, the most effective subversive, anti-establishment artists and artistic movements often become–by their sheer cultural impact and visibility–the new establishment in art.

I believe that a similar process is at work in the manner in which Alexandre Gurita is redefining our understanding of the art world today. His pluralistic understanding of art opens up the field of cultural production to diverse artists, locations, modes of giving cultural value, and audiences. Although his project may have been accused by some of nihilism, I’d say that there’s a big philosophical –  actual – difference between pluralism and nihilism. Nihilism represents a flat denial of all values, be they ethical or aesthetic. By way of contrast, pluralism supports the value of a multitude of standards. Although pluralism can be relativistic, it doesn’t have to be. The standards for many aesthetic values can be defended and validated. Personally, as the founder of a more or less traditional movement in art (postromanticism.com) I’ll take artistic pluralism over rigid hierarchy any day.

As I have argued in my previous article, The Conformism of Postmodern Style, I object to the fact that elitist practices in museums of contemporary art and in some galleries impose a certain conformity (which I loosely associate with postmodern art) upon the art world. In so doing, they don’t give diverse artists a real, fair and democratic shake at presenting their works to the public. But, to my mind, envy of those artists who have “made it” or tearing down the entire artistic establishment is not the solution. Opening up the art world from within is. The French have a saying about this: Vive la différence! The art that Alexandre Gurita endorses – invisual art – is as far removed from my more traditional postromantic art movement as you can get. However, to my mind, the real issue is not imposing one standard of what constitutes good or true art, but making it possible for different kinds of artists and artistic styles to be shared with the public in a multitude of venues. This is what the reincarnated Biennale de Paris directed by Gurita aims to do.

In such a newly redefined art world – or art fields, more like it–it’s possible for more traditional artists like the postromantics to coexist and share cultural space and ideas with the more avant-garde postmodernists.  And if anybody in France still accuses Gurita of political correctness, they can blame it on Pierre Bourdieu, who, incidentally – and ironically – won the prestigious Médaille d’or du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). This goes to show that it pays to shake things up and repudiate cultural consecration. You might even get awarded a medal for it!

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

⁽¹⁾ The invisual is visible but not as art. Invisual do not need to be seen to exist.

⁽²⁾ -Orientations : The Biennale de Paris rejects exhibitions and art objects. It refuses to be ”thought by art”. It identifies and defends true alternatives. It calls for “non-standard practices”.

-Strategy : To be liquid. If the ground floor is occupied, occupy the floor below.

-An Invisual Art : No serious proof exists that art is dependent on the art object. We can therefore assume the opposite. The Biennale de Paris promotes invisual practices which do not need to be seen to exist. The invisual is visible but not as art.

-A Non-Artistic Art : The Biennale de Paris defends an art which does not obey the common criteria for art: creative, emotive, aesthetic, spectacular…

-An Art which Operates in Everyday Reality : The Biennale de Paris promotes practices that relegate art to the background in order to conquer everyday reality.

-A Public of Indifference : With the Biennale de Paris there are no more art spectacles. The Biennale addresses what it calls “a public of indifference”: persons who, consciously or accidentally, interact with propositions that can no longer be identified as artistic.

-A Unified Criticism : Organised as a network, the Biennale de Paris constitutes a critical mass composed of hundreds of initiatives, which would otherwise have been isolated and without impact.

Leonardo Pereznieto: Devotion to Art and Human Rights

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Able Fine Art Gallery, art, art and activism, art and human rights, art blog, art criticism, art history, Artists and Runners for Human Rights Mexico, Claudia Moscovici, devotion to art and human rights, Edvard Munch, expressionism, fine art, fineartebooks, history of art, Laura Ramirez, Leonardo Pereznieto, Leonardo Pereznieto: Devotion to Art and Human Rights, Leonardo Pereznieto: Postromanticism and Human Rights, Mexican Consulate, postromantic art, postromanticism, postromanticism.com, Romanticism and Postromanticism, sculpture, The Scream

Leonardo Pereznieto is, along with me, the co-founder of the contemporary art movement postromanticism. He lives in Mexico and comes from an artistic family: his mother is a musician and his father was a well-known artist. He has won the Mozart Prize for the Arts for his sculpture, which epitomizes the ideals of postromanticism: an incredible life-like quality which is nevertheless full of imagination and fancy; a delicate sensual touch; a passionate sense of the spirituality of earthly existence.

On January 12th, 2012, Leonardo Pereznieto exhibited some of his works at the Able Fine Art Gallery, in New York City, alongside other notable international artists: Tanya Kazakowitz, Kim Wan, Steve Hickok, Kim Wan, Oh Se-Chul, Kim Ji-Young and Park Ju-Hyun. The opening reception was lively, with hundreds of art lovers in attendance. Laura Ramirez, the Associate Director of the Mexican Cultural Institute in New York, participated at the opening, representing the Mexican Consulate. The artist John Wellington, the sculptor Cynthia Eardley, the actress Suzi Lorraine, playwright and the director Micheal Simon Hall  also attended the show.

Leonardo Pereznieto has exhibited his work in many prominent galleries throughout the world, including Paris, Florence, London, Montecarlo, Frankfurt, Seoul, New York, Los Angeles, and Mexico City and has delivered over 50 lectures including at the New York Academy of Art, the University of Michigan and at the Celebrity Centre Florence, Italy. Among other honors and prizes, he has been awarded the Gold Medal of the Italy Award for Visual Arts; Premio Firenze (sculpture); the Mozart Prize for the Arts (sculpture), Nice, France and the award at the International Art Festival, New York, NY (sculpture).

Aside from his devotion to art, the artist has also dedicated a large part of his life to humanitarian causes. He is the Director of Visual Arts for the non-profit organization Artists and Runners for Human Rights Mexico, which has the purpose of raising people’s awareness about the UN´s Universal Declaration for Human Rights. Believing that art should also contribute to worthwhile social goals, Leonardo has dedicated the sculpture featured above, entitled The Scream, to the protection of human rights.

We’ve all seen Evard Munch’s Expressionist painting, The Scream (1893). The frantic colors, the skeletal shape of the man on the bridge, his gaping mouth, all suggest angst. This painting might as well be a symbol for the horrors humanity suffered after the artist died: the Stalinist purges, the Holocaust. How do you capture the human capacity for evil and senseless violence through sculpture?

Leonardo Pereznieto manages to do it eloquently in his version of The Scream. This sculpture features a man who resembles in some way Munch’s figure on the bridge: his gaping mouth voices a silent scream, while the lines on his face suggest hopeless anguish. His face is slanted upward, as if appealing for an explanation to the divine. We can’t tell if he finds any solace in faith. But we see quite clearly the source of his anguish: the beautiful woman he has lost, who lies languidly in his arms. Her lifeless shape is now free of pain. His rage contrasts with her endless repose. Together they form a symbol of the innocence and outrage of senseless human suffering.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

http://www.amazon.com/Romanticism-Postromanticism-Claudia-Moscovici/dp/0739116754

The Google Art Project and Google Music: There’s No Turning Back

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aesthetics, art blog, art criticism, Claudia Moscovici, Google, Google Art Project, Google Art Project and YouTube, Google Music, Google Plus, googleartproject, increasing popularity of art, making art accessible, Metropolitan Museum of Art, panoramic views of art, postromanticism.com, Romanticism and Postromanticism, seeing art online, Starry Night, the Frick Collection, the Frick Museum, the future of art, the future of galleries, The Google Art Project, The Google Art Project and Google Music: There's No Turning Back, The Google Art Project: There's No Turning Back, the Museum of Modern Art, the Palace of Versailes, the Tate Gallery, the Uffizi Museum, Van Gogh, virtual gallery tours, virtual museum tours, virtual tour of museums, youtube and art, YouTube art videos

On February 1, 2011 Google launched the groundbreaking Google Art Project. This is an online, high-resolution compilation of some of the greatest works of art, featured in some of the most famous museums, worldwide: including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and, my personal favorite, the Frick Collection in New York City; the Uffizi in Florence; the Palace of Versailles in Paris and the Tate Gallery in London. All in all, seventeen museums and galleries participated in this revolutionary venture.

According to the Wikipedia, Elizabeth Merritt, the Director of the Center for the Future of Museums, described the project as an “interesting experiment.” Other leaders in the world of art greeted this venture with more optimism. Julian Raby, the Director of the Freer Gallery of Art, stated that this project would increase viewers’ interest in visiting the actual museums. Brian Kennedy shared this view, stating that even though the virtual museum and gallery tours offer better resolution and panoramic perspectives, that’s still not a substitute for seeing the works of art in person.

It’s not the same, but, in my opinion, the Google Art Project represents the wave of the future–if not the present–not just for museums, but also for art galleries. Galleries in particular have taken a terrible hit during the past few years. Many were forced to go out of business. During tough economic times, art is seen as a luxury that many consumers are willing to forgo. The Google Art Project generates interest in great works of art once again. And with interest comes visits to the museum and galleries, which in turn, increases the number of  art collectors and buyers.

Incidentally, I also love the idea that Google, which now owns YouTube, combines the virtual museum tours with YouTube videos related to selected artists or works of art. By combining beautiful art and music, sometimes even local scenes, and by being so widely accessible to hundreds of millions of YouTube viewers, Google is making art accessible and inviting not only to art lovers but also to those who have only a remote interest in art.

The world of art has reached a pivotal turning point due to this, and similar, technological advances. Those galleries that will adapt to these new ways of reaching viewers to inform and attract the general public will be much more likely to survive than those that will not. I can’t see virtual reality becoming a substitute for actual reality in any domain: be it art, sex or entertainment. But I do see virtual reality as the most effective–and now, indispensable–way to spread information about the reality that will count most in the twenty-first century. You can learn more about this project by visiting the website http://www.googleartproject.com/c/faq.

More recently, in May 2011, Google also launched Google Music, an online service that offers music in a similar fashion to itunes (in fact, you can import songs from itunes on it). This new service is very versatile: you can purchase songs on Google plus as well as store up to 20,000 songs for free. So far Google Music is available only to U.S. residents, but it will soon open up to other parts of the world. You can find more information about Google Music on the website http://music.google.com.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

http://www.amazon.com/Romanticism-Postromanticism-Claudia-Moscovici/dp/0739116754

 

Poetry in Motion: The Dance Photography of Richard Calmes

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aesthetic philosophy, aesthetics, Alex Gurita, Alexandre Gurita, art, art blog, art criticism, art history, artistic collaboration, Biennale de Paris, Claudia Moscovici, contemporary art, contemporary dance, contemporary photography, dance, dance photography, dancers photography, fine art, fineartebooks, fineartebooks.com, history of art, images dancers, modern art, modern dance, multidisiplinary art, painting, Pavel Rotaru, photographer Richard Calmes, photography, photography and dance, photography of dancers, photography Richard Calmes, photos dancers, photos of dancers, Poetry in Motion: The Dance Photography of Richard Calmes, postromantic art, postromanticism.com, Richard Calmes, Richard Calmes dance photography, Richard Calmes dancers, Richard Calmes photographer, Richard Calmes photography, richardcalmes.com, Romanian dance, Romantic art, Romanticism and Postromanticism, sensual art, The Dance Photography of Richard Calmes

The twentieth century was the era of specialization. Every field became so highly specialized and technical that only experts could master each discipline. The twenty-first century, however, is the era of collaboration. As an art critic, I’ve witnessed this comingling among different fields in the domains of advertising, cinema and photography. Some of the most talented photographers in the world work as Directors of Photography for commercials and film. Since both are primarily visual arts, one might expect a fruitful collaboration between the domains of photography and film. What is more unexpected, however, is the combination of photography and dance. No artist that I know of has pulled it off better than Richard Calmes.

An American dance photographer with a growing international reputation, Richard Calmes has  travelled all over the United States to capture the talent of some of the most gifted dancers and share it with the world. His images range from the most urban contemporary dancers in New York to the most classical dancers in Washington D.C.  He experiments with light, setting and color to capture the unique aspects of each genre of dance as well as of each dancer. His photography represents an homage to the beauty of dance as well as to the mental and physical strength and discipline it takes to be a dancer and make your body do what most of us can’t: and, what’s more, do it gracefully.

In an email exchange, Richard told me that his great admiration for dancers has a personal dimension (as well as, incidentally, a connection to my native country, Romania): “My daughter danced in Bucharest in the early 90’s. There was a dance Company here in Atlanta, Georgia founded by a Romanian, Pavel Rotaru, who was once a famous dancer there. He took them to Romania on tour and they were received with much passion. She had a great time. It was watching her grow up and improve year after year which taught me the sacrifices and love dancers have for their art!”

Richard Calmes’ images, like dance itself, are poetry in motion. They express movement, personality, character, mood and theme. His more shadowy black and white series is understated, classic and mysterious.  Most of his images, however, include striking and bright colors, to capture the drama, sensuality and passion of modern dance. And then you also have his motion or dynamic series, which trace the movements of the dancers in flight, to maintain the focus on dance as the most dynamic art form.

Featured on the covers of dance magazines as well as in gallery exhibitions, the photography of Richard Calmes shows the benefits of specialization and collaboration among the arts. This is no Marxist rotation of disciplines, where everyone purports to be good at everything: an impossible utopian goal that leads to nobody being really good at anything. Rather, Calmes’ images show the best of contemporary artistic reality at work: the most talented artists in each field working together to create something far better together than they would separately, as you can see in this video:

In my estimation, we’ll continue to see each field of art develop (both technically and artistically) and thrive in its own genre while at the same time we’ll see more and more collaborations among artists working in different domains. Soon art exhibits will no longer be held only in museums or galleries, but also in dance halls, movie theaters and concert halls. Analogously, dancers will sometimes dance at gallery exhibits, particularly when the exhibit itself focuses on the art of dance. Calmes is paving the way not only for other photographers, but also for the increasingly multidisciplinary direction of contemporary art in general. For more information about Richard Calmes’ photography, take a look at the artist’s website on the link below.

http://www.richardcalmes.com/

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

Literary Images: The Photography of Alex M. Bustillo

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aesthetic philosophy, aesthetics, Alex Bustillo, Alex Bustillo photography, Alex M. Bustillo, Alex M. Bustillo photography, art, art blog, art criticism, art history, Claudia Moscovici, collage, contemporary art, contemporary photography, erotic transgression, Erotism, fine art, fineartebooks, Georges Batailles, Histoire de l'oeil, history of art, L'Erotisme, Literary Images: The Photography of Alex M. Bustillo, Marquis de Sade, modern art, Pablo Picasso, photographer Alex M. Bustillo, photography Alex Bustillo, postmodern art, postmodernism, postromantic movement, postromanticism, postromanticism.com, Roland Barthes, Romanticism and Postromanticism, Story of the Eye, Surrealism, Surrealist photography, Susan Sontag, The Photography of Alex Bustillo, The Photography of Alex M. Bustillo, transgression

Alex M. Bustillo is an international artist par excellence. Born in Miami, Florida and of Cuban origin, he currently resides in France. Alex has lived throughout the world, however, including the United States, Puerto Rico, Latin America and Italy. It’s not only his diverse cultural backgrounds that shine through in his photographic collages, but also his keen interest in all aspects of culture: including philosophy, literature, music and film.

Pablo Picasso is credited with having invented the artistic collage, made up of sketches, painting and newspaper cutouts. Bustillo transforms this modernist tradition into a postmodern artform that includes overlapping materials as diverse as digital photography, plexiglas and aluminum foil that somehow work together to create a striking and unique artistic whole. Not limited to the visual arts, Bustillo has even collaborated with the American musician Garland Jeffreys to incorporate musical ideas in a visual context.

Bustillo doesn’t shy away from anthropology, philosophy or even erotic fiction. His collection  Story of the Eye (above) offers a visual interpretation of Georges Bataille‘s famous erotic and philosophical collection of vignettes by the same name, which was published in 1928. Bataille is best known for his anthropology of pleasure, Eroticism (1957), which studies human sexuality in terms of religious sacrifice and cultural taboos.

But it’s Bataille’s erotic tale that captured the imagination of artists, literary critics and film producers. Written in the tradition of libertine fiction made popular in eighteenth-century France by the Marquis de Sade, Story of the Eye describes the erotic passion between an adolescent male (the narrator) and Simone, his main partner. The couple have a menage-à-trois with Marcelle, a mentally ill teenage girl, engaging together in various exhibitionist acts (in front of Simone’s mother) and other taboo sexual behaviors.

Simone and the narrator are the original Bonnie and Clyde–or Natural Born Killers, more like it–manifesting their penchant for transgression through their increasingly violent sexual bond. When Marcelle breaks out of the mental institution, she becomes suicidal and hangs herself. The sociopathic lovers have sex next to her corpse, suggesting necrophilia, a recurrent theme in the book. This seedy story seems to be taken right out of pulp or pornographic fiction; however, it’s become a favorite allegory of taboo and transgression among French (and Francophile) intellectuals. Both the American feminist critic Susan Sontag and the French structuralist literary critic Roland Barthes wrote about it.

In Bustillo’s interpretation, Bataille’s tale of sexual liberty and libertinism takes a dystopic turn. His dramatic images are atavistic yet historical (in the photograph above you can see superposed images of an Egyptian bust, an American Indian chief and a Roman soldier); disembodied yet carnal (one slim leg appears, suggesting death rather than desire). Rather than glorifying transgression, they tell the story of what (and who) is sacrificed by the individual and society when the sadistic and perverse are  allowed free reign and gain power over others. At once elusive and allusive, the photography of Alex M. Bustillo provides a tantalizing peek  into the world of culture. You can view more of Alex’s portfolio on the link http://www.saatchionline.com/alexmbustillo.

 

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

Intoxication: Artistic Fame and the Magnetic Persona

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aesthetic philosophy, aesthetics, art, art blog, art criticism, art history, Arthur Danto, artistic fame, artistic magnetism, Claudia Moscovici, conceptual art, contemporary art, Damien Hirst, Damien Hirst's fame, fame, fame and art, fame and Damien Hirst, fame in art, famous art, famous artists, fine art, fineartebooks, fineartebooks.com, Friedrich Nietzsche, history of art, Immanuel Kant, Impressionism, intoxication in art, Intoxication: Artistic Fame and the Magnetic Persona, Leonardo Pereznieto, magnetic persona, Nietzsche, originality in art, Pablo Picasso, Pierre Bourdieu, postmodernism, postromantic art, postromanticism, postromanticism.com, Romanticism and Postromanticism, Salvador Dali, Surrealism, Surrealist art

No matter what they may say, few artists create art  only for themselves. Just as few writers write only for themselves (unless they’re only writing in a journal, and even then, they may do it with an eye for posterity). Most artists aspire to share their art with others. Many want that elusive concept of “fame”. Artistic fame means being valued in their own lifetime as well as leaving a significant trace of their art for posterity. This, of course, implies canonization: making their name–and style(s)–common currency not only for their own times, but for future generations as well.

Immanuel Kant gave us three standards for great art that stands the test of time: 1) originality (the first of its kind in a certain style), 2) exemplarity (others will want to imitate that style) and 3) inimitability (the art is so unique that others won’t really be able to imitate it, just as there are many Impressionist painters but only one Monet or Renoir). If we examine, however, the manner in which art is consecrated in reality, we see at work the processes described by the sociologist of art Pierre Bourdieu. Art is what artists, critics, museum curators and collectors deem it to be. In my estimation, both philosophers are partly right: art is what those in “the field of cultural production,” to use Bourdieu’s term, say it is; however, what they perceive as “art” has a lot to do with Kant’s three criteria for aesthetic value.

Perhaps even more so, art has to do with the magnetic persona of the artist. To offer a notable example, Pablo Picasso not only reinvented his art in radically new style during each of his periods–ranging from the relative realism of his blue period to his Cubism, to his collage art–but also shaped public opinion, juggled and manipulated art dealers and defined international art.  He commanded attention to his art largely thanks to his greater-than-life persona. Similarly, Salvador Dali, though one of the founders of Surrealism and an artist of immense talent, generated publicity for his art via antics that weren’t completely random. For example, to underscore the lobster motif of his art, he gave a talk in New York with his foot in a bucket and a lobster on his head.

In our times, I believe that Damien Hirst is the artist who manages to draw the public most effectively, not only through his sometimes shockingly original and diverse art–the pickled sharks, dissected cows, diamond-studded skulls and collections of diamond-clustered butterflies–but also through the way he presents himself to the media: through his dramatic persona. Artistic magnetism goes beyond mere shock value or even publicity stunts. It’s perhaps best described by Friedrich Nietzsche when he urges every person to live his or her life as a work of art. Few artists–let alone people in general–succeed in doing that. Because, as Nietzsche also states, “For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.” Artistic fame happens when both the artist and his art are able to intoxicate us.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

The Neo-Surrealism of Gustavo C. Posadas

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Surrealist art often combines the best of both worlds: a “realistic” representation of objects, which requires talent and technical skill, and a fantastic imagination that takes us past the threshold of the rational and the knowable, so we can explore the mysteries of the subconscious. Surrealism offers an escape from the real world yet also probes the depths of a perhaps truer and deeper reality: the reality of human desire; of our dreams and nightmares; of our hopes and fears; of our collective past and a visionary future we can barely imagine. Surrealism can also be playful: at least in the hands of an artist like Miró as well as in Magritte‘s linguistic imagination, whose paintings are filled with visual puns and paradoxes.

The contemporary Mexican artist  Gustavo C. Posadas continues the Surrealist tradition today. Calling himself a Neo-Surrealist, Posadas has been a visual artist since 1977. He’s also a curator for art exhibits and the Director of ACCORDarte Gallery and Grupo Centro 10. His paintings have a haunting beauty, revealing a fascination with the human figure in its most elemental representation. They often resemble women–without hair, clothes or makeup–beautiful in an atavistic manner. They seem the creatures of the past or figments of some future civilization, somehow bypassing the present. Posadas uses vivid colors, immediately capturing our attention, to draw us into the paintings which we can begin to decode only if we use our feelings and imaginations more so than our eyes.

Posadas’s paintings are also conceptual, as Surrealist art tends to be, provoking viewers to think about the concepts of time, individuality (his figures often overlap, in a provocative and strange symbiosis) and emotion itself. Some of his figures resemble masks, whose expressions are trapped in silent screams that mimic our emotions, exploring the limits and limitations of our powers of communication.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

An Abstract Monet: The Post-Impressionist Art of Claudiu Presecan

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aesthetics, An Abstract Monet: The Post-Impressionist Art of Claudiu Prescan, art, art blog, art criticism, art history, Claude Monet, Claudia Moscovici, Claudiu Presecan, contemporary art, contemporary Romanian art, fineartebooks, fineartebooks.com, history of art, Impression Sunrise, Impressionism, Impressionist painting, Monet, painting, post-Impressionism, post-Impressionist, postromanticism.com, Presecan, Romania, Romanian art, Romanian artists, Romanticism and Postromanticism

Claudiu Presecan‘s art looks like a more abstract, contemporary version of Monet’s paintings. Prescan’s latest series,Traces on Water (Urme pe apa) doesn’t just look like an updated Impressionism: it actually conceptualizes the complex (post)Impressionist interplay between the eye’s perception of light and the painter’s representations of water, sky and the beauty of nature. The artist states in his mission statement that his aesthetic revolution takes place by “escaping in Nature” to seek the sensations “that fulfill the soul through the dazzling interplay between water and light.”

As you can tell from the painting above, the lines and contours of Presecan’s paintings are more abstract and suggestive than in traditional Impressionist art. They merely hint at the objects they represent rather than showing them realistically. At the same time, Presecan’s artistic experiments with light are in some respects more philosophical (phenomenological) than materialist, as they were for the Impressionists.  Following in the footsteps of some of the classical philosophers, Presecan depicts water as the essence of nature. Not only is water, like air itself, an element basic to survival, but also it symbolizes the cycles of life. In its fluidity and blue-green color, water represents mystery, depth, calmness and luminosity. You can find out more about Claudiu Presecan’s innovative post-Impressionism–a fertile cross between Impressionism and Abstraction–on his website, http://www.claudiupresecan.com/.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

 

The Art of Vesa Peltonen and Global ArtXchanges

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aesthetic philosophy, aesthetics, Amnesty International, art, art and human rights, art and spirituality, art criticism, art history, Claudia Moscovici, contemporary art, Cubism, fine art, fineartebooks.com, Global ArtXchanges, international art, international art programs, modern art, multicultural art, pop art, post-Impressionism, postromanticism, postromanticism.com, Romanticism and Postromanticism, Vesa Peltonen

Vesa Peltonen has dedicated not only his art, but also his life to protecting and celebrating human rights. His paintings have a softened Cubist feel about them: as if the viewer were examining not just the shapes themselves, but also their shadows and the shades of color, from all angles.  The effect is dazzling. Like in post-Impressionism, his paintings allow the eye to mix the colors from afar. Because the emphasis is placed on shades of striking colors, however, the images seem to float despite their underlying realism.

Vesa’s paintings are multicultural in theme, as the artist finds the beauty and flavor of each location where he travels to bring art to students all over the world. Vesa Peltonen’s art and his human rights activism are, in many respects, inseparable. He founded the Global ArtExchanges Program, which, in his own words, views art as “an integral part of helping enliven the learning of youth, and thus enriches their neighbourhood and community, large or small.”

This program collaborates with local art group directors to motivate youth across the globe to express themselves artistically. Global ArtXchanges works hand in hand with human rights organizations, like Amnesty International, to bring the beauty of art to impoverished areas of the world, where artistic expression might be viewed as a luxury, not a necessity. Art may not be essential to basic material survival, but, Global ArtXchanges maintains, it’s nonetheless essential to our spiritual and creative flourishing. You can find out more about Vesa Peltonen’s visionary art and the Global ArtXchanges Program on his website, GLOBALArtXchanges.org.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com