art="s"

                                      2013

                                      Farewell, Arthur C. Danto_ 01/01/1924-10/25/2013

 

                                      Thanotostatement:  U+00C6≥U+16B1(U+16D0)

 

 

 

To be direct, my creative purpose is to unite those things, which are separated for various reasons, but belong together with the Other from which it stands so tragically set apart.  But how I feel about this act of statement making is that my audience no doubt has expectations of me (of artists) that I am not aware of, so I'd like to take creative license here in writing to you, my patrons, and be creative, even in (especially in) word.  My deeds (as though words are not deeds of sorts) are elsewhere for you to view, so I won't be direct about what motivates me just now -- not straightway.  Rather than get straight to the point, please enjoy my admitted act of pontification, and dig your feet into the ground:  Gravity just might be a bit weak for the time being -- understand that I intend to be inventive.  There is always the chance that I'm writing from above the ground, and I simply can't take this requisite act of modernity --- "artist statement" --- too seriously.

 

Moving on then...

 

I'm always busy trying to figure this out -- making an artist statement -- when to begin with, I make and have always made art to do the statement making for me...or so I thought.  Until as of "late", I have imagined that art as the communicator is not something imagined in vain.  Again, as of late, the growing thought that art is dead has left me feeling as though the only remaining vanity in art and its so-called "world" is to make art instead of statements alone.  Tell me -- what do the dead communicate to us unless we participate in candle lit séances on ground-level sigils carved in stone? -- The "drawing" forth of communicative spirits in the grand'ol necromantic style atop yet another work of art. I find that the dead are drawn to their own:  art ='s their narrative, after all! -- In all of my time as a student of visual art, I recall no such summons having ever occurred, though it satisfies the scholars to make statements on behalf of Michelangelo as though they have. His work alone inspires such imaginary visitations from the man himself, which is, suffice it to say, quite enough to suggest that "art speaks", yet the master carved his impiety into pieta, MICHAELANGELUS BONAROTUS FLORENTINUS FACIEBAT -- which does, too, suffice. 

 

Regarding Ego, not much has evolved. Upon examination of modern works we discover that the trend continues while artists yet live -- how dutiful, such statements -- joining yet another trend to chisel artist statements:  come' pietoso.

 

 

To need to make a statement is, and is nothing else, truthfully only an act which foreshadows the coming death of art, if it is not already so very late, since an artist needs to provide an account for its arrival half past ...

 

 

Modern artworks arrive en media res, though through its unflinching stoicism, there are no means for providing flashbacks to prepare the viewer for its immediacy.  There stands the patron before the work that is its very own first and last words; nothing more or less can be conveyed, its Homeric epic status exhausted, its statement infinitely succinct:  the work as the ultimate sage, and in an era of many statements, who will hear the wise for their few words?  Such was Pieta, its sagacity timeless, revealing its "beginning" and "end", Messiah's arrival and departure, his birth in the middle point of time - his birth and death as crescendo and decrescendo, as dual denouement - its coming into being "X"uthored by narrative, an eternally feminist artist statement:  ab ovo!  Missing from modern art - narrative - not the who, but the why: "Genius" called to inquisition - "WHY MAKE THIS?"  The artist gives testimony:  "I"..., which fails to satisfy the interrogative cabal!  For the creator, his own narrative dies with him --- his work in need of supplications --- ego offers no salvation --- the patron is in need of an explicative narrative, the critic without pity screaming "crucify him" --- his work is not from the beginning, but ab ovo easy --- his work is “temperal” --- his painting a yolk he cannot bear! 

 

Disguised from being discerned comes modern art from a black swan of uncertainty, screaming the inquisition --- and WHO MADE THIS?  And the scholar decrees ---- "Ego feci, Non factum habet. "Deus est mortuus", Num mortuus est."  In modern times, artists make statements to replace a missing narrative code, with code not encoded into the work itself:  a seminal inscription in the egg-white art world without Pieta, to whom God is dead --- because of which, art is dead!  Enter effigymodURN:  the art of modURNity an effigy placed in a funerary container whose contents is art free of content, whose role is to exclaim the delusion of "self" expression independent of narratives of Logos. 

 

ARTIST STATEMENTS...

These statements usually forestall the death of the artist, not his art, as they draw in the patron to forgo interpretation (where the real fun of art dwells like a daemon), which in going before viewing, kills it, and if read afterward, omits having ever read the art.  This is, to be clear, only another form of death both art and artists enter into when they supply such statements to patrons. 

 

 

What matters more to me is to salvage the rich history of art and its future from letting the gravity of plain speech crush its wonder and awe-inspiring presence by sucking it down into a grave of "art ='s"...

 

 

So, what am I "up to" in my art, or why do I make it?  Well, there are many reasons, but here's what I think will spare the life of my art.

 

 

I make what I make because we're all flying thousands of miles per hour through space on a 25,000 mile round spaceship made of 118 known elements, all of which are spinning over 1,000 miles per hour on the earth's wobbling axis, traveling further and further still away from the center of the universe toward some uncertain edge, or not.  Flying, that is, while hundreds of millions of nation sized ice and stone formations circle our solar system in an outlying Oort cloud, which could find themselves jettisoned toward this spaceship home of ours and destroy all life on earth.  To interpret that pietoso instance... well, I seek a wormhole of escape before the Wormwood of demise --- I desire to apply the same to art. I am against making statements, which place an epistemological end to art viewing, instead of potential epistemic successes from reading my art independent of my input.  Truth is, I too have to interpret my own art, if it "means" anything at all.  I view it as a portal through which my audience can transcend space-time and travel to distant worlds beyond the "art world" and its plethora of artist statements.  Either I provide the audience with a gate that they can take independent of my vain hope that they "get it right", or grant them two divergent roads in the forest of the cosmos.  Taking the road less traveled, I won't make a statement of artist intent, rather, I will leave the road open for the patron to decide for himself --- right or left --- kitsch or kunst?  To my knowledge, I can't imagine what lover of poetry would read the poem if the poet explained his words' origin or teleological directive.  Art should remain far from being explained or "found out", dependent only upon the patrons' "presence" (not the artwork's), and remain independent of my raison d'être.  I have my reasons for its being, but what does it mean to you, the patron, who flies with me toward Hyperborea, toward Valhalla --- must artists make statements by candle light of such gravitas, that we summon Wormwood instead of a very Genius Einstein-Rosen Bridge? 

 

 

Through space with no sense of where we are headed....to me, that's worth paying tribute to by doing something with my life that is equally as weird and inexplicable as being on an organic spacecraft, and an immediate cause for wonder!  In my art world, we make CONTACT with Other worlds by bending space and time, along with all the rules!  Such distances should not await explanation to be experienced NOW before "I" define my Actions, Reasons or Telos - the Universe certainly doesn't. 

 

Ultimately, art equals something ineffable, expressed as...

Æ≥r(t)

 

Æ=U+00C6

(Æon: infinity or the ash tree [SHELTER :: nature as artist])

infinity+shelter≥r(t)

r=U+16B1

(the ride or journey)

t=U+16D0

(Laws of the universe)

 

U+00C6≥U+16B1(U+16D0)

 "An encoded message"

 

about such statements:  

artists' artifice &/or office