For the love of art...

Bad art!

All three of my kids studied 'creative' crafts after high school, diametrically opposite of what I did when I was their age. I became a technologist and a technocrat. They are earning their dough in 'creative' occupations. Nothing wrong with that, although it took me some time to digest. 

A long ago, I remember, out of sheer curiosity, I tried to start a conversation with my eldest of two sons, about what they taught him at school 'art' was and what makes a work of an artist 'good art', as opposed to all things commercial and bad art. Needless to say, he had no concrete answer to that, because there's simply no real answer to the question. Do we like a particular Arles work of van Gogh above a 'similar' of Gauguin's because a critic said so, or because we see something different? And how to explain that some of us like works of Picasso and Braque above those of de Kooning and Pollock? How does someone explain the process by which an artwork's colours, shapes and forms, and perhaps movement elicit such feelings inside us, and we feel that this is indeed what art must be all about?
A few days ago I happened to browse thru the photography portfolio of someone who's recently known notoriety as a UI designer for Apple's iOS devices. In his website he presents his core skills and work, but also says that he is a 'photographer' and shows off a number of his photographs. I somehow sensed that he is the sort of photographer that Bryan Adams also calls himself. More like gifted amateurs, I'd prefer to call them both. I must be honest, I thought his photographs were not too bad... at least that's what I thought. Don't shoot me for that! But I must also admit that my skill in discriminating good from bad art is close to non-existent. So I decided to ask a friend, who I believe had far more advanced capability in deciding good art, and discriminate it from bad art. She is an author and a journalist in her day job, but she also loves the arts in most of its forms. I asked her to tell me what she thought of this guy's photography. This is an excerpt of her response:

...They (note VJK-D: his photographs) conveyed to me this look of self-indulgence... I remember that the ones he shot in Morocco almost wiped away altogether my initial desire to visit the country, and made disappear the romantic dispositions that I gained after seeing that documentary years ago, as I already told you, about Fez. I simply despise our (note VJK-D: hypocrite empathy and arrogant contempt we show towards 'lower class' people) approach as :

• the Rich towards the Poor 
• the West towards the East, 
• the Strong towards the Weak

Many photographers and authors often do that, and it’s become a banal cliché for sure. I am looking for love and affection for the beautiful, the hope, and indeed life itself. We have already been lost in meaningless and lifeless things; we have been hardened... I want the artist to make me teary about the things that exist around me. There he comes, a total stranger, from some place far and away; he looks at them, he embraces them, he describes them in words, or by means of images or animations, and shows them to me again, to enliven me to restart doing, for instance, gardening, or cooking, to caress them with enthusiasm because they are not meaningless, because this is what life is, what the sun and the rain of every single day undeniably are.

The reason I blogged this is because of a number explicit and concrete elements she explains genuine art lovers 'see' in artworks, that I rarely experienced in the past being stated in those words. I simply wanted to share the experience. That's all...

More good news

Screen capture of Reuters RSS on July 16th, 2012

Nowadays it appears to be more entertaining to read obituaries than Reuters news reports. Read here their recent titles from a screen capture of my Reuters' RSS, from my Google homepage this morning. Even the one news report -- third story from the top -- about a company acquisition (these are usually positive news) is the result of a hostile take over that seemed to have initially failed. What can you say? What will ever bring remedy to this? Is this really a 'traditional' economy low? But, why does it last so long? Lack of leadership on both sides of the pond? Definitely one of the reasons. Old sins of our middle-aged generation of baby-boomers? Abuse of the environment? Too few taking control of too many resources with too many left struggling for survival? I thought the global village would be a solution to all our problems. A divine panacea, so to say. Dream on, dude. We are all fucked up, plain and simple!

The worst July in recent years...

People watching the first leg (swim) of yesterday's Triathlon in Oudenaarde,
East Flanders, Belgium! Has been pouring rain all day!

Actually, most July months ever since I stepped into Belgium, 40 years ago this July, has been like this. What is so wrong with this country? Most of Europe (at least the Southern part) is hot and burning with temperatures closing or above 40 degrees, and we got 12 degrees over here. Our northern coastline tourism is already dead by now, and people dress like in autumn and winter. My fingers as I type this feel like frozen, and I got to wear socks to feel the blood flowing back in my taws. Come to think of it, I don't even care about the freezing temperatures. But how about that freakin' rain? What is it any good for? I reckon, when God decided to define weather for every country in the world, he probably felt he needed a leak and came to piss all over Belgium. Flanders in particular.

Triathlon of Flanders

Triathlon of Flanders, a set on Flickr.

First Triathlon of Flanders organized in Oudenaarde and the Flemish Ardennes. July 15th, 2012. With pouring rain. What else?

Saint John in Saint Bavo's

We are almost at the eve of Ghent's Feasts 2012. It actually starts on Friday, 13th and it goes on until the following Sunday, the 23rd. The rule is that the Belgian National Day, July 21st, must fall inside the week of Ghent's Feasts. Although there's a lot of beer consumption during that period, the objectives of the 10 days long feasts is to be a celebration of culture in most of its forms, visual, textual, musical, theatrical and culinary. It's not like the October Feasts in Munich where visitors drop dead and pissed from drinking megatons of beer, and definitely not so crowded as there. I think I read somewhere that the Feasts have been going on like this almost for two centuries. I have known them for no more than 36 years, which is the number of years I lived in and close to the city of Ghent. 

This noon I went to visit Saint Bavo's. While city workmen were still busy setting up the venues for the celebrations all over the place in the citycenter, under a crazy sky that kept pouring heavy rain every now and then, I sought tranquility inside the largest cathedral of the city, Saint Bavo's, a historic catholic church with works of Van Eyck, Rubens, and Jeroen Bosch among others, that stands in the heart of the city for more than a thousand years. A masterful building of medieval architecture that creates in you awe as you turn your eyes to stare towards the top of its towers. 
One of the country's most famous curators, Jan Hoet, who unfortunately was sedated into coma the last few weeks, because of a health incident when he was recently in Germany, was the curator behind Saint Jan, an expo of young artists, who show-off their work conspicuously among the ecclesiastic artifacts of the cathedral, inside the venue premises. 
I photographed both, a few views of the cathedral itself, and most of the artist works, as well some of the visitors (a Japanese tourist group for instance, looking with awe at a large Rubens painting). I put up a simple slideshow and this is what you see embedded in the beginning of this blogpost.
As I usually do, I have tried to reproduce the atmosphere in the church as I experienced it myself during the half hour of my visit there. I enjoyed shooting pictures with the camera doing conspicuous shutter noises, while cards with 'no photography or video permitted' hang all over the place. Nobody said a thing to the old bugger with salt and pepper hair and a rather dear camera, so I got away with it. They 'knew' I didn't do that for money, so where's the problem? I didn't fire any flashlight anyway...
A series of three photographs shows one work called "a thousand Gods". Icones of Gods from various religions were projected against a flat pillar at the side of the ceremony table, where the priests perform their sacraments liturgy. Another set of pictures shows a huge sword hanging from the ceiling. I literally stood underneath and felt kinda like pissing myself, hoping the supporting steel rope wouldn't break apart! There was also this neon light ring with words written on it, like "love", "death", "life", "pain", etc... flashing consecutively the words one by one, and then all of them together for a few secs. There was also this beautiful painting of a young girl on a huge canvas by an artist called Mathieu Ronse, who happens to be an acquaintance of my daughter's, I dare say. He even gave her one of his early works about ten years ago, in his mid twenties then. Actually, this was the only artist I had heard of. In reality, I rather enjoy a work without knowing its artist, because I believe, knowledge of "who done it" leads you often to rationalization of your real appreciation of the artwork. You end up admiring something just because it was done by someone famous. Not fair!
I also found quite impressive a funny Escher-like stairway made of simple plywood, creating an arc altogether. I'm displaying three different photographs of that work in the slideshow. It created an exceptional visual impression, both with its shapes and color. Finally, I found interesting a praying mat with two hands and feet in plaster white, symbolizing a praying Muslim, i suppose. The embroidered mat shapes were reminiscent of an Islamic temple. Catholicism became quite tolerant after all. 
Worth visiting if you happen to be around Ghent, not so if you are far away, unless you want to experience the rest of the Feast goodies next week!