It was a photographer that I heard say that there was not a need to become too concerned with art. The point is that if we start from where we are and focus on the essentials will the process will pull the art out of us. If, on the other-hand, the focus is on what we consider to be art the motivation may very well be a self-serving one. Both painting as well as photography (any creative pursuit for that matter) is best approach with humility. The reward for keeping it simple in this manner : a refreshing of the things within us that are essential : truth, beauty, deep feeling and aesthetic pleasures in all the important areas of life (The open door of each consciousness.).

Published in french as Peinture : les fondamentaux

At a certain point in the process a Visual Living experience distills itself into some kind of essence. Something remains: not a mental reflection, the memory of what was seen, or the relationship between them which has now passed.

Luckily, we occasionally through our lives gain insights that give us a warm glow. Time stands still and the Universe sings us a wonderful song, some time passes, much of the glow diminishes but the wonder of the remaining essence can remain for a lifetime.

These experiences, the visual experiences and the magical moment experiences are, I believe of the same nature. Most of us have them. Some of us attach more importance to them. And many more are simply oblivious to them. Someone recently said: “The world without Art would be like a parking lot.” True. And, I would add, life without the soul of experience would be the cement that paves the parking lot.

The above is some reflection on a telephone conversation tonight with a good friend. We talked about understanding life, health, selling an apartment, relationships, the emphasis on technique in painting today, friendship and other things! Why am I rambling on like this you ask? I am afraid I’ll have to answer with a question, “Would you read this if it was poetry?” It seems to me that in the days in which poetry was part of our literary lives things were much different. Words had deeper meanings, paintings and photograph had deeper meanings, our lives had deeper meanings and the world was not becoming a parking lot.

Reclaiming the words used today by main street to make that cement is important, no?

Published in french as Merveilleuses expériences des yeux de l’esprit

This is not intended as a rhetorical question. Today, when asked the seemingly inevitable question “What do you do?” (Yes, even in France) my response is now “I am a painter – also a photographer.” So, I think maybe the question is “Can a person in today’s world be a generalist?” I’ll back up a bit, say 50 years or so. During this time I’ve spent the majority of my creative effort in the process of the understanding and the practice of painting. No doubt much more time spent in the understanding. Much study and reflection. During the times when there was some clarity the painting itself was relatively easy. This, of course after years spent studying the practice and the understanding of how different pigments behaved in different mediums and so on. However, doubt has dogged my every effort. Painting is, today, very very difficult if you approach it sincerely and consciously. As for photography: this has for me been a breath of fresh air. It can be a creative response to a relatively short period of time – a mere blink in the span of history.It directly speaks to contemporary times. In point of fact, it was invented the day before yesterday – a little more than 150 years ago. We have cave paintings dated something like 30,000 years old. We are not in this case, talking about the same ball game.

And yet I have been confronted in an aggressive manner because I was carrying a camera. This has happened in France by people who knew me to be a painter. To say that you need not to be affected by what other people think is, I believe, beside the point. We do not live in a vacuum. You have to at some point wonder what is going on here.

I’ll back up again, just a few years this time. In the mid-nineties I was walking along the lake close to Lausanne and met a couple from the U.S. It turns out he was an old art professor at a major University in New York State. In the course of our conversation he told me that he believed that I could find acceptance in France as a photographer but it would be quite difficult as a painter. I’ve often pondered how he had come to that conclusion. Let me state categorically that I do not think that being an American in France has had anything to do directly with my level of recognition. But I do question wether or not my photographic interest has compromised my painting. There is that nagging element of doubt that has been hounding painters for at least 100 years. We know as a fact that almost immediately after the introduction of photography painters began using it as a tool. Courbet used photographs quite a bit and the impressionists were enormously affected. Not only was photography used as a tool, it shaped their approach and theories about painting. It is not far fetched to say that the world of painting has not been the same since. We could dig deeper into how thinking about art itself had changed after the revolution but this is beyond the scope of what I want to say.

Bringing it back to the personal level and my original question: can a person be both a painter and a photographer? (Rather than attempt as I often do to answer my own questions, I would really like to know what you think.)

In any case, I plan to, in the not to distant future, to begin a blog on my photography. That my interest in photography has influenced my painting I will readily admit. However I have never felt the need or inclination to use it as a tool or make paintings based on a particular photograph. Why? Painting in its own right is much more fun. Painting from photographs is like assembly work.

Actually, during the last 20 years I’ve spent little time with photography. Up untill the 90’s I received much pleasure processing my film and doing black and white prints. I even went so far as to take a portable darkroom with me on my travels. (I was very mobile – what you might call a nomad during many years.) I would set up my darkroom wherever I was. Moving to France marked the end of this habit.

Slowly, I’ve become in recent years involved with digital photography. I bought a Canon 10D in 2003. No chemicals! And comparatively the creative freedom is incredible. I find great pleasure in it. After playing with Photoshop and Lightroom from their beginnings I begin to get “serious” about it.

Aside from this, we are moving house. After 15 years in the same place the time arrived to move on to greener pastures. It is off to Burgundy we go. Both Françoise and I spent our youth in a rural setting so it is a return to our roots of sorts – a village of 200 people. Calm, peace and tranquility.

Published in french as Un peintre peut-il aussi être un photographe ?

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As things in this regard began to quickly change a move was in order. Heading East was out of the question. There was only a lot of water to the west. I moved North. A somewhat nomadic way of life followed which ended with my arrival in France 16 years ago. Once again it is time to move. Hopefully it is the last one.

My formative years were spent in the country side in Northwest California close to the Sierre Nevada Mountains. I am looking forward to living in a small French village. It is like a return of sorts.

Published in french as L’esprit pionier de l’ art

Okay, I begin to rant. I know that things in general are much as they have always been. Since Plato the artist/painter has played a marginal role. But, at least he had a role of sorts. Even as a worker he had a role of sorts, may be in many respects a healthier one.

A few days ago I found an English translation of the important speech of Aude de Kerros, pronounced (march 09) at the French “Académie des Beaux-Arts”. It looks at word games played with Art since the Second World War. I highly recommend that you read this. Then I would hope that you can understand that this sort of chicanery has been going on at least since the time of Plato. Recently, Courbet was imprisoned and then run out of France. Cezanne was stoned by village children and so on. Not to speak of unknown artists who starved to death in their garrets.

The thing interesting about this article is the suggestion that a big change in the business of art is taking place. It seems that the financial bubble burst has disturbed the connections between the good old boys who manipulated artistic matters on a global scale. There is the suggestion that art and the world of art is about to become more democratic. Imagine, then if you are an artist you will no longer be a degenerate outcast.

Published in french as L’artiste est un exclu

The other day my wife read on FriendFeed that “a society without a stable arts base is a parking lot”. I do not know who it was that said that but they nailed it. I began writing this blog (first article posted originally in April 2007) with this essential core thought. I mean what in the hell are we thinking of. Art is today exactly whatever you want it to be from a pile of rocks, a dead cat, to you name it, n’importe quoi.

Many art pundits tell us that Marcel Duchamp is responsible for this state of affairs. They imply that exhibiting a urinal and signing it “R. Mutt” started this slide to nothingness. What utterly simplistic bullshit. Having said that, understanding what has gone on over the last couple of hundred years with European Culture is not easy. I do not by any means consider myself an intellectual but I am a thinker with good intuitive instincts. It has literally taken me at least 50 years of continual reading and pondering to just begin getting my mental teeth on the problem. This blog is an attempt at clarification. For these fifty years I have been a slave to this pursuit: paint is the symbolic medium and writing an exercise in understanding.

Interestingly, the interest as measured by traffic to this site is significantly weighted to French readership. The English visits are very low. Reading anything from this is difficult at best. (For one thing I live in France). However, I am very thankful to have a strong French following. Having said that, my purpose in writing is not strong reader following. I am attempting to learn how to talk about things I am beginning to recognize as important. Understanding seems to be the name of the game. Making money and fame have never been the goal of honest painters.

Published in french as Esclave de la peinture Partie II

I believe we need to get past it and move on to more important issues. Otherwise, art has the risk of becoming irrelevant. It clearly already is for all but a very small number of people. And I’m not at all sure this is a healthy sustainable situation. But, then again, progress in art is not a straight line. It has often moved in reverse.

Published in french as Esclave de la peinture Partie I

It has never failed to amaze me how we become stuck in our ruts. Most of us change slowly if ever. I’ve done a fair amount of travelling. And at one time I was inclined to talk to many people. Numerous times I’ve found people living close to a scenic wonder they have never seen. When I say close that could be Montana where people are found who have not been to Glacier National Park. I kid you not. I found several people in Montana who had not been to this mind blowing natural splendor.

The point I want to make requires a strong qualification. I lived in the US most of my life. I’ve been living in France 15 years. One of the first things I observed in French people was a natural or genetic interest in art and painting. I was flabbergasted. Here there is much more apparent interest in painting than in the US, much more. Notice that I said apparent! The interest I fear is somewhat superficial. I have found many who knew very little about the history of art in France. Many were not familiar with the names of major French painters of the recent past. And these individuals are actively engaged in the arts.

Let us take a glance back to before the First World War. The integrity of the French painters was intact. You have innovation along with a tradition. After the war the School of Paris managed to install itself as the only paradigm. It becomes the only game in town. Today, this spirit continues in France although there are cracks in the façade. Its influence on art in the world at large outside France is near zero. Quite a radical turn of events when you think about it! What could have possibly happened to bring this about?

The questions from this point quickly multiply. Answers are in short supply. The balance, in any case, between poetic and literal expression was lost.

A painting does not begin with an idea. If it does I believed the artist has lost his way. If a painting is to be successful it becomes an object: a work of art that create experience. Ideas come into play as a result or a by product of that experience.

If a painting conveys immediate experience there is a huge hole in the modernist theory that form is content. I have written on these pages that there is NO content. Just experience! And after that initial experience we have ideas as to its meaning which may or may not have occurred to the artist.

So what happened? I think that in the aftermath of the horror of the war we find pundits establishing the modern day equivalent of the Academy. Along with that we have the professionalization of the art, with that the ideal that the creative person was an active moral force in society was lost. Before this there was a certain respect for someone dedicating their life to artistic production. What followed was a withdrawal of that respect. Degrees and “official” recognition become necessary for survival. Respect is no longer possible.

Coming back to what I said. I said that this apparent interest was superficial. I believe that along with the professionalization of the arts you also lose something in society. Most in our society become twice removed from the reading and the experiencing of poetic expression. It is somewhat ironic that in the US this professionalization took place only within the last 30 or 40 years. How this will play out is anyone’s guess. I’m encouraged by the vitality I see in some young painters. Can they keep it up? It is not easy in today’s social climate.

What is my point? I guess I’m being my provocative self. The artist today is entering a precarious economic situation if he or she is not an established artist. Along with this challenge is a big, big caveat. There is unprecedented potential for real creative change at both the aesthetic and as a consequence the social level.

Published in french as Integrité poétique

It no doubt sounds a bit mundane to talk today about artistic vision. World events dictate the need for something much more utilitarian. It seems, however, that for a good long while moralistic political economic concerns have contained the limits of dialogue. And within those limits we move from one crisis or war to the next. It has been said that without a vision people perish. How true. Moving through life from one goal to the next is in fact crisis management. It is not the full engagement of life.

Moralistic dribble? I think not. Ever since Louis Phillip’s “juste milieu”? the vast majority of the art community has moved from one zeitgeist to the next: a never ending parade of progress. The goal always remains the same: to find the next big improvement. Meanwhile artistic vision becomes dimmer and dimmer. It has become a faint flicker.

In spite of all our modern sophistication, the way we think is fundamentally visual. With all of the information we have literally at our fingertips photographic images remain a strong tool of manipulation and control (see Suzan Sontag’s “On photography”). Someone said (I think it was Moholy-Nagy) that the illiterate of the future will be ignorant of the camera and pencil alike. This was said maybe 70 years ago. Today it is absolutely imperative that we begin to understand the ethics and the grammar of photographic images. Suzan Sontag called for an ecology of images. We need to react to this pollution long before we react to an economic crisis. Until we as a people get this right we will continue down the same road.

If one begins to get a good feel for what artistic vision is about it helps in understanding photographic ethics and grammar. In fact, there is no other way to approach it. The artist has always wanted to play a part in contemporary society: to be of his time. By the same token a piece of him or her lives in the eternal: the artistic vision side. How else he has been able through the ages to go up to his garret and starve for the sake of it. Long live to the artist in all of us.

Published in french as Vision artistique

In the artistic realm of things we turn our gaze towards higher values. Or, so we tell ourselves. Humanity has for millennium turned towards the future for meaning and salvation. I mention this because I find myself endlessly amazed at how some things always remain the same in spite of all the professed advancement. Nowhere is this more evident these days than in the artistic domain.

To the casual observer there appears to have been a tremendous advance artistically speaking after the Reformation and the so called Renaissance. And there was in fact. But it had all been done before. Looking back to the Greeks for guidance and inspiration was not exactly a mark of originality. The period separating them are glibly call the “Dark Ages?. So, was this just another of humanities return to values movements? As in most cases, it seems to have been largely an exercise in the renaming of things. This time they coined the word culture. And with this word began the elite’s modern propaganda campaign which continues to this day.

Okay, the artist and those concerned with the artistic realm danced to the beat of a different drummer. Or at least they did until just recently. I am not so sure that this is not finished. It seems that all the pretension has run to out of steam. I, personally, do not for a second find sadness in all this. All is as it should be. Now the artist can go about his and her business. He can at least do for the moment. Soon, he will be told to work, consume and shut-up.

This rather bleak assessment of things is a small part of my personal attempts to put our current state of affairs in perspective. (Those who have not noticed changes in the weather patterns need to stick their heads out the window.) It is like when you do a painting. Frequently it is necessary to step back a certain distance in order to see it clearly. I hope this helps.

In truth and art,
Denis
Published in french as Travaille, consume et tait-toi