Joseph Nechvatal
I can't but place a ref to this very long discussion - http://post.thing.net/node/1225 that is Catherine Perret in conversation with Joseph Nechvatal
Commerce and Collectives
It would appear that the force driving collectivisation is purely commercial, from both the artistic corner and the commercial/dealer one.
Artist collectives - of which London provides some quantity - appear to exist as reaction to the atomisation inevitable within anarchy and its individualisation of direction. Therefore the appearance of these will relate to that exegesis upon the atomisation of style which is the result of the demise of classicism.
Of course this death was a long process and can really be marked from the time of Buenarotti himself, and the discoveries in the Renaissance of lost roman pseudo classicism. One has to comment that that incipience of death or destruction immediately finds its seed planted within the circle of human affairs , as noticed by earliest Chinese philosphy. Thus Buenarotti flags the destruction we experience, whilst his un-related successor Bernini brings down the lasting guillotine of perfection from his mastery of a mechanical reproduction for the transposition into marble of pre-ordained modelling- the cornerstone of the dreaded 'salon' art.
The dealer collectives are the international Art Fairs, a recent and ever expanding phenomenon, which sees the axes of nationalism intersecting to support the paucity of content available to the commercialist dealer gallerists. These latter feed as groups now under the reefs of nationalistically inspired Ferias / Foires / Fairs. The non-commercial Biennales of yore presumably inspired this success.
Artist collectives - of which London provides some quantity - appear to exist as reaction to the atomisation inevitable within anarchy and its individualisation of direction. Therefore the appearance of these will relate to that exegesis upon the atomisation of style which is the result of the demise of classicism.
Of course this death was a long process and can really be marked from the time of Buenarotti himself, and the discoveries in the Renaissance of lost roman pseudo classicism. One has to comment that that incipience of death or destruction immediately finds its seed planted within the circle of human affairs , as noticed by earliest Chinese philosphy. Thus Buenarotti flags the destruction we experience, whilst his un-related successor Bernini brings down the lasting guillotine of perfection from his mastery of a mechanical reproduction for the transposition into marble of pre-ordained modelling- the cornerstone of the dreaded 'salon' art.
The dealer collectives are the international Art Fairs, a recent and ever expanding phenomenon, which sees the axes of nationalism intersecting to support the paucity of content available to the commercialist dealer gallerists. These latter feed as groups now under the reefs of nationalistically inspired Ferias / Foires / Fairs. The non-commercial Biennales of yore presumably inspired this success.
The state of affairs in the visual arts world
Well it appears there are a few strands worthy of commentaries and these will take time.
There is the cyberspace Art situation, dividing up as it does between:
*'simple' established Art galleries throughout the world, reflecting the real world
*the would-be (paying) 'collectives' devoted to region or specialty, or none
*the freebie collectives with some principle underlying
*the entirely open collectives
*the cyber side of real-world nation based foundations, state bodies, even unions
*the arty orientated open fora largely reflecting wishes
*wiki(s) and blogs
*single artist websites reflecting the private real world
*auctions and monetary valuation sites supposedly measuring the real world
There is the remnant of modernist-academist war, petering out and only partly of interest for the absence within the academist corner of any sufficient worth, sense or justification to make the slightest impression upon modernism. The chief interest lies in the necessary analysis of the dominance of 'modernism' and the cyberspace situation is of course but reflection of the real-world curatorial replacement by its own essential academism. This remnant could possibly be considered the educational aspect of the art world
And there is the underlying reality founded- despite what appear to be near politically-correct curatorial attempts to pretend otherwise, upon purely nationalistic drive within the arts.
Between these factors , the art world can be seen as reflective, even more than it would itself claim, of current human societies as they really function. Even without being an arabist I can see the odd youngster attempting to enter through the cyber portals above and expressing similar signs as any south-american or latvian of icelander of his/her desire for an audience or recognition. As art is an expression of feeling and thought - a communication, this is of course natural to all but those for whom society of any kind has ceased or never begun to function, who may be a burgeoning number.
There is the cyberspace Art situation, dividing up as it does between:
*'simple' established Art galleries throughout the world, reflecting the real world
*the would-be (paying) 'collectives' devoted to region or specialty, or none
*the freebie collectives with some principle underlying
*the entirely open collectives
*the cyber side of real-world nation based foundations, state bodies, even unions
*the arty orientated open fora largely reflecting wishes
*wiki(s) and blogs
*single artist websites reflecting the private real world
*auctions and monetary valuation sites supposedly measuring the real world
There is the remnant of modernist-academist war, petering out and only partly of interest for the absence within the academist corner of any sufficient worth, sense or justification to make the slightest impression upon modernism. The chief interest lies in the necessary analysis of the dominance of 'modernism' and the cyberspace situation is of course but reflection of the real-world curatorial replacement by its own essential academism. This remnant could possibly be considered the educational aspect of the art world
And there is the underlying reality founded- despite what appear to be near politically-correct curatorial attempts to pretend otherwise, upon purely nationalistic drive within the arts.
Between these factors , the art world can be seen as reflective, even more than it would itself claim, of current human societies as they really function. Even without being an arabist I can see the odd youngster attempting to enter through the cyber portals above and expressing similar signs as any south-american or latvian of icelander of his/her desire for an audience or recognition. As art is an expression of feeling and thought - a communication, this is of course natural to all but those for whom society of any kind has ceased or never begun to function, who may be a burgeoning number.
Conceptual comment:purism in monumental art- the Doors of Perception.
Why sculpt? Why do you see what you do, that I tried? Why is it limited -to forms rather than the contemporay direction of conceptual comment?
The ancient Chinese -whose monumental (that is -true) sculpture is through Confucious understood as the concept of the simple fitness of form.
it is as if we cannot -however clever we be- lie to our very selves. The fitness of form is, as the Sun is or the clouds are. Humans are as they exist- 'our' natural forms- describe immediately our modes of feeling, and, the monumental -that borders on the reduced or puristic in as much a modern sense as any recent culture has achieved- provides us with the vocabulary for describing these inner feelings.
To 'grab' at feeling, to exert some description of feeling rather overloads the natural - the poetically natural- that which closer approaches the truths which reside within us all, but which are sadly distanced through our useful Doors of Perception.
What you see is a self portrait, made form marble from the Rambla from the canteras or quarries of Macael, in Almeria Province, at the east of Andalucia in southern Spain. So- it's art. Arte some have to say. Fine art. Visual art. High Art. In french it is 'plastic arts' and 'beaux arts'. Spanish- 'artes plasticas' and 'bellas artes'. In fact art is supposed to be a generic for, is it, literature/poetry, plastic arts, painting all together with history and mathematics.
Mathematics probably shares the solution- which is the best simple truest resolution or what as a sculptor could be called the simple fitness of form. I came here because http://sokolovsculpture.googlepages.com like all gpages doesn't get picked up on by s/engines( and especially not when 3-D 'forms' are the 2-D content), and can't be redirected usefully to a dotcom either.
Why no dotcom? Well it is regged, and supposedly up,and I'll redirect this blog there but ...I started that googlepages set up, for which really I should thank Google. It's easy- unless like me you have megabytes of tiny hazy edited down photographs or -in fact- jpegs. But the structuring works, and as long as there is this hiatus before really easy software bridges the gap into the mediawiki/blog/gallery future, normal hosts don't appeal. ' Geeklog ' and ' MediaGallery ' promise the future, and maybe that's the way to go- allowing some interested reader to safely email directly to a page, allowing a plethora of archiving power, but looking beneath the hood you soon see dire amounts of programming savvy requirement.
Incidentally there is at least one other Alexander Sokolov 'sculpting' out there, though you wouldn't confuse our work as he says he is anti- ' traditional sculpture '- or something. More about the marble of the Rambla another day.
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