Intellectual terrorism

The Environment artist's I'm looking at as evidence!

Jean Dubuffet - A french artist and sculptor I felt a connection to because of his beliefs regarding the style of art and how it shouldn't fall into a traditional aesthetic.  I do a lot of works from feeling and memories and this is where our thoughts and views differ slightly.

Dubuffet believed that the past and memories were debilitating and harmful.  He actually proposed founding "institutes of deculturation " to help people clean out their minds. This idea I would maybe like be able to use sometimes, it could be helpful sometimes to forget. However, in doing so I feel I'd lose some of the me I am yet to discover. Is it holding me back? From a personally non arty way yes it has held me back or made me question my ability etc. This also has gave me passion and 
feeling that without living it I wouldn't never of known.

Dubuffet and Art

Art Brut - Outsider art or raw art made by people unscathed by artistic culture.  Dubuffet wrote it was motivated purely by the need to express the festivities that take place in the mind.

Art Therapy - Had an Art Brut Collection displayed and had wrote about the works passionately,  the works had been do by asking patients of a psychiatric hospital to draw and create work. Interesting stuff and this is a way of working that I haven't really tried... Why do we always need an idea or a plan. Set in stone.........

Stone or brick in my case - and again I'm back to the brick man idea and a full circle of ideas........ 

Dubuffet rejected many concepts beginning with beauty, he worked methodically and explored materials, subjects and methods in rapid succession. He was the first artist to use a thick textured paint called bitumen. He also used sand, clay, tar and straw in some of his works.

Below is a work called the busy life. I like the marks and scratches he has created, It does seem busy and crazy, full of body and movement. Sort of abstraction landscape mixed with a childlike innocence.

The colours are a mix of harmony and the red bold colours do give off a sense of confusion to ones eye..  I notice how the darker brown at the top works to create distance. 

I like the graphic nature

textures and paint (this makes me wanna paint with stuff....everyday stuff.

Flat and fat - This image was made by having the fat over lean medium. This lets the paint settle in its own way. again letting the control of the marks be out of your control as such. The work was also said to look like William de Kooning images, another artist I had a looked at.

De Kooning painting

This paste, while still fresh, repels the oil, and the glazes one applies on it organise themselves into enigmatic branchings. Gradually, as it dries, its resistance to the fat coloured sauces weakens, and it assembles them differently. Its behaviour changes every fifteen minutes.  Dubuffet wrote that these branched facts, running trees, seemed to make his figures illuminated, they have transported me into an invisible world of fluids circulating in the bodies and around them, and have revealed to me a whole active theatre of facts, which perform, I am certain, at some level of life.

This I didn't really understand but I'd been looking at Di Vimci.

He felt that that the world and human body were connected and similar with regards to the universal cosmology. Believing that the roots/paths of a river are like the blood vessels in our body, Like the rock and stone to be of bones etc....  connected and of relevance in all that happens and we do. 

With all of this, my body idea and thinking does connect to the now.


    

The blood that flows through our bodies the cells changing, the seasons at the moment are for me a reminder of old and new. The bulb underground freezing, cold and forgotten or unnoticed but in spring coming up and warming the air and ground, warming our hearts and bringing food for the animals and insects alike. Living breathing and changing. The tumours inside strong etc inside a delicate body of channels and pathways.

still do love my tumour

All of these things are to me connected to my learning but I sometimes feel lost at the scale and size of the stuff I'm learning or coming up against. The work and beauty of Di Vinci a polymath, whos knowledge goes way over my head.... I want to learn and know but choosing what work to study more for me is a daunting one.

Perspective for me is an area that has given me a lot of trouble. The way my eye and hand see different angles makes life hard for me to understand simple shapes. I think a couple of hours self learning will only help me long term. I think what many of these artist have in common are the wanting to learn but the time they give they learning is something that I dont seem to have. must make more time for little studies..!!

Anselm Kiefer - German Painter and sculptor would argues with the past and questions and confronts taboo and controversial issues. His work has also used mixed media like straw and ash and clay etc. He does give a lot if not all his time and energy on his artwork and for him it is literally his world/home. The scale of this work is lifelong and factors many thing for past and present. Both seem to be living side by side in a natural habitat.

 
 



Anyway 2/3 artists I've looked at L Di Vinci, J Dubuffet,  De kooning, A Kiefer

Sources -
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/leonardo-da-vinci/10202124/Leonardo-da-Vinci-Anatomy-of-an-artist.html

ww.tate.org.uk/art/artists/jean-dubuffet-1035

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/willem-de-kooning-1433

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/anselm-kiefer-1406