Good art asks questions! It does not necessarily answer your questions, but questions your answers.
Questions posed by art can be very direct, sometimes radical, but also very subtle; they can be colorful or simple, a play of shadows, light and darkness; they can consist of sound or rest in the sound of silence – and yet they are universal! Therefore, art – in whatever shape or form and whether we like it or not, whether we understand it or not, whether we can connect to it or not – has a deeper meaning for us as individuals, as cultures and for the world as such. The only task we have is to listen to these questions, to open ourselves to them, to allow them to approach us and to be moved by them. At this point, the universal is transformed into something personal – the personal that emanates from the artist and the personal that it encounters in us, the viewer. It can be a completely different feeling or a different point of view, and that is precisely the beauty and value of it, because there is never just one way of seeing, but always just one world.
At its best, art allows this kind of space in between as a source of origin for the new, the unknown, the expansion – both inside and outside.
I’m writing about non-duality, the power of intuition, energy as matter, direction, life and… art!
My art writing has nothing to do with unnecessary “discourse production”, classical “criticism” or the irrelevance of abstract rhetoric, but is rather a way of exploring the big questions of life through art, meaning and dialog.
“I am deeply moved by the words laying on this paper. In fact, not everyone can read and write about others works and sensibilities. But with you I have this feeling that you could see between the lines, behind the walls, through the fog... it’s a powerful, honest, and sensitive text, where I feel totally understood and connected. Let’s share again inspiration, love and care. I thank you for the generosity of your heart and your understanding of human being.”
The Art Blog
The Aesthetics of The Real
Anthony McCall, Four Projected Movements, 1975, Installation view, Centre Georges Pompidou / La Maison Rouge, Paris, 2004. Photograph by Marc Domage
“What pattern connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all the four of them to me? And me to you?”
All his life, Gregory Bateson was on a quest to find the “pattern” that everything connects. I really cannot say at this point if he found a final answer to this question. In any event, it would have been his answer. The question leads me directly to that mysterious figure of thought that can only ever be its beginning: myself. In order to be able to enter into a sphere in which I can come up with a response, I must first of all have answered for myself: Who am I? Who has not asked himself this very question at some point in his life? And if there are answers to it, such as ‘I’m Tina’, ‘I’m an art scholar’ – who is it saying that? What would happen or remain if especially the last part of the sentence drops out? The great, indescribable, scary, unknown I AM.
And things turned out as they mostly do in life: Unforeseen. Read on…
I love these encounters in and with the arts, when they are pure. And, of course, an art that is evoking this subtle, yet all pervading, undeniable presence of something greater.
As a curator and art scientist, I have been asked the question „What does the artist want to tell?“ more times than I can remember. I wonder sometimes – does it say more about an art to which people hardly can relate (anymore) or does it say more about us and that we have forgotten to open up to our own answers and to be touched by our inner self or maybe both?