[nettime-lat] Notes about Art

["Almandrade" <almandrade_x@ig.com.br>]

Notes about Art

Art is a form of knowledge that demands specific reading and contemplation.

Its understanding is not limited to the first glance. Without the necessary
information, the research and examination of the language goes unnoticed.
The appearance satisfies the untrained eye.

"We can only see that which can be seen" (Merleau-Ponty). What can be
perceived in a work of art is that which fits our point of view. Man is
inserted in a society, in a language, where he learns to see, think and
feel. Language is the device through which he assimilates things, beings,
shapes and colors.

Since art can be anything, in the name of contemporary methodology, we often
encounter something which is said to be art. What criteria is used?
.
For an artist, knowing how to paint isn't enough, neither is acquiring
random objects and images. Having references and a method is mandatory. Each
artist conceives his art using his own theory, even though it might not be
formulated explicitly.

A work of art contains multiple possibilities of examination. We recreate
images from our perception, and subjectively modify them according to our
life experiences. We project our values and anxieties on them. Works of art
are completed in different ways in the imagination of each spectator. It is
also used for decoration, adding the curiosity of a poetic shelter to an
inhabited location.

In order to speak about art, one must learn the method of observing its
production, from the concept to the work of art and form the work of art to
the concept.

Art is perceived as originating from the work, a process that is linked to
experience and to thought which sets certain subjective conditions of
knowledge into motion. One gets to know an artist through his work, and this
work is an invention of the artist's activity. (Heidegger)

It is a local political act. Art has its own materiality. It is not used to
support other politics, even those that are supposedly cultural, that ignore
questions of language and its transformation. "Throughout the great
historical periods, along with the ways of living of human communities, the
way one feels and perceives things has changed" (Walter Benjamin). Art takes
part in these changes as the political duty of transforming reality within a
specific territory of knowledge.

Art is subject to a strange system of power when it comes to culture. No
longer seen as a cultural phenomenon, becoming instead an exclusively social
and market fact. The problem is not the market (it is necessary and plays an
important role in the art circuit), but the importance it has taken upon
itself as the main agent of the circuit. It has undoubtedly aided
production, yet has caused the retail value to take reflection into a
recession.

We are facing a moment where the cultural production is more and more
difficult without media interference and market interest. If this society's
ethic is consumption, everything is governed by market law: health,
education, culture, etc.
The intellectual and the critic are disposable in a society where the world
of thought is rarely tolerated. On the other had, the sponsors, art
entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, curators... are the protagonists of
art.

The artist, who was considered to be an unqualified artisan until the 14th
century, began to occupy a notable place in the knowledge territory since
the Renaissance and, in this new millennium, is considered to be the
cultural villain.

What has been happening with plastic arts and culture in general is part of
a society's spectacle that sees retaining riches as life's objective. A
cultural institution with few resources, left in the hands of sponsors,
programming and the political culture.

ALMANDRADE
----------------------------------
Almandrade (Antonio Luiz M. Andrade)
plastic Artist, architect, master in urban drawing and poet. It participated
of some collective samples, between them: Biennial XII, XIII and XVI of São
Paulo; "In Search of the Essence" - it shows special of XIX the Biennial one
of São Paulo; IV National Hall; Universe of the Soccer (MAM/Rio); National
Fair (S.Paulo); II São Paulo Hall, I Ephemeral International Exposition of
Sculpture (Fortaleza); I Bahian Hall; II National Hall; Honrosa mention in
the I Estudantil Hall in 1972. It integrated collective of visual, multihalf
poems e projects of installations in Brazil and exterior. One of the
creators of the Group of Studies of Language of the Bahia that edited the
magazine "Semiotics" in 1974. It carried through about twenty individual
expositions in Salvador, Recife, Rio De Janeiro, Brasilia and São Paulo
between 1975 and 1997; it wrote in some periodicals and magazines
specialized on art, architecture and urbanism. Prizes in the competitions of
projects for plastic works of art of the Museum of Modern Art of the Bahia,
1981/82. Fundarte prize in XXXIX the Hall of Plastic Arts of Pernambuco in
1986. It edited visual booklets of poetries and/or works: "the Sacrifice of
the Direction", "Blacknesses of the Laugh", "Poems", "Nocturnal Sweat" and
Architecture of Cotton ". Copene prize of culture and art, 1997.









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