Art is…
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
- Andre Gide
Dogon tribe
Don’t you wish you were a little plasticine person who gets to live in this enchanting plasticine village when you look at this picture?
A trail of YouTube clips, starting from Australian whales, brought me eventually to an article on Dogon people in Wikipedia. It is extremely interesting.
A few brief facts:
- Dogon people are The Most Positive Tribe of the planet Earth. They are known among the neighbours as Sewa People (Everything is Fine People)
- Women are economically independent from men (their husbands) and the equivalent of a jewelry box in Dogon is the size of a house.
- Man too have their own space for “boy’s only” time. Very wisely, the roof of the building they use for that is made low, so that to prevent fighting, in case a conversation heats up somewhat (below is an example. Isn’t it a fun place to spend afternoons with the mates?)
- Women have 5 days a month off family duties in their “girls only hut”
- Makes one cringe a bit – both genders undergo a ritual of circumcision…
- The Dogons are very harmony oriented. In their rituals, the men praise the women, the women praise the man, the young appreciate the old and the old appreciate the young!
- In their myths, for apparently millennia Dogons cary knowledge about Sirius star system, which modern science came upon only within the last few decades.
Art and God
Like it!
This here is my kind of humor. In general, and in particular the way I feel at the moment…
“I wish I were and idiot”
… said an idiot.
Love this photo!
Another one of the Tedtalks – building a windmill
He is one of the amazing ones!
“East of Nowhere” – contemporary art from Central Asia
Artworks from Central Asian artists hailing from nations that were formerly Soviet republics, including Kazahkstan, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, are on display in an inaugural event launching the new space of Fondazione 107, in Turin, Italy.
One of the most stupid sentences mottos in advertising media
is “because you deserve it”.
It is the 21st century. Women vote, preside, earn living etc, etc for some time now. Yet, if they want to “treat” themselves to a bottle of shampoo or a tub of cream, they have to deserve it. To serve well in other words. To be a good girl.
Girls, you have to be good, if you want that stupid shampoo or whatever, you know. It is not like you want it, you get it. No way! You’ve got to deserve it.
Maybe the advertising industry does attract “all the bright creative and ambitious young people” leaving the rest of the visual arts with the residue, according to Banksy. But if that “because you deserve it” thingy keeps cropping up hundreds of times every day on TV, radio and street boards, then the bright and creative ones are still very thin on the ground even in the advertising industry.
Good thing there is no television in our household. On the other hand, I might have wound up creating a piece of art representing a violently fragmented TV set in a formaldehyde solution, bearing a long and meaningful title…
Vsiual art – importance… impotence…
Let’s enjoy something deep and meaningful. Something beautiful and innocent, created with the skill and the soul.
Today I especially dislike the conceptual and otherwise visual art of today, with the exception of Banksy and book illustration.
“The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.” Banksy
Here is a nice blog entry about him.
The accidental finding of the previous video led to another one, which reminded me about something I was thinking sometime now and today in connection to my work – the need to have a human presence in a picture. Otherwise it seems meaningless… Why, I do not know.
Morning…
View From My Studio Window
First day in the studio after two weeks break.
Resistance.
Cold big room.
I sit down on the bed, facing the view. NOW…..
… The wind carries yellow leaves past my window. Their unorderly procession adds gayety to the intensely stormy sky.
The wind gently holds the birds up in the air. They remind me of something… Of what? The feeling. The feeling of being alive and enjoying just that – being alive, which is always revocable, but constantly neglected. Why? Why cannot I share it with everyone? The poignant happiness of the moment, transient and untransferable. Or IS it untransferable?
The bird, flying in the sky, being happy and unconcerned – does it care about sharing its emotions with anyone?
The leaves, scattering away from the trees, obviously having fun escaping, what do they think of their experience?
Why can’t I stop and enjoy and not care about involving others into the sharing of my experience, and looking around and asking, “Did you see that? Did you notice that? Do you feel what I feel? Feel it with me!”
Because I am a human?..
