“Metaphors of Silence”

November 24, 2010

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Series F
Medium: Oil On Linen
Size: 14 by 18 by 3/4 inches
2009

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Acknowledgments:

David Lowenberger,

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986),

Carlo Giuseppe Soarés (1892–1976).

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Introduction

An artist’s Manifesto by Ricardo Morin:    Viewing of his Jersey City art-studio where he engages with his paintings [2005-10]; some artworks are in progress and some are part of a recently finished hanging scroll series, entitled Metaphors of Silence. http://www.ricardomorin.com/

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Metaphors of Silence (2005–2010)

Studio Videography Transcript (Edited in Prose)

From 2005 to 2010, the work expands on questions dealing with perspective, synthesizing concepts of pictorial space and infinity that have been present over the years.    Painterly abstraction and plasticity are allowed to express, both in form and in content, a kind of art that moves beyond a material world of signs.

The paintings reach toward the infinite, toward mystery, and toward the poetry present in each individual drama.   Although situated within twentieth-century aesthetics, the work does not align itself with a specific historical movement or with a postmodernist agenda.    Making art is approached as a fleshy product of human experiencing, a result of the maker’s own passion.

The idiosyncrasy of the individual, indivisible in nature and blind to causality, is held within an aesthetic frame that embraces all essences.   The image appears as a residue: non-objective, timeless, and at times existential.    It does not seek to explain experience.   Rather, it manifests itself and invites interpretation from the observer.

The finished work stands on its own.   The viewer may come away with the sense of a generative completeness, as if a universe were making and remaking itself.

“Metaphors of Silence” suggests that the verbalization of aesthetic reality implies its own ending. No matter how precise, words resist the magnitude of that reality.    The actuality of art may remain unseen if it arises within a fragmented spirit, shaped by formulas, gratification, or condemnation.

Art is not sustained by the prejudices of the observer, nor by the need to attract attention through eccentric stimuli.    It is found instead in the open space of silence, in the stillness of meditative contemplation, and in the freedom to observe without the control of the observer.

In that state of heightened attention, questions become unnecessary and responses diminish the act of observation.   This aesthetic is not derived from accumulated experience, from association with the past, from the search for an audience, or from the demands of a prevailing market.

These currents are not governed by awareness or unawareness.   They do not pursue fulfillment, nor do they arise from vanity or choice.   They are manifestations common to all, defining what exists beyond ideas and words.    They operate creatively without dependence on the noise of knowledge and remain outside measurement and classification.

Within that obscurity, a vital energy unfolds, moving beyond limitation and isolation.   Creation appears as a process of awakening and renewal within every relation.   To participate in the movement of life requires a continuous release from conditioning.

The creative act is not an accumulation of knowledge.   The figure of the “creative genius” marks only a stage within the process of deconditioning, and it cannot become knowledge if confined to individuality.   The eye, bound to duration, may seek moments of inspiration, but those moments do not constitute creation itself.

Creation occurs in that which reaches beyond the moment toward continuity.

In this relation to art, the aim is not self-fulfillment, but the expression of an underlying interconnectedness.

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Metaphors of Silence (2005–2010) by Ricardo F. Morín

Studio Videography Raw Transcript

 

0:07

From 2005 to 2010, my work expands on questions dealing with perspective,

 

0:14

synthesizing concepts of pictorial space and infinity, something I have worked on over the years.

 

0:23

I have allowed painterly abstraction and plasticity to express, both in form and in content,

 

0:29

a kind of art that goes beyond a material world of signs.

 

0:38

My paintings reach for the infinite, the mystery, and the poetry in every man’s individual drama.

 

0:44

Though immersed in twentieth-century aesthetics,

 

0:52

I neither strive for a specific historical movement nor for the postmodernist agenda.

 

1:01

Simply, I look at making art as a fleshy product of human experiencing,

 

1:08

a resultant of the maker’s own passion.

 

1:15

Just as the idiosyncrasy of an individual, indivisible in nature, is blind to causality,

 

1:25

an aesthetic frame embraces all essences,

 

1:32

and the image is only the result or residue non-objective, timeless, or even existential.

 

1:40

In this sense, the image seeks not to explain what the meaning of experience is;

 

1:48

rather, the image manifests itself, provoking interpretation from the observer.

 

1:56

The finished work stands on its own.

 

2:06

The viewer comes away, I hope, with the sense of the work’s generative completeness,

 

2:15

of a universe making and remaking itself.

 

2:23

Metaphors of Silence.

 

2:31

The verbalization of an aesthetic reality implies its own death.

 

2:38

No matter how precise, the very accuracy of words resists the magnitude of that reality.

 

2:46

Seeing the actuality of art may never take place

 

2:53

if born in a spirit fragmented by the illusion of formulas,

 

3:01

immured by gratification or condemnation.

 

3:08

Art is not sustained by the avarice of a prejudiced observer,

 

3:16

nor is it derived from eccentric stimuli meant to draw attention to itself.

 

3:23

It is found in the open space of silence,

 

3:32

in the stillness of meditative contemplation,

 

3:40

in the freedom to observe without the control of the observer.

 

3:48

With heightened attention, questions become unnecessary,

 

3:56

and responses trivialize the act of observation.

 

4:03

This aesthetic is not the product of experience,

 

4:11

nor the association with the past,

 

4:19

nor the search for an audience,

 

4:27

nor the product of a prevailing market.

 

4:34

These currents are not aware or unaware;

 

4:43

they do not propagate fulfillment,

 

4:50

nor are they the product of egotistic or vain ritual.

 

4:57

They are manifestations common to all of us,

 

5:06

that which defines us beyond ideas and words,

 

5:14

that which operates creatively without dependence on the noise of knowledge,

 

5:23

that which is not suited to measurement or labels.

 

5:45

Within obscurity, a vital energy unfolds beyond isolation.

 

Creation is the awakening and renewal present in every relation.

 

If we are to join in the movement of life,

 

freeing ourselves from conditioning is a continuous creative process.

 

The creative genius is only a stage in the deconditioning of the self,

 

which cannot become true knowledge if confined within individuality.

 

The eye, bound to duration, may seek moments of inspiration,

 

but such moments are not part of the act of creation.

 

Creation belongs to that which reaches beyond the moment toward continuity.

 

In this relation to art, I do not seek self-fulfillment,

 

but express the interconnectedness of humanity.

 

Acknowledgments:

David Lowenberger,

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986),

Carlo Giuseppe Soarés (1892–1976).


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“Acts of Individual Talent”

October 2, 2009
Triangulation Series 225
Triangulation Scroll Series Nº 225, 49 x 68 inches; oil on canvas; 2008

Origins of Modern Western Aesthetics

The concept of Aesthetics comes to us out of a wide variety of different traditions: from those of the West, the Chinese, the Japanese, the African, the Polynesian, and so forth.    The Western traditions, of course, have different qualities from the others with regards to origins, to evaluative criteria, either in opposing or defending approaches to the making of art.

From its beginnings Western aesthetic theory has developed in parallel with art criticism.   The concept, however, of Aesthetics, but not the word, was first talked about by Joseph Addison (1672–1719), in a series of essays in The Spectator in 1712, as a “pleasure that is derived from the imagination.”   Thus, pleasure forms the basis that will serve as the foundation of modern aesthetics.    Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–62) most likely read Addison, and he sought to define Aesthetics as a science of that which is sensed or imagined in his master’s thesis Aesthetica, 2 Vol. (1750-58) at the Royal Prussian University in Halle.   He coined the word for the German language; Aesthetics is derived from the New Latin aesthetica (the feminine adjective), and it is related to the Greek aesthetikos/aestheta (perceptible things) and related to the verb aesthetai (to perceive).    Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), however, took issue with aesthetics as a science. [1]   Nonetheless, the term remained controversial, and it was not until much later in the 19th century when it was finally accepted in academic circles.

Aesthetics is a specific valuation theory, or a distinct convention of what beauty is.    It is an individualizing characteristic or a particular taste for, or an approach to, what is of interest to the intellect or pleasing to the senses:   both visual or auditory (as in literature, the plastic arts, architecture, and music).    By extension, the term Aesthetics may be applied to many varieties of human behavior—toilette, cosmetology, interior design, and so forth.

For the avant-garde Aesthetics and Originality can be at odds with established social or political norms.   Aesthetics, as valuation, is normative. Art criticism is the way in which the norms are established.   Art criticism is transmitted both to collectors and to institutions (e.g., museums, in the case of the plastic arts and the marketplace, in the case of music and architecture).

Although art criticism dates from antiquity, analyses of visual aesthetics or the plastic arts began as a journalistic effort.   The art critic and the artist became mutually dependent, and what had once been new and refreshing by the closing of the 20th century, became academic, routine, and repetitive.   Contemporarily, Harold Bloom (1930–2019) expressed that art criticism had become confused with questions of social justice and politics, and was no longer about the art product itself. [2]

Nothing, however, is really new; the concept of Aesthetics itself, as a means of expression, may be said to be a dominant force dating as far back to the origins of human cave paintings.   At the turn of the 21st century, there no longer seems to exist an adherence to one current aesthetic or approach; art criticism now appears to evoke a wide variety of tendencies of the formal, moral, social, and spiritual.

In the following excerpt, “Confessions of an ever emerging visual artist” from a YouTube and WordPress-audio-visual Manifesto entitled “Metaphors of Silence” (2010), I have given my own point of view:

The usage which the visual arts serve is a complex demonstration of varying dimensions whose expression seeks not to explain meaning but to express its intent; to bring about a clearly independent act of interpretation, over which the artist exerts no control as creator.   From this, arises the sublimity of the psychological condition that is partly visual delight and partly passion that renews and nourishes a spirit of partnership with the medium.   The intent expresses one is what one perceives:    i.e., it is a quality of energy and a temperament independent of the intellect, separate from the craft itself, and apart from the residue of the images. [3] [4]

Endnotes

[1] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), Introduction, §§1–5.    (Kant does not reject “aesthetics” outright; rather, he rejects Baumgarten’s project of establishing aesthetics as a science: scientia).

[2] Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994), 17–35.    (Bloom argues that literary—and by extension artistic—criticism has shifted toward ideological frameworks—Marxism, feminism, historicism, etc—and that these approaches prioritize social and political concerns over aesthetic value; as a result, the evaluation of the work itself is displaced.)

[3] Manifesto: Metaphors of Silence (https://rfmorin.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/metaphors-of-silence/)

[4] Autobiographical Statement: Ricardo Morin – Art – Paintings and Watercolors (http://ricardomorin.com/Statement.html)

Acts of Individual Talent

A harmful but enticing, state of affairs develops in the visual arts when the ethnocentric-artists align themselves with the adjuncts to commerce and their proxies (commercial institutions and art dealers on the one hand, and foundations and curators on the other), all of whom serve as instruments of indoctrination and publicity for the dictation of style, theme, and content, and in giving markets:  The entertaining ‘circus’ of mass culture.

The Zeitgeist of multidisciplinarity and the crossing of frontiers seek to justify the relevance of the visual arts—in its sales and resales—through their contortions of its contextualization and validation of its avant-gardism.   The study of the methodological principles of aesthetic interpretation gauges the importance of the arts and its place in the world of gimmickry and fashion, which are far removed from the dynamics of its origins.   As such the visual arts find themselves in approximation with the modalities of narrative but expressed in the language of commerce.   The artist now is succumbing to an ethos of expanding academic sophistry (the parcels-for-sale of commercial art history and the critics from the mass media).   The result is not so much a lack of insight but a desperate impulse to cultivate greed and to strive for status; this indication of a bourgeois, sentimental enlightenment and authority avert any negation notions of a therapeutic or hobby genre:    as anything other than menial and disenfranchised dilettantism for dabblers of artistic pursuit.

And so it is that the ensuing adaptation of analytic discourses into politics, philosophies, semiotics, linguistics, psychologies, and mathematics outline the obvious while absorbing the seeds of self-destruction.   In other words, the universal urge of a visual necessity finds itself transmogrified into commercial success.   Self-expression compares to commodification: Personal fulfillment is to be equated with making money.    Can we suppose this mercantilism arises out of the Genre paintings of the 17th century (petit genre:    still-life, flora and fauna, landscape, and scenes from the lives of the middle-class) with the emerging power of the bourgeoisie being able to decorate their homes with this style of painting?    With a still bleaker legacy, these merchants of taste and consumerism seem to have missed the point that one’s perception of an image cannot be replaced by its description.    To do so is to replace a jargon—piece of gossip with the visual intent.    As visual meaning derives from internal intent, an encoded tag for a work of art can never replace the joy of experiencing it.   Art is a manifestation of observation; as such, it is basically immeasurable.   Passion and quality of energy need not require explanation, or, in particular, its manifestation should not be interpreted either for its worth or for its valuation—or enrichment—of a given elite. [1]

Ultimately, there is a tendency on the part of any artist in his/her approach to consolidate the supremacy of their egos and minds, with the verbal and the visual in a hieratic creative process; at this very moment this rationalization extinguishes both probability and logic (in other words, it becomes dead!).    The lame allusions to the Conceptual, self-aggrandizing conceits, or to the simplistic Kitsch of popular iconographies—biases turned into cliché—to the orientation of Gender or Identity—affirmations of self-discovery—, or to the flaunting of Geo-Environmental Installations—with their fixed dimensional constants, all fall short of their promise to deliver something new or important: Declarations of approval, however, abound.

Many of today’s mainstream artists mythologize uprooted specimens derived from the trivial and the prosaic.   Coming from a world we know about and live in, instead of a world we don’t know yet; these agents celebrate derivatives of tyrannical forms of erudition.   Rather than enhancing our sense of perception, they extend an alienation that comes out of ambition and ownership, and make ubiquitous the desire for the object, which surrounds our ordinary lives.   This gregariousness and massive consumerism disconnects and puts us to sleep in a technological era of purveyors of everything except sensitivity and human interconnectivity.

Collectors, museums, and galleries—today’s greedy usurpers of culture—welcome the glitz by which they turn art into a commodity and their power as plutocrats to satisfy the ignorance created by their Circensian parade of market indices.    By definition the mythomania of stardom promotes only the few; every selection of one is a rejection of many [The Rise of the Meritocracy]. [2]    The result of complacency fuels the alienation of 90% of active artists and creates therein an artificial shortage of resources, thus giving value to those market indices which ultimately result in the excessive struggle for survival.   Rather than art giving strength to the collective unity, a sense of sectarianism separates everyone into a race of competing ideologies over commerce.   The truth of art is left to search among competing opinions over what is relevant.   These unstable times of ours, of victimizers and victims, of plunderers and the exploited repeat themselves in the annals of history.

Conformity, indifference, defining ourselves by the supremacy of personal success obscure inquiry on the disadvantaged.   It is an empty gesture for one to defend the free market progress in the arts of today, or of any other given period.    There have been innumerable artists whose accomplishments did not depend on a resplendent financial support or an irrefutable explication of competing narratives; sometimes, their ultimate measure of accomplishment came about despite the obstacles they had to endure—as well as the mores and instability of cultural vanities which opposed them.   Their works may have come to have a great deal of recognition either towards the end of their lives (as in the case of a Paul Cézanne, who preempted 20th-century Modernity throughout his first forty years of obscure labor before landing a first one-man-show); or after their deaths (as in the case of Vincent Van Gogh, recognized for his sublimely “outsider” creations):   When the capricious dictates of fashion made them relevant.   And then, there are those who lose or regain their relevance, as in the case of François Boucher during the French Revolution, whose reformulation waited 100 years later until the end of the 19th century.   In the same way, we have the banal chasing after the new in the late 20th century.   And finally, there are those in 21st century who are first praised only to be soon forgotten.

The answer could be found by the rejection of a collector’s system of greed, or by the recognition that the quality of artistic creations cannot be pursued as a commodity.   The answer cannot be found by their taxonomy.    The answer is to be found in the recognition that any form of exploitation is undesirable and destructive to our collective being.   The answer is to be found in the cultivation of all the arts, not as a commercial testimony of our sense of humanity.

If support for the arts were to be sought after, would we not need to assess the irrationality of our system of valuation, perhaps even our own cultural rationality?  

Ricardo Morin

Editor, Billy Bussell Thompson.

http://ricardomorin.com/

Endnotes

[1] Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Viking, 2002). Extract: It is hard to recognize nascent art forms when they are on the rise, and  by the time they are widely appreciated their best days are behind them—pp 400-410

[2] Michael Young, Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870-2033: The New Elite of Our Social Revolution (New York: Random House, 1959), p.12 [London: Thames & Hudson, 1958].  Young’s pejorative conception, set in a dehumanized [dystopian] future is based on the existence of a meritocratic class that monopolizes access to merit and the symbols and markers of merit, and thereby perpetuates its own power, social status, and privilege.

Triangulation Series 555
Triangulation Scroll Series Nº 555; 49 x 33 inches, oil on canvas, 2008

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“Cape Cod 2009”

September 9, 2009

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Picture of myself taken by my husband at Beechwood Point, Santuit Pond State, in Mashpee, Mass

To my beloved

On a bright sunny day with temperatures in the mid-seventies, we rambled along the trails surrounding the delta-like shape of Long Pond.   From there we continued on to the much larger adjoining Mashpee and Wakeby Ponds—first in the morning sun, before lunch, and later in the cooler light of the afternoon after three.   Along the shores, we saw men and women with their pets playing at the water’s edge.

The clearings, unforgettable amid the surrounding forest, were bathed in clean sunlight.   Their green patterns seemed to rival the timid Gothic forms that human hands have built in an effort to imitate nature.

Roots covered in emerald moss rose in steps toward translucent tunnels, leading us through a chance arrangement of natural colonnades and buttresses beneath open canopies.   The fresh, aromatic air revived the errant heart as we walked through gullies and groves, at ease with the rhythm of the soul beside me.

 

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“Platonic Scroll Series 2009”

August 6, 2009

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Platonic Series #99, 2009
Platonic Scrolls Series #99 — Engraving on Canvas in a Digital Frame

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Ricardo F. Morin, September 9, 2009, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

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The aesthetic beauty and symmetry of the Platonic Solids have made them a favorite subject of geometers for thousands of years. They are named for the ancient Greek philosopher Plato who theorized that the classical elements were constructed from five regular solids: the dodecahedron, icosahedron, octahedron, hexahedron and tetrahedron–there are no other possible regular polyhedrons. The 92 Johnson Solids are irregular polyhedrons which, as the Platonic Solids, are also made out of triangles, squares and pentagons.

The Platonic Scroll Series serve as analogy to our inter-connectivity and the imponderable quality of harmony that unify us.  It is to be noticed that there is no set manner as to how these manifestations may be perceived by any observer. Our reality is ever so much more interesting than any image representing it or anything that can be explicated.

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“A Dialogue On Truth and Beauty”

April 23, 2009

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CGI 2025

MN> The film My Dinner with Andre was recently canceled in Caracas.

RM> This is coincidentally one of my favorite movies of all times.

MN> There is also  “Wings of Desire” (Der Himmel über Berlin),  one may see them apart but with some connection…

RM> Having a profound impact during the Eighties, I came to own DVD’s for both of these films; you have just reminded me to view them again, like re-reading a good book. These days I seek a better understanding by reading J. Krishnamurti’s innumerable publications [Krishnamurti Foundation of America].

MN> Have you read through Osho Rajneesh? or traditional G.I. Gurdjieff?
There is another movie kind of interesting Meeting with Remarkable Men by Peter Brook…

RM> I understand that in either instance leadership and methodology overshadow search for truth.

MN> That is right but the info is all about the same methods for increasing your consciousness…Sufi and new Indian…Interesting comments found on Powels book Gurdjieff. Also a very interesting approach to the knowledge in Ouspensky’s Fragments of an Unknown Teaching…

RM> I am mostly leery of anyone who pretends the attainment of truth through a technique, a method or a system, a belief or a dogma, for in doing so he/she succumbs to divisiveness. As much as I admire Krishnamurti, I don’t follow anyone’s authority: neither Jesus’, nor Muhammad’s, nor Buddha’s and much less any ashram’s or famous guru’s.   I find it useful to recall a quote from J.K. which is very much apropos: “Beauty (truth) is in experiencing, not in experience.  Reality has no resting place.”   The understanding I take is that our collective past does not belong to anyone, though knowledge of it may be useful to establish its limits.

MN>Yes, the path is the one taken by a mind alone; I do share the same perspective about freedom.  I used to say to my friends that I was a man of no land and no heroes.. or maybe not only was I mentally ill but, perhaps, socially disabled.   It is very pleasant to communicate with you.  In rare occasions does one truly have a dialogue.

RM> You meant not inclined to gregariousness, as opposed to socially disabled or unsociable. Though disability in terms of sociability is tantamount to the inability of compassion, I do see you as a most compassionate human being.

MN> Thanks for your kindness.

RM> Be well

MN> And you too my friend.  We’ll talk again soon.

Artist Website

Posted in On the Nature of Perception and Human Interconnectedness | 2 Comments »

Abstract: Triangulation Series 2006-08

December 8, 2008

Platonic Triangulation, bodycolor on paper, 22 x 30 inches, 2008

I choose the golden ratio 1 = 1618 as a consistent format which is clearly inherent of the infinite, to breakdown a dialogue on the fluidity of the vehicle of painting and its geometry.  At the same time, I establish a triangulation of the bare plane of the canvas which reaffirms its paradoxical nature as an object: where the fictitious flatness of the plane plays in suspension with the illusory spatial depth of forms expressed on it.

Ricardo Morín

http://www.ricardomorin.com

December 13, 2008

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Manifesto 2008

December 8, 2008

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Triangulation Series #25-- oil on linen, 60 x 37 inches, 2009
Ricardo F. Morín
Triangulation Series Nº 25
37″ x 60″ x 2″
Oil on linen
2007

Ricardo F. Morín, December 8, 2008; Jersey City, NJ

My work Triangulation Series 2006-08 expands on questions dealing with perspectives synthesizing concepts of pictorial space and infinity:  something I have worked on over the years.  I have allowed painterly abstraction/plasticity to express both in form and content a kind of art that goes beyond a material world of signs; my paintings reach for the infinite—the mystery and the poetry in every man’s individual drama.  I choose the golden ratio 1 = 1618 as a consistent format for nonobjective abstraction which is clearly inherent of infinite congruency [a manifestation common to all known perspective methodologies], to breakdown a dialogue on the fluidity of the vehicle of painting and its geometry.  At the same time, I establish a triangulation of the bare plane of the canvas which reaffirms its paradoxical nature as an object: where the fictitious flatness of the plane plays in suspension with the illusory spatial depth of forms expressed on it.   Though immersed in 20th-century aesthetics, I neither strive for a specific historical movement nor for the postmodernist agenda.  Simply, I look at making art as a “fleshy” product of human experiencing, a resultant of the maker’s own passion.  Just as the idiosyncrasy of an individual, indivisible in nature, is blind to causality, an aesthetic frame embraces all its senses and the image is only the result or residue.

Non-objective, timeless, or even existential—in this sense—the image or Kunstgegenstand proposes not to explain what the meaning of experience is; rather, the image manifests itself, provoking interpretation from the observer.

There are no outside sources nor preconceived notions of the final composition.  Gesturally and intuitively, I use the plane of the canvas as an active platform (in other words, a conversation, so to speak, takes place among the paint, the canvas and me as I apply paint onto the canvas.)  In variegated densities, layer after layer—transparent or textural—the work transforms itself gradually by spectral accruement.  In continuous dialogue, I work on several pieces at the same time so all are able to inform the other.  An inner rhythm from each composition thus unfolds and guides the shifts and the construction of forms: burials, resurrections, exaltations, veilings, reattainments—all thanks to the gritty and sumptuous nature of the medium; a moodiness arises from the interlocutors with its acrid qualities of dissonance and complementary transparency. Indeed, it is color, as texture that establishes the emotional landscape of each piece.  The finished work stands on its own as a concentration of multiple layers; each of the numerous strata is essential to the completeness.  There is a sense of multidirectional movement in each of the works that acts on the viewer’s eye as he/she glances over the delineated shapes and peers through the entanglements of strokes and arabesques.  The viewer comes away, I hope, with the sense of the works’ generative completeness of a universe making and remaking itself.

As I said at the beginning, I embrace in my love of art a sense of universality; I do this not for my own self-fulfillment, but for the cosmic order and interconnectedness in our own awareness of humanity, the unifying mode from all masters.  As such, I am perennially emerging as I wander around in my space of today’s uncertain and leaderless being, where authority is seemingly derived from conflicting, and confusing powers of disbelief.  Freedom has come to us but its ethers and incongruities make us stagger.

Artist Website

Edited by Billy Bussell Thompson, Professor Emeritus

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“Art Under Institutional Mediation”

December 5, 2008

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Digital Image created with Maya and Combustion Softwares

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It’s like a goat tied to a post, who can wander only the length of its tether

Jiddu Krishnamurti, 1986

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Ricardo F. Morín, December 5, 2008, New York, NY

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Anyone who aspires towards a career as a visual artist understands that the constraints for survival are questionable and that destiny often is one of the many factors that determines recognition.   One’s mission is not about seeking recognition or even permanence, but about maturing and sharing one’s talent through exploration and inquiry.   Congruency with one’s ancestry, identity, and oeuvre is not a matter of commercial interest for any given national identification.   These elements  are irreducible aspects of signification, undefined against perspectives concerning conventional pieties—imponderable manifestations of one’s existence:   neither up to meeting others’ expectations, nor up to appointed entities and their economic models used as marketing ploys.

The art world includes actors who manufacture adversity in order to expand their reach and authority.    Let me begin by addressing the frustration of visual-artists with dual nationalities, who sometimes suffer in the corral of Latin-American fundamentalism.   Let me also question why their resulting frustrations are an order of business imposed by contemporary Medicis who seek to buy a parcel of history in the parochial institutionalization taking place inside these artists’ countries of origin.   These merchants promote their wares by controlling, by and large, markets located abroad.

Certain philanthropic foundations—I speak especially of the Phelps-Cisneros—sell themselves to museums as influential and often Darwinian laboratories with their claims of heralding innovative programs focusing on Latin American issues and fostering its cultural heritage.   The above cited institution takes its leadership from a wealthy socialite, and boasts about its founder, as an amalgamation of bourgeois society and contemporary scholarly erudition. Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, anthropologist amateuse and founder-—deeply attached to her own ideas—, sees herself as neoembodiment of the 19-c. bio-geographer, Alexander von Humboldt:   a man whom the contemporary Simón Bolívar (the Latin-American revolutionary and freedom fighter) cited as the real discoverer of South America.

Such portrayals, however, never yield balanced visions of pluralism.   Only by peeling through layers of hubristic poshness, can one expose the foundation’s wish to create a dialogue about contemporary art with an historic nucleus set in Venezuela.   But this desire simply reflects an aberrant fundamentalism; a rigidity whose aims are the preservation of certain regional traditions, which coincide with the institution’s own acquisitions.   Undeniably, the preponderance of these cultural investments represents past meaningful movements, i.e., Kinetic, Op, and other neo-geometric derivatives.   These movements, needless to say, are complaisantly popular, relatively noncontroversial artifacts among the political élites in Venezuela–from outright dictatorships, to feeble democracies, up to the presently evolving kleptocracy of the Bolivarian State of Hugo Chavez.   They define as well the reoccurring themes coming out of this base which have found worldwide exhibitions and critiques.   Contemporary art within this context exemplifies, nevertheless, exclusively the demagoguery of the ruling class’ claiming a national identity as stimulating and not one of imposed, antiquated historicism.   This marketing ploy impoverishes both spontaneity and the local culture itself!

Succumbing to or courting this scheme is dangerous to artists and leads to alienation.   Giving in promotes stagnation arising from these very institutionalized dictates.   Such fashions segregate artists into a kind of regionalism and ideology, totally out of flux with the global community.   Let me reflect on the raison d’être of any artist or, for that matter, of any human being; it must consist in a universal respect for dignity and freedom that cannot be sold, only shared.   Let me underline that philanthropic societies that today yearn for an enforced authority through their wealth and through an enforced false sense of nationality and/or political or religious affiliation(s) are not only out of step with the transformative spirit of our times, but also with the globalized revolution taking placed in our culture, where the despotism of conventional borders and preconceived identities are lacking.   This revolution is neither political nor economical; it is occurring within our very being, and it is the result of the change within ourselves of what is really important.   We are dispensing with creative communities subjugated to a poisonous market place.We are dispensing with creative communities subjugated to a poisonous market place. [1]      We have a new sensitivity and perception that will embrace cultural societies and producers alike.   No simple answers arise; but we are growing in responsibility and self knowledge:   we move to freedom and away from subjugation.

Ricardo Morín

http://www.ricardomorin.com

Endnote:

[1] The mythomania of stardom by definition examines only the few. Complacency fuels scarcity of resources while alienating 90% of active artists and assigning value to market indices, thus staggering self-sustenance.

Ricardo Morín

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Posted in Art, Institutional Critique, Cultural Identity, Political Economy of Art, Contemporary Art, Latin American Art, Globalization, Cultural Production, On the Nature of Visual Art | Leave a Comment »

“From the Margins of Immateriality”

June 1, 2008

Mavericks!

Look for renewals departing from Life.

Let us defile institutional theory mongering,

a corrosive taxonomy at the service of petulance,

marketing anachronistic slogans of nonsense.

*

Subservient to infamy,

cohorts of dilettantes,

not lack of delimitation as handmaiden to ignorance.

*

Who promotes the edge of a new fugitive survival?

Fleshing out servitude as style,

replacing intellect with mordacious rapacity,

parading unclothed, bareness of duplicitous souls,

with a gashing defiance, an insatiable desire to own,

a clandestine culture of the misbegotten?

*

Boards of museums and CEOs glowing and bursting forth,

grotesquerie of gulosity,

takeover of corporate predators.

*

Mavericks!

Let us not jibe and succumb to chauvinism,

emasculated by oppression.

Take heed that Freedom is not for sale.

*

Would the web revolution lead artistic endeavors to a political revolution,

replacing galleries, museums, and the collector’s system of ownership?

Would the internal calling of an artist overcome the external demands of market survival?

Would such a calling exist in a natural state, without intervening forces of manipulative trends?

Would such a calling be bound to exhibitionism and voyeurism in exchange for sales, acquisitions, commodities, and the will of managing agents?

Would we face a new reality, free of stardom and economic maneuvers?

Would participation and isolation make any difference if such a calling serves no purpose but its own?

Would history become both irrelevant and important at once: irrelevant to how one fits in, and important to how one understands its limits?

Would knowledge always remain intertwined with some burdensome measure of superstition?

Would we repel paradox on arrogantly moral grounds, or tend unabashedly toward our primordial instincts?

Artist Website

Ricardo F. Morin, New York, NY

June 1, 2008

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Posted in Art, Contemporary Art, Cultural Critique, Aesthetics, Institutions, Political Thought, Digital Culture, Philosophy, On the Nature of Perception and Human Interconnectedness, On the Nature of Visual Art, Poetry | Leave a Comment »

Infinity

May 31, 2008

Ricardo F. Morin. May 3, 2008, Jersey City, NJ

Pillared vision of instinctive passion

Sung by nightingales cradled in daylight

Dread neither consequence nor precedence

For it belongs to eternity.

*

Reverberating and plangent, masking no longer

A solar plexus in protest to one’s limitations

Cracked, felicitous interpretation to his freedom

Away from the perverse shadows of cynicism,

Doubt no more, a drought of discontent.

*

Upheaval to communicate what’s most dear

As he rises from turbulence.

What’s most consoling of his inner lament?

Apollo opening Dionisio into the abyss of infinitude,

Bells ceased without tower to cling.

*

Let me rest on nothing but your caressing whisper,

Mused and detached

Return and departing at once

Carry this song into our universe.

Artist Website

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