Notes about Art

By Almandrade (Antonio Luiz M. Andrade)
Artist,painter,  poet and brazilian arquitect
See Currículum

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.