I know what I like....
The Victoria Memorial, by Thomas Brock |
Like it, or not. Call it what you will. Art is all around us. And there is more of it every day. Whether you perceive it in the natural world:
Knot in their thousands over The Wash (but is it art?) |
Or someone sticks it in front of you. Time Horizon at Houghton Hall is an interrogation of its site through a form of acupuncture. By sticking foreign objects into a living body - the earth - it seeks to revitalise it, inviting them to think about what lies below, beneath the apparent surface of things; (Artist's Statement.)
One of a hundred Antony Gormleys in Time Horizon at Houghton Hall, Norfolk. |
[I can do that, too, Mr Gormley, even without taking my clothes off:]
Self portrait in Time is Horizontal, at Holm Beach, Norfolk |
Around 46 years ago, Wafa, a young Palestinian woman, gave me a birthday present. It was Edmund Burke Feldman's book, Varieties of Visual Experience. In his Introduction to the Functions of Art, he asks, How can we explain their (the visual arts') survival, and indeed their prominence, for so long under such varying circumstances and among so many diverse peoples?
Meeting myself coming back |
Feldman suggests that art is practised and prized because it satisfies vital personal and social needs.....
Woman and Child, 2024, by Martin Skalicky |
He goes on to say that art continues to satisfy, (1) our individual needs for personal expression,
Graffiti and a view of Brno |
(2) our social needs for display, celebration, and communication,
{and this picture reminds me of an Australian I met in Rome nearly fifty years ago, who claimed the unforgiving chat-up line, Hello Sheila, I've got a whip at home....}
Portrait of Mrs Marie Ruzickova, early 1920s, by Linka Prochazkova |
and (3) our physical needs for utilitarian objects and structures.
Žlutý kopec Water Tanks, Brno |
It takes all sorts. I couldn't live in an art gallery:
Nor could I live in a palace like the Albertina in Vienna:
I would soon get into trouble for misbehaving, or not quite understanding the protocol, like Martin:
Martin, into the Corner, You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself, 1989 by Martin Kippenberger |
But I could survive with a Monet in my bathroom - Amanda loved these pictures:
The Water Lily Pond, c 1917 - 1919, Claude Monet |
L'émotion by Ferdinand Hodler |
No. I know what I like (I may not know much about.... you know....) And I like this hare. I love the way that Dürer got it to sit still for long enough to get the whiskers right:
Young Hare, 1502, by Albrecht Dürer |
When all is said, undone, (sic) art has its place in our confused and confusing world. The more it is repressed, the more cuts a government makes to its welfare, the more there will be. And, as the population explodes, so does the variety of and need for art. And just as there are many different types of us (even Gormley used 23 different castings of his own body for his 100 cast-iron body forms at Houghton) - just as there are many variants of being, there are variants of the visual (and other) arts. To suit every taste, (and some distastes as well? Ed.)
We model the natural world to bring it closer, to remind us of its wonder:
Reflections and a Charcoal drawing by Roberto Longo |
We celebrate the human form:
Or, maybe, we walk on by, reading a book:
Me, I like to find art in my surroundings. Though is that art? (Does it matter? Ed). Up a church tower in Tabor.....
Don't take the seats, Leave them where they are |
And I love the colours of autumn leaves, scattered here on a stairway in Karlštejn castle in Czechia.
Or, as here, caught in mid fall:
And I love the patterns of shells and pebbles in the sand at low tide on a Norfolk beach:
Just as I also love the creative dreams of artists, who, against the rules of reality, rectangularise the world and flatten it into two dimensions while suggesting more, painting the mystery of white against the canvas, as in this wonderfully eery picture in the Albertina:
Landscape with Lanterns, 1958, by Paul Delvaux |
Yes, whatever happens, I will see you in my dreams:
Whatever may cause those dreams..... There is art in nature.....
At least so I hope. Let us pray......
Praying Hands, by Albrecht Dürer |
Now sit back and enjoy:
https://youtu.be/hNRHHRjep3E?feature=shared