23 September 2012

Hunter, 1999, painting, 30x 40 cm

2000 painting

Stigmat, art group, Tbilisi, video, the best since Joseph Beuys



Ich hab die Stigmat Truppe mal getroffen und wusste nicht, dass die da Kunst machen, und hatte echt Schiss gekriegt, weil ich dachte, dass es sich da um Irre handelt,weil die da mit einem schwingenden Hackebeilchen durch die Gegend liefen.. die "leben" ihre Kunst


 (I once met the stigmat troops and did not know that they're doing art, and I got really scared because I thought they were lunatics running around with a swinging hand axe through the area .. they "live" their art )

After Buzkashi, near Samarkand 2011

After Buzkashi, near Samarkand 2011

George Tsagareli, Tbilisi 1991

George Tsagareli, Tbilisi 1991

New in my collection this work from 1991 in Tbilisi by the famous Georgi Tsagareli , more images here georgianphotographers.com/stay-in-the-war/

11 September 2012

Art and 9/11

Today is 9/11/2012 

Why is art so dead right now ? 

Some say, art changed into the network. The networkers are the new artists, producing new content for the big content machine internet. 

Some think, the ever changing Facebook wall in front of you is the art work, to that all the networkers contribute their content. 

Some say the internet is the ultimate art work. 

Some big German artists say that 9/11 became the ultimate art work and destroyed all other "weaker" art. 

Karlheinz Stockhausen said right after 9/11 as quoted in Wikipedia: 

"Well, what happened there is, of course—now all of you must adjust your brains—the biggest work of art there has ever been. The fact that spirits achieve with one act something which we in music could never dream of, that people practise ten years madly, fanatically for a concert. And then die. [Hesitantly.] And that is the greatest work of art that exists for the whole Cosmos. Just imagine what happened there. There are people who are so concentrated on this single performance, and then five thousand people are driven to Resurrection. In one moment. I couldn't do that. Compared to that, we are nothing, as composers. [...] It is a crime, you know of course, because the people did not agree to it. They did not come to the "concert". That is obvious. And nobody had told them: "You could be killed in the process." (Stockhausen 2002, 76–77.)" 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlheinz_Stockhausen 

and 

Anselm Kiefer said:

"the images of the 11th September 2011 met all the characteristics of art: beauty, ambiguity, even the interaction with the viewer." 

(translated from German, cited in German TV here http://www.3sat.de/page/?source=%2Fkulturzeit%2Fthemen%2F154350%2Findex.html "...die Bilder des 11. September 2011 erfüllten alle Merkmale von Kunst: Schönheit, Vieldeutigkeit, sogar die Interaktion mit dem Betrachter." ) 

On the other hand many other artists failed to address the issues of 9/11, there are many reasons for it, one is maybe, that the happenings are to complicated and difficult to reflect. Search for examples "Art on 9/11" in the web. 

Another reason could be the huge iconicity ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconicity

of the burning WTC towers and what happened on 9/11. 

To me that leads to the ultimate crisis of art: 

- it failed to address 9/11 in an artistic form 

- it can not compete with the imagery of 9/11 

- it did not question other theories, i.e. it failed to search for the truth 

- it lost it's own trustworthiness and credibility with 9/11 and left the field over to the spins and lies of the corporate mass media 

What do you think ?


christus