Below are some of my very personal thoughts about the ideal painter type and visual art in general. All romanticized and idealized, but that suits me well.
Originally written hurriedly in a notebook with multi-coloured pens, so I put the colours here too and overall edited very little so it's a tad messy.
A good artist, visual artist, for example a painter, is a master of storytelling. He uses his skill to guide the viewer in and through the artwork, makes the viewer see, think, feel what the artist wants him to.
An artist is a master manipulator, philosopher, mythmaker, shaman. An interpreter, middle-man, filter, entertainer, educator, guide.
A visual artist, a painter, needs no text to accompany his works. Text as a tool of expression is equal to but fundamentally different from painting, from visual composing.
Contemporary, conceptual, text-heavy art as a new subtechnique, an experiment with little history, tradition.
A painter is not a conceptual artist. A conceptual artist is not a painter.
A painter draws from the long, rich, dignified history and tradition of painting. It's a science, a developed elaborate living language that is forever in constant transformation.
Post-modern nihilism is not a sole inevitable direction for painting, it is just one narrow, crooked and dried up branch of this huge tree of art history.
Painting is a discipline, priesthood.
A good painter knows way above the basics of graphics, composition, colour theory, art history.
Is familiar with philosophy, biology, theology, mathematics (geometry!).. all things that study the world and us in it.
He uses all this knowledge combined to create and present artworks that are of great skill and readable on many levels by all sorts of audiences (lay public, children, other artists, art theorists and specialists of other above mentioned fields).
A good artwork is skilfully executed, well presented and timeless while in perfect sync with the time current to the artwork.
A good artist has dignity and respect. A certain "artsist's nobility" that at the same time distances from and makes easily accessible to all other groups in society.
He is the onlooker, the quiet storyteller, but yet an illusionist of great power, that he might choose to use for the good of all mankind or .. sell to the highest bidder.
..
Why are there art academies that teach students of "painting departments" to be contemporary conceptual artist instead of painters?
Automatism and other experimental art forms are just wild explorations, not worth the position and importance given to them.
...Says I...
Art itself is a constant battle.
Artist as a virus, spreading his language, ideals, the very model of the world.
Art draws from itself but not only.
Art that only pokes around its own nose serves little purpose for the society outside of artistic circles. That's why the public is disappointed in contemporary art. It's "not for the soul".
A painter who isn't able to harness the usage of form, line, colour, composition, narrative, presentation, etc, shouldn't be called a professional.
If he calls himself a painter then he is a painter, who doesn't know how to paint.
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