FrankVanPelt's Artist's World of Wampeters, RingWorlds, and Ducks

 

Title.


<h1>Up from Minimalism</h1>
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               {<a href="#ufm-translations">Translations in UFM</a>}
               {<a href="#ufm-philo">Basic Philosophy</a>}
               {<a href="#ufm-artists-are-different">Artists are Different</a>}
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<h2>Translations in UFM</h2>

For film-makers, the more emotional and human
the subject matter, the more different they believe
the work to be done to translate the reality (real
or otherwise) to the silver screen. This goes back
to the narrative and the story:

  The narrative is:  The Queen died, and then the King died.
  The story is: The Queen died, and then the King died of a broken heart.

Of course the more human and identifiable the emotions,
the more abstract the expression can be.

And of course in performance art (and other non-filmic
art; eg, game play) *any* abstraction can be used to
create the translation. THIS is the lesson of minimalism
that is lost in the modern era. Note that in the film
"Potemkin", it is the boucing baby carriage that carries
so much truth - even the person being shot in the eye
is less horrifying and the help-less-ness of the baby.

From Rothko to Rhinehardt is the span from the abstract/
emotional to the minimalist/un-emotional; ie, from
the viceral to the surgical. One can feel the emotion
in Rothko's work because every brush stroke is so
clearly torn from his life and world-view, but in
Rhinehardt, we must KNOW/LEARN what he is to understand
the outrage that he is expressing.

And thus, there are (at least) two different goals to art:
To evoke understanding, --or-- to provoke mystery. When we
use understanding as the vehicle of our work, then we hope
to involve the viewerin our more subtle view of the world
via a message that we want to communicate clearly - despite
the fact that the viewer/participant may have to dig a bit.

In the case of mystery, we purposefully withold key
information (often THE keys to decoding the mystery), so as
to intrigue and draw the viewer in. For example, in John Cage's
"Four minutes" of silence, the viewer's own ambient experience
pourse into the space provided - in much the same way that
a visitor to a museum pours (if they are not pre-hensile
or pre-sensile) their own thoughts into an abstract and
especially a minimalist work; assuming that they haven't
"SPOILED" the experience by reading the museum label.

In both cases, the effort to decode/understand the art work
may be too much --or-- the viewer may just not be in the
mood for that kind of work; eg, not in the mood for some
John Cage, but expecting some Mozart, communication Generation,
Black Star, Coltrane, etc.

 
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<h2>Basic Philosophy</h2>

Almost by necessigy, the artist must be involved; ie, committed
to the life and times of the artist. This is NOT a question of
faith in man, his destinies, nor in any general idea whether
scientific or spiritual. It is a statement through expression
to the firmest and boldest ideas (both good and bad) that the
world expresses. We as artists hope for the best, and yet all
of our outrage at indifference, predjudice and greed is for
the most part ignored by governments, businesses, etc - and
we are only sought out when some nice decorative work needs
doing.

Thus, our dedication to the existence and existance as
well as some hopefull future existince that will be better
than the present is the projection of ourselves as humans
that just happen to be artists. The transformation from
bystander to victim is the torture that *must* drive the
artist's committment. To stand idly by while the blurble
of the fourth estate is waltzed into a dark recess of the
House of Usher by the regimes of the world - is an atrocity
that can not stand; the matrix must be challenged - even
though it may mean our death. And the regimes and status
quo realises that simply to ignore us may yet serve even
better for the abys of oblivion is omni-present. THen we
walk the steps; and we are beaten and we can only express
in crying and pleading our selves what we have known to
be going on for all the time that there have been tyrants
and comfort that silences most voices.

And that is why (i in the particular was transformed from
a "mere" letter writer in Amnesty International into a
gothic shadow of my former self - a lurking artist who
knows the deepest extent of torment and the involvement
that such knowledge provokes. To be otherwise is to be
a dabbler -- always in the sunshine and whisling a happy
tune past grave yards and worse that one hardly
acknowledges. But, even a dabbler can not predict what
event might allow the muses to transform us into a
committmenteur rather than just a dabbler.

 
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<h2>Artists are Different</h2>

In his novel, "Breakfast of Champions", the writer
(often SciFi writer) Kurt Vonnegut delves into the
idea that "artists are different, they don't think
like normal people". [Vonnegut, Pp. 167 & 229-230]

And as artists, we must feel free to reject or
embrace or ignore (or dress in a nice hat) ANYTHING.
An artist friend of mine once said how artist had
to be so smart because we have to learn so much;
ie, to be able to transform history, science,
technology, events, etc into art. Yes, but more
mainly to be smart *differently*; the artist as
liberator (at least from the mundane). Rejecting
even the "holy" Aristotlean western reductionist
logic, etc.


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