david sylvester - art critic [1924-2001]

interview with sylvester by bbc3

pre-ww2 much more interesting than post-ww2.

japanese art

edo period [within which originated ukiyo-e 'the floating world' wood block prints representing geishas, kabuki, courtesans, sumo;]- 17th- 20th c

meiji period [meiji restoration ended the edo period and japan's seclusion; hence inciting the 'japonism' phenomenon in the west , especially france, at this time]- 1868-1912

asia week exhibitions

william baziotes

shezad dawood

shez



so the neon lights in arabic, spelling out God's names, are a spin off of bruce nauman's work.


i'm pretty sure 'al-fataha' translates to 'the opener'. yet its labelled as 'the judge' on the saatchi gallery website.
the site will tell you this is a rejection of the idea of the 'clash of civilizations', and that it is a synthesis of the east west dichotomy that dawood shares in.
but i see an allusion to the burning bush story/myth/ religious narrative. a miraculous, neon-lit spectacle entangled in desolation; a glowing advertisement from within the dry, wild west frontier. it describes the current state of meeting of these two cultures.

His ideas on sufism are written here - a commentary on his artwork involving vintage praktica cameras.

this dude's work is really starting to fascinate me.

but, not suprisingly, in interview, seems pretty pretentious.

[over-used words when reading about art: 1) subversive 2) pretentious].

bob dylan - painter

favela villa broncos, 2010

paul gauguin

rene char: on the perils of too much clarity:

"ne pas effeuiller le coeur de la rose"

[do not strip the heart of the rose].

nollywood babylon

first of all lancelot is a bad-ass. As the movie director that is followed in this documentary, he has a burning ambition, passion and love for the movie industry, including all its unwelcoming elements, that can carry you through the entire film in an effortless wave.

they say america has colonialised the world through its movies and music. but the nigerian movie makers assert they aren't copyists, and communicate their life as it is. the country is a continuing integration of indigenous roots involving a large degree of occultism with christian european colonialism as well as islamic 'evangelism'. Although the influence of islam in the film was trite to non-existent, the clash/reconciliation between western christian ideals and african ancestral custom was said to be in a transition phase. and maybe at the moment seemingly in a perpetual transition phase that could take generations to overcome.

[this is the whole pastiche thing again].

self-analysis

there must be a collective consciousness or psychology because my paintings i can tell now are falling into the realm of pastiche and i have only just recently begun to study postmodernism, while i've been working on my paintings for a few years now.

its a mash up of genres and eras but not involved with any sort of satire or irony. just blankly eclectic. in a critique i was told it was in fact post-modern because it was eclectic, multicultural, but infused with contemporary imagery. he suggested i add imagery of violence and feminism because it would be 'relevant'. but i don't know why i would want to perpetuate stereotypes. i also have no intention of being subversive. it just 'is'. and maybe it is an empty conglomerate.

and maybe it really is reflective of a state of pleuralism devoid of substance that we find ourselves in.

and maybe i've fallen into a place of some sort of reverse-orientalism, being a product of migration and multiple past diasporas, finding myself nowhere and with only a faded, deja vu sense of any connection with history.

although in my critique, he asserted that it was 'new', its not really new, just a product of my time and place, and definitely not close to anything avant-garde, which has been noted by others many times. there is no 'edginess'. i am not aware of what the avant-garde style is at the moment, if any. In the pseudo-avant-garde, technical proficiency is absent, and there is a continual spin on conceptualism and appropriation, which i have no proclivity to indulge myself in.

a true synthesis into something new is the challenge.

what are you trying to get at? i don't know.