Tuesday 24 December 2013

End of year musings

Today on a VERY windy Christmas Eve 2013 I desided that my blog can be better used as an outlet for some pressing issues that bother me now and again as well as a place to discuss various points of art skills that crop up among my students. I know that regularity generally is not my forte but I am going to try anyway.

At the moment I am officially on holidays that's probably why blogging suddenly appeared to be more possible then when I am caught in a treadmill of commuting between students and my studio.

On the phone today my mum read me a few passages of the Russian philosopher Berdyaev whose book "Crisis of Art" I must have bought ages ago. The book was written back in tumultuous years of Russian revolution. The world was generally crumbling all around the writer and so was the art. It is interesting to read him from the modern point of view when those changes which were just beginning to take place then had a chance to fully develop.

Indeed as Berdyaev was suggesting the art was stripped to the bone and then blown to atoms by various modern practioners throughout 20th century. Where we find ourselves now is a post-apocaliptic land where those in possession of skills are like lonely rangers travelling through vast fields of wilderness.

I found it interesting that the things that occupy my thoughts at the moment were commented upon by the great thinkers almost a century ago. However I often find that art critics go wildly over the top when they are analysing a piece of art. With Berdyaev today it seemed to me that a few sound ideas were swimming in a sea of mysticism.