I always travel abroad
on business. Never as a tourist. I have never set foot in a neighborhood where
there are graffiti.
When you visit for
business purpose, someone is waiting there for you. You mean something to him. Earning
his bread depends on you. You're part of his world. In his World you're an important
and sometimes irreplaceable part. Thus you are not Abroad. You are not just at
home, the thrill of your brush not only leaves a reflection on the fabric of
life there, your urge becomes a part of life itself - and it makes sense for
them and for you.
"This house-ur
house" – my friend, a Dutchman in the Netherlands, welcomed me in perfect
Bulgarian at the doorstep of his home.
It is the same in
art.
Until recently in our
academy the development of art ended about Van Gogh. After that art was "Zemlya
v Illuminatore" and "Podmoskovnie vechera". The end of history
was Van Gogh.
I will therefore go through several contrasting stories from
his life to illustrate the difference between the two aspects of life and
things. We have all read that he was crazy and had chased his colleague with a
razor in his hand. Quite an experience! Action by any standards. You do not
have to be an artist to do it yourself. In our country tourists even do more
mischief. And such mischief sell the newspaper and art stories all the same.
And we have also been
told that he was unrecognized genius – it is known that the doctor from the
hospital in Arles, who treated him, covered with his portrait, a gift by Van
Gogh, a hole in his chicken coop meshwork. You see now that Dr Gachet was even crazier.
He and the rest of their society in civilized France approved of his savage
act. They were tourists in art. They had not seen the message and spirit of the
time and preceding them sensory and cultural model, objectified in a new scenic
practice. Or maybe they had seen them ... And that is why they put him in a
lunatic asylum in Arles. That is why Sasho Sladura wa murdered in Bulgaria. And
not only he. See the dramatic destiny of the greatest Bulgarian poets! Do you
think the executioners of Geo Milev turned their attention to the new language
constructs and the generated verbing in his poems about our organized bandit
country in 1923? Apparently, they were well aware for their time of the value
of the experiment and the ability of its results to change the nature of
worldviews and life. The ones and the others - they both understood.
Now-even for the
tourist – the following story becomes comprehensible.
Van Gogh and Cezanne meet
at a ‘plein-air’ workshop. They explore light changes at different times of the
day and their compositions of the day are therefore the same, but the color is
different. Cezanne was the son of a wealthy banker and is known by then as a
mentor, with all his dedication and straightness in the cause of the new color
painting. So they are sitting, tripods stretched, and painting. At some point Van
Gogh puts some brown paint on the palette. Cezanne says nothing. He just gets
out his gun, places it close to himself and continues painting. Right, eh! I'd have
shot him for this treason as well.
See where the problem
stands. When you paint a portrait in pencil for example what you actually do is
leaving traces of graphite on the rough surface of the paper. And so, and so,
until you convey the expression and get the character.
My question addressed
to you is how can you claim that traces of graphite 'capture' a character?
How black-white proportion suggest resemblance and
character with the person portrayed of flesh and blood, not of paper and
graphite, so that you can admire him? The artist has built up in YOUR HEAD
combinations and ratios of stains and material which altogether rise
comparability with other known to you group of perceptions, bearing the name of
the portrayed person. He has caught his character, right? He has caught your
threads of perception.
Later on Salvador
Dali and Louis Buñuel will manipulate the sensitivity and perceptions with the razor
and the eye at the beginning of his famous fundamental movie. They displayed
That incident with Van Gogh in a technique. That is where the magic hides. That’s
an entirely different story. How this could be done, upgraded with techniques discoveries
of every generation, that is the real art history and it could only be studied
with brush in hand, with a teacher and in a studio. This is the setup in completion. And the scenes of
"display" and "recreating" the figure and the plot are left
for the tourists. They call that art. The first steps of the figure and the plot
can be told with words and be played by anyone. You don’t need to know the plastic
language basics. The character and the composition should be recognizable enough
to illustrate properly the social or the ideological task. This kind of
"re-creation" is art history as we find it in our textbooks. Art
critic in there is like a tourist guide.
"Look to the left!
See how Van Gogh is cutting his ear with a razor. "
"See also
Surrealism in 1929! Watch the scene with the razor in Un Chien Andalou
"How touching the
author has defined it! What a mentality! The Surrealism“
Thanks. There is no
way to be social and to be art at the same time. The is no servicing insight.
Under the veil of the
figure and plot whose manifestation we used to call Socialist Realism, a number
of Bulgarian authors went on searching and discovering in sculpture and art
language. That true story is what
I intend to present in a program project of Sculpture Park Varna. To illustrate
the undeniable fact that one and the same lyrics and music sound convincing with
and without plot, background and visual interpretation to show you that
story line and music-making are different and only associatively related categories I will
play several different versions of Ohne Dich of Rammstein.
The
same lyrics and music but without the plot background
If my demonstration
was successful I will make another step towards the truth - compare
music-making in the portrait of my teacher’s teacher Marko Markov and Arno
Brecker. Both are Burdel’s students. In the comparison techniques inherited
from their teacher in plastic language will be outlined. Me personally, I am
not on their level in portraying, I conducted my own research, you now study
at the Academy and did not make it to be successful in everything. I do know however
that one and those who are better than me in doing it. I will try to present
them to you in a series of exhibitions.
Generally this will
be a review of the past 50 years Sculpture in Bulgaria. You will see the best.
Without taking care who was in which
team and what socio-political time labels they had to overcome to survive as
artists, and in a difficult time for art to re-convey knowledge and techniques of
expression, and of objectification of views and beliefs through the sculpture craft.
Why Veso is going to
present things from the past? the question you are asking yourself. If we only now conduct analysis and comparison
then what exactly is the past? And unlike newspapers and TV there are eternal
values and the research of ways of visualization and expression in and via plastic
language is the thin thread of knowledge familiar to us from the cave of
Lascaux, which is not interrupted for you thanks to them. If the Thin thread of
civilization breaks here and now, then your children will go Where somebody
will wait for them starting from The Great Disruption of Fukuyama, and they
will be part of his life, and culture and his perceptions. And you're just a
group of tourists on a life-forgotten station.
Last, but not least.
if the Resemblance was the purpose of 20 years of training in art and sculpture
the we should close the Academy and buy a 3D scanner and a 3D printer. And send
the students to pick strawberries in Scotland. What are they for? I hear that some
subjects are being closed . We should hurry, huh?
Now for my Muse that
is On The Road, and does not intend to
pick strawberries in Scotland.
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