Measuring uncertainty

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.

Epicurus

Nothing persists eternity. There is just certainty of someone's grave. Apparently, the tombs of the Egyptian rulers persistent for a three thousand years. The solid ground beneath is allowance to remain not plundered and observed by the millions living. Easily inherited the buried glory of the dead dynasty in the desert death. Autopsy for a time and majestic glory... During his lifetime Vermeer was in the shadow of his more popular currents. Just significantly afterwards rediscovered as first among them. How long Picasso, Miro, Warhol, Bacon, Hirst, Flavin, this cultural icons of today's mass media world could stay undisputed authorities; There is always revolts and dismissals, there is always fluid reality of changes and unpredictable chaos. Unlikely one could be surprised by an entity if this isn't something of a larger scale than before, substitute for a different or totally forgotten. Is prologue for a new modernity means a burial for a past iconography, or just a new layer on it? Malevich must be signifier for a long period, i suppose groundbreakers and revolutionaries have a strong reason to always stay remembered for a long periods. Malevich in relation to art is like Einstein to physics. A pragmatic theorist who luckily gained spot in the beginnings of new consciousness in art and design, a theory which became almost dead objectivity. What is ideal, one may ask. Andy Warhol, is he an immortal pop art king or a hostage of tomorrow's fashion? He had relevance to his time, Andy was a king of retail beauty of modernity. Our universe is just singularity among the multiple possibilities of such. could it be amazingly different, yes it is. Brand of the art, this finally what we receive. Brand of the old art, this what we had. Jerry Saltz once made exceptional remark about fleeting moment and eternity in art, guessing if was Baudelaire quote. Today was a cold day, perpetually frozen in the air of the Northern winds. I've spent time thinking about space. A white box, perhaps it is freezer. In modern world one's death could be just persistent therapeutic eternity for someone's mind eternally frozen in the cryogenic unit.

The chaos aftermath

Haiti.

Once synonymous to dark medieval memories and zombie rituals got newer sinister meaning. Death and further reconstruction of a crushed dream of accidentally momentarily sacrificed governance and it's subjects, the human powers abused by a planet; an event of primary chaos that no one can behold; just have a few escapes to avoid... Once Pompeii were flattened upon powerful eruption. Roman civilisation was far greater scale to perish upon it... yet, indeed, humanity always face a higher dangers and possibilities of a bigger massacres, unless one never stops to act wisely to protect itself. Indeed, chaos and anarchy is a strict part of existence that you never like to be faced with; suddenly you always seek for a splendid escapes from death; sense of mortality is perhaps something that is beyond escape, in realisation of thing beyond purpose, which is finite; in the beginnings for the arts and culture. Death occurs upon different scenarios. Island just a model for the certain isolated community of beings. A Universe has own gravitational constants. Hundred thousands lives gone, a massacre in a matter of seconds; a blind reason of a knife falling down upon own weight and without mercy for those accidentally existent on it's patch, a dark revenge, an arrogant injustice on the entry point to the gates of cynical recycling Hell...The man world... starving to suffer...always waiting for terror at the slaughterhouse for perverse dream... time...chronicles of changes, a pauses between periods of the splendid growth and dark decadence. Past century was century famous for Wars. World War was just delayed for few decades. Endless autopsy for regiments and a grief burial for a tens of millions... a forsaken innocence, reverse genesis, blown up justice, self-incineration caused by inability to order the world few inmate. There were many plausible causes to all wars, within an ideas or finance, always some sort of eternal dreams for dominance; a brute force above the Holy trinity, dismal for all Saint, will to the power ... unprecedentedly created by any means... an ideas easily and blindly followed by the majority of a man bearing a flag of supremacy. How easy would people follow an legitimized crime, alluring in it's allowance given for the desires for forbidden present in subconsciousness of a mortal. To follow, obliged, and never asking why, just because it said to be an arbitrary prescription. Nature of a man has multiple dark sides, which sometimes make you awake at the Morning which is the dawn of a barbaric rage, or for another crusade for a glorious myth or for a strange ordeal. History is often just a hideout for a powerful one, the facts easily being forged or viewed upon the completely opposite angles by the historians of the arguing parties, often, what was seen as good may be fiercely presented as bad just to shadow one's intentions. World uncertainty since 2007, since the fallen giant of financial power was a source for a doubt and dismissal for hope in the golden age standard. Art, for instance, is just a part of the global flow. There was a Sacred animals in ancient religions, a totem wished or owned; a status marker, a saturated definition for a sovereign kind. The paragon of animals, apparent power of a man is a splendid gift survived through gloom age of a struggle with supreme, disordered, misunderstood and chaotic. The faith never lost.

Haiti, rebuilt into the blossoming state. Indeed, there is no argument to deny possible. Exuberance gained by the materialist approach. Glory of Rome was in the strong philosophical thought; a man power was reflected on the glory of it's art, Or was it art which once reflected in the generous society which made Romans great. Art, or just a concept? It is easy to imagine small fragile and unprotected world failing upon the pressure from the outside force which is impossible to resist. Spiritual decadence in the age of forsaken dreams... beyond, a system developed by man just outside of current limits. The art is to construct realities... refusing chaos and decay, and millions of aimlessly putrefied corpses.

Art Power

In this comparison chart is the selection of 30 artists. We intended to measure socio-cultural effect for their art in the present tense. Resulting chart; global importance/brand power for selected artists, as calculated January 25, 2010:

1 Pablo Picasso, 2 Andy Warhol, 3 Claude Monet, 4 Ernst Kirchner, 5 Henri Matisse, 6 Vincent van Gogh, 7 Francis Bacon, 8 Jackson Pollock, 9 Jasper Johns, 10 Pierre Auguste Renoir,11 Paul Cezanne, 12 Gustav Klimt, 13 Willem de Kooning, 14 Wassily Kandinsky, 15 Paul Gauguin, 16 Mark Rothko, 17 Rembrandt van Rijn, 18 Peter Paul Rubens, 19 Titian, 20 Piet Mondrian, 21 Amedeo Modigliani, 22 Winslow Homer, 23 Giovanni Canaletto, 24 J. M. W. Turner, 25 Georges Seurat, 26 Kazimir Malevich, 27 Raphael Sanzio, 28 Thomas Eakins, 29 Pontormo, 30 Johannes Vermeer.

Survival rate of a brands link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/2553805/BRAND-REVIVAL * Highest known price paid for work of art to date, known to be a 140 million US dollars paid for Jackson Pollock painting in the private transaction.**Chart was completed January 25, 2010 Reference to top prices are approximate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_paintings

http://www.artfacts.net/

http://www.artprice.com

http://www.metmuseum.org

http://www.louvre.org

http://www.museodelprado.es

http://www.tate.org.uk/
graph image copyright © 2010 after-modern-art.blogspot.com

Piero Manzoni. Dana Schutz. Yue Minjun

Three totally different, yet not random names. The reason they reviewed together is a retrospective of art of Piero Manzoni, amazingly young, and suddenly deeply intellectual, at Gagosian. 2009 was extremely simple year, we see this show as a considerably best happening to occur in New York. Dana Schutz presence was noticeable during a several years, her faux-naive abstract-surrealist paintings obviously is a statement kind; Yue Minjun's art, probably, could be, at some extent, compared to the mark of the new Epoch. However, we see significant new wave of art from China that made art world look totally different during the few years. Piero Manzoni lived short but vibrant life amazingly reflected in his art. His proto-conceptualist oeuvre absorbed more than a number of artists expressed in the decades producing art. Despite the fact, that appreciation for enfant-terrible intelligent kind of art often is totally absent from the popular public, his work possess an extremely firm materialist beauty and have a complex intellectual message. The show was brilliantly orchestrated and, if you seek for the aesthetics which is raw, intellectually brilliant, yet minimally-simple, Manzoni's show was exactly that. Just a small remark; how difficult to find something as good as this Manzoni's exhibition; without any sort of a thing that presented maximalism or blindly rooted ambition, just equilibrium of idea and form; that apparently played together in the fashion of Beethoven's sonata and let you think subconsciously about surreal worlds reminiscent to art of Jean Arp. When i think about Dana Schutz, i probably start to remember nights spent at different places, sometime joyful, sometime sleepless because of a climate changes or mosquitoes around. Sometime, experiences could be superb. What we like is desires; what we hate is what we need, but we hate impossibility to attain it. Sometime, her compositions not-all-the same good, as one expects. The treatment of surreal subjects alongside with great sense for color, and striking composition, produces quite remarkable effect; i certainly admit i like it. The questioning of whatever something what seemed attractive during the period of 6 years; if same could remain interesting for ten to fifty years ahead. Yue Minjun. The few years was amazing years for China. China got US in 2 trillion dollar trade deficit; China achieved something new and extremely powerful in art, finally, the ability to produce objectively new and truly own, cynical-social realism which is made in China and seem to belong to its time. One can't know what awaits Chinese power in the next thousand years, same no one knows future of the World, we may just guess what's going to be next... Yue Minjun's "Execution", is a mark for a new age. In execution we see dualist pictorial opposition, perhaps it is the picture of the conflict of the old and new. At some extent, the new power triumphant over old, and we see kind of celebration for the revolt, a new life and new art.

http://www.gagosian.com
http://www.zachfeuer.com
http://www.chinesecontemporary.com

Authority of the maker

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

Albert Camus

Among equals no one the Lord. Within archive or chronicle nothing to compare, just weights and numbers. Once long ago as 7 year old I had to solve mathematical problem in four rules. I never knew a way for it. and no other did. Only option you had is to invent by effort. I think that puzzle in four actions is kind of art, a great one produced for the history. How often true inventions happen? I clearly remember occasion, long ago and strikingly obvious. Suddenly, a child of me was screaming. I've got problem answered, but i doubted if it was wrong. Yet there was a teacher who knew the correct answer. The pure novelty no one knows it... subconsciously, perhaps many know that answers exist. just a few can understand and explain it.

Charles Saatchi - What is contemporary with or without him

Imagine Tracey Emin's bed without Charles Saatchi gallery, or Damien Hirst's shark without presentation and introduction, or no press whatsoever? Perhaps answer is yes, it remains the same, beautifully engaging to some extent, but with no money power in it. Is this a lot to affect one's perception? Art still just a pure romantics of some one's extorted lives. Same bed and just a same dead shark, a lesser known as totemic public icons. But still sacred beast and a personal cut of life. What a loss in the public eyes, such a shame on Britain, or just other Britain without a controversial image for modernity. Despite, it was headlined by the news. Should YBA found different patrons, or no patrons at all, we might have seen a different image of Contemporary art, or no Contemporary art at all? A dark image for society limited only to product consumption and product recycling. A different kind for humanity or no humanity at all?We may have never seen Pyramids without the King's desire to construct those, and without the power of an ancient kingdom to fulfill request. Similarly we could have missed a Sistine Chapel without the Christian God, one provoked a rage of controversy since the early Middle Ages. Religions established strong upon a beauty of a cult and art surrounding it. Beauty used wisely to expand and distribute it's influence zone. Is beauty some sort of psycho-social concept of being. Charles Saatchi, just an occidental stranger, or a perfect man of our time. Objectively, shall we had both Emin and Hirst missed and gone, someone else could have came to same ideas.., just under a different brand, apparently creating objects to become an other cultural icons. Art could be the big, bright and shiny reflection of an Era. Existent solely upon the will of an artist or intentions of isolated group. Art wasn't a poison for a future of man. Art challenges dogma and offer ideas. Hate Saatchi, love him, we suspect that both feelings have same origins. Indifference is the only worst sign of recession.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk

Diego Velazquez. Francisco Goya. Pablo Picasso. Andy Warhol

Icons of the remote and not forgotten past. Images of the power, usually. New ones? Assault to the tradition. Challenge to Academy. Burial of past. New strength. We like it because of totemic force of power. This greats are they random? What is a measure for talent or genius. Genetic accident? Great school? Amazing game of life? All of this, perhaps. Perhaps only struggle can produce emotions and results. Beyond ordinary grave. Goya painted for the King. Kind of a child of Diego Velazquez. Fransico's oeuvre same as an Old Testament as reflection of his time, deep and sharp, the most complex phenomena. It's complex, intense and stimulating. Quite original in his pursuance for craft, which he commanded to a great extent, especially obvious in his suite of lithographs, Caprichos. Probably strongest example of political satire in the history, which made a great deal of sensation in his lifetime. His art pictured life of the king's court and darkest fears of Spain, society fuelled by the spirit of Christianity tormented by inquisition whose fearful approach left darkest trace on the psycho of man. Reality, glorious in Majas on a Balcony and magnificent portraits of the royal family, and dark gloom of demonic tragedies from his late period etchings. Picasso was no occidental stranger to the painterly realms. He easily gained authority in the perfection of that was hard or impossible for others in the early age, than got noticed and managed to find himself, starting from production of complex images of poverty, an technically superb etchings; then he positioned himself high in the eyes of society. Picasso quickly became the icon of his time. Cubism was more than a modernist trend mixed with the take on the classicist tradition, it was science mixed with art, art was interpretation of the fundamental theories of time and matter. Picasso was a kind of public clown, in own words; but guessing he knew the nerve of society. He played strong. Andy Warhol. Every civilisation had the moment in it's history, when it rises above equals. A golden age for America was marked by the art of Andy Warhol, he left remarkably strong trail for it. He was a populist kind, eye pleasing maximalist and terrible player with the feelings for a guilt and pleasure of his time. Far from the purist and objectively deep realist art of Francis Bacon or Lucian Freud. Public, often don't dare it's hardest critics. What is modern? Perhaps first is what we see in the mirror, because it's you who measures the universe. Criteria applies. Perhaps most of it depends on someone whose reflection is equal to one of Philip IV in "Las Meninas". Just a small chamber in Buen Retiro. One death for a hundreds years in Prado...

1. Francisco Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, 1799, etching plate 43 of Caprichos
Copyright © 2010 Francisco Goya / image in the public domain
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/09/eusi/ho_18.64.43.htm

Black bright dangerous science of irrelevant paranoid dreams

Today was perfect. Tonight was dangerously empty, because everyone seemed lost without purpose and motivation. The beauty was the only sudden desire which followed strangely. Day disappeared in the shadow of black unconscious night.

Sinners. Saints. Objections and Principles

Why? The first question of existence.

Perhaps art gone wild away from bit rotten but right once time ago ideas of humanity. Post human might not be humane at all in the world where idea of life and death became weird commodities, or would simply disappear in the virtual reality world without life and death or black and white which is practically impossible to outline just some strange kind of existence relying only on the energy of solar system, seeing only death of a matter or event horizon of a nearby black hole as an event that will make existent disappear completely. Gods and idols, totemic ground for forbidden; majestic in the glorious beauty of it's delicate status. The world sometime was felt burning to the dust everything what was humane; world sometimes seems populated by someones sleepwalking unconsciously routine of a simply programme, day by day, from dust into the dust, and absolutely overwhelming nothing. Their world distorted by interrogations into privacy, insanity of being exceedingly sane in the false principles, the ones which is to regard of postal clerk, seen only in the mechanics of matching the similarity of entities and correctness of delivery. Christ, once adored symbol of humanity? extremely dependent upon fulfilling the will of his father; the one suffered for sins of living promising a life afterwards. What for was that made by his father, one might ask. The entire thing. A protection of technology, medicine and education. When billions born die and suffer thousands years to hope one day death is conquered to the will of living; and what to expect thereafter? Increasingly beautiful legend of a human world. An Oedipus complex, profoundly infected. Strange results. Crusaders pursuing idea to capture a God's love and a Holy Grail by means of sacrifice for most living in the Holy Land. Love of God is in the blood of millions, in the cancer and schizophrenia man die for, it's unlimited in it's reach for everyone of a billions living. Blood so beautifully engaging undead. Sudden love is your only reward, once you feel to escape gloom of everything. Praying people seem quite beautiful in their desire to infect something divine into own reality.

The dead gravity of love

The dead above living. Dead is God. Death absolute. The fear is superb ruler. The absence of fear absolute to dead. Fear is the king. Death irreversible. Everything was dead and everything will be dead. The power of the ruler is built upon power to control death. Withdraw death to suspended sensual existence. Someone born and die by multiple reasons and billions circumstances. Death is a biggest commodity of all trades, whatever you pay you pay to make a distance from the dead. Death is only something that makes you love fragile exaggerated return for the fear. The all great art is purified death and the biggest graves torque your existence into the feelings. The greatness of absolute is within this supreme dead gravity that makes feel this what is alive.

1. Nicholas Chistiakov, Murder in Istanbul, 2008, 60 x 40 inches © Nicholas Chistiakov http://www.nicholaschistiakov.com. Photography: Allan Martin Leer

January 6, 2010

Today is calm day with crisp air and absence of movement around. The live has been suspended in some kind of infinity since 2007. I wish there was a day to break this entangled relativity into a joy. Kind of really amazing once life. To break the silence...

Between genius and insanity

David Cohen, an arts reporter, once suggested that art is all about sanity. This is quite interesting. Sanity, is that purely about acceptance or commerce, talking cynically; genius, is that something intensely more complex. Sanity has always been close to religion and conventional governance, the revolutionary science is quite often appears as public devil, one pretending to ruin the system, forfeit one to another, whose basis is a higher intelligence. Burn the beach of someone's vertebrate existence to the steel proof certainty of cybernetic age. One's life was cool at the empty beach of joyful existence, but anyway. The physical rules aren't firm basis for reality, it is just approximate definition made one day; based on on limited facts. One which is firm just Mathematics. Renaissance was purely mathematical concept at it's best. Without understanding the truth one can't expect the progress, without progress life becomes purposeless. Is Duchampian "Fountain" all about sanity or insanity in his time, a challenge message for psychological boundaries explained. Tomorrow is made by science which to invent, today just follow tomorrow's dream...

1. Nicholas Chistiakov, Hysteria, 2009, oil on canvas, triptych, 9 x 12 inches each part, left part. Artwork used with permission. Copyright © 2010 Nicholas Chistiakov http://www.nicholaschistiakov.com. Photography: Allan Marin Leer

Reward for an Emperor

Empire shall never forbid itself. Beautiful gold encrusted throne of a monarch seem to add the power to His Majesty never the less than regiments of soldiers and the Supreme Court. Time just alters every value and impact. The Emperor is attractive that's why followed. Once disbalance occur revolt upraises to dismissal of everything. A subordination, what a great number of commanding efforts we had ever witnessed. Massacre of innocents, a great power. Justice? What is that in the corrupted intelligence of every living. Absolute is the gravity and atomic structures which only what we are. Mistakes. Arrogant to many privilege is inherited from fourth grade genesis of one; absolute intolerance there below for someone outside the circle for granted. Nothing is imminent persistent only death. Bread and Circuses, is a perpetually few desires of a man. With the regard to history of Rome whose powers were carried by legions of strong, every Empire can hold it force upon just one rule for superiority. Powers of today world held by intelligence and technology. Intelligence a concept perpetually beautiful and therefore dominant for all living. Values, a strange thing. What does it take, one's desire to reign above the others... just the will to pay high for the throne.

1. (not illustrated) Damien Hirst, For the love of God, 2007, diamonds and human teeth
2. More works by Damien Hirst
http://www.tate.org.uk/pharmacy
3. Requiem, Damien Hirst's recent exhibition at Pinchuk art centre
http://pinchukartcentre.org/en/exhibitions/past/8826

When I think about Moon

I remember the days under open skies in the raw fields of wheat
A burning fire
An absence of reason in a joyful game
With someone
I liked to catch
Perplexed
Close
Disarmingly
The cold moon was never close to me.
I can't imagine being there.
One day self replicating something might be infected into it's cold waterless surface.
Within matter of days it may populate large areas of what seemed so far from being alive.
Change everything sensationally.
Absence of feelings is dead body in nameless grave.
I think about Moon
Desires exuberant oxygen raw black skies stars sharply in memory
Was it yesterday
Or never
With you