Generally this is bullshit.  Really ,' if you like it, you like it' is more accurate.  It really comes down to the fact that your second grade teacher didn't know what else to tell you, when it came to teaching art so, there you go, 'if you like it, it's good.'  Bull!
     What is important to do, if you like something is to ask yourself, Why?  then if you are being somewhat honest and non dogmatic, you can begin to explore the assumptions you have regarding the visual arts.  Generally speaking, the culture is lost in a neo-classical/neo-modern consciousness.  NOT a modern/classical consciousness.
      Antonio and I used to differentiate between a 'picture' and a 'painting'!  Simply explained, a picture is when the subject matter dominates the experience.  This is generally a conceptual and or sentimental event.  A picture can be 'abstract' as well as 'realistic'.  A painting is when the color and brush express the motif and artist's personality, and vice versa.  Here you are are beginning to deal with painting as an artform...
 
I have arrived
I am home
in the here and now
I am solid
I am free
in the ultimate I dwell



a cool video NBC did of Antonio

        

Just want to let you know of a couple of Ebook downloads on my website.   I am using LuLu.com and hardcopy editions are available there as well.

Here are the selections:

1.  An Artist's Manifesto/The Tao of Painting

A nuts and bolts mystical approach to Painting and Art.

A concise description of the archetypal principles

that go into the creation of a work of art.

 

2.  The Best Art Appreciation Lesson Ever

 

An exercise/contemplation on looking at a painting focusing

on the foundation principles that make up a painting.

This would be great for a student of Art History in analyzing

through direct seeing a work of art. 

Would be great for anyone working in a gallery

who would like to better talk about ANY

work to a potential client.  And would be great for anyone

simply wishing to deepen their appreciation for art!

Check it out.  I will be publishing more as time goes on.  Let me know what you think.  Any questions will be honored.

Cultivate Audacity

Brother Can you paradigm?

        

Googled Antonio yesterday, and to my surprise and satisfaction found that the Foundation website is up and runjning.  While it is obviously just a beginning, hopefully it will eventually actually describe the man and his place in cosmos.  A very smooth and nice web presentation.  Keep up the good work Mr. Skrapitz!

In Honor of the occasion, I am going to post his quote on style for you all...

Style

a quote by Antonio Salemme/Master Artist  (1892-1995)

 Style is most important, whether it be a book, a piece of
music, a painting, or a piece of sculpture.  But style is
recognized only in retrospect.  If one has style in mind while
one is painting, one becomes stylistic.  One produces a style
after the Gothic, or Renaissance, or African.  The style becomes
superficial and becomes a manner, and we call that stylistic.
My style comes out of my whole life.  The style is the result of
the state of mind of the artist, the subject matter one is
handling, the state of one's health, and the clarity of one's
mind: all that goes into the work.  After it's done, the style
can be recognized.  Whatever comes out is a spontaneous and
mysterious thing.  Style cannot be defined intellectually.  It
can be seen only in retrospect.

For example, the Gothic style came out of the condition of
France and Germany in the 13th and 14th century.  The 12th
century was Romanesque: after the Romanesque came the Gothic.
The Romanesque was a result of the Roman Empire, the Greek art
and all of that.  Then the Gothic came because the people began
to express themselves more directly.  It came out of  The
climate, the stones they had to work with, and their religious
approach... their interpretation of Christianity.  That whole
thing produced what we call the Gothic style, and the word
'gothic' means 'barbarian', uncivilized'.  It was original
expression, getting away from the Greek and the Roman.  But it
all came about in retrospect.  The people who built the Gothic
cathedrals built them as well as they could under the condition
and the state of mind they were in, and out came what we call
the Gothic style.

 So when someone does a painting, the same process takes place.
Everything one is comes out in that painting.  If one's able to
be spontaneous, then there is spontaneity in the style and there
is vigor in the brush strokes.  If one is not able to be
spontaneous, because one is still immature and one is uncertain,
and one's technique is not complete, then style doesn't come
through, because one is still struggling with technique.  If one
has mastered the technique and lived, and is still vigorous, and
paints with pleasure, then out comes what we call style.  
Style is never an intellectual and willful effort.  It is like
grace in the spiritual life.  We try, we pray, we sit, we
meditate.  By the grace of God in a mysterious way we become
enlightened.  You don't become enlightened by mere effort.  You
don't achieve enlightenment.  Enlightenment comes after great
discipline and effort, but we don't achieve.  It is the same
with style in Art.

To check out some video of Antonio's studio and read a brief bio,  visit www.williamderaymond.net

        

siva and parvati at the end of the universe





big deal...






nothing wrong here....

        

This is the pure gold of the culture. This kind of understanding. It is rare and extremely valuable. << MORE >>

I am seeing the humanity of Warhol and his tribe. How you took care of one another. How you all loved one another, how misplaced your aesthetic visions are.....<< MORE >>

Woke up this morning.  I wake up most mornings.  I feel generally like I live at the bottom center of a spiraling vortex of cultural conceptuality.  I am the eye of the storm. 
     At the same time, i am a walking mirror, reflecting the conceptual bias of those who come in contact.  It is amazing and awful to live here.  'You live your life, as if it's real, a thousand kisses deep.' - Leonard Cohen
So at some point this am. I thought of offering my services as an  Arts Attitude Adjustor.  This would be a service for anyone practicing art and unaware of the eternal nature of the medium. 
     It is interesting how you awake one day and find you're old and older, like it took no time at all to get here.  It is fascinating how we generally take our mortality for granted in this eternity of infinity.  Still here we are, our bodies rushing to their own mysterious conclusions. 
     Just wanted to express here a bit.  Still I am serious about Arts Attitude adjustments.  Yours in eternal bliss....

        

'A new emotional urge had to be found to fill the place of spiritual conviction; national feeling welled up to fill the gap. The absolutist and the representative principle were losing the support of religion; they gained that of nationalism.' [C. V. Wedgwood's "The Thirty Years War"] << MORE >>

        

Writing well is the best revenge. << MORE >>

I realize that I'm coming home at last.<< MORE >>

Silence is not different from whole purpose. The power of the first bird at first light is the wholeness of expression. << MORE >>

So what's the deal?  Antonio taught, "Look at the brush strokes."   This is the sword that cuts thru conceptuality.  No story telling, 'avoid the literary spirit...' as Cezanne warned to fellow painters.
     The above painting is direct - alla prima.  Just put down, once and done.  Its entertainment value rests in understanding the nature of color and appreciating the subtlety of tone and the harmonization of the same.  The colors are notes that play in the overall composition harmony.  This particular painting is something of a jazz piece the strong red lines.  the 'fruit' on the 'tabletop' are just solid red circles. there are a series of interesting greens that relate to the red, the violet, the portrait backgrounds.  And of course there are the blues and yellowsand even the white of the glass, (that makes no rational sense at all...)
    This painting is as spontaneous as handwriting and show the intelligence of the artist (moi), as far as direct experience goes, this painting is no doubt a comtemplative doorway that, dare I say, opens into great bliss and humor.   And this is achieved via the art of painting....  

        

Played: 72 | Download | Duration: 00:04:07

        

But perhaps one of the most bizarre and stunning corollaries of the addiction to the nihil - cause or effect is unclear - is the denial of self. Possibly it is both cause and effect. That is, it may be that the denial of self is both a cause and a consequence of the addiction to the grand néant, the great nothingness, that is now the prepossessing idol of the marketplace in our culture.<< MORE >>

But now we have become addicted to an 'idea' of revolution, and the idea has destroyed everything, for the time being, that the revolution actually stood for. Today, the dominant 'culture' is this utter perversion of the modern, a perversion that should not be allowed to preempt the first revolution even as part of its name.<< MORE >>

        

But while I can obviously articulate what is wrong with the culture, for anyone who cares to listen, what has hovered at the back of my consciousness throughout the developmental process of this critique is the question of why those who oppose us not only cling so tenaciously to something that denies the real pleasures of aesthetics and the intellect, but why they hold obsessively to an outright denial of value: why are they addicted to the nihil? That is, what is it about the denial of value that causes them not only to cling to it, but also to espouse and express it as if it were a supreme virtue? << MORE >>

Perhaps the new modes of digital presentation can simulate paper more nearly as a photograph than as a video screen, just as television has become more movie-like. But the 'weight' of the book is not simply measured in avoirdupois. And the 'presence' of the printed page is precisely that it does not change. << MORE >>

As I said in my last post, the English metrical foot is dead. But the death of the English metrical foot is the unspoken cliché of contemporary modernist or 'postmodernist' American poetry. 'Unspoken', as in addictive denial: that is to say, the contortions of present modernist American metrics are based on the unspeakable fact that we cannot, at any cost, have any semblance of the old foot in our poetics. The result is a 'poetry' worse in its prosody than the most denatured and artificial prose.<< MORE >>

        

     As a teacher teaching teachers, I say that the young child before any gaining ideas or concepts, is the true abstract expressionist.  They delight in the medium, the brush, the color..without stylized self consciousness.  As one grows and matures, there enters in the idea of 'perfection' or having to get it 'right'.  This is basically an adolescent dilemma, ie. the struggle with technique, and the dealing with the programmed or conceptual mind.  Of course all this can take place at whatever physical age the practicing artist finds him or herself.
     The idea of relationship to the world enters in at a fairly mature stage, where one realizes the 'abstract nature of reality is the source of beauty.'  This thought ramifies psychologically for the artist.  But like so much of contemporary reality, we tend to see ourselves as seperate from 'world', or 'external reality'. even though it is obvious that everything we observe is necessarily internal as well.  So what is the world?
     I'm going to cut it short here, with, for now, a final thought for the painter.  It is the relationship with the world that is essential to the ecstasy inherent in mature self expression.  It is the connection to nature and understanding the intrinsic nature of what the brush communicates, that mere dominating the medium or brush can never achieve (thru the intellect).  Know that this eternal, inherently mystical language is there.
     Don't hesitate to email or comment if you have any questions or clarifying observations.  Regards.
    

        

Kirsten is this bright 10 year old.  She sat like a champ.

        

The major conceptual dilemma in the visual arts is the unconscious cultural fascination with neo-classicism.  It is a serious problem, especially if you aspire to true artistry.  Put as simply as possible, this means the subject matter is the value of the painting.  In modern art, that is, art that is not conceptual but based in the eternal realities of the moment and world and medium/artform, the subject matter really is only factor of 20 % of the painting's value.  The consciousness of the brush, the color relationships, the ability to express oneself compositionally in relationship to the WORLD, are for the most part the better part of art appreciation.
     More on this later, but a note of history, and an intro to neo-modernism...if you look at the early work of DeKooning you will see a lousy neo-classicist.  Then you get the abstract stuff.  Mostly, I Think, because of market forces, etc. -  Ego driven needs essentially.  I have seen this pattern repeated continually.  The neo classicist tends to trade in that concept for the so called 'modern' concept of abstract expressionism (among other neo-modernisms).  Here the subject matter also dominates...so what if the image is so called 'abstract' - it is exactly what it is...very real in other words...
     Like I said , more later....

        

I used to joke that I 'was famous long ago / for playing the electric violin / on desolation row', aka, I was a poet in Philadelphia twenty-five years ago.<< MORE >>

But, of course, this is only nominally what my previous post was about. The change may be subtle, but it is very real. The problem with the mass media is, of course, first of all, that it is 'mass', but, second of all, that to reach a mass audience, one must mirror the mass consciousness. And, even perhaps in revolutionary times, the masses always want to believe that their own immediate worldview is universal . . .<< MORE >>

We just watched the extra on the third disk for the first season of Mad Men. I think I've caught four or five of the episodes so far. To some extent, I can take it or leave it. But I have this nagging feeling as I watch them that something is not quite right, not 'on'. From the first, my response is, 'where are the maniacs'? << MORE >>

The publicity presents the automobile as a blessing within the reach of everyone. A universal right, a democratic conquest? ...<< MORE >>

Therefore, what happens with this emergent critical concern for Unity is in fact an analytical deconstruction of criticism, and not of art or aesthetics. Specifically, it is a deconstruction of the aesthetic assertion of Unity, that is, the deconstruction precisely of the assertion that Unity is not only the necessary condition for Art, but also its functional basis.<< MORE >>

What is peculiar to me, culturally, is that a critical theory should finally elevate Unity as the essential critical principle for literary art at precisely the time when philosophy was burying Unity as an identifiable principle of logical analysis. << MORE >>

Perhaps the most imperative unspoken and at best only partially explored question in philosophy is the question of whether we can go back to zero. Can we act the part as if philosophy had never existed and begin again from scratch?<< MORE >>

Scientific objectivity places the experience of objectivity potentially within the range of the majority. But the experience of objectivity, whether viewed culturally or individually, produces an array of artificial simulacrums. Even those who have experienced objectivity in its most explicit form, as the sudden recognition of an 'objective fact', are subject to the hypocritical presumptions of an artificial objectivity. << MORE >>

     Pax is the 19 year old son of my good buddy and fellow artist, Tim Tirrell.  He has graduated from the University of Washington.  He was in India in the spring studying and working for a local Indian organisation dealing with forestry and health issues.  Then he came back and spent the summer commercial fishing in Alaska.  Quite a guy. 
     I am happy with the portrait.
   
   

        

        

        

        

Thank God I developed my philosophy before I read 20th century philosophy, or even, in fact, western philosophy from the beginnings of the 19th century onward. I start to study the Frankfurt school and suddenly discover all the reasons I have always detested the 'New York' orientation, since the Frankfurt school plays directly into the late 19th and early 20th century history of New York . . . The wholesale rejection of individualism, because of the failure of philosophical conceptualism, is such an asinine misidentification as to warrant every adjective for the moronic, including profanity. It stands on a par with calling the present modes of capitalistic imperialism 'neo-liberalism'.<< MORE >>

Not sure if I ever posted this.

        

        

'All things happen suddenly,' says Henry Miller, 'but there's a long process to be gone through first.' He could have just as easily said: 'there's a long process to go through afterwards.' But everything happens suddenly. The only real moment of time is now. Whether what we experience is cumulative or intuitive, its ultimate import is instantaneous.<< MORE >>

        

        

In my last post, ('the sixties, part 436', 11/21/08), I argued against the assumption that the sixties were essentially political, a proposition which has gained credence simply by the preponderation of dense and discursive texts focused on this topic alone, as if it were the legitimate narrative of the sixties. After thinking about it for the last few days, I believe I am prepared to assert that the psychedelic experience is the veritable core of the sixties. << MORE >>

        

This is around 18x24. actually took a couple of days to do, and was a somewhat fascinating process...It is a very different process from painting to appreciate this type of work, at least that is my experience.  You can be drawn into various details in a 'peculiar' kind of way, that doesn't depend on the composition as a whole.  Something like that.  the reason these things are self destructive is that it takes quite a few original art works to create them.  Cutting and pasting ain't nearly as demanding as doing the original work itself.

        

        

Let him be to thee for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast aside....<< MORE >>

        

My first excursion into the Chiricahua's was an overwhelming look at a true natural wonder.  It is about 50 miles from where I live in mcNeal, Az.  The rock formations are astounding, in an area of a large national park.  Many vistas to see and so forth and so on....