theesthetes

“After photography, for example, emerged to rival the production of paintings which faithfully depict reality in line with our perceptions, and even had the audacity to promise - quite legitimately as it turned out - that what it depicted was far closer to reality, painting was eventually obliged to retreat from the representation of the world of objects after a 50-year long struggle and to concentrate on depicting its own idiosyncratic world (i.e. surface, form, colour and the properties of materials and technical devices from the frame to the canvas). Its triumph in doing so is evidenced in the abstract painting of the first half of the 20th century. The fact that painting went back once more to creating pictures of the world of objects in the second half of the century (from Pop Art to Photo-realism) was a development that referred directly to photography. If, in the world prior to photography, painting was based directly and immediately on representing the world of objects, then object-based painting after the invention of photography came to refer solely to the world of objects as it was depicted by photography, i.e. to object-based and figurative photography. But it is not just the experiences with film and photography which have led to an exchange with painting: digital ‘Paint’ programs and the experience of working directly on the computer and the screen have given an unmistakably fresh impetus to painting. Significantly enough, they have also kicked off a new form of computer-derived abstraction in painting. Yet it is not just the western programme of visual images which has changed through the influence of the technological media: the programme of sculptures has obviously been transformed, too. We can recognise the dominating influence of computer algorithms and 3-D programs right down to the field of architecture. We could therefore be tempted to ask whether the effects of the new media on the old media have actually been more successful than the works of the new media themselves. The central movens and the central agendas of 20th century art: the crisis of representation, the dissolution of the traditional notion of artwork and the disappearance of the author – all these factors are due to the emergence of the new media. The radical turn towards the culture of reception which occurred in the 20th century, the explosion of the visual in art and science, the pictorial turn, are all consequences of the new media.”

“To bring the sublime into the mundane is the greatest challenge there is.”

“Nature continues and evolves regardless of humans. Humans, regardless of nature, change throughout time. When these two ever-changing and evolving entities encounter each other, Ikebana is born. The ancients termed this encounter “elegence” (furyu). I believe that encounters define life.”