quidnovis61

Foedus sed meus est......It's ugly but it's mine....(Huh??)

So, tell me...
Is it just me....or are there more folks out there that feel the same way?

A long time ago a good friend of mine told me when we were talking various 
things,"If its ugly, its true" and I must say, I have been pondering about that 
ever since... and the more I ponder the more sense it makes these days. 
Now, I am not talking about modernism or Dadaism or Surrealsim or even 
post modernism....this is some kind of waaaay-beyond-
post-modernism...

 

 


      


 
The art scene of the twentieth century IS ugly...there is no doubt there. 
What I am thinking of is not really the fact that it is ugly or that a mere 
4 year old could have done it better etc. What I am trying to get at is to 
reflect on why art turned to this raw cynical cruel meaningless macabre 
horrendous form of expression. From private art to public art, in 
mass media and fashion, in illustrations for childrens books...art 
seems to strive for a base and trivial concept leaving a rather bad taste 
in the mouth afterward.








 

 




Somewhere around the mid and end of the 1800s the world of Art 
started to change - slowly. I have often wondered why. Could it be 
that Man's thought process underwent a radical change, there was
 an advent of pessimistic philosophies revolutions of the 
technological/industrial kind that made people feel a sense of 
non-humanity and that was reflected in art? Beauty and sensual realsim 
that was so much the hallmark of art, seemed to have vanished. 
Instead it was replaced by a non escapist stark reality almost to the 
point of being brutal. Is art then a sign of the times - a Zeitgeist in 
the world of art? A "quest for truth" as one feels it is? In that case I 
must use the words decaying, horrifying, turbulent, depressing and 
pessimistic to describe art. 
 

Duchamp in the early 1900s quite shocked the world by his art (specially 
the Fountain - a urinal) and things have not gotten any better. 

In short - ugly. Once more..... 

Wherever one goes, what one reads or sees - it is amazing to see 
mans preoccupation with the ugly. And somewhere in the depths of my 
being I shudder to think that the truth really is in the changing face of our 
world... it is going from beauty to ugly and the trend in all the spheres of 
our lives is gravitating towards the pessimistic. And we must await a 

Renaissance - of Mind, Body and Soul to turn this around. It is like turning 
the Titanic at a drop of a hat and just as improbable. 



 
But we will wait. 



 
Wait in the sidelines. 
On grassy spots on the edge of the road. 
On the pavements of our lives. 

Wait for The Renaissance.
The impressionists. The sensuous, pastoral, passionate realists....... 
Natural Art like Dürer's Large Turf  (1504...see below) - like photography - 
but with brush strokes rather than with the  shutter.


   

 

 


Lifting our senses. Filling life with beauty. Giving art another dimension 
and meaning. Bombarding our lives with peaceful
brush and pen strokes once again. 


 
Yes, we will wait. 
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(Do we have a choice?)