I want to take my learning and reflection from the last year to come up with a 'manifesto' for my own art. This is NOT a manifesto in the sense of defining what art should be for everyone, rather it is a rallying call and 'bar setting' for what I want my art to be. I hope and expect to revisit and revise this statement as the year progresses (and beyond).
After much effort to organise these statements, I leave them to stand as they are!
My art should be:
- Honest
- A true and genuine attempt to communicate something I believe in
- My best possible effort, created with care and effort
- Respectful
- Respect the viewer's gift of attention, whoever they may be
- Be accessible on many levels
- Don't be a smart-arse
- Don't be obscure, strive for universal truths
- Allow the viewer space for their interpretation, don't bully a point
- Be minimal in both physical and emotional resources
- Dignified
- Too small is better than too large
- Too quiet is better than too loud
- Pieces should speak for themselves without needing long explanations (or ideally titles)
- Don't pander to people's expectations
- Pieces should defend their message and boundaries (independent of context insofar as this is possible)
- Beguiling
- Attract attention and reward it with intricacy and depth
- Draw the viewer deeper with playfulness and/or hidden depth
- Make even difficult things easy to contemplate
- Balanced
- Balance meaning, aesthetics, and technique/skill
- But meaning is more important than aesthetics and aesthetics is more important than skill
- Balance gravitas and playfulness
- Key pieces should contribute to my wider practice and should be curated accordingly
Questions to ask myself about my art:
- Do I mostly know what this means? Is the meaning unclear to me? Is the meaning too prescriptive? Is there one meaning, or many? What else could this mean?
- Is the meaning something I genuinely feel deeply?
- Is this obscure? Could anyone get something from this?
- Would this piece work without a title or placement card?
- Is anything missing? Could anything be taken away?
- Is this my best possible effort, respecting my own limitations
- Does this piece shallow? Is it ugly? Is it technically poor? If so, does it's beauty compensate for its shallowness? Does it's meaning compensate for its poor quality? etc
- Does this grab your attention? Does it reward it when is has it? What's the first impression? What's the second? The third...
- How does this fit into my wider practice?
But not necessarily
I also wish to record the following 'anti-manifesto'.... I do not consider it important for a piece of my art to be:
- Commercially successful or even saleable
- Important to society as a whole
- Created in pursuit of some 'worthy' cause such as saving the planet (we got ourselves into this mess, lots of us will die before we are motivated enough to get ourselves out of it)
- Technical demonstrations of skill in some medium - I am the artist who walks by himself - all mediums are alike to me ;)
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