VISIONARY REVUE

NOTES ON
VISIONARY ART
AS ANTI-MODERNIST

One
must be
absolutely
modern

- RIMBAUD -

MODERN ART

    
One makes oneself
a visionary through a
long, immense and reasoned
disordering of the senses

- RIMBAUD -

VISIONARY ART

- Confronted by modern technology, such as photography, Modern Art retreats from accurate representation, giving rise successively to Impressionism, Expressionism, New Objectivity, Constructivism, Abstract art, Abstract Expressionism, Conceptualism, Installations, Performance art etc. Finally, it surrenders itself completely to photography.

    

- Confronted by modern technology, such as photography, Visionary Art incorporates these ways of seeing into painting (see Pierre Peyrolle in 'Visionary Art in France') and even surpasses them through hyper-realist painting (see 'Mati Klarwein Remembered'). While doing all this, Visionary art also attempts to accurately reproduce what no photograph can: dreams, hallucinogenic visions, psychedelic states etc.

- Claiming that representational or figurative art 'has been exhausted', Modern Art turns away from tradition, history, and technique in an attempt to find 'new means of expression'. Experimental art and the 'avant garde' emerges, seeking to provoke a blasé audience through shock tactics (an inverted crucifix in a bucket of urine, etc).



    

- Through alternative states of consciousness, the Visionary artist finds alternative ways of perceiving traditional works of art. Many unexpected messages (previously hidden or 'unseen') now emerge, expanding our 'narrow, all too narrow' perception of art history. The Visionary artist attempts to integrate this renewed vision of the past into all future works.



 
 
 


PARIS - FALL 2004


MODERN ART

- By questioniong the medium of painting itself, Modern Art brings the painterly medium into the foreground of our vision: brushstrokes, 'pointillisme', the 'material' of the paint, silkscreen dots, 'drip painting', line painting, flatness, etc. Gradually, the image disappears, and the viewer is left staring only at the paint...

    

VISIONARY ART

- For the Visionary artist, the canvas is like a window onto another world. He does not admire the window itself, or call attention to the quality of its glass. He makes the medium as transparent as possible, so that the image may be 'im-mediately' presented to the viewer. He tries to present the original vision as authentically as possible.

- Writing plays a critical role, independent of painting itself. It remains in the hands of critics and gallerists as a powerful means of persuasion (see Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word). The artist's title offers us nothing ('Untitled' No. 7) and the critical text is written to support or justify the existence of the work.

    

- Writing has a separate autonomous existence for both artist and critic. The artist's title enters into a poetic relationship with the image and the critical text explores in words the same elusive subject that the painting explores in images: dreams, visions, hallucinations.

CONTINUED


UNICORN


 
 
 


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