Mark Rothko - Transcendentialism - Creative Freedoms

The unfriendliness of Society to their activity is difficult for the artist to accept. Yet this very hostility can act as a level for true liberation.

Freed from a sense of security and community, the artist can abandon his plastic bank book just as he has abandoned other forms of security.

Both the sense of community, and of security depend upon the familiar. Free of them, transcendental experiences becomes possible.

(Mark Rothko 1903 - 70)

A genuine creative life which inevitably comprises of the occasional transcendantal experience or two is not compatable with existing in the world of current social or artistic conventions, and yet no-one is ever separated or outside of these social frameworks and conventions.

The two positions of conformity and creativity are not opposed to each other. I have experienced beautiful, and enlightening moments that have involved and centred upon the very things we think of as normal regardless of social, political or philosophical position.

But in terms of "normal" work, I have only ever had transcendental experiences in the company of others when engaged in an activity that was genuinely creative and included a wide degree of group and individual freedom, which is not conducive to the formal social structures and organisational processes of everyday convention. You can forget any glimpses of enlightenment in any occupation that is not creative, and by creative I do not mean working in the creative industries as a designer, performer, paid artist, or yoga tutor.
Transcendental moments or experiences are transitory and people often experience such phenomena as seemingly ordinary events. This is down to personal differences in feelings, intuition, emotions, and how open-minded one is at that precise moment.

In fact I do not regard transcendantal experiences as anything other than a moment of self-realization or personal insight into the context of ones life within the grandiloquence of the Universe itself. As for the term spiritual, that has been over-used and much maliogned by New Age Spiritualism which is nothing to do real spiriruality at all, but a simple throwback to 1960's of people experiencing a genuine sense of individual freedom, personal and social creativity.

I digress...although my own theory of creativity and community is aesthetically perfect, I don't think it is possible to have an ideal community or Society in reality, as it would require a group of people to be enlightened about themselves and others around. They would all be accepting of the strengths, flaws and differences of each other, and the history of humanity has seldom seen this except in the behaviour and philosophy of a very rare few individuals. I refer to the likes of Joan of Arc, Ghandi, Mother Theresa etc.

Plato's Republic of an ideal utopian society is unworkable, and would slowly but inevitably morph into Animal Farm, or Lord of The Flies; Both of these social processes and communities I have seen and experienced at first hand, and observed in even the most creative of art communes.

It is not the gathering of creatives or artists with a shared aim in mind which produces truly revolutionary art, but the psychological ability to be genuinely open-minded and to create as an individual within the wider social processes of genuine equality, and real democracy.

The problem of alternative "modern" art communties is the people who form and organize them are themselves socially conditioned to follow the same social and political processes we see in main stream politics and social insitutions. To avoid this everyone would have to understand that each participant is equally both important and unimportant as everyone else, and this require humility. A trait sadly lacking in my own constitution at this present time, but something I am constantly working upon. A special characteristic I have rarely come across, although we all have our moments!
At this point it seems clear to me that any notion of actually putting into social practice any form of community based upon art or creativity, leads only to one end.....covert fascism. And my experiences of living in art communities have proved exactly that.

I would even venture further, and say any conventional conception of a creative art community that has been in existence for more than three years should immediately cease to exist, or it should evict all those in positions of power that run it as there is no doubt it will be running along the rigid organisational lines of conventional Society and the social processes of an establishment.

In order to ensure genuine creativity and democracy in any community you need to schedule in revolutionary structure snad processes riught from the beginning woven into the very fabric of art processes and social action, not just write them down or expect people to understand them.  The best way to ensure this would be a complete social revolution every three years; and which artistic, creative. or political incumbent is going to agree to their own scheduled demise in the interests of future freedom?

Out With The Bureaucrats, In With The Artists

I recently read an article entitled as above, in a newspaper regarding the new Chairman/Chairperson/Chairwoman of the Arts Council of England Dame Liz Forgan. the article lampooned any notion of trying to specifically fund artists whose work was attempting to express a political or social message, and concentrate on funding organisations known for quality and excellence in supporting the work of artists, and thereby let the artist express whatever they want. I agree, and excellent idea. If a wide and diverse enough strata of arts organisations are given funds them hopefully one would assume that a wide and diverse groups of artist would eventually be funded, of course it will never be that simple or democratic as any individual, group, or art organisation will testify to. To even be in a position to apply for Arts Council funding their are restrictive and stringent administrative hoops and organisational barriers to consider, and that's before you get anywhere near describing the art, content, and aims, (why should it even have an aim?) and if your art is too seen to be to radical or political(how do they decide?)will result in rejection, failure, and no doubt a slot on some hidden blacklist.

I applaud the notion of a spattering of artists amidst the various hierarchies of bureaucratic power, although a diverse and vibrant mixture of creativity across all disciplines and areas would be more democratic as I can think of nothing worse six painters on a funding committee with six accountants and a Chief Executive who but for the grace of god might have been a banker.

Why stop merely at arts organisations, why not simply place a wide diversity of talented creative people as well as artists at all levels of all organisations, Government, Education, Health, Economic. You would assume this already happens and there that is a continual flux of new ideas and social innovations being discussed but as any creative person knows, ans as the research explains creativity is the most vital survival ingredient of any organisation, but that doesn't mean its valued or even wanted. Who the hell wants to work with creative people, think of the chaos! Nooooo! Let's stick with the tried and tested structures and processes, that will see us through. The economic crisis is just one of those things no-one could have seen coming...........

The Body in ART

Sculpting The Human Body
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The majority of artists at one time or another seem to focus their attention on the human body, partly this is due to conventional art training whose foundation is upon the student being able to understand the classical history of art and the role of the human figure within it, and also to develop their own artistic talents by learning to draw and paint the human form. I found this method restrictive, repetitive, and boring, a sort of factory approach to creativity. A (still)life imprisonment of both body and art (factory) worker. As a result I have ever only drawn the human form once, decided it was 15 minute mini masterpiece of creative expression reminiscent of Picasso and Matisse, (sketch below) and then moved on; To throwing paint over people as I recall which was far more interesting.




Even worse is drawing the perennial bowl of fruit. Whenever I was faced with grotesque caricature of the creative process I immediately left the room, and if possible the entire course. The best art courses are not necessarily at the so called prestigous art colleges.

Inside The Creativity Cell

Radical Theory in Art + Economic Crisis

The Art Market, Affluence, and Degradation.
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"Anything we might call radical theory in the arts will have to be solidly constructed in all its social dimensions. It might take something as catastrophic as a collapse in the economic structure of this Society to have any substancial effect on the carreening superstructure of modern American Art."

Ian Burn (1939-1993)




Reading the quote above on radical art theory, I was amazed at its current relevance, and found myself wondering what the author would make of our current global economic crisis; it is also notable that in terms of the relationship between Art and Society that if you change the ending from "Modern Amercian Art" to "Modern American Society" or even just "Modern Society" , it reads well enough the same. DA

The Creativity Cell

Here is where I develop my art.

The S.C.U.M Manifesto

The Society For Cutting Up Men (Valerie Solanas 1968) ______________________________________

I'm sure she would hate me for saying this but after reading her manifesto, I am quite convinced that if Valerie had been born a man, she would have been quite similar to me. Apart from the most extreme and vitriolic of her anti-male views, their is much to be admired in her manifesto; and given the creative nature and sporadic chaos of her often turbulent life, I feel a definite affinity, and creative kinship with her. Their is absolutely no doubt in my mind and social experience, that men are clearly responsible for the majority (if not all) of violence and war all over the planet. In this respect I am an ardent feminist.

her view the Ego-centric male as universalis harder to justify, but in my experiences of life and art she is largely correct, men in general (I include myself) and especially those who claim to be artists are incredibly self-centred and ego-driven. This is not always a negative trait for it depends upon what the goal and aims of this drive is directed towards.

You can clearly see the self-centredness in the persona of Damian Hirst who preoccupies himself with the role of the artist as celebrity, the defining example being Andy Warhol, who is also the main protagonist for the anti-male S.C.U.M manifesto.

But one could hardly claim that Nelson Mandela was self-centred or ego-driven for wanting equality and democracy in South Africa, but that is exactly what his drive and ego-consciousness fight for. Is anything really possible in life without some expression of the individual ego? I believe it is just a question of how much we express of ourselves for ourselves, and how much of ourselves we express truly in the service of others? A notion that to my mind that is not incompatible with itself, for it seems to me that it is possible to fully express the self, and therefore the individual through means and ways that are in complete synthesis with the expressive needs and wants of others.

I do not believe the individual (expression) must be oppressed for the greater needs of the community (Society), or that the wider community must only serve the needs of the most powerful individuals in Society. There is, and always be relative social tensions between the individual and the group(s) to which s/he belongs at both the micro and macro level; the central creative issue in terms of personal, social, and economic development of all our individual and collective human potential, is how to create a sustainable socio-economic balance that allows all of our individual and community strength to emerge and thrive in tandem, which clearly is not how our current Society is at present maintained or governed.

This is an argument that I feel sure the extreme views of valarie Solanas would agree with, because of course she would argue that the reasons for the individual, collective, social, and economic imbalance is simply down to the self-centredness, ego sex, and power drives of men.