Dear All,
What matters to you in Art?
It was very gratifying that we had good mix of long standing, regular and new members attending our “What matters to you in Art?” discussion. The meeting appeared to go well with around 20 people pitching in with a good range of interesting, intelligent personal views.
We covered many views such as Art as reflecting back our own experiences, Art as a record of events, Art as a way of getting to know your subject and much more. We discussed different approaches and techniques including abstract, portraits, loose v detailed approaches and the freedom to experiment which at one point included including using gin as a medium. It was clear that art plays an essential and special role in each of our lives.
We discovered a renewed interest in our old Easel Magazines and putting out a call for anyone who may have old copies of them. It turns out that Adrian still has quite few of them and so the aim will be to make them available on our new Website .. so we are already on to it. As Adrian says many views expressed then are still current controversies! Once we know which ones we have I’ll put a call out for any missing additions.
I apologise if I was unable to include everyone’s views on the night but it appears the discussion had not quite finished and still continued on Face book. For those that do not use Face book I reproduce below some recommendations and thoughts expressed.
Allan Davies:
“I recommend Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, Book by Hans Rookmaaker. It is brilliant. Published in the ’90s but focused on the ’60s. Something else to study is that of Art and Spirituality by Kandinsky. Art matters because it touches every nerve, body, mind and spirit. I appreciate Kandinsky because his mathematics and music is demonstrated in his works. Triangles have meaning, for example, and specific colours represent orchestral instrument sounds. He is intrinsically involved in every work from head to toes and generates emotional responses from viewers. I remember a day at Tate Modern with Maddie viewing the Kandinsky exhibition; she was in primary school. Viewing a very large work she observed that Kandinsky was very sad when he made it and then explained how she knew. She had no idea why 1917, the year it was painted, had influenced his mood! Have fun making art, friends”.
Bernard Victor:
“I would recommend a book by Andrew Marr called A Little Book About Painting . It not only explains why he paints and good advice on looking at paintings, but advocates the idea that painting should always be looking forward, and not trying to emulate the painting of the past. Yet another lovely landscape painting is not getting anywhere. It has all been done before . If you are going to paint landscapes or still lifes try and find a new approach, not just paint a pretty picture”.
Thank you everyone for contributing and taking part.
Kind Regards,
Paul Stringfellow
Membership Secretary & 1st Friday Programme organizer.