Museums, paintings, and art history

I woke up in the morning relaxed - Saturdays are lovely when one has nothing else planned (which hasn't happened to me in a while). I put my tie on (with all the small details like cuff-link buttons), my tweed jacket, my casquette, and my gloves. Coquettely, I made my way along the old streets - the old streets and old buildings predispose one to feel of a different age, of a different culture, of a different time, and of a different interest. And so, I became an art historian for a day - with the tweed jacket, without the elbow patches.

I walked in the museum of art in Brussels today and looked at the classic paintings exhibition. If you were to conjecture that the paintings should reflect the true state of mind of the time, the interest of people, their culture, their thoughts an their fears, their emotions and worries, and their joys, I think you'd have to conclude that spirituality (and by an extension religion) was the topic of the day. The old masters focused on depicting the familiar religious stories - familiar to anyone who has read the Bible (which was, at the time, the book, the story, the history - and yes, not everyone had read it because people couldn't read - but yes, they knew the stories). Or they would weave religious elements with angels, wings, bishops, the Holy Trinity, and ritualistic elements. If you knew the Bible, you knew the stories; if you knew the stories, you knew the paintings. And if you don't, you look with today's eyes: try to make sense of the people and the stories - their search to the eternal answer (what is the meaning of life - there, I've said it). And back then, religion gave them that answer. 

There is another topic that often comes up in the classic artists I see in the museum - lust and seduction. For time immemorial (again, see Bible, chapter 1 - creation), relationships between people (particularly romantic relationships) were of a curious topic for artists. In fact, it probably isn't an exaggeration to say that art exists because of love. And then came the renaissance, and the question of religion took second stage. But the arts didn't die - their expression just changed. It now depicts beauty, liberty, war, love (or lust, for the sceptic) itself. Religious expressions in paintings in the 17th and 18th century were no longer flat, no longer idealizing, no longer static. In Rubens' paintings each muscle is textural, each drop of sweat reflects light, each facial expression feels authentic and tangible. 

Art came about because people wanted to share their expressions and feelings toward another person or people in a tangible way. A way that speaks not only to the subjects or objects but to the entire world. Would there have been art, were there no love? And here you ask what about the commissioned art - was it also out of love? It was and it wasn't. It gave the commissioner the object he needed that they couldn't do themselves. And it is their love that drives the painter. Could the painter be just a tool as is the brush? Isn't he just the craftsman? Is he the mind that control the hand, while the patron is the heart? 

Anonymous, ACTA, and contradictions

While across the pond, the talks of SOPA and PIPA are toning down (focus shifted to working conditions inChina), it seems today was a day for ACTA to be acted upon. It is an important topic. Not only because of its implications of sensorship, democratic hypocricy, and Orweilian foreboding; but also because of its commercial motivation, political ignorence, and catholic denial. I would not claim to have a full understanding of ACTA, or of democracy, or of freedom of speech, or of policy implementation, or legal predictons, or mafia industry business models. And I would not claim to support a protest for the sake of a protest - an anonymous protest. Is this not a contradiction in itself - to be anonymous to fight against being under identified surveillance? Should we not be going fully public to show that we have nothing to hide? Is it not a contradiction that the oldest form of revolution (a street protest) is attempting to demonstrate that we can and should own our future?

As with many revolutions, this one is also been taken on the street, by the young ones, the college students whose lifes are going to be change by such legislations, the ones who are underprivelaged in society. I was walking among them today, wondering what makes them really tick? Why don't we see professionals in ties among them, what are their expectations, who are they speaking to with such activities (those who make decisions or those who should be joining them), what are they hiding from the "mafia" and what can the "mafia" really benefit from them? Of course, I am beside the point. Yes, I do need to read the newspaper more often.

(And yes, the Oxford comma in the title is important.)

Living alone and Brussels [on compassion]

A couple of months ago, a story began. Many stories begin at any given point in time but we rarely know how the story goes on - like the 1001 nights stories - never ending escape and imprisonment. There are stories you would tell in loud voice, in front of people, without fear of rejection, without being laughed at but with a laugh, stories of mystery and mysticism, stories of complicated plots and characters, stories of linear plots and simple characters ...

I was travelling in Amsterdam when a story began. It had been incubating for a while as all stories do - they are collection of light rays scattered randomly, waiting for that perfect glass element that will focus them at the right time, on the right plain. They are just the continuation of past stories - stories scattered when they reached an end of a path, a wall, a mirror. 

Today, walking the streets of Brussels, the story comes to a next chapter. Today, living alone is not something to avoid - one must get out of one's own imaginary shell - a shell that does not even exist - and walk into the guarded garden of common-hood.

Living alone is not about confusion or loneliness or isolation. Living alone is about enlightenment and freedom. I still do not know where the boundaries of my "self" are, I still look to others with uncertainty, I still define my "self" by the environment and by the boundaries of the "other". I still look for the microphone pointed at me (rather than at the important person in the middle of the square), and I still exchange a smile with the chocolate-drugged teenagers, and I know that the colourful clothing is just a scream "this is me, here! stay back and go find YOUR color!". 

I removed the headphones - I wanted to hear the city and the people; I walked the streets, slowly; I looked like a tourist with a camera hanging on my neck (and on Sunday, that's all that Brussels is about); I used the camera as an eyelid - to wink, to show the others that I am one of them smirking shyly at the peeing boy. And that's not loneliness, nor isolation, nor confusion. 

This is empathy and compassion. This is the power to feel anyone, to be anyone, to define your "self" as someone you admire, to shy away from the world when you want, and to help the shy away from shyness, to morph and be morphed, to adapt and be adaptable. In today's culture, we are lead to believe that knowing who you are, and being yourself is a good thing. And yet, we are criticsed for "having changed", for no longer "understanding", for "being stubborn". I do want to change and to adapt, and to mend, and meld and mold. And living alone helps me expand like water and air - filling the voids in between the others whenever necessary, wherever left.

Photography is History

For well-over a month now, I've been using quite extensively the new Voithländer 35 mm f1.2 II lens. It is a superb lens - it is sharp, it is great to handle, it offers light sensitivity unbeatable in the 35 mm range, and fantastic contrast and color rendition. It is a fantastic black-and-white lens especially when paired up with the Leica M8's infrared sensitivity. And it made me think about what the lenses tell about the picture. 

We've often read about lenses that render vintage, or modern, or clinical, or that are great for color, or that offer surreal rendition, etc. The lenses that we use (figuratively and literally) create their own reality and have their own feel. That's what we refer to "vintage" when we talk about softer lenses. We use them because they capture our own expectation of the world back in those days - ghostly and desaturated. They have melancholic value because we want to live in that world - some of us, anyway. Their low contrast is for us a summary of a historic moment - calmed down, poised, and sometimes flatly boring. We become like the characters in "Midnight in Paris" who cannot live in their own time and look for a future or a past.

The lens is more than just a brush in the hands of the photographer. The lens is the intermediary inner eye, the intuition and the impulse. It is the brush but also the canvas on which we draw with light. It is the paint and the palette.  With a manual focus lens, the photographer is in absolute control of how impressionistic, Cezannian, Bensonian, Cartier-Bressonian, etc. the composition and appearance would be. Super-f lenses, opened to the fullest, gather light that can easily overwhelm the sensor – like a bucket of pain splashed on the canvas. These lensed are made for drawing at night – when each photon matters, when the human eye is not capable of seeing colors, and when people open up to you - by the fireplace, with a candle, under the fireworks.

Then we have a whole new world before our eyes. Colors and colorful people. Smiles and tears. Music and noise (no silence ever). Breath and stank. Toxicity and invigoration. Poets and lyrics. Begging for money and satisfaction without greed. Being of past, and present, and future. A Prokofiev and a Rachmaninov piano concerto – Bach doesn't fit at night but the Russian romantics and surrealists do. 

We are drawn to that world, as photographers. It is revealing, it is unseen. It is a secret. Perhaps, its allure is in its invisibility. Or maybe, photography is just the artist's attempt at escaping death, which often comes at night, in the dark, without us seeing. We all want our picture taken, our presence documented, our loved by our side. The fear of perpetual neglect is what has driven the artist for centuries. So what's so new with photography? Infinite reproducibility? And isn't it through photography that we try to live in another age? To move to the times which we like - recreating the ages, recreating the clothes, the make-up, recreate the greatest and most beautiful era. But isn't any one of them like that? Aren't we all trying to escape the present?

But life is a little unsatisfying. And that's why we need to document each and every part of it - the happy parts and the sad parts, the ones we want to forget and the ones we want to remember forever. But above all, we must document the ones we want to live in.

Egoism, inspiration, and consumerism

Why do artists create?

- They want to change the world! (=inspiration)

How can they do that?

- By reaching the masses! (=consumerism)

Who do they want to change the world?

- Make it better! (=egoism)

For whom do they want to make the world better?

- For other?! For themselves?!

This was taking me into the territories of anthropology - because documentation of the human existence is rife with questions of fulfillment, of change, of inspiration and egoism, and of consumerism. From the early days of the human tribe, we have been exchanging goods, we have been looking for the things we need (and things we also want) and have given away things we had in excess, be it money, or food, or shelter, or one of the other Maslow layers. And all for the self-actualization, for finding peace with oneself. I look around and wonder why I want to get a deeper grasp of the systems we live in. Is it all just some misfiring (and mis-wiring) in my brain? What is the link between all of the beautiful things that one surrounds oneself with and the type of creative work one does? Isn't this where inspiration comes from? Isn't creativity like 5-grade physics: energy doesn't get lost, it just transforms?

Elizabeth Gilbert writes: "With all respect to the Buddha and to the early Christian celibates, I sometimes wonder if all this teaching about nonattachment and the spiritual importance of monastic solitude might be denying us something quite vital. Maybe all that renunciation of intimacy denies us the opportunity to ever experience that very earthbound, domesticated, dirt-under-the-fingernails gift of difficult, long-term, daily forgiveness." and this is the things about creativity - one has to lose all restraints from the wheel, and let the cart drive on its own. 

In photography, I often forget when I am taking pictures and when not. I do want to get my hands dirty, I want to be ignorant of what the person is saying and I want to be participating in what the person is telling me; I want to be there and yet to look from aside; I want to be one with the camera, and yet want to feel that it is a tool; I want to record intimacy; I want to record the moment that person sees only me and no one else in the conversation. And I want this for my own actualization - for my own satisfaction of fulfillment and peace. And I also know that I want them to feel satisfied and fulfilled from this exchange - of a service, really.

An exchange of a service - sounds..., what? "Cheap"? "Impersonal"? "Non-conversational"? It is all that perhaps. But that's the only way to get through, to learn to firgive, to learn to understand and to listen, to smile and frown, to tell the truth.