Haunted by Tao

After my succesful post from a while back, I’ll give it a second go!

Being a huge fan of Horta, it’s sometimes difficult to interpret and understand modern architecture that is “inspired” by him. A recent example is “Cafe Horta” in Antwerp. As is in a name, it pretends to uphold the legislation of Horta. Well, maybe it’s not all that simple.

First of all, have a look at their website and in specific the “Art Nouveau Hall“. It reuses some parts of “La Maison du Peuple” that I’ve mentioned earlier on this website. So far so good. Reusing original otherwise lost artifacts is a good thing. But take a look at the rest of the hall. Seriously … That’s not the idea nor philosophy of Horta. Creating a large amount of light is good, that’s how he meant it to be. But what’s up with the pale colours? Art Nouveau was about light forcing it’s way through a spectre of coloured light, stained glass. The whole rainbow in one room. Not some pale imprint of even more pale colours …

Why couldn’t they add vivid colours, play with the light and shadow that inevitably paint the walls. As my dissertation is about stained glass from the 15th century until now, I know a bit about how colourful it all can be. How even the medieval man knew about it’s beauty. A person we often called “stupid and moronic” (although recent research has somewhat revoked that view, many still hold on to that thought). Still they knew and they were experts with light and colour. It wasn’t until the 19th century for the rediscovery of this secret. And what have we learned from it? Looking at the Art Nouveau hall … not much.

A shame really. Having spent so much effort in integrating original parts of Horta’s Maison du peuple, it’s in no relationship with the other elements. A missed opportunity, but that’s perhaps modern architecture. Maybe I’m just too old fashion. On the other hand: don’t copy when you can’t reach the original level. Be original for god’s sake!

Just recently an exposition about one of my favorite post-Renaissance artists started, or at least his works are finally brought together.

Giovanni Batista Piranesi, most famous for his “Carceri”, is being exposed in the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent.

I’ve always been fascinated by his works. For some reason, the imagination is so widespread, so far fetched that it’s so complicated to comprehend. To grasp what it’s all about. Composing, combining, rewriting, redrawing, … he did it all to create a vast world of imaginary dungeons. A sad look through the eyes of someone in the middle of progression. Rome was his point of no return. The world surrounding him became his playground.

I’ve went to see the exposition for a second time and probably will return a third one during the holidays!

Talk about buying a cat in a bag: an Australian museum was supposed to be the proud owner of a Van Gogh, until recent research suggested that it was a fake, or rather created at the time of Van Gogh, but not by his hand…

Reason to get suspicious was the fact that he never talked about it with his brother Theo and some compositional problems (read the entire article here).

Talk about bad luck: before research it’s net worth was € 15 million. Don’t think much of that remains. But even more important, the prestige lost due to this. No more headlines at the museum, perhaps a lot less visitors (or as human nature predicts, vice versa).

anyhow, I know I would be devastated to find out it I were the curator of that museum. Maybe a rope would be a good idea …

Will it make better what cannot be improved? I sometimes wonder how people can use (and abuse) art as a standard of good taste (don’t confuse this with the works of Hume!). How can the propagation of one’s imagination become the level to which our lives should be compared? Does it makes us better? What about the book Goebbles wrote? What about the art-collection of Stalin & Hitler? They knew their Classics, so why are even modern philosophers convinced of the goodness of art?

As long as art is conceived from a correct point of view, the propagation of someone’s imagination, I’m willing to follow this way of thinking, but that is just a very narrow perspective, a very small part of the population is able to recognize fact from fiction, imagination from reality, specially when it comes to art. Art is never intended to make us better people, it’s most of all because person X asked person Y to glorify himself (sometimes herself). The lawless art of the twentieth century showed us the other extreme, but that’s a different case.

Art as the ultimate power to improve our lives, am I ready to live up to this ideal, because my studies require me to? I want to say yes, but I can’t. I just refuse to see art as the answer to every ethical question asked. An artist is nothing more than on person, an individual, who holds no more truth than you or I. So how can he or she be responsible for me improving what I already hold for granted? My life is just as I see fit, do we need the opinion of strangers to tell us otherwise?

My philosophy (I consider myself to be someone inspired by Taoism) tells me that there are several ways in life that can help us trying to rationalize. But they are not binding, they leave room for open interpretation. And I feel the same way about art. Of course, one should be free to enjoy whatever he/she likes and be able to reject the opposites, but that makes art in no way the answer to every question. Does the Venus of Milo tell me how my girlfriend should look like? Or what to search for in a woman? This would be a rather idiotic line of thought, for it leaves me no way of free interpretation.

I think that art should be considered as what it was intended for: combine the context with what is on hand, what has been created and try to understand the reason why. One cannot fully understand the correct context, that’s no more than normal, but try to be creative, to become inspired by everything surrounding the work of art. Don’t look at the Mona Lisa as the best work of art Leonardo might have created. That’s just administered by journalists and a (now) famous writer, but who are they to tell us what we can or can’t consider beautiful or ugly? Instead, look at the Mona Lisa as a painting of a woman, nothing more and try to ask yourself if you like it or not, without knowing the background situation. Yes, I can tell you that the Mona Lisa has been Leonardo’s muse, that her smile was already present at an earlier painting, that the difference between the left and right background has several reasons, but they are of no importance for how I or you should perceive the painting as painting. The picture drawn is that of a woman, not of some wondrous person existing outside of our world. She doesn’t. She actually has existed and was no more normal than you or me.

But as long as people need other’s opinions to satisfy their own, it’s impossible to fully understand art in it’s correct context. So I’m not trying to fight it any longer. I will just look at art from my perspective and try to respect yours. After all, who am I to make you or anybody else to share my point of view? In which way would that differ from all those I consider to force their will upon others?

Following the problems that arose with Nathalie Lubbe Bakker, I had to say the following:

Be aware: belgian politicians are everywhere …

Just got back from Paris.

Uploading pictures and editing the movie …

edit: pictures are online