What's Fine Art and Why Realism?

Hello, I am Fred Ross, author and president of the bow which stands for the Art Renewal Center. In 1974 I earned my Masters of Art Education at Columbia University, and came down deeply disillusioned in what the art world had come to. Three times latterly, in 1977 I visited the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA. and saw for the first time a oil by William Bouguereau named Nymphs and Satyr painted in 1873, and the power and beauty in that one work led me to probe what had actually passed in the 19th Century which soon led to the consummation that the art history of that period was nothing but a series of deformations and falsehoods. And this fabrication was being tutored as art history in nearly every council and university art department in the world. I've spent the last 40 times unraveling what passed and seeking out the variety.

It's indeed an honor and a real treat to be speaking at this time's TRAC conference and to be suitable to partake my studies just what exactly is fine art and why an accurate understanding of the meaning and purpose of fine art leads inexorably to concluding that only Literalism, that is, images grounded on the real world in which we live, play and work, are able of meeting the description of fine art and suitable to meet the loftiest and most advanced pretensions to which fine art aspires. To duly explain this, we need to go back to foundational basics.

Grounded on the below, I posit:

The visual fine trades of delineation, oil and form are best understood as a language. a visual language. veritably much like spoken and written languages, it was developed and saved as a means of communication. And veritably much like language it's successful if communication takes place and unprofitable if it does not.

This contemporaneously helps define the term "Fine Art." So fine art is one important way that mortal beings can communicate.

This consummation again poses the question

Can it be fine art if it doesn't communicate or doesn't indeed essay to do so?

Communication can only happen if the language of the speaker is understood by those who are harkening. An absolute necessity for communication is that the language employed has vocabulary and alphabet participated by speaker and listener or by pen and anthology and thus logically by painter and bystander. The foremost forms of written languages used simple delineations of real objects to represent those objects as observed in Hieroglyphics and the foremost delve delineations. The origins of written language and the origins of fine art imbrication in this nearly identical way. Without a common language there's no communication and no understanding, whether in jotting, speaking or fine art. All three have the uniquely mortal purpose of describing the world in which we live, and how we feel about every aspect of life and living. As a language, fine art is like all of the hundreds of the spoken and written languages that are able of expressing the enormous, measureless compass of mortal studies, ideas, beliefs, values and especially our passions, heartstrings, dreams, and fantasies; all the varied gests and stories of humanity.

The vocabulary of fine art are the realistic images which we see far and wide throughout our lives. The alphabet is made up of the rules and chops demanded to successfully and believably render the images and ideas and seamlessly connect them together.

Then are some of the rules or alphabet which hold together the real objects or vocabulary of the visual language of fine art changing silhouettes, modeling, manipulating makeup to produce murk and highlights with the use of glazing and scumbling which enhances the form through layers of color, use of picky focus, perspective, foreshortening, compositional balance, balancing warm and cool color, lost and set up shapes and lines,etc.

Now consider this tone-apparent variety Indeed our dreams and fantasies as well as all stories of fabrication, which aren't real, are expressed in our conscious and subconscious minds by using real images, none which look like ultramodern art. Thus non-objective abstract oil doesn't reflect the subconscious mind. Dreams and fantasies do that and artwork can also do that; but only by using real images and assembling them in ways that feel like fantasies or dreams.

Compare these now to two artists who are considered amongst the topmost Abstract Expressionists William De Kooning and Jackson Pollock.

What's being communicated in these two Modern oils and which system of working is a more successful way to communicate, literalism or abstract?

Universality

Likewise, the vocabulary of traditional literalism in fine art has a commodity which makes it unique, in one important way. The language of traditional literalism cuts across all those other languages and can be understood by all people far and wide on earth anyhow of what language it's they speak or write. Therefore Literalism is a universal language that enables communication with all people, history, present and the future. Modern and abstract art is the opposite of language because it represents the destruction of the language of fine art and is thus the absence of language. The absence of language means the loss of communication; it takes down from humanity maybe our most important characteristic. that which makes us mortal. the capability to communicate in great depth, detail and complication; and in the case of fine art, the Modernist paradigm banished the only universal language that exists in realistic imagery, with the ways and chops needed to achieve it. This knowledge had grown, developed, and was precisely proved and saved as it was passed down for centuries from masters to scholars.

The artist tries to express his or her passions about life and to communicate with others through their art. The artist has set up a formative way to deal with the variety of mortal actuality, the knowledge that we all die. Rather of shaking their fist at eternity and being overcome by sadness, hate and depression, the artist "enthusiasms at the dying of the light" (to quote Dylan Thomas) seeking to overcome for themselves and their followership the introductory loneliness of actuality. They strive not to be engulfed by despairing the brevity of life, or the absence of meaning that we face in the wake of the certainty of death and the certainty of loss. fastening on those negatives leads to an absence of meaning, which is the central belief of Empirical Nihilism. It's no wonder also that Existentialism would espouse ultramodern art or that ultramodern artists would associate their work to Existentialism.

Fine art finds meaning rather, by using the horizonless creativity of the mortal soul, and the measureless brilliance within the mortal brain to find endless ways of communicating with each other about our delicate and differing peregrinations and odysseys that can and do do through life. The substance of fine art has always been to express effects which people find as meaningful whether religious oils of the early and High Renaissance or kidney oils of the 17th and 19th centuries.

We all are born helpless, hugely dependent and profoundly ignorant about who we're and what lies ahead. We all worry to be loved, to be understood, and we all need and want instructors. We want them to be kind and patient and to educate us what we need to know about life and navigating society. We want to be admired. During nonage we always explore paths to happiness which can be dangerous and destructive. We all want to find work that inspires us and is fulfilling. We want families and if we've children we want to be good parents and to offer better lives to them. We all must endure sickness and the eventual pain of death and substantiate those we love suffering. mortal beings all have universal and combined characteristics as well as an horizonless variety of unique and different traits which constitute our differing personalities. We all want and need love and fellowship, warmth and fellowship. We also have pride and are vulnerable to having our passions hurt or to being scouted, or feeling covetousness or covetousness.

Fine art can deal with all or any of the putatively endless arrays of passions and guests that profit, excite, terrify or persecute humanity. This is the broader description of "beauty" and the abecedarian aesthetics that defines fine art. The artist is said to be successful who can communicate some portion of mortal experience and do so with beauty, poetry and grace. As with prose, poetry or theatre, there are subtle and nuanced ways to express ideas and passions and to allure and inspire one's followership, or there are blatant, tone-conscious, awkward, pointless, jejune attempts which fail as workshop of fine art, as well as en endless continuum of degrees of success or failure.

Frequently people ask how sad or negative subject matter can be beautiful. Beauty is achieved by poetically communicating some aspect of the mortal condition with empathy so that the bystander/ followership can relate to how it might feel to actually live through some unhappy or horrible experience. Or maybe they've formerly lived through such an experience which evokes analogous feelings. The artist is telling a story that has strong meaning due to some aspect of their particular history. The bystander says to themselves either purposely or subconsciously," I know how you feel." Fine art helps people connect with one another and can indeed act as a pressure stopcock releasing pressures and can reduce the liability of conflict. Uncomfortable or unwelcome subjects may not be enough but they can be veritably beautiful and we can learn from them. ultramodern workshops with their undecipherable meanings can do the contrary alienate and agitate us. Frequently Modern workshops are praised for doing just that. Their stated pretensions are frequently to shock or personality.

Frequently when censoring a movie or show or a work of art we hear people say" It does not speak to me" or" It does not do anything for me". What they are saying is it does not communicate to them or at least not about the commodity they watch about. The utmost people who view abstract Minimalist or other ultramodern art forms you'll hear say that. Those in the Modernist movement will say they're ignorant and not sophisticated enough to see what is there. In other words, it's not the fault of the artists that their labors have produced a commodity that does not communicate, it's the fault of the observers for not having learned the Modernist explanation for making objects without meaning. But when it comes to great theatre, poetry or prose, utmost people can understand what's being said and intimately find the beauty that does" speak" to them.

Academically trained realist artists of the 19th Century were indicted of being potty. But what could be more potty than saying " only we enlightened '' can understand what Rothko, Warhol, de Kooning and Pollock were saying. However, they say "You all are too ignorant, tasteless and oblivious to get it, If we do not like it." They call realist art simple and less sophisticated, because its meaning is too egregious and easy to understand. In other words if a work succeeds in the primary purpose for which it was created, mortal communication, that veritable success becomes the reason it's denigrated. The living realists of the moment as well as all realist artists of history were expressing universal themes and reaching out to all people of all time. What could be potty about that? Realist oils of history as well as those moments are intended to bring humanity closer together.

Let us formerly and for all put a shaft through the heart of the Modernist argument that Literalism is musty, petty, pointless and devoid of meaning. For if that's true of technically professed Literalism, also it would inversely have to be true of all poetry and literature which also uses a vocabulary and structure which are recognizable by pen and anthology, speaker and listener; as it's too by painter and bystander.

In theatre the task at hand is whether the playwright, director and actors can enable the followership to" suspend unbelief." They endeavor to produce a world in which the plot of their play, or movie takes place. For this to work, the effects that be" the business" and the dialogue need to seamlessly work together in a manner that feels logical and credible. Indeed in magical literalism, wisdom fabrication, and fantasy the thing is to make it all feel possible.

We all know that the movie or live show has been precisely written and orchestrated. Each word that's said, every movement the actors make, and each element of the set design, backgrounds, and props that appear and are seen or used, have all been planned, generally down to the lowest detail. The actors need to make it feel like they're saying their lines as if they were robotic responses to effects that might be said in the situation or circumstance being portrayed. Indeed, some directors allow announcement-libbing and extemporaneity from their actors to enhance believability. But, careful planning is the underpinning" verity" of what's going on. For a theatrical performance to succeed as a work of art, it all must feel to be passing spontaneously as it would in real life. In that environment, the pen can explore ideas about life that he or she chooses; whether it's about poverty caused by an indifferent or malignant government or pots, as seen in Grapes of Wrath, or the waste of life and the restlessness and inertia that accompanies inherited wealth in The Great Gatsby, or the shafts and loose society and its effect on else good people portrayed in Les Miserables. All these books have been made into successful theatrical products and flicks that can be said to have reached a position of fine art through the language of theater with its analogous vocabulary and alphabet of literalism. They've crowned in products that suspend the followership's unbelief and they've each created their own unique forms of beauty.

In poetry, two good examples would be Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, or Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, both runes are about defying death and characterize how to live one's life, knowing that the grim reaper lies just over the horizon. These two runes use the language of words to deal with delicate subject matter in a beautiful way and all the images supplicated are bones from our guests in reality.

Still, so that the details of how it has been constructed is apparent to the listener or bystander, the artist or author is allowed to have failed, If the structure of the work of art is awkward or tone-conscious. In a theater, if the jotting is fine, but the amusement is terrible, we might also condemn the actors or the director. But in every case you have the work of art constructed from essential corridor and assembled by the pen, director, musician, musician, actor, songster, cotillion , painter or sculptor in a work that's largely systematized and bedded with a position of complication only set up in mortal beings.

The significance in understanding this beginning process becomes veritably apparent if we now look at the debate that has passed between ultramodern arts. Traditional art. The Modern artists who are credited with the origins of Modernism are celebrated for pointing directly at the underpinning reality of what fine art is constructed from. Cezanne, Manet and Matisse we're told showed us the '' verity" that an oil is really just multicolored makeup applied to a flat oil, paper or face.

Prestige Suggestion

Do scholars believe in this new heir of Western Art? Or doesn't believing in it hang their grades and positions( and the holdalls of those invested in similar art)? It's amazing how the need to avow one's belief constantly in a commodity that was preliminarily delicate or insolvable to believe, will come decreasingly easier when supported by numbers of authority. A useful term for this miracle is" prestige suggestion".

What ultramodernists have done has been to prop and abet the destruction of the only universal language by which artists can communicate our humanity to the rest of, well,. humanity. They also have erected up a maze of apologies and blocked all other viewpoints. However, also we must question any practice that designedly suppresses documented substantiation, If the history of what actually took place isn't to be lost due to the temporary prejudice and taste of a single period. Art history mustn't be reduced to little further than propaganda directed towards request improvement for precious collections passed down as wealth conserving stores of value. Successful dealers, who deduced great wealth by dealing workshop created in hours rather of weeks, had little trouble lining up eloquent, eloquent and conclusive masters of our language to make complex descriptions presented far and wide as brilliant analysis to justify what are really veritably uncomplicated, simpleminded and simplistic workshop; creations which arguably should have and would have been rejected out-of-hand but for their disingenuous and cunning sophistry.

There's a difference between value due to prestige suggestion and value due to natural quality. Surely, in the hunt to define beauty, we need to understand that difference. We should be suitable to see through prestige and determine when we're in the presence of the truly beautiful, versus a work that is topmost quality is the prestige attached to the name of the artist or the movement. In this way a oil with little natural value that has the hand of De Kooning, Pollock, Rothko or Mondrian on it, is assigned high values because people with a PhD or the title of Professor or Museum Director next to their names have told us what to suppose about their worth. Also, major dealers or transaction houses have assigned estimates of millions of bones to their work. Most people don't feel knowledgeable enough to know what has or doesn't have value and calculate what" authorities" tell them. This is" prestige- suggestion". Indeed if their instincts are to reject commodity, they keep silent lest they expose themselves to sport for being considered ignorant, tasteless or out- of- touch, succumbing to" social pressure".

Art-Speak

Along with "prestige suggestion", there's a second veritably useful expression that aids us in understanding what has passed and how Modernism, after gaining ascendancy , has been suitable to maintain its position. That term is called " Art-speak". Art-speak is a simulated form of language, which uses tone- purposely complex and sophisticated combinations of words to impress, enthrall and silence opposition. Art- speak attributes to Modernist works noble positive rates which are just not there at all." Art- speak" is generally used by people in positions of power and authority and in combination with" prestige suggestion" is eventually employed to silence contrary instincts and ideas to help people from actually relating what has been paraded before them.

Art-speak, a way by which complex sounding words and generalities are used to produce the vision of a commodity being further than it's as a system to produce value, meaning and significance that drastically outweighs what's actually there. Sotheby's Contemporary Department said that" Cy Twombly's grand 1964 oil' unidentified (Rome)' is one of the highlights of our Contemporary Art Evening Transaction on 12 February 2014." But what's indeed more entertaining is the videotape created about the piece for the trade. If one looks at it objectively we can see that the oil really looks like the type of trifling that numerous peoples' two time old children do. At one point the videotape flashes to a scratch with pencil and say's it shows the artist's" growing confidence". Putatively there are numerous in the art world who suppose grown-ups scribbling like children is a commodity people should be willing to pay big bucks for. Although the piece does look like one a child would do, this portrait vended for British pounds, over US bones .

Watch the videotape above to view this inconceivable illustration of art speak. Everything about it from the word choice to the British accentuation to the dramatic music oozes value, when really the work is nothing but signatures.

Art Speak exemplifications

The first It's from the watchman of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery in Ottawa speaking about the work of a youthful' conceptualist' she regards largely. (The work itself was nothing but a device that blew out banks intermittently.)

I suppose that certain issues being foregrounded in it (the art in question), similar to its modesty and its involvement with everyday conditioning as opposed to a sequestered plant practice are presumably relatively reflective of current directions in art. You could say that this work is riding the crest of a surge, in its emphasis on communication, in its engagement with the everyday, in its involvement with deciduous guests .

Secondly I've a quotation from Catherine Perret describing current trends in Modern and Postmodern art.

Catherine Perret is associate professor of ultramodern and contemporary aesthetics and propositions at Nanterre University in Paris.

She's extensively published and accepted as an authority on ultramodern andpost-modern art.

Catherine "Take Marsilio Fiscino and/ or Giovanni Pico as exemplifications. Their thinking generally placed the reign of significance in- between the vast closeness of spiritual perpetuity and the baseness of present materialism- thus concentrating on the zone of transformational conduct of humans that lead to a natural magical witchcraft. This noology is about knowledge that can transfigure effects and countries of the system. In that sense I'm maintaining that we're leaving the age of sterile reductive analysis and entering into one of cornucopian conflation; much like the lyrical- legendary- scientific age of the early Renaissance. The binding force of this conflation is clearly inter-subjective pleasure( art) and a lust for goofy perceptions out of which new possibilities grow. These perceptions are attained by trial/ chance/ inner- threat- however need not be vindicated, nor repeated. Indeed they shouldn't be. It's about a hunt for originality in that sense. The new noology's validity is attained through the force of its correspondences and its breath of connectivity. The performing pan-panoramas will satiate this period and be the counter-attack to fundamentalist suppression as its menace will supersede our distrust of immoderation and lead us into a qualitative approach by escaping locked down delineations. In some ways it's a development of Nietzsche's Gay Science."

And there it is. I must tell you-categorically and without any equivocation There's no idea, conception or study which can not be expressed with direct and fairly simple language. But simple language would not work as well to be confusing. If the words could be readily understood, opposition would be far more likely.

The "authority" of high positions, and the" authority" of books and publications, and the" authority" of instruments of delegation, all work in combination to impress and sink and silence those whose common sense would otherwise rise up in opposition. Without a distrust, people would easily see this art for what it's apparent gibberish if it's supposed value hadn't radiated from the grandiose mouths and pens of those with such a transcendence of" authority" to back them up. Numerous scholars and indeed preceptors have come forward to report how traditional literalism has been nearly or actually banned from their art departments. They want to partake their mournings at the hands of Modernist preceptors, and ask what they can do.

Barring of ideas and not permitting free and open debate has been a problem throughout history. Most frequently relating to religion or politics, it rears hinder its ugliness in other fields as well. John Stuart Mill's reflections on speech repression are as alive and accurate moment as they were two hundred times ago

Where there's a wordless convention that principles aren't to be disputed; where the discussion of the topmost questions, which can enthrall humanity, is considered to be closed, we can not hope to find that generally high scale of internal exertion, which has made some ages of history so remarkable.

Still reluctantly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that true it may be, if it isn't completely, constantly, and valorously bandied, it'll be held as a dead dogma, not a living verity.

Without a dynamic living network of experts tutoring specialized knowledge in delineation and oil, it'll noway be possible for council and university art departments to have scholars who are suitable to enrich the debate and the academic terrain for all scholars by producing workshop of art that are able of expressing complex, vital and spirited ideas. To prohibit these chops to be tutored on a lot in any real depth is as ridiculous as having a music department that refuses to educate the circle of fifths or only teaches three or four notes from which they contend all music must be composed. It's as absurd as having an English department in which all words that had recognizable meanings were interdicted and only writing without words or judgment structure would be permissible.

Still, they would drink the chance to defy the ideas that they should be well equipped to refute, If there was nothing to be ashamed of in their tutoring styles and in their results. They've a solemn duty to maintain the integrity of study made possible by what has been handed down to them by those artists, pens and thinkers before us, who established a vast, complex and rich system of training with which to educate and pass on a wealth of knowledge. designedly precluding access to this information is crippling to the pretensions of education and a severe inhibition to assuring a society grounded on freedom of study without which progress is insolvable. Where is it more important to vouchsafe these principles than at our nation's sodalities and universities who have a duty to expose their scholars to responsible opposing views in all fields of study?

Traditional skill-grounded art in recent decades has had veritably many proponents, ceding nearly a century to an ascendant modern titan. Ironically, that century has seen the topmost strides forward in every other field of mortal endeavor. However, the art world is sorrowfully behind our times and will need to do a lot of catching up, If the proponents of literalism are as correct as it seems.

The new Realism movement now has thousands of artists. That's a stunning turn- around from the sprinkle who were working 30 times again. There are over 70 bow Approved Shop grounded seminaries and several staying to be vetted. And there are dozens of associations helping to support the sweat of these artists. There are numerous upmarket art galleries in major metropolises throughout the world who concentrate on art with images from the real world. You have all taken great strides forward in reclaiming our century's long heritage in Realist fine art. We're now seeing solid suggestions of the rich creativity developing at the heart of the 21st Century art world. The exhilaration and sanguinity which flows forward from then couldn't be more thrilling or more instigative. I can not stay to see the magic and beauty that's in store for us as these artists are inspired by an avalanche of original perspectives, innovative styles, and brilliant game- changing subject matter of a fleetly growing Realist movement. as artists partake their ideas together sowing and cross pollinating a landslide of creative and innovative thinking that will lead us to ever more lyrical, inspirational and beautiful artwork in the workrooms, salons and exhibitions in the times that lie ahead. Just half way through the alternate decade of the first century of the third glories, we're truly at the veritable morning of a new period that celebrates the beauty and poetry of the mortal soul. Thank you!