The Datzuk Blog

Last post I talked about some of the philosophy of impressionist, expressionist, post impressionist art and how it relies on the artist to quantify their place in the art community. Now I want to address performance art.

I come from the generation of artists born just after the hippie art “be in’s” and the European mod movements of the late 1950′s through the early 1970′s. People of my generation boosted the performance artist to rock star status with individuals like Lydia Lunch, Ann Magnuson, and Joe Coleman.

How many people remember this group of people who shook up the art world by mixing music, film, photography, theater, guerrilla staging, into one big citywide campaign to broaden everyone’s view of art?

Tick Tock Tick Tock, DING!
Times up. Not many I can tell you.

People know Ann Magnuson from TV and movies, most know nothing of the madwoman lying just below the surface.

Lydia continues to make CDs and work with other artists in the studio like Exene Cervenka.

Now, Joe Coleman is a good illustration of my point. His artifact has been recieved well, but his proformance art… a lot of it, has been lost to the proformance. So, that art, here and gone, that was the intention. Like theatre, or a musical performance. Still, it’s his paintings that have been on display at museums and galleries around the country. The proformance art has vanished, but the artifact quantifies the action of the proformance being lost.

Well, here today?
Art or artifact tommorow?

I have heard people say that by hindering the impulse to create with the practice of the craft we lose the raw BANG of the idea. “The idea is red, paint RED!”

This is expression yes, but, then where is the craft? It’s in the artist’s statement right?

Here is me. I have always considered myself a whimsical artist. Never taking myself too seriously, looking for the impulse of creativity from an innocent, unjaded perspective. Simple, fanciful, with a mix of “high” surrealist art.  I like my work to make me smile when I’m done.  Then I know I’m done, and it works. We all create for different reasons- mine are simple it makes me feel good.

Still…. I’m trying to understand.

Simply putting a color on a canvas and calling it art is complicated to say the least.

The thought of red being the only push to create has never seemd very….. creative to me personally. Red exists. That’s it. To say you created something because you used RED does not warrant artistic merit because, red by itself is just a color.

Why red?

Does red have some tangible purpose in the composition?

If so then a canvas covered in red works right?

Bah! You say!

I AGREE and I DISAGREE!

Time has to tell.

This is a new concept in the history of art.  Looking at a timeline, an idea like this is so recent, that the artists who first had the concept are barely a generation away.

My question to the “post impressionist” is, what happens to the giant red canvas after it becomes an artifact? What happens after the artist is removed by history and only the painting remains? What happens when the name plate is lost, the catalog number burns in a fire, the records at the gallery where stolen, the painting itself was stolen?

What if there is no connection to the BANG that created it?

Is it just a big red square?

We’ve both been getting more time to devote to the Atlantin Tropic Vision project.

Keep checking back for updates!