Inspiring Art

[Jay]

Nice to see something like this out of China:

http://v1kram.posterous.com/liu-bolinthe-invisible-man


He is making a statement on many levels. This is how you change the world.

[don]

Re: Inspiring Art

Nice to see something like this out of China:

http://v1kram.posterous.com/liu-bolinthe-invisible-man


He is making a statement on many levels. This is how you change the world.

You're right, though most won't get it. Thanks for the link :cool:

[Jay]

Re: Inspiring Art

You're right, though most won't get it.

That's probably why it's been allowed to exist up to this point without the Chinese authorities clamping down. Genius really. Great art is always like that.

[don]

Re: Inspiring Art

That's probably why it's been allowed to exist up to this point without the Chinese authorities clamping down. Genius really. Great art is always like that.

Great art is often both subversive and concealed.

[*T*]

Re: Inspiring Art

You're right, though most won't get it.

That woud include me. I'll think about it today.

[Jay]

Re: Inspiring Art

That would include me. I'll think about it today.

The second to last picture is the most pointed.

[LargoWinch]

Re: Inspiring Art

I concur with one of the comment made on Liu's website:

Ethan Bloch said...
Holy crap. That is amazing.

Good find Jay.

[cjppjc]

Re: Inspiring Art

Jung on the artist


The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is "man" in a higher sense - he is "collective man," a vehicle and molder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind. ...

The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and elaborating and shaping the image into the finished work. By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life. ...
Therein lies the social significance of art: It is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is more lacking. The unsatisfied yearning of the artist reaches back to the primordial image in the unconscious, which is best fitted to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present. The artist seizes on this image and, in raising it from deepest unconsciousness, he brings it into relation with conscious values, thereby transforming it until it can be accepted by the minds of his contemporaries according to their powers.






To grasp the meaning of the work of art, we must allow it to shape us as it once shaped the artist. The we understand the nature of his experience. We see that he has drawn upon the healing and redeeming forces of the collective psyche that underlies consciousness in all its isolation and its painful errors; that he has penetrated into that matrix of life in which all men are embedded, which imparts a common rhythm to all human experience, and allows the individual to communicate his feeling and his striving to mankind as a whole.

[don]

Re: Inspiring Art

Jung on the artist


The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is "man" in a higher sense - he is "collective man," a vehicle and molder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind. ...

The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and elaborating and shaping the image into the finished work. By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life. ...
Therein lies the social significance of art: It is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is more lacking. The unsatisfied yearning of the artist reaches back to the primordial image in the unconscious, which is best fitted to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present. The artist seizes on this image and, in raising it from deepest unconsciousness, he brings it into relation with conscious values, thereby transforming it until it can be accepted by the minds of his contemporaries according to their powers.

To grasp the meaning of the work of art, we must allow it to shape us as it once shaped the artist. The we understand the nature of his experience. We see that he has drawn upon the healing and redeeming forces of the collective psyche that underlies consciousness in all its isolation and its painful errors; that he has penetrated into that matrix of life in which all men are embedded, which imparts a common rhythm to all human experience, and allows the individual to communicate his feeling and his striving to mankind as a whole.

And we have a recent low-rent example. I started the thread A Photo That Needs No Caption, based on my take of a great satirical look at the $$$ Oligarchy. Other members have since pointed out the Star of Davids woven into the piece, with additional art from the same guy that makes clear his intent wasn't FIRE at all. Nevertheless, sans Stars, it's in the eye of the beholder. Once a piece of art leaves the artist's hand, it's open to interpretation. The more overtly political, the narrower the interpretations. Liu has that well under control.

[cjppjc]

Re: Inspiring Art

And we have a recent low-rent example. I started the thread A Photo That Needs No Caption, based on my take of a great satirical look at the $$$ Oligarchy. Other members have since pointed out the Star of Davids woven into the piece, with additional art from the same guy that makes clear his intent wasn't FIRE at all. Nevertheless, sans Stars, it's in the eye of the beholder. Once a piece of art leaves the artist's hand, it's open to interpretation. The more overtly political, the narrower the interpretations. Liu has that well under control.

The sentence that that speaks to me:

until it can be accepted by the minds of his contemporaries according to their powers.


This is true of all things. Art. Knowledge. Power in Washington, or gold.