Some of my immediate reflections on the Gutai manifesto, scribbled down in my sketchbook on Friday 15 September 2011 (see the post entitled 'Gutai - A Coming-Home' dated 21 August last for the full Gutai manifesto):
- Enjoy the materials you're using.
- Transcience of materials and artwork: use the material, photograph the outcome, destroy or let deteriorate.
- Gutai principle: intergrity of the material is all-important. Use materials so their properties are revealed/made the most of.
- Always, constantly, question what the material is about, and how can I demonstrate/reveal/show that?
- Make art to make art, not to exhibit and sell. Exhibiting/selling totally subsequent and main aim of exhibiting is to work with/alongside other, like-minded sculptors/artists.
- What about the fundamental principle inherent in my work in the past - giving the viewer a moment of respite from hectic modern-day life? How can I keep to that whilst adopting/intergrating Gutai principles? cf. Theo van Doesburg: 'Art is a spiritual function of man, whith the purpose of delivering him from the chaos of life (tragedy).'
- How does marble carving fit into this?
- Direct responses to manifesto:
- !!'The human spirit and the material reach out their hands to each other'!! Beautiful!
- Materials loaded with false significance, not simply presenting their own material self but taking on the appearance of something else. Intellectual aim murders materials and they can no longer speak to us.
- Gutai art does not change the material; it brings it to life. Does not falsify the material. If you 'leave the material as it is', i.e. retain and reveal its integrity, it starts to speak/tell us something and does so with a mighty voice. Keeping the material alive also means bringing its spirit to life --> leads the material up to the height of the spirit.
- Disagree with art of the past not able to call up deep emotion in us: still contains and reveals the magnificent life and the spirit, albeit shrouded in a thick mist of subsequent intellectualism and affectation; can still evoke deep emotion, the problem is that these artworks can no longer be seen/viewed in a serene/peaceful way, away from the tourist hoards. Their age - decay in some - adds to that deep emotion. Important also to consider these artworks within their art-hsitorical context, not as art of today.
- Beauty of decay. I don't see it as the material 'taking revenge', simply the beauty of the process, i.e. the material continues to live after the artist has done his work, completed his stage in the process.
- Pollock et al. grapple with the material in a way that is completely appropriate to it. They serve the material. SERVE YOUR MATERIAL
to produce something living.
- Abstract Art - one of its merits: it has opened up the possibility to create a new subjective shape of space, one that truly deserves the name 'creation'.
- Combining human creative ability with the characteristics of the material.
- Kazuo Shiraga - spreading paint with his feet - had merely found a method that enabled him to confront and unite the material he had chosen with his own spiritual dynamics; no other motive.
- Constant message about the materials through characteristics, colours and form.
- ART - THE RESULT OF INVESTIGATING THE POSSIBILITIES OF CALLING THE MATERIAL TO LIFE.
