“The greatest art is life itself,” becomes a colloquial notion, which encapsulates the esoteric art of alchemy, shamanism, and other forms of mysticism, which proceeded psychology as a modern way of describing the mysterious processes of living.
Read MoreOriginal Song: Mothers & Daughters /
A celebration of the living presence — of “the fruitful vine” and the “olive branch”: old & young at once; an eternal process of creativity, family and community; of “Mother & Daughter”. This song was then written, composed, recorded and finished in blazing speed. A major contribution to the genius of this piece is Gene Pino, maestro guitarist, coming to the studio with a 1953 Gibson L5 and a Handmade Brazilian Nylon String Guitar. Gene Pino recalls, “I felt like we went into an alternate world during that recording session.
Read MoreMapping ORIGINS: The Art of Integration /
Artists seek resolution of inner and outer tensions, personally, in relationships and between cultural groups. This is a call to rise above flagrant moral negligence on the part of the academy, curators and artists themselves, to recognize that what we do has consequences, on a personal, national and global stage. In order to grow together:
Read MoreMapping ORIGINS: Conflicted Artists Position /
The contemporary artist is tasked with reintegrating the multitude of past art movements, resolving disassociated conflicts, into a greater whole. A multicultural, multifaceted — that is, a comprehensive approach — is thus the progression beyond arbitrary obsessions & expressions of dualism, towards a greater union of self — intrapsychic, interpersonal and transpersonal.
Read MoreMapping ORIGINS: Artistic Dynamism /
Striving, in an aesthetic and philosophical quest, each artist looks for remedies for the alienation of society from nature
Read MoreMapping ORIGINS: Colors of the Individuated Personality /
Color itself is finally revealed to be a profound conveyer of the status of our inner dualism, and a possible path towards connecting to a source of oneness — that is an inner radiance, or inner light.
Read MoreWhy Paint? Artist's Sacrifice & The Shadow Goddess /
I remember the controversy of whether or not the “Balthus should still hang at the Met,” and the formidable articles asking “If Men Should Still Be Able to Paint the Female Nude” in 2019.
What is art history and painting, “without the nude” though, anyways?
The model makes themselves available, vulnerable, open; the artist does too.
Every portrait is a self-portrait. — Spring Art Review: Why Paint? Contemporary Art and the Academic Painter's Sacrifice to Beauty (The Archetypal Shadow and Feminine, Great Mother, as per Carl Jung, Erich Neumann) (Essay Describes Kali, The Artist, The Jew, The Black Model) (A Review and Summarization of my work)
Read MoreThe Coming Decade: What to Expect in Culture & Art /
Pioneering markets (Germany, Silicon Valley) have been integrating insights of Western psychology and Eastern spirituality, Meanwhile, in the past decade, Paganism was America’s largest growing religion. The reintroduction and proliferation of cannabis, recreational and laboratory use of psychedelics, affects the cultural psyche causing vast individuals to calibrate or fall into catastrophe over their innate spirituality, religious archetypal substructures and inner conflicts. This is a backdrop of what’s to come.
Read MoreImmersive Art Is Millennial Art: X-Mas With Hudson Valley Surrealist Daniel Giordano /
Giordano is a Newburgh native fresh off a well-deserved print feature in the New York Times Arts section. He didn’t get there by looking like Justin Bieber (eternally young), and Harry Styles (gender-bending style), but by a strong dose of a 1920’s Italian workman blood — as he labors, in constant production.
Read MoreSamuel Abelow: Exhibition 2019 /
This body of work examines the complex psychological, romantic and spiritual relationship of Orpheus and Persephone. Through oil painting and various media, Abelow uncovers universal archetypal truths revealed through the creative process.
Read MorePolymorphous Paganism in Underground Art Show /
A lover boy with bones of air moves through the evaporating mist after a monsoon that swept through Manhattan on the evening of September 6, 2019. Red light glows from 22 Ludlow St. — is this a mirage? No, this is Alberto H. Arsenberg’s debut solo show in NYC, “Your Kind of Person.”
Read MoreKate Klingbeil: Painting the Recovery of the Feminine /
The dream contained in Klingbeil’s diary of the unconscious carries out a circumambulation around the revitalizing mother archetype — as great goddess. This image is the way to the feminine self — a mystery we hurt to have forgotten and is all that we don’t understand.
Read MoreMystic Eros: Chris Ofili at Zwirner and Frieze /
Entering into a stripped down, pristine antique townhouse, and up a flight of spiraling stairs, amongst the dapper Upper East Side milieu, I came upon Ofili’s largish canvas of a green mermaid figure, mysterious, intoxicatingly swimming in bejeweled waters of the deep psyche.
Read MoreGerhard Richter, David Wiseman, The Hudson Yards: The Cultural Realization of The Aesthetic Life /
New York City: Within a few square miles in Chelsea and the new construction in the Hudson Yards, a strange renaissance of contemporary culture and art is flourishing. Amongst all of this, it is hard to tell whether or not the hyper-real and superficial aspects of this renaissance are so excessive that we are doomed, or that, redeemingly, it is rather that these are flaws and areas of gray in a bizarre cultural evolution. However, there is undoubtedly the sensation of a moment in culture that is of great importance.
Read MoreThe Black Model at the Crux of Western Culture: Sweeping Exhibition at Musée d’Orsay /
The “Black Models” show at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris reveals the Western neglect of the archetypal feminine, which accounts for racial and gender subjugation and ultimately a disregard for the planet itself. In this view of the show, we poignantly discover a cultural progression, but also a dire need for further understanding today.
Read MoreFrom Paris: l'Orangerie & The Louvre (Archetypal Feminine and the Greek Mentalité) /
Artists’ are driven by an immortality fantasy. Also, they are poetic types who feel the contents of life-psyche deeply. They need a subject, many of the Europeans chose “woman,” for she is at the center of their psyche; her unending pull both profound fodder for inspiration, sparking their instincts, stimulating the artist towards production.
Also, this obsession with the woman is a form of masochistic self-torture to tease themselves unending, turning an interest into a fascination, and finally into an addiction. (As one painting will not do, and one lover neither; all the complications of this muse relationship come with it!) On the contrary, it has been a form of liberation (hence, the “libertine”) to feel their erotic nature.
Read MoreJuicy Color Hits In Marc Horowitz’s High-Flying Act /
Marc Horowitz’s newest paintings are all variations on the same composition: stark backgrounds resonate like a crisp sky, as chunky stick figures pulse like balloons. As in Rothko’s chapel, or Rembrandt's self-portraits, Horowitz repeats and alters the same idea in a series. And, as Rothko reduced his palette to shades of black, focusing on rectangular forms, and Rembrandt to shades of brown, focusing on the self-portrait, Horowitz’s latest interest can be compared to these exalted masters: his works, as packed with juicy color as ever before, have discarded earlier structures and devices (inkjet prints which allowed for complex puns on rendered horses, landscapes, etc.) in favor of an undeniably primal composition.
Read MoreNYC Art Roundup: Contemporary Figuration at Its Finest /
Dana Schutz’s acclaimed show “Imagine me and You” exalts figurative painting ever-again, with a power and humor especially her own. The epic canvases are slogged and dashed with heavy amounts of paint, the safflower oil of which she uses as medium giving off a tangible odor. The onslaught of these powerful sights and smells, are a sort of pleasure especially modern in their strangeness.
Read MoreHilma af Klint at the Guggenheim After Dark: Mystical Endeavors in Art /
From October 2018 through April 2019 the Guggenheim Museum in New York City is exhibiting the monumental works of artist and mystic Hilma af Klint. The solo exhibition, “Paintings from the Future,” has on display astoundingly mystical, large format paintings, as well as exquisite works on paper. One notable gallery room — which has become a must-Instagram for those in the art world — includes a dozen epic works that scale ten feet high.
Read MoreThe Lover Archetype in Modern Men: Soundcloud Rappers, XXXTentacion as Dionysus /
Both Orpheus and Dionysus are archetypes commonly active in the personalities of contemporary artists. An artist with an undeveloped “Orphic” disposition will tend more towards a longing, romanticization and dramatization — a poetic, almost mystical love. The artist tinged more with an immature “Dionysian” typology will be affected by extreme emotionality and even reckless, violent behavior. These typical scenarios are caused by living out a collective pattern — an archetype — which has an impersonal disregard the individual wellbeing.
Read More