art theory / reflections
A painter is someone capable of self-expression through form and color.
An artist is someone whose spirit is involuntarily one with the world.
The rare cases in which a painter is also an artist give rise to works in which mankind can find answers. A universal art?
We are no longer accustomed to such a thing.
Tribes of factotums have invaded the times and places of art with frivolous and mediocre things.
There are, as Fausto Melotti says, "those who still paint human figures and therefore consider themselves humanists."
"And those, especially in the USA, who think that size is enough to turn a small work into a great one."
And the others, the ones who never begin a painting without already knowing what color the last brushstroke will be: "the sedulous clerks of abstraction."
Art is like life: it arrives when you least expect it and never from the direction you are looking in.
The most precious fruits of art have never been born in museums.
Art critics … There have been few truly capable of understanding where art was coming from and where it was going.
There have always been few capable of creating something worthwhile and few that then understand and strive to make the work of art part of mankind’s common heritage.
The evolution of society has generated a greater demand for participation in cultural life on the part of new social classes, and this is unquestionably positive. Unfortunately, the response of private and public bodies has often proved inadequate through failure to combine quantity with quality. Not to mention the bad faith that is often unfortunately to be found in the field of art.
With his deft use of form and color, Piet Mondrian succeeds in talking about universal issues. We must set off again along the path.
One is almost ashamed to talk about universal issues today.
Michel Seuphor was a great friend and associate of Piet Mondrian. I contacted him in the late 1980s and asked him to read my studies on Mondrian's last accomplished painting Broadway Boogie Woogie, which he was so kind as to comment on.
It is a great pity that people of this type are disappearing: people who have helped to forge the history of modern art and are very different from most of those buzzing around art today.
Seuphor was an art historian, a poet, and a painter. He spoke about ten languages. An intelligent man of great nobility and generosity, at the age of 86, in spite of everything, he still believed in people.
I wrote him a letter without ever having met him and did not have to wait long for an answer.
I came across an article by a certain Mario Bellini entitled "The Abstract Virus" in a monthly magazine of architecture, design and art called Domus.
I was dismayed to see the reproduction of a work by Piet Mondrian alongside the text.
In short, Bellini argued that abstract art was responsible for practically all the ills of our time …
I felt it my duty to write him this letter, which, 19 years later, has yet to be answered.
It is quite true that people of real culture are readily available and unafraid to exchange views because they believe in what they are doing.
What they do gives them sustenance and strength, enthusiasm and confidence in tomorrow.
Unfortunately, this kind of persons are exceptions today.
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