andrewbinder

[andrewbinder]

The Painted Protest

How politics destroyed contemporary art

from Harper's

If art merely conjured the same experience that could be attained through knowledge of the author’s identity alone, there would be no point in making it, or going to see it, or writing about it. If an artwork’s affective power derives from the artist’s biography rather than the work, then self-expression is redundant; when the self is more important than the expression, true culture becomes impossible.

[andrewbinder]

Oizys (detail) © Andrew Binder 2024

[andrewbinder]

Man, Composition in Red and Blue (detail) © Andrew Binder 2024

This piece started as nothing but a quick experiment, but it ultimately revealed to me a possible way forward...

[andrewbinder]

If everything is loud, then nothing is loud.

If everyone is a "hero", then no one is a hero.

If everything is art, then nothing is art.

[andrewbinder]

“Living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice or you’re not.

It makes no sense to say you’re not good at it. It’s like saying, “I’m not good at being a monk.” You are either living as a monk or you’re not.

We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output.

The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world.”

― Rick Rubin

[andrewbinder]

#wip © Andrew Binder 2024

[andrewbinder]

Process stages of Portrait Study 8.08.24 © Andrew Binder 2024

[andrewbinder]

Deconstructed Head in Pink, Red, and Blue (details) by Andrew Binder

© Andrew Binder 2023

[andrewbinder]

Coda- Dorothy Parker

[andrewbinder]

Just want to say that Summer SAD is a real thing. And though it’s technically spring right now over here, it’s already in the freaking upper 80′s...in April....so it’s de facto summer already.

https://www.webmd.com/depression/summer-depression

[andrewbinder]

Good to see I am not alone

Everyone celebrating the Spring equinox/end of winter and the return of longer, warmer days:

Me, knowing it’s only a matter of time before the Summer SAD kicks in:

[andrewbinder]

Dissonant Harmony in Pink and Cyan (detail) by Andrew Binder

© Andrew Binder 2023

[andrewbinder]

‘This Is Her Reality’: The First-Ever Biography on Hilma af Klint Unearths How the Swedish Artist Lived, Worked, and Communed With Spirits

from Artnet.com

Af Klint’s body of work, which bravely departed from the figurative art that was popular at the turn of the 20th century, predated the first Western abstract compositions by Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. It was a staggering revelation, to say the least. As the art world rushes to fit it into an art historical canon that has woefully excluded women, it is important to move beyond the catchphrases that have emerged around af Klint: Up until recently, many of the intricacies of her life, work, ambitions, and friendships, were not well-understood.

[andrewbinder]

There are days when I wonder if I even enjoy creating art anymore. Those days where I want to scream and tear my hair out because nothing is working. Those other days where the endless treadmill of trying to “promote” myself, and play the oppressive social media game, makes me wonder what the point is anymore.

[andrewbinder]

Untitled (soft pastel, charcoal, digital drawing, digital composition) © Andrew Binder 2022   www.andrewbinder.com

[andrewbinder]

Scientists Are Building a “Black Box” to Record the End of Civilization

The black box will be built in what the developers say is an extremely geologically stable location in Tasmania.

from www.abc.net.au/news:

On a granite-strewn plain, surrounded by gnarled mountains, sits a giant steel box.

Incongruous in the landscape, much like Kubrick's black monolith of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame, its alien presence suggests it was put there with intent.

And if those that discover it can decipher the messages it contains, they could get a glimpse of what caused the fall of the civilisation that was there before.

This is Earth's Black Box.

continue reading

[andrewbinder]

L'art pour l'art

“The fight against purpose in art is always a fight against the moralizing tendency in art, against its subordination to morality. L'art pour l'art means, "The devil take morality!" But even this hostility still betrays the overpowering force of the prejudice. When the purpose of moral preaching and of improving man has been excluded from art, it still does not follow by any means that art is altogether purposeless, aimless, senseless — in short, l'art pour l'art, a worm chewing its own tail. "Rather no purpose at all than a moral purpose!" — that is the talk of mere passion. A psychologist, on the other hand, asks: what does all art do? does it not praise? glorify? choose? prefer? With all this it strengthens or weakens certain valuations. Is this merely a "moreover"? an accident? something in which the artist's instinct had no share? Or is it not the very presupposition of the artist's ability? Does his basic instinct aim at art, or rather at the sense of art, at life? at a desirability of life? Art is the great stimulus to life: how could one understand it as purposeless, as aimless, as l'art pour l'art?”

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols