30 March 2009 - In the basement
Monday, March 30, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Day 899 - Conclusions: No. 1
In order to get a woman posing naked for you, you must be a celebrity first.
No matter how talented you are, if you are famous, women will feel protected by your status. I don't like it at all, but it seems that is the way to make it function. The more famous you are, the less that woman will be condemned by the society. And, also, you will be less condemned as an artist if you deal with tabu subjects as human sexuality. It is a big hypocrisy, because the talent and the artistic value of your work always came second. When you are not famous, critics tend to accuse you about what you cannot be and do, instead of appreciating (without prejudices) for what you are and create. And the society tend to shut you down. So you must won your popularity ("the other way around") and became a "certified value" to be allowed to raise your voice.
We live here, in Romania, in a society where the Ministry of Education is putting the study of nude (history of art, painting, sculpture and drawing) as a main subject in art schools - starting with gymnasium and then all the way through high school, college and university. But then if a young artist decides to choose this subject later in his career, it is suddenly condemned for immorality. It is hilarious how the tax payers are paying the salaries of hired nude models in art schools (through the state budget and all) and then the same tax payers are condemning the artistic representations of human nudity. I have started to study nude at 14, as a young student in the art school gymnasium in Bucharest, under the communist regime. And 20 years LATER, in the democracy, I found myself questioned and accused about doing nudes. And I met women willing to pose nude, but too afraid of doing that because the negative reaction of the society.
Well, I will always think that this problem was solved, in fact, hundreds of years ago, when Michelangelo was allowed by the Holy Pope to paint nudes on the Sixtine Chapel ceiling, despite the violent negative opinion of it's cardinals. But it seems that the society is always ignoring that. Today the public opinion have no problem with The Sixtine Chapel, because Michelangelo is considered a genius and his work a masterpiece - and nobody questions that. But in his time, Michelangelo was an young artist as many others in the context of his time.
And in this way we are reaching again the idea of the first line of this post, closing the circle.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Day 892 - Important
Sunday, 22 March 2009, Karousel Gallery (Bucharest) will have me holding a lecture on "The Nude In Natural Light" photography, starting with 3:00 PM. We have room for 30 people who would like to attend a free lecture and a "Q & A" session.
We have coffee, tea, goodwill and good words.
Address: Karousel Gallery, George Calinescu St. No 5A (across the "White Horse" Pub in Dorobanti area). Anybody interested please send an e-mail at: karousel.gallery @ karousel.ro. See you Sunday afternoon then.
Cristian Crisbasan & Karousel Gallery
Monday, March 16, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Day 890 - On Freedom
I found this exceptional interview with Jock Sturges, one of the masters of photography - an artist that I immensely admire. Read this fragment - for the rest of this interview follow the link.
What is the contrast between the intent of your work and the perception of your work?
That is an impossible question to answer because perception varies in every individual, and, more broadly, in every culture. There can only ever be differing perceptions of just what any given body of work or individual art object is. The range of possibilities is near infinite. What one person or group finds unlovely, another might consider transcendent, another shocking, another dull. It is finally not my responsibility nor of any great interest to me to address the external perception of my work at all. But I do not seek to please nobody. Not at all. I want first of all to please the people in my pictures and then, close behind, myself. If my work pleases the people it depicts and meets my own standards then I am done asking questions of it.
As far as I know, my work has never in any instance been found problematic by individuals or social systems in Europe. In the early '90, during the federal investigation into my work in the states (USA), the FBI tried to persuade the French to investigate me based on their characterization of my photographs as problematic. The French police wrote them back and said "Not only are such pictures not illegal in France, we actually think they are quite beautiful". In the European context, the norm is a sexual maturity that surpasses that of many Americans by a significant margin.
I will say, however, that over the past two decades the intent behind my work has grown to incorporate a modicum of political ambition. Pathologically obsessive interest in humans very often derives from what is hidden, forbidden, not seen. My work hides nothing, conceals nothing and thus in time should hopefully work against such illness. Or so I would like to admire.
Seattle, 2009
Read the rest of this very important interview here:
http://interviewwithanartist.com
Friday, March 13, 2009
Day 889 - I want to be free, not an artist
"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe wether it call itself home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as FREELY as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use - silence, exile and cunning"
James Joyce - A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man
