A personal, curatorial & bilingual Blog about: Artistic Movements, my Art, Creativity, Innovation, Design, Leadership, Empowerment, Sustainability, Science, Jazz, Movies and other cool pursuits - Blog personal y curatorial bilingüe sobre: Movimentos Artísticos, mi Arte, Creatividad, Innovación, Diseño, Liderazgo, Empoderamiento, Sustentabilidad, Ciencia, Jazz, Películas y otros temas.
It was a rainy morning that had turned into a lovely afternoon. You know the sort of day I mean. Wet streets that reflect the sunlight with enriched tones, trees with rain water droplets hanging from every leave. The air, cleared by nature and perfumed by the ozone coming from the warm wet grass of the park next door, while the cleansing wind felt slightly cooler from caressing the surface of all the wet buildings that surrounded us.
THAT DAY (2014) – detail – by Ignacio Alperin
As usual, I was painting and listening to some jazz.
It was Kind of Blue, in vinyl, playing this time on an old record player rather than my usual garb. A gift from my late dear aunt Frances whom, after passing away, had left for me to enjoy.
I remember sill that at first I could not get it to work. It was a portable Phillips record player in bright red which packs like a little suitcase. Very cute, very shiny, and very silent.
I thought to myself, “Where will I be able to find someone to fix this?”
THAT DAY – Detail
It was, after all, more than 40 years old. So I gave it a try myself. As it happens, and as I fiddled with it for a while, I realized that it didn´t work simply because it had never been plugged in since purchased. It was brand new, seals untouched, warranty still in the box. Simply the contacts had rusted over the years from inaction.
A bit of cleaning and suddenly, I was off and running. The slightly tinny sound of the small speakers did not bother me. I had my huge Yamahas for everything else. This was the right sound for special moments.
And this was one of those special moments. As artists, we all – consciously or not – try to achieve some kind of immortality. Or at the very least, surpass our own life time by leaving behind something that may allow us to achieve a kind of “longevity” of sorts through our artistic works.
I envy – in a manner that is more healthy admiration – the fact that movie actors and musicians through image and sound can achieve this much more easily than us.
To me, listening to any of these recordings is like being in my house one moment, then I turn Kind of Blue on, and next thing I know, I am pushed into some type of time travelling gizmo. All of a sudden I am in 1959, standing in a corner of a studio while these guys, most of them long gone in 2016, come suddenly to life.
They look at each other, some smile, others concentrate while puffing smoke, others chew gum and read their music. Suddenly the voice behind the glass taps and says “Take one!”, and off they go. As I listen they are alive, they are immortal, they are playing “live” for me once again and they are great at it.
It is that very personal, very emotional connection, the one I use in my painting. It is a combination of admiration, melancholy, and happiness. My synesthesia helps along the way, and it all translates into colors and shapes, and hopefully feelings transmitted at a distance.
So I was painting and I thought to myself “This day” is “That day”. The wet trees, the sun coming through, Miles´ trumpet pushing the clouds, Evans keyboard giving a soundtrack to the wind, Cannonball and Coltrane caressing the grass, Chambers putting rhythm to the bounce of every rain drop, and Cobb simply reminding us of the summer storm that was quickly receding in the background.
And here is “That Day”.
The result of that beautiful rainy morning, and sunny afternoon, in which a great “live” band and myself just spent the time painting together.
THAT DAY (2014) by Ignacio Alperin 60cm x 80cm Acrylic, oil based paints and sprays, and inks on canvas
I know I am going to get myself in trouble for writing this.
Furthermore, I am probably going to get a lot of mails from artists who have come to my “Flash, Crash, Boom, Creative afternoon” lectures.
I like talking about the importance, for an artist – any artist – of being conscious of the significance of the “mythological” aspect of his or her story. I have always argued that the “selling point “ is as much the artist as the art.
Let´s take van Gogh as an example.
A painting he may have given in exchange for rent (100 bucks worth perhaps) has remained intact. It is always the same painting. It hasn´t gotten better with time. It is not wine – it isn´t that it has “aged well” -. It has not acquired flavors, or details in this case, which were not there before.
What has changed in our appreciation of the artist. It is van Gogh himself who has aged well. We have come to appreciate his story, his ways, his dramas, and his techniques better with time. And as a result, everything he has done has become something else. Each one of his paintings have become “a van Gogh”. His “mythology” has overpassed the painter and the flawed human being. And that is where the difference rests.
I always make the point of qualifying this view by pointing out that, by mythology, I do not mean becoming, or asking to be treated, like a “god” –although many colleagues do fall into this trap- , and neither do I mean that you should lie about your history.
It has to do with, simply put, being consciously aware that an artist´s story
This “may be” Banksy – who has built his own mythology by being secretive to the point of not ever showing his face –
is as much part of the process behind the growth in value of an artist work, as is the quality of work produced. People, more often than not, “buy” – engage, become interested, admire, or simply like – the artist first, and then they become interested in the art to the point of deciding to make a purchase (particularly when the price of a painting is above impulse purchase price).
This is so normal, that when in a newspaper we read that a famous painting is sold at a record price, for example, it is generally the case that the title usually implies that it is the artist who has been sold, while in the follow through we learn about the painting, sculpture or whatever it is really behind the news.
We “buy” Picasso, Van Gogh, Rauschenberg or Pollock. And we get – assuming we had the money – whatever painting is available at the time. The reason is twofold. On the one hand we understand there are market forces behind all these sales, as we are talking about investment grade painters and paintings after all. So whatever is available must be worth our while.
And secondly, we are talking about paintings that resist, endure, and grow in appreciation during a long period of time. And these facts usually have a common thread. In fact, each one of these works represent, in pictorial terms, an intricate part of the artist´s life.
We are talking, then, about art that is a visible section of an artist´s passion. And that is also central to this equation. We are buying a piece of an artist´s identity, a piece of his artistic soul. Or at least that which will endure the passage of time. No matter what embelishments the artist may have made to his own story, what survive are the vestiges of his true self.
This is all very personal stuff. We are talking about an artist´s spirit, his or her heart, and in the case of those already gone, the legacy of work that is left behind and provides the artists with that desired immortality of sorts.
Yet many artists, in their desire to get to that special plateau, become mere caricatures of themselves. They make up stories, take on looks that are more for the benefit of others than a symbol of whom they are, and fictionalize their lives to the point of becoming like characters in a pantomime.
They confuse “a personality” with “personality”, they make-up a stereotype of an artist rather than being true to their history and letting others judge and decide. They feed us with fiction, while true art is as real as it gets.
True art is about a naked person being shown and exposed; it is a soul being revealed; it is a heart discovered in its most intimate detail.
Salvador Dali
Many have “put on an act”. Dali was brilliant at this. But the key word here is “brilliant”. He built an engaging public persona around his personal quirkiness. And all of this pointed towards two ends. On the one hand his renowned love of money, and secondly it was probably his way of exorcising his own childhood demons.
Did we see the real Dali in action? Probably not, but was it a fake personality or was it based on his very real and eccentric nature and life history.
This was the second son of a family who had lost their first child, also named Salvador, only nine months earlier. He looked so much like his dead brother that his mother suspected that he was actually their previous dead child reborn, and it is believed to have acted accordingly. On top of that, and from all accounts, he was quite the sadist as a child. Even to the point of considering that pleasure and pain were pretty much the same mechanism. He used to attack people for no apparent reason, and it is said that he even threw a dear friend off a bridge “just because” (his friend was badly hurt as a result).
So, was he putting on an act or was the act an embellishment – a mythology of sorts– of his own life story and personality? You can decide if there is a difference between this and the fictional character. But keeping in mind Dali´s story, is then the fictional character many artists envelop themselves with, something wrong?
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Some will argue that, whether truth, embellishment, or pure fiction, in all cases this is just marketing. And if as such it increases your sales, it is ok. And it may well be so. But the fact remains, and my experience corroborates this assumption, that many artists do end up believing they are this phony façade. They end up playing out the character in their real lives, and to a certain level, they end up getting lost in their own concoction.
So what is the point then?
Very simply: Whatever you do, be true to yourself, or at the very least, try your utmost to keep true to yourself. You are an artist. You are someone whom, by definition, will follow what your heart dictates. And that does not mean you cannot work on your own mythology. If you think about it, your life –any life for that matter – is rich and therefore plentiful in “workable material”.
Your beginnings, your family, your place of birth, your life experience, your ideological bents, your personal attributes and your personal agonies. They all have contributed to your present YOU. Your life is the source of your own mythology, and it is also the fountain from which your artistic endeavors spout.
It needs to be put into an attractive order. It needs to become your life story almost in cinematographic terms. It needs that attractiveness that makes your story something to be consumed, in the good sense, like a good novel. In short, it needs to become a story that people can engage to and become close to, and by doing so, they will begin to know you, and will become closer to you and your art.
There is an old saying in marketing about not falling on the trap of basing your decisions on your own marketing. One thing is what you sell, which necessarily enhances your virtues in detriment of your weaknesses. Something else is believing in your own “enhancements”.
Falling into the trap of that “fictitious character” is part of the learning process. I see many who do fall and never get out of that hole. In the short term it may be fine and it may potentially be profitable as well. But in most cases it will not last. And what is worst, it will take you astray from your true self, which is in the end, where your art is coming from.
story almost in cinematographic terms. It needs that attractiveness that makes your story something to be consumed, in the good sense, like a good novel. In short, it needs to become a story that people can engage to and become close to, and by doing so, they will begin to know you, and will become closer to you and your art.
IGNACIO ALPERIN: THE ART OF THINKING OUT LOUD / EL ARTE DE PENSAR EN VOZ ALTA 