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Preface. The text, which accompanies my works in the following overall presentation is a continuous narrative, which goes beyond a description of my art as it relates to a philosophical
field of discussion relevant to my approach in art. Due to differentiation, which is necessary to formulate the issue and argumentation I draw a wider circle, expressing my esteem
for philosophy and reveal how art contrary to my conception relates to my reasoning and views.
I hope you enjoy reading about the underlying intellectual reality of my works.
Introduction. Art has a voice but is wordless in itself. And still art speaks to us and goes beyond where words end. Making art is the expression of pure feeling and inner experience
aspiring to some non-definable higher goal beyond the material world. The art I create is ahead of me. It makes visible my inner view and the intellectual subjects I am concerned about.
The intellectual approach by describing art in words, on the other hand, reaches out and touches us to open our minds and awareness’ for the particular work of art and evokes the feeling
and meaning that is breathing within this work of art. The most precise intellectual approach on art is, of course, philosophy, the discipline which precisely knows how to express new
findings and insights or even create and make intellectually aware what has been indiscernible up to that point and thus creates art a second time by making art intellectually tangible.
If I talk about my own art, I can only do so in widening the perspective to the thinking of twentieth century art. Arthur C. Danto’s lecture on “The Abuse of Beauty” is the basis for
the intellectual analysis from which I may take quotes as reference to my own thinking.
The writings of the analytical philosopher Arthur C. Danto are equivalent to becoming intellectually aware and bringing to full light what may have been a shadowy, indiscernible feeling.
Danto opens up the inner world, the inner life, the pure breath of art. He takes up new thoughts, new conclusions, which unveil art and lets you walk right into the art discussed,
lighting art to the living entity that art really is.
Danto’s “The Abuse of Beauty” is of particular subjective relevance to my works because Danto discusses the relevance of beauty in the course of art history – and in particular,
he discusses the revolution of visual arts early in the twentieth century and how beauty fell out of grace, was hidden, attacked and ‘abused’.
As I strive for beauty in my art or I should paraphrase it by saying art strives for beauty in my works, I feel the necessity of discussing beauty from my experience and feeling
embracing the long way beauty has gone from being attributed to be the essence of art to “good art must not be beautiful”. There is a need to establish beauty in art in new light,
new significance and in minimalist character.
In order to work out my views and impart my own reasoning on beauty in art, it is necessary to flash back on the concepts of art in relation to beauty in a holistic approach
prior to discussing my own works in detail.
“Whatever happened to beauty?” Danto asks at one point and continues “There were two thoughts, on the very first page of [Hegel’s] work, which became deeply stimulating to me
when I began to ponder the philosophy of beauty. One was the rather radical distinction he drew between natural and aesthetic beauty, in the very first lines of his text.
And the other was his gloss on why artistic beauty seemed “superior” to natural beauty. It was because it was ‘born of the Spirit and born again.’ That was a grand ringing phrase:
Aus dem Geiste geborene und wieder geborene. It meant, as I saw it, that artistic beauty was in some sense an intellectual rather than a natural product. […] I began to think
that the beauty of an artwork could be internal to it, in the sense that it was part of the artwork’s meaning.” [Quote Danto, ‘The Abuse of Beauty’]
Beauty and the twentieth century. During the history of art – in the course of the 20th century – beauty was questioned, broken, destroyed, or “abused” as Danto phrased it
and moved “from taste to disgust”. Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselle d’Avignon revolutionized paintings with an impact last experienced with Giotto. Dada abused beauty ‘to
punish the bourgeoisie for its decision to go to war, consigning to their death millions of young men on the battlefields of Europe’. Copying visual appearances was superseded
by a reality, which brought out the inner truth about a sujet rather than its appearance and art had become political. And there is a third dimension to the transformations in art,
which has been closely connected to beauty in art – mainly the elements of morality, goodness and the sublime (roughly summarized).
“It was the moral weight that was assigned to beauty that helps us understand why the first generation of the avant-garde found it so urgent to dislodge beauty from its mistaken
place in the philosophy of art. It occupied that place in virtue of a conceptual error. Once we are in position to perceive that mistake, we should be able to redeem beauty for
artistic use once again. […] Had it not, for example, been for the artistic avant-garde in the twentieth century, philosophers almost certainly would continue to teach that the
connection between art and beauty is conceptually tight. It took the energy of the artistic avant-garde to open a rift between art and beauty that would previously have been
unthinkable – that, as we shall she remained unthinkable long after it was opened, largely because the connection between art and beauty was taken to have the power of an a priori
necessity.” [Quote Danto, ‘The Abuse of Beauty’]
Painting had come to a head in academism and was entrenched in its rules and shallow values while society was shaken in the aftermath of the Great War. Beauty in art was so
highly separated and diverged from reality that Tristan Tzara’s statement “I have a mad and starry desire to assassinate beauty …” seems to have been the only reasonable thing
to do. Beauty was dethroned and remained a matter of avoidance.
On closer examination, however, I wonder whether beauty was the source of ills. The constraints set up around beauty were solidifying beauty to a lifeless, meaningless,
shallow, and spiritless shell deprived of life. It were the constraints of academism, the constraints of the expectations of society on art, after all a society which had lost
touch with the inner truth of the values they upheld.
“Whatever happened to beauty?” Art is a truthful thing, so art got rid of falsity – and beauty was imprisoned within. Thus, ‘assassinating’ beauty and changing sides
from beauty to ugliness, distortion and even disgust, at the same time ran over and destroyed the limits and boundaries set up by values inseparably associated with beauty.
Beauty was once declared to be the essence of art. This was a high esteem, but at the same time this aspiration confined beauty. Associating morality, goodness and the sublime
with beauty is reasonable - from the point of view of these values. But beauty itself may argue that the beautiful is simply a state of being – as beauty in nature is a natural
state of things and beauty of the universe simply is; beauty simply is. If so, then the other side to the story relating to the periods of absence of beauty is that these periods
have eventually released beauty and have set her free to reinvent herself and get back to her source – purified from all aspects of morality, goodness and the sublime and any
constraints that had tied her down and be re-born.
There isn’t anything final in art: ‘beauty is the essence of art’ is not the final thing, just as ‘beauty dethroned’ is not the final thing, ‘abstract art’ is not the final
thing, just as ‘figurative art’ is not the final thing – whatever art aims at, it is part of an endless chain of ‘becoming’ and ‘being’ – and the moment the development peaks
at the height of anything new, all may seem final, because of the overwhelming impact of ‘the new’ – still it is not the final thing; in the end all is part of many links
making a long chain of processes and developments.
Sujet. Firstly, there is the woman as main sujet throughout my portfolio – the body and close-up portraits; single figures, single portraits for unique individuality of each human;
and there is the element of ‘thinking consciousness’ [German: ‘Geist’ for which there is no equivalent in English]; ‘thinking consciousness’ is the definition for ‘Geist’ taken from
the German ‘Duden’ and is translated literally; it gives an idea of its depth that goes far beyond 'mind' and is not tantamount to 'spirit' either, although both are involved as well
as the invisible and the non-material.
Appearance and beyond. In their appearance, the bodies, and heads of the women I paint are veiled in beauty, grace, and an erotic aura. These women demand space for their being,
their thoughts and contemplation. They live outside time. There may be something challenging in their pointed attitude speaking the language of placidity.
I express feelings, thoughts and attitudes through female beauty and aesthetics, which give a clear statement that these women neither need to explain nor to proclaim anything,
but that they naturally and self-evidently take an important part in the world and these women do not need to change in order to be what they are: Womanhood does not stand in the
way of being strong, self-confident, independent, intelligent, and free. I consider strength, self-confidence, independence, intelligence, and freedom as beautiful aspects and they
are expressed through beauty that goes beyond appearance.
The beauty of these women is subtle just as all inner qualities are communicated in a subtle way – they are soft and calm not loud.
Style/Approach/Concepts. The figures convey a feeling of energy and subtle emotion. Through the powerful and immediate presentation of the human figure and the
close-up view of female faces (in paintings to follow) the figures are allowed a broad intellectual space and freedom. Colors are vibrant and opaque on the one hand,
or they are reduced to shades of brown and grey, black, and white; restrained monochrome shades or chiaroscuro, all supporting a feeling of ease or conflict and contradiction.
The abstract elements – although widely spread and obvious, seem to stand back in the overall painting and support the complexity of humans. In the process of painting, all
elements I add to the space surrounding the figure are created in the intention to ‘add to the figure,’ to support the figure’s essence, being, expression; all shapes, forms and
shades are designed to actually be in touch with the figure, be part of the figure as if her inner life, her inherent being is brought to full light. There is no background as
such – there is the mere overall intricacy of the figure.
Conflicting dark and light parts and depths are balanced by the appearance of the figure because our contradictions are never really obvious.
The inner view. No way of explaining the blossom of art and the deep-down experienced knowledge of the vital necessity for art being around – any pondering that goes with it,
any fallacy, any bit of truth that may become visible within and is gone the next moment. Art changes the world – it does so all the time. We are not aware of it; we could not
explain why it does if we were asked. If art were removed altogether, the heartbeat of the world would suffer disruption. We would be left in the cold, asking art to give us shelter.
The process of making art takes place in a room that is next to the room of the world. The window is wide open as to watch what is going on, but not really being involved – not during
the time of making art and transforming into creations experiences, notions, thoughts, feelings or conclusions. The process of making art and the reasons for making art are beyond
explanation or one could say they are as natural as breathing – I do not think about it, I simply need the oxygen.
Where writings on art discuss thoughts and follow the line of an intellectual approach, there is something even deeper than reasonable and logical thought:
True understanding and comprehension is a feeling that can actually see – this inner eye is embedded by imagination and
linked to a feeling - a 'seeing feeling' - a window to perception.
The new light of beauty. The beauty of art following her times of abuse (to stay with this phrasing) is different from the beauty before these movements.
"In order to find in what way beauty can have a role to play in the art of our time, we shall have to free ourselves from the Edwardian axiom that good art
is categorically beautiful. It is an achievement of the conceptual history of art in the twentieth century that we have a very much more complex idea of artistic
appreciation than was available to the early Modernists – or to Modernism in general.” [Quote Danto's 'The Abuse of Beauty']
I highly appreciate these epochs during which art moved into directions where abandoning beauty had become a mere side-effect and breaking rules was replaced
by absolutely new and original approaches on art as to push the boundaries, identifying insincerity, dismantling values, which were not lived upright. And what
was destruction first, turned out to nourish art and society where it had gotten stuck in limitations.
Morality belongs to the world and is limited; beauty belongs to the universe and is endless. Morality may go with compassion, but beauty goes with love and neither
love nor beauty need to be instructed nor can they be
Change. Change has always been one major desire in all approaches to art – may it be style or may it be intellectual transformation. Any artist of any one epoch in
art history intended to surpass the artists of the former epoch – they changed their views, their style, their emphasis. The means of the ugly is the provoking,
in viewing society and politics unworthy of beauty and goodness, and the means of beauty is lifting us up to a higher view, as if our ephemeral lives needed to come
to a halt for a moment, so our emotions may become calm and our minds clear.
The inner experience of timelessness and calmness is a state of mind in which solutions find their way to us. Timelessness, calmness, contemplation, and the
need for a wide space around us, in which these qualities can come to life, are key components in my art, which express women according to these features.
The female figures in the paintings are strong enough to stay indifferent to any disturbances from the outside in order to reach calmness needed for contemplation
and deeper insight. Deeper insight into things is achieved through asking questions and thinking – becoming conscious of the power of questioning, thinking and
imagination which give way to the new ideas. Instead of adapting a way of thinking that has been set up in the past, women may contribute to innovation through promoting
their own ways. Following a path that has been walked before is not freedom.
The female presentations put forward the idea that women may compliment the material-oriented structures in today’s lives with ‘Geist’-oriented structures.
‘Geist’ also employs creativity and imagination. Freedom is born in the mind and is inherent to the spirit. Whatever action equality may require, all actions
that are driven by a mind that actually is free will outperform any activities of a mind that wants to be free. It is crucial to find the limitations and hindrances
to freedom. A free mind that takes on responsibility adds so much more beyond setting up equality: it actually adds a positive element of how things will improve through
women in their own and new ways along with their own and unique skills and talents. It takes freedom and courage and great arguments following the line of logic to create
innovation and bring innovative ideas on the way.
Proving a female approach to finding solutions and confirming female thinking, reasoning, methodology and tactics in an attitude that supplements the world. The inner world
of women differs from the inner world of men – the inner world of thinking, methodology, tactics, and attitudes while embracing the laws of logic are hidden values that need
to come to light. Confirming and establishing the courage of women to stand up and enforce their own ways and win through self-confidence gained by the journey of creating the New.
This is a complimenting approach, not a rivalling approach: We can make a great uniting entity rather than creating a separating entity.
Translating contradiction and conflict into painting. The painterly aspects of contradictory and conflicting elements of shape and form and line or the strongly figurative
against the absolutely abstract go beyond and reveal a contradiction, which is part of us all – which is a fight we are fighting within our minds and feelings. The dissonant
elements, however, are not obvious and convey an overall harmonious feeling. We are not really one with ourselves. We are in conflict with ourselves in various aspects.
The beauty of these women is not perfect beauty, this is not the ideal or the sublime and neither is there any reference to morality. There is imbalance and chaos – although
not obvious. The paintings walk the path from imbalance through chaos and finally cover all elements to convey a feeling of harmony.
“Nelson Goodman, set aesthetics aside in order to talk about representation and meaning, this was not done with the expectation that we will return to aesthetics with an
enhanced understanding. It was done, rather with the awareness that beauty belongs neither to the essence nor the definition of art. But that does not mean that aesthetics
belongs neither to the essence nor the definition of art. What had happened was that aesthetics had become narrowly identified with beauty, so in ridding art of beauty,
the natural inference was that we are in position to segregate the philosophical analysis of art from any concern much taken up with natural as with artistic beauty.
[…] We have, rather, a new appreciation of aesthetics possibilities, including a fresh way of thinking about beauty itself. […] The difference between beauty and the
countless other aesthetic qualities is that beauty is the only one that has a claim to be a value, like truth and goodness. The annihilation of beauty would leave us
with an unbearable world, as the annihilation of good would leave us with a world in which a fully human life would be unlivable. The pressing philosophical question
then is what is the appropriate connection between art and beauty?” [Quote Danto, ‘The Abuse of Beauty’]
The outer world is a mirror to us, just as people are mirrors to us. Art is a mirror, too and “Beauty may indeed be subjective, but is universal,
as Kant insisted. […] It connects with something inherent in human nature, which would explain why aesthetic reality is as important as it is,
and why aesthetic deprivation – depriving individuals of beauty – should have taken on the importance it did in the artistic agendas of the avant-garde. […]”
[Quote Danto 'The Abuse of Beauty']
Depriving art of beauty belongs to the art of the avant-garde of the twentieth century around which a highly intellectual circle of thinkers and philosophers
was established along with great many galleries who promoted art unknown to the public for the reason of confronting the public with the new, the provocative,
the astonishing, the devastating but overall artistic approaches, which were created with so much willpower for change in art and society and our lives – these
times were on the height of intellectuality in all areas of culture and art, all were out for change, be it modern dance, music, literature or sculpture and painting,
these were times of sophisticated philosophers and writers and literate public figures who were sincerely engaged in social accountability. It was an era of an
intellectually thinking consciousness engaged on a common well-educated ground. This art is where we come from today. And these are high criteria to preserve and uphold.
Change, on the other hand, is inevitable.
Art is a mirror. Art is a mirror that has the power to transform. Viewing art leaves a trace in the mind, in the consciousness, in the spirit – which we may not be
aware of, but which has an influence on us, nonetheless. I painted this fact of art mirroring us, in mirroring the beauty in ourselves, which ‘connects with something
inherent in human nature, which would explain why aesthetic reality is as important as it is”. There are two sides to the story of humans.
When a face or a figure in my paintings is depicted surrounded by a frame, which is obviously a mirror because the element standing in front of the table is reflected
as is the table itself, then who is the person in the mirror? Since there is no other reference point, the person reflected must be the viewer himself, showing that
within each human beauty is affluently present. It is important to be in touch with the element of beauty within us and it is important to be reminded these beautiful
elements exist. It is one half of the path for finding our true selves – which may seem a cliched and stereotyped statement on the surface – but which is
nonetheless a true and important path to go. On reflecting ourselves, we will see the opposite (the dark side) even clearer, when viewed through the beautiful.
The dark side doubtlessly exists, but we are detached from it when contemplating the dark side through the eyes of beauty, which makes it more likely to control
it and to understand why it needs to exist – at least to question why its existence is unavoidable. The true self is beautiful, and it is universal to all humans.
So, on returning to the painting reflecting the viewer himself, if it is the viewer who is depicted, it is a depiction through the transforming powers of art as well
as a gentle reminder of beauty within us. We ourselves are the roots to change and beauty is one of the keys.
Intellectuality and spirituality. Intellectuality of the 20th century has given way to spirituality in the 21st century – this is my impression. The twentieth century
intellectual sophistication is not part of our lives as it used to be. The ‘Geist’ of those times has gone – which is not surprising as all epochs have had their peaks,
which declined to give way to something new. The aspiration has changed and where in the past there was ‘one movement’ following the next, now we live in pluralism.
Our approach as artists has become strongly individualized. This stresses even more the importance of an overall concept which reaches out to a general statement,
which touches us all, because it is of universal validity. “Beauty may indeed be subjective,” but why then does Kant insist that “beauty is universal”? Danto gives
the answer by concluding “it connects with something inherent in human nature, which would explain why aesthetic reality is as important as it is […].”
Running wild or why beauty might be a “true thing”. The beautiful appearance of nature is due to the underlying principles of nature born from laws inherent to nature.
Nature is not made of ‘objects’ that are beautiful empty shells. In breathtaking beauty, the universe brings into existence galaxies, star clusters, supernovas,
galactic mosaics featuring billions of stars at different stages of life – all due to scientific laws – internal universal truth. Maybe from here one might go one
step beyond and state that beauty is truth, because beauty is the outer reality of nature and the universe due to the inner, eternal laws.
Since the medium of painting lacks the element of directly reaching out to the intellectual mind as literature and lyrics do, it has the great potential
and capacity of touching our inner being – consciousness, subconsciousness, our emotions and the feeling, the unknown of our inner world, in a silent
approach. We are given the opportunity to stop thinking without any efforts. We are given the chance to observe and melt with the object of observation.
The silent and non-visible energy of painting that draws us into its world is a powerful argument for employing beauty in art which in the wider picture
embraces all we strive for.
Beauty of world is superficial, beauty of the universe embraces all.
On intellectual level my art reaches out to people to become more aware of the worth of thinking and contemplation. Thinking, contemplation, and imagination are keys
to insights and insights are what raises lives beyond daily business. Thinking and contemplation makes us aware of our complexities and contradictions and affirm our
right to be as complex and contradictory as we are. Thinking may be wild, or it must be wild in the initial stages. Thinking does not imply following what is already
in existence but creating the non-existing or what is outside our awareness yet. Later wild thinking may return to logic and reason and argument, or it must return
to these pillars. It is not black and white – and it is not grey in between either. It is all colors. Light and dark, but still colors.
Enlightening the fire of inspiration within the viewer may be a way of touching the sources where the elements of our curiosities, enthusiasm, questioning power
and courage are born. Art teaches and educates us. Art confuses us, forces us to take a second look (or a third). Art lets us go through drama. No matter the picture
or the concept, no matter the path. Art is about us.
On the other hand, my work in art also has a strong emphasis on painting itself – painting for the sake of painting and for the sake of being a painting – containing
all painterly elements – be it flatness and solid form, perspective, color and depth, contrasts, chiaroscuro, boldness, and softness, abstract and figurative – after all,
the elements of painting are the instruments for manifesting a new and unique reality on the canvas, which is capable of creating astonishment, admiration, sadness, joy,
puzzlement or creating a new thought. In the process of the work, the paintings evolve, new ideas evolve – so all moves and will keep moving into directions unknown to me today.
In the beginning of making art seriously, I was strongly drawn to classical Greek art and the Renaissance. I still refer to the renaissance for models for my works, in
particular to Michelangelo’s monumental, massive, and powerful sculptures. I take these sculptures into our times and while the earlier works show classical elements
for the most part, later my works become increasingly ‘modern’. I paint the pictures in my mind, and all happens for a reason, which we are not always capable of
interpreting. To me art happens.
The sensation of freedom is what we feel when we are in touch with our inner, deep awareness. Art can provide the world with a momentum that touches our most inner jewels.
Art has a timeless or eternal character – no matter its style, no matter whether the ugly and disgusting criticizes with the aim to touch awareness of ignorance by creating
shock waves to break through the barriers held up inside of us or whether beauty chooses to touch love within to overcome ignorance by creating insights, which are achieved
softly through the ‘instruments’ of love and empathy. Our goals are the same. Any art that choses the ‘ugly’ and does not breath ‘Geist’ is just an empty shell as
any ‘beautiful art’, which creates beauty without breathing ‘Geist” along with any intellectual and mindful acquaintance to humans, the world and its issues.
Beauty is not the appearance of beauty, but the ‘Geist’, the thinking consciousness, which creates ‘reality’ on the canvas. The world and its issues are in its
core humans and their issues – after all it is all of us together who create this world.
“The highest responsibility of the artist is to hide beauty”, John Cage once said. But all that is a plea for one thing and excludes another thing (or the opposite thing),
does not constitute the whole thing. Today’s pluralism in art – on the basis of the cultural heritage of twentieth century art – gives way to letting one side be a mirror
to the other. It is experience made from antagonistic views, which makes up a brilliant, unified entity. It reflects today’s necessity for acceptance and appreciation
of “the other,” “the opposite,” “the different”, “the strange”. Apart from provoking society by setting up a mirror reflecting the prejudices, distortions, narrowmindedness,
greed, injustice and violence, there is also the other side of people and society, who take broad and complex views, who seek solutions, who reflect on opposing opinions.
Current Affairs. The young past has given evidence of a long chain of exceptional environmental catastrophes, social and political upheavals involving human suffering,
terror, and war. Leave alone the fact that all is embedded by the world-wide pandemic crises. All descends upon us, and the life that we reach out for is blurred until
it vanishes altogether and for a moment all that remains is the memory of a dream. This dream, however, is part of our true substance.
“If consciousness disclosed only unrelieved disgustingness, we would wonder why we had such an endowment. The world of sheer disgustingness would not be one we would
wish to be conscious of lor very long, nor for the matter live a life that would lose its point without sunlight. […] Beauty is an option for art and not a necessary
condition. But it is not an option for life. It is a necessary condition for life as we would want to live it. That is why beauty, unlike the other aesthetic qualities,
the sublime included, is a value.” [Quote Danto, ‘The Abuse of Beauty’]
And although a true value is already existent, it needs to be re-born from true feelings and minds and it needs to be established to become reality in our lives.
Beauty in art is a true reality opposing the world in a soft, subtle, and silent approach and pouring into the world the gentle scent of challenging solutions and
change from within ourselves.
Thinking takes us to the essence of all things; and essence is a realm of beauty.
All quotes included in this narrative have been taken from Arthur C. Danto's lecture 'The Abuse of Beauty'.
© This narrative was drafted in September 2021 by Anwar Taimuri. All rights reserved.
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