Johannes Itten 

A teacher at the famous Bauhaus school, he was in charge of the mandatory foundation course, which would give you an understanding of the essence of the Bauhaus ideology before you approach further education at the school. Bauhaus manifesto says, ”Architects, painters, and sculptors must once again come to know and comprehend the composite character of a building, both as an entity and in terms of its various parts.” to see all the parts that are working towards one goal, to blur the line between artist and craftsman and together build the future with no class-distinction. Bauhaus was a radically different school, with goals of solidarity and knowledge and Itten was introducing and selling the pedagogic. In a new form of school, there was a new form of teaching, Itten would incorporate meditation, breathing exercise and physical moments to optimize creativity. Itten later developed a colour theory that is still used today.  

The painting above we find beautiful not only for its colour but also for its logic. The red in the painting is well balanced. From a purple field, a line goes into a spiral, going to orange, yellow, green, grey, a scale of green-grey and in the bottom right blue. 

It’s a journey through colours, a journey through the three-dimensional colour sphere.  

Developing a more profound colour theory, Itten was working withe the colours as its own 3D space, a globe, a sphere of colour if you will. This demotion of colour came to get rules and properties and today we know easily how to navigate in colours, finding complement colours and understanding how is now also easy, thanks to Itten. 

Martin Creed 

Louisiana Channel. Martin Creed Interview: Things that Don’t Add Up. Available at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYNSii75-Ns  (2018)

Tate. Martin Creed’s Work No. 850 | TateShots. Available at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U8Fl45-DFw (2008)

Matthew Silver 

Matthew Silver’s Awakening. Heasrtpocalypse w/ Matthew Silver (love yourself vine guy). Available at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRV_eiUy4GA&t=139s (2017) (Accessed )

Salvador Dali

Taylor, M, R. god and the Atom: Salvador Dali’s Mystical Manifesto and the Contested of Nuclear Painting. Available at: https://thedali.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/proceedings-TAYLOR-en_edits_12.19.16_final.pdf

Chris Burden 

BBC Art (2017) shoot and crucified: The extreme art of Chris Burden. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2S05hw48t0tpcnS03yqvrfp/shot-and-crucified-the-extreme-art-of-chris-burden (Accessed 22 November 2019)

Art Story. Tracy DiTolla (2019) Available at: https://www.theartstory.org/blog/artist-chris-burden-is-more-extreme-than-you/ (Accessed 22 November 2019)

Burden (2016) Available at:https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=12&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjYjMWExYXmAhWIYcAKHbHyDl4QFjALegQICRAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.netflix.com%2Fes-en%2Ftitle%2F80113784&usg=AOvVaw0ov9G48ByL-jA_ZMVjLJe8 (Accessed 23 November)

body art 

Heinrich, F. (2012) Flesh as communication — body art and body theory. Available at:https://contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=633 (Accessed 20 November)

sport

Folk, K. Contemplative Fitness (2013) Available at: https://eudoxos.github.io/cfitness/html/cfitness.html (Accessed 28 November 2019)

mindfulness

Young, S. What is mindfulness (2016) Available at: https://www.shinzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/WhatIsMindfulness_SY_Public_ver1.5.pdf (accessed 2 December) 

fredrik söderberg 

Söderber, F. (2016) Everything Entity http://www.fredriksoderberg.org/exhibitions/koelnpress.html (accessed 25 November)

johannes Itten 

image: https://www.bauhaus100.com/the-bauhaus/people/masters-and-teachers/johannes-itten/

Arsdale, S, V. Johannes Itten the art of color. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20020415141417/http://dezignare.com/newsletter/Johannes_Itten.html 

https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/113857/interior-of-johannes-ittens-color-sphere/113941

https://web.archive.org/web/20020415141417/http://dezignare.com/newsletter/Johannes_Itten.html 

Bauhaus 

https://web.archive.org/web/20081208025710/http://www.bauhaus.de/english/bauhaus1919/manifest1919.htm 

books 

Beer, R. (2003) the handbook of Tibetan buddhist symbols 

the poetic edda 

David, S. Emotional Agility_ Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life-Penguin Books (2016) Accessed: 2 December 2019

image 

British library https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/asanas-and-mudras 

 Crucifixion (corpus Hypercubus) by Salvador Dali

A modern retake on Jesus Christ on the cross. The body of Christ is ascending from the cross, the cross is a Hypercross with a representation of a Hypercube (a cube in four dimensions). Think of it as a folding out Hypercube or Tesseract, taking it from four dimensions into tree dimensions, ending up with eight cubes and if arranged properly, in the form of a cross-like structure. In the same logic applies on a cube, take an object from three dimensions to two dimensions that can for a cross with six squares. 

The white Jesus is centered in the picture and behind him is the cross itself there’s a horizon stretching far away under the feet of Jesus. In the left down corner, we see Mary Magdalena half the size of Jesus. At the bottom of the panting, there is a tile work in black and white, holding a shadow of the cross.  

 

To form the perfect cube.

Supposedly a cross is needed, arranged with six equal squares. 

This is the body that holds Christ’s consensus.

Dali in his later career became fascinated by nuclear science after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The knowledge that man is withholding the power to evaporate a big city, burning it up in a fusion of radioactive blast. 

 

Heartcalypse 

A Doomsayers shifts in consciousness by Matthew Silver and Trey Kirchhoff

Hell on an Earth, doom’s day, judgment day, Ragnarrök is approaching. The clock is in the eleventh hour! Again and again, the end is often the topic of prophecy which some believes and some profits from it.

In this theatrical video, we see Matthew Silver in the role of the crazy profit spewing words of the apocalypse. In the fast pace metropole of New York City. The end is now in a radioactive mutant infested word. But maybe the only one here who is the preacher of Silver’s character is a mysterious lady with the emotion of pity for Silver in her eyes. Her Compassion and love prevail the fear that is preached. When the Doomsayer sees this Angel on several occasions, he is confronted with his fears, he hallucinates scary businessmen and a corn-god (bearing the cross on his back). Through the forced act of facing his fear, the Doomsayer gets the epiphany that the end equals a new start and the Doomsayer is reborn with love consciousness. 

 

sorces:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_(Corpus_Hypercubus)#Gala 

https://thedali.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/proceedings-TAYLOR-en_edits_12.19.16_final.pdf  

My brainstorm for my thesis.

It seems natural to research artists who explore the topic of meditation. Perhaps look at the difference in how art has been viewing the meditation.

My art tends to have a religious or spiritual connotation.

For this reason, I always thought I should have more knowledge of old masters like Johannes Itten, Kandinsky, Kupka, Mark Rothko, Paul Klee, and Hilma Af Klimt.

But I feel also very much stuck in my practice I have been trying to incorporate my body more in my art. Some of a few artists working with their body are Matthew Barney, Matthew Silver, Chris Burdan, and Frank Yank.

Many of these artists, working with their bodies, are also bordering into art about spirituality.

life and death

Spirituality = self-fulfillment  ??

Because it would be funny.

A sill image of the performance directed by Martin Creed, Work No. 850. People running one by one with thirty seconds intervals through the museum. Creed was asked by the Tate museum of art if could make an art piece for them. Creed saw the big space as an opportunity for a race track in the big rooms of the museum. 

Running, in general, is something that stands out, a shock, an urge to give way. Exhibiting what you don’t expect, something so foreign as running put in the context of a context as a museum, a context similar to a library. A Place where we have so many behavior rules. It puts the museum into a theater where perhaps there just been a robbery or they are chasing each other.

Running making a contrast from everting still. in motion, the opposite of stillness. The contrast off the still and the moving is a deeper reference to the dead and the living. Running makes you feel alive, the body produces serotonin, dopamine you even get happy from it. Running from something, running from your problem seems like an impossible task, instead of running is very meditative, if you are just casually running thoughts about the day will go through your head or if you really push yourself your staying in that momentum of thinking (tempo, breath, right foot, left foot).

---

If running is being alive, Frank Yong turns running to a Suicide recipe with adding a bottle of whiskey and a pack of cigarets, in his performance Suicide 2. Youg is for a second-time performance Suicide this time with a bottle of alcohol and tobacco isted of milk and bananas. Yong is running back and forward on a track and each time back hi is drinking from the bottle. with the cigarettes in his hand hi is smoking continuously when hi gasping for air. Halfway through the bottle and third-way through pack of cigarettes, Yong is already very much deteriorated and later hi able to finish the bottle,  the pack of cigatettes and then going for a final sprint back and forwards resulting in him throwing up for a second time, surviving Suicide 2.

”One of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. Alcohol and cigarettes are the only two drugs legal in most countries to fuel the rat race. Ironically they are more addictive and self-destructive than most illegal substances.” Yong is applying our few legal drugs in a way exploiting the toxicity they hold.  Drugs that distract us from our day to day world the one time in the month, the only time when you allow your self to act outside the frames of convention.

At the very end of the video, we see Yong laying dead and still on the asphalt vating for the bird to eat his dead carcasses.

Paris

It has been 130 years Eiffel tower is the well known dominant of not only Paris but the whole of France. It was built as a manifest of industrial progress from wrought-iron. When the plan of this remarkable building was published, a big wave of criticism among artists was raised. Names as Adolphe Bouguereau, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Gounod, and Jules Massenet were signed under the petition against “Artist Against the Eiffel Tower”. Some of them changed their opinion after it had been constructed, some hadn’t. It has been as well an inspiration to many artists, first movie taken shot on Eiffel tower was Slumbering Paris by Rene Clair in 1923. Many light projections and laser shows were performed on this legendary tower. First of them was in a year of the opening were red, white and blue signals rotated around the tower and reached 11 km. To compare, for a New Year’s Eve of the millennium there were two light beams with a reach up till 80 km. Regular light shows on an Eiffel tower is not the only art connected to this monument. Robert Delaunay created the Eiffel Tower series of paintings. Not to mention the cheesy movies located in Paris to always show the perfect window view with Paris dominant and kitschy glamour fashion style of recent days.

There have been 11 replicas of Eiffel tower today. The oldest one is placed in England, three can be found in the USA, one in Japan, two in China and in Czechia, Romania, Russia and Lyon by one replica of the famous Eiffel Tower.

 

Tianducheng

Not far away from Being in Chain, you can find a replica of Paris and the Eiffel tower. Is this what happens when communists don’t know what to do with their money? China is failing hosing construction, building megacities to create jobs but do not have a demand for housing where they built. Tianducheng is one of China’s ghost-mega-cities, was this project trying to make an attractive city by replicating western Paris?

Inspired by the western ideas through western architecture, or providing the lover middle class of China, it brought the opportunity to visit a fake Paris. There is a Chines phenomena, for whatever reason, of replica city, there are more than just two in China. There is a Parisian, a Veniceian, an old English town, a Swiss village, an Italian village and more. Small or big, iconic places from Europe and the world, replicated, ripped off and made in China. The attraction could be getting that nice tourist and not to mention wedding photos that Chines wedding cupels all way get early in the morning. Now, it is even possible to not have to leave The Peoples Republic of China to get does stunning wedding photos.

To emulate, someone is one of the biggest gestures of admiring. At the same time coping someone can be most offensive. Still, architecture itself holds values, status, singe of progression and also ideas. Ideas of what is possible, what is a beauty the small cultural difference (example) of a pointy arch and a round arch. The threat against Communist China is the knowledge of more than one idea, the acknowledgment of different cultures is an acknowledgment of different ideas.

Las Vegas

From modernity we got Las Vegas producing casinos representing all the corners of the world, making a mini world in the desert of Nevada. All to attract people and tourists how are ready to spend money. The biggest statement this Eiffel replica makes is: try out our French cuisine, the French make the best food and we make the best french food. A shallow replica for a casino maned Paris this time whit a clear purpose.

Extra pictures of some honorable mentions.

Fredrik Nietzsche:

Looking at the world, the state of consciousness can be present in different stages or levels. In an ordinary level, things are practical and are valued for their function. The level of an artist’s consciousness would be at a different level, objects are not valued for their function or purpose but instead, they are valued for the ecstatic qualities. 

Life itself would gain purpose only by looking at the world with an artistic consciousness. 

While seeing an object you get your first impression, your basic consciousness. This is followed by questing it, creating a perspective from several angles. Perhaps, does the object look ecstatically pleasing? This leads us to the third level of consciousness. Again questioning why but in this case it is: ”why do you like or dislike the object? What  part of you makes your opinion?” This is making you more appreciative of ordinary life and more understanding of other people’s opinions.

(Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle wheel, 1913/64) 

Two familiar objects put together destroying any function they previously had. Frost to be looked at from a new perspective, a higher level of consciousness if you so will. 

Jacques Lacan:

Understanding people is like to understand how the person was formed. The human goes through a mirror stage at six to eighteen months of age. Until this period a child won’t be able to identify the reflection in the mirror as itself. A person will also separate himself from his mother and designate his identity more (the ego develops) and the interference of the father in this process directs the person’s desires. 

The world is driven by people’s desire rather than a reason. It is needed to recognize your own desires. Then the person can understand the subject through the symbolic, the imaginary and the real. Understand the message, not the person.

(Salvador Dali, Galatea of the spheres, 1952)

This painting by Dail reflects on how life is build up by endless numbers of small particles. In the time of the development of nuclear power and atom-bombs. But I think it is a great representation for all the history that is in a person, History that could have taken many different paths. A see-through view on the history that defines us 

Gilles Deleuze:

Deleuze is embracing creativity in sociology, politics, education, and art. He sees the world is unpredictable. Deleuze rejects rationalism and states that philosophy should bring forward the answer to ”What are we doing?”. We shouldn’t bother with the question: ”What is there?”. 

Deleuze wanted to free the individual from the Modernist social structure. To free one’s identity to let it flux, to embrace difference, impermanence, contradiction, non-identity, and simulacra.  

(Rene Magritte, The son of a man, 1964) 

In this painting, everything is clear of what is there, more interesting is what it is doing there. the peculiar position of the apple making the man in the picture anonymous and we can’t say much about the person in the picture, maybe nothing more then, we see a son of a man. 

Jean Baudrillard:

Life is simulated! We are given freedom in a form of illusion, the choice between baying a red car or a blue car, this car or that car. In our society, we are rather fed a simulation of reality, through TV then experience it first hand. The notion of being in a simulation would prudes panic in society but TV and entertainment, hyperreality is suppressing this notion and reassures society of reality.  

(Frank Yang, I don’t like nature, 2018)

In our reality, many are following the societies norms and preconceived ideas. The avatar in the picture plays on this and makes contrast trough out the picture. The intellectual with a violin, the stupid with muscle and the virtual reality in the middle of nature. 

Michel Foucault:

Philosophy is a tool to help people overcome de suppressive nature of dominant and controlling institutions. Thinking for your self brings confidence and rational ethics because you can argue for your thought you can be confident in them. This gives power-structures a new edge in favor of the common person. Power, knowledge and the body, these three are Foucault’s trinity of a power structure. 

(Frida Carlo, What the water gave me, 1938)

Can we restrain the mind? Foucault’s study of prisoners shows you can constrain the mind, being within high security the sense of all ways being surveilled becomes present. With even this I believe your creativity, your imagination has the power to liberate you to levels the physical can’t impose itself on. 

Modernism vs Postmodernism.

(Mikhail Larinov, Red and blue Rayonism (Beach), 1911)

Above you can see an example of a Modern artwork from the Russian movement Rayonism. The author, Mikhail Larinov, created his artwork on canvas with oil paints. 

Modernistic art is well defined, with clear boundaries, but still, we can see an influence of Cubism, Orphism, German expressionism and Futurism. He followed the latest scientific discoveries as x-ray and radioactivity, the Rayonism means exploring the fourth dimension of the world. In Rayonism the Russian identity is present. The pre-revolution atmosphere is mixed with tradition and national unity. Because Russia was under a communistic influence, mass consumption and marketing weren’t present in Larinov art. Mass culture, on the other hand, must have had an influence.

But even, when tradition and nation unity is one of the characteristics of modernity, the other one is individualism. And the artist should know who he is and keep his original identity in every artwork. For Larinov that we can see in his technic and in the style of main subjects in his art. Another important characteristic of modernism is controlled order. Larinov is following rules of Rayonism and that is his way to fit in the Modern box.

Science is the main developer of progress. It is a true engine for civilisation and its growth. Larinov uses a base of science – nature for his inspiration. In his art, there is a clear difference between humanity and machines. 

 

(Richard Hamilton, Just what makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?, 1956 )

The collage of a Pop art genre made by Richard Hamilton, is showing us the author’s opinion on a consumption life. Several brands and their famous products are present on this art piece and next to ”perfect” bodies like from a commercial, are the biggest eye-catchers. In a consumption life, it is important to buy the cool stuff, and it is not the product, what a consumer wants, it is the brand. Two persons are naked to remind the viewer of the cult of the body that is walking hand in hand with consumption life. As on a TV on a background, the lady is the most concern about her exterior. Nudity is the new fashion and thanks to media it is becoming a part of ordinary life. The difference between pornography and body cult is blurred. Hamilton is showing with his satiric style, how we are absorbed with commercials and can’t get rid of its influence. It is everywhere. 

Post-modernism criticizes the hope of what was given to progress and technology. It failed us. Expected is unfulfilled. The can with ham is bigger than the dishes on a table, it doesn’t make sense, what the technology created for us. Does technology really serve to us or we to it? Hamilton is making this point in the vacuum cleaner on the stairs: ”ordinary cleaners reach only this far”. But who needs to carry even longer vacuum cleaner? That is not the point, right? The point is to have the latest model and the most known brand. Consumption life all again.

The flat, what Hamilton shows, is a home of a couple. A wife, taking care of the household, preparing dinner and watching a favorite channel on TV. But that is not her only identity. She is also a sex-bomb, like the TV star. In extreme, she can be described as a porn star. The husband, coming home from work bringing the perfect gift for his wife, ready to sit to a dining table. Is that enough? No. He as well has to have a perfect body according to the latest body cult and be ready to satisfy his wife whenever and wherever. Common´ nobody can be such perfect like a cyborg. And that is their life, that is what is happening at, like to be, personal home, with the sound of the latest music and the TV programs with the best ratings. Just an ordinary life. Just this life is not theirs, it is life according to a manual prepared by a society.

To place Niklas Jannborg among painters who are reflecting on the same topic as he does, you would first be cheerful not to set him next to the more (perhaps) popular artists in the topic of spiritual art. The contemporary spin on surrealism “visionary art”, what could be described as slick and flashy, is mostly depicting a hyperrealistic surrealistic scenario inspired by the tranquil and happy experience of psychedelic drugs. Mr. Jannborg´s art is more expressive and less rendered, it has a base in a formal quality of painting, with an emphasis on brushstrokes, gestures, layers, and textures.

Art depicting life struggles, a panic-like atmosphere 

Mr. Jannborg told me, in his first year of the basic art program, he early saw no point to try to depict in a realistic matter. One reason, he said, was that he would never be the best in this even among his peers, and the second reason, not striving to an academic art form, brings artistic freedom and in the art itself we see more personality and the influences the Niklas Jannborg had in the start of his art education. Mr. Jannborg continued, hi naturally looked up to his classmate’s building friendships and exchanging ideas about art. At this state only focusing on the idea of formal qualities in art and just that, what looks good? The topic of the art was secondary the important thing was to evolve, push one self’s skill and emotion. 

Spiritual art, more like a spiritual fart. 

Bread in bread out… Is what Mr. Jannborg says hi wanna inspire people to do, or to bring awareness too. If people where more mindful people would be less stupid, Mr. Jannborg says and chuckle proudly. He describes to me similarities between mindfulness and painting and tells me how painting, as well as meditation, has a lot of misconceptions, it is not all about stillness, peace, and happiness. Mr. Jannborg gives me the middle side of meditation, hi passionately tooled me how you have to think about it close to or like a religious practice (even many people call themself spiritual to be in a gray zone) because it is about self-development, facing your demons, being conscious about the now, your most dominant thought and practise in good and in bad. The practice should be not to give up when it’s hard or discard a painting that is bad but to go throw the problem. Perhaps stay in the pain to see what causes it, like the painting, we can have simple problems, with simple solutions but they tear on us if we keep or selfs distracted from them.