The Art We Love to Hate - 2013.8.15

Once again, the summer into which all year long I have projected plans, ideas, intentions good and bad, a priori filling it to far beyond bursting with oceans of freedom and continents of unclaimed time, has passed like a flicker.
First, I moved my studio. A smart move. And a battlefield of wanton and deliberate destruction, compacting about 150m2 of studio into ca 20 m2 of ex-bedroom. The extreme down-sizing does not scare me, it's just rather tiresome walking into unsuspected walls, or tripping over the little furniture that is left.

But I am slowly getting the hang of it. The move itself and the year-long preparation are now a distant memory.
For all the trouble, I rewarded myself with a visit to Brussels, to the retrospective of Giorgio Morandi. A great, humble painter. He is one of those who help me accept the limits of my new studio. It seems so glaringly obvious, once you've seen the paintings, that it is possible to create a universe with merely a few bottles and tins, that you wonder why noone else is doing the same.

In fact, in the aftermath of every Morandi retrospective, tens upon hundreds of artists are so smitten, that you can see derivates everywhere, from painting to photography, for months on end. Unfortunately, these enthusiasts only ever attempt to emulate the 'good taste', the esthetic effects, and never touch the core.

Had Morandi ever been motivated by the search of Beauty, or good taste, he would never have created the silent, eloquent, singing works that he has.
All the more regrettable that the curators of Beaux Arts have once more subordinated the raw material - the paintings -, to their silly and superfluous agenda.

Curators are eager to prove that they're worth their salaries. That is not always a good thing. No way will a curator simply hang the works in chronological order, that would be far too easy, and smack of sloth! No, he/she spends sleepless nights conjuring up some 'concept' within which to accommodate the paintings, thus giving the exhibition 'meaning'.

Screw the paintings, they are merely instrumental. This curator has arranged them within 'thematic'groups: landscapes, flowers, still-lives..., adding exactly NOT A THING to the exhibition, except a load of confusion with the spectator as to chronology and evolution.

Another issue which one day wil cause me to die of heart failure, or of an unnecessarily violent suicide, concerns the layout of the exhibition. I know that most works on paper must be protected from direct sunlight. But can someone please give me one tiny good reason why oilpaintings, tableaux de chevalet, must at all times be kept as far away as  is inhumanely possible from natural light?

Years ago, there was a Morandi exhibition in Bruges, in the beautiful high-windowed stately rooms of the Groeninghe Museum. Let the paintings come to life in the light that pervades the work of the Flemish Primitives, and see what happens? Not a chance. Curators prefer electric lighting, the confounded idiots.

The Musée de Beaux Arts was designed with ample glass roofs for the benefit of exhibitions of painting and sculpture. So what do the curators do? They block up the sources of natural indirect (!) light, and bring in the spotlights.
Fact is, they hate painting...

And no, I haven't quite finished.