Wednesday 23 March 2011

selfportrait iconoclasm by sandpapering out




















Another three stages of a self-portrait photo which is destructed with rough grained sandpaper. It is more or less precise executed within the contour of the head. Therefore the background in the photo stays visible as a room. Do we call a photograph figurative? There are photos which are abstract. Figurative images are constructed in stone or with pencil or paint. A photo isn't a construction, often a photo isn't a construction but something captured by chance. Even though a lot of styled photo-models are posing during photo shoots in what is construction of images on a high level, those photos we don't call figurative photography.
Does it matter, figurative or abstract images? Yes, it matters. Abstraction to figuration is superior, abstraction thinks. God had no stature, shape, form, figure nor posture when he spoke to Moses on the mountain Horeb, therefore figurative images are inferior. Plato posits that reality is an idea of the higher unknown. So a figurative image is an idea of an idea and therefore unnecessary and superfluous. For Plato and Yahweh it isn't allowed to play and entertain with figurative images because it distracts from the world of ideas and will lead to idolatry. Figuration is inferior to abstraction, abstraction is superior to figuration.
Still we feel this distinction, in art we work with this distinction.
Malevitsj, Mondrian, Newman and Reinhardt are superior to Magritte, Picasso, Dali and Duchamp.
Magritte, Picasso, Dali and Duchamp are inferior to Malevitsj, Mondrian, Newman and Reinhardt.
Magritte, Picasso, Dali and Duchamp is entertainment for the bored "looking for stories" junkies.
Malevitsj, Mondrian, Newman and Reinhardt is pleasure and delight for the spoiled "longing for emptiness" addicts.

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