Manifestos
The Prophecy
● Mani was the first artist/prophet who widely used painting as a medium for spiritual purposes, mainly to illustrate his cosmogony.
● A good painting whether conceptual, landscape or portrait should be a reflection of the painter’s belief system. If a painter doesn’t have an authentic belief system, his/her paintings are of no importance.
● A canvas that has been painted for money or fame isn’t worth more than a tablecloth.
● What makes a painting everlasting? The answer is nothing; the universe with all it’s little and big paintings will inevitably collapse one day. One should not occupy his/her mind with such a naive question too often.
● Painting is intrinsically a two-dimensional medium. When a three-dimensional object is added to canvas, it’s not painting anymore; unless it’s just a thick layer of paint.
● Objectively everything is colorless. Color is an illusion made by visual system, therefore a good painter should be a good illusionist.
● Color wise and texture wise, traditional painting is incomparable to digital painting.
● Painting supplies that contain animal products should be avoided.
● History of art that mentions Jackson Pollock as one of the great artists of history but doesn’t include Siah Qalam is deceptive.
● This manifesto is not fixed; it changes and evolves with time.
● Vincent van Gogh was not merely a great artist; he was a humble prophet who preferred painting to preaching.
One of Us Must Be Mad
Art history could do better without 2nd half of 20th century and early 21st century western art. The average is a pile of crap. The pace of their industrialization has been much faster than their too fussy but too kitsch art developments. WWIII might do all of us a favor! I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t relate to this nonsense. I don’t blame anyone who relates to this nonsense either, otherwise they would look like a 19th century moron who doesn’t relate to post-avant-garde-nonsense.
● Ambiguity can be good, but not to the point that makes every meaning possible and therefore meaningless. I have more respect for a blank canvas.
● If the intention of Pop “art” was just to become popular, it has done a great job.
● Used palettes look more beautiful than most of the abstract paintings; and I’ve chucked lots of them out.
● A camera has been taking much more realistic pictures than any photorealistic or hyperrealistic paintings, and much faster. I thought Realism was killed, how did it reincarnate as something even more absurd?
● Still Marcel Duchamp’s urinal is the best conceptual “art”. It prophesized what-is-it-all-about before it all began.
● Digital “painting” is good, for those who don’t want to bother with painting.
● And this AI “art” is the latest nail in the coffin, on which they are dedicatedly busy banging. An “art” that is made by Artificial Intelligence is artificial, obviously.
● Meanwhile Eastern art has mostly become a rumination on the corpse of a mystical beast, or merely a frozen plant-based burger.
● If you suffer from lack of content, keep changing the book cover will help to keep you in the market.
● You can’t judge art – that’s true – but you can judge whether it’s art or not.
6 May 2024 – last edit: 27 June 2024