Monday, June 23, 2008

Name it and frame it!




...and what about "art"...so definite a term...so edged and crispy a little word..."art".

Lately, I think of art as I think of the word: God....too small a word for an endless, borderless, unimaginable process and not a "thing". God is life...life is active, organic...blah, blah, blah...you get the point.
This is why I dislike frames in big museum galleries. They strangle the process...the movement...the living flavor of the expression begun by a creator...they announce endings...and references. You've seen them. ..great masterpieces wrapped up in some horribly, ornately sculpted, golden frame, endlessly matted and shouting HERE! Who sat around thinking this is the way to show off the workings of prolific creators?! The very people that you'd think would MOST appreciate the importance of never minimalizing the artist...stamp it done and cap it's flow.

I am fully aware that some works are rather "sketchy" on canvas...and don't finish out so neatly...okay...but to tell you the truth, I'd still be FAR more fascinated viewing the frazled canvas edges as the artist left them (in motion) rather than visually challenging my perspective with a fortress of here's-where-you-should-be-looking frames!

I favor creating...not creation.

I prefer flow, not damming.

I want a sense of the cinema...not a dead movie poster.

Why do we think like this?? Does an artist even spend a nano second considering how a work might be matted...let alone framed? I think the answer is obvious....an "artist" doesn't.

People who want to "own"..."capture"..."exploit" and even just "relate" tend toward definition...closure...safe boundaries. Hmmmmm...reminds me of some religions... boundaries...confining dogma...creeds....exclusiveness...well, (another day).

Okay....clearly not realistic, but.....

I want to visit a gallery of "frameless heads on nameless walls", to quote a poignant songster. And I want to know artists who have never imagined a mat or a frame around their creation. And above all....I want to be appaled at my own thinking that in any way celebrates definitions.... the confining of a creation...yours...or your creator's. Don't name it...don't frame it!

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