The purpose of purposeful art

Why I do

Preface

Art is a language. As such it must bear purpose, as any other verbal language. It’s sole purpose is to communicate, communicate a message, a meaning, hence communicate its very purpose.
Purpose dictates means and technique, it translates itself to content which dictates the formative language. Hence purposeful art and the natural birth of Infographic Art, that utilizes the tools and the conceptual essence of Infographics to help form art works.

I discovered that I have no better language than the one of art to express myself with. I like shapes, I like colors. I dismember and analyze the world particularly through my eyes. Art gives me the ability to express complex abstract concepts and philosophical outlooks in an everyday and commonly accessible language.

For the sake of purposeful art, one must define restrictions and boundaries in order to make possible the conveying of a focused content within the absolute spaciousness of art, and therefore in my works I create a system of visual expression that uses a certain color and formation scheme, which are intended to convey notions and messages that are abstract in nature but specific in content.

Strata of purposeful art

I believe in inspiration as a source for any form of art and I experience emotions as the propelling force of the content that inspiration supplies, but the function of the intellect is not lessened in importance. There has to be harmony and balance between the impulsiveness of emotions and the order of the intellect, otherwise any instinctual action performed by the common beast could be characterized as a work of art. A work of art is realized into creation by all strata of all the energetic forces of the mind.

Purposeful explanations

I try for my art to speak for itself, but still I feel that there must not be any doubt as to the ability and possibility of the viewer to understand my point of view.

To me, the innate guidelines and essence of purposeful art dictate the diagnosing and explaining of each of my works. If you’ll want to delve into the work and understand it, you’ll read otherwise, move on – no one will force you, but you will know that at least you have the option to take the guided tour and penetrate to the true depth of the art work and try to undergo the experience of it, as did I as the creating artist, but nevertheless be left with room for your intelligence to curiously intervene.

It is true though, that in some cases an obsessive compulsion not to leave even a single square millimeter of the artwork undocumented has taken over me like a terrified devil, but that mostly happened pertaining to artworks which brought to the world a totally new approach in expressing abstract concepts and it felt imperative to me to explain that new language. Anyhow, that is also an inseparable part of my creation and evolution as a human being and another layer in realizing my mind contents into the level of the visual display.

I know that the art language I use is not supposed to be understood by everyone and it will be rather presumptuous of me to expect that anyone will have the will and the patience to delve into my spirit to that extent, as if he or she were passionately in love with me. Only God does that and no one had yet been born who can understand me as thoroughly as I understand myself. This is a superficial era and I am a deep person. These are facts.

Why others don’t

The first reason

Speaking of which, not too long ago someone said to me: “you’re unusual. Artists do not like to explain their work”. I contemplated this a little, I felt it for a while and now I think that there could be three reasons for that: the one is that perhaps they don’t have anything to explain and not because their work is so obvious but rather because there is no message, content or purpose to their art work except for it being the documentation of some momentary caprice of their mind or some attempt to express a certain perceptual characteristic, or perhaps a form of mere aesthetic pleasure.

The second reason

The second reason might be that they are simply not capable of it. They work exclusively or almost exclusively under the burden of momentary urges at the worst case, based on vague intuition at the reasonable one and on the basis of lucid intuition at best. They have not the consciously aware accessibility to the creative forces which are active within their minds and they are not willing to admit it or are not even aware of it.

The attitude of such artists, along with the worshiping of the institute of art critique, to anything pseudo-new only out of fear not to miss as they did not only once before, as in the case of Claude Monet which was one of many famous examples, perhaps created some sort of a consensus, that an artist is busy creating art and not in the diagnosing and criticizing of it. Picasso even warned once by saying: “is there anything more dangerous than being understood?” Nevertheless, Picasso was a true artist, cocky as a peacock but deep and unpretentious, as well as of a unique and secure perception of what is art, or at least of what it isn’t.

The third reason

The third reason might be plain condescending. The artist readily assumes that anyone and everyone are supposed to plunge into his head and understand exactly what was it that went on there, and of course simultaneously utilize the knowledge of the theoretical guidelines of art along the ages, and thus learn to truly and deeply appreciate his perceptual interpretation or the message he tried to convey.
And as I already stated in the article Characteristics of Cubism, Futility of Technique, one who neither possesses the casual ability of reading minds nor the necessary theoretical knowledge of art, will be forced to enjoy the work of that artist in one of two ways only: either through the enthusiastic impression of others, meaning through his artificial and handicap attempt to belong to the group of those who “understand art”, which in itself might be an assembly of chronically insecure individuals who do not “understand art” themselves, or through his own private experience, which is probably the best way to understand art anyway, not to mention to enjoy it. However, he will probably lack a deep and profound insight to the artist’s psyche and to the message he tried to convey through that particular work of art.

Unemployed art critics

Personally, I don’t think that there is anything wrong in being understood, although I understand the bad side of it and consciously experience fear because of how it might harm me. It’s possible that many art critiques enjoy the challenge of diagnosing and criticizing works of art because that is their only active connection to the world of art – this witty intellectual lookout – inasmuch as they are perhaps not capable of being creative artists. Take away from them this pleasure and they might remain unemployed and stripped of their social niche in that world upon which they so desire to shade. They might hate you for being that which you are and start criticizing you instead of your works, for being banal, boring and blunt – the antithesis of avant-garde.

Nonetheless, not everyone are Picasso and I feel that in most cases, the artist simply assumes that if he’ll “make it” in the art world, there will be enough art critiques and art dealers from Madison avenue, that will do their best to explain why so, because it is not possible that he “just made it” by the sheer force of good karmas of the past or because God said so – there has to be a concrete intellectual reason for that – and so, they will start doing for that artist the job of introspection and self-contemplation, the job of knowing and understanding himself.

Now really, why purposeful, why art?

I explain to you so that you can understand the message. I want you to understand the message because I want you to understand me. I want you to understand me because I want you to buy me. I want you to buy me because I am lonely. I am lonely because I am a megalomaniac. And life is beautiful.