Ceci nest pas findigart

Why Ceci nest pas?

The artwork Ceci n`est pas une pipe by Rene Magritte, is all about the treachery of perception, about the automatic conditioned mechanism of our dualistic mind. That’s where I take it anyway – it’s a spiritual issue rather than a psychological or a physiological one. So the same way Ceci nest pas une pipe was meant to challenge that conditioned perception of seeing a picture of a pipe and saying: “That’s a pipe” rather than realizing that it is only an image of a pipe, so does Ceci nest pas findigart challenges the perception of modern art in general and of digital art in particular. findigart is not all them other digitized nonsenses of shallow-age art.

Emerging from fear

Conservativeness

The artwork emerged from the fear of conservativeness, for perhaps there exists the misconception that digital art isn’t real art, but rather another way to pass free time with fractal technocracy, computerized simulations of this and that or visual mumbo-jumbo of imaginative landscapes and other folly, which are shallow, meaningless and purposeless although they require high technical proficiency and many hours of labor.

Loneliness

The artwork emerged from the fear of loneliness, for perhaps I will not be able to take shelter in the desired shade of the consensus umbrella of the art critique institute and the renowned gallery and museum curators, only because I am not classically schooled in the theory and techniques of art and that I don’t have any interest in paints and brushes.

Classic tradition

The artwork emerged from the fear of the classic tradition of art, for despite all my enormous respect towards it, I don’t have the need to pace myself, heel by toe along the individual furrows of all the artists of the past, just because ironically, these were accumulated over time into academic curriculum, aristocratic living room chats and pompous self images, that lean upon punctilious intellectual and technical expertise concerning the history and definitions of art along the ages.

Indeed, strange and wretched is the infant who waits until he is able to intelligently observe the walking patterns of all the babies of the past, then turns to imitating their styles, one by one – only to take the first step for himself, naturally as his body guides him to. I believe that if a human being was to plunge into the entangled depths of all the practical, anatomical and philosophical conceptions concerning the nature and essence of walking from point A to point B, he would have gotten confused and panicked and would have never been able to take the first step. The weight of all the opinions and beliefs of the past would have paralyzed his primal instinct as to his own force of will and his ability to direct it, and as to the natural capacities of his own body.

The good fortune of Zenon was that he learned to walk before he learned to think, and the ones of babies is their lack of conscious awareness, which allows them complete attentiveness to the forces of nature.

Ignorance

The artwork emerged from the fear of ignorance, for they might not understand or even know that art is the nature of the mind just as walking is the nature of the body. Inspiration cannot be learned at the Ecole des Beax-Artes and intuition does not develop by reading books or by technical training. These only give a background of perspective and fine tuning of guidance, and focus a mind which is already tuned to its purpose.

The real origin of art is the origin of the self-conscious being, meaning the absorption capacity, the extent of sensitivity and the lucidity of concentration of the mind. You might say that if one has a soul of an artist and a heart inclination towards art, then art reveals itself to him as a result of the practice of meditation, more than anything else. Therefore, when I have something to say, I just say it, naturally and in my way and my way only.

Self-defensiveness and frustration

But fore and foremost, the artwork arose as a conditioned reaction of self-defensiveness and frustration. When it comes to defending myself from ridicule and hostility I feel like the most trained person in the world, and when it comes to the consensus not recognizing and reckoning with my abilities, my opinions and my work, I feel like a barrel of explosive. Perhaps I was an ostracized artist in one of my previous lives and now I am returning to my old skilled and sophisticated habit patterns of defiance whenever I, in some manner, approach that Art which threatened me so in the past and turned my life into a constant battle for the survival of my wounded ego.
But I do not bear a grudge – just give me a reason to forgive and prove thy honesty with golden pennies, so that I’ll stop being so damn suspicious…

Security of art

Captivity of relativity – Freedom of infinity

So that’s the way it is then: that same wall that protects from the invasion of others also prevents the exiting of the presently contained. The cage might be expansive, sophisticated, polished, sterile and furnished with characteristics of liberal pretension and pseudo-individualism, but the containing spaciousness is infinite and natural. The man is reduced into a formational schema of eroded aggressive definitions (sharp angularity), wrapped together with a cold hypocritical outline, and anyway creates for himself a reality to fit these definitions (similar patterns appear on the couch, cat etc.). The expressions of the spontaneous and the natural are only evident in that which is artificially made (the sphere of classical art), and the only freedom is within the boundaries of handicap (the swinging cripple). The tidy formative contour cracks where there is not a sufficient amount of self awareness, hence spiritual awareness, to sustain hypocrisy (the cat).

Choice of slavery

The vast unbiased sky visualize the symbol of the first choice of Man (apple) and their mute declaration (storks) penetrates the realm of art, the residence of the truth and honesty, which shines constantly and is not affected by anything. Of course, we are always welcome to choose to go outside into the freedom of truth and creativity (ladder and rope), but a familiar prison cell intimidates less than strange freedom (spider webs).

Backlash of evil

But despite it all, the attempt to express criticism towards the art establishment (a demeaning version of the art classic Diskobolos (discobolus) of Myron) collides with the criticism of the subject of the work itself against its creator (the thrower is throwing a keyboard instead of a disk), against the artist. Perhaps this is to draw the attention of the critique to the fact that out of every rule there is an exception – I only have to look around in order to realize that. Also, the entire scene depicting the narrow mindedness of classic art is confined within a modern computer monitor, as a symbol to the fact that I myself am not free from mental fixations concerning what is or is not art, only they are modern and they are mine.

A thank You

Certainty lies within the graceful gift and the silence of the stork. I couldn’t have done this without them… thank you (only after the fact did I realize that storks are actually mute, and only after talking to my mom did I gain the perspective of the skies also symbolizing heavenly grace on top of everything else).

Know thyself

Everyone whom is a bit knowledgeable about one’s mind’s contents, knows that recoiling is the complementary emotion of attraction as disgust is the complementary emotion of passion, and that the greater the one is, the stronger it projects upon its complementary and nourishes it with strength and vitality. An enormous passion I have towards art and a tremendous fear from it do I possess. Art is the ultimate femme fatale and the art critiques are her numerous wooers, with whom I have to compete.

As I broaden my auto-didactic education in the wonderful yet threatening infinite realm of art, so increases the reasonable possibility to submit to the impositions of fear of being a gentle, sincere and lonely vanguard Don Kichote, and as a result to become a vision-less mass of fixated knowledge, as the desire to prove my expertise in the known field of art increases.

I

If so, I am the conservative sentry armed with fixations of condescending panic. I am the fearful slave whom with allegiance and sanctimonious disposition carries out the duties of conformism. I am the rebelling individualist who is fed up with the burden of furrow. I am The Master, The Ruler, The Artist who conveys a new aspect of the infinite. Pleased to meet you, I am Ilan Lichtnayer and this is findigart.