Apocalypse ... When we hear the word apocalypse, immediately comes to mind the biblical message.
Nowadays and everywhere, we are living in an apocalyptic world.
Currently, the events that are happening around the world -wars, political persecutions, terrorist attacks, famines, slavery-prostitution, destruction – all of them, make us remember the Bible´s last book of revelations.
Jorge Rando, from the Museum, wants to publish this manifesto as a Contemporary Arts Testament, inviting all artists to participate, and give hope to those who suffer from dreadful human rights violations. We do it from the arts, putting forward a new concept of expression, which helps society to prioritize humanistic and spiritual values, and contribute to fight the worlds´ savage materialism that drags us, and lose our senses in our youth.
We wish that this movement, born from Malaga´s art scene, becomes a movement involving artists from all art disciplines: painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, music, literature, cinema, theatre, philosophy and communications ... inviting those in the society at large to fight side by side for a better future.
We can and we must stop this march or escape to nowhere. As artists, and for everyone who support us, we are obliged to our art. We must use our inner spiritual force in creativity to fight for true happiness for men, protecting Mother Nature and the continuous evolution of mankind; without neglecting humanistic principles, essential for the development of humanity.
Society in our days is moving to fast, that is the reason why we are convinced that art must push and some times stop some aspects of such frenetic evolution; or some of those changes in nature and in social policies taking place nowadays in different countries.
Art and artists should always keep on mind that we are a very important part of society; which means, that we cannot keep at the margins of the struggle for human rights. In its place, we must actively engage with our art to help to achieve freedom, justice and peaceful coexistence for all human kind.
Art has also been swept away by this apocalyptic tide of corruption and deceit. Human values have been swept away by rampant materialism, where the money-god is the governing force in today´s world. Art has been override by these false values, which transformed art into a product of the market. Art has also been dragged by this “addiction,” which spans over all humanity; that pursuits happiness based solely on material things, disregarding those spiritual values that should prevail in order to achieve true happiness, impossible to obtain without total freedom.
Artists should no wait longer for rebelling against this “epidemic,” which is devouring genuine art, which is in danger to be substituted by the so-called “art,” in which everything is allowed and aggressiveness and vulgarity rules. This type of art is produced by those who call themselves “artists,” but who were not born to be one, or those who want to dominate the “guided” art world, leaded frequently by those “despicable” people who only seek to profit from art.
Damn the art market!
True artists and all art lovers have to confront those people, with total freedom and the power of our work, as well as the continuous search of the true meaning of art. We must demand from those who promote art and those opinion makers, to be prepared and alert and not to be deceived by false art, neither to buy into mere illusions and mirages. Instead, we expect from them to analyse art with sound judgment, clearly differentiating it from art expressions genuine and valuable … In short, we expect them to be alert, and be careful not to fall in “bait and switch,” since clearly big dangers lie ahead if transmitting and spreading a mistaken notion of what should be consider as art.
Every current pictorial movement, and arts in general, are called to maintain the purity and freedom in art. They are called to restore spirituality, prioritizing substance over form.
In art nothing can be invented. The artist can only reveal or transform it, because everything has already been invented since the beginning. Up to now, art has always accompanied the evolution of the universe and human kind. Today, and in the time we live in, artists´ given talents must put to the service of society, in order to help recover those values largely lost. So the new technological and scientific advancements, human achievements, as well as to all material goods that we possess as society, are accompanied by spiritual values inherent in every human being.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the expressionist movement completely stripped from all the art brackets. We as artists, departing from the concept of new expressionism, do not want to break with the past, but rather open new paths of expression, supported on the foundations of liberty of thought and spirituality in Art.
PROCLAMATION
We want to proclaim human being´s spirituality, present too in everything else surrounding us in the universe.
We want art to be a pillar in human evolution, since it has always accompanied man from its origins.
We want the various governments that rule our destinies, to find out once and for all, the importance of art in the progress of the community. Thus, they enact patronage laws that benefit human beings both spiritually and materially, and bring great economic savings for citizenship as well.
We want, speaking from the arts and regardless of the type of government, help democracy to prevail in all countries of the world. Since, we believe that art must be democratic and artists are obliged to use democracy as a vehicle to achieve a better future.
We want, throughout our art, show the world everything that is taking place around us, so we all can participate, and not only in condemning reality, but actively fighting against injustices and horrors committed all around the world. We cannot remain indifferent to the problems around us. On the contrary, we have to contribute to solve them. Art neither can nor should it be isolated. Art is not restricted to privileged minorities. Art is universal.
We want to fight the dictates of the market, and follow the cue given by freedom within the creative process. Let each artist chooses his/her own means of expression using his/her own language of expression. Do not allow that the art market and its miscellaneous people; guide our work and tell us what we have to “do”. We must keep those critics and opinion makers that consider themselves “sacred cows” away from art, and give voice to art critics and opinion makers who behave with honesty, wisdom and love to art. So they contribute to the independence of art, and artworks become valuable because its merits, and not due to those added supplements.
We want the “isms” gone. Lets not allow broad concepts in art to become seized by specific movements that appropriate universal meanings for describing some kind of “evolution” in art. All kind of art needs to have a preconceived concept of what is to be accomplished. The word conceptualism belongs to all and every one of the artistic expressions; thus we shall not assign it to a explicit “form of interpretation” of a specific artistic movement.
We want to be inflexible with the fundamentals but flexible with the ways and means. Freedom in the use of artistic language is paramount to our work. So, let trace our own path and search for it, but do not dig deep into it. Allow that the spirituality within our labour help to accomplish genuine creativity, so everything that comes out it, could be accurately described as an artwork.
We do not want to break with twentieth century expressionism or any of the artistic movements that have preceded us. Instead if we want to promote the rebirth of a new concept of expression for the XXI century, our work should contribute to transform the apocalypse that we live in, into hope now and in the future.
We want that the work that comes out of our artists´ hands is not the result of digging into the more difficult, what no one has done so far or plain provocation, but the result of a job well done, consistent with wisdom, freedom and compromise, essentials ingredients in the creative process.
We appeal to museums to leave their premises in search of people, so people can come inside.
Currently and in accordance with the era that we live in, we want museums to be convinced that they no longer have legitimacy by themselves, realizing that its legitimacy is given by the society.
Let artistic expressions reach everyone!
We want our workshops to be open to all artists, who wish to participate in this new concept of expressionism that we are promoting and spreading.
We want to divest and to strip of all type of academicism, although we have assumed it, since we must present ourselves pure and unburdened before the process of creativity. In purity freedom is found. We want painting to strip from all their symbolisms and attachments. Each painter uses the line and the colour that the canvas demands, with no code that dictates their standards. Hope can be painted in green, as well as in black. There is no specific meaning for colours and e shall not be rules for it us.
We want to free the line from the composition and categorically restore within the creative process its entity; lets liberate the line, even from the hand that handles the brush. The line that we are referring to, it is the one that together with the colour stain make up the picture.
We want to position drawing in the place where it should be in painting (at the core), as we have always defended, since its spontaneity is very close to the spirituality inside the artist.
We want to be VORREITER (trailblazers), walking always ahead, at the forefront; we do not want to go back or long for the past. Instead, we want to recover what has been lost along the way, due to the rush of getting there first, sometimes even at the cost, of dispensing some the necessary aspects of the lengthy process of creativity. In this society of wild consumption, we do not want art to become a commodity of “use it and throw it away”.
Among all of us lets defend ART!
Everything moves because of love; loveless painting is just colour without a soul. For the artist, the conjunction of love and freedom is essential in order to grasp the philosophical concept behind the artwork to be performed. This process of inner thought, takes the artist to the theology of creativity. That is the eternal quest that will plant the seeds in order for genuine works of art to blossom.
We must flood the world with painting, sculpture, music, poetry ... art must swamp our cities; so culture and human values take precedence over everything else.
I want to paint life.
Jorge Rando