Added Apr 19, 2012
Contemporary Art Bahia.
Contemporary Art Bahia.
It is past time to talk about contemporary art production in Bahia, as we know not everything that is produced in the present moment can be described as contemporary art. Remember that the main feature of contemporary art is its proposal to reflect on it, is the work that forces us to rethink its materiality, its existence leads us to an effort to critically analyze visual theory known.
The contemporary aesthetics - aesthetics as part of philosophy that studies the beautiful - is not interested in shock, not the news you want as the vanguards sought precedents, and it seeks to offer the strangeness, requests and encourages the questioning of its interpretation and language.
She appropriates the images that are generously offered all the possible ways, giving new meanings to these significant, without limits or rules of theme, quality, cultural significance or other, find them mostly in everyday life.
Why is it so difficult to understand the art of today, we live in a historic moment of change of values and habits in a dizzying speed, this stunning linked to poor definition / understanding of what contemporary art is creating a fertile ground for the emergence of opportunistic all species, which, when allowed to give, exhibit and sell their works of art pseudo-stimulates, unworthy and provoking criticism, mockery and irony of society that is suspicious of his intentions, or even worse actually creates a market millionaire frauds, fallacies and unbelievable tricks.
Especially in the Bahian art market, artists and reputable obvious artistic value, live with adventurers, opportunists, and others that make up both the large group of artists that although they have a production quality feel priced out of a market eager for news that the realize that contemporary art is becoming a commodity increasingly sought the halls guide their choices by the apparent contemporary works, indifferent to the history of the artist, which is essential to its legitimacy and recognition, abandon years of hard work in search of a technical improvement, the development of their research in desperate search of easy recognition, or a seal of Contemporary Artist, or aesthetically correct.
We must recognize that there is a pernicious and contradictory policy in dealing with art today that deeply affect the art market in Bahia, on the one hand contemporary artists who have had their names revealed in the halls and galleries supported by, won their markets and can sell their works with relative ease, on the other hand a select group of modern artists dressed contemporaries sometimes keeps its markets since more than 30 years, the dust trail of them follows a large group of poor artists, amateurs, and good artists out market.
It's time to talk seriously about this issue, find ways to catalog and select the entire current production in the state, divided into groups of style and technique, seeking to set market values, to guide its production, and finally try to put some order in chaos for the sake of art and culture of Bahia and its artists.
The School of Fine Arts of the university certainly embrace this venture would be a way to discover unknown true values we can provide an opportunity for mature artists to keep their entire investment of years of work and not necessarily continue producing contemporary art, but art of quality, quality which has no direct relationship with the style or season, but with the seriousness with which his work is conceived and executed.
A work of art is recognized by the energy it emits, for more than teorizemos from Vasari to date, although it is very Cartesian, have not found a reasonable explanation or definition for / emotion I feel when confronted me with a true work of art , whether primitive than 30,000 years ago or a contemporary work of complex reading, this emotion, this shortness of breath, like falling in love with the true, is what I like in art.
Celso Cunha
Sculptor and professor of Visual Arts