My creation is based on the emotional and individual feel of the form transposed into the sculpture and color into the painting. Spontaneous action such that expresses my spiritual condition in the current moment strongly while I am in the process of creation. The creation is a strong reflection of of my feelings and emotion which I push into the work in the process of creation.
In each of my creations whether its a drawing, painting, or sculpture, The observer can discover all the best, important things which have to be in any classical contemporary piece of fine art. Namely this includes the idea of composition, form, climate, mood, physical balance of the artwork, light and space, personal interpretation of the given subject, and most importantly the aims, and strivings which the creator want to show. In the process of creation the artist has to use his professional knowledge, understanding of how the artwork has to look, today, technique, feeling, imagination and emotions of experience. Therefore a masterpiece is born which is a reflection of the personality of the artist and his condition in the moment of time in which he is working. The artwork is like a certificate of memories with all the above mentioned values imposed on the creation by the artist.
Stoian Atanasov Valkov
About Me, My Creation, and Art Today
I am not a known and acknowledged artist in any town, state, or country even though I have been living and working outside of my native land (12 years in Poland, and 25 years in USA) for a total of 37 years. This can be one of many reasons for why I am not acknowledged by my own personal human fate for which I am responsible. I am never among my own people and always alone. I am not actively existing in history in the world of creation of art namely here in New York City, the city which today still is one of many important centers of contemporary art with itself countless galleries and museums. I am not claiming that I am a great artist, and that I discovered something great. But I have been creating since I graduated from University of Curie Sklodowska in Lublin to right now without pause. I have everything to be a well-known and famous, acknowledged artist. I have an art education and concrete knowledge of this area. I have uncovered my original style and my own welding technique. I gained a high art level in thought and creation. I am a master of basic classical criteria of understanding requirements of today’s contemporary arts in drawings, paintings, and sculptures. Always I am myself. I do not copy, repeat, or imitate anyone’s work. Sure I got some influence from my favorite professors’ style and art direction, but I always try to be original and to have my own interpretation of the style and subject of the art. It has to be synchronized with my own thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Always I am striving to push these values into my creation. When art work has these values it is truly art, not simply a beautiful decoration or illustration. I know my value as a human and as an artist. The art works which I created are original. From the beginning of my creation I was competing with the best artists. I succeeded and I want my art and creation to be much better than my favorite great names from the history of contemporary art in the last 100 years. I know that I am still not famous, but I also know I am a great artist in the process of creation. For a long time I am scrutinizing, watching, comparing and valuing the great artists and I am getting confirmation whenever I visit the many museums and galleries of NYC that of the many wonderful art works none of them are like mine. More than 33 years of professional treatment of my knowledge of history of the arts starting with my student years, go deep into University of Maria Sklodowska in Lublin, Poland and now here in USA where for more than 25 years I had the possibility to know the original art works of many artists who I learned about during my time as a student. I am delighted to watch, scrutinize, and examine original art works of different artists, and trends. I was learning history of the arts all over again, but this time not from a textbook with black and white photos or from lectures of my favorite professors, but directly standing, watching, observing for hours in galleries and museums of NYC the many original art works from today’s time. My attitude about art today is bilateral. All those things which I wrote above give me possibility of correct concept understanding of the arts, to get high art level, possibility to discern good from weak, bad creation, to discern and estimate to discover my way. I am delighted from museums such like Metropolitan Museum of Art, in which we can see art works from all times, continents, from the first activity of humans 40,000 years ago to our time. I am delighted at MoMA where we can see modern revolutionary Avant-garde from the beginning of the past century and their ground breaking transformation in the best new manifesting into abstraction in 1950 especially here in NYC. I am delighted from so, so many other museums which has not step back so much by scale and value of art works from Manhattan and this district. All those things influence me to build correct and concept oriented history of contemporary art today. History of contemporary art today boil down to different concept, direction, style, famous names the correct understanding, orientation, knowledge, is a problem for many. It is difficult also for experienced artists to find themselves in this ocean of concepts with contradiction of ideas between themselves. That is why I have not only the opposite attitude. I have also negative attitude about arts today. It is my disappointment, pain, sadness, disagreement, to many artists and their creations activity where seeing lack of concept for creation of art today, disappointment of without idea art works, creation and creator which often we see also in famous galleries and museums. So often in galleries and museums we see not exhibitions with fine arts, we see “Discussions of the Artists”, “Conversation with Artists”, guest speakers, film and video installations, and music presentations. This activity is for poets and writers who recommend their book during literature nights. Nights of poems and writers I inspect see art work and instead we see computer arts we know for that specialize in unsurpassed specialist of moviemaker from film arts. I also inspect shocking three dimensional contemporary sculptures. Instead we see installation arts. Sometimes in this installation art we see all the street garbage which we see in our everyday lives especially in New York City and New Jersey this like ordinary view of lifestyle of American society. Of course the creators of this installation art try to give other meaning to this street garbage and things of everyday use in life, but frankly it is so dull and uninteresting. Art does not have anything different from what is considered its opposite – posted Lotringe Sylver, a professor of philosophy at Columbia University. In the gallery and museums so often we can watch performance art, the theatre is a wonderful place for that. For if I saw this installation art in a different place I would never even consider it art. It began of course from Marcel Duchamp and the catchy slogans such as “Everything is Art” and “Everyone is an artist”. There are far more names and bright minds such as Joseph Beyus, Andy Warhol, and today’s Jeff Kooms, Dominic Hirst, Takashi Murakami, virtually all conceptualism especially pop art. Me personally I have feeling, everything is mixed there are some things mistaken about different kinds of art are change their place, part, role, that is why because leaving it as traditionally assigned to the area and constantly annexing new areas: science, politics, and more in everyday life. And yet something essentially seems to die in it. Writes Marcin Gizycki in the book “The End Then What?”: ‘Coincidence is not lost for lack of what is important?’ So leaving it as traditionally assigned to the area and constantly annexing new areas are strongly expanded field of possibilities. But contemplate the occasion of the concept of art disoriented often discourage buyers, completely false criteria which always were used in assessing and distinguishing good from evil works. Today’s art work is treated as a commercial commodity. Millions of dollars. There is no place for any traditional ethos of the artist: inspiration, idea, technique, message.It is vulgar undisguised business. Domination new art up to the complete renunciation of the classical paradigm. Brush, canvas, chisel, or stylus would completely go down in history. Art ultimately bad of life and eventually triumph concept art workshop. The art permissive and even encouraging the continuous stretching in the past and the processing of what was intended first. “It seems to us that there remains nothing but an endless retrospective of what preceeded us” wrote John Baudrillard. Peculiar expression of that exhaustion are enjoying in recent years, more and more popular in the arts so called repetition. Developers decide on the exact copy of former artistic postures. Over production the art is dying not because they lost but because it is too much. Thousands of galleries and hundreds of thousands of artists, millions of their works. So many exhibits, so little time, it is impossible to see it all. ‘A modern oconoclasm is fabrication, the proliferation of art work in which there is nothing to see’ wrote John Baudillard in “Conspiracy of Art”. In today’s day exists extreme commercialization, killing the true spirit of creation and forcing the artists, market cunning and opportunism, orientation to the merchant not the recipient. The closure of the art in the internal self reinforcing cycle (critics, curators, artists). Donald Kuspit in his book “The End of Art” adds another objection: Not just a break from any aesthetic, which offers the driving force of art for centuries but even soft antyestetyzm. Art embraces autotematyzm and urban developers to bend over human condition, are increasingly leaning on the condition of the industry.
Paranoia and absurdity in the fine art in our time is most incompetent, incorrect and not well educated artists who are supposedly the best, famous, acknowledged, and rich. All that being said, they’ve successfully created real Kitsch though they don’t know what the definition of Kitsch is. But the best sadly in all of this is nobody and nothing can be done to change the direction of the development of contemporary art. This absurdity, which kills the spirit of the true creation in the art, and leads to a hopeless dead end. This is like that because so many rich and influential people and institutions are the reason for this. They invested millions and millions of dollars… Spiritual desert of contemporary people by a decline of people’s values, the solitude of contemporary society is a reflection and is one of many reasons for an increasing number of people with poor taste in spiritual art.
From my numerous and continuous visits to the galleries and museums of NYC, of course I saw some especially great arts, but not once was I disappointed, sad, lost ambition, or the desire to create and to be in general an artist. I was staring, looking for, desiring to see good art works…but so often I saw weak, bad arts and so much kitsch. That is why for myself I wanted to remind of my knowledge about history of art from my time as a student and now with different perspective review the history of art and pay attention to Pop Art and Kitsch.
Pop Art and Art Today
I would like to share my thoughts, knowledge, conclusions, attitude, and to do for myself balance for art today for this popular and contradiction of motion, concept, style, in this which pop art is. I call to mind from student years that I couldn’t understand then so famous our times style such as pop art, nor yet my professors to whom I have so much respect also couldn’t explain completely and clearly what pop art actually is. Pop art, one of the most widespread motions of art of the XX century is an artistic motion which appeared in England and the USA initially in 1960 and quickly reached popularity all over the world. The name pop art exists thanks to Britain’s painter Ronald Brooks Kitaj who in 1956 put the word “Pop” on one of his paintings. Critic Lawrence Alloway paid attention to this and used the word to name the trend which presents of the artists in Jais Gallery in New York City. Alloway hits perfectly on the concept of this idea. Later on Claus Oldenburg presented himself like this: “I am for art which itself become ripe unknowing this, for art to which give of chance because start from zero…I am for art which get line and form from the life, which is whirlpool, grow up, spread, set up, splash, boiling, art which is simple, unceremoniously sweet, stupid like life itself”. Explorer of pop art explanation that for pop art has strongly influenced film, advertisement, comics, illustrations, magazines, radio, and TV. Societal phenomenon brought to this pop art steps over clear artistic criteria and requirements of the art after 25 years, staying, working, creating, and living American life style here in NYC and New Jersey, I not only understand the idea, concept, and style of pop art, but confirm my understanding about this style… It is so simple… This style is a reflection of the life style in American society. Main element universal to art works is presence of the things from everyday life used and got from sphere of high industrial civilization, of American society by popular and mass culture “Coca Cola, soup, sandwiches, glass balls, rabbits, cats, dogs, toy balloons, pigs, and more. All those things you can see in the front of the home in NYC and epecially in NJ. With all due respect for pop art and its representatives, for me personally pop art never was interesting like concept, style, trend, by this spiritual desert, of contemporary people, by decline of people’s values, by this surface level culture, of mass culture which for me is that plait, banal, in outline, temlet, becomes stupid, and kitsch, passing, repeat and commercial. I am individual and original artist, by presence of the elite high culture. There are so many criteria to use to value the artist and his art work, but most important is the artist and his work have to be original as to not be confused by another artist. Elite high culture, which requires long education, knowledge of things, to have artistic possibility, talent and genius, full arguments of the critics for elite high culture staying and defending positions of straight of individuals which are insulted on mass show us that convict from the crowd die the true great artists. That is why on the base of elite high culture accepting that mass culture doesn’t have to be researched, have to fight to be by the side. How many correctly educated, talented artists are overshadowed, concealed, tread on by the enormous crowd and representatives of mass culture and pop art with those mentally plait requirements of arts and artists of pop art whom by some way grow up and got acknowledgement. So often artists like that adjust to mass media what kind of absurd to look at pay attention to mass advertisement, radio, and TV, to exist like famous artists, history of contemporary art is filled with these instances.
Kitsch
Concept of the Kitsch
The term kitsch is from German origin and means “garbage, decadent variant of given style, manifesting bad taste or mass manufacture of banal and rough commercial products. Imitation form and function of authentic without to have its contents and quality, easily of express, plait identity for ugliness of ugliness”. Kitsch so often is oppose to this what for someone is kitsch, for another can be acknowledged for value of artwork. This concept appeared around 1870 in Monaco of clubs for paintings, and first of all treatment to paintings. Fairly universally lines of the kitsch easily express plait identity and “beautiful” into artwork “ugliness for ugliness” absence of contents and thought in our time conscious used from famous artists like submissiveness form of creation express such contradiction standard show of mass, but for regret this kitsch first of all express cultural arrogance then objective artistic valuation. One of the first manifestations of this is Dadaism. This manifestation the best can see in art of Pop Art the best ambitious representative Andy Warhol, and ours time from his consecutives which list is tolerably long. First the word kitsch was used from critics of arts in Monaco 70 years into the XIX century and treatment of trend into paintings of landscape of unknown authors in pictures of gold frame buying from quickly growing in wealth German manufacturers wanting to manifest their wealth. American bourgeoise and all next New York middle of society 50 years into the XX century about anything for example choose and buy arts not risk and not insult or shocking the guest decorated their salons. According to Abraham Moles, kitsch is soothing of “bad, poor taste” before everything kitsch is “arts of happiness” wrote the author. “Paradise for little requirements” this is painting of lost disintegrate of the values, absence for something which grieves and accepts kitsch. In XX century the Werner Hoffman aware that Kitsch is an eternal phenomenon. Marek Hendrykowski maintained existing of the kitsch into art in the past epoch, for example kitsch Giotto, Botticelli, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Rubens, Rovoko, Romanticism, Gothicism, kitsch opera, kitsch Wagner, Servantes, Mickiewicz, and many more… Andrzej Banach “Kitsch threat, sickness” Conception of Theodor W. Adorno. Theodor Adorno, Clement Greenberg and Hermann Broch, in opposition to the idea of advanced – guard they define kitsch as a kind of false consciousness. For Adorno one of ambitious theoretic of art in XX century. For him kitsch is a parody, catharsis, and aesthetic consciousness, “kitsch false consciousness”. Creators of avantguarde of 20-30 years of XX century also maintain that kitsch is harmful to society. In 1960 existing of kitsch by function of camp when again criteria of values are desperate and treaten. Today is more difficult of critics to maintain with conviction that to know what is art and what is kitsch? Mickey Mouse in the comic magazine can be kitsch, but like fragment into painting in gallery is artwork, depends on the context. Conception of kitsch Hermann Broch. H. Broch Austrian philosopher and esthetic, for him kitsch “evil in the system of values of arts” He wrote: “essence of the kitsch, is mistake ethic category with esthetic, kitsch wants to do beautiful, not well (good), it depends on effect of beautiful”. Kitsch is not evil art but it is not art and doesn’t create its own system of treatment. Kitsch gave rise in result from refusing to be true to the things that are beautiful. System kitsch demand from own consecutives to “work beautiful” system of real art put on the first place “work good” In kitsch basic aim is wonderful effect, decoration, ornament. In real art there is aim, accepting reflection of the world, but also to forming his kitsch only imitation of the formiring of the world. When put beautiful effect shows that kitsch only disgracefully describes reality. Kitsch after already formed tastes and liked kitsch is evil, conscious turned hierarchy of the values. Evil into system of imitation which is kitsch is not only in choice of the subject, but for incorrigibility liquidation for that which base is in whole arts. Arts need the kitsch, because feels in danger from kitsch and oppose against kitsch. By this kind of triumph over kitsch 100s of years but to entirely liquidate kitsch can’t to come, the art lost either all its own identity, opponent with which to fight and for this by all means need the kitsch to life…
The Art of Happiness
Broch already today is to past. Today valuation of Abraham Moles, “Kitsch, Art of Happiness” Postmodernism oppose to criteria offered from modernism. Maria Poprzecka is Polish Art historian. Already can’t use category kitsch, ugliness, poor taste mixed kind of high arts and mass art. Those phenomena left off the margins of art not long time ago, now they find its center. Critics, Julian Spaldin – Damien Hirs isn’t an artist. His works have no artistic content and are worthless as works of art… I can only be in agreement with this valuation and assertion. All those aquariums, sharks, animals, can be everything but not works of art. All those things which exhibit can be high quality chemical – laboratory achievement of work, but not works of art. Everything which he exhibits is really kitsch. We know from history of art, that styles such as Naive art, Primitive Art, Folklore are the styles with the best low art values, but they have value, kitsch is worthless as works of art.
Stoain A. Valkov