I have a strange relationship with doors. I never lock them. Rather I approach them. It’s a flaw, I think. Lack of courage, perhaps. But I happen to not close the doors. I let events do it. After all, who am I to determine who has to get out of my life forever? Generally, those who take another path do it alone. Very quietly. A step at a time. One choice after another. So, I leave it open. Because you never know. Maybe one day whoever had gone out, shows up in front of that door, and finding it open, sits down for a coffee. And if enough time has passed, enough pride, and enough pain, I’ll ask – How much sugar? My dear friend clear your mind of all “can’t”. This sentence was said by a stranger, but I think it was the sentence that had the most impact on me. It is not a very compressed aphorism, it highlights a truth without too many words. All the “I can’t / I can’t / I can’t” are just walls that we build and that don’t allow us to succeed. Success is not necessarily being rich it sucks to be successful is something easier and more beautiful, success is in the little things. We must be happy with ourselves when we set ourselves a goal and we manage to achieve it, the key is precisely this, to complete not having reached perfection. If only I could walk between the chiaroscuro of your irises, light up my days with the lights of your every memory, if only I had the key of that French garden which makes the contours of your face guiding breath for each completed painting; if only i could stay there, stop, waiting for your name, your veins like purple wisteria, your skin like peony petals, and listen to the rhythm of your beats touch the shores of the lake and make them tremble in the reflection of the other half of the sky.
The Blossoming Almond Branch is an oil painting on canvas that Van Gogh painted in Saint-Rémy in 1880 shortly before taking his own life. He painted it on the occasion of the birth of his nephew Vincent Willem, son of his beloved brother Theo. Inside, he chose to represent, as a symbol of nascent life, a freshly blossomed almond tree. Almond blossoms are the first to bloom with the beginning of spring, sometimes even anticipating it by blooming in late winter, and therefore become the symbol of life and the hope it brings with it. Nevertheless, since they tend to fade after a short time they also represent fragility, delicacy. So much, in short, in a single painting, in a simple branch. All this to say that this is one of the Van Gogh paintings that I love most. There is nothing that strikes me more than beauty, pure charm, that what is fragile unconsciously possesses.
If we took one of these paintings to a gallery today, it would be considered amateur painting. Because other types of paintings are in fashion, often digital, that everyone wants in their living room. Modern art is now considered useless junk. When I go to exhibitions, here for example the Biennale, there are always very few people. Today, more than ever, people judge art as a superfluous thing, which one can do very well without. And I say this as an artist. Talking to so many people, how much they feel that I am an artist, everyone becomes "what a beautiful thing". But if you ask them how many artists' paintings they have bought in their entire life, they say "I'm sorry, nobody". If I ask why they tell me they had more needed things and they used their money for other things. This is really disheartening for an artist but in reality this happens.The painting I put here in this post is a PAUL KLEE's artwork. Would you who look at it think it's worth millions? Yet Christies of London sold a Klee for:
Hammer price: $ 6,767,549 (Christie's, London, United Kingdom, 21/06/2011)
Maybe you found a Klee work in your attic and you think it's the artistic task of some nerdy kid. Because for many people artists waste time, starve and produce useless things. Not all think this thought but most. Even if an artist is quoted a lot of money, he remains one who produced useless things.
"Art is completely useless"
What do you think about it?
This sentence was written by Oscar Wilde, more than a century ago in the preface of his famous short story "The Portrait of Dorian Gray".
In particular Wilde said:
"We can forgive a man for having done something useful if he does not admire it. The only excuse for doing something useless is to admire it intensely. All art is seless."
Beauty for millions of people is a beautiful woman, a beautiful man, an actress, a Greek statue. How much art do you have in your home? How much art would you like?
Why does an artist keep creating? If there is any artist among you and he wants to answer, he can give his idea here. If there is someone who paints as a hobby, you can tell here why they do it and what emotions they feel.
Today anxiety was destroying the walls of my heart. it crushed veins, arteries, nerves, and not even a movie could help me. Yet it was Vermeer. So I was taken by the painful creative fury, shaken like a tree by the wind and since I didn't have the canvas to paint, I took a curtain and cried colors over it. And did I feel good afterwards? no not at all. I've been worse. Because this will be yet another painting that will end up in the attic or burned in the barbecue. There is no hope.
When I have negative emotions I start painting or I go to the gym where I swim. Or I’ll put on some music and dance or go out walking with my dog. Sometimes they are very strong and don’t pass right away. But somehow I try to get them out of me and turn them into something beautiful. I have read many books by Osho about tantra and meditation but unfortunately there are no meditation courses in my area, even if I have practiced Tai Chi, which is called “meditation in motion”. In the past I have attended a Hare Krishna temple in London and have had more comfort from singing and dancing with them but also from the silence and peace in the temple. I have also had the opportunity to hear the Ohh sung by the Dalai Lama himself, in a church in London, but all of these things have not solved my history of abuse as a child. Unfortunately, however much I can avoid thinking about it, certain traumas remain in the mind and bodyHow many sensations do you have? How many demolitions do you do? Heart to heart lined up for a second. If you want a thousand monsters who whisper loves to you. You peel off sheets and be alone. A drop of life instilled in the chest. You want illusory loves. You let yourself be captivated by stupid sirens. I’m not like you. I don’t need illusions to live. I look at the flowers. I look at the trees. I watch my dogs. I need these things. People only know how to deceive and ask for money.So I stay here, trapped in a life I don’t understand, thinking that those who call me ungrateful are right, yet without the strength to change. It is an illusion to think that memories cannot have form, concreteness. We believe we can bury them in the dark ravines of a cellar where we will never enter, like a clouding of conscience, which makes us continue our miserable lives. Then, one day, without warning, we bump into the analysts of a past so vivid that we can touch it. I found the ticket to Paris in my jacket pocket, exactly what we looked for everywhere, two years ago, on returning home, because you said you wanted to keep everything from that trip, about us, from those days away from the world, where it seemed we could be anything we wanted. I believed it, with every atom. It was a hope, a prayer. I don’t believe in anything, I would have liked there to be a God in my head too. I would not have asked for anything else in life. Your gaze was enough, because it contained everything. And I have seen everything in our days together, in that determined impulse departure. You convinced me with a smile. You were half a woman and half a child, stripped of heels, makeup, clothes that were always so elegant for work days. The world had Geneva in career. I, only me, kept my private Geneva, the one that took off the mask and let its frailties and tenderness caress. I saw you sleep, every night, from the first times you were still on yours, to those when you instinctively looked for my arms, even in sleep, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I heard you sing in the morning, to the rhythm of songs that only you knew, while I, as soon as I woke up, only knew how to spy on you in my silence. I watched you provoke me, without even having to take off your clothes. You had the right words, slow movements like a distant call. I imagined you naked and you felt it, you smiled. You got me drunkYet I don’t think about your body as I turn this note around and around in my hands. Something I loved even more is hammering in my head, that is, that strange empathy that allowed you to understand everything I felt. You knew how to read me. Would you ever have thought that one of your greatest qualities would push me away? It is not your fault, of course. I did it all in this strange game of destruction. I was afraid. It seems the classic excuse that we men invent, against which many of you slam, convinced that it is enough to take care of our weaknesses to have a fairytale ending. The truth is that everyone has to fight his demons alone. You knew it when you let me go. You seemed to have always expected this, as if you were born to let me leave you. You said nothing other than tears and I didn’t expect silence to have sharp weapons. You couldn’t know that I was already dead, years before, in front of those who said the same words to me that I repeated to you. When she left me, I convinced myself that I was like her, that I didn’t know how to love. I witnessed the waltz of strangers who approached my life without ever really being part of it. “I don’t feel”, I said. At first they didn’t understand, then over time they gave up and I saw them disappear from my life. I found a thousand excuses, a thousand faults. It was easy to dismiss. The closer I got to someone, the greater was the heat with which I ran away. You really touched me, without my realizing it. You slipped into my head, into my limbs, and when I realized it, it was too late to send you away. I loved, and I couldn’t explain why. But I assure you, for someone like me it burned, like a stake that consumes you. I didn’t want to depend on someone who could potentially deprive me of myself. I made you witness the waltz of ambivalence, split between the desire to keep you and the urge to send you away, to protect me from those ghosts that perhaps were only in my head. The danger I felt and attributed to your presence was the echo of a distant wound, which I was afraid could reopen, with your simple touch, with your presence. I fought with the invisible enemies in my head and gave them your appearance, to the point of giving you this huge emptiness, where before there were a thousand words. But the sin of one’s own silences is paid for with loneliness. I know very well now that in this empty house I no longer hear your laughter and I have no arms to touch me at night. I thought I was defending myself and instead fear exposed me, it shattered everything.Perhaps it was not yet the time, our time. I didn’t know how to love you without shields. But now that there are no trenches, no curtains, I don’t need weapons … If I wanted to walk in this life with you, would you come? They say that those who love you will not leave you. I say instead, that sometimes we run away thinking that a place is hurting us, but then we understand that no other place is home. So, once again, in this letter, I give you words. However, now, they no longer serve to protect me, but only to love you. I ask you forever: Do you want to be my home?
As a young girl I imagined a different future and being an artist (I don’t get high nor smoke or drink, I’m an atypical artist I know) I thought that my skills, both artistic and intellectual (I always had excellent grades in school) would have me taken far, in every sense. I have always dreamed of a life off the cursed island, Sicily, because as soon as I grew up a little and became old enough to understand certain social dynamics, I felt suffocated in my aspirations. My parents wanted me to finish my studies, find a rich husband and get married and bake some grandchildren for them. Instead I didn’t do any of this. I have not followed any rules of social life that tradition imposed. Immediately after high school I went abroad to pursue my artistic dream but I was forced to return because my mother was sick and I took on my responsibilities as a daughter and still do it today and in return I do not receive than criticisms and always negative judgments. In part you are right, I have not been able to get even the minimum of what I aspired to in my artistic life but on the other hand I have a situation that everyone envies me.Of course, after having understood how things are going, after having discovered that “either you follow the rules of the market or you stay out of every field”, the choice to continue on the difficult and fruitless path of art is truly crazy. But I can’t turn my back on myself and my fantasy, and especially in recent times if I hadn’t had all these dreams with me yet, I think I wouldn’t have been able to go on. Sometimes instead I say to myself, trying to convince myself, that it would have been better not to have these dreams at all and not to have all these creative abilities, since up to now they have not brought me anything concrete because I do not compromise for any reason and I do not I want to sleep with anyone to get credit. This crisis due to covid pays for itself first of all precisely those sectors of genres that are considered unnecessary, and art is one of them. Certainly having a nice painting hanging on the wall does not fill people’s stomachs so even I wouldn’t feel like persuading someone to buy a painting rather than buying groceries. First of all, I myself have had to give up those beautiful things that make life more pleasant (dinners out, accessories, hairdressers, cinema, theater, concerts, cosplay fairs, …) and so why shouldn’t others give it up too ?! The covid spared no one. So what’s the point of creating so many beautiful things if they have to remain closed in a box or drawer? Being an art therapist seems nonsense. Working with autistic children seems inconsistent. Yet it requires a lot of patience and a lot of control. But I never talk about my passion for saving children.
As a young girl I imagined a different future and being an artist (I don’t get high or smoke or drink, I’m an atypical artist I know) I thought that my skills, both artistic and intellectual (I always had excellent grades in school) would have me taken far, in every sense. I have always dreamed of a life off the cursed island, Sicily, because as soon as I grew up a little and became old enough to understand certain social dynamics, I felt suffocated in my aspirations. My parents wanted me to finish school, find a rich husband and get married and churn out grandchildren for them. Instead I didn’t do any of this. I have not followed any rules of social life that tradition imposed. Immediately after high school I went abroad to pursue my artistic dream but I was forced to return because my mother was sick and I took on my responsibilities as a daughter and still do it today and in return I do not receive than criticisms and always negative judgments. In part you are right, I have not been able to get even the minimum of what I aspired to in my artistic life but on the other hand I have a situation that everyone envies me. Of course, after having understood how things are going, after having discovered that “either you follow the rules of the market or you stay out of every field”, the choice to continue on the difficult and fruitless path of art is truly crazy. But I can’t turn my back on myself and my fantasy, and especially in recent times if I hadn’t had all these dreams with me yet, I think I wouldn’t have been able to go on. Sometimes instead I say to myself, trying to convince myself, that it would have been better not to have these dreams at all and not to have all these creative abilities, since up to now they have not brought me anything concrete because I do not compromise for any reason and I do not I want to sleep with anyone to get credit. This crisis due to covid pays for itself first of all precisely those sectors of genres that are considered unnecessary, and art is one of them. Certainly having a nice painting hanging on the wall does not fill people’s stomachs so even I would not feel like convincing someone to buy a painting rather than buying groceries. First of all, I myself have had to give up those beautiful things that make life more pleasant (dinners out, accessories, hairdressing, cinema, theater, concerts, cosplay fairs, …) and so why shouldn’t others give it up too ?! The covid spared no one. So what’s the point of creating so many beautiful things if they have to remain closed in a box or drawer? Being an art therapist seems nonsense. Working with autistic children seems inconsistent. Yet it requires a lot of patience and a lot of control. But I never talk about my passion for saving children.
Feminism’s most powerful tool for transmitting the message was surely art, in all its forms. It is true that women were present in art history both as artists and models, but only the latter is widespread and offers plenty of information, while the former barely stands ground. It was the men who painted women, often objectifying and misinterpreting them, and the topic seems to be more than recurrent.
While there’s no doubt some of them are world’s greatest artworks, it was time to bring to light also the achievements of women in the field, and to do it now.
THE PRODIGY OF IDEAS 