Kingdumb ?

Art Burshy has stayed home today, during the inauguration of king Willem Alexander.
Publicly he would say it is a bloody discgrace, not the right time during crisis, far away from reality, and a fake sort of power somehow justified by a God.

But while being home somehow we find him all in orange, drinking traditional Oranje Bitter, and watching while the new king swears to be a good king and respect and build fair laws in the kingdom; one of the smallest countries in the world with all these crazy people that go our all dressed in orange on a day like this.

It is a public disgrace and a display of mass hysteria, but somehow Art finds it also very appealing.
Next time he might even join the balcony ceremony...but that might be some 30 years from now...

Why not some nice radioactive red hair

Art Burshy is walking with his daughter in Paris, and a woman with bright red hair catches his eyes.
So he starts imagining what it would be to have such red hair...

He truly feels some nice red hair would reflect his state of mind, his character, his being.
There are so many nice bright red colours like magenta, different sorts of cadmium red or even some crimson red.
In general he finds that people are way to afraid when picking clothes and how they look. Why not going to work with a nice fresh red or bright green hair colour, a way of saying:
- hey, I am who I am,
- it is good to be different and not be afraid of it
- the way I look does not define who I am, it emphasises my true self in my appearance.
- I am not afraid of what people think about me, and not afraid to make fun about myself
- it distracts people on the days where Art does not wear nice clothes, and they just focus on his red hair
- people can always find you in a big crowd, and will more easily remembered.
- at the same time it allows to go incognito and not be recognised by old 'friends' that he actually would not feel like speaking to.
It is also good in a way that it shows we do not take our appearance too seriously; Wouldn't it be nice if our prime minister one day would have some red hair, and why wouldn't the bosses of organisations so come to work with some lemon yellow hairdo, instead of wearing the same grey suit every day and the same shortly cut hair.

Art also remembers when he first decided to have a beard...this lead to so much reactions and several were negative. At the same time it confirmed to him that he was right to do it, that it was a part of him that needed emphasising. Art loves people that have the courage to be different, wear different clothes, have different hair colours. Even if it is a form of rebellion, a way to speak up without sound and so much more natural.
It should be more normal not to appear normal.

Art concept or business concept

Yesterday I went with Art Burshy to the opening of a new exhibition. And Art seemed quite pleased that some of his paintings had been added to the collection; he was almost showing his joy when we walked towards the gallery.
I could not have imagined how quickly this would turn around just some 10 minutes later.
So what happened?
Well, I was just getting a drink, actually looking for some champagne, as that for me is one of the incentives of going with Art to these exhibitions.
I then saw Art in front of a small art work. It was a tiny white cube that was exhibited just next to a art work of Art. Several expressions crossed his face while observing the cube from really up close. I looked around but detected no security staff that would be at the point of intervening. I approached Art and asked naively "well Art, do you like it?"


Art straightened his back, and looked me straight into my eyes "well Maurice, what do you think?".


These are the trickiest moments with Art; whatever you say will be wrong.
Say that you don't really know and he will say you are a coward, no original thinker and more, until you finally surrender. If you say you like it he will be asking why, what is so special about it, until he finds enough elements to prove you wrong. If you say you don't like it, probably is even more dangerous as he will call you barabaric if it turns out to be a master piece in his mind.


So I said to Art "well, I really don't know, what it should be, and why it should be beautiful"...it was risky, but true, and you cant make fun of the truth, can you.


And then...
Art started to speak slowly...
"Did you see the art work next to this white cube? It is my art work.
Now my own art work is a deeper expression of feelings, part of an effort to capture my deeper emotions, using the skills I have carefully constructed the last 35 years, it is meaningful and as a result it can touch people and confront them with my view of reality...
Then you have this white cube next to it... This is an idea, tranformed into a small piece of wood, painted perfectly with white paint. Sure, I read the idea behind it, which is funny, almost interesting, as it is based on Thought, but very close to existing cliches."
Art's head had become a bit more red, and his eyes started look look more angry.
"Then look at the price....it is way more expensive than my art work!
And this is where the art world is going?
Ideas are more important than expression and personal meaningfulness.
Artists delegating all the making to others, only translating an idea into design...
I heard for example of an artist Hamiens Dirt that turns art into business, having people execute the ideas for him, and the bloody bastard earns millions from art...it is a disgrace...and it is the opposite of what art should be..."


Then I made a mistake, mainly fed by my annoyance of Art again turning a nice exhibition into an energy sucking visit...


"Well Art, but why do you give a f*ck...why would you care?
You earn a living with you art, why do you care that others make good money?
Why are you so arrogant that you allow yourself to judge other art works?"


Art became silent, and I wondered if my angry words had touched him...


Then Art calmly spoke:
" well, forgive me for having a dream and a passion of what art is about.
Indeed I do not know everything about art, but I have seen and created enough crap to know what is good.
The role of artists is to reveal a deeper beauty, a beauty that moves people.
I find it disrespectful that people hijack the art and turn it into something superficial, and focused on making money.
But you are right, why would I care if stupid rich people spend loads of money on such crap?
They do turn conceptual art into a business concept, but why should I care.
I wanna go home and make a beautiful drawing with color pencils, going back to my childhood dream before I became obsessed by making 'art'.
And lets take my art work home with us; it does not belong here."


And so Art took his art work off the wall and out we went...

Art in business

This time Art is applying for a new job.
It is very difficult as a living artist to get by.
So a side-job would be great to have a bit of stability in life.
And he thought to apply for a managers position...as he feels he could teach people quite a bit.
In his mind companies more and more focus on (a)squeezing the last cost out of the company, (b) monitor all employees' every minute spent and (c)adopting the latest flavor of methodology and (d) jump on the newest managerial hype.

Art Burshy feels it is time to re-focus on inspiration, learning from concepts in art.
It seems so logical that the best performing teams are the ones with motivated and maybe even happy people.
And when overstructuring jobs, the pleasure is structured away, people lose a sense of fun.
And life is not about running and finding the answer to every issue and question. It is about learning to ask the real questions, like an artist.

And wow, somehow to his own surprise now Art even reached the last 2 candidates.
This seemed such a great company; they had a great social campaign, they have an environmentally friendly building, they advertised the need for diversity...
and looking around they could use a bit of diversity... A good moment to hire a nice middle aged artist with a little bit of business experience but lots of life experience.
Nowadays everybody is a manager by the way, so it cant be difficult, so why could it not be Art.

But somehow, in the back of his mind a little alarm bell is ringing...everything here is soo consistent, all the same, same suits, same expression, and...
Well he starts to wonder; despite the advertised company policy, the corporate responsibility programs, the people-are-our-most-valuable-assets program, the fantastic smiles and empathic looks...
he somehow starts to think that just in the end they might stick to old habits...
and maybe not take this unique opportunity to choose an enrichment to what they already have, to hire an artist that is full of energy and ready to get started.

Well, time will tell...

a bloody original portrait

It has been a long time that our artist Art Burshy made a portrait.
When he was young he made quite a few, and making a portrait is always a struggle.
First of all, it is bloody difficult to make a drawing or painting resemble a person truly.
There were moments where he would start a painting, thinking all the first strokes were perfect, capturing the key features of the face...
and then in the end it turned out to be a completely different person.
Or even worse, he would think it was a success...and then other people would not even recognise the person from the portrait.
Actually he discovered that the worse the start, the longer the struggle, the better the end result.
And it was great when in the end people admired a portrait; it is the sort of painting that is easiest accessible and always results in people admiring your skills.

And....now he realises about portraits that:
- almost every style has been tried, and often better than he could do it himself,
- it is bloody tiring to make them; it makes him focus on skills and the resemblance, rather than enjoying painting and expression.
- in addition there are always expectations when you portray people; they would like to be beautiful and smiling...which is much less interesting than portraying the ugliness and truly dark expression
- there is no representational purpose of portraits; if you want a picture you just take a picture,
- he does not need admiration for his portrait skills, really, sure it is nice but he can do without,
- he is even tired of people having an opinion of portraits, and how good it resembles the portrayed person. Normally people are quite reserved when watching modern art, but once it is a portrait...my God they do have an opinion, and worse, they feel an uncontrollable need to share it with the artist

But...
Recently he could not resist temptation...and he started a portrait.
And this time he wrote down the guidelines for his own painting:
"I shall remain focused on expression and the joy of painting"
"I will make a portrait of the one person that will not have any expectations; myself"
"I will do it without mirror, as I think I should know my own face by now"
"whenever I catch myself thinking of - whether it resembles me - I shall undergo sanctions:
  - throw paint on the portrait to force myself to be less focused on the resemblance
  - drink a beer, even in the morning - not really a punishment but will loosen me up
  - ask opinion of my son, who will always be ready to tell me it is crap
  - force myself to laugh out loud for 5 minutes...
  - and the continue"
And actually he is happy with the result (so far), and remained truly free.

And now Art even thinks this method could probably also be used in other contexts:
- artists too much focused on making the perfect painting, but maybe also
- people at work losing focus on pleasure and having fun at work
- bankers that are too focused on numbers, forgetting how nice it is to give good service and help an ordinary person
- politicians that are busy with power and influence, that forget the dreams they had at the start
- parents that are focused on what their children should become, forgetting to actively show their love and support

Well, maybe Art should start making such experiments for himself, before expanding this innovative treatment to other areas, don't you think?