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The art of Alasdair Macintyre |
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INDEX
ARTIST PROFILE |
The following is an annotated version of Alasdair Macintyre's speech at the opening of the Mount Alvernia College Art Show, 15/10/2004. In art, as in life, it is wholly beneficial to be true to ones self. By all means, learn and immerse yourself in all of the conventions of art, but more importantly, particularly in a modern world, the art that you create should come from within yourself, and within your own experience. It is in this way that a totally honest art will be created. I often have said that my favorite saying is by the German surrealist artist Max Ernst, who stated once that he, as an artist, has one eye open, and one eye closed. His open eye, or “outer eye”, he has fixed on reality, of the immediate environment and the events in the world around him. His other closed eye, he called his inner eye, and with this eye he rummaged around inside himself, and looked at what was going on within: his life experiences, his upbringing, his relationships, his knowledge. The art that he created was a synthesis of this inner eye and the outer eye combined. I find that this, above most other artist quotes that I have read, is a wonderful depiction of my own personal artistic process. A common thread that runs through art history is the fact that artists make use of their immediate and surrounding environment. As an example, van Gogh painted his environment in the south of France, both his immediate surrounds such as his bedroom, his house, or the wider areas such as the roads and fields. An artist today is surrounded by not only physical landscapes on one level, but mediascapes on multilevels. Cyberscapes introduce yet another dimension to the mix. In effect, the modern day artist is simply doing the same thing that an artist did one hundred years before, that is, reflecting and interpreting the world that he or she lives in. For good or for bad, I do have an inveterate interest in politics and in world affairs and social issues. I listen to the news daily, and watch some of the more credible current affairs programs. I, along with (I would hope), the vast majority of society, have been horrified and deeply disturbed by many of the images which are flashed before us in daily news programs, particularly when the items are specifically those concerning mans' inhumanity to man. It has to be, that these influences come through into my art work, and where I am not at all keen on telling anyone what my work is specifically about, I am however, very much interested in different opinions of my work, and how the viewer of an artwork will bring their own attitudes and interests to the piece. In so many ways, a room full of a hundred people could offer up at least as many different interpretations of an artwork. I am a very big fan of the American writer on mythology, Joseph Campbell. I first became familiar with his work when I stumbled upon an interview with him on non commercial television in the early 1990's. The interview was recorded towards the end of Campbell’s life, but he spoke with the energy and enthusiasm of a man a third of his age. Among the many topics that Campbell has written and spoken about is art, and how the artist is a beneficial and integral part of society. Keeping in mind the integrity of Max Ernst’s concepts of the inner and outer eye, and Joseph Campbell’s notion of the artist as modern day mythologist, I also appreciate the idea suggested by an artist much closer to home, an Australian artist whom many of you will have heard, the late Brett Whiteley. One statement that Whiteley made towards the end of his own, tragically curtailed life, was that sometimes he felt like he was a “messenger boy for a much higher source”. To me, this is a tremendously illuminating idea. There are some times, as an artist, when a message or an idea arrives “out of the blue”. Generally it arrives when you are doing some mundane task like vacuuming the floors or driving to work. Whether you call it a message, an idea, inspiration or a light bulb turning on. I will try to illustrate this concept, it is almost as if there is an internal inbox inside your head when a message arrives, and sometimes the message may have in image attached, which could be the starting point of an artwork. Unfortunately the message arrives without a return address, and often times it is totally unpredictable when a new message will arrive. Sometimes I get three or four a day, other times weeks may pass without one. In speaking about this area, I am reminded again of the work of Joseph Campbell. He spoke of the artist being the modern day creator of modern day mythology. The artist in this sense could be any kind of person with a creative facility, a painter, a poet, a sculptor, a dancer, a songwriter and so on. Campbell once said that “The ideas (or concepts), come out of an elite experience, the experience of people, particularly gifted, whose ears are opened to the song of the universe”. October 2004 |
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I am never comfortable discussing the "meaning" behind my work, or any work for that matter. The meaning lies within the realm of the viewer, with their own references and experience. There is no one "right" interpretation. I am however, often surprised that many people who do demand to know "what is it about?". In many ways, the artists is like a perpetrator of a crime, and the criminal should always leave the scene of the crime, leaving the forensic investigators to sort out what is what. With any luck, and like any master criminal, the investigators and the criminal, should never meet.
May 2003 |
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All content of this website is copyright 2003 Alasdair Macintyre.