top of page

Statement of faith

sduhem

‘Artist, do you like art dealers? Yeshhh!!! Absolutely!!!’

‘Do you like their ‘good advice’?...er...not always’


So, Don't give up on who you are and what inspires you.




 


I accept,


My position as an artist-copyist and art historian




Creating and showing implies responsibilities: that of answering questions, explaining, sometimes justifying oneself, or accepting various ‘advice’, which the artist does willingly. And yet, a priori, he should be quite free and able to promote his work without having to give any explanations. You know the commonplace: ‘a work of art stands on its own’, and in a way, he shouldn't have to justify himself.


Reality shows that this is not quite the case. A lot of people are always ready to give you ‘good advice’. As an artist, you have to be open to suggestions and able to listen to new ideas, that's for sure. However, there are some pieces of advice you could do without because they go to the very heart of who you are or what you stand for.


As an artist, I'm starting to get all this ‘good advice’. Better to laugh about it, isn't it?


Portrait de Phi-Artiste-Peintre, en train de rire
Phi-Artiste-Peintre, qui se marre !

For example:


  • ‘You shouldn't insist on technique, that's craftsmanship, not Art!’,

  • ‘You shouldn't associate your creations with master copies on your website!

  • ‘You shouldn't offer ‘made to order’ paintings - that's no longer art,

  • ‘You shouldn't display prices in a shop! Art isn't that!

  • ‘You shouldn't do dog portraits! or babies...


So, when someone starts telling you what you should be doing and all that in order to comply with the doxa of the art market and the galleries... and you have the vague feeling that this is going to profoundly upset who you are, well, it's time to react...



To each his own!


A ‘profession of faith’ is not an unattractive way of building firewalls and clarifying to your partners what you consider to be essential.



Mine is as follows, and I would ask them to respect it:


  1. I have no pretensions, because 25 years of studying art history have enabled me to measure the gulf that separates my work from that of the marvellous artists and masters who have succeeded one another up to the present day. I simply defend the status of painter, creator and copyist, as a part of myself that aspires to express itself.



  1. I have no intention of dissociating technique, know-how, the art of copying and selling works of art from creation itself in my career and in the way I promote it. Because all these elements form a whole and to want to deny oil painting its technical or craft dimension, its relationship to commerce or copying, is to choose to erase a whole part of the history of artistic creation. And if I had to argue (I'm doing it for the sheer pleasure of it, because as I said above, in reality, my freedom as an artist would be not to have to do so ...) :


  • Most of the great artists - by which I mean those who have left their mark on history, and no doubt a serious inventory of contemporary creation will be needed - were marvellous technicians, applying rigorous know-how. Most of them were preoccupied with ‘cooking recipes’, for some it was even an obsession. They left behind a wealth of texts, which they discussed among themselves, refined and published in the form of treatises. These ‘recipes’ were at the heart of academic discussions at least until the end of the 19th century. It's a pity that this knowledge has been forgotten and that the ‘deconstructive’ ideologies of some intellectuals, at work since the Renaissance, have sought to do away with the ‘knowledge of the hand’, deemed ‘dirty’ and far less noble than that of the ‘mind’.



  • Most of the great artists were great copyists. Admittedly, this was not all they were, but they practised the art of copying, sometimes even for long periods. The pejorative judgement on the practice of copying makes no sense whatsoever when we know just a little about its role in artistic training, from the dawn of time. It's a misunderstanding of the history of art. If we had to take two examples .... We could mention the time spent by Michelangelo in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence, reproducing Masaccio's frescoes. We could also argue about the place of Degas' paintings - Absinthe, or Woman in a Café, in an Edward Hopper work like Nighthawks. The creation of an artist is not a production ex-nihilo, it is the fruit of impregnation, and for the greatest of them, of a surpassing of this impregnation.



  • The reconstruction of art in the twentieth century in the wake of Duchamp and Picasso was essential. It was the order of things. It continues with the development of Artificial Intelligence and Transhumanism, behind which lie highly specialised knowledge and know-how, as well as ideologies, propaganda and censorship. As an artist, I wish to retain my free will and not submit to lurking ideologies. I accept the existence of all artistic currents, the subjectivity of aesthetic appreciation, even my own, which is my own and which I do not wish to impose on anyone.



  • Finally, I won't hide the fact that I need to make a living from my art, and therefore to sell. And like most artists, past and present, I need to offer prices and commissions to a clientele. Painting to order is a marvellous exercise, quite the opposite of being unworthy. In the past, this clientele meant ‘princes’ or ‘patrons’, who were highly esteemed. There was no shame in living off their good fortune. It's a good thing they existed, otherwise there would be nothing left of the major works of Western art. It's fortunate that artists were able to offer their works and their prices, their conditions, their themes and their genres.



3) To sum up: no one has to impose a way of presenting yourself or ‘conforming’ to the rules of the art market or galleries. There are no rules, or rather there is only one: what you are and nothing else, what drives you to create, and what you choose to defend.




As a Phi-Artist-Painter, I defend a vision of art that integrates all the parameters of Creation, those that books and history allow us to approach and know, from the works of the masters to popular art, from overflowing creativity to mechanical reproduction. And I don't give advice that's too ‘wise’.





0 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


Phi Artist-Painter
 

bottom of page