art pitch blog post

This is the blog post version, so it probably will not be the same as the finished products that I printed out.  Just a warning / disclaimer.

Last year I purchased a book that has the 200 Best Illustrators Worldwide.  It’s a huge thing with over 300 pages.  Most of it is just glossy colorful pages – as it should be.  & most of it features the 200 best illustrators from around the world – as it should because that’s what the title said.

Here you have illustrators from all walks of illustrating life: illustrators for products & for advertising; illustrators for magazine editorial accompaniments; illustrators for calendars & cards; illustrators for books & graphic novels; illustrators for mass media & posters; & all those that fall in between or partake in all of the above.

@ the back there is an alphabetical index of all of the different artists, countries, categories, & the page / s they fall on.  It’s a great resource.  I might even just bring my copy in for people to look @.

Another great resource is the live-blogging experience I made of it [that summer I posted artwork from all 200 artists]:   http://tealrallythong.tumblr.com/tagged/200+best.  I mean you don’t even have to purchase the book; I have like howevermany pages of the artwork that’s found in my book already on my blog.  So you can click @ your leisure & find an artist to represent if you haven’t already done so.

I contemplated a few artists that were in here:  Ofra Amit; Olaf Hajek; Andreas Peis; & some others.  Check out their work, I insist.

  

I NEARLY chose Olaf Hajek.  But then there were some choice semi-Orientalist / appropriation issues [like this African Nature man series really just put a bitter taste in my mouth because I was really just skeptical as to what his vision was – like oh this guy is African, thus he HAS to be some sort of “witch doctor?”; the Yoga-Hindu art has great colors, but I still feel a bit uncomfortable when people outside of that culture try to portray it] in his body of work & I didn’t really want to uphold that.  

 Also I’m confused as to what this piece "Black Antoinette" really means.  I want to hope that it’s presenting this standard of beauty in a new light – giving a white ideal that oppressed so many others a new spin.  But then I’m skeptical because there’s all these “exotic” things around her / all the women in the series.   I’m afraid this painting is just objectifying a black woman in a new way, hidden under the guise of a “new" Antoinette.  Like oh she’s African & she’s some “exotic flower” just like the exotic flowers in her hair; oh she’s African & some “exotic animal” just like the exotic animals in her hair.  That’s like some Orientalist logic right there.  CAN’T WE MOVE PAST ORIENTALISM IN THE ROMANTIC ERA?  PLEASE?

   

But @ the same time his usage of colors & aesthetic is so fucking intoxicating & awe-inspiring.  So you should really check out his portfolio / website:  http://www.olafhajek.com.  But I’m still a bit concerned about the politics of his work.  I mean not EVERY artwork has a manifest / overt like political message… but if you’re not careful, you can say the wrong things even with positive imagery.  So I’m not sure.

But I finally ended up going with someone who is not featured in the 2011 book [perhaps he’s featured in the 2012 version but I haven’t looked thru that] named Joãs Ruas [that’s going to be really hard to say & I’m scared I’m going to make a fool out of myself]. 

Here’s a bitty blurb from someone who is not myself [cuz she uses a lot of intellectual terms that I’m not going to use] talking about said artist:

"João Ruas paints a haunting world inhabited by enigmatic figures and regal beasts awash in a maelstrom of mysterious energies. His explorations of the darker realms of the spirit evoke states of emotional turmoil, spiritual hunger and troubled passion. Weaving together history, mythology and cryptic symbolism in a misty dreamscape where twilight is ever at hand and the bounds of gravity seem optional, he describes an ethereal mythos that is somehow deeply personal and disquietingly universal at the same time. "

- Amanda Erlanson

During Art History, even though I knew all these terms related to these nice portraits that show kalos & chiaro scuro & transcendentalism & veritas & Apollonian / Dionysian conflicts & tenebrism & everything else, it didn’t mean that I actually wanted to OWN the work.  Sure I can respect the aesthetics, but did I LIKE it?  Yes you have your Rembrandts & your Van Goghs & your Rococo & Mannerist painters… but did I actually LIKE their work?  You can shroud portraits & other works with all of these fancy terms, but in the end can you CONNECT with it?

There’s nothing wrong with less “academic” art.  Or art that doesn’t adhere to the “canon” in whatever ideal is being held up @ the time.  There’s nothing wrong with deviations from the norm.   Hell, a lot of art before it was considered part of the new canon WAS a deviation from the norm – the old canon.  Like the abstract artists from the impressionists from the romantics from the more realist-Renaissance artists from the religious symbolists from the Hellenist Greek realist sculptors from the more didactic & symbolic sculptors from the beginning of time.

João Ruas is more of an illustrator than a painter concerned to keep up with the norms of the privileged few anyway.  & if you WANT to tie him to a key figure, perhaps it would be Francis Bacon – because some of Ruas’ art can have that streaky abstract horror feel.  There’s definitely an element of the ultra-violence in a number of his works.  But @ the same time, it’s paired with delicate female figures, earthly animals, & the shrouds of the supernatural.  He surrounds himself in so many different things.

Ruas also surrounds himself in the richness of colors.  He will pair the delicates with the robusts ; the faintest red-pinks & the blood red; the faint whispers of blues with the deep seas of blue.  He dances madly [in the best way possible] in between these two worlds.  But instead of showing up as bleak contrasts, those colors, too, dance & mingle together.   

Ruas has dark imagery, yes, but deep imagery.  He is well-versed in the fables of cultures.  & right now is the cover artist for the Fables comic series.  He knows & paints portraits of arachnid storytellers, gorgon girls, neutral nymphs, & homunculi creatures.  His pieces do have a “darkness” about them.  But also a lightness.  There’s deep symbolism, but there’s also an accessibility to something that looks interesting & different; something that’s not just lines of paint arranged just so or blobs arranged just so or hyper-realist figures with no vision.  There’s richness in the story, in the characters of the paintings – something that lacks so much in some of the spheres of painting & art today.  Now there’s so much tied up in the technique to the point where people create hollow, yet aesthetically pleasing, figures.  They’re gorgeous mannequins, but there’s nothing underneath it all.  There’s no soul.

Ruas gives you soul.  Sometimes more than you bargain for.  You can feel depth; you can feel DUENDE.  You can feel death & you can feel struggle & that might make you feel uncomfortable or that might make you cling onto it & not want to let go, but @ least you FEEL something.   I personally feel an awe rise up in my gut, but also a wince sometimes.  Because even with these beautiful nymphs, there’s something haunting them.  There’s something they want to tell us, but can’t. 

         

& even if Ruas paints something hollow, there’s a REASON that stare is vacant or those eyes are looking off in the distance, glazed over.  There’s a reason there’s a barrier between his character’s eyes & yours.  He doesn’t want to push you away; in fact he would rather you join him.  He would rather you embrace the little private journals & sketchbooks he puts on display & even sells.  All of those intimate, unique little drawings – just for you.  Something the two of you can share.

There’s this intimacy & secrecy even through this dark imagery.  & I’m not just spouting out my own intellectual nonsense just to sell him.  Sure the forms may not always be beautiful [some of them are downright ugly & are drawn in such a grotesquely awkward way], but you will always FEEL something, regardless of the “beauty” of the piece.  “Beauty” is so overrated anyway.

  

All selected artworks by Ruas are taken from his “III” show, shown @ the Thinkspace Gallery in LA, May-June 2010:  "What divides the sacred from the mundane? Is that an universal or a personal matter? Can a moment, a place or a person in your life ever be sacred? These questions were the starting point of obsessive and transforming thoughts and drawings which resulted in this series of works. Iconography obviously plays a big part in the aesthetic being explored but so does everyday life, everyday dreams and everyday fears."