How I got into art:
About miekla
Klaus Jürgen Miegel Instead of a meaningless profile I would like to take the opportunity and present my thoughts concerning art today. Although this attitude is often rejected, and mostly vigorously and even fanatically denied, in my opinion art still depends on a certain degree of skill. This skill is revealed through a technique which clearly expresses what the artist wants so say with his/her works. This almost automatically excludes the necessity of an interpretation by a third party, but also by the artist him-/herself. To my mind, a separation of mind and technique is not possible where art is concerned. The artist who feels a burning desire in him-/herself to communicate his/her ideas and who is thus truly interested in telling the world something will always find a technique and the corresponding skill to master it so that it eventually expresses this interest – and every artist needs to possess this interest, otherwise he/she shouldn’t call him-/herself an artist. Someone who only pretends to feel this interest will have great difficulties in conveying his/her ideas to the world and therefore depends on the popular, but bloodlessly composed and only supposedly deeply reflected interpretations of others. Consequently, a lack of artistic technique is clearly a sign of missing or only alleged commitment. This is only partly connected with virtuosity. A technique is always good if it expresses what the artist wants to say. If it doesn’t fulfil this requirement it is bad – however perfect and virtuoso it may be regarded. Thus, an official “spoon-feeding” and even the nowadays ever so popular promotion of “art” would become obsolete to the same extent to which people who are truly interested in art would be enabled to look at works of art in a completely uninfluenced manner – so that they would once again learn to look at a picture without being subjected to such an influence. Without the customary manipulation, which we have become so used to nowadays, a viewer will always be attracted to those works of art that he/she – and only he/she – considers vivid and expressive. Every person has got an innate feeling for art, and the same goes for musicality. Both senses can be trained, but they cannot be generated anew – whether critics like it or not. One doesn’t have to put it as drastically as Michelangelo, who said that an artist who cannot draw is simply incapable, or the painter Tintoretto, who originated from the genre of colouring and who also remarked, “You can buy a lot of colours along the bridges of Rialto and you can paint many colourful pictures with them, but those in this city who are really able to draw I can count off on the fingers of one hand.” Even the most stupid have come to understand that you needn’t necessarily have to be a chef to judge the quality of a good meal; yet, for many decades the official art opinion-makers have been trying to disguise the fact that the same is true for the evaluation of art – partly because they feel embarrassed, and partly because the latter is the only foundation for their acting as an art windbag. Unfortunately, this way of supposedly talking knowledgably about art is financially valued more highly in our superficial and talkative times than most artistic works themselves are. Of course, taste is often very diverse – thank God! The official exertion of influence on art trends and ideals of beauty as well as the almost always deliberately indistinct and pompous (and often even perverse and foolish) interpretations of critics must be regarded as evil as the rash condemnation of one or the other art trend, as the latter is/are usually the reason why it becomes possible for us to experience a premiere of the fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes” in galleries all over the world on a daily basis. In this scenario there is, of course, no (“stupid”) child who would be allowed to openly claim, “But the emperor is all naked!” We have come to a point where most adults leave their personal opinion concerning art in the cloakroom – together with their coats. This goes for openings at art galleries as well as for visits in a museum, and even people with a higher level of education are not immune to this phenomenon. Too often critics are allowed to patronise the audience or viewers with their mostly far-fetched prattle, thus concealing the missing commitment of so-called artists; without any real authority these critics want to make “non-critics” believe that they or any official source hold a monopoly on artistic taste. If this official patronising of art and the artists were to come to an end – but only then – we could eventually go without all the mistaken promotion of art. Even the greatest optimism, however, cannot warrant hope for such a development in our superficial “modern” times. Thus, I tell all those officially nominated and self-appointed critics, “Once done is worth a thousand times beaten to death.”, or to comfort them, “Even a dreadfully bad wine might occasionally make a good vinegar.” [Klaus Jürgen Miegel, Offenbach, September 2006, on the occasion of the Offenbach Art Reviews] It would be most appreciated, if people that still have an own opinion, as long as Art is concerned would contact me . And ,I am allways locking for decend places for an Art-Exhibition !
