George Hofmann – Dialogue
January 16, 2023
In Painting, gesture is language….
George thought it would be interesting to start a discussion about painting, about this moment in time for painting, and so, he gives us a loaded topic that still resonates with painters today.
What is meant by gesture? by language? What does this mean after Modernism? After programs, AI? After George’s ideas about Fractured Space?
What are your thoughts? We would like to hear what you have to say.
George Hofmann’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/georgehofmann1240/
website: https://www.georgehofmann.com
3 Comments
gwh12
I wonder if we are so past E.M. Forster’s “only connect” that it is virtually impossible to have a dialogue now. Maybe, in these times, we only think of protecting ourselves. And who could blame us? The forces of selfishness are rampant … we seem to have evoled into a society of ruthlessness …
admin
It’s interesting George that you bring up Forster’s sermon. Forster was making an argument to connect head and heart – an interior journey to become a whole being. Today we only connect as an outward experience. We swipe right, we connect virtually and we experience our world through electronic enhancements. When we try to connect today it is not a spiritual experience, a romantic experience, or even a physical experience, but it’s always a transactional experience. Our need for connection is not within but online. And this kind of “online only connection” may be a similar experience to your discussion of Fractured Space – “Eventually, the combination of frontality and fracture, the mix of virtual and real, the juxtapositions of subjects, and the speed that characterize media began to underlie, more and more, the feeling of almost all paintings. The reverse, of course, is also true: collage and fracturing are now everywhere in media…” And when we look at that idea of Fracturing we have to ask – what is “the feeling of almost all paintings”? If our feelings, our visions and our lives are fractured can we connect and become whole as Forster wants us to?
gwh12
I think paintings are dialoging now – too bad we haven’t a higher level of discourse amongst critics and writers on art.
A series of articles on current philosophy in the NY Review of Books recently featured comments on connecting: one exists by virtue of recognition – being seen.
As artists we are perhaps most closely tied to seeing – in every sense; and in a comment I saw on Instagram, Edward Steichen said, “once you really commence to see things, then you really commence to feel things”.