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Darwin's Manifesto VII
Darwin Leon
Whereas the impressionable poets were wont to bow down to the Impressionist artists when the those artists entered the bohemian café, the post-modern artists, impressed by the intellectual attack on intellect, bowed down to the despairing writers and became anti-artists. In their understandable despair, afraid to believe anything at all, they found what they were looking for: nothing at all: their salvation was nowhere to be found. Therefore contemporary art represented the destructive life they hated, becoming virtually the very thing it protested.
And now the historical spirit of fine art must be recovered yet again and brought forward. The culture of high civilization is not the enemy of man but is his best friend. That is, if he would not be a brute. His brutal enemy is primitive, ignorant, and barbaric, and is all too "contemporary” or determined by the collective unconscious and blind habits of his time. In critical terms, the brutal art is all subjective concept and no social ideal. The artistic brute has a concept that he does not really understand, and his success depends on a popularity contest whose winners might as well be randomly selected by a computer. The surrealist artist brings those inchoate forces of cultural darkness to light, not to celebrate them as a contemporary attraction but to tame them. Note well that Renaissance Masters were not "contemporary": they painted and practiced the "classic" subject matter of thirteen centuries prior for nearly three hundred years.
Although I tune in to Surreality, I do not rely on the arbitrary and accidental determination of my main subjects - as if one could intentionally be unintentional. I choose the subjects that I meditate upon. Of course I do not deny that providence might have a role in the determination of my choices, that there may be no such thing as an accident. My works may reflect current events, or project future events corresponding to destiny. My projections of the future are not contrived but are the consequences of my penchant for constant experimentation and exploration of the myriad forms that the spirit of art can take when the medium is willing.
Despite my intense interest in the discovery and exploration of new frontiers, I am quite mad about cubism and surrealism, as can be seen in many of my works to date. I am now experimenting with a more intense way of abstracting and enhancing the figure, a movement I call cubosurrealism. The marriage of surrealism and cubism conveys the unconscious and subconscious suggestions of the momentous and marvelous Surreality better than either style standing alone.
It is a very fine thing, I think, to embrace the best aspects of natural traditions wherever they might be found. For example, the heroic tradition recognizes heroes. It is natural for social creatures to find and emulate the best among them. Creative artists have a tradition of recognizing their own heroes, the great artists who have most influenced their artistic progress. I happen to look up to Salvador Dali. I do not idolize Dali, but he is my artistic hero, the inspiration for my artistic mission.
Of one thing I am certain: Dali was ahead of his time and of our time. Salvador Dali came up with his own style and imagery while abiding by masterful technique. That is, his innovative _expression was carefully controlled by traditional means. Dali had a paradoxical way of entertaining the general public with intellectual subjects they might not otherwise comprehend or be interested in. Of course his greatest sin was in getting rich by bringing fine art before the public in a commercial way - as if a master has no right to make fine art out of a lipstick advertisement, so everyone could be amazed and exclaim, "Voila!"
People are rediscovering Dali and are consequently finding meaning in postmodernism. Sophisticated people are now claiming that appropriate projections and interpretations of Surreality are therapeutic. The anti-artists said that salvation is nowhere, but practitioners of surrealistic art finds the possibility for the resurrection of art and humankind everywhere, in every possible subject whether it be concrete or abstract.
The resurrection of art remains to be seen. That is why I carry forward with my project with my manifesto in mind.
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