"Ode To B.Willikens" 1977

A genuine work of art or what I mean by it, needs - I think - not to be analysed
and explained.
If it is finished, that is, in every respect in itself completed and corresponds with any coordination system, which always must be comprehended in details too - then the educated, thinking consciousness (if there is still one left) of the observing vis-à-vis easily understands the meaning of the relevant depicted statement.

But, as we know, in practice, these favourable circumstances are not often combined with each other.
So, I shall comply with the wishes of some people - although I am of the opinion that principally nobody should have the roasted pigeons placed into his/her mouth.

With this, the up-to-date last of my works, (1977), my primary intention was: to throw a highlight (by using slogans) onto today's more than questionable art scenery - including that of the last ten to fifteen years, a period certainly, but with a serious background.

The position of today's artist in our society is degraded more and more to a tragic clownery, since the basic thinking of this, our society, is coined more than ever by primarily pure material points of view.

Logically, the constantly rotating, always increasing circle: production - consume, has in the meantime gripped all vital regions of society and norms.

This is known everywhere, but consciously comprehended in its implication only by a minority.
In fact, the majority of the artists, as well as the members of our society, and inevitably their reflectors, resigned and resign - actively or passively conscious, not as often unconsciously - more or less without resistance to their regularities.

The artist as individual person hardly exists any more; in fact, he/she has become a manoeuvred-produced and self-producing mass in itself, who in turn reproduces the masses as such, according to the regularities, which result from it.

With the background of commerce - and consume thinking, he/she voluntarily renounces subjective creativity and consumes or produces willingly that which is proclaimed by politicizing, psychologising often corrupt profiteers within the mentioned circle, as the at present to be striven for ideology of the body of thought and the prevailing design.

Thus, the common motto propagates: "not the quality of a work of art makes the price, but the market value of the individual name determines the price and with it the often questionable quality".

It is well known that it is learnable to determine the quality, respectively non-quality of material assets.
Thus, it should be learnable just the same to realize and reward the (non-) quality of a work of art as such, independent of considerations, which should not have anything to do with it.
These days, a creative and highly talented artist is not born any more as such;
in fact, he/she is "made" to be one.

Even the silliest and untalented person has a chance in our, so called, "liberal, democratic social order" to have the title "artist" or even "genius" attached to him or her.
A term, indeed, which always pays in cash with clever manipulation.

Of course, I do not intend at all here, for instance, to deny the aesthetic beauty of a smooth, grey impersonal concrete wall, likewise not the aesthetics of a narrow, empty room with skylight, in which the impersonal, sterile bier can speak a very personal language. Thus, it can become itself an impressive personality "matter", all the more so if the ideology of a fantastic symbol is visibly given, but still is immaterial, since illustrated by a colourful angel within a palette of rainbow-colours, which, on its part, unsuccessfully tries to escape from the given premises or symbolised (spiritual) situations.

After all, I stand (among other things) for the conceivably greatest possible perfection of any portrayal - it should live - as long as it does not put into question all contents, because the impalpable unrealities of "to be nothing", "not to be", "to be empty" and so on, can also be realized as a real fact, at least in the subjective sublimated works of art and therefore with regard to content - by the relation of its realization and similar to mathematical (ir-) regularity - can (or cannot) leading itself ad absurdum. (*)
(* See JABRO’S masterwork, titled, "Moloch-Life: The Screaming Scream", Easter 1967. ©)

In other words, it can (or cannot) be absolutely sufficient to describe an obvious, as realistic recognized fact for instance with the subjective sublimated adjectives as "bare or empty emptiness", "dead or inexistent inexistence", "unfilled or contentless content", "unsubstantial or meaningless meaninglessness", "inexistent or nothing nothingness" and so forth.

At last, all the blah-blah of some, so-called, "art connoisseurs" only really serves primarily their own image-making and has often nothing in common with the actual statement of the artist. What to do then?

Personally, I lie down under the fading sun and let myself - as far as it is still possible - be warmed by it in the illusory, unrealistic hope that no shadow might fall on me.