AESTHETIC REFLECTIONS

Interview with Armando Alemdar (and André Durand)
© 2004 Idea Fine Art, London, UK

J = Julia Hodgson (Art student, Wokingham Art School,

A = Armando Alemdar (Curator, Idea Fine Art, London-New York)
D = Andre Durand (Director, Idea Fine Art, London-New York)
C = Michele Carlile (Art Teacher, Wokingham Art School, UK)

J- What compels you to be an artist?
A – Well I just see it as the very reason for my existence. I could not live and not be an artist. But ultimately I think it is to show the world what I have learnt – as I learn when I paint.
J – Learn what?
A – I learn about life, I learn knowledge.
J – Do you feel that you learn your targets, your techniques, or is it ….
A – No. The technique is of course part of it – I learn concepts and thought processes.
J – Do you feel that those thoughts are common to society or are they individual to you?
A – Both, it must be both. But it would be an illusion to say that it is individual, because as an individual I am part of society.
J – Is there a reason why you focus on philosophy so much?
A – I think that it has always been in me to try and better myself. The best way to better myself, my mind, is through philosophy.
J – Is there a particular reason why you focus on the philosophy of Marx and Hegel?
A – I think that any philosophy that is concerned with dialectics will be of interest. This kind of philosophy has movement by its own virtue; it is not static and therefore it can never become dogmatic. But one should be careful not to equate this to mere relativism.
J – Do you feel that people use philosophical thought enough today, or is it something that you think should be incorporated more?
A –It should definitely be incorporated more. We don’t use enough philosophy in our lives, we don’t... There is a lack of spirituality generally – lack of will to better oneself as a result.
J – Do you hope that your artwork will encourage people to do this – is this one of your aims?
A – That’s definitely one of my aims. Art has essentially a communicative function, although a work of art never bears a direct effect on the viewer. Instead, it has an indirect, subtle effect.
J – What’s your idea of the Absolute Ideal – the concept that you regularly mention… What do you feel that is?
A – It is the energy that is in us, and around us; it’s the constant flow of life which has two spheres - the material one in which we all exist, and the spiritual one. And this is why I was so attracted to Hegel who so clearly made this connection between the material and the spiritual.
J – Is that what you try to do in your own work - combine the two elements?
A – In my pictures I want to show the spiritual that is around the physical body; that is the more pragmatic aim.
J – And why do you choose to focus on the nude figure as a basis for your work?
A – Because the nude is the basis of beauty and aesthetics. As they say, the human body is the measure of all things.
J – Why do you feel aesthetics is so important within artwork, you seem to focus on that so much more than the conceptual elements which are in modern art today – for example Brit Art. Why do you feel that aesthetics is so much more important?
A – Well because it is, because Brit Art today is a mere reaction to what preceded it– it doesn’t stand on its own. It can only exist as a reaction and that is why it fails I think.
J – Why do you consider a reaction to be a bad thing, especially within the art world?
A – Because it doesn’t contain the contradictory elements within itself. It doesn’t have two sides. Therefore, it cannot facilitate a dialectical process.
J – Why do you feel that it doesn’t have any kind of conflict? I thought that is what Brit Art is all about – asking questions and exposing truths to people.
A – There is no conflict within itself. There is a conflict with what precedes it.
J – And how do you feel there is a conflict within your own artwork?
A – Well, there is conflict between the different aspects within it; between colour and form, concept and matter, etc.
J – So with regards to the elements that have been within art works throughout the centuries, do you feel that traditional artworks have always had that conflict - is it something that is disappearing, or is it something that you are introducing?
A – No, no, I’m not introducing at all, I am just rewriting; yes, rewriting the traditional values that have always existed. And in this sense Neomodernism is just a way of looking at art not an art movement per say – it is a philosophy of art.
J – How do you maintain that it is still something new? I would have thought that for anything today to move forward it still has to be original in some way. How do you consider Neomodernism to be original?
A – Because it is a fresh look at art; it looks through the ‘isms’ of all art movements that preceded it. It allows one to look at an ‘old master’ at the National Gallery with intimacy and sensibility as one would have for any other work that contains the necessary qualities.
J – This is quite clear in your style. It has a new element to it which is really interesting. Your art presents something so new and yet has traditional grounding.
A – I think that’s quite original.
D – What Armando?
A – My stuff.
D – Yes, I don’t think that I’ve seen any abstract paintings that have been done which have the depth that Armando’s do. I mean depth in both senses: spiritually and artistically, but also like in that three dimensional sense of depth that we find in Renaissance painting. For example, lets take Piero Della Francesca’s ‘Flagellation’. We have this tremendous sense of depth and perspective. We perceive the same qualities in Armando’s paintings and yet he isn’t using any kind of obviously recognizable physical form. I find this really unique. I think that is possibly what gives them the spiritual dimension which just seems to be automatically implied. Its probably also worth mentioning, though Armando would be too modest to say, that he’s from a Sufi background so he has traditionally been acquainted to abstract representations of Truth and God. I think that we don’t look seriously enough at the history of abstract painting, in say linking it with things like calligraphy and Persian painting – that is something that comes very naturally to Armando in such a way that he doesn’t think about it. But as an observer from the outside it occurs to me that the proper antecedents of the work Armando is doing - the real link – will be found I think there, in Persian painting and calligraphy. Because that is in a sense abstract form; it has the same meaning - the Absolute. To us a piece of calligraphy that says, for example, ‘Allah’, has an abstract form. And yet to a person who can read it and understands it, it immediately has meaning. That’s how I go into Armando’s paintings – its like the form inside has a similar meaning. It has both dimensions within it. I think it’s unique. I can’t think of any other abstract painting that does that. Can you?

J – (pause) No.
D – Julia, I can’t think of any at all; I’ve never seen it before. When Armando was first working on these new pictures I wondered about it myself and really looked everywhere and I couldn’t find anything similar, and when we published our ‘Transfiguration and the Ideal’ we didn’t find any good antecedents for Armando’s pictures. So I tend to think that the link we found there – calligraphy and some of the forms – is a suitable one. You notice some of the forms Armando sees and paints are particularly attractive to our sense of the calligraphic, and to our sense of the beautiful.
C – So it’s like Islamic art (?)
D – Exactly.
C – Yes… Fluctuating forms…
D – Absolutely.
C - …and regenerating that … the computer imagery….So that is an interesting… (interrupted)
D – I think we must put computer out of it though, as far as Armando’s paintings are concerned, and as far as calligraphy is concerned – its an anathema (laugh). Really, its part of the beauty of calligraphy that it is so free and ‘uncomputerised.’
C – But perhaps for youngsters, because the computer is so much a part of their lives. ..But I agree that if you examined some other great calligraphy works you will find a wonderful link to Armando’s imagery.
J ( to A) – Were you aware of this link?
A – No...I mean, we briefly discussed the subject.
D – I don’t think that I’ve ever mentioned it before – have I? Just very briefly.
A – Very briefly.
D – Because I’ve been very interested in abstract painting myself. I’ve always maintained that it does not originate in the 20th Century, but much earlier, in sacred geometry and Islamic art. .
A – In fact, we’ve considered other abstract paintings, but they’ve always failed the test when works were reproduced in black and white – like Kandinsky. It just looses the impact of the depth when in black and white, somehow the form is lost and the image becomes flat.
D – What I found as one of the most insidious concepts of Modernism is the idea of this flatness. It was Clement Greenberg, I think, that promoted this flatness, the flatness of the canvas surface - I hate that. To me a painting must be some sort of a window that you can go into, that your whole being can go into, and that’s the beginning of an adventure into an another world. In fact, smacking myself on the surface of something – it just hurts. I don’t even want to know about it.

That is again one brilliant quality that Armando achieves – you feel that you can just go in there and be in his pictures like Alice in her mirror; it is wonderful, it is a whole new world. And that idea, that Modernist idea that a picture has to be flat, it is just ridiculous…
A – A mere bourgeois concept of art as a decorative item and symbol of status.
D - Julia, I would be very interested in the course of your writing about this if you find any abstract painting that achieves the same effect as Armando’s pictures.
J – Its interesting, I’m just thinking of a student of my age that has created a piece based on music. We took a photograph in black and white and it looked so striking. It was in a way similar to Armando’s work, with fluctuating lines moving towards some kind of a void.
D – Exactly, that would be the right spirit and feeling. I think black and white is very telling of a picture, of any image really. It is a good way to analyse it, I think.
J (to A ) – Which painters have been the main influences in your work, or just as an artist?
A – Well, before I developed this style it was a surrealist painter in Macedonia, Vasko Taskovski. For me a much better painter than Dali, both technically and conceptually, much more mature and unaffected. But that is a direct influence. Other than that, I think thought is a much bigger influence than any particular painter. However, Titian is a great influence, indirectly.
J – What is it about Titian’s work that influences you?
A – The colour sense, the depth, the truths that comes out of Titian’s paintings. The truth of a Titian face; life gushes out of this face, whereas in a Veronese it is a mere illustration, almost like a Socialist Realism picture, or should I say, poster. Recently I have come to believe that I like Titian more than Da Vinci. Somehow more truths come out of Titian’s paintings. Da Vinci deals more with the perfection of form perhaps, but somehow Titian provides more inspiration.
J – I found that when I went to the National Gallery of Scotland, having not seen much of Titian’s work before. What amazed me was his style of painting. And the way in which he captured people appeared so modern for his time – sort of impressionist in the use of colour.
D – What do you mean by that when you say ‘how modern his work seemed’? I think that’s where the danger is, in the concept of something being modern. Because actually it is properly lodged in the timeless zone of our minds. Titian is timeless, not modern. We want to say it is modern because I guess even you are a product of the idea that there is some kind of progression in art. Is that still a current idea in art schools?
A – Yes, linear progression.
D – I know I had a little bit of that, that progress was something applied to art which of course it is simply not so. Progress has nothing to do with art.
C – I agree with you (Armando) that ‘linear’ is the question, that’s an assumption because its an assumption with everything in society that progress is linear.
D – But we know that there is no such thing, the concept of progress is just…
A – But that goes if one implies that ‘modern’ means development. However, I guess that in the way Julia uses it, it just means ‘ahead of its time’. The fact that subsequent styles came after the Renaissance and the fact that this reminded her of the way Titian painted in so many centuries before that would make his work ‘modern’.
D – Well yes, but we’re still having that kind of modernist outlook at things that there is progress in art. But consider this: Titian is painting these incredible paintings 500 years ago and they seem extremely relevant to our present time – why? What is it about them? It can’t just be the colours because Titian’s palette exists in other painters. What is it about Titian’s art that makes it so relevant to the present time?
J – His palette did seem somewhat different to the other paintings at a similar time though.
D – Well , the paintings at the National Gallery in Scotland are some of the most incredible pictures he ever painted – the height of his maturity really. But I’m trying to think of a contemporary of Titian who seems as relevant now. Can you think of one? A 16th century painter that seems as contemporary as Titian?
C – Canaletto , wasn’t he around at the same time as Titian?
D – But he’s a little later, isn’t he?
A – His colour sense is much richer though than to any painter from that period.
D – To me the absolute timeless quality of Titian’s art is achieved his pictures are so philosophical, so deeply thought out. His approach to the myth and subject matter is in total balance with his ability to paint and realise.
J – Isn’t ‘timeless’ perhaps the same as what I would mean by ‘modern’?
D – That’s what I’m trying to identify because this is something we have to be clear on.
J – That is what I mean by ‘modern’.
D – Then ‘modern’ is an artwork that ‘hits’ you now.
A – It is perhaps Neomodern. Neomodern is what we mean.
D – That is exactly it, becaus4e the point of Neomodern is that it is modern but it is always new; it is a tautology between newness and modern. So, Titian is Neomodern. That’s what I would say. Definitely. That fits in perfectly with the philosophy of art. And are you saying that Leonardo is less Neomodern , are you Armando? I am inclined to agree with you, except for perhaps certain works, like the Mona Lisa.
A – Yes, the Mona Lisa is definitely Neomodern.
D – The Last Supper too is Neomodern. But I think it is not an advantage to compare such successful Neomodern painters as to illuminate anything. There is that timeless quality that I think they have.
Do you have a feeling that any modernist painters are in that timeless zone?
J – (pause) Lucian Freud I think. I’ve always loved his work – it’s something within his composition and the use of colour. It’s something which I personally find spiritual. I doubt, however, that he has intended that necessarily as a spiritual series of works.
D – He seems to deliberately seek to avoid that idea by the choice of the subject matter.
J – I disagree. It is just something about his composition that I find amazing.
C – This is true, it is the extraordinary humanity of his images that actually gives it a very spiritual feeling.
A – What? The hyper-real subject matter negates itself and it become spiritual?
C – Yes.
J – Well, the sprit is something that is in everybody, its not an external entity as such.
D – That is true.
C – When everything is striped so bare, as is the case with Freud’s figures, there is no flattering of any kind.
A – Or idealisation.
C – Yes.
A – I prefer the negating of the form through idealisation than to strip it bare.
D – That’s an interesting way to put it. Yes, that’s the other way of negating the form, by idealising it. And you say that Freud goes in the other direction, is that what you are saying?
A – Yes. I think the purpose of art is to convey a concept. Neomodern works of art convey the concept by idealizing form, which then negates itself. It negates itself by the virtue of its own perfection. When we look at the Mona Lisa we don’t think about how she was painted, we don’t think of the form. We are simply observing the Truth of her. In contrast, Brit Art has actually negated the physical work of art altogether, leaving only the concept. How vulgar…
D – Yes. Like you, I prefer the idealisation of the form rather than the ….. I suppose Lucian Freud ties in with Rembrant a bit in the sense of leaving it all hanging out. Would you agree?
J – I don’t see how they are that different, as if it might come round in a full circle. Two different ways of representing the same thing.
D – What comes to the same point? Rembrant and Freud , or Idealizing a form , or making it more… what’s the opposite of Idealizing?
J – Sorry, I didn’t make that clear. I find the spiritual element within Armando’s work as well as in Freud’s. Its in both artists work, only in a different way. I think perhaps Freud’s work is more difficult to be absorbed into for some people. Some people see the image and see it as shocking – it’s a boundary to some perhaps.
D – Some people find it shocking- do they?
J – I think they do, there will be some who just find the human form as a taboo subject – which is sad.
D – That’s probably just in England.
C – Particularly if it is not idealized. I think that people find the idealised form much more acceptable.
D – Would it be arguable that an idealised form could be more beautiful? I know beauty is not a much used word these days, but its rather the point isn’t it.
C – Beauty is compelling.
D – Beauty is also something that everyone knows, whether they like it or not - they sense it. What do you think then of Francis Bacon?
J - I like his work less than Freud’s. I find it more difficult to understand and relate to – I don’t really like the distortion of the form as such. I’ve never really made a particular effort to fully understand his work.
A – Do you feel that there is anything difficult to understand about my ‘Job Transcending’?
J – No (nothing difficult), it is something that I feel I can relate to, it is not a boundary. I feel I’m able to be absorbed into it. The spiritual element is something that I have always tried to understand, and has interested me. It’s not as though it is something that scares me, which I think for some people it does. I think that the idea that there is something beyond the material is something that not everyone can accept.
(long pause)
J – Armando, how would you hope your work to be understood?
A – Just to give some sort of understanding of the energy around us, to give some sense of the intangible. I wouldn’t like my work to present any sort of boundary and I hope that my art does illuminate something of the spiritual.
J- It would be interesting to go out into the street with a copy of it and just ask people how it makes them feel, just to understand how accessible it is to a wide range of people.
D – I think that out of the people who accompanied, who moved the painting to the churches. The director had the most interesting comment about ‘Job Transcending’. He said he wasn’t particularly partial to abstract painting but here was a picture that everybody could love, no matter what they loved about it. And everybody has really loved that picture. It was just general love – we could have sold it twenty times over really.
J – And what response have you had from art critics?
A – Well, all positive , sorry to be boring (laugh) – everybody has liked it.
J – Have you had any comments about Neomodernism?
A – Neomodernism was only published properly in April 2004 so it is too early to say. However, we wrote the manifesto in 2001.
D –There was quite a lot of animated discussion about it though at the exhibition, very simulating. And the interplay between people was extremely interesting on the subject. I think everyone is keen to look at a painting and not call it an old master any more - that does in some way put it in a horrible dusty cupboard of one’s mind.
J – You both seem very critical of Brit Art and Postmodern art. Do you not relate to any of the conceptual values which are raised in that work?
D – But what are the conceptual values raised in that work? Could you just tell me some of them?
J – To me they address current truths, making clear to people some life values, things which people would find to shocking to look at in real life and yet when they are faced with it in a gallery opens their eyes, it makes them aware of current issues and possibly initiates changes in their views on current issues.
D – It certainly changes people’s views about art, to think anybody can to do it, that’s for sure. Don’t you think if that stuff wasn’t in a gallery - which is the operative part of the concept - we just wouldn’t bother with it?
J – Well that’s part of the point, you wouldn’t look at it if it wasn’t in a gallery.
A – That’s the whole point they make.
D – If it wasn’t in gallery we would just forget about it?
J- I think so. I’ve always been interested in art, and I’ve always found that I’m observant of everything around me, but I don’t think that everyone is like that, and I think that to put something in a gallery like Tacey Emin’s bed – people would normally not see that because … they just shut their eyes, focus to get to work on time. I think Brit Art a good way of opening people’s eyes, forcing them to look at things which they wouldn’t normally look at, which they are too scared to look at or...
D – But what is the role of looking at her dirty bed? What does it meant for anybody to have that experience? It is interesting that the idea of a dirty bed can get into an art gallery , but then you’d need someone as uncultured as Charles Saatchi to buy a gallery , to pay for the stuff , have the media machine behind him , and stick someone’s dirty bed in the gallery. Do you know the thing where Andy Warhol and some other guy stood on a ladder and pissed on the piece of copper . Do you remember that? I mean that’s Brit Art –its such an old hat to start off with. But you need it I think – a media giant and that’s the phenomenon which I find interesting about Brit Art. Is what the media can do to something and how it can wind people up. But I don’t think that a real work of art needs that. If you found ‘Job Transcending’ in the most ignominious place like some sort of basement or some place where you would never expect to find a painting you’d still think: ‘ my God that’s beautiful’. If Tracy Emin's bed is found in a room in your house you would probably clean it up and throw it out. And that’s really all there is to be said about it. It’s the phenomenon of taking something that is mundane, ordinary, and make circus of it.
J – I still think it is making us aware of an element – people are so blind to what is going on in the world around them – there not aware of wars which are going on in certain countries, and I think it is useful to train people to be aware of things.
D – I’m afraid that Brit Art doesn’t do that. I think that Brit Art as a phenomenon itself could probably only happen in England or America. It needed Saatchi and his cache behind it. It needed Mrs. Thatcher to sell stuff to the Japanese. It needed materialist pigs really to get behind it with no culture whatsoever. I’ve been to the Opera with Mrs. Thatcher and she was a barbarian as far as I can say. But that being said, the biggest danger of this art is that it has destroyed people’s confidence in art, it has destroyed people’s respect for artists. There is this element that ‘anyone can do it’.
A – Still, we cannot refute Brit Art absolutely and completely because again it is just a part of the dialectical process of art, and life.
D – Yes , but at the same time of Tracey Emin’s bed I am working and painting - there are other things happening here that don’t get the same media attention.
A – Yes, but it is also a useful thing. Brit Art has useful aspects to it.
D – I can’t see one Armando.
A – Well, by presenting us with anti-aestheticism Brit Art forces us to relate to aesthetic values and in that...
D – It doesn’t have that effect, I don’t believe. It has the effect with people of really pissing them off. What is that doing in a museum?
A – But that is the whole point of it, because they put it in a museum; the whole point is so that we can ask that question. Also, we mustn’t forget that Brit Art is a result of a certain frame of mind. That frame of mind was created and Brit Art merely reflects it – and because it reflects it has created the art movement – and the creation of the art movement has sprung Neomodernism. A dialectical cycle of art.
D – For me Neomodernism doesn’t happen because of …..
A – But remember how we started to conceive of Neomodernism – it was because we were so disappointed with the present art scene, with Brit Art and Postmodernism.
D – Well yes, but one has to accept the fact that I have been painting all this time myself, before Tracy Emin was born and had a vision of our present time. Ever since we developed these kind of galleries where we go in and people can drag their kids too; ever since the art gallery existed as a middle class, cool place to take the kids to on Sunday, and blah- blah- blah –ever since the gallery existed on that level in people’s mind , there was a premise it seems to me which starts with putting the urinal in the gallery. When was the first piece of shit put in a gallery? When was the first junk actually put in a gallery?
A – It was actually literally a piece of shit, by that Italian artist, which predates Duchamp’s urinal.
J – When would you say the change occurred, between the traditional and the postmodern aesthetic values?
A – When the gallery becomes the public space, with Modernism. Post –modernism is a reaction to that – it wants to take the everyday object and put it in the ‘high art’ environment of the gallery. But the irony is that by doing so Postmodern art itself has become the elitist, ‘high art’ in white-wall galleries. It has lost its own cause. I guess, in this sense, Brit Art has negated itself dialectically.
J – I would have thought that elitist art would only interest or attract a small select group of people, but something like Brit Art attracts so many people into the galleries. I was in the Saatchi gallery this morning and the range of people who were there was incredible. How is that elitist art if you have got such a wide range of people?
A – It tries not to be elitist art. As I said, Brit Art defeats its own point because it started by trying to take out works of art from the galleries – take out the elitism. Now they find themselves in the most elitist environment - in the Saatchi gallery on the embankment.
J - Is that why you feel the spiritual element is so important in a piece of work? Do you feel that that is something which is in everyone?
A – Of course it is. And that’s the one dimension which everyone can pick up in a work of art - a real work of art. This kind of an art work could speak to everybody. A work of art has got to do that – it has to speak to absolutely everyone – even Americans (Laughing).
J- How do you go about constructing your pieces of work – the stages?
A – Starting from realism, with realistic sketches.
J – And how to you get the abstract form from that?
A – Well that’s the part that I feel, which some people call talent. So, first I draw the nude realistically – I don’t know whether I see or imagine the shapes or the thoughts around the body -depending on the model and how she or he feels. I present these energy/thought forms as visible as the actual body – equalize them in order to reach abstraction.
J – And how do you choose your colours?
A – I have never made a decision about a colour. The first colour that comes to mind is actually always the right one. I’ve never made a mistake with colour – never. I’ve made mistakes with form – the form can change throughout the process, but not the colour. However, in the last four years I have started painting in the Renaissance technique of glazing so I achieve the colours with several transparent glazes.
C – Did they teach art in schools in the Republic of Macedonia?
A – Yes, in a very traditional way
C – All the way through?
A – All the way through; icon painting, decorative painting, life drawing, calligraphy, History of Art…
C – All of that in main stream school? You didn’t go to private school?
A – Oh no, no, this is in art school.
C – So what about in ordinary school – like Julia’s in. Did they teach art?
A – Yes, just the normal subject of Art – drawing, painting, plaster and Icon painting in ordinary school because it is a tradition in Macedonia.
C – And do you have a religious background?
A – Yes, if one considers Sufism as a religion – though I think that is a much more mystical way of thinking rather than a religion. Contrary to popular beleif of its Islamic origin, it predates both Christianity and Islam. My grandfather was a practicing Sufi dervish of the Bektashi order. I beleive that I have the family's Sufi path in my blood. I have sensed if not observed this in my everyday behaviour towards myself and others. Treating everyone with understanding, patience and love is the underlying current of every religion, and this is exactly what Sufism is; it is the underlying current of every religion.
C – So you did Icon painting.
A – Yes, actually that one over there is mine. Well in this one I have cheated because it is not the traditional way in which it should be painted. I used much more colour than is allowed and the brush strokes – your not meant to blend colours, you are meant to use just strokes.
C – Is there a reason for this?
A –I think it just objectifies it, it idealises the subject matter, and it doesn’t allow any sensuality or any subjectivity and I think that this way it passes the test of time and it can therefore be used as an instrument for praying.
C – And I wonder if that concept follows through with any of your painting ideals?
A – Of course. I think I work through the form to such a level that I try to ‘work it out’ and objectify it. My paintings really are the end result of a long process and that’s why I don’t like modernist paintings with the pure expression of the artist, the purely subjective expression of the artist. I don’t like to show the process that I go through, I don’t like it just to be my own expression, I like it to be the result of something that I have achieved in my mind.
J – Are there times when you are creating a work of art and your own beliefs or understandings are challenged so much that it becomes a problem – that your views are changed considerably.
A – There is always a problem. I mean, I don’t think I would be pleased with a painting unless there is a problem. I have to learn something while I paint.
J – What was your style like before this kind of work?
A – To be vulgar, surreal.
J – What made you change?
A – Well, when I look at my previous paintings now I really feel disgusted. I think: how could I have been so unsubtle and vulgar? But then again even when I started my abstract style, the abstract paintings from three years ago, I see these completely vulgar and undeveloped and opposed to the ones I am painting now. That is because I am painting in layers now, which is how the Renaissance painters used to do it. But I always maintain that an artist’s art develops parallel to his/her mind. And that I achieve by the regular talks we have here at Idea Fine Art, seminars and lectures for up to forty people - along side private exhibitions. These are usually art historical or literature talks. There are many academics of different backgrounds who get involved. There’s a Philosophical School - they often take part - The Neoplatonic School of Thought - it is very exciting.
C – So, Neoplatonic – Is that something which interests you?
A – Yes, although I stick to German Idealism Schopenhauer, Schiller and Hegel . They really excite me, but then again there are things I can’t turn my back on – such as Marxism. I studied Marx throughout my youth. I am from a socialist country so…. As a result, I think now I have a very good balanced view between the idealist and the materialist theories.
J – Can you please explain how Marx and Hegel’s philosophy is in some way linked?
A – He merely further developed his theory.
J – Marx developed Hegel’s?
A – Yes.
J – How? Because when looking at the basics of their philosophy, they seem to be quite different.
A- Yes, on the surface. But in fact, not at all – they are very similar. Especially in this sense of the dialectics.

END OF DISCUSSION.