>>> Artistic Techniques Seminars
Lecture
Nonviolence is best known as a form of social action in the struggle for human rights, but it is less well known as a way of life, and even less as a mode of artistic expression. Nonviolence as an artistic approach is not a superficial aesthetic matter governed by codified forms and methods, but a way of approaching and experiencing art that we can sum up with the word coherence.
A painting, like any human action, can be coherent: it can possess a formal composure in which each particular element resonates with the whole. This expressive harmony develops in an inseparable relationship with a specific inner experience or feeling, in which emotion is consistent with the images and with the painted result. When we make a painting, regardless of the judgement of others, we can broadly experience two sensations: one of an appropriate correspondence between our experience and what we have expressed, and another of conflict, a feeling that our creation is somehow not right in relation to what we have produced.
There are therefore different degrees of coherence. The first concerns the appropriate use of techniques we have learned: we seek to produce something consistent with our level of preparation. Trying to break the world record for the 100-metre sprint without having the necessary ability is the first act of violence we commit against ourselves. In the seminar we will try to identify the many violent approaches, acquired from our social environment, that lead us to fail and to experience violence in the act of making art.
Seminar
The only path towards nonviolence passes through recognising, accepting and transforming our own personal violence. From an energetic point of view, we can imagine violence as a blockage, an island within us, but sometimes also as an abyss, a kind of black hole that deprives us of the meaning of life and leads towards depression. In the seminar we will try to change an inner state that we experience as violent: an image that oppresses us or that we perceive as negative. We will express it on a large sheet of paper and immerse ourselves in this state, trying to recognise it. Then, using painting techniques, we will transform this external and internal situation at the same time. This transformation, through colour and a different way of painting, will allow us to experience a new form of expression, freed from darkness and reborn from the ashes like a phoenix. The aim of the seminar is to experience painting as an action, and to discover how different this action can be depending on the source of the image we wish to express.
Seminar topics
Who can attend
For anyone who wishes to understand the emotional and psychological mechanisms involved in artistic creation. Maximum 12 participants.
Duration
The seminar comprises 16 hours over Saturday and Sunday, plus a two-hour lecture on Friday evening.
Fee
The fee for each seminar is agreed upon with those interested.
Download workshop information sheet (PDF, Italian)
Lecture preview
Le forme espressive come traduzione delle energie vitali
Before we can begin to imagine an aesthetic that expresses a nonviolent feeling in painting and sculpture, we must first recognise how violence manifests itself in these artistic forms.
Violence in Western aesthetics is not only widespread but, we might say, dominant, despite the naive belief that art is somehow exempt from it. Our difficulty in critically addressing violence in contemporary art stems from the lack of a sufficiently developed model of analysis with which to evaluate much of the work created since the 1950s. We might say that a critical vacuum has emerged, in which anything and its opposite can be called art because contemporary criticism cannot move beyond the subjectivism of beauty, reducing contemporary aesthetics to a matter of personal taste. Yet we know that personal taste may scarcely exist in a society where financial power manipulates states, information and societies—and therefore art as well—in order to steer tastes towards violent models, whether explicit or unspoken.
In this lecture we will seek to outline possible new critical models that can guide us towards greater awareness of violence in art. We will also try to establish new general criteria that can orient artists towards creative approaches aspiring to a nonviolent aesthetic.