​​"Repeatedly I am asked to explain how my painting evolved. To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was." 

-Picasso 1923


​CG

What is a tree if you do not call it a tree?

What is a “tree” if you do not label it any kind of tree like a fir, or spruce. Or plant, or organism, what is it?

And you cannot call it an assemblage of leaves, branches, trunk and roots. What is it?

Imagine seeing a tree there before you. It clearly exists but what is it if there is no definition applied to it.

Trees have been around longer than human language, so they have been something before humans called them anything.

But what is a tree? Without any label it mysterious. It is a an undefinable expression of life. Because we name things, we think we know what they are, but naming them reduces them to a superficial concept. . . Like the words art and artists.

​Posted by PH

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​Don’t become a zombie artist of collective unconsciousness. Instead, make art consciously. The greatest threats to humanity are not religious extremism, climate warming or nuclear war. It is the the inability of individual humans to see see themselves as unwitting slaves of collective unconsciousness. To state it theatrically, today the earth is populated almost entirely by zombies.

The vast majority of humans today are like pale corpses staggering through almost-life, pushed around by TV, advertising, devices and the war on our attention.

. . . Then suddenly the zombies (speaking through an interpreter) say to me: "Hey fancy mouth, you are human too so we are going to eat you!" And they begin lurching toward me.

"Ok, that's fine." I say, "But before you eat me I should mention that I am not merely human, I am post human. I may have a human appearance but I am human being. And if zombies eat being they will die!—I mean, in a good way this time. So I warn you, eat my flesh only if you can withstand the bitter taste of truth!”

The zombies halt their lurching and look at each other confused.

The moral of the story is, when we are more being than human, we are no longer controlled by the collective zombie mind. So don't be a zombie artist. Make art consciously.

​PH

​How can an artist take exclusive and personal credit for creating a work of art that the universe had already been working on for that past 13.8 billion years?

​PH