The problem is modern art. It’s completely finished. In art a cliché is a sin. Modern art has become a cliché. You cannot abstract from an apple tree in the manner of Mondrian. It has been done. It has been done to death. So bollocks to Pollock, abstract expressions etc. 

Far more interesting these days to look at the paintings of Victor Hugo or Alexander Cozens. I call what they do, and I attempt to do, “Deep Art”.

To some extent Deep Art has been anticipated by the surrealists, though it is actually earlier than surrealism. Basically it is going in the opposite direction to modernism. Begins with some involuntary chaotic action, splotches, blots, found chaos, even a confused photograph, then works into that chaos to attempt to get somewhere. Not necessarily a figurative result but to a feeling of resolution in the artist’s mind.

Deep art is a departure. It is alchemy. Its primary aim is for the artist to lose consciousness of the self in the engrossment of making art.

This also reminds me of Leonardo da Vinci’s advice: to look at a wall – at its blotches and imperfections, and see what image you might discover there.

Deep art is done as a form of personal meditation. This is the only response to an “artworld” flooded by ambitious practitioners. That artworld only admits of a canon of megastars. Maybe twelve big names at any time. And that is innappropriate for the reality of the vast number of artists that there are in our world today.

There is also a special sublimity about deep art – particularly as applied to Victor Hugo’s paintings. This is to do with the sense that they work with suggestion, that, unlike Cozens, they never result in a completely figurative image. I go into this further in my essay, An Inquiry into the Sublime.

See also More on Victor Hugo.

Anthony Howell, 23/12/24

And at the Royal Academy in March

https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/astonishing-things?sourceNumber=817685

More recently, I tried reshaping the notion of deep art – to work it into my poem-in-progress, The Runiad:

xxx

This isn’t just about winning contracts; it’s about reshaping

x

The very nature of conflict. This is a struggle about who will sculpt

The basic ontology of conflict in the age of HyperWar,

Where kill-webs and machine-speed decisions could render

Human oversight peripheral, or even obsolete. But, as I see it,

There is a problem looming up with progress going this way.

The problem can be seen in modern art. It’s completely finished.

You see, in art a cliché is a sin. Modern art has just become a cliché.

x

You cannot go on abstracting from an apple tree in the manner of Mondrian.

It has been done. It has been done to death. So bollocks to Pollock,

Abstract expressions etc. Progress! It’s just so 20^th century.

And it seems to me blind, and leading to the annulment of mankind,

So we need to go another way. More interesting today

To look at the paintings of Victor Hugo or Alexander Cozens.

I call what they do, and I too attempt to do, “Deep Art”.

x

To some extent Deep Art has been anticipated by

The surrealists, though in its beginnings it’s earlier than their time.

It is art rejecting the embrace of progress with a laugh!

Prefers to start from some involuntary acts, flung splotches, blots:

A chaos, that you may have come across, even a confusing photograph.

Work into that chaos and from there attempt to get somewhere.

Not necessarily to arrive at a result but to a sense, of what?

x

Of resolution in the artist’s mind or of something that

Suggests that it’s intended perhaps. Deep art is a departure.

It is alchemy. Its aim is for the artist to lose consciousness

Of self in the engrossment of mining it, of mining art

From a muddled, arbitrary mess. And so the deep artist is

Not bothered about swanning around Frieze. Deep art is done

As a form of personal meditation. This is the only response

x

To a careerist “artworld” flooded up to the gills by eager

Beavers. That world only admits to the canon of its megastars.

Maybe twelve big names at any time. And this is inappropriate,

Given the number of artists that are out there making stuff today.

So it’s an idealist gesture, a bidding adieu to the modernist

Notion of progress so romantically espoused by the futurists.

But just as they walked into a future that they could not see,

x

The deep artist stumbles backwards, backwards into a past

That can’t be seen. Because that artist faces the other way,

Anticipating horrors that progress would inflict upon us all,

As evidenced by the tractors that have come to block Whitehall,

Foreseeing the destruction of our green and pleasant land

By forces such as USAID obeying the command of shady NGOs

Owned by oligarchs so rich that they have morphed into lunatics.

x

From Book 19 of The Runiad