why carve?

["Clive Murray-White" <clivemw@zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz>]

Hi all,

Oh I do love "learning stone" in the morning, especially when its -2 degrees
C in my studio.

Actually that sounds as if I'm a reluctant worker, nothing could be further
 from the truth but random topics, especially like this one, make me stop and
think why stone and why carve and then just as quickly, "Well isn't that
great, Norman has just made me re-state all my core values to myself,"  a
very good way of starting the day.

I've been a sculptor/artist all my life and for most of it I taught at art
schools. I've only ever been interested what I call the pointy end of art,
the ultra contemporary. If any one was to look at what I've done over the
years they'd probably think that I've gone progressively backwards, starting
off with installation and performance (well sort of) then through to
something somewhere between formalism, minimalism and conceptualism and then
on what I do now.

This came about because I felt that there was another better more
comprehensive art in me, I had no idea what it was, just that it was there.
A series of accidents introduced me to stone, not only did I find an
absolute affinity with it but from a conceptual and historical perspective I
found myself realising that almost all the arguments that were used to
eliminate stone from pointy end sculpture were more than a little fluffy.
The all pervasive "you can't use an old material to express contemporary
thoughts and issues" propaganda was turned on its head when I realised that
it was never really applied to vigorously to paint!. I also found myself
asking why were we always encouraging our students to upset the general
public. Again I reasoned that we had actually forgotten how this practice
really came into being from the 1850's onwards, the real answer is that the
art the academies favoured was completely out of step with the changing
world, the academy was the target, not the general public. It is my heart
felt belief that the modern art tradition has just about run out of puff and
has become the very thing that it set out to overthrow, another academy
protecting its own and its progressively irrevelevant dogma.

It is my genuine feeling that our efforts (thought the last century) to
invent a brand new art for our brand new world has actually left many of us
feeling as if we have almost completely lost touch with our culture.

So this doesn't turn into a book, we seemed to have gotten on the some kind
of merry go round perpetually asking the same question over and over again
"what else could be art", it seemed a reasonable step to say if anything can
be art why do we perpetually avoid the obvious answer of "why can't art be
art?". Ridiculous as it may sound for me this was the magic breakthrough and
what was even more exciting was the fact that my pointy end art mates went
ballistic in their denouncements of what I was doing. The liberating effect
of being able to pick and chose anything I like from the entire history of
art is absolutely awesome.

Making stone sculpture is perfect work, a perfect balance between making and
thinking, and, luckily for me that's all I do these days.

Sorry its so long.

Regards Clive

Web: www.cowwarr.com