Sculptors

"Nudity wasn’t an issue in the kingdom. Princes and princesses were traditionally swathed in a simple white cloth, often bare-chested, wearing long coral necklaces."

"It was easier for me, my mother already paved the way for females to be bronze casters."

"Olowu describes herself as a feminist. She gave birth to eight children but always kept working, even when she was pregnant."

"Art was part of the life of the people, through singing, dancing."

"I want to go to the Leinster hills, To the Dublin hills by the rocky shore. I want to climb to Ben-Edar's heights— I want to be home once more."

"’Twas the dream of a God, And the mould of His hand, That you shook ’neath His stroke, That you trembled and broke To this beautiful land.Here He loosed from His hold A brown tumult of wings, Till the wind on the sea Bore the strange melody Of an island that sings.He made you all fair, You in purple and gold, You in silver and green, Till no eye that has seen Without love can behold.I have left you behind In the path of the past, With the white breath of flowers, With the best of God’s hours, I have left you at last."

"“Greater preference is accorded to sculptures and paintings created by artists attached to the royal courts over the centuries. Artefacts from rural and tribal India were outrightly dismissed as everyday objects, completely unfit for display in a museum. No one, with the sole exception of K.C. Aryan, realised that the illiterate and unknown craftsmen living and working in the countryside had nurtured our artistic and cultural heritage since hoary antiquity, and preserved it from getting lost for good.”"

"Unfortunately the contrast between the value of these collections and the shabby treatment they receive from the upper class and the authorities deserve a closer investigation and contemplation... This collection is large, tasteful, and greatly appreciated by art connoisseurs the world over. At the moment, it happens to be housed just next to the capital and the international airport. Any Minister of Culture in his right mind would first of all visit it and then promote this collection to show the world that particular facet of the many-faced Indian creativity. But this is not happening."

"K.C. Aryan was a productive painter himself. Twice his paintings drew attention from the authorities. A few years before independence, during a communal riot in the North-West Frontier Province, Muslims paraded a group of Hindu women naked. He depicted the scene. The British authorities feared it would stoke resentment among the Hindus, so he had to abscond from their searchlight for a while. Come independence, his community of Lahore Hindus was partly massacred and partly had to flee for their lives. In Delhi, near Kashmiri gate, they had to live as refugees. Aryan’s painting of the refugee camp was titled: “Freedom comes for us.” Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was not amused."

"“This long neglect and wanton destruction of our folk and tribal heritage has been compounded by the unsavoury process of pseudo-intellectual distinction between ‘arts’ and ‘crafts’, or ‘fine arts’ and ‘decorative arts’. This led to a profound loss of repositories of rich ethnographic material bearing centuries-old expression and symbolism.”"

"[It is] “a most deserving tribute to the unnumbered anonymous artists and artisans of our soil through the centuries. In it are manifest the creative genius and artistic expression of countless unknown potters, weavers, embroiderers, painters, sculptors and other craftspersons of this country ‘whose names and identities have been lost in the mists of time’ and whose artistry is comparable to, if not excelling, the best of its kind found anywhere in the history of human civilization.”"

"The ordinary house was the habitat of the great painter himself, as he found no state or private patronage to give his collection the space and the care it deserves. Collecting he did out of personal passion for art and out of a sense of duty. He sensed how art that was an everyday feature of Indian folk life a century ago is now getting rare and in need of preservation for posterity. Art lovers and art owners were united in despising tribal and folk art, even throwing it away to replace it with more classical pieces."

"K.C. Aryan (born 11 August 1919, died 2002), a Partition refugee from West Panjab, was an accomplished painter. He founded the Museum for Tribal and Folk Art in Gurgaon, still functioning today. He saved plenty of old paintings, sculptures and other arts & crafts objects for posterity by collecting them in his museum or donating them to more established institutions. In 1970, he presented to the publishing unit of Punjabi University Patiala a manuscript with illustrations for a book, 100 Years Survey of Panjab Painting (1841-1941). It was eventually published by the PUP in 1975, but only in mutilated form. The Senate Board of the University objected to the inclusion of one particular painting, and threatened that if it were published, the grant for the whole publishing unit would be stopped. The contentious painting, executed by a Pahari painter in the mid-19th century (whose name, as often in folk art, remains unknown), shows a topi-wearing Guru Nanak praying to Lord Vishnu. The Board took the Sikh-separatist line that that Sikhism has nothing to do with Hinduism, and that the Gurus are above the “Brahminical” gods. It is the same line that keeps the Sikh establishment from calling their central shrine, the Hari Mandir (“Vishnu temple”), by its proper name, hiding it behind the superficial designation “Golden Temple” or the Moghul term “Darbar Sahib”. It is also why in 1922 they threw out from the Hari Mandir the murti-s that had been worshipped there ever since Arjan Dev inaugurated it in 1604. Sikh identity as a separate religion, rather than as one of the many panth-s in the Hindu commonwealth, is based on a denial of history, and this requires a constant censoring of unwilling historical data: names changed, scriptures doctored, murti-s thrown away, the publication of a painting suppressed."

"KC Aryan is singularly equipped in writing on them [folk bronzes], having lived, seen and collected many of the images on the spot and being a practising artist."

"Aryan points out how his father, the late painter KC Aryan, was the first to preserve and promote these unknown paintings from Jodhpur. He says, “Nobody knew of their existence. These large-size paintings were done by pujaris from Jodhpur, and not by painters in a conventional manner. They are so vibrant and have now become extinct."

"Through death, new forms are born. Even when it looks like something is diminishing or disappearing, it gives way to a whole new force. Death is always necessary for change to occur and for new life to come."

"Unlike Western societies, where you find a lot of organised stores and shopping centres, African markets are rather visceral, tactile, and very physical."

"It is hard to discuss cultural elements without thinking about the environment and the universe."

"Therefore, the solution to climatic problems has to be collective. It is our responsibility to treat and handle nature delicately, so that it can be sustained."

"On one hand, I am thinking about how ‘good things ultimately trump’ in our world, in spite of life’s unpredictability and abnormalities. It is my mantra – a way to remind myself that life events always tend to have cycles, so good things will definitely come to pass, even when life seems grim."

"The roots are the vessels through which life passes to produce more. I am thinking about my own roots and of where I come from. Even when I am not in my homestead, I still feel very connected to who I am as an African."

"The climatic changes we experience are forced changes, creating much damage to humankind and the natural habitat."

"Man has a symbiotic relationship with the Earth. We depend on the natural surroundings for sustenance, shelter and survival. Ecological and climatic conditions in the natural habitat reflect how well we manage Earth’s resources. We can only ensure our longevity if we protect and preserve the planet."

"Motherhood has made me more appreciative of and empathetic to others. It has also taught me a lot about the nurturing qualities of earth, which is the basis for most of my work."

"Ângela Ferreira occupies a special position in the history of artistic approaches to archival practices. One of the pioneers of research-based strategies at the very beginning of the 1990s—before these strategies had a name and long before they became a widespread (sometimes jaded) paradigm—the artist also applied her archival impulse as a new critical tool for sculpture, rooted in expanded and ethnographic procedures. But what marks Ferreira out in the contemporary art world is that her work often concerns the region of sub-Saharan Africa and, more specifically, South African and Mozambican realities inflicted by the troubled history of colonization, post-colonization, and apartheid."

"I think it’s time to start looking at these buildings as African architecture and no longer putting these tags of Modern architecture from colonial times. Of course, you will never take that history away, but they’ve now belonged to the people that are living in them for much longer than they did during colonial times and so they should be seen as African architecture."

"I realized that choosing a building or any kind of built structure immediately gave me a righteousness of place. Architecture rooted the work in the place and had an amazing other quality, which is that, particularly with public buildings, everybody knows them; they belong to everybody in the city."

"An avant-garde artist of Leningrad, Mendagaliev’s style is naïve. Vibrant colors and thick, heavy strokes form simple scenes that feel more symbolic than real.In each painting, there are repeated motifs: a table, a chimera, women, a bird, a fish. There appears to be a story begging to be told about the city he has lived in for so long, and, perhaps, a painful one. In the paintings, faces of people look in different directions, they pull from each other, guiding the viewer’s eyes into a chaos as the sphinx overlooks it all with a sense of doom. Then, there are portraits of chimeras and demons stalking individuals on the metro, women tormented next to a table or underwater beneath a fish in flight. They have a sinister tone to them. Fantastical, but simple, Mendagaliev’s works linger in the mind and resurface in the memory of St. Petersburg as a city."

"Near the Egyptian Sphinxes’s steps on the Neva River banks, you feel presence of the mankind thousand-year history, which these creatures brought with them. The space of the city was filled with new meaning and life, new myths and legends. Artists found new images, began to learn speaking and expressing themselves in a new way through the classical city. The city of huge squares, wide streets. dark backstreets and well courtyards; black shadows fantasy; white nights that distort reality. When I realized it all, I began creating my Mythology of the city. And I hope that it will be a worldwide language for all those who love and appreciate the city of St. Petersburg."

"A white sheet of time, on which the sunlit city appears as a relief imprint. Thick golden air with poplar fluff. Time has stood still. House number 29a. Yellow square of the wall. Small square of the window, which is cramped. You are flying away beyond the fence of the Childhood House on the wings of a memory bird. Grass-blade days are woven into a tangle of years that rolls along the road of memory. A unique, vivid image of the home town from the distant childhood, the Home from which you flew away forever. The town of my childhood."

"Kawarga-Skete. To anyone climbing inside the tower, the ascent is symbolic. Working one's way through the monstrous structure of a factory… rising up through a column of industrial scrap and waste… then standing aloft in the cupola space between sky and earth — free of the intrusions of materialism. Sounds from the composer Kryptogen Rundfunk reign from within this biomorphic cell — focusing the journeyman on the scattered fragments of the self — washing him down with nature's own elements."

"His works show high culture, erudition and taste, it is hard to favor any particular piece. Moreover, the artist prefers options on a particular plastic theme, as he himself puts it. He uses various in techniques, and revisits it in different periods of creativity. He believes his plastic theme conveys the plastic state. The state arises and manifests in very different ways, yet retaining its basic sign. Perhaps this art form blends both the sign and its notion."

"...from my point of view, a very serious, worthy and professional exhibition. It's nice that there is a solid culture of color, ...there is a persistent desire to express their feelings of life, their artistic vision."

"The works create new poetry, which involuntarily rivals with habitual esthetic stereotypes. For instance, we accept as a common notion to worship joyously the classic beauty of St. Petersburg, its harmony and stately grandeur. This exposition does have variations of that sort. But observe “Night Nevsky” by Parygin. Rough to the touch texture, dark abyss. In the darkness urgent lights explode. They bring forth immediate spiritual angst. One does not regard the regal magnificence of the urban landscape-it is neither cast aside, nor left behind the curtains, as dramatism of modern perception takes over. One regards not a city museum for curious crowds, but one beholds the habitat of our days where we seek, love, fight, suffer. That art defines perception."

"Another important direction in contemporary Russian artists’ books, with many precedents set by the Futurists, is the fusion of poetic and artistic talent of artist-authors blessed with Doppelbegabung. The intimate relationships between text and image is enhanced when author and artist are one and the same person and engage in an inter-art discourse that leads to creations that are truly unified works of art. An artist who achieved equal mastery in more than one medium and made different arts merge in his personality was no doubt Alexey Parygin. His poetic collections <...> represent an attempt to synthesize text and plastic figurative form in books where literary and visual languages are calculated to have a simultaneous effect on the reader/viewer. The work of Alexey Parygin have common features that are not accidental as the books were created at more or less the same time."

"A big city is always partially a Babylon, sometimes an eclectic mixture, juxtaposing contrasts, dialogue and conflict all at once. It is a Unity achieved thanks to our differences. It contains both old and new things. A city without development is dull. A city deprived of its historical context is uninteresting. Moreover, a city without clear urban planning ideas is a toneless backwater."

"Megalopolises. Plans. Building plans. Yellow. Street lineature. Labyrinths of yards. Pigeon flocks. Green. The geometry of squares. Dead zones. Subway burrows. Red. Meaning signs. Dim light. Noise. Voids. Black. The work transformed itself in the process of manifestation. The pictograms appeared almost by accident — naturally. Text: Parking / Diner / Bird / Airport / Disabled / Attention / Parking / Motel / Bar / Attention / Cat / Bird / Diner ... Recoded, literally: art, like all modern culture, lost its clear value criteria, meaning and purpose of movement long ago. City. One of the main problems of modern society is the almost complete loss of the ability to self-cognition and self-identification. City. Civilization is degrading. The agony still continues, maintaining the illusion of life, but it does not change the merits of the question. City."

"An artwork is a container of a human experience. A poem in a closed book is contained energy, ready for whoever reads it, wanting to be charged. Art is able to energize a part of us that is usually ignored. In my experience, the artworks that touch us deeply and manage to connect with us are artworks that have a rich internal world and vital inner connectivity with themselves. The hard part is the ability to detect it because it’s not about the obvious elements in an artwork; most of the time, it is about what is beneath that which is evident. It’s the unseen, the invisible. I believe that the appearance of the artwork is a big obstacle. We call it visual art but it’s all about the invisible."

"It was in the desert, where there seems to be nothing, that's where I learned to see."

"In front of every blank canvas or paper, I face nothingness. What breaks it is the desire of doing. With each blank paper, there is a new unknown to explore, a nothingness to go through. By doing it more and more, a hidden part of me is unveiled. After some time, it isn’t about me anymore but about the whole universe. By exploring my nature, I explore the universe’s nature. We are one. Each painting is a cosmic one, even if it’s a failure. When I make a painting, the painting makes me too."

"Nevertheless, the answers remain innumerable and the sculptures seem different to the eyes of each beholder. Next to a drop of darkness that widens across the page of life may appear a meteorite radiated by cosmic waves, while the black disk of a pendulum keeps on reminding us of the inexorable flow of time. All this is seen through the fascinating kaleidoscope of Armen's art that projects images on images in an implacable vortex of stimuli. No single analysis is considered definitive because, as it happens for the hermetic poetries, in front of the sculptures of Armen an interpretation is tied intrinsically to the sensibility of the observer."

"The only prison is myself."

"Each work may be considered as a contemporary microcosm, unnamed, self-referential, but rich of past and present identity, still tied to previous work but announcing the forthcoming one, which enables the viewer to participate in the discovery of his inner energy, sharing in the identity."

"These sculptures are not altars but mirrors of the viewer's soul."

"Simplicity is very complicated."

"New is a very old word."

"I believe that all art is playing seriously."

"Defying the ego, Armen Agop releases his works into the world detaching himself from them. For him, the man, it's all about the process, and for the stone, it's about endurance. Perhaps, his works can be regarded as contemporary conduits for the Ka, rare portals of communication between the incorporeal and the terrestrial realm. Created in time, they are meant to resist time, vibrating within their own frequencies as an undying ode to life."

"I don't work, I either play or pray."

"The Communists are Jews, and Russia is being entirely administered by them. They are in every government office, bureau and newspaper. They are driving out the Russians and are responsible for the anti-Semitic feeling which is increasing."