What is idiosynchronism?

Answer 1

Idiosynchronism

"... a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more... a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." William Shakespeare

In the spring of 2006 the paths of three individuals crossed, and in spite of their disparate backgrounds and ages they found a common bond in art, and decided to form a new art movement called Idiosynchronism that was to be based on the terrible beauty of existence- subjectivity, futility and meaninglessness. They wrote:

"Our premise is that nothing can be objective- all experience is subjective based on emotion, passion and the self, there is no ultimate truth or reality other than our own transitory feelings and illusions.

We aim to take art away from the illusion of objectivity, and rationality and place it firmly where it belongs into a subjective environment- we aim to use imagery, themes and styles that are currently taboo in art - passion, melodrama, kitsch, emotion, cliché- we seek to produce work that some contemporary art galleries would not have the courage to hang because it sits outside the current artistic ethos, and that some buyers would not want because it does not flatter their ego, make them look sophisticated enough, or match the colour of their living room sofa.
We acknowledge the existence of our prejudices and social conditioning and the lies we perpetrate on a daily basis in our so called egalitarian societies which are in fact structured to make us feel collectively inadequate and therefore easily manipulated."

However, the futility and terrible beauty that they speak of is not the nihilist attitude commonly taken in the west, but one which has its roots in Zen which says that we have to see and accept the world as it is in order to truly engage with. There is no isolated me against the cruel world, no us against a system which is forever plotting against us, for we are the system, we are ultimately the perpetrators of our own misery.

Underlying this is the strong belief that Art's true function is not to please or decorate (that is the role of other lesser disciplines such as craft or design) but to challenge and question, and to be as Simon Schama wrote, the thug lying in wait to deliver painful truths to its audience.

Since its inception in Cyprus, the Movement has now spread world wide and has attracted many established artists and art theorists who see that the time is ripe for art to take a new direction. Here are some comments from people who have joined the movement

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. This point can be reached.
(Franz Kafka)

Jarik Jongman, a Dutch based artist who worked with Anselm Keiffer writes:

"We are living in a world of turmoil and crisis that is rapidly taking unprecedented form.

The financial crisis is now manifesting itself on a global level. Whether we are witnessing the disintegration of the capitalist system as Marx foresaw it is not certain but we might be justified in fearing that his prediction of a general pauperization of the masses will occur. Even if western civilization would escape relatively unscathed,

it is almost certain that things will never go back to how they were before.

With pressures rising to yet unforeseeable levels it is legitimate to wonder whether these processes will also unleash man's innate tendency to violence.

Notwithstanding the fact that evidence of this tendency can be witnessed on a daily basis, the question arises whether extreme abominations on the scale of Auschwitz would be conceivable once more.

Much has been written about the unusual coincidence of circumstances that enabled these horrors to take place but we have also come to understand, for example through Milgram's obedience experiment in 1961, that we are all capable of brutality, or at least of relinquishing responsibility for our acts, even if this means harming others.

Adding to that Hannah Ahrendt's observations on the banality of evil, we now generally have accepted the notion that man's civilized appearance is merely a very thin coat of veneer.

But from where stems this unwillingness to control our tendencies towards violence and cruelty? Many of us will have acted in a violent manner at times in our lives, most of us facilitate suffering indirectly, through buying products derived from slavery, through eating meat of mass-slaughtered animals. To sublimate our feelings we watch movies about the mafia, about war, we go to boxing matches and football games..."

Only by going too far can you go far enough.

(Francis Bacon)

Jac Saorsa, a noted art theorist, currently lecturing in Nicosia writes about a work she is currently engaged on 'Narrating the Catastrophe' , which constitutes a philosophical discourse between Ricouer's phenomenological hermeneutics, Deleuzean aesthetics of sensation, and an artist's (myself) autoethnographic account of practice, in an exploration of elements of figuration in the art process. It focuses in part on narrative identity, and on Deleuze's 'catastrophe' that must be reached during the art process..."

For Masha Yozefpolsky, a Russian born filmmaker based in Israel, her concern is that

"Regulated and hypnotized we are indeed normalized into a psycho-physical zombie state of being, order and uniformity. While reality itself, loosing its coherency and certainty on any possible level, our selves are being stolen from us. Within the present distorted world what are the certitudes? What are the navigation principals?

As a nonfunctional zone of multiple reflectors where deconstruction and reconstruction coexist art shifts perception and experience as an alternative survival territory to our mundane reality."

Our purpose is mischief.

(Emilio Zapotek)

Mores Rabenstern an artist based in Germany states that: "...reduced to the basic rules of nature, every individual striving for the best position, gaining the best as possible. This mixture despite all the longing for more justice, more ethics, not to forget the false promises of these damned religions causes all the trouble we do have. And I am afraid despite all (so called) intelligence, there is no possibility to change anything at all. Sometimes I do imagine this small, blue planet as a great and rather weird experiment ... who can tell?"

Clay Smith in the United Kingdom writes: "transcendence of the human, looking at the layers within the human condition, and how these can change and alter at will, according to our will to change...One's own contemplation and peace of mind (without the burden of culture or religion, though these are very important factors in my idea), can one achieve within yourselves that moment of clarity/enlightenment, in which a 'critical mass' can be obtained. I am thinking in terms of two faiths/beliefs clashing to create a critical mass, like in quantum physics, but instead of something explosive being the reaction, I am hoping for something very positive to emerge from this. One element for the reaction will be 'Blind Faith', the other 'Science'. My idea relates to my living and working in a multicultural environment. It also relates to my sense of isolation and loneliness, which I have lived with, and felt OK with, all of my life.

The only illusion is Objectivity. (Emilio Zapotek)

Marcus Reichert, an American artist, writer, filmmaker and leading art critic writes: ..."man's cruelty may derive in some way from the pressures of simply existing in a world that is in the process of being destroyed through man's obliviousness, greed, arrogance, etc. but there does seem to be another dimension at work here and that is man's unwillingness to control his tendencies toward violence and cruelty, even in their most subtle and "civilized" forms... concentrating more exclusively on man's compulsion to sublimate and degrade his fellow man through the violence and cruelty he enacts. I'm not saying in any way that our subject should be about sadism but one does wonder if certain forms of violence that are enacted supposedly for the good of "someone" aren't a form of perversion. Obviously, this is a very complex subject and one that needs to be addressed with dignity. Are Francis Bacon's paintings dignified? I would say so. Are certain forms of conceptual art that recreate an atmosphere of torture dignified? I'm not so sure. Is any form of art that exploits suffering merely for visual or theatrical impact a dignified pursuit for a "thinking" human being? I think not."

Janne Kearney, an Australian based painter writes: "I never thought I would fit in any where! I never thought people shared these feelings and thoughts too!"

But the last word should surely belong to the member who was awarded a posthumous honorary membership to the movement the notorious Ronnie Kray, one time lover of Francis Bacon and the Lord Chancellor of England Lord Boothby, who along with his twin brother Reggie he rose to fame in the 50's and 60s by means of murder, extortion and blackmail: "...Do you like it?"