Murillo Dias

Please send good vibes my way and @ElaineDeLucaD’s. Dad, with advanced Alzheimer’s, is in intensive care with H1N1 and double pneumonia. Mom also has H1N1 and is watching over him by herself. I would drop everything to go back to them but my blood test just came back + Dengue.

Gm, Artists, and Collectors! "The Spirit of Perseverance" by @HugoFaz The Believers Collection - public sale coming next week

Gm to the people pushing this space forward! @HugoFaz @Ars0nic @SgtPepeWorld @punk6529

A Plea for Difficult Images (A small rant about what I think art is today) Written by our co-founder @halecar2 - Why does the contemporary art world embrace the ugly, the everyday, the absurd, the nonsensical, and the visually and conceptually challenging? Why is that? You know this is the case because, 5 out 10 times, you come out of a contemporary art museum asking: What just happened!? What the f*** is this? Why is this art? Well, it is a long story, but let's start with something basic, like, pretty, beautiful images have been done ad infinitum up until the 20th century. Every pretty sunset, cityscape, landscape, still life, and portrait has been done before to perfection. You just need to open up a history of art book, and you will find hundreds of examples of pretty images. The challenge for artists after the invention of the photographic camera, which rendered things so perfectly, was to see other things. The challenge for artists today is to see the world differently: ugly, weird, absurd, unrecognizable. The artist's mission suddenly became to ask questions and to think and represent differently: art is the place where we can have no certainty; where it is ok to make no sense and just present questions. Beautiful things still get made. Cute is still a thing in 21st-century art, But for completely different reasons. Beauty is not done for beauty's sake, but to challenge why we would, after thousands of years, still want to see beautiful images. Abstract art was once a f*** you to the establishment. But since the world tamed it, abstract art has become decorative at best. The last moment or revival of this form was called "Zombie Formalism" for its complacent visuals with "modernist and expressionistic styles,” which worked perfectly to please collectors interested in flipping works of art they did not understand from emerging artists who essentially crafted hundreds of generic images indistinguishable from one another. Contemporary art has moved into a space where artists tend to challenge art and beauty. They've become philosophers of the image, and in doing so, they have left many viewers perplexed as to what exactly it is that they are witnessing or supposed to connect with. It seems that art today asks viewers and collectors to go on the same trip that the artist has gone through: understand thousands of years of art, read all the books that questioned why that was all made, and experiment with them in what can be considered art today. For those curious about art and collecting, they usually come to art with a blank slate and arrive at pretty pictures and, as many viewers for thousands of years, enjoy what they are looking at. The creators of those pretty pictures call themselves artists, and so it seems the system works. But when those pretty pictures escape the niche they are produced in and try to mingle with the contemporary art world, rarely do they become accepted, because, the museums, the informed collectors, and the contemporary art market ask the question of why pretty pictures again? Why today? How is this advancing our understanding of art? How is this commenting on all we know about art? What are these poster-looking, perfectly designed illustrations proposing to the art world that we have not considered before? And so those questions need to be answered for pretty images to be seen as art. Pretty is not only an aesthetic concept, but it is also about the intentions and the way the artist is capable of expressing his artistic intent. You can have “pretty intentions,” and that, too will be challenged. Simple themes, simple concepts without historical and conceptual rigor, are torn down and debunked because why do we need pretty artistic intentions anymore? Why do we need to see images based on explorations of color or form, self-portraits as an exploration of self, the line between reality and fiction, and the list goes on... These ideas have already been explored to the depths of their possibilities and those explorations became a movement in the past. To go down that path again is a matter of practicing or studying to be an artist, but the contemporary art world rarely could see this as a proposal to move forward in the world of art. So, you see, a plea for difficult images is a plea to be committed, respectful, thoughtful, and innovative. We cannot move forward, as in all practices that thrive on “the new,” without committing to understanding and challenging what came before. Science asks this of us, technology asks this, literature asks this, and cinema, too. We need pretty images, but they should only be a path to something way more profound. To do and understand art takes time, vulnerability, and a willingness to change… not everyone is willing to take that path. - (All animals by @Visu_AI_Poetry)