Film Nadia Russ: NeoPopRealism Evolution
http://www.archive.org/details/NadiaRussNeopoprealismEvolutionfilm_132
Monday, December 29, 2008
Thursday, December 25, 2008
NeoPopRealism Evolution - Scholar Article
Nadia Russ: NeoPopRealism Invention
by Nadia Russ
NeoPopRealism is style of visual arts. NeoPopRealism combines brightness and simplicity of Pop Art and deep psychological realism, has high energy colours and graphic nature.
Word NeoPopRealism and concept I created January 4, 2003.
l
NeoPopRealism and its cultural expressions are rooted in the art traditions, and are intimately linked to a community sense of identity and self determination. NeoPopRealism art possessing artistic qualities of Pop Art, resides in its realism. Invention of NeoPopRealism in visual arts is essentually logical extention of the art evolution.
As an artist I'm shaped and influenced by the important past innovations.It was reserved to 21st century to witness an invention of visual arts -- NeoPopRealism. It was significant neccesity, reflecting new millennium. An invention is seldom a mater of chance. It was a responce to a deep, general need, which is at ones intellectual and creative.
NeoPopRealism is a natural extention of evolution:
60th -- Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns with Pop Art;
80th -- Jeff Koons with his Neo-Pop;
at the beginning of the new millennium I manifested NeoPopRealism...
NeoPopRealism commandments reflect needs of 21 century:
1. Be beautiful;
2. Be creative;
3. Be peace-loving, positive-minded;
4. Do not acept communist philosophy;
5. Be free-spirited, do the best you can to bring the world to peace and harmony;
6. Be family-oriented, self-disciplined;
7. Be free-minded. Follow your dreams;8. Believe in God. God is one;
9. Be supportive to those who need you, be generous;
10. Create your life as a great, adventurous story.
21 century is the time, when people has to come to the point, when positive and optimistic sense and ideas have to get dominant position worldwide.
II
There is short description on how to paint in the NeoPopRealist manner.
Close your eyes for a moment. Lets make faces. Use acrylic on canvas or ink on paper.
The line turns to a beautiful eye on the right side of the canvas.
Then lips. Nose. Draw left eye that belong to another person and look different then right one. Draw profile that picture right part of the face. Draw nose, lips, that belong to another, left part of the face.Add hair, ears, symbolic objects as a backdrop. Now color.
Feel free, get bold, cold one. Another one, hot.
Third, cold one... Do you like what you see? Turn on all your senses. Feeling of harmony is important condition. Enjoy process. It's fun, it's game, it is enjoyment. And total satisfaction at the end.What you see look too simple to you? Make it more complicated: double line, triple line. Connect eyes, nose, lips, ears and figures at the background. Play 'til "drop dead", following your feeling of harmony. Sorry if you do not have it. Then you are in trouble. Important condition is a talent, professional skills, imagination and sharp sense of the contemporary world.
III
Art develops along with society. We cannot stop its evolutionary movement whether we want to or not. Art always reflects people's lives, their economic and cultural achievements, and technical progress. The great artists of the past reflect their own eras, and therefore became part of history. We know the names of Picasso, Dali, and Warhol& Each of them is a vivid representative of his time, and made his own particular, extraordinary contribution to art. The 20th century saw the furious battle of two such dramatically opposite styles as Pop Art and Realism. Pop Art was badly received by proponents of Realism. And Pop Art in its turn ignored Realism. The second half of the 20th century could not ignore Andy Warhol, because he was its vibrant representative. His devotees were not in the minority. There were as numerous as the supporters of realism. Andy Warhol could not be ignored because he was a representative of his time whose art reflected the life of huge numbers of people their interests, feelings and needs. It doesn't matter whether we like his art or not. Then came Jeff Koons...
In the year 2000, it seems that the development of art had reached a dead end. The new millennium demanded something different, new, something that would characterize its new ideas, goals, desires. What could that be?I was headed this way from the outset. It began more or less in 1989, when I took pen and ink in hand seriously for the first time. I never wanted to imitate the great artists. Why not be a great artist myself? It's not hard, if you know what you are doing. Without any special art background or skills, deliberately closing all the channels by which artistic information could reach me, I refused to allow my brain to work as a copy machine. I decided to reinvent the bicycle, more precisely, bicycles. From December 1989 to 1996 I moved from ink on paper to acrylic on canvas, passing by way of oil on canvas. The artist is an unusual creature. I can make this claim with certainty because I began to make art seriously at the age of 29. Before that I was an ordinary, normal person. I worked as a journalist, a musician, tried nearly 10 professions out of boredom. I came to the visual arts, for which I had had an affinity for since childhood. The visual arts are an abyss, a narcotic. If you enter them, there is no way out. You will be lost to everyone else. What does this mean? Simply that a personal has decided to follow his own path, not a group path, but a singular way. For some it is a long road, for others short, and some lose their way in the fog.
My artistic experiment consisted of the following: living in a country that had been closed to new trends in art, I decided to invent a new style that would shake the world, as Picasso, Dali, Warhol and a few other great artists had done. As I already mentioned, I had not received an education in art, but all through childhood I had drawn for elementary, secondary, and then college school newspapers, etc. I had a musical education and was involved with journalism, so I already had experience in experimenting with the brain's gray matter. With only 16 percent of it in use during normal activities, the brain cannot produce interesting results. If a greater portion of the gray matter comes into play, then one can expect extraordinary results. How can this be done? It isn't all that complicated. That, which makes us ordinary, normal people, makes us bad artists. The conclusion is as follows: forget about every day life, the fact that you belong to some kind of system, walk in line, are supposed to organize relations with people, function within society. Some artists drink to achieve this (but "Don't drink and draw!), others use drugs. My way of approaching it is auto-suggestion. This was difficult in the beginning: I' go ON and OFF, ON and OFF.
Now, however, the ON state has become a constant. This is what it is to be an artist. The brain is always ready to create unusual pictures that involve the transformation of reality, of the seen and heard, into the language of color and line. It becomes easy and unforced, whereas earlier it involved pain and suffering. It was difficult because professionalism limped along on one leg. And in order to bring a painting to a finished state, it was necessary to undergo a lot of suffering. Harmony and professionalism were not walking in step. The ideal feeling of harmony had insufficient professionalism. Now, when they walk side by side, it has become very easy to call up all sorts of pirouettes, leaps and jumps. Painting has become an entirely pleasurable activity. I'll return now to a discussion of the 'NeoPopRealism' style. Where did this name come from? Even my very early works didn't fit into any exhibitions or any particular gallery. In answer to the questions "What style do you draw and paint in?" I could not give a definitive answer. That was a dead end for me. I was tired of wracking my brains about how to answer.
In Florida in 2002, I created a series of bright canvases, including "Seasons of Nightmare" (or "Green Face of Greed"), "His Inner" & "Miss & Her Admirer", which formed the finished system of artistic representation in my style. At the time, for that matter, someone commented that they were impossible to copy and he was correct. In 2003, I decided to create a word what would characterize my works as much as possible. My paintings are bright; appear to be quite simply made, and at the same time their content is profound. Logically, it seemed, this was Pop Art and Realism together. In addition, I added the particle NEO. As a result, I ended up with NeoPopRealism, combining Pop Art and Realism.A little secret.
I had many artistic friends in Moscow. I had questions for them about technical matters. But as far as colour and other individual matters that characterize an artist's individuality, I never wanted to hear their advice. I believed in my feeling of harmony. And I always knew that with an ideal feeling of harmony it is possible to get out of any difficult situation alone on canvas. We are all subject to a higher harmony in this world. Everything else is secondary. If you have a marvelous feeling for harmony, you can spit on the canvas and it will be brilliant. And so, I played with brushes and paints in my own way and relied exclusively on my extravagant contemporaneity and ideal feeling of lack of desire to repeat anything done by any artist I knew or didn't know. No matter how great he was. As a result, you are acquainted with NeoPopRealism. Forgive me for the "ism." But there was no way around it. I had to give a name to the results of my brazen artistic nihilism.A small detail. As I already mentioned, the history of art is a gradual transformation of styles. I couldn't have come to NeoPopRealism just like that. NeoPopRealism is the result of the invention of several bicycles. It turned out, accidentally, that I live at the beginning of the 21st century. And at this period of time it could have been nothing else but NeoPopRealism. Simply because it is precisely this style that fully reflects this era with its silliness and refined intellectuality, with its technological achievements and technical progress, with its social and ethnic, and cultural differences. Being absolutely unfamiliar with western and American art experiments,between 1989 and 1992 I passed through a transformation beginning with the African style drawings to Andy Warhol's bright flat faces. In between were Dali, Pollock and other representatives of the leading art styles.I came to the United States for the first time in 1992. And it was a continuation of my personal artistic evolution, which reached its peak in 2002, in Florida.
Because of its elite qualities, visual art isn't particularly meaningful or important for the masses if there is not deep philosophy behind it. In the 21st century people was a better life. The masses are tired of waiting for the end of the world, which has apparently been put off for several hundred years. And for a good life, we need a positive view of reality.I have prepared a 21st century philosophy for NeoPopRealism as a style of visual art. If effect, it is the philosophy of the beautiful people and a healthy life, which we should all strive for in order to preserve the world, our individual health (physical and psychological), improve life and strive for perfection.
If one follows the canons of NeoPopRealism, the individual's life will begin to change in a positive direction. And the place to start is at #1: Be Beautiful. Beauty will save the world, is hardly a new idea. It produces a charge of positive energy. Then we move on to #2: Be creative, never stop studying and learning. Don't fall behind the times, develop yourself, be progressive. #3: Be peace-loving and positive-minded. If you are inclined toward the positive you will attract positive people. And your life will change, will be transformed into pleasure, and so on.
The 10 canons of NeoPopRealism are the key to making your life flourishing and successful. And that means they are the key to complete satisfaction.
The 21st century has its own laws. And if we don't heed them, we can end up in a difficult situation, which has already led to enormous catastrophes and tragedies. We need art, beauty, positive thinking.
www.neopoprealism.org
2007/USA
by Nadia Russ
NeoPopRealism is style of visual arts. NeoPopRealism combines brightness and simplicity of Pop Art and deep psychological realism, has high energy colours and graphic nature.
Word NeoPopRealism and concept I created January 4, 2003.
l
NeoPopRealism and its cultural expressions are rooted in the art traditions, and are intimately linked to a community sense of identity and self determination. NeoPopRealism art possessing artistic qualities of Pop Art, resides in its realism. Invention of NeoPopRealism in visual arts is essentually logical extention of the art evolution.
As an artist I'm shaped and influenced by the important past innovations.It was reserved to 21st century to witness an invention of visual arts -- NeoPopRealism. It was significant neccesity, reflecting new millennium. An invention is seldom a mater of chance. It was a responce to a deep, general need, which is at ones intellectual and creative.
NeoPopRealism is a natural extention of evolution:
60th -- Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns with Pop Art;
80th -- Jeff Koons with his Neo-Pop;
at the beginning of the new millennium I manifested NeoPopRealism...
NeoPopRealism commandments reflect needs of 21 century:
1. Be beautiful;
2. Be creative;
3. Be peace-loving, positive-minded;
4. Do not acept communist philosophy;
5. Be free-spirited, do the best you can to bring the world to peace and harmony;
6. Be family-oriented, self-disciplined;
7. Be free-minded. Follow your dreams;8. Believe in God. God is one;
9. Be supportive to those who need you, be generous;
10. Create your life as a great, adventurous story.
21 century is the time, when people has to come to the point, when positive and optimistic sense and ideas have to get dominant position worldwide.
II
There is short description on how to paint in the NeoPopRealist manner.
Close your eyes for a moment. Lets make faces. Use acrylic on canvas or ink on paper.
The line turns to a beautiful eye on the right side of the canvas.
Then lips. Nose. Draw left eye that belong to another person and look different then right one. Draw profile that picture right part of the face. Draw nose, lips, that belong to another, left part of the face.Add hair, ears, symbolic objects as a backdrop. Now color.
Feel free, get bold, cold one. Another one, hot.
Third, cold one... Do you like what you see? Turn on all your senses. Feeling of harmony is important condition. Enjoy process. It's fun, it's game, it is enjoyment. And total satisfaction at the end.What you see look too simple to you? Make it more complicated: double line, triple line. Connect eyes, nose, lips, ears and figures at the background. Play 'til "drop dead", following your feeling of harmony. Sorry if you do not have it. Then you are in trouble. Important condition is a talent, professional skills, imagination and sharp sense of the contemporary world.
III
Art develops along with society. We cannot stop its evolutionary movement whether we want to or not. Art always reflects people's lives, their economic and cultural achievements, and technical progress. The great artists of the past reflect their own eras, and therefore became part of history. We know the names of Picasso, Dali, and Warhol& Each of them is a vivid representative of his time, and made his own particular, extraordinary contribution to art. The 20th century saw the furious battle of two such dramatically opposite styles as Pop Art and Realism. Pop Art was badly received by proponents of Realism. And Pop Art in its turn ignored Realism. The second half of the 20th century could not ignore Andy Warhol, because he was its vibrant representative. His devotees were not in the minority. There were as numerous as the supporters of realism. Andy Warhol could not be ignored because he was a representative of his time whose art reflected the life of huge numbers of people their interests, feelings and needs. It doesn't matter whether we like his art or not. Then came Jeff Koons...
In the year 2000, it seems that the development of art had reached a dead end. The new millennium demanded something different, new, something that would characterize its new ideas, goals, desires. What could that be?I was headed this way from the outset. It began more or less in 1989, when I took pen and ink in hand seriously for the first time. I never wanted to imitate the great artists. Why not be a great artist myself? It's not hard, if you know what you are doing. Without any special art background or skills, deliberately closing all the channels by which artistic information could reach me, I refused to allow my brain to work as a copy machine. I decided to reinvent the bicycle, more precisely, bicycles. From December 1989 to 1996 I moved from ink on paper to acrylic on canvas, passing by way of oil on canvas. The artist is an unusual creature. I can make this claim with certainty because I began to make art seriously at the age of 29. Before that I was an ordinary, normal person. I worked as a journalist, a musician, tried nearly 10 professions out of boredom. I came to the visual arts, for which I had had an affinity for since childhood. The visual arts are an abyss, a narcotic. If you enter them, there is no way out. You will be lost to everyone else. What does this mean? Simply that a personal has decided to follow his own path, not a group path, but a singular way. For some it is a long road, for others short, and some lose their way in the fog.
My artistic experiment consisted of the following: living in a country that had been closed to new trends in art, I decided to invent a new style that would shake the world, as Picasso, Dali, Warhol and a few other great artists had done. As I already mentioned, I had not received an education in art, but all through childhood I had drawn for elementary, secondary, and then college school newspapers, etc. I had a musical education and was involved with journalism, so I already had experience in experimenting with the brain's gray matter. With only 16 percent of it in use during normal activities, the brain cannot produce interesting results. If a greater portion of the gray matter comes into play, then one can expect extraordinary results. How can this be done? It isn't all that complicated. That, which makes us ordinary, normal people, makes us bad artists. The conclusion is as follows: forget about every day life, the fact that you belong to some kind of system, walk in line, are supposed to organize relations with people, function within society. Some artists drink to achieve this (but "Don't drink and draw!), others use drugs. My way of approaching it is auto-suggestion. This was difficult in the beginning: I' go ON and OFF, ON and OFF.
Now, however, the ON state has become a constant. This is what it is to be an artist. The brain is always ready to create unusual pictures that involve the transformation of reality, of the seen and heard, into the language of color and line. It becomes easy and unforced, whereas earlier it involved pain and suffering. It was difficult because professionalism limped along on one leg. And in order to bring a painting to a finished state, it was necessary to undergo a lot of suffering. Harmony and professionalism were not walking in step. The ideal feeling of harmony had insufficient professionalism. Now, when they walk side by side, it has become very easy to call up all sorts of pirouettes, leaps and jumps. Painting has become an entirely pleasurable activity. I'll return now to a discussion of the 'NeoPopRealism' style. Where did this name come from? Even my very early works didn't fit into any exhibitions or any particular gallery. In answer to the questions "What style do you draw and paint in?" I could not give a definitive answer. That was a dead end for me. I was tired of wracking my brains about how to answer.
In Florida in 2002, I created a series of bright canvases, including "Seasons of Nightmare" (or "Green Face of Greed"), "His Inner" & "Miss & Her Admirer", which formed the finished system of artistic representation in my style. At the time, for that matter, someone commented that they were impossible to copy and he was correct. In 2003, I decided to create a word what would characterize my works as much as possible. My paintings are bright; appear to be quite simply made, and at the same time their content is profound. Logically, it seemed, this was Pop Art and Realism together. In addition, I added the particle NEO. As a result, I ended up with NeoPopRealism, combining Pop Art and Realism.A little secret.
I had many artistic friends in Moscow. I had questions for them about technical matters. But as far as colour and other individual matters that characterize an artist's individuality, I never wanted to hear their advice. I believed in my feeling of harmony. And I always knew that with an ideal feeling of harmony it is possible to get out of any difficult situation alone on canvas. We are all subject to a higher harmony in this world. Everything else is secondary. If you have a marvelous feeling for harmony, you can spit on the canvas and it will be brilliant. And so, I played with brushes and paints in my own way and relied exclusively on my extravagant contemporaneity and ideal feeling of lack of desire to repeat anything done by any artist I knew or didn't know. No matter how great he was. As a result, you are acquainted with NeoPopRealism. Forgive me for the "ism." But there was no way around it. I had to give a name to the results of my brazen artistic nihilism.A small detail. As I already mentioned, the history of art is a gradual transformation of styles. I couldn't have come to NeoPopRealism just like that. NeoPopRealism is the result of the invention of several bicycles. It turned out, accidentally, that I live at the beginning of the 21st century. And at this period of time it could have been nothing else but NeoPopRealism. Simply because it is precisely this style that fully reflects this era with its silliness and refined intellectuality, with its technological achievements and technical progress, with its social and ethnic, and cultural differences. Being absolutely unfamiliar with western and American art experiments,between 1989 and 1992 I passed through a transformation beginning with the African style drawings to Andy Warhol's bright flat faces. In between were Dali, Pollock and other representatives of the leading art styles.I came to the United States for the first time in 1992. And it was a continuation of my personal artistic evolution, which reached its peak in 2002, in Florida.
Because of its elite qualities, visual art isn't particularly meaningful or important for the masses if there is not deep philosophy behind it. In the 21st century people was a better life. The masses are tired of waiting for the end of the world, which has apparently been put off for several hundred years. And for a good life, we need a positive view of reality.I have prepared a 21st century philosophy for NeoPopRealism as a style of visual art. If effect, it is the philosophy of the beautiful people and a healthy life, which we should all strive for in order to preserve the world, our individual health (physical and psychological), improve life and strive for perfection.
If one follows the canons of NeoPopRealism, the individual's life will begin to change in a positive direction. And the place to start is at #1: Be Beautiful. Beauty will save the world, is hardly a new idea. It produces a charge of positive energy. Then we move on to #2: Be creative, never stop studying and learning. Don't fall behind the times, develop yourself, be progressive. #3: Be peace-loving and positive-minded. If you are inclined toward the positive you will attract positive people. And your life will change, will be transformed into pleasure, and so on.
The 10 canons of NeoPopRealism are the key to making your life flourishing and successful. And that means they are the key to complete satisfaction.
The 21st century has its own laws. And if we don't heed them, we can end up in a difficult situation, which has already led to enormous catastrophes and tragedies. We need art, beauty, positive thinking.
www.neopoprealism.org
2007/USA
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