SYMPHONY OF OPPOSITES
The other image of the sure-realism

” THE SECOND SYMPHONY OF OPPOSITES ”

”Througout times the barbarians have attempted to kill art, they ended making it immortal”

Apparently due to some differences in taste, some people may not appreciate the theme of art works, some people might as well refuse to be involved in a piece of work bearing a controversial theme because of political or socio-cultural reservations, and it is almost questionable that a spectator turns down an artistic expression as a result of constraints linked to religious beliefs, as taboos are implicit in any society. All of that is fairly understandable. But reaching utter contempt for art, seeking some kind of restriction or prohibition of freedom of thoughtd and artistic production just because of moral values, then everything turns to be unacceptable, judging becomes very disturbing and untanable. Isn’t it conflicting with philosophy and the essence of the art to have boundaries that art should not cross! Do we have the right to talk about prohibited or forbidden topics !!!

I – The sacred and the profane:

In our daily world, depending on our religions and beliefs, there is the universe of the sacred and the universe of the profane. Belonging to these two universes, and while Man in the past was torn between heaven and hell, many of our myths and legends appeared. In art, what was sacred yesterday is nolonger the same today, what is sacred for some is not necessarily sacred for others, the sacred might bear various interpretations because of the cultural, religious and political differences in societies. The SACRED is defined to be the thing to which we owe absolute respect, which has gained high value. For some people it might be linked to religion and religious practice, for others, It is frequently used in a non-religious sense so as to qualify values ​​deemed essential such as freedom and human rights. In contrast to the sacred, The PROFANE, devoid of sacred or religious character, is related to the human, temporal and terrestrial field and which has become synonymous with secularism.

In the history of art, love was one of the most controversial themes. It has aroused artists’ interest and has been subject to scandal, causing indignation and sometimes acts of barbarism. Today, can we speak of secular eroticism and sacred love !

 II- Art between censorship and vandalism!

Is there a microclimate favorable to the vandalism of art works? The question between art and vandalism is important because it enables to define the acts which violate the respect towards the artist’s work, acts that can be accepted as being artistic.

From 1535 to 1541, after a request of Pope Clement VIII, Michelangelo painted a fresco representing the Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. At his death, Daniele da Volterra was hired to cover with sheets the genital parts of the Last Judgment characters, for the sake of decency. This act led him to get the pseudonym of Il Braghettone today.

The Cubist painter Ozenfant built Le Corbusier, 53 Reille Avenue near the Parc Montsouris, a workshop with lines… we can see the painter assaulted by criminals wearing hats or hooded, who shout: “To death! To death ….

If acts of vandalism involving an art work constitute all a deliberate attack on this type of property, it is nevertheless possible to question the motivations that induce a person to act that way. Indeed, through the various examples of vandalism, we must note that these wrondoers have provide specific justification to their act. Also, the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban in 2001 is an expression of religiously motivated vandalism. This vandalism comes from iconoclasm as well as from the wish to remove all forms of foreign culture. Vandalism with religious connotations is ancient and shows a form of intolerance and rejection of other cultures. It is possible to infer that this type of vandalism is the most violent, insofar as it has no other purpose than the destruction of art works created by another culture. This example is not unique, and many other works kept in cultural institutions have faced this kind of attack.

III – THE “SINFONIA DELL AMORE” : An image of “sure-realism”

Love does not differ basically in the various human cultures. While the courtship methods have remained basically the same in Africa, the East, Europe or North America, I only wonder why this same notion of love that Humanity is sharing has become suddenly negatively appraised, when it turns into an artistic expression, I wonder why this noble value suddenly turns into a sin for some! Can art cause such a tense emotion? What can be so shocking? Is it representing eloquent bodies showing amorous situations? Is it the orchestration of human beauty? Can we speak of secular eroticism and sacred eroticism? Or a profane aesthetic and another sacred! Are cultural constraints and religious values ​​leading us to undertake “preventive censorship”? Censor yourself before you are censored!

I do not want to answer these questions but I would certainly like to invite you to share this discussion . For me, there is no taboo subject, only I should seek through the new “sure-realism” another way of expressing them . I will try to implement these concerns on canvas, I must seek a new synthesis capable of expressing these contradictions that could help us develop a new universal attitude towards taboo subjects, I will allow myself to travel through the “nth dimension” in order to connect the ends of all opposites and orchestrate the second symphony of the opposites, the symphony of love.

Through this new symphony I have chosen to join the extremities of the sacred and the profane, the simultaneous notion of opposites and separate things. What appears for some banned as subject with what appears for others undersized and that will likely be rejected by both.It is about attracting and stimulating attentions in order to create new situations of reflections.

The second symphony is the synthesis of an encounter between admiration and rejection, desire and horror, beauty and ugliness, a unique encounter between the sacred and the profane, it is also an interpretation of the many enigmatic human reactions to love, too often hypocritical attitudes, consisting of concealing one’s character or true intentions and affecting opposite feelings and opinions, “pretending” to be horrified and frightened to conceal what someone likes to covet and wants to acquire.

The second symphony is an orchestration directed by a new “Aphrodite”, who shows at the same time seduction and discretion to the caprices of the tense emotional aims and in the face of this ill-defined symbolic view of “universal moral values”. As a conductor, she played through her many movements the symphony of “the noble value of love”, a value she seeks to express in accordance with the moral and universal ethics of the action, which Kant called “The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals”.

MOURAD ELLOUMI sure-realism.com

Professor Emeritus of Plastic Arts.

Professional Artist- painter.