Rambling about Northern painters and artistic preferences...

 I quite like Northern painters such as Friedrich (see his Eismeer à gauche or, also good: Monk by the Sea et al) who has a talent for romantically depicting man confronting his inner-, and outer nature that reflects former; or Munch who is able to efficiently portray pure emotion. I like both the Italians and the Dutch but am neither too fond of Dürer- not as a painter- too pedantic, too self-aware, too much an epigone of the Venetians like the great and underappreciated Jacopo de' Barbari and the Bellinis- though he is a good graphic artist, nor of Cranach- a Protestant! and friend of the fat, malicious Luther- but again think favourably of the so-called Donauschule (Danube School) especially Altdorfer with his archaic, cosmic nature-realism.

Coming again to more modern stuff, I even enjoy the jokes of the Surrealists and the still very much neglected kitsch of the French Academy and have nothing against the Impressionists, either, am more than tolerant of the English portraitists, water-colourists, of the visionaries Turner and Blake.

The last 50 years would deserve an additional (future) ramble: there is much hypocrisy, ignorance and blatant stupidity in them but at least we- and hereby I mean true art on this highest level as I understand it- seem to resurface a bit recently, meaning that complete abstraction and white-canvas, pure-idea-instead-of-substance Dreck, is declining again.

My recommendation of a good artist of the recent -my- generation would be Stelios Faitakis (I had already thought that European culture was initiated by the Greeks and also would be ended by them but maybe it will also again arise through them?) He is able to truly artistically re-interpret traditions like the Icon and Asian influences in the scope of the present, modern world; like in Gaudì's architecture one can see his faith, his true religiosity or at least his honest struggle with it and crave for it in his works.

I could propagate my own writings or my relatives' paintings and graphics here but I simply won't out of decency. That's how we few modern real artists actually feel: we again have found meaning and the value of meaning in life. We refute atheism and spurn purely profit-oriented thinking. We again put value on God or the gods and honour valour, our local and ethnic affiliations and Tradition (including but by far not restricted to modernism and post-modernism!). We, are the future.

Stelios Faitakis' work. I have his book 'Hell on Earth' -which I recommend- in my other appartment now. I'll post some of his more positive, 'iconic' pictures in a future entry.