The Art of Tetman Callis

“People die every day and the majority of their belongings are of no value to anyone.” – Dmitry Samarov, “The Vivian Mire” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“It can sometimes happen that, when confronted by what seems to be a wall, which one cannot get either through or round, a kind of radical reorientation is called for. Turning the whole thing over so that an approach can be made from the opposite side, as it were. If this is to succeed, it […]

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“To be excited by the prospect of a great adventure is one thing, to act is another.” – Bridget Riley, “At the End of My Pencil” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Everything we have come to call the arts seems to be in almost every 3-year-old. When these capacities are absent in a young child, we worry about them. There seems to be an understanding that the thing we call the arts has a critical function for kids, though we may have a hard time saying […]

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“The discourse of art, like any other professional discourse, imposes limitations on the possibilities of the gaze, speech or actions conducted by the spectator. The discourse of art directs us to continue to see the work of art as the source and goal of discourse, and enables the specialist spectator to exercise professional knowledge and […]

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“The photograph is never a sealed product that expresses the intentions of a single player. The photograph does not make a truth claim nor does it refute other truth claims. Truth is not to be found in the photograph. The photograph merely divulges the traces of truth or of its refutation.” – Ariella Azoulay, Civil […]

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“Over the course of the last 250 years at least, human beings in different locations have thought of themselves as citizens and have debated the essence of citizenship as well as its limitations. Now that so much time has passed, thought concerning citizenship need no longer be bound to the invention of a zero point, […]

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“Whenever human beings exist together with one another, whether in private or in public space, whether in open or closed spaces amenable to, or hidden from, the surveillance of others, their being together constitutes political existence. This political existence takes different forms characterized by varying degrees of freedom and repression.” – Ariella Azoulay, Civil Imagination: […]

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“To historicize visual culture adequately is also to undermine the narrative that presents the history of art as the pertinent field of knowledge for the generation of visual culture in relation to which visual culture stands as a kind of appendix or late variant, possessed nevertheless of loyalty to shared principles. The hegemonic narrative, which […]

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“Whoever appears in a photograph or whoever is glimpsed in its frame always stands in a certain set of relations with others. Neither the photographer who is invested with ownership rights over the photograph as object, nor the work of art constructed as the center of gravity of the discourse of art, are capable of […]

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“The coming together of the photographer with the persons photographed always extends beyond the concrete encounter between them. The photograph serves to increase the chances that the encounter will, in fact, endure, migrating to other spaces and circumstances which, at the very least, evade the photographer’s ability, or that of the persons photographed, to know […]

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“A community of stakeholders is usually represented by a certain body or sovereign power. The sum total of citizens cannot, however, be represented. Modern nation-states who bestow a civil status on their subjects presume to manifest and to represent their citizens as if this civil status were the essence of citizenship. But citizenship is the […]

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“The photographer engages in a significant series of choices with respect to the event of photography, and these influence the manner in which its final product—the photograph—will appear. Such choices begin with the sheer decision to aim the camera in the direction of a certain event or certain individual, and range through decisions relating to […]

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“Nothing pulls the art world into line faster than the sight of an imperial checkbook.” – Robert Hughes, “The Rise of Andy Warhol” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Before flaws look like style, they look like flaws.” – Maria Adelmann, “Basket Weaving 101” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“A person’s nose is one eye wide, as is the distance between their eyes. A mouth is two eyes wide. A face is three noses long. A nose is as long as your ear.” – Molly Fitzpatrick, “Faces of Death (And Larry David)” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Both virtue and art are always concerned with what is harder, for success is better when it is hard to achieve.” – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, Ch. 3 Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“[Florida Department of Corrections] inmates convicted of property crimes and weapons-possession offences have the most tattoos, while sex offenders, particularly those convicted of paedophilia, tend to have the fewest. Inmates with at least one tattoo were actually 9% less likely to have been incarcerated for murder than those without. The effect is even more pronounced […]

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“It’s very hard indeed if not impossible to intend or design something uncanny. The uncanny results, it isn’t something you have much control over.” – Ian Penman, “Wham Bang, Teatime” (emphasis in original) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“In a violent, distracted, media-saturated world the most needed artistic resource is no longer a critique of the possibility of meaning—mass culture itself has become that critique. What is needed, rather, is the production of meaning that resists distraction. Consumer capitalism thrives by simultaneously creating human loneliness and commodifying a thousand cures for it. One […]

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“The most interesting thing for an artist is to pick through the debris of a culture, to look at what’s been forgotten or not really taken seriously. Once something is categorized and accepted, it becomes part of the tyranny of the mainstream, and it loses its potency.” – David Bowie (interviewed by Michael Kimmelman in […]

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“In art, ambiguity is not a fault.” – David Manier, “Sex and Lots of It” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“The texture of any great work of art is complex and ambiguous.” – Northrop Frye, “The Archetypes of Literature” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“To judge a contemporary work of art correctly demands that calm, unprejudiced mood which, while susceptible to every impression, carefully guards against preconceived opinion or feelings. It requires a mind completely open to the particular work under consideration.” – Carl Maria von Weber, (Composers on Music, ed. Sam Morgenstern) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin […]

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“For practical living, man needs to be free in his thought and responsible in his actions. But in dealing with art, responsibility of thought, which makes for slowness of judgment, and freedom of action, which makes for flexibility of taste, constitute the mechanics of vigor.” – Virgil Thomson, Taste in Music Share this… Facebook Pinterest […]

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“Thus it happened that Adolf Schiele, then twenty-four, encountered Franz Soukup’s twelve-year-old daughter. According to family legend, it was love at first sight, at least for Adolf, who vowed to make Marie his wife. Whether, as has been said, the Soukups opposed the marriage is debatable; the connection with the prosperous Schiele family was certainly […]

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“We don’t need art to express ourselves. If you are sad, then cry. If you are angry, destroy something. If you don’t like something, say no to it. But if you want to make art, then do it because you want to make art and not for any other reason.” – Slovenian Damien Hirst (interviewed […]

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“My definition of art is very straightforward: Art is what is sold as art, and that’s it. When someone buys something, believing he or she is buying art, then it is art. If you pay for something because you think it’s art, you’re basically creating art: the buyer creates art, not the artist. This is […]

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“Every new generation of artists is faced with the task of originating new forms of work that fall outside the margins of established commodity. In other words, to create work that  is uncommodifiable, though it will not remain so for long. This is the cycle, the dance, the lie at the heart of the avant-garde, […]

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