LOGS FROM THE VOID To access the journals, consider subscribing to JJFBbennett via: Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/1809829/join DeviantArt : https://www.deviantart.com/jjfbbennett/subscriptions Meta Subscriber Hub for exclusive content: https://www.facebook.com/JohnBennettArt/subscribenow?surface=pinned_comments The Highway and the Lost Soldier What began in Journal 001 as "T he Whisper of the Rust ", a haunting, ancient frequency in the desert static that lured travellers into the spinifex, soon became a physical threat in Journal 002 " The Salt and the Sinew ", as a crawling, unnatural drought began parching the land and its people, reclaiming their very moisture as an ancient debt. Now, in Journal 003: The Tithe of the Living , this relentless hunger has materialised on the Stuart Highway as "The Thirst That Walks." Even the sealed, air-conditioned sanctuary of a tourist bus cannot protect the living, as a single open door is all it takes for t...
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Consider THIS Gatekeeper
Gatekeepers in the art world determine what art is exhibited and made available to the public.
Gatekeepers include curators, gallerists, collectors, critics, and other art industry professionals.
Museums, galleries, and cultural institutions are often considered the primary Gatekeepers.
Curators play an influential role in selecting and organizing exhibitions.
As an independent artist, it is essential to recognize and consider the influence of these Gatekeepers.
Botticelli Gatekeepers
The Medici family played a significant role in shaping the art and culture of the Renaissance period and were critical patrons of the Arts in Florence.
Botticelli and other Renaissance artists navigated the values and expectations of their patrons to maintain financial support and avoid falling out of favour.
Botticelli's famous paintings, The Birth of Venus and Primavera, were sponsored by the Medici family and demonstrate their classical influence.
The church also significantly influenced Renaissance art and commissioned many works for religious buildings.
Botticelli's personal experience of false accusations and imprisonment inspired his painting, The Calumny of Apelles, which warns against false and malicious allegations and reminds us of the importance of safeguarding fairness and creativity.
Powerful and Influential Gatekeepers
In ancient Greece and Rome, wealthy individuals and institutions commissioned large-scale artworks for public and religious spaces, reflecting the ruling class's tastes, values, and interests.
Colonizing states utilized art for propaganda, promoting their culture and customs as superior to the local ones.
Classical art focuses on technical excellence, representations of gods and goddesses, historical and mythological narratives, the depiction of military achievements, and attention to detail and realism.
Patrons and institutions with considerable resources and power can influence cultural narratives and advance their interests, values, and agendas through commissioning or purchasing works of art.
The decisions of gatekeepers, such as wealthy patrons and powerful institutions, significantly impact artwork creation. Is it a formalized process for independent artists to seek commissions in patronage?
How the Powerful Influence Artists
Wealthy and powerful business and political leaders have influenced the art world by commissioning classical works of art that reflected their ideals of wealth, good taste, and cultural heritage.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, wealthy patrons favoured classical themes and techniques demonstrating their moral purpose, wealth, power, and cultural sophistication through their art acquisitions.
In the 18th to 19th century, wealthy patrons favoured Rococo and neoclassical styles, which reflected their belief in the classical tradition and conveyed a message of stability, order, and permanence.
The rise of industrialization and globalization in the 19th century allowed artists to become more independent, sell their works directly to private collectors and institutions, and explore new styles and techniques.
In the 20th century, a new class of merchants, industrialists, and bankers emerged who acquired innovative art to reflect their creativity, innovation, and impact on society, shaping the artistic direction and promoting artistic freedom and creativity through their support of innovative artists.
This artwork is protected by U.S. and International copyright laws. Distribution and/or modification of the artwork without written permission of the sponsor is prohibited.
AI ART and Meaning What role does an artist play when employing AI? Artist statement by JJFBbennett If we accept that AI can generate vast quantities of statistically “meaningful” content from data and algorithms, then meaningful art may lie not in the output itself, but in its selection and framing. AI functions as a kind of unconscious, producing raw material at scale. The artist’s role shifts from maker to curator: deciding what to extract from the data’s noise, what to present as art, the context in which it appears, and the conversation it enters. The artist as the muddler and meddler in the centre of it all. This shift has an art-historical precedent. In 1917, Marcel Duchamp’s *Fountain* made a decisive claim: the artist had not sculpted the urinal but selected it, titled it, and placed it in a gallery. Meaning arose from the gesture of choice rather than the act of making. Walter Benjamin, too, anticipated this logic in his reflections on montage and editing: meaning can e...
Through the eyes of the Lost Soldier The sky is bleeding into the dirt again, and the old hunger crawls up through my boots. It no longer matters. Time does not march out here. It pools beneath a dry creek bed, stagnant and unseen. But when the moon swells, heavy and bruised with copper rust, the cold in my ribs becomes a scald. The scrub does not burn with heat. It burns with memory. Through the tangled mallee, I see the flash of artillery, the orange-red roar of a barrage that never stopped falling, trapped forever inside the rib cages of these dead gums. I taste copper on my tongue, sharp as rifle oil and dried blood. The black heavens press down, bending the whole world inward until I am trapped inside a glass bead of fire. I pace the boundary where red light cuts into deep shadow, waiting for a relief column that lost its heading eighty years ago. Everything here is parched. I am so thirsty. But I do not want water. I want your nourishment. I want your dawn, your warm pulse, as yo...
The Territory of the Little People - Storm Clouds Approaching The atmosphere over Pine Creek churns before it breaks. The sky stops being a distant ceiling, and tears open into a fevered, gestural vortex, churning in fierce ribbons of cadmium gold, raw ember, and bruised ink. Here, in the suffocating stillness of the build-up, the heat plays violent tricks on my inner eye. As the squall gathers, the twisting ironwoods and fractured ridges don't feel empty; they crawl with the uncanny belief of the Little People, low-slung, watchful phantoms spun from wire, red dust, and dry static, waiting out the road's fragility. Every jagged branch and swirling filament of cloud becomes a face, an arm, a sinister presence breathing inside the rising storm, drawing the traveller deeper into the delirium of the interior. Pine Creek Storm Front Torn black filaments of wind and shadow seemed to claw straight out of the atmosphere, dripping down like hot tar, twisting through the spindly ironwo...
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