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10/05/2005: "ART and NATURE Book and Artists as Authors"

It is a revelation how many artists write so well about the world as they perceive it and of their artistic experiences. Yet a controversy has come to light about how many visual artists are reticent to write their thoughts and prefer to express only through imagery instead of written language as well. Artists are often self-limited to the use of drawing, painting, sculpting, photography, even digital arts, to express an inner life and to make art tangible. If we were cultural anthropologists, such as Margaret Mead, we could say we have discovered that visual artists are often verbose but "afraid" to express through words. While this is often a cultural matter, it is inhibition enforced by an inner critic that actually prevents individuals from giving succinct descriptions of their feelings in words. This inner critic is a compost of cultural, familial, and peer impositions. Is this why the artist is often the radical figure, the romantic oner willing to risk all and endure dire circumstances if need be to create?



Just think of the long-suffering images of Van Gogh, Gauguin, Michelangelo.

In this day and age when visual art seems to belong solely to the realm of Disney and animation, we must take a stand to expand the place of visual artists in the world. An explosion of authors who are not artists is glutting the cultural marketplace with their words. Their tool is a word processor capable of making changes with the mere touch of a finger.

The tools of the artist are far more complicated and difficult to use. Every artist knows that if one element is changed in an art work, it affects every other thing

Is there an element of finality in the written published word? Does the belief in the old adage, - If it says so in print it must be true - control the works we create?

The reality today is that an Artist's market lies more in cyber space through conceptual art works. There are grants and patrons out there just waiting to share in the extraordinary experience of creation. In order to reach them the artist must be able to use words to describe the meaning of their art and the broad scope and concepts of their works.

The Expressionists had Appollonaire who described the works to the world, and very successfully indeed. Yet few artists can afford high priced publicists.

It is necessary in today's artistic atmosphere to receive more exposure.

Don't Artists who write therefore have an advantage?

The thrust of our work at this late stage in our professional arts careers is in sharing through the medium of the internet. We are determined to share our website www.barongallery.com for the purposes of increasing exposure for artists through unusual, but dynamic venues.

The Lifescape Portrait of Ed and Hyacinthe Baron and the Baron Conservancy heirs. 4x4 on canvas. A digitally manipulated montage of oil, photographs, marble dust and acrylic polymer collage.


The ideal exposure on the internet as far as we are concerned is to have a premiere portfolio site on wwar.com and to extend to the sites of other artists by establishing reciprocal links. For instance, your active URL on our web site and vice versa on yours allows the visitor to go back and forth.

The internet is such a marvelous medium that allows artists, traditionally loners, to reach out, to communicate and above all to share particular views of the world.

We urge artists to broaden your stance as a creator and to seek to publish your art and words as an archival record of your expressions, to put into the hands of your collectors and patrons.

The Baron Conservancy with images imposed. Acrylic on canvas.


We are discovering that in our desire to share our "quiet" place as we refer to the physical site and acreage of the Baron Conservancy in Wonder Valley California, we are finding like minded creative individuals and remarkable artists and authors who are talented and able to express, inspire and give insight into the artistic process and are also concerned for the preservation of nature and the human spirit.

We chose ART and HUMAN NATURE as the theme of our annual literary and art book and have extended the submission date to November 23rd, because we wish, as in all our projects, to empower artists to expand their forms of expression and we ask visual artists not only to display their works, but to describe them, using words.

We are looking forward so much to this opportunity to share our journey with creative artists, authors, poets and we know that together we can create an annual published book collection that will be a work of beauty to be cherished for a long time. We like to think of it as our gift, a way of giving back. If one lesson has been learned from 45 years of being involved in the world of art as a creator and collector and supporter of artists, it is that the universe accepts creativity with grace and gives back so much more than one can ask for.

We encourage artists to set forth their conceptual designs and literary descriptions of projected visions of what could be, and to publish their art in books and as limited edition etchings, lithos, prints, even on narrated films. Perhaps if more visual artists enabled their powers of visualization with words, it could make a greater impression on the world.

Don't you think?

Here is the link: http://www.barongallery.com, barongallery@aol.com

Replies: 10 Comments

on Tuesday, October 18th, wendy jean hyde said

thank you to Hyachinthe. to me i feel the art is in the act of creation, as in dance, music, movement and energy. we push the paint around and dig away at the clay to come up with a thing that beholds to the ultimate Toll of Time and who knows what will happen to our painting once it leaves our hands? the objects are now decoration they can now be torn, broken weathered and printed onto t-shirts to be sold on the sidewalks, until the viewer is moved by them, stops and gives them his/her attention. then the whisper of the dance can be felt again to the viewer. i am torn between writing about my "art" because part of me says to let the viewer keep his / her own interpretation but there then lies the risk of misinterpretation... if we don't write about it then eventually someone else will or not...

on Thursday, October 6th, Hyacinthe Baron said

Thanks again to everyone for their thoughtful comments.
We will be posting new information on our web site regarding participations in the many projects we have planned and different events and venues we wish to make available.

So check with us from time to time to see what's going on. We look forward to being in touch and of course sharing our arts and writings.

on Thursday, October 6th, Ed Baron said

Yes, those projects were ahead of their time. And now add the Roden Crater by Turrell to that area. We lived in a Frank Lloyd Wright designed house across from Taliesin in Scottsdale, were friendly with the Director and our son best friends with their son. The underground ampitheater, the great individuals who attended the Saturday nights events, the odd structures built by the students out on the 1400 acres. Non of it accredited but certainly a center for the individual creator to test the mettle.

Fantasies? These huge land projects are definitely that. We prefer the description visions, the abilities of artists to project beyond boundaries into physical space and now into internet space. While the physical space exists, the future can be tangible and conceptual because art is executed on "another" level, if you will.

The future is here and now. There are art lovers waiting and willing to participate. It has been our experience, as that of Soleri and Wright and Turell, that the artist's task is to put it out there...and draw like-minded others in.

As a gallery owner and artist's agent for so long our intent is to make art possible and available.

on Thursday, October 6th, gabriella said

Ed and Hyacinthe;

What is it about those sere wide panoramas that bring out the ideals about finding a Utopia, or to founding a place where creativity can flourish? I am thinking back to my visit to Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti, north of Phoenix, and seeing the amazing results of his and others daydreaming of possibilities being made actual, out of the raw materials of concrete and rebar, human labour that was taking shape in the desert.
Similarly, a visit to Taliesin ll in Phoenix, yielded the same sense of wonder and questioning.
Do you two also have a long view of what is or can be possible on your site? You project certainly leaves open a possibility to establish a place where a confluence of creative energies may be made manifest!

on Thursday, October 6th, Ed Baron said

Thank you all. For being here. For understanding the bigger picture. Hyacinthe and I have learned that art today is part of a new whole, of technical innovations and space technology and DNA possibilities for understanding everything.

It is almost as though there is no longer a stretched canvas big enough to make our mark on. We should have known that with Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns. Everyone is out of interior wall space. Museums are full up. Expensive homes want Architectural and textural Art to project from their walls.

Some months ago we hung one of Hyacinthe's paintings on the outside wall of the old Miner's cabin we are restoring. The wind took it, the rain water in the washes carried it downstream. The texture changed, the canvas tore off the stretchers. Hyacinthe discovered a new partner. NATURE.

When we are at the Baron Conservancy we can turn full circle and grasp the emptiness of space around us. This is an incredible feeling for two born and bred New Yorkers. There is so much space. Enough to be a new canvas for the building of forms. Architectural, sculptural and made of natural materials including glass and marble and stone and metals and space age polyester monomers and fiberglass cloths and resins.

The annual ART and HUMAN NATURE COLLECTION book will be our tangible archive of the creations artists are invited to design for and "build" on this space.

The internet will be our forum. We hope you will all be a part of it, a space for the exploration of new ideas, and old laments and experiences and at last, a place to converse as they used to at the old White Horse Tavern and at the street cafes of Montmarte.

Yes, a serious dialogue among artists, authors, poets. We are thrilled. Bring on the film makers.

on Thursday, October 6th, jose said

These blogs really are gathering momentum and turning into something palpable even though it all takes place on the www. This opportunity you are giving artists to learn more and join in the Baron Conservancy in Wonder Valley is a beautiful gesture Hyacinthe, as are Adri de Fluitier’s Art in Nature or Asbjorn Lonvig’s Playhouse projects.

I imagine that logging-on to this site must be the virtual equivalent to walking into a Café in Montparnasse at the turn of the last century [without the wine and the merriment], or into any other place in any other time when artists were meeting and setting things in motion that would affect others. Like Andrew says there are people here one would like to make contact with, and not too seldom the words do provoke changes in the things we are creating and the direction we are taking. This is important. To know that we will ‘pop-in’ and perhaps learn a bit more about each other as Gabriella points out is great. A certain responsibility arises out of all this: It’s up to us to make these ‘encounters’ meaningful for ourselves and for those who enjoy coming in silently and listen to our mumblings. Call me a dreamer but I’m one of those who believes this Forum is going places.

on Wednesday, October 5th, gabriella said

Hyachinthe;
I have always liked to read what artists write about, their process, the origins of their ideas, their perceptions of the world and the operations of others within it. Similarly I also very much enjoy what writers, dancers and composers write about their processes. The insights thus provided are immeasurable in value, and provide useful documents for the generations to come.
This focus of yours is a welcome one. I wish you great success in it!

on Wednesday, October 5th, Margaret said

Hyacinthe:

Perhaps visual artists are “reticent to write their thoughts” because of the negative response to their doing so on many fronts. I have so often seen and heard comments advising artists to let their work speak for itself. I disagree. I consider this a very closed way of thinking perpetuated within the visual art community, and often put forth in art education.

Words and their meanings are another art form. They can move in and around visual imagery, or in addition to it, creating a multi-dimensional work. I speak personally having done this, creating work, for instance, that grew from a poem which talked about a period in my life. The words of that poem wove through the imagery creating a pattern of both meaning and texture. The work was freestanding fused glass and purchased because the person related to not only the sculptural form but also the feelings expressed in the poem. I have had that happen on numerous occasions.

It would be my wish that artists feel free to express themselves on multilevels when moved to do so, to express their inner life in not only the visual language of their choice, but also in our wonderfully expressive verbal language. It could be a rich marriage.

This is a great project!

on Wednesday, October 5th, Andrew said

The blogs of artists who are writing on this site are giving me very strong impressions of the people are behind the words and the images. In the same way, the comments are too. I come here often, and I wouldn't if I weren't getting something very valuable out of it. If I weren't an artist, I'd want to make contact with those who were to better understand their work, and reading what they'd written would give me that opportunity. Being one means sometimes the words even change the things I create.

on Wednesday, October 5th, walt said

Hyacinthe,

this is a wonderful project. And certainly there are a great number of artists who would benefit from it.