Romantic Anti Romanticism
Aug 13-23, 2003
Blair Butterfield | painting | space 3

My new body of work from the last month, Romantic Anti Romanticism, is oil paintings and paintings made of candy on canvas. It is a celebration of a certain dislocation of being that is post romantic and contemporary. It encompasses surface manipulation in decorative ways but still conveys a message that would otherwise not engage the viewer.

The message is relative to ideas linear to the post modern. The particular “surface manipulation” is referring to the need of the hyper real, excess and gratification. These specific qualities reflect culture and a certain persuasion needed to engage an art audience into certain ideas.

The ideas reflect that we live in a world of Romantic Anti Romanticism. We are dislocated from a particular reality due to a constant prescription of life style and personality through media and entertainment control. Although this isn’t something that can be helped due to the loss of “moral pieties” and “academic principles”.

This leads us to live the lives that we want and desire leading to schizophrenic tendencies that cause what Freud described as a libidinal disturbance during childhood, so as adults we unconsciously try to obtain illusionary wholeness through commodities.