J- So, I do art to avoid the system?
L- No, you don’t use art to avoid the system. Art is in you. The system wants you to avoid yourself, ro supress it, to make you a consumer.
Art is your expression of Life. If you use Art to avoid the system it is the same as a drug adict or a TV adict.
J- You do drink a lot of coca-cola.
L- I am diabetic.
J- You should know by now that’s a joke.
(He sights in german with his teeth out)
L- Art is the creation of yourself, the counterpart of the system, it is your world. It is not to avoid, it is to be.
J- How does art relate to the system? You said that in a painting I am giving them something they don’t have… what do you mean?
L- Well.. capitalism knows how to take the good out of things and use it in a positive way, well, productive. To be an artist means to be one of the last individuals, to survive in the mass. Many “become” artists so to be an individual, do not get confussed by theese, it is not the same, they choose an ilussion of being an individual. To be an artist it requires a truthness that only few can bare. We live in dark times, oppresive times, and so the truth becomes smaller in things. You are giving them some part of the truth. They, and you and me, we all seek the truth everyday. Your work is to communicate it. It is in everything, it is in everyone.
Jo & Lutz