Any game you play has rules.
If you don’t explain the rules, you can’t understand the game. There are 17 official rules in football and 18 in handball. Use your hand in football, and you get a penalty. Use your foot in handball, and the same thing happens. Every game requires two things: the objective and the rules. Anyone who breaks the rules is a cheat; anyone who flouts the rules is a spoilsport.
For some reason, many people live under the assumption that the rules of art are the same everywhere and universally understood. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. Visual art is part of culture, and culture is dominantly regional. The rules in art/culture are more different than in any ball game.
So here are some of my rules that I tried to follow for the last 40 years.
Rule 1: Art is a gift.
In his seminal book The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World, Lewis Hyde argues that art functions in a "gift economy" rather than a purely transactional market. Art is a gift in three phases: the initial creative spark given to the artist, the labour of creating it, and the finished work offered to the world to foster human connection. Art as a gift revolves around the ideas that
I don’t ‘invent’ out of a void but through close observation.
The gift must circulate. Unlike commodities in a market economy, which gain value by being bought and sold, the value of art lies in its movement. Gifts are meant to be passed along, shared, and kept in motion to build community and spark further creativity. Art establishes a bond of gratitude and reciprocity between the creator and the audience. When art is treated merely as a commodity to be bought and sold, this sense of communal connection is diminished.
Rule 2: All information stems from the work of art itself, not from theory.
Rule 3: Transparency, which literally means layering levels of paint to express the complexity of our world. For me it also represents the higher, not visible, charismatic expression of a work of art. Richard Serra’s sculptures, for example, might be dense in their massive materiality, but they are transparent in the way that they quickly let you experience something beyond their volume.
Rule 4: Avoid control and replace it with 'Unwillkürlichkeit,' which refers to actions, reactions, or processes that are not consciously directed or deliberately controlled. It is the opposite of intention and often relates to instinctive, reflexive, or spontaneous processes.
Rule 5: Abstraction that avoids the ambiguity of narratives.
Rule 6: Poetic atmosphere and expression.
Rule 7: Colour as a more objective language of emotion than words, signs or personal perception.
Rule 8: Art is a sensual, intellectual position, not the masterful display of craftsmanship.
Rule 9: Search for freedom.
Rule 10: Stop counting.
Rule 11: Avoid metaphor and repertoire art.
Rule 12: Create movement.
Rule 13: Art is about innovation. If the institutions award you, you are simply not ahead anymore, and a first prize simply excludes 99 colleagues. The days of the artist as the lone ranger are long gone.
Rule 14: If you engage in matters of public interest, remember that society and general well-being advance with our ability for compassion. To imagine that someone else might suffer the same as we are or Vice versa is only possible with imagination; we should not turn to philosophers or politics but to those who enable our imagination, which is literature, film, the arts.
If you don’t explain the rules, you can’t understand the game. There are 17 official rules in football and 18 in handball. Use your hand in football, and you get a penalty. Use your foot in handball, and the same thing happens. Every game requires two things: the objective and the rules. Anyone who breaks the rules is a cheat; anyone who flouts the rules is a spoilsport.
For some reason, many people live under the assumption that the rules of art are the same everywhere and universally understood. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. Visual art is part of culture, and culture is dominantly regional. The rules in art/culture are more different than in any ball game.
So here are some of my rules that I tried to follow for the last 40 years.
Rule 1: Art is a gift.
In his seminal book The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World, Lewis Hyde argues that art functions in a "gift economy" rather than a purely transactional market. Art is a gift in three phases: the initial creative spark given to the artist, the labour of creating it, and the finished work offered to the world to foster human connection. Art as a gift revolves around the ideas that
I don’t ‘invent’ out of a void but through close observation.
The gift must circulate. Unlike commodities in a market economy, which gain value by being bought and sold, the value of art lies in its movement. Gifts are meant to be passed along, shared, and kept in motion to build community and spark further creativity. Art establishes a bond of gratitude and reciprocity between the creator and the audience. When art is treated merely as a commodity to be bought and sold, this sense of communal connection is diminished.
Rule 2: All information stems from the work of art itself, not from theory.
Rule 3: Transparency, which literally means layering levels of paint to express the complexity of our world. For me it also represents the higher, not visible, charismatic expression of a work of art. Richard Serra’s sculptures, for example, might be dense in their massive materiality, but they are transparent in the way that they quickly let you experience something beyond their volume.
Rule 4: Avoid control and replace it with 'Unwillkürlichkeit,' which refers to actions, reactions, or processes that are not consciously directed or deliberately controlled. It is the opposite of intention and often relates to instinctive, reflexive, or spontaneous processes.
Rule 5: Abstraction that avoids the ambiguity of narratives.
Rule 6: Poetic atmosphere and expression.
Rule 7: Colour as a more objective language of emotion than words, signs or personal perception.
Rule 8: Art is a sensual, intellectual position, not the masterful display of craftsmanship.
Rule 9: Search for freedom.
Rule 10: Stop counting.
Rule 11: Avoid metaphor and repertoire art.
Rule 12: Create movement.
Rule 13: Art is about innovation. If the institutions award you, you are simply not ahead anymore, and a first prize simply excludes 99 colleagues. The days of the artist as the lone ranger are long gone.
Rule 14: If you engage in matters of public interest, remember that society and general well-being advance with our ability for compassion. To imagine that someone else might suffer the same as we are or Vice versa is only possible with imagination; we should not turn to philosophers or politics but to those who enable our imagination, which is literature, film, the arts.