Manifesto of Florescencism
Artistic movement confronting COVID pandemic crisis with beauty and self-awareness
(First edition June 2020, Second edition September 2021)
Context:
For quite a while art pieces with a soft touch, expressing gentle beauty have been ignored in the art scene, because we have become so much used to negative shock, sensational news, and to contesting cruelties by recreating them in our art. The arrival of Covid-19 is somehow as if the world was forced to sit and listen, and find the value of a sanctuary. We came to see that it is not always the loudest, the biggest, the noisiest, or the dominant, which hold the key to life.
We need a shift in the COVID-stricken time to have more balance in the world around us of which the art scene is a part of. Today’s new knowledge in the fields of neuroasthetics, energy psychology, and energy medicine need to be reflected in our art, if we are mirroring the developments of our human civilisation. A shift in the art establishment is needed by giving space to what comes from the heart to connect to others’ hearts, in a sacred space of beauty which intertwines us with nature to feel at home in the world; a home which feels warm and safe.
When our imagination is active with an art-efficient intelligence, it not only makes the ordinary world around us become more wondrous, more beautiful and more complete, but it also brings us creative approaches to challenges. It brings us a sacred space of beauty to contemplate our social realities.
Today’s trends:
There is currently a lack of balance in the dominating scenes of artistic expressions. The lack of balance is due to the over use of shock value and stunt style approach to art pieces to create quick attention seeking effects. This is in line with the side effect of instant-gratification in our internet age which has brought us also a click-bates culture.
Campaigns against global warming and other environmental crises cannot be fully effective, unless a genuine connection to the earth and nature around us comes to a balance. The current pandemic of coronovirus is highlighting more symptoms of the lack of closeness and relation with nature, as well as a society which is far more in competition for wealth than community building.
Alongside the movements of slow journalism, peace journalism, outdoor garden projects like the Eden Project, in the artistic field there is need for a similar initiative to create a balance in our international society:
· Gentle serene art to balance our responsiveness to a wide range of stimuli. Much of the mainstream audience is no longer responding to gentler stimuli, due to desensitisation caused by excessive use of shock value used by PR agents in advertising, the art market, sensationalism in mass media, and also terrorist groups who try to instil fear.
· Art engaged in social science and neurosciences creates a better balance in people’s perceptions on society; it makes us get in touch with what goes beyond national or regional compartmentalisation of identity and with deeper insights and knowledge beyond what sensationalism brings.
Building on the masters of previous artistic movements and today’s knowledge:
As an international group of artists mostly from the millennial generation we are responding to our current international crisis, by taking heritage from the past masters who created the artistic movements:
· The Pre-Raphaelites and the Golden Ages of painting and illustration, for their attention to details in relation to nature’s romantic beauty with human
· Art Nouveau movement for their concern about beauty in the applied arts, and re-establishing the connection with nature and the understanding of it on a deeper level.
· Symbolism is another movement which we take heritage by accessing archaic symbols which stimulate and awaken our collective psyche
· Surrealism for its subconscious exploration and imagination
· Expressionism in its emotional connection with the brush strokes
Neuroaesthetics, energy psychology, energy medicine, epigenetics :
Going beyond the definitions of beauty by cultural framings, we have delved into the findings of today’s field of neuroaesthetics in neuroscience. In those findings there are hints about what touches our nerves and senses when we undergo an aesthetic experience – insights as to what our instinct recognizes as beautiful and connects to as a feeling or perception of ‘being home’. Energy psychology tells us how our feelings inside influence the external realities we create in our lives. Energy medicine tells us that beyond the physical matter, there is more to what we take in. Epigenetics tells us that outside factors besides DNA sequence can control and influence genetics. Bearing such knowledge contributes to opening channels when creating paintings for a better quality living.
Our method of painting responds to the dominating situations of the world today, with each painting element an affirmation towards flowering out of crisis, towards a process of evolvement, a life-affirming state:
1- Repetition
In a landscape painting the repetition of leaves, stones, flowers, waves etc. bring attention to things we often do not take notice of and enjoy, both as rhythm and abundance in the surrounding nature. We often fail to notice that due to our rushed life-style of click-bate internet age. The stylistic rhythm of that repetition caresses the being with its music that shocking type of art fails to do to our senses. Repetition also stresses abundance that speaks to our nerves in an age of anxiety.
2. Overall organic form
Bringing people closer to nature involves also stimulating the capacity of connecting to the core of physical existence which manifests in shapes and forms shared between external and internal features of us humans, and other natural entities. An analogical way of thinking brings a better understanding of the micro-macro principles that encompass a care for our living environment. Making analogies between shapes also on the basis of symbolical similarity and metaphorically, for example clouds as brain, a face as a heart, trees as human bodies, or a landscape which by itself or with some alternation contains the shape of something organic. Besides the connection of humans and nature, there is another important dominating trend which we would like to counteract and balance by this: the ideal of beauty in people’s physical appearances is massively framed by the international cosmetics’ industry selling cosmetic products. We deem such standardization of beauty way too narrow. Therefore the recognition of the beauty of internal shapes that make our bodies and that of the visible nature, widens our perception of physical outer beauty also.
3- Use of elements in harmony with nature
Human activity or human made objects which don’t harm nature, or represent a way of using nature which is in harmony with it, affirm human creativity and intelligence which is protective towards life rather than destructive.
4- Refreshing palette
The ‘dark night of the soul’ is a process, and we like to show that process. Darkness has its place, and so does light. Lifeforce has made the world evolve so far in transformation. We like to stress that space for renewal amidst the heavy states rather than being doomed inside it as a dead-end state. We like to affirm a life which renews itself.
5- Knowledge inspired
We are living in an age of information, yet accessing knowledge of in-depth quality research remains on a lower level than that of journalistic news quality. Knowledge also which can elevate our insights into understanding ourselves comes from literary works like poems and novels. As much as fast tracked information is useful, in-depth knowledge which requires longer time for processing and contemplation is important for our balance as sentient beings who are at a fast pace of technological advancement. Emotional growth goes hand in hand with the knowledge to develop wisdom. We want to fill the gap of the discrepancy between the fast pace of technological development and that of our wisdom and emotions.
6- Point of infinity
During the Renaissance the point of infinity used in paintings through the discovery of perspective, brought the general public closer to the idea of territory and physical space confinements. As painters of the present artistic movement we take that point of infinity of perspective but apply it to other compositions of non-physical space such as our mental and emotional space. In physical compositions we juxtapose the infinity analogically from the earthly space to the transcendental space of our perceptions. When for example masses of clouds finish behind ranges of mountain, or fields stretching out to a very distant point, those become like a symbol of the collective consciousness metaphorically depicting our emotional and mental spaces.
7- Dancing brush strokes
Aspiring dancing individuals that we are, we like to pass on emotions with rhythm in our brush strokes, so even in cases of violent chaotic expressions we use a dancing manner of grace. The channelling of the strongest emotions in the hands of an artist still carries grace in reaching the audience.
8 – Directionality and movement
To affirm an expression of life in movement rather than stagnation, we stress the state of movement towards an infinity point - the unknown point none of us knows of, or the rhythm of the brushes which would make even a still life painting come to life. No matter how still and firm something looks, it is composed of a constantly moving energy/matter and so it is constantly changing. We affirm that changing state with the movements in process.
The term ‘florescencism’ was first coined in an essay Lida Sherafatmand wrote in 2016, to express the state of flowering out of difficulties in her floral paintings, as a phenomenon of florescence. For our artistic movement the principle of alchemy, the symbolic meaning of turning iron into gold, is a crucial spirit for which we decided to use the same word to express our global work. We face cruelties in our art not by simply regurgitating the expression of the cruelties to complain, but by expressing them together with motives which bring opposite symbolic qualities as a force for transformation and processing pains, all while applying today's knowledge.
While we were preparing our artistic movement, the cornovirus pandemic broke out which brought out several phenomena of imbalance we had been contemplating about. All this urges us as artists to commit in launching our works as a movement here and now in 21st century.
Co-authored by Lida Sherafatmand and Milko Nestoroski
Artist Signatories:
Lida Sherafatmand
(painter, based in Malta)
Milko Nestoroski
(painter based in Struga, Macedonia)
Natalia Yuryeva
(painter based in St Petersburg, Russia)
Paola Dias Silva
(painter based in St Petersburg, Russia)
Stanislava Malahovskaya
(painter based in St Petersburg, Russia)
