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| Format: | Recurso digital |
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Zenodo
2025
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17006165 |
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Table of Contents:
- <p><span lang="EN-US">There is one text that has haunted me for years: Camiel van Winkel’s *The Myth of Artistic Practice*. When I first read it, it felt like a sobering wake-up call. What was I, a visual artist, supposed to do with this analysis? I found myself – and still find myself – in an impossible position: a maker in a society increasingly oriented toward simple consumption, measurable returns, and the whim of the moment. What was my meaning anymore? Could my work even be about anything in a world that demands bite-sized answers and instant gratification?</span></p> <p><span lang="EN-US">Years later, I picked up the text again. With the knowledge of today, with the experience of an artistic practice that has had to position itself in relation to the ever-advancing logic of neoliberalism. The myths that Van Winkel dissects – the artist as genius, as craftsman, as critic – had not disappeared. They had turned into kind of stage props in the theater of the cultural sector, where everyone plays their role but no one really believes in the play anymore.</span></p> <p><span lang="EN-US">My studio is not a place of romantic inspiration, but a laboratory where I wrestle with materials, meanings, and my own position. Every brushstroke, every concept, every choice is accompanied by the echo of Van Winkel’s words: am I doing this because I must, because it’s expected, because it fits into some myth or other? Or worse: is my resistance to those myths itself already a cliché?</span></p> <p><span lang="EN-US">In this text, I reflect on Van Winkel’s analysis, but also on my own practice. How does an artist relate to the myths that both shape and suffocate them? Can art still mean something that cannot be immediately framed by the market or institutional logic? And what does that say about the value of art in a time alienated from itself?</span></p> <p><span lang="EN-US">This is not a reckoning, but a search. An attempt to find, amid the ruins of the old myths, something meaningful that resists the one-dimensional logic of our time. Because, in the end, I still believe in the power of art – not as a mythical wonder, but as an act of resistance against the self-evidence with which we understand ourselves and the world.</span></p> <p><span lang="EN-US">—<span> </span></span></p> <p><span lang="EN-US">Martin Sjardijn, visual artist<span> </span></span></p> <p><span lang="EN-US">The Hague, 8/30/2025</span></p>