FREEDOM's ORATOR : Art For Everyone!

Art For Everyone
Art is what you can get away with (A. W)
The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.
Pablo Picasso
(Ghetto Theatre’, 1920, by David Bomberg)

To celebrate the centenary of the Ben Uri organisation, highlights of its émigré art collection at Somerset House. London.
The Ben Uri, an outsider organisation, was founded in London’s East End Jewish Whitechapel’s ghetto in 1915 and is the oldest Jewish cultural organisation in the UK. It was dedicated to giving young Jewish artists a chance, and among its first stars were David Bomberg, Epstein, Mark Gertler and Jacob Kramer. Over the past 100 years its collection has grown to include 1,300 pieces by some 380 artists. It is now temporarily based in St John’s Wood, but 67 works are currently on show at Somerset House, in a small but powerful exhibition that highlights how influential Jewish artists in this country have been.

This exhibition at Somerset House is therefore a rare opportunity to see many of its most impressive highlights displayed together. Works by the likes of Jacob Epstein, Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Marc Chagall, Whitechapel Boy David Bomberg, Jacob Epstein, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and my favorite dadaist artist Kurt Schwitters are just some who have revolutionised British contemporary art.
I recomend you to visit it and eat the art.

(Mark Gertler, Rabbi and Rabbitzin)

L.S. Lowry (1887-1976) - Good Friday

Kurt Schwitters' MERZ & Dadaism

Schwitters's MERZ

The word ‘Merz’ essentially means the totality of all imaginable materials that can be used for artistic purposes and technically the principle that all of these individual materials have equal value. The artist creates by choosing, distributing and reshaping the materials. Merz art strives for immediate expression by shortening the path from intuition to visual manifestation of the artwork…
Merz stands for the freedom of all fetters. Merz also means tolerance towards any artistically motivated limitation. Every artist must be allowed to mould a picture out of nothing but blotting paper, for example, provided he is capable of moulding a picture.

Kurt Schwitters once said "I take any material whatsoever if the picture demands it. When I adjust materials of different kinds to one another, I have taken a step in advance of mere oil painting, for in addition to playing off color against color, line against line, form against form. I play off material against material, wood against sack clothes etc. Art is a spiritual function of man, which aims at freeing him from life’s chaos. Art is free in the use of its means in any way it likes, but is bound to its laws and to its laws alone. The minute it becomes art, it becomes much more sublime than a class distinction between proletariat and bourgeoisie."

'A museum that really wants to promote modern art might give the artist a guaranty, on certain conditions, so that he can get on with his life and his creations. Or do you believe that the museum is more interested in the artist’s death, in order to see the price of his paintings go up?'

En Morn (1947), by Kurt Schwitters

Schwitters was the father of Dada Movement. (K. S)