Something old, something new, something borrowed . . .

Augustus John.

Dear Readers.

Myself and my “partner in crime”; Helen Tuxford, are considering opening a blog site dedicated to our magazine; “The Scriveners Review” so that we can reach a reading audience more diverse than our local hard-copy recipients. This will involve having people like you reading and subscribing to the blog…and at the moment we are asking ourselves; “Is it worth it?

Below is our ideology.

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I invite you to immerse yourselves in a revitalised arts movement we are attempting to create with our humble little magazine called ; “The Scriveners Review”. It can be called ; “The Romantic Movement Reborn”..yes, reborn into the twenty- first century, reborn into a cynical and materialist age where creative arts and crafts are only considered for their “bottom-line value”, ie; what is it worth and is there a market for it?

We believe art has a social obligation…a social objective , but it has been perverted by a market mechanism. There is a serious distortion of our perceptions of achievement within the realms of creativity once we accept the lie of “art for art’s sake” , this is a postmodern prescription and debasement of a noble act of seeking to understand the world we live in. We have given over both riches and recognition to those who ill deserve and abuse both and we receive (unlike our caveman ancestor with their rock-art paintings) little or no representations of our collective struggles in return.

“art” does not exist in itself, but rather as an adjunct to physical experience and cultural existence!… it is not a separate construction of the imagination. No longer do we aspire to the heroic deed or moment as depicted in The Odyssey or The Aenied, or even in the later mythologies of modern people just going about their everyday lives, easier to descend to the lowest common denominator of cruel brutality. Elitism that has captured our culture in “art” has created a dearth of imagination in the population, a denial of the humanist / emotional centre needed in all creativity. The progression to true artistic depiction is a one way street: The honest artist has every qualification to aspire to true art (by “true art”, we mean; creative art that comes from a desire within the artist to depict the emotions they feel in their lives, including that which is esoteric or aesthetic, not just anecdotal ) because of their connection with physical activity or cultural ambition. The skill needed to envisage, conceive practicalities, collect materials and thoughts and then to “mold” all this plasma into a cohesive design, makes experience in the practical work-fields an essential qualification for the undertaking of an artistic project. That and the emotional trysts of success and failure, strength and weariness , love and loathing of the work involved, gives the honest artist all the training needed for creating a “work of art”. The “careerist creator”, conversely, rarely. very rarely, becomes artist they just do not have the patience nor the skills.

And while I accept the slogan “art for art’s sake” is from the early nineteenth century, it still is a fatuous statement..and I leave it to Nietzsche to affirm my opinion…..Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that there is no art for art’s sake. He asked: “…what does all art do? does it not praise? glorify? select? highlight? By doing all this it strengthens or weakens certain valuations….Art is the great stimulus to life: how could one understand it as purposeless, as aimless, as l’art pour l’art?”

Which leads us to ask; who judges on what is a ” work of art’? Who indeed! This leads us back to my statement concerning elitist boundaries. Invariably, it is in the interests of a certain class to claim “ownership” and therefore set a “monetary value” on pieces of “art”. The judges, therefore, tend to be those who collect, contract, earn a living by, or just generally set commercial boundaries to : “Objets d’art”, whatever material they be.
This vested interest-minded presumption confines the creation of beautiful objects or imaginative constructs of the mind again to those “qualified” to create!

With this humble publication, we wish to revitalise that emotional centre most lacking in the bigger world of “corporate art” or as it is called; “The Art Industry”. The editors want to encourage the promotion of an older age of arts and craft along with creative writing that best examples and fulfills that knowing hunger for a more emotional involvement, a more romantic viewing of the world around us and our culture in the community.

“Onward, Excelsior!”