Regardless of the global trends I think I spent my childhood in a daoist world, then my formative years in a modernist world and then now it’s all switching to a post-modernist confusion.
I must clarify which of my beliefs /forgone conclusions that I hold on too, are modernist and if I actually still believe in them.
Like being a so called conceptual artist, that my works are conceptually driven, maybe is a description of my process instead of form. If I say i’m a Chinese ink painter then maybe others in the “art world” take me to be a modernist, but actually do I think of myself as a daoist doing the paintings or what? What do I mean and what do they think I mean? Can’t ignore the latter, when I am communicating. Otherwise might as well dun communicate.
Ashley and I discussed about identity and if the focus is on how one sees oneself vs another see oneself. There’s self-identity and identity maybe. Anyway aren't they two sides to the same coin?
The question is what is authentic between these two sides. The core and the authentic and real.
Is it what that is consistent? One may see oneself as feeling A and others may see oneself as being A but maybe one is really feeling B. But is the insistence to discuss myself in this separatist manner also a modernist thing. Haha. Like maybe one is more than both sides of coins plus core. Maybe there’s no different selves.
Maybe this is why I avoid etymological discussions nowadays.
I also realise that my writing which had been put aside for so long, was confused by modernist comments about its form. Comments like the length of sentence and the other formal qualities. and these have never been my focus in writing. So that made me confused about what it meant to be a writer.
My favourite is to write in this folksy language. Which I have come across recently , describing Dewey. But that brings the discussion back to the formal quality again and then… What?
So this is what I mean about re-evaluating my preferences and conclusions.
Wait I think my definition of modernist is also muddled. Sorry to my teachers who made the distinctions clear before. I meant the Greenberg modernism. Not the Terry Smith Asian modernism. Which ive also been thinking about.