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MANIFESTO OF VISIONARY ART
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visionaries, some more heroic - Frank Frazetta, Micheal Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith; and some more macabre - Berni Wrightson, Clive Barker. Parallel to this were the Underground comix of California, with their later expression in Juxtapoz magazine. In Europe, particularly in France, comics developed into the finer graphic illustrations of les Bandes Dessinées, with Moebius, Druillet, and others
Already, though, the borders defining the genre were becoming hazy. Do we consider American Sword and Sorcery, Sci-Fi, and Fairy art to be visionary? And what of New Age art, with its interest in dolphin consciousness, alien abduction, crystal channeling etc? Each must make his own decision here (though the author of the present manifesto says - adamantly - no).
The number of exhibitions are mounting. Among them: du Fantastique au Visionnaire (Venice 1994, Maurizio Albarelli), Der Faden der Ariadne (Mussbach 1998 Otfried Culmann), 100 Sacred Visions (Payerbach 2000, Rubinov-Jacobson), Art of the Imagination (London 2000, Brigid Marlin), Fantastic Art (Australia 2001, Damian Micheals), Parfum de femme(Paris 2002, Claude Cussac). Meanwhile, the Centre international de l'Art fantastique organizes on-going and permanent exhibitions in the Chateau de Gruyères. TheSociété des Arts Fantastique, de l'Imaginaire et du Reve has already organized a number of exhibitions near Paris. And, in 1996 there was the founding of the Zentrum der Phantastischen Künste (www.labyrinthe.com) in Germany.
Through the publications of Galerie Morpheus (James Cowan), the founding of Art Visionary magazine (Damian Micheals), and the creation of The Fantastic Art Centre on the web (Christian de Boeck), more and more Visionary Artists have come together, detecting strange, unaccountable, but undeniable harmonies in each
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other's works. A monastary of sorts is being built in the desert. Invisible tribes of wanderers are banding together, coming to shelter, and forming once more the Masonic Order of Visionaries.
In France and Belgium, there stands at present the works of Dado, Di Maccio, Jean-Pierre Ugarte, Roland Cat, Lucas Kandl, Erik Heyninck, Michel Henricot, Francois Schlesser, Christophe Vacher, Jean-Yves Kervevan, Patrick Delorme, and Gregoire Massineau. In Germany and Austria, Ohlhauser, Peter Gric, Daniel Friedemann, Heinz Zander, Karl Kaefer, Mannfred Ebster, Manfred Sillner, Michael Maschka, and Otfried Culmann. In Norway, Odd Nerdrum. In Poland, Beksinski, Yerka, and Banach. In England, Alan Senior, Brigid Marlin, Laurie Lipton. In Australia, Damian Micheals and Paul Freeman. In Italy, Bruno di Maio, Benedetto Fellin, and Paolo Grimaldi. In America, Weber, Judson Huss, Martina Hoffmann, Ann McMoy, Cynthia de Robbins, Anton Brink, Andrew Gonzalez, and Voke.
This list is by no means definitive or complete. There are many practising visionaries today who remain unrecognized. Others prefer to work in solitude. But without a doubt a strange phenomenon is occuring: a wave of artists, struggling to bring their vision to light, is growing larger with each generation.
And so, the signatories to this Manifesto may number themselves among the latest generation of Visionary artists practising today. Tired of the academicism, elitism, shock value, gallery politics, and huge financial speculations surrounding modernist and post-modernist art, the practitioners of Visionary art have made a genuine, sincere, and authentic attempt to revive something eternal within the contemporary experience of art. Each of them pursues, in the words of Ernst Fuchs, "a special authenticity of imagery born of the visionary experience"(15)
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