"Very early on, I fell in love with the landscape of the human face, where all the emotional states of life are to be found, and that love affair has not faltered." Burton Silverman “I am still trying to do something that is not yet achieved, though I’m unsure what that something is,” he said.... “That’s a backdrop for all that I am involved with, which is trying to create some kind of value system,” he said. “Why do we think something is interesting, worthwhile, worth seeing again? How does it resonate with regard to its conversation with the viewer?” he asked rhetorically. In the most basic terms, in order for visual art to communicate a value system it has to be representational, intrinsically. In contrast, much of Modern art and Post-modern art, generally called abstract art and what Silverman called “non-object art,” depends on words in order to justify or explain what it means. ...“It’s about making pretty pictures that are also not about pretty things,” he said. ...Formal classical or realist art education was practically non-existent during his youth, so Silverman taught himself how to draw and paint by studying the masterworks at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and at The Frick Collection. ...Yet such representational and realist artists are still marginalized in the mainstream art market and art establishment. Silverman called that marginalization the result of a “disease that corrupts,” he said. “It is also denial. In a sense it has been a brain wash, because people have grown up trained to view art for its formalist qualities and thus its validity in a way is such that no conflicting understanding of the possible alternatives can contravene it,” he said. As an example he mentioned how a Cy Twombly piece, showing scribbled circles, is considered high art and sells for thousands of dollars, yet it’s comparable to drawings made by his 3-year old grandson. (http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2211360-the-spark-and-wisdom-of-artist-burton-silverman/) . undefined

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