Structuristic Art – a completely new art movement!
Hamburg, 18.09.2013.
Hitherto largely unnoticed by the public, a completely new art movement is establishing itself – spreading from Germany to overseas. It has the potential to revolutionize the international art market. The Structuralist art theory developed by the Swiss artist-philosopher Felix Stoffel (54) now boasts six hundred artists and over two thousand registered works in twenty nations, including America, Asia, and Arabia, and even India.
It is no coincidence that Structuralism is flourishing precisely now, at a time when we are shifting from the possession-oriented thinking of post-industrial generations to an era of sharing and exchanging. The American author Rachel Botsman (“What’s Mine Is Yours”) speaks of Collaborative Consumption. She expects a “shift from an ‘I’ culture to a ‘we’ culture.” In the same way that thousands of software programmers worldwide have long become independent of software corporations and use their own distribution channels, and musicians no longer want to be exploited by production and marketing companies and make their works available to the global public for a small fee after honest evaluation by an appreciative audience, convinced Structuralists are embarking on a similar path.
What are the characteristics of Structuralism? Essentially, everyone has more or less artistic talent – and the craftsmanship can be easily acquired and gradually refined in the Structuralist art schools.
Structuralists appear under a common label. Their paintings receive a coded stamp, i.e., a voluntary registration with an encrypted name. Their work should first have an impact – not their personality. For only what one has created oneself ultimately leaves a mark in the world. The human being himself is transient. Nevertheless, authorship is precisely documented and the individual is highly valued.
Precisely therein lies the true – and in the art market completely new – power of Structuralism: any eccentric cult purely around the artist’s person is undermined, any marketing of the current art market is torpedoed at its very beginning. Wealthy consumers can no longer adorn themselves with the aura of a famous painter just because they have spent millions on his works. The art craft, the true value of a painting, thus returns to the place it deserves according to Felix Stoffel.
However, this vision goes much further: Structuralism enables wealth creation close to the people, because fundamentally, every person, from their own hand and from personal artistic ideas, can at any time and anywhere create new works of art and thus tangible assets for themselves and their fellow human beings. Any speculation with works of art is thus brought to an end.
Since the Renaissance, artists have mainly been left to serve the vanity of the nobility and clergy, and later of the wealthy bourgeoisie. At the latest with the Bohemia, it can be seen how one art establishment is replaced by the next. And that is precisely what led to the massive errors of today’s art market.
The more this phenomenon of the exaggerated artist ego spread throughout the world, the more dizzyingly art swindles could flourish. Because a cleverly marketed ego suggests uniqueness and thus seemingly high value. And whoever invests in these highly praised artist names as a collector, at least for a short time, highlights their own name.
Structuralism will succeed in breaking this mésalliance of artists and consumers and helping the artwork itself regain its radiant splendor and real value. Therefore, its founder views his philosophical work, or its practical application, Structuralist art theory, primarily from a social perspective, similar to how Joseph Beuys once formulated it in his thesis of “Social Sculpture.” According to this, every person can contribute to the well-being of society through creative action. Felix Stoffel would add: And in this way, even lay the foundation for their own wealth for themselves and their fellow human beings.
Beuys’ idea of a freely accessible education and art market corresponded to the counter-position to the respective ruling power apparatus and its established bourgeoisie. This ideal is based on principles that had originally formed during the Enlightenment: freedom, equality, and fraternity.
People who previously had “nothing to do” with art are therefore variously interested in Structuralist art theory, as it is taught and consistently disseminated in general courses and specific training modules.
Info: www.structuristicart.com
Felix Stoffel, the founder of Structuralist art theory, was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1959. After a career as an illustrator and caricaturist, he trained as a medical hypnotherapist in Zurich and received his doctorate with a communication theory topic. Through his company Stoffelsconception, he has been working on his artistic-philosophical work for more than three decades. In the mid-1980s, Felix Stoffel developed the foundations of Structuralism, a pedagogically and, above all, socio-economically oriented art form that has now been established on several continents. This year, he settled in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg with his team.