Art as a form of presence

Where the gesture remains, even after you leave.

“Art does not reproduce the visible; it makes it visible.” — Paul Klee

Some people paint to escape.
I paint to stay.

Art, deep down, is a form of presence — not representation.
It’s the gesture that says, “I’m here”, even when words fail.

When you paint, write, or sculpt, you’re suspending time.
Not to run away from the world, but to touch it differently — through your hands, your gaze, your silence.

Art doesn’t solve anything.
But it gives shape to what we feel, and sometimes, that’s enough.

Being present isn’t just being somewhere.
It’s being whole in the moment — body, breath, color.
And art might be the last place where that’s still possible.

👉 Café conclusion: to create is to say “I’m still here”, even when everything else goes quiet.

The power of emptiness in visual arts

Where silence becomes visible.

“Nothing is not a hole; it’s a field of possibilities.” — John Cage

Some people fear emptiness — the silence, the blank space, the pause.
But in visual arts, emptiness is anything but absence: it’s the place where the work breathes.

Malevich painted his White on White as if to say, “I no longer need anything for something to exist.”
Rothko immersed us in color fields that are really portals of silence.
And Agnes Martin proved that delicacy can be as radical as the most violent gesture.

Emptiness isn’t a lack of expression.
It’s the moment before the word, before the color — that fragile instant when the eye is still learning how to see.

In the end, emptiness is where everything begins.
Without it, gesture has nowhere to land, and thought has nowhere to echo.

👉 Café conclusion: emptiness isn’t the opposite of art — it’s its breath.

5 contemporary artists who reinvented the use of color

Paint tubes in a chromatic revolt.

“Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet.” — Paul Klee

People always bring up Van Gogh, Matisse, and Rothko when talking about color. But what about today’s artists? They’re not living in the shadows — they reinvent color as language, experience, even provocation. Here are five names worth dropping at your next artsy dinner.

Olafur Eliasson
He doesn’t paint, but he paints with light. His installations turn rooms into artificial sunsets and fogs of color. For him, color isn’t pigment: it’s atmosphere.

Anish Kapoor
If you’ve seen that black that swallows your gaze (the infamous Vantablack, and all the drama around it), you know what I mean. Kapoor doesn’t use color as decoration, but as pure power.

Yayoi Kusama
Polka dots, mirrored infinities, and rooms straight out of a pop delirium. Kusama turned color into repetitive obsession — and in that, found freedom.

Sean Scully
Looks like “just” geometry, but it’s poetry in blocks. His stripes breathe, vibrate, almost move. His abstraction is warm, not clinical.

Cecily Brown
She paints like diving into chaos. Colors explode, blur, and collide in furious gestures. Painting that doesn’t ask for permission to enter.

👉 Bottom line, with paint still wet: color has never been just aesthetics — it’s attitude. These five prove it can still be reinvented with every generation.

Why do we still talk about Van Gogh?

Vincent van Gogh, “Two Cut Sunflowers” (1887). The Phillips Collection, Washington, Image in public domain by Wikimedia Commons.

“I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.” — Vincent van Gogh

We talk about Van Gogh as if he were an old friend. And in a way, he is. You know the straw hat, the sunflowers, the ear, the letters to Theo. Even if you’ve never set foot in a museum, you’ve met him.

But why this collective obsession?

Tragedy sells (big time)
Van Gogh is the original rockstar painter: poor, misunderstood, suicidal. He lived in misery, died young, and sold almost nothing in his lifetime. The rest you know — the market and the critics turned him into legend. Culture loves martyrs.

Color that screams
Look at one of his canvases and tell me you don’t hear sound. The yellow of the sunflowers spits light. The starry sky isn’t sky, it’s music in oil. There’s an intensity that cuts across time, almost untranslatable.

The myth of authenticity
In an age of Instagram filters and polished LinkedIn bios, Van Gogh works as a counterpoint. The “mad genius” who didn’t fake it. Who burned from the inside and threw the ashes onto canvas. Truth or romantic construction? Doesn’t matter. It works.

And you?
We still talk about Van Gogh because we need someone to remind us that art isn’t just market, technique, or “good taste.” It’s excess, it’s pain, it’s beauty that disturbs.

👉 Bottom line, with paint still wet: Van Gogh reminds us that for art to be art, it must be urgent.

5 things you should never say to an artist

“An artist is someone who sells what he no longer has.” — Picasso (with his trademark irony)

We all know that friend who thinks they’re being nice… but says the worst possible thing.
To avoid deadly stares and awkward silence, here are 5 gems you should never say to an artist:

1. “Can you actually make a living from this?”
   (Thanks for the concern… now excuse me while I eat my canvas with acrylic sauce.)

2. “But how long did it take you?”
   (As if the value was in the stopwatch and not the creation. Spoiler: this isn’t Uber Eats.)

3. “My kid could do that too.”
   (Congrats to your kid. Maybe they’re a genius. Or maybe you just don’t get it.)

4. “Can you give me a discount?”
   (Sure, and you happily take half your paycheck, right?)

5. “I could do that myself.”
   (Then… why didn’t you?)

👉 The no-fluff takeaway
Respect the artist, enjoy the work — and if you can’t think of anything smart to say, just compliment the color.

Picasso: genius or master illusionist?

Pablo Picasso, 1950s. Photograph by André Villers.

“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” — Pablo Picasso

Was Picasso a genius or simply a brilliant illusionist?
The question stings, because it shakes the pedestal we’ve placed him on.

On one side, the undeniable genius:

• He reinvented himself through multiple styles, from the Blue Period to Cubism.

• He broke conventions and opened the doors to what we now call contemporary art.

• He created iconic works that even people who dislike art still recognize.

On the other, the master illusionist:

• He knew how to provoke, shock and grab attention like few others.

• He sold himself (and us) the idea that any line he drew was art.

• He turned his persona into a spectacle — and that also has a price.

Gertrude Stein, who knew him in Paris, once said:

“He is Spanish, you know… and for a Spaniard, the world is a stage.”

And the critic Robert Hughes put it bluntly:

“Picasso was as much a salesman as a painter. But maybe that was the secret of his greatness.”

👉 What remains is this delicious ambiguity: Picasso was both artist and performer, painter and salesman, genius and illusionist. Maybe that’s what makes him eternal — you simply can’t put him in a single box.

And you? When you look at a Picasso, do you see genius, trickery, or both at once?

👉 The artsy moral of the tale
Picasso may have sold illusions, but maybe that’s his greatest talent: convincing us that art is more than paint on canvas — it’s also the story we choose to believe.

What is art, really?

Paint and coffee — the official fuels of creative madness.

“Art is what makes your heart beat faster. Or slower. But never indifferent.” — Anonymous

Art isn’t just museums and white walls.
Art can be the doodle on a napkin, the blurry photo that ends up having more soul than the “perfect” one, or even the silence between two guitar notes.

It’s personal, but also universal.
It’s serious, but it can also be brilliant nonsense.
It’s hard work, but also a stroke of luck.

👉 The trick? It doesn’t need a single definition. What it needs is space for you to breathe and feel.

👉 Bottom line, with paint still wet
Art is anything that makes you stop for a second and think: “Hold on… that moved me.”