There are some paintings you look at and you wonder who the people were, you muse about the time and place, the fashion, the thinking of the characters and you inspect as far as you are able the skill of the artist. But you have to take another step in your mind to consider philosophical ideas. Then there are paintings you look at and you are in the heart of philosophy immediately. And there is no saying what kind of painting this will be because it is different for all of us. It may be abstract; it may also be a landscape or a figure that just strikes us as asking philosophical questions.
Everyone who stands in front of a painting asks themselves questions. Inspired by or surrounding the art work in front of them. I wish we would all share those questions because they are the heart of everything we do and write about here at the New Art Examiner and there are no stupid questions. There are, of course, many silly answers.
But sometimes even with the thousands of readers we are gaining online, we can feel we are not engaging enough with our audience in the modern world and not getting enough feedback, not being questioned enough, so that we can really move the culture out of the fascist gutter it has fallen into because of the lack of thinking about art and the preponderance of thinking and manoeuvring that is done for money.
So we have been thinking long about hosting an online radio show. We now have eight editors around the world and four of them teach at university level, as well as experts in radio technology and scheduling and writers’ groups invested in creating content: podcasts, discussions groups, open forums… you name it they want to engage with you.
Examiner Radio will be hosted online and available on computers and phones around the world. It will be free and it will be a two hour show every day of the week with each show hosted by a different country, to enable listeners to tune in at sensible times. But as a part of the process we want to hear from you. Do you have a good reading voice; a wish to hear particular kinds of people talking about art and culture; ideas for shows; suggestions on interviews and podcasts people can record and send into us?
We welcome all your ideas and thoughts as we plan for this new and innovative project in the life of the magazine. Please email suggestions, brief or in depth, to:
letters@newartexaminer.net
We shall look forward to hearing from you and discussing your ideas.
Daniel Nanavati
Volume 34 no 4 March-April 2020 p 4