The Maximal Experience
Sonia Sacoder Astor and Ted Astor
“Less can be more, but less is never all.” S.S.A.
“Humanity at its magnificently human, in its restless desire to push on in all directions as far as possible.” Isaac Asimov
From the earliest days of humans to the present, one idea begets another. As part of the process, people, through their innovation created tools and found ways to simplify and understand the world around them. Today, computers, cyberspace and the internet provide still another medium for this evolutionary refinement and reinterpretation of the human experience. The result is an opportunity for any person to use her or his imagination, intelligence and memory to understand our ongoing travels in space and movements through time. (From the book Travels in Space, Movements Through Time)
Using collage images, taken from photographs printed in publications, and acrylic paint I have developed a Maximal Approach. The paintings contain multiple images, each seen from a different perspective that gives a global sense. Through individual memory and sensibility, the viewer interacts with the painting. The works are geared to a space age, information age audience. The overall title for my work is Travels In Space, Movements Through Time.
With photographer Ted Astor, I have collaborated on focus prints of my paintings and a series we call “Anybody’s Portrait.” We have had a number of joint exhibitions including such places as the Palisades Gallery of the Hudson River Museum and the Hammond Museum.
“What amazingly complex paintings, very intriguing!”-Barbara Haskell, former Whitney Museum Curator.
“I really liked the contrast of huge scale and micro-detail and the way it metaphorically translates into ideas about the planet, the environment, the human race, war, etc. I was also struck by the degrees of similarity and dissimilarity between your work and Ted Astor’s”-Lucy Lippard, Art Historian and Critic.
“The universe of Sonia Astor is one of contrasts resolved. Her art shifts from small to large images, from galaxies above to earth and water below, from images derived throughout the history of art in reflections based upon yesterday’s news. Part of the fascination with Astor’s visual abundance comes from attempting to identify the many individual images in the work.”-Lynne Mayocole, gallery director Westchester Community College.
War And Peace
When people come together with common forms, ideas and goals they become a movement. In art, for example, painters concerned with the representation of a three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional canvas adopted a common approach that we know as the Cubist Movement. In the atomic age, where war can mean the end of the human species, a wide spectrum of individuals have joined groups aimed at dealing with the nuclear threat. We have, for example, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Educators for Social Responsibility and Seeds For Peace.
We are in the maximal era. Using the World Wide Web and Cyberspace we can access anything and everything, communicate with each other instantly and document events and their context.
Events
September 11, 2001- World Trade Center
Guernica Expanded
Connections
Collage
Collage, originally a term in art for compositions that included materials from various sources, now also refers to the assembly of diverse ideas. In art, instead
of cutting with a scissors, carrying by hand and pasting with glue, collage today involves the electronic keyboard and mouse to paint and transform images.
Linkages, Transitions
Programming
Andy Astor (1957-2000) was a programmer.
Author Gerald Astor