Nelson Ferreira Art Classes Painting and Drawing

Jay Shetty may have landed the interview of the year. Across much of Southeast Asia, I notice a striking contrast—people here seem far happier than in the West. The countries that still embrace spirituality appear more content. It’s refreshing to see Madonna openly speaking about spirituality and the idea that our artistic creations are never truly ours to own.

https://youtu.be/zUvRv5JrItk?si=DbXGv...

#JayShetty #Madonna #Spirituality #SoutheastAsia #Happiness #Contentment #Creativity #ArtAndSoul #EasternWisdom #InnerPeace #LifePerspective

3 months ago | [YT] | 0

Nelson Ferreira Art Classes Painting and Drawing

Painting Angkor Wat Temple with the PlatiGleam technique, as an ambassador of Borobudur Park, IDM - InJourney Destination, and with the support of GIZ Cambodia

#AngkorWat #PlatiGleam #BorobudurPark #InJourneyDestination #GIZCambodia #CulturalHeritage #TempleArt #ArtForCulture #NelsonFerreira #SacredLandscapes #PaintingHeritage #TimelessTemples #ArtAmbassador #CrossBorderCulture

4 months ago | [YT] | 5

Nelson Ferreira Art Classes Painting and Drawing

SOME MYTHS THAT CONTEMPORARY ART INSTITUTIONS LOVE TO PROPAGATE:
1. Van Gogh the “starving pauper” myth (Tate, MoMA, Van Gogh Museum): Constantly framed as a penniless genius who suffered in obscurity. In reality, his brother Theo bankrolled him; he painted on extremely expensive pigments, squeezed litres of costly paint, and lived as a kind of middle-class dropout. He went to paint for several years in the south of France, and even had a shrink. Which poor person could do that in the 19th century?

2. Duchamp as the “inventor of conceptual art” and readymades (Guggenheim, Tate, Pompidou)
Institutions routinely present Fountain (1917) as the “birth of conceptual art,” erasing entire 19th-century avant-gardes: The Incoherents in France (1880s) were already exhibiting found objects, absurd titles, and anti-art gestures. Duchamp himself knew he wasn’t first — but the myth survives. Any Prehistoric magical amulet made with a simple sea shell is a readymade and also conceptual.

3. Western Male-only “origins of abstraction” (Guggenheim, MoMA)
It’s widely claimed that Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Malevich invented abstraction. They ignored Hilma af Klint’s non-objective works (1906 onward), because she was a mystically inclined Swedish woman. Guggenheim only mounted a major show in 2018, revealing decades of curatorial erasure. They also never learnt about Islamic abstracts widely found in book illuminations. Or abstract Paleolithic and Neolithic patterns. They only know these three white men.

4. Abstract Expressionism framed as “pure artistic freedom” (MoMA, Tate)
MoMA aggressively promoted Pollock, Rothko, etc. as spontaneous American genius, ignoring that the movement was covertly funded and exported by the CIA as Cold War propaganda. Many exhibitions today still sidestep this context, preferring the myth of isolated genius. In reality, it was part of a cultural colonialist agenda.

5. Indigenous/non-Western erasure in “modernist breakthroughs” (Pompidou, Guggenheim, Tate)
Western institutions consistently claim originality for modernists who borrowed from African, Oceanic, and Indigenous art. Picasso’s so-called “discovery” of African masks at the Trocadéro gets celebrated, but the source cultures remain framed as “primitive inspiration,” not intellectual equals or even superior.

6. Minimalism as radically new (Tate, MoMA)
Minimalism (Judd, Andre, Flavin) is presented as a rupture, while earlier precedents in Bauhaus design, Constructivist stage sets, and even Shaker aesthetics are ignored. I had to study this extremely boring style for a whole year at the faculty of fine arts of Lisbon. The professor never mentioned 19th century minimalist artworks by 19th century artist Alphonse Allais. Or pictures like this one I chose to post here.

These blunders aren’t just mistakes — they’re convenient mythologies.

1617: An “extremely Baroque” monochrome, Et sic in infinitum — “And so on until infinity” — inscribed along its four sides, depicting the void before creation. Like Malevich’s 20th-century counterpart three centuries later, Robert Fludd’s black “square” is in fact a rhombus.

5 months ago | [YT] | 6

Nelson Ferreira Art Classes Painting and Drawing

An echo chamber in art happens when artists, institutions, and audiences keep recycling the same ideas, aesthetics (or lack of them), and narratives. Safe. Marketable. Self-referential.

The result? Cultural stagnation — novelty on the surface, but no true originality underneath. Exactly what Dame Vivienne Westwood meant when she said of contemporary art: “The whole 20th century was a mistake. Not one idea happened in the 20th century.”

And I think she was right. Just look at the Incoherents — the 19th-century group that already staged the absurd, the conceptual, and the experimental long before the so-called avant-gardes claimed innovation. Contemporary art has been stuck on repeat for 140 years.

#EchoChamber #ContemporaryArt #VivienneWestwood #ArtCritique #CulturalStagnation #NoOriginality #ArtDiscussion #PunkSpirit #ArtDebate #CreativeCrisis #ArtWorld #Incoherents

https://youtu.be/vT5ssoZ80dQ?si=vYh2v...

5 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 0

Nelson Ferreira Art Classes Painting and Drawing

Great news coming up soon… in Indonesia right now.

5 months ago | [YT] | 6

Nelson Ferreira Art Classes Painting and Drawing

To celebrate the 700th anniversary of the birth of Inês de Castro, I am exhibiting in Alcobaça at the painting exhibition (Un)VEILINGS OF PEDRO AND INÊS. It’ll be running until June 7th. This exhibition features works by Cristina Henriques, Gianmarco Donaggio, Joana Guerra, João Leirão, Jorge Prata, Maria De Fátima Silva, Nélia Caixinha, and Nelson Ferreira.

These are some of the icons I’ve done using methods learnt at The King's Foundation School of Traditional Arts

Curator: Alberto Guerreiro
Museu do Vinho de Alcobaça, Portugal

9 months ago | [YT] | 5

Nelson Ferreira Art Classes Painting and Drawing

Hand-painted Christ Pantocrator in traditional egg tempera – now ready to ship to Italy. If you’d like to commission a sacred icon in time for Easter, contact me today to secure your order. Some of the icons are available to purchase now:
www.nelson-ferreira.com/

#ChristPantocrator #EggTempera #SacredArt #ByzantineIcon #HandPaintedIcons #ChristianArt #ReligiousArt #Iconography #EasterGift #CustomIcons #ArtCommission #FaithAndArt #OrthodoxChristian #CatholicArt #TraditionalPainting #IconPainter #NelsonFerreira

10 months ago | [YT] | 4

Nelson Ferreira Art Classes Painting and Drawing

Teaching in Lisbon, at Casa-Museu Anastácio Gonçalves about 19th century drawing methods. Here are some examples of drawings, made by young students that learnt Academic methods back then. This quality used to be frequent, before Academic schools were dismantled during the 20th century. It’s time to bring back this skill level. I’m teaching the Bargue Drawing Course as the first step of Academic training. More classes coming up in January.

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1 year ago | [YT] | 5

Nelson Ferreira Art Classes Painting and Drawing

Today was a synchronous day. After arranging the details of my next exhibition in Portugal (it’ll be in Évora), I received these beautiful photos from a friend who remembered that it had been two years since I had my exhibition ‘Painting rarefied the spirit’ at Portugal’s National Museum of Contemporary Art. Look how this little boy worked so hard beautifying our museum 😍

#MNACPortugal #NationalMuseumOfContemporaryArt #PaintingRarefiedTheSpirit #NelsonFerreira

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1 year ago | [YT] | 1

Nelson Ferreira Art Classes Painting and Drawing

‘Lightscape of the Night: the Monastery’s Sunset Frontage’.
PlatiGleam painting on canvas, 202x202cm, 2023.
(Image on the left: with natural light. Image on the right: with the torch of the mobile phone near the eyes).

Batalha Monastery

#PlatiGleam #NelsonFerreira #Batalhamonastery #Painting

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1 year ago | [YT] | 0