Joseph Arthur’s first passion is the visual arts, yet he is better known for his musical talents after being discovered by Peter Gabriel in the mid-nineties. Arthur’s artwork is a spiritual quest expressed through form, lines, and color, involving a profound search for the ‘thread’ of life, binding even opposing forces of torment and beauty. As with Arthur’s music, evocative of such vivid imagery and emotion, his paintings dance with a similarity animated rhythm of form. His artwork has received much attention from the artistic and musical community including a Grammy nomination for his album packaging for the 1999 release of Vacancy which led to the opening of his own gallery in Brooklyn, NY -- the MOMAR (Museum of Modern Arthur)
MISSION STATEMENT:
- MOMAR seeks to broaden the parameters of the fine art world by fostering a multi-disciplinary interaction among innovators in painting, music, poetry, performance and the visual arts. - MOMAR encourages innovation and challenges convention in Art, but reveres the traditional artistic values of beauty, craft, spirituality and history. - MOMAR rejects the notion that art can be valued or devalued on a purely commercial level. - MOMAR seeks to create a new approach to art patronage that includes but extends beyond the conventions of financial support and criticism, and allows for nontraditional contributions to and from the community, including volunteering, charity work and education. - MOMAR is founded on the principle that Art has a conscience, is relevant and can foment positive social change.  MOMAR believes that artists are responsible for illuminating truth. - MOMAR answers the eternal question "What Is Art?" with another question: "what isn't?" - MOMAR encourages interaction between artists and audience, and partners at will with like-minded organizations. - MOMAR is finite.  It is not an ongoing concern.  Its building and its organization will disappear. - MOMAR can, and will, party.
IN HIS OWN WORDS...
“I make art which reveals secret selves or secrets of the self By being deeply personal I attempt to find something universal To uncover the truth of what we are beneath the flesh and form To commune with spirit in organic swirls and drive at the electricity expanding us all Unconscious action Or truth in movement Call it a truth movement I want something beyond myself But I go thru myself to get there I go thru myself to reach you And hopefully find that place where we are one I use air And water Ink and paper When I paint I am the hand of nature giving man permission to be a flower I follow the flower into death until it breathes new life into me and then itself again I paint to uncover And cover what was never there at all I throw charcoal dust at the wall And watch as the black blossom becomes something final and still And then I rise from this meditation Somehow new Somehow complete Charged by giving charge Gifted by giving a gift Enlightened to the fact that now nothing is something And I was dancing in the arms of god” - Joseph Arthur 2009 My art is spiritual nerve. It always bugs me when people say it looks like hair, But this is the reason for 'wig' In the center Which like all fear, Brings itself, upon itself, That which we desire to avoid. The correlation Of hair and nerve One alive One dead (Painted white and in the center of the room in a kiddie pool (where life comes to celebrate itself at the apex of youth and innocence)) Nerve The highest sensation of feeling The raw The unspeakably open Where ecstasy and excruciating pain are one And hair The death The dead thing The drug history contained therein Wig A fake death A painting A fake life Or the representation of something more than life An exaggerated Or enhanced version How do you do that? People always ask when they see my work The only answer I give them Is Doesn't that very question make it a thing of raging greatness? They usually laugh or spit at my feet or want to slap me But it remains true Because mystery Especially in this day Of no mystery Is of the utmost value In my paintings Life Or even alien life is represented Sex And the reaching for the beyond In the wigs An answer to my critics A fake death Something lower In a cheap plastic pool Where poor kids come to play A middle finger in a room surrounded by ecstasy Ps The name Wig Yes there are wigs But the real wig The nerves open The junkies fiending at dawn Or lovers in orgasm Or the mystic Closing his eyes As he looks toward the sun All of them wigging Not to mention The alien visiting This world and the next Joseph Arthur – October 2008 "Painting might be impossible to write about It's a place beyond words from where it comes It's nature showing strange flowers It's a drug that obliterates the self It's a mirror in the spirit world It's where the shadows come out to play It's a shared hallucination It's dream made material set ablaze in the night Maybe it goes beyond everything else Like playing a guitar without strings It's a place man meets God and says What the fuck I love to paint It's where I go to church"