#16 - Fen de Villiers | Artistic Heroism and the Soul-building Power of Beauty

This is probably the most inspiring conversation I’ve had all year.

Fen de Villiers turns blocks of stone into powerful art. Just look at this. He willed it out of stone. With. His. Hands.

Fen studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. He’s on a mission to reinvigorate sculpture to its most vital and energetic form. Maybe you’ll be reinvigorated too.

Topics include:

* How do you even become a fine art sculptor?

* What makes art energizing? Why is most contemporary art the opposite?

* Cultural vitality and it’s relationship to physical vitality

* Modernism, art deco, futurism and vorticism

* How western culture forgot how to celebrate life (and became a death cult)

* Why now is the best time to create a new artistic movement

* The revolutionary act of simply making things

* How Fen has been shunned by the current art scene

* Why Duchamp’s Urinal was legitimate art at the time (but wouldn’t be today)

* How Fen stays motivated to wake up every day and make things

Resources:

* Fen’s Manifesto for Aesthetic Invigoration

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