Miami Art & Culture

An interesting message from Hans-Jürgen R. Klemm at CityLoftArt concerns “BUYING HAPPINESS”…

Money has functions: power, symbols of power, but also: dependence of power symbols. We end up prisoners of our own artificial power creation: money, money and money.

I have frequent exchanges with power-holders, successful and brilliant ‘money people’, and after a few sentences of conversation there is sometimes no other discussion than this: money, power, symbols of power, and a surprising emptiness in the true, very simple human exchange…

Do we forget that money is a totally “foreign” value, invented by humans and ephimerous like humans?  Certes, we need money to subsist, to eat and drink, to be able to have an acceptable and agreable lifestyle but … from a certain size of apartment on, you loose coziness, you even have no more togetherness, no more spontaneous communication, no more human warmth.

Children become opponents to their parents because they (!) see that those artificial values do not belong to their search of family values, and  they suddenly cannot respect anymore the parental ‚ superiority’, meant to be their guide for their own growing life.

Consequences: retreat in their shell, refuse of communication, advice and affection. Worth: wrong ‘friends’, alcohol, drugs, agressions… And for the adults: an astonishing proliferation of churches in the search for happiness and human contacts.

I am German and I literally lived the degeneration of my after-war generation:
Building up Germany again from ashes, using the talent of the german working ability and strenghts like goal orientation, organization, precision, perseverance and invention, until… everybody had everything. And now, for the past 20 years, their only remaining ‚goal’ is traveling, researching lost ideals, which cannot be found in luxury-hotel-enclaves…

Germany now looks for new goals, new identities…
America has been recently as well, confronted with a deep identity crisis:
Money does not heal anything, it can even destroy a lot, if there is no effective mechanism to avoid abuses. 
America too is now looking for new goals, new identities…

Why dont we come back to a more simple, healthier life option? We are all humans,
born to be interdependent to each other, born to enjoy each other and born to respect each other. Success of individuals is always acceptable. In France (I lived there for more than 20 years), success is generating more respect and recognition than in the USA, irrespective of social standing.

France knows how to live life (and how to eat and drink :-), with spontaneity and the best of what money can provide – but in a very discreet way and -consequently- accepted manner.

There is an expression: “FRIMER” which distinguishes clearly the “connaisseur’ and the “show-off-eur”.

And this may be the way to adopt a good function of money: use it exclusively for YOUR wellbeing, discretly and NOT for your neighbor. After all, your neighbor does not live with you. And there must not be any competition. Your lifestyle has to be YOURS, some interior designers can be very helpful to your choices, but you have to preserve yourself the most important function your money can provide: the pleasure of doing a decision for yourself, for your or your beloved’s pleasure, for your wellbeing without need of labels, cliches or “musts”.  In fact, it describes some sort of new modesty, an intelligent understatement.

Apart your clothes, ART and INTERIOR DESIGN are the medium to show your real individuality. Listen to your good feeling and what it is worth to YOU, to the pleasure to re-discover it daily in your home, don’t buy it for the price ‚advantage’, you might have negotiated, buy it because YOU LIKE IT and it gives you PLEASURE and good feelings looking at it every day. A ‚rebate’ is never satisfying, because your never know what the next negotiator can obtain…And after all you HAVE to look at it every day 🙂  – Take your time and check if you have this ’10-sec. flash’.
Look for quality of work, finishing, originality and the obvious VISIBLE artwork VALUE.

Go see stores which are able to give you a LARGE choice of an artist’s work, advice and the feeling to have a selection of what you want to see in your most private surrounding, your home.

Be invited to discover our defintion of ‘living art’, harmony and wellbeing thru color & light.
A private appointment (305 491 0492) will be arranged at your convenience anytime upon your demand.

Hans-Jürgen R. Klemm