words can't follow

Art works because each of us feels alone, and art is the way back to a friendlier place. Nothing is much friendlier than sharing a deeply held truth about yourself with others, even if it’s only you and the artist. Thoughtful people look for and sometimes find themselves in art. Maybe they find the art they would have made if they’d just given up their career and devoted themselves to art for decades, or maybe they feel connection, an empathy for a piece – they don’t know why. Now if someone else, maybe a total stranger, seems to like the same piece, chances are better than average they’ll have other things in common – a fondness for ethnic food, a tendency to drive too fast, a preference for city life, even though they may not speak. Whatever it is they’re responding to can’t be talked about directly. That’s because words can’t follow everywhere pictures can go – it's the reason we have art around.

Also see "The More Things Change, The More Art Remains True."  Published in Business Lexington, December 24, 2010:  http://www.bizlex.com/Articles-c-2010-12-20-96436.113117-The-more-things-change-the-more-art-remains-true.html

published in Bizlex

It’s been a while since I blogged. For one thing I had an article published in Business Lexington, a mashup of two previous posts called “Putting Creativity on the Payroll”, suggesting that CEO’s put an artist on the payroll just to be an artist, and one on buying from local artists, "Art Destinations Need Patrons Who Prize Hometown Art".  (See links below.)  The intent is to foster an indigenous movement which supports working artists and recognizes their contribution as members of a progressive and humane community.

I think art movements begin with awakening audiences, not with genius artists, and why not here and now is my question. We look around to find ourselves in a desert, miles and miles of seamless walls and nothing but decorator prints and couch paintings. Information and exposure is all the water we need.

The way we were……….

 Essentially I think there are artists everywhere, and the variable factor is audience, which has been suppressed by both commercial and academic interests. The business side wants to narrow and control the product producing artificial scarcity, while the state-supported side wants to avoid the scrutiny of just about everybody while getting paid. They both promote an exclusionary art which justifies itself through a consensus of self-interests, and each affects a manner aloof and condescending toward the general public. This isn’t the time to argue with them, and prove them wrong -- it’s time to do something else.

http://www.bizlex.com/Articles-c-2010-10-14-95608.113117-Putting-creativity-on-the-payroll.html 

www.bizlex.com/Articles-c-2010-11-24-96181.113117-Art-destinations-need-patrons-who-prize-hometown-art.html

actual censorship

Where is the art you don’t get to see, haven’t had a chance to own, that will probably never be made? It’s been censored. No, not because it was obscene or unwholesome, heavens no, but because it was accessible, direct, and might appeal to the general public. The very people we hire with our tax dollars to decide what art is worthy of our notice have been hanging out a carrot on a string, getting a free ride, and the donkey has been us. They do this by staying slightly ahead of the curve, out toward the cutting edge, and if too many people start to like it, they move on. They sponsor a stable of artists who would be completely unsustainable on an open market, and promote them as being superior to artists who might be able to support themselves if they had access to the galleries, the grants and prizes, the press attention currently monopolized by the non-profits, the universities, and all other entities supported with public money and not by the dissemination of art.

They exert control through blatant censorship and call it being progressive, contemporary, and not limited to the narrow provincialism of the people who buy their lunch. Oh, they pretend to promote art, but artists don’t thrive in their communities. They’ve made art an amputee in everyone’s hometown, a sacrifice to charitable events, and expect artists to decorate various street utilities around the town for degrading pittances. Maybe that’s not the visibility for art we need. Original art direct from the hand of an artist who has something to say about the world, has acquired the ability to say it, and who wants to find common ground with the viewer, might appeal to a lot of people. It might supply something they’ve felt missing in their lives, given the chance. Let’s give it a chance.

Instead of handing over your money to some guilt-driven fund drive, for which you receive nothing but the assurance they’ll be back for even more next year, buy a piece of art from a local artist you like, and hang it where you’ll see it every day. Simple as that.

artists are stuck

Artists are stuck in menial jobs all around you. They started out devoting their main efforts to making art, and tried to earn a living with what was left. This technique, known as “earning a living with the left hand”, has been a common device of long tradition among artists. Some bail pretty quickly, finding sustenance with diminished aspirations in advertising, if blessed with degrees they teach, and still others dive into the state-funded, non-profit art apparatus where they crush the dreams of others for meager but regular pay. They most all flirted with the notion of life as an artist early on, but sensed the butter was on the other side.

Some artists took up a manual trade, figuring they’d be tired but could save their mind for reading and thinking about art. “Just another construction worker with an art degree” the last time I saw a friend. Some became cooks, clerks in art supply stores, whatever it was, they went home and made art, at least they did in the beginning. Soon they found the wide-open territory of visual expression was narrow and restricted, after all. Their straight-ahead sincerity was casually dismissed by academics who favor the stylish offhandedness of art made on a salary -- derivative, contrived, good enough to get paid.

They found the cost of studio space, the equipment they needed, the stuff to make art – canvas, paint, brushes are all bought at the sacrifice of everything else beyond bare necessities, when earning a living with the left hand. If they wanted the companionship of another person, that person had to make all the same sacrifices – a lot to ask. So, most of them gave up – see previous post ‘upside down’. They’re out there now, cranking out some semi-functional craft, stuck in some meaningless job, defensive and self-conscious around professional siblings at Thanksgiving. But they aren’t the hurting ones……..

It’s you, and all your fellow citizens – new houses, endless floor plans, neutral colored walls to the horizon, and what are you putting on them? Tired animal prints, florals to pick up some color from the drapes? You’ve been robbed. All the art those people would have made, if your local art authorities had not closed doors in their faces, isn’t there. The living they might have made, not as flamboyant international celebrities, but as respected contributors to community life and well-being has been diminished, diverted, didn’t happen, and they aren’t the only ones poorer.

artist-in-residence in industry

As an employer with office staff, production people, break rooms, reception areas, offices and conference rooms do you think it's possible art acquisition would be more economical, of greater investment benefit, and more fun for you and the rest of your company if you had an artist on payroll? If you’ve seen previous posts – most particularly ‘art and the private sector’ and ‘reasons to own art’, all of them really, you might consider answering ‘yes’. Yes, it would be a practical, business-wise and publically responsible decision to hire an artist to be an artist.

In terms of community benefit, the ultimate objective is to nurture a functional art market capable of sustaining dedicated area artists, and distributing original art to homes, offices, and public areas in the central KY area. The first step would be to support the development of individual artists, allowing them the studio time to find their own voices, and in a mutually beneficial exchange with the members of your very grounded, purpose-driven enterprise. This private initiative to jump start a latent art awareness in the community is necessary since years of publicly funded, non-profit efforts on behalf of art have left art weaker, less accessible, and ever more in need of public support – predictable really. By shifting the responsibility of finding, funding, and displaying art from career bureaucrats to the private sector, in this case you, an organic connection is reestablished between the artist and patron, and everything changes – most of all, the art.

The artist, as your employee, feels an urge to connect with staff and production personnel, and their art will be influenced by your support. A working artist benefits from the positive and negative feedback of a varied, unbiased audience, and would welcome the opportunity to explain their objectives in common terms, all in addition to essential time in the studio. Regular employees would have something to talk and think about directly connected with their workplace, and might soon begin to realize art’s values are something like their own. You would acquire original art, a worthy vessel of company tradition in years to come, would be presenting a progressive public image, and by way of your patronage the community you live in might become known nation-wide as a nice place to live and a good place to buy art.

art in a time of shrinking expectations

Less -- it’s the new more. Can’t go back is what they say. The pre-2008 economy was hyper-inflated, a period of reckless consumption, and more, more, more, without real assets, nothing but plastic, to back it up. It won’t come again. For one thing, consumers can’t be coaxed into maxing out for all that non-essential stuff again, another generation having learned to be more responsible, to take life more seriously, to buy just what they need.

The art market really went nuts, maybe even more than other financial systems, since its prices were pure speculation, fanned by the delirium of acquisition, the adulation of fame. A new order is taking over, with shifted priorities and new sensibilities. These days we don’t have the same money to spend on pointless stuff, and soon we’ll stop envying those who do. In times of contraction, people learn to travel light, to possess less stuff, to concentrate value. They begin to think of art in a brand new way. Ask yourself – would you rather move to a new city with eight works of art, or two vans of furniture? Would you rather tie up your assets in common possessions constantly wearing out, becoming dated and obsolete, or in a few unique objects which never change, which give constant pleasure, and which may even increase in value in the time you own them? These same questions are finding new answers these days.

art and the private sector

Business can lead the way. Let’s change things, do it differently – see if we get a different result this time. Instead of automatically giving money to the local arts fund, pushed from behind by the accountant, pulled by a sense of community obligation, let’s consider how much the same money might buy.

Suppose you were to hire an artist, put them on the payroll, keep half the art. Frankly, what you pay for is studio time, but demonstrations and office discussions are also a possibility. Art goes up in your offices, your conference room and reception areas, and, for variety, you might trade around with other companies doing the same.* Not all artists would be compatible, but you get to review, hold interviews, borrow and hang the art while decisions are being made. Employees could participate, building a sense of company identity, and inspiring pride in personal performance. The art you acquire could eventually become valuable simply because you allowed an artist to find their feet, to build a body of work, to become productive and self-sustaining on their own.

Picking your artist might be easier than you think. Many of the mature ones have had a broad work experience, and may have touched your area or something similar before. Younger artists have fervor, and talk more about art than about themselves. In any case, their real resume is in the art they produce. Do they already put in as much work on their own as you would pay an employee, with a couple of raises, to do for you? If you come up with a yes, think with your pocketbook, and learn to like the art as you get used to it.

*see prior posts, ‘art and self expression’, and ‘authenticity”

gangsters and art

When I first heard HBO was going to make movies for tv, I expected low-budget, b-grade soapers, which is what made-for-tv movies had always been on commercial driven broadcasting. This is probably because the essential ethic of advertising is that people are like sheep, and can be led by their insecurities, their longings and delusions into buying non-essential stuff. Entertainment for sheep is pretty simple – guns, confrontation, some implied intercourse and you’ve got yourself a winner, i.e., you’re going to sell lots of stuff. HBO produces the Sopranos for subscription, a different business model, and they go about it in a different way. They used all their technique, all their talent, all their artistic integrity to make something that looked like real life. Tony has trouble with his kids, gets food poisoning, tells his therapist about his mother just like a real person might. This expanded dimension allowed the viewer to use their own life experience to see into those characters, and to see a bit more of life through their eyes. People like good art – the Sopranos sold a lot of subscriptions to HBO. Not only that. Other production companies began to find support for better stories, better art, even on commercial tv. There continue to be ripples throughout the medium.

It isn’t necessary to call a glass dirty, goes an old bit of rhetoric, but only to put a clean glass up next to it. Someone has to have a clean glass, along with the means to get it on the same shelf, something that wasn’t possible in broadcast drama until HBO came along. Still, it’s clear we have an appetite for something better when it’s available. We need a new business model, one where the private side of our economy takes responsibility for finding, displaying, and promoting local art, and then we may actually begin to realize all those benefits the non-profits claim when fund raising, but never quite seem to find. If business people took responsibility for the art hanging in their own offices, for finding and becoming patrons of area artists whose work they admire, and for making art a part of the conversation at social gatherings, they would find life and business more rewarding, more productive, more profitable, and, in ripples, so would everybody else.

do you have too much money for art?

Could write a novel to hint at it, wealthy insensitives on horseback chasing foxes through peasant crops, but we see it in the news everyday. Might construct a pithy poem, record an insightful song, do a little dance, but let’s just say it out. If you haven’t stood on the edge of a two lane highway late at night in front of the only gas station in miles with seventeen cents in your pocket and one direction as good as another, you’re probably not ready for art. It’s a place you might get to from several directions, and it may not always look just like that, but if you’ve been there you know what I’m talking about. I don’t mean to sound heroic. We’re born into a stormy sea, most of us, and parental expectations, cultural norms, and our own natural limitations are the bare and jagged rocks we cling to. It takes some adjustment, and art helps with that.

Wealth, in this or any time, is about frolicking in warm sunny pools. Royal lines declined without the constant tempering of war because only the immense cost and the strategic realities of battle could penetrate the cocoon of convenience and comfort their wealth provided. Without the strife of daily living – changing tires, making beds, stretching paychecks, several rooms in our personal attic are never occupied. Artists who make art for the ultra wealthy understand their overriding emotion is boredom, having never gone upstairs at all, and they connive to amuse and distract them with giant chrome puppies, diamond encrusted skulls, and such. They’re not like you and me.

We work hard for the money, and with unemployment up around ten percent, we all probably work a little harder. Before we take some of that money and spend it on art, it has to mean something to us. What would that be like? Maybe we like the image, and maybe we like the color, and maybe we like the way our expectation is always fooled when we look at it. Maybe we’ve met the artist, and are following their career as they sell art to friends and neighbors, and we get to see other examples of their work when we visit. Maybe we see in a sincere work of art an old friend in the making, an image and its attendant memories that will always be there, unchanged, wherever life takes us. Whatever it might be, really rich folks won’t get it. They think art is about collecting famous names on stuff -- there are very expensive ink blobs for them.

art is the measure

Art is the measure of regard one has for one’s self. Obvious for the artist, but it actually applies to everyone. It’s true for the art you look at, as well as art you might make. What else is art about – anyone with a better answer step to the front of the line. The artist makes a statement – this is the best I can do, this is what I think you want to see, this will make me famous, and it’s right out front for anyone to look at. At this point the artist is completely honest, or at least can’t hide anything, because if they’re a grant-sucking, art regurgitating camp follower, it’ll show in their work.

For everybody else it’s pretty simple, too. What art do you have on your walls -- at home, in the office, and how important is it to you? Do you see yourself in the art you choose to own, choose to look at, even to notice. Maybe not. Public money has been trivializing and demeaning art for over half a century, and by now the general population doesn’t seem to care – what a surprise. The first artists to be supported, promoted, made famous with public money, grants from foundations and public institutions, were the abstract expressionists after the second world war – art’s Taliban. Instead of firing squads they used ridicule, ending careers, driving established representational artists into menial occupations elsewhere, pissing on all of art history – the way fundamentalists tend to do. More extreme than most, they banned the depiction of anything, and it went on for years and years. You still might hear some old art professor fading into retirement absently mouthing the words –“I have more important things to do with my time than to go around copying nature” for the million-billionth time.

Public money turns art into the idiot pet we walk twice a day and otherwise ignore, and that’s its job. Built into the distribution of public money are enough filters for mediocrity to ensure a public thirst for self-verification and redemption will have to look elsewhere – politics or religion, perhaps. The poison in the well are the decisions of self-serving bureaucrats who don’t know or care anything about art – check the walls in their houses for verification. Artists with self-respect may turn away, and find themselves turned away from, with no access to grants, commissions, and the resulting public recognition. (see previous post – 'upside down') Public institutions -- non-profits, state commissions, public university art schools all expend vast resources, the public's own money, to commandeer the public’s attention for their own benefit, not the benefit of art, the public or its culture.

It’s time to see past the vast public art enterprise, so dependently attached to the veins of our political structure, and look for independent art and artists who express, in some unspeakable way, the seriousness we have felt, or would like to feel, in our own lives, day to day.

can’t get there from here – Kroger bakes art

Kroger wants to do right by their customers, wants to give them what they want at a fair price, but they get tired – tired of people complaining about the bread. It’s refined and processed, reduced to the lowest common denominator for taste and nutrition, and has no personality at all – like cotton candy that turns to paste when you touch it to your mouth. Sick and tired of hearing it, so they decided to give those so-called art bakeries, the ones producing traditional breads with character, texture, and taste, a run for the customer’s money. Deep in stainless steel labs late into the night they tested and baked until they had an array of breads to rival any family-owned, neighborhood bakery. There were seeded tops and different shapes, all looking really diverse and wonderful, but all made from the same regular old white bread dough. All the different kinds of bread tasted the same, and not a bit better than their regular bread. They found the look, they had the technology, but they couldn’t produce a good loaf of bread.

The very process of finding and funding public art provides the look of art, the sensation of something new, but it’s a generic, one size fits all, bleached of meaning copy product – glitzy and clever on the outside, but all the same white bread on the inside. It isn’t anyone’s fault – it’s the process. Constructing cool stuff to conform to guidelines and parameters, figuring markups and materials, delivery dates and installation constraints turns artists into culture vendors and fills a city up with things that eventually rust, fade, and collect debris. Does it add to the quality of life – maybe. Mediocre in gives mediocre out – it’s like a law or something. Artists line up to receive a drop of public money, in the form of direct commissions from city or state, or the tax-deductible sponsorship of business, while myriad non-profits grow glossy. The city is left with stuff to maintain forever and ever, or until the thrill is gone.

It isn’t the art that’s the problem – it’s the backward set of priorities that puts it there on the corner, in the median. The Picasso in Chicago (see prior post, July 4), often cited as an iconic example of public art, wasn’t chosen by committee, wasn’t paid for with public money, didn’t fit anyone’s parameters.

one art

There is one art. Scholars who explain it all to the rest of us don’t see it that way. They divide art up with fences and gates, categories, periods, schools. They do this because that’s the way they’re taught – so much easier to score the tests. By the time they’re done, representational painting and abstract painting are different things, modern and contemporary are separate realms of expression, every year in SoHo has it’s own stars. Actually, the idea of making marks on a flat surface which somehow create 3D pictures in the mind stretches back thirty thousand years we know of, and it’s been going on continually since. Languages require a lot of learning and divide up humanity into regions, tribes, nationalities – the obvious source of many of our problems. Art goes in directly. Fifty percent of the brain interprets vision and eighty percent of the circuits connect in some way, according to tv documentaries. Art needs no translation.

Art has been used to pull many wagons. Early on we think it had to do with hunting, the Egyptians made it talk, the church used it to shape and condition human experience, and we sell stuff with it. Behind it all is this mysterious ability of human perception to animate line and shape on a page. Our purpose here is to deal with the pure stuff, and it doesn’t really matter which box you pull it out of. There are artists all around with something to say, and some create visual images as deep and wide as you have eyes to see.

inception

Seems like a novel idea, planting seeds in the subconscious to grow and bear fruit in the inner workings of our heads – actually, it’s happening every day, but instead of attacking us in our dreams they use art, and call it advertising. The power of art, the persuasiveness of art, and it’s all focused at getting us to buy something – toothpaste, motorcycles, ED medicines. Does it change behaviors? They sure make a lot of money claiming it does, with charts and graphs.

upside down

Just sitting thinking about people I knew, committed artists living and breathing it, who have gone other directions, given up, settled for less. A couple were landscape painters who loved the countryside, loved their brushes and tubes of paint. One had a studio down the hall – his high school buddies would fall in on Friday night from their different professions to drink beer and engage in old familiar conversations, and the other lived up the stairs. Doing other stuff these days. A ceramicist who had a studio across the hall was making free standing figures, finally clock faces and trivets – she knew all the formulas, understood the chemistry, watched the kiln all night while it slowly built up temperature, and she’s gone, too. I’m not making this up.

Their expectations weren’t that high – no one expected to be famous. Their only ambition, and mine, too, was to pay the rent, to buy the materials, to keep going. Not only did they finally find themselves defeated, the artwork they would have made in their maturity never happened. The people who might have owned their work, lived with their art, and enhanced their lives with it settled for less as well. Artists I know who struggle on have learned how to hang sheetrock, how to repair furniture, how to live with old cars, while non-profit arts groups suck up grant money, pass out favors, take home regular paychecks with medical and retirement. Art is upside down in central Kentucky.

goldfish art

Recently a posting on an art blog reported an exhibition in which goldfish were swimming in blenders and patrons were invited to push the buttons. Sounds like something severely abused children might do, unsupervised. Participation in violence isn’t going to be my favorite arts activity, and seems, in certain respects, to be bald-faced unwholesome. On this blog, in this mode of thinking, we ask that people consider taking money that could be spent on other stuff and buy art with it, instead. The major argument we have to make is about mental health, psychic well-being, individual realization, and much of contemporary art, including pureed live fish, doesn’t seem to help with that. Art has great power in the human mind, and trivializing dark impulses might be counter-productive is all I’m saying.

attention span management

Does the internet give us access to all the information while making it near impossible to think? Well, yeah, so it seems -- people have been doing research. It has to do with dwell time as much as anything. Being smart, it turns out, isn’t so much about brain power as the ability to focus what we’ve got in one place long enough to gain traction. Surfing is screwing it up. The reason print media is losing relevance is because fewer and fewer people can get to the bottom of the page. Is that bad? – probably. When slogans are seen as philosophy and sensationalism is called the news human potential starts way behind, and politics turn atavistic.

Art doesn’t cure it, but it can offer some relief. Art fortifies the attention span by expanding the moment. Instead of a flickering universal search, one teapot sits next to a cup and a lemon ever since you bought it, inherited it, were given it as a gift. On the first day a painting is seldom a match for the most modest of home entertainment centers, but it gains slowly, catching and holding our notice over days, months, and years. Owning interesting art is an investment in attention span management in coming decades, and it’s becoming a better bargain every day.

Starving dogs and public art

Most public art seems little more than quirky decoration, compared with that thing in Chicago in a square of its own, right downtown. It’s worth noting Picasso couldn’t get a visa to visit the US, and Chicago, not NY, always seemed to represent America’s brutality to European artists. Even so, when Chicago accepted it for free they didn’t bother to think it might mean something. Though they won’t admit it, they’ve come to suspect implied criticism of some sort, and have been trying to figure a way to dump it in the lake for years. I wouldn’t pretend to know what it means, either, but it has the hunched shoulders, the bare ribs and splayed pelvis of canine starvation – humanity’s own notification of serious bad times. I’ve actually seen the homeless sheltering underneath to soak up the residual heat in the steel, as if it had been intended. I don’t agree or disagree – I’m just awestruck.

art and sports

Art, like sports, is in the experience of playing the game. The reason color commentators at sporting events are former players and coaches is because we naturally give more credence to those who have had the experience. Without them all the stadiums, sports publications, and all the experts would be out of work. The game of art is simple. The participants are the artists who make it, and the people who look, buy, and own it.

Sports requires athletic ability and special physical attributes – jockeys are small and football players are big. Few of us qualify. Art requires looking and thinking, which should include almost anyone willing to try. Lectures and demonstrations won’t make you a better tennis player, but getting out on the court, maybe being embarrassed at first, will. Nerves and reflexes, muscles and joints will eventually know the game. Try looking at original art, in due time buy something appealing, and hang it in a place where you’ll see it every day. Mysteries will fade, and you’ll begin to know what you like, why you like it, and where to get it. You’ll be in the game.

seeing truth

Jackson Pollock, his paintings are famous and so is he, a seminal figure to be sure. Besides being famous, his paintings are unbelievably expensive, and just in case you wanted to buy one, here’s what you get. Jackson couldn’t do representation, so you’d acquire a revolutionary form of painting, one that profoundly embodies despair, frustration, and futility. Some said at the time that Jackson’s work wasn’t art, but you wouldn’t hear that from me. I see the spontaneous, totally authentic expression of monumental social unease and self-doubt turned aggressive and belligerent through the medium of alcohol. Beyond rendering his inner existential tantrum, the work, itself, has also been gloriously self-destructive, commercial paint solvents eating away at raw canvas, and museums keep his paintings on constant life-support. Pure genius, that.

The question is, if you’re not a terminal alcoholic verging toward suicide, why would you want to own one of Jackson’s paintings, or even spend much time in front of one at a museum? The awful truth about art is, it’s really true – art reveals the artist at whatever level you care to look, and sometimes you find yourself in there, too.

other people's eyes

Some people aren't sure how the world looks around them until they check other faces to make sure everything’s ok. They dress, not to suit their own taste -- whatever that might be, but for other people’s sense of what’s cool this year, this month, this time of day. Some people, it turns out, seems to be most of us, and it isn’t hard to understand. We swim submerged in advertising which constantly promises to make each of us more acceptable to everyone else, and even though we know they lie, some part of us believes them. They know we'd all like to be liked, to belong, to go along with the crowd.

It’s in the purity of art where the dross of any tangible value burns away, and all that’s left is an impossible price for some sanctified master's offhand gesture, sustained and justified only because someone else, somewhere, would pay that much and more. If no such buyer is available, an anonymous phone call to the auction floor enters a bid for them as if they existed. The value of art, according to industry bluebooks, is an accumulation of prior approvals, the consensus of qualified authorities, and, at the top, artificial prices established in bogus auctions. Looking through the eyes of other people has its drawbacks.

For one thing, it’s very hard to see art that way. Actually seeing art requires looking through one’s own eyes, and as a fact that’s part of it, just in itself. Picasso said, “Art is a lie which helps you to see the truth”, and if you can actually see what the artist made, without reference to fame, or price, or what anyone else thinks, you have a chance of seeing everything else that way, too.

change

Google changed last night, again. They didn’t tell me. I just found it this morning doing something different. Change is becoming unpredictable. The youngsters stay on top of it for a while, but they’ll go spinning off, too. Art as a life-saver ring tossed to the person over-board makes sense – more every day. Art, itself, doesn’t change. Fashions come and go, but a worthy piece of art becomes more interesting, more potent with age. Even mediocre work gains in stature simply by being original, as charming frontier portraits down at the courthouse attest. What changes is how we see it, although it doesn’t happen overnight. An original painting owned forty years will become something entirely real, as furnishings and gadgets flicker and change all around it.

art and self expression

With our new success in business, in a profession, what have we got? There’s more money, and that certainly can be convenient. There’s a better car and a bigger house or apartment, but does that satisfy? The opportunity to grow as an individual doesn’t come to everyone, and finding the authentic self, living life to the fullest, is the real reason we’ve been working so hard. There are shortcuts.

Art is not about the self-expression of the artist, one of many myths concerning art. Art, in the home, in the office, is about the self-expression of the owner, the person who pays. If that sounds peculiar, it’s only the world turned right side up. A home with seven or eight pieces of original art, in different styles, from different places and times, helps us to know the person, and helps that person know themselves.

Personal taste – it’s a process

First look at a lot of art, maybe meet an artist or two, and finally buy a piece of art. Sad but true, to make this method work best you have to spend a little too much, whatever that means for you. From that point on, art won’t be meaningless anymore. Anything you notice in an exhibit or gallery, in an office or home, will be compared with what you have already, and from there you find your way. 

empty calories

Fast food is bad for you. Politicians are preparing legislation – no more toys in happy meals in California, fewer sugary drinks in the vending machines. The franchises, themselves, are upgrading their menus. People are beginning to notice what they put in their mouths. They demand more nutrition, less fillers, a more profound food experience. A new health-consciousness blossoms in the community mind, and everything changes. Quality improves. The food is better and people are healthier, presumably happier, and we wonder how we could have poisoned ourselves for so long. Still, these same people, us, will look at anything.

Food is physical, has weight and texture, while visual images are only mental, ephemeral, easily manipulated and supposedly private. Seeing is conditioned by expectation and experience, which means we see what we’ve seen before, and not much else. If our visual diet is rush hour traffic twice a day and crime drama on TV at night, our ability to get much out of leaning over the rail at the grand canyon will be limited. Art is about visual nutrition, vitamins for the senses. The reason to own and live with art is to open the mind to real-life experiences, situations, decisions that have to be made.

Does it work? Probably wouldn’t fit on a scale or graph, but listen to the testimony of ordinary people who have made sacrifices to own art. They’re not willing to trade back because of tangible differences they feel in broader areas of their lives. Digital reality is a long strip mall of empty calories, enough to live on but insubstantial and fleeting – the thumbnail Picasso no different than the thumbnail moon landing. An actual work of art direct from the hand of an artist has more juice in it than all the virtual tours of all the museums in the world, and it’s never consumed – it just gets stronger, more vital, more healing.

paying attention

“I think, therefore I am”, is a famous quote, spare and efficient, positive and weighty. Nevertheless, just existing is becoming an ever more tenuous concept, and just by itself doesn’t count for that much. It would be better to say, “I’m paying attention, therefore I am here.” That’s a concept with traction, the first stone on a path that leads somewhere. As living organisms it’s what we were made to do, but it isn’t always easy. Babies resist sleep, some do, as near as we can tell because they don’t want the lights to go out. We’d pay attention all the time, ourselves, if it wasn’t all so boring.

Our dilemma is fairly simple. We’ve inherited a survival program hard-wired – an antiquated operating system balking at modern applications. It’s primary feature, so-called habituation, dictates that any information which doesn’t lead directly to eating, fornication, or our possible immediate demise is constantly pushed toward the back of the line in our heads. We become civilized when we learn how to work around it, in varying degrees. We sublimate and substitute, but it never goes away. Repetitive anything without tangible reward or punishment on the spot tends to lose focus, colors fade, other thoughts crowd in – it’s hard to pay attention.

Just the same, we like paying attention. It gives us pleasure. Bored people around the planet fill up their leisure flirting with danger, just to “feel alive”. Returnees from the world’s combat zones suffer rueful nostalgia for the smell of anything in the morning like over there. Closer to home, many of us enjoy travel, mainly because seeing something never seen before offers the simple joy of using the equipment we came with. Still, there's only so much we can do. Louder gadgets just seem to amplify the problem, pounding evolution's finely-tuned senses back into our heads, as next morning bleakness attests.

Art is about paying attention. There are more elaborate theories, but this one rules them all. Whatever style or school, whatever time period, art’s main function is to focus and condition the attention of the viewer. As every other possession begins to fade with familiarity, a successful work of art compels attention, becoming more of a presence in a room, in a home, in a lifetime, the longer it’s owned. Beyond that, owning and living with original art also makes the blue of the morning sky more pronounced, the sound of birds more distinct, and makes good food taste better – all that comes with just paying attention.

authenticity

We believe the primary function of art is to be owned and lived with, but that isn’t all we mean by owning art. About the middle of the last century vast amounts of public money began to influence what art was taught in colleges, what art received public recognition, and which artists were granted public support. The inborn imperatives of bureaucratic careerism has led us to an art that is obtuse and distant, a hothouse variety unable to support itself on the local level, and most usually associated with charities and non-profit activities.

We assert that decisions made with out of pocket money, with an intention of long-term ownership, leads to a different art, one that embodies the values and aspirations of our culture more authentically. When the community truly begins to support working artists by buying and owning their work, sophistication and taste, along with the quality of the art produced, can gain ground rapidly together.

reasons to own art

There was a time not long ago when our every possession bore the imprint of its maker, yet these days nothing we own was made by human hands. Everything is extruded or stamped, designed by computer on some other continent, issued in hundreds of thousands, and we get one. Not only is nothing we own really personal, it’s about to be superseded by even newer technologies. A work of art, now more than ever, is the distillation of what’s been left out – it’s the tincture of humanity that makes houses livable, makes work environments more humane, that helps us find our better selves.

In the workplace, original art sets an example that can inspire more conscientious work in the shop and sanction more creative thinking in front offices. Art in reception areas and conference rooms projects a serious maturity that is noticed by customers, vendors, and even the competition. At home, works of art become old friends, reflecting the personality of their owner, while recalling the past more vividly than a drawer full of photos. They move from place to place with their owner, claiming each new dwelling as familiar territory, a personal sanctuary in a world of impermanence and change. Finally, works of art endure, so that even after generations, when everything else has been discarded and replaced, over and over, they will look the same, although the world might find them more valuable.