inherent worth -- obscene prices

I’m so out of it, naive and unschooled, and don’t seem to know a thing about art. On the other hand, maybe I just don’t like rich people, question their values, and find myself mildly nauseated by their motives. It’s a bigotry formed from afar, since I don’t know any, and I’m invisible to them. We’ll never meet, but I do see their art. Art reveals quite a lot, can’t help it really, and the current market as reported in media, six figures and above, is a hideous cesspool of hardcore hustle and financial corruption, tax-fraud and insider manipulation. The ‘high-end’ art market has become little more than a ponzi-scheme soap bubble, apt to collapse in the moment something better comes along. Don’t be alarmed, I’m not trying to offend. I can say whatever I want, and they’ll never hear me. Rich people don’t listen.

These 10 Artists Broke into the Art Market Big Leagues in 2018 in Artsy Magazine, online

They could have all been grad students judging by the work alone, but something about their person -- their ethnic origin and circumstances, their gender and orientation, perhaps their brazen borrowing from other artists or invoking historical events or personages has made their work suddenly astoundingly expensive. ‘The painting was originally sold in 2013 from a summer show at New York’s Greene Naftali Gallery for just $20,000, making for a 2,900% increase in value in just five years,’ is the way they talk about art. No one is going to mention that on the front it’s little more than a totemic signature, easier to bid for, but not much to look at, little more than a threadbare gimmick.

In the end, it isn’t the art that offends, rather it’s the lifestyle it reveals, and it’s a barren, stark testimony. According to their art, the ultra-rich are frivolous and shallow, basing their investments on a hyped-up consensus that doesn’t really exist, and propping up a system of speculation and conjecture having nothing to do with art. Gigantic price tags on mediocre art are more about an appetite for elevated social status and competitive trophy hunting. Look outside, the world is changing, the human race is challenged, and that sort of lavish unsustainability may be going out of fashion soon.

Some say they want a revolution, but instead of street protests and barricades, let’s just change the art instead. What sort of art it will turn out to be will sort itself out, but let’s bring down the price to an attainable level, not cheap but affordable. Between four and low five figures there’s a lot of room for a lot of creativity, and enough for a productive artist to live on. It’s also a price range that puts serious, meaningful art up in middle class houses, art that’s seen everyday and lived with for years, art that elevates the conversation and broadens perception, and an art that expresses the real aspirations and concerns of real people living real lives.

socialism so smart -- sometimes

Socialists are generally well-meaning folks who seem to assume they know what’s best for everyone, and when it comes to public health and transportation, schools and state parks, we can all appreciate their efforts, but the free market is the realm of individual choice and expression, and socialists shouldn’t meddle. They don’t know everything. 

‘Cuba implementing law to restrict artists gradually’ from lex HL, dec 9

The law won’t stop anyone from painting, but it will restrict the work from being shown in public, even in private homes, and intends to fine and imprison artists if they try to sell their work without prior approval by a panel of ‘supervising inspectors.’ This is one terrible situation, an example of a state attempting mind-control by trying to limit and coerce artistic expression. One sentence toward the end of the article reveals a bias shared by ministers of culture everywhere. ‘Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso Grau defended the breadth of artistic expression in Cuba, which he said is “scarcely found where the market is the censor.” ‘

It’s such an odd phrase, ‘where the market is the censor,’ and I’m not sure what it means. It reveals a distrust of common people, a paternalistic disregard for what people attest they want by giving up something, even financially sacrificing, just to own it. Really? So, just who the fuck are you, mister minister of culture? Do you think you know best what should go up on the wall in Cuban homes? Do you imagine you are so wise as to know who the worthy artists are, and which ones should be ignored? Well, in case you ever want to defect, you can find a comfortable roost at the NEA, a gigantic national bureaucracy devoted to just that, choosing art for Americans. They think like you do.

Selling art is an anathema to the culture drones who assess and grade our art, and they cringe at the notion of popularity, especially among the common folk who happen to support their swell activities. While they live on public money, and even distribute it, they’re not keen on public tastes, preferring more progressive, conceptual forms of art, one assumes hoping to avoid public scrutiny, public awareness, and public concern. They should all defect to Cuba.

The market can sort art out without their help. Not only will the market sort it all out, it will make the art better, continuously, as a growing sophistication meets a more rewarded, more dedicated creativity emerging from studios, almost anywhere the rent is cheap. Socialists rise up, help us with health care and infrastructure, but don’t get carried away. Don’t suppose you can choose art for anyone, that’s personal, a matter of individual expression, and within the realm of the ‘free market,‘ and is, in fact, why it’s called ‘free.’

art as antidote -- modern addictions

I’ve wandered far far away from what other people say about art, on a different page in a different book. Well fine, no reason to avoid the obvious. I’ll try to be explicit, make the differences indelible, setting out to homestead in unclaimed territory. I begin with the notion that we are by nature ‘sight' animals, with half of the brain’s mass and a large percentage of its circuitry devoted to deciphering vision, so say TV documentaries, but the necessities of modern life insist we think and write in words, strings of abstract symbols that represent reality. Written information comes in through the eyes, but is routed through much less complex hearing circuits, like spoken words. A practical adaptation no doubt, but it’s going to leave a lot of unused capacity, tiers of vacant rooms in everyone’s mansion, levels of feeling and thinking, attitudes and responses that don’t squeeze down into words.

Along with this notion of non-verbal areas of awareness and communication, I’ll also have to admit that my ideas about art history sound like science fiction. No need for the intervention of aliens, it’s just the artists changing the whole world by altering the way everyone sees it. Painters in the renaissance didn’t ‘discover’ perspective, whatever that means. They absorbed Aristotle’s world view, a logical system of cause and effect, and then they ‘converted’ everyone else who saw their paintings. This new way of seeing, and thinking, granted europeans a huge tactical advantage over the rest of the world for several centuries, trade and warfare, science and art. Even though modern culture is much more diverse, this technique should be as potent today, and by now it’s in the public domain, free to use.

Can't help but be automatically suspicious of governments wanting to be involved with art, at all, let them tend to other matters. In totalitarian regimes attempting mind-control, artists are harassed and worse, while in democracies team players are smothered with love, encouraged with grants and stipends to dive deep in the weeds, national endowments sponsoring art nobody wants, even justifying government participation solely because no one else would pay for it. Well meaning, perhaps, but art produced on a salary is incentivized all wrong, producing instead havens for mediocrity. It’s predictable enough, just the standard government paycheck ‘no one rocks the boat’ complicity setting in.

I’m also not pretending to be smarter than the people I grew up with. Some might be limited regarding art, painting in particular, but at the far end of national culture, in a state that traditionally lags, it’s possible to think average citizens may have been cheated, groomed to consume, with soup cans to represent art, so sad. Here’s where it gets crazy. I think original art calls to them, and when enough local art displayed where the public can see it, they’ll start to respond, that means by buying it. This supposes there’s a thirst for honest direct expression, perhaps the part that’s been missing, and that common folk will start to realize it, just by seeing a heartfelt and unpretentious art. For sure, it’s not coming out of a phone. Thought of this way, art is the antidote for chronic sense overload, medicine for our media addictions, and a distant call to wakeup while we slumber, morning on its way, anyway.

business vs art -- more than money

So why are artists such lousy business people, poor helpless souls who never seem to get anywhere without the help of some more practical person making the deals and doing the books. Humans are quite adaptable, surviving in almost any environment, by any set of rules, but there are limits on how far one individual can stretch. The same person could turn out to be an artist in a studio attempting to express something unique yet universal, or the top-dog at some premier ad agency, beguiling public consciousness for any product or service that pays big bucks, but it’s highly unlikely one person could manage to be both at once. 

The overall overriding ethic of a commercial culture is, ‘gain as much as you can while giving up as little as possible,’ and doing it well, in any legal endeavor, leads to prosperity and elevated community standing. We grew up with this cutthroat formula and take it for granted, and probably won’t sense anything wrong as long as we stay warm and dry, but it isn’t the only way to approach spending time on the planet. Sometimes frustrated damaged people, post-traumatic seeking healing, possibly in some degree autistic attempting connection, or temperamentally just not inclined to participate, and somehow have it backward. They’re called artists.

(Something happened in modern times to obscure this distinction. A business mentality, contained and regulated in its natural terrain, invaded and overran commerce in art, and the auctioneer became the final authority determining value. It’s a red-tide contamination brought on by an unnatural inversion in market forces, too many newly-rich customers and not enough high-quality supply. A big-bang inflation of trademark, its fans call it ‘signature,’ art emerged, featuring velvet rope exclusive and all the media signifiers of glamour and excess. The entire era will be seen as an aberration, and major museums with an example of each modern ‘master’ will de-acquisition to disappointing returns some day, but that’s not part of this discussion.)

The artist, instead of considering wise market strategy, pours out as much as they can, working weekends, late at night, all in the hope of getting something back, anything back, just enough to live on would be ever so nice. It’s somewhere beyond unreasonable to expect such a person, with such naive and wide-eyed trust in fate, to wade out into the surging rapids of commerce and do much more than drown. Darwinism dictates our social order, and we each have a share, but artists shouldn’t face discrimination simply because they think there are things more important than money. What those things might be must vary with each artist, but the fact that they feel this way is apparent from how they devote their energy, in what they do, and it’s always going to be there in the art.

Does it have any real value, this created thing more important to the artist than money? I wouldn’t try to convince you that it did, but the artist must have felt that way, and others when they see it, may begin to realize they do too. If some practical sort needs to reduce this transference to strictly mechanical terms, we are just organic robots, after all, constantly digesting examples all around us, with the sum total determining who we are. Art is an enriched little thumb-drive of experience, longing, and attitude about life. This information, encoded in colors and shapes, is meant to be compatible with your operating system, goes straight in, an automatic update you won’t even be aware of, but everything will work better, quicker, and you'll process more information. Business, in the future, will try to keep up.

some way out of here -- art’s secret door

The culture goes downhill, expectations plummet, fast food becomes the national cuisine. Over a certain age and you begin to notice, literary icon Hemingway who wrote books is replaced by Stan Lee, a drawer of comics, and Miles Davis gives way to Snoop. It’s all a matter of taste, of course, but certain human values may be lost in the carnage of modern entertainment, the short-cut simplification of traditional moral narrative by fresh-faced teens with super-powers. Makes a person wonder, just what the hell is going on?

Looks like commercialism, with a price tag on everything, has been dragging down our common denominator with crime and hateful emotions on the television every night. It’s nothing sinister, just trying to sell more trucks and beer is all. Football players on the field risk life-long debility and even their sanity, while the commentators, ignoring the game, are discussing contracts and options, and rank players against their salaries instead of other players. CEO’s piss away loot on stuff they don’t need just to impress their peers, and the quality of art is supposed to depend on what someone else, with more money than you, is willing to pay for it. No one really cares what’s on the front.

Can’t stop it, can’t slow it down, better stand aside. The embodiment of unbridled amoral enterprise, foreshadowed incidentally by art in the eighties, has risen to head of state, and an unhinged bifurcating hysteria stalks the land. If history works at all, it’s about time to take a new grip on reality, to find something positive and good to cling to, perhaps to look around for a signpost that leads out of this swamp. Here we come to an interesting and open question about art -- is art active or passive? Does art reflect or does it inspire, and is it the result, or the cause, of change? 

Can an evolving national mood channel itself through working artists in their studios, influencing their work in ways even they might not fully understand? Well, yeah, actually, that does seem possible, and the example cited above just confirms it. Painting may seem an archaic form but there’s more of it all the time, on the sides of buildings, even as an excuse to drink wine, and it’s being seen more often in businesses that are open to the public. Oddly enough, it turns out the time-binding duration of original art has become more significant as the world trends toward one-use disposable, digital volatility. Just the artifact of that much concentrated human effort, and the anguished, perhaps only half-successful attempt to get through to you, has a value of its own, and if you also like the picture, it’s a bonus. 

greek perspectives -- modern apps

There was an article in New Yorker recently about greek statues, suggesting they were originally painted bright colors. Minuscule grains of pigment were scrapped from tiny pits in the marble, and analyzed high-tech. It’s become particularly important these days, some people extra sensitive because the marble with the paint worn away is white, white, and just another example, they go on. Seems more likely that for the victorians, monochrome was the most they could tolerate, such sexually obsessed people they could be aroused by the loosening of a shoe, and those statues were way too real already.

Of all ancient artists, it was the greeks who most perfected ‘realism,’ the faithful depiction of muscle, flesh, and form, and sometimes they even went beyond that. Consider the Parthenon, what’s left of it, where all the straight lines are actually imperceptible curves. In a hundred and fifty feet of base there’s a deviancy of about an inch and a quarter, and the columns exhibit only the slightest bulge, so why is that? Seems the greeks were compensating for the distortion inherent in the 35mm lens at the front of our eye, something we never notice because the brain makes adjustments.

Maybe the Parthenon was all painted, figures included, but it’s a range of possibility too big to think about. It’s obvious already they were way smarter than us, we’ll only be leaving junk behind, and how they went about using color in and on their temples is something we’ll never know by buzzing atoms. Let’s just consider it as white, the way we found it. The Parthenon from a distance, atop the acropolis, must have given the impression of platonic perfection, of being impossibly ‘real,’ the entire edifice tuned to correct for the imperfection in our sense of vision. It’s an uncanny level of genius our own civic designers will never approach, and an open and enduring questioning of reality that giant atom smashers will never address.

Did they make great art because they suddenly became smart, or did making and living with art eventually make them all smarter -- it’s difficult to say. With no more technology than prophetic trances, they pretty much maxed-out human potential in a general population, in part sustained by the labor of others, and no one has ever come close since. Some might claim they received help from ancient aliens, but isn’t it nicer to suppose they did it by themselves, by singing, and acting, and making art?

Here the center cannot hold, and everything flies apart, who disputes? Chasing dollars cheapens art as it cheapens life, but as individuals we’re free as we dare to be in our own little patch, since unless we’re famous, no one cares. Greek art belongs to another age, but using art the way they seemed to might come in handy these days, as an influence on how we see and think, and on how we live our lives. It’s just a small part of our reality, really, the art on our wall, but it's something we can control ourselves. Pick the art that leads the direction you want to go, and hang it where you’ll see it everyday. You’ll probably never notice how the world changes.

trusting the internal compass -- ignoring expertise

Rousseau of french revolution fame, asserted that truth was whatever the majority believed, he was very egalitarian, and in a commercial culture such as ours, his common denominator formula goes double, big dollars back him up.

Musical artists are the beasts of  burden for the entertainment industry, creating authentic and heartfelt music that’s fed into the machine, ‘please listen to my demo.’ There rough edges and heartfelt emotion are peeled away, some big name act is found to turn it into platinum, and it’s in your head forever. Something wrong here, I can feel it. The public is being robbed, somehow duller and less attentive year by year, while the artists at the front end are just getting screwed, no kissing. People in the middle are getting rich, stupidly rich. Do they play an instrument, do they sing and dance, do they influence the entire culture, preset the mentality of the majority, and limit what can possibly be attained here? Some of that stuff, yes. They have their foot on the garden hose of free and direct expression, and they’re living off the backup.

Being commercial is, after all, the way we all got here, but capitalism loves bottlenecks, and a drought or a blight is always good for someone. Sly operators go right out and create them, or at least their illusion, and are much respected in the business world, the ‘any industry will do’ mass manipulators. When they insinuate themselves into perfectly legitimate commercial exchange, they limit supply and monopolize distribution through branding and big-budget advertising, value-adding themselves and their expensive tastes to the price the customer pays. Given an item of exchange that’s essentially an intangible, say like art, these talented manipulators of fellow souls have the opportunity to fly. With nothing really going for them but a conjured perception of rarity, and the nodding, smiling affirmation that everyone else wants it too, they navigate in rarified air. In a world where making money is the game, these suave hustlers occupy the top rung.

Fake auctions and outrageous bidding are just the front for a whole industry of pretence and bluff, all based on the false narrative of modern art with its exclusive stable of super-stars. I wouldn’t disparage the work of any artist who accomplishes anything in their own studio, whether anyone else likes it or not, but leaping for a passing bandwagon isn’t really a free ride, doesn’t go anywhere. Philosophically old Jackson Pollock might have a few points, mostly goofy, but looking at his art makes me want to drink, heavily, and I don’t drink. I long ago let go of the notion that believing in his transcendent insight was the price I had to pay to participate, and to any who ask, feels like a new suit of clothes.

By ignoring what isn’t there, it becomes possible to see what is, and this makes looking at art so much easier. An infinite spectrum of art presents itself, as broad and as deep as you need to go, and some of it is available right around where you live. Give up your preconceived, preprogramed boundaries and just look at all of it until, one day, you feel a resonance, it’s only semi-conscious and indirect, like a little magnetic pulse you can’t explain. Hope it’s not too expensive.

gift of prophecy -- the artist’s curse

So why do artists have to die before they receive recognition, art’s oldest cliche, and the first thing people say when they find out you’re an artist. There must be a reason. Artists could be seeing the future, but that seems a bit far-fetched. Artists can’t pay their bills, live in substandard locations, and are exposed to myriad bad habits any of which saps the impulse, so it's unlikely they'd become time-travelers. The secret may be that they’re simply detached, not on the corporate ladder even at the bottom, and this free-floating independence leads to a kind of unblinking objectivity, and being down on the ground they sense the rumbles first. Most of their siblings and classmates went out for as much pie as they could carry home, burrowing into some secure niche in society’s broad fabric, but artists struggle along with menial occupations that don’t pay extra for loyalty, and they feel none. Artist are confronted with and react to things as they are, and it gives them a head start.

There’s a lot of insulation between the well-to-do and things as they are, and for the most part the rich don’t even want to know. In terms of awareness, this level of comfort creates a lag-time, a persistent gap that follows a culture’s real-time meanderings, but always a few steps back, and the general public usually rides with them. As the world turns over, as new mentalities advance past obsolete and faltering systems, people find the artists have been there already, saying something that relates to how they feel, in that moment. It happens over and over -- it’s a cliche, the biggest cliche there is about being an artist. Artists sometimes have to die before they receive recognition because their life-span doesn’t quite cover the lag-time in public awareness, and there it is, the curse of artistic prophecy.

It might even be a more active process, and art might be more than just the reflection of its culture, even if two steps ahead. It’s art that spreads the word, that carries the message mind to mind, a new point of view, an attitude, a way of seeing the world that never occurred to the previous generation, even though they’re still dominating public discourse. From the art that's available now, it’s possible to buy a piece of the future, a zip-line to a changing world view, in your town, in your state, on the whole planet. Textbook art history, sad to say, and its legions of state-supported administrators and sly marketeers, together touting a pantheon of ‘tongue-speaking’ savants, have become just last century's fairy tale with an unhappy ending, good bye.

Go find art that’s just beginning to speak, that makes music in your inner ear and pulls at your attention, even when displayed with other art. Just as the fruit that tastes the best turns out to be the most nutritious, the art you’re apt to like might help you keep your feet, as new realities arise. Prophetic, detached, totally independent artists are everywhere.

art’s efficiency -- heavy value-added ratios

Art is about efficiency most of all, a business model in the extreme. Here I’m not discussing the university mode, instructors to counsel and encourage, studios to socialize in, canvas and paint supplied, nurturing galleries and student exhibitions, all of that topped off with a degree and a teaching position somewhere. Not a bad life, warm and dry, but like many forms of refuge it comes with a price, the peer group assassination of artistic potential. Argue the point if you must, but attend the annual faculty show of festering little worm-gardens, they do so support each other, and then show us the art.

There is another way, and it doesn’t involve trust funds or any form of independent wealth, more of a detriment to artistic development than a college degree. It’s much celebrated in folklore but seldom followed all the way through even though art museums are full of it, the practice of ‘subsistence-level art.’ I can’t say if it’s easier or harder these days, but a couple of generations back Johnny Mercer wrote, ‘anyplace I hang my hat is home,’ about a time when a person with practical skills could travel about, rent a room, find something to eat -- this would be more difficult these days. The old dictum that ‘the independent artist must learn to earn a living with their left hand,’ becomes more of a challenge in a world where two may not be enough.

A fair number start out on their own, some with dreams of skyrocket success, intuitively hacking the visual depravity of the super wealthy at international art fairs, but these gravitate to advertising agencies for a regular paycheck almost immediately. Along the way more drop out -- the day job becomes an occupation, the derision of in-laws and general indifference at family gatherings becomes intolerable, and there’s the lack of money. What’s left after a few years are mostly misfits and loners, fervent neurotic people addicted to creating, who find solace and healing in connecting mind and hand, driven people willing to sacrifice just to do it.

It’s also going to require herculean efficiency, and a diverse set of semi-skills having little to do with art. Can the artist unstop the drain in a cheap rental when the landlord is too busy, reattach a muffler with a wire coat hanger, do their own cooking, shop second-hand, all such as that? Studio rent is always extra, so studio time is precious with every moment devoted to making art. Materials are scrounged, adapted, and used up totally, paint tubes squeezed dry, brushes used until splayed and stiff, and nothing of value is thrown away. Bad personal habits better be few. It’s an austere, even an isolated life, with a slim chance of finding a supportive mate, and even less hope of recognition from the warm and dry. Blind luck becomes the unknown constant in every equation, and compromises can be made with everything except the art.

A romantic backstory can be intriguing, but the point of the exercise is to produce an object that jogs the perspective and stretches the perceptual radius of the people who see it everyday, perhaps each time the visit their physician’s waiting room, maybe every five years in an art museum. How is this accomplished, what value is transferred, and why do people want to look at art at all, are the first questions that come to mind. A certain portion of the answer will remain mysterious, but one thing is plain. Art on the wall is ultimately efficient, transforming materials available to anyone, cheap and ordinary, into an unique image that communicates directly, mind to mind, without words even forming. The successful work of art finds and binds people with similar aspirations and self-concept, and helps them find each other. That’s a pretty big trick for not much invested materially, and a reflection and function of a practiced, even a lived efficiency.

seeing the world -- utilizing art

So I am reading an article in a magazine, Atlantic, that’s telling me we’re all too bigoted to even perceive reality in an objective, rational way, so might as well give up knowing anything -- the impression I got. I’ll concede present conditions lend credence to such an assertion, hermetic encampments lobbing real and imagined facts like grenades back and forth, but turns out they’re just islands floating in a sea of rampant subjectivity. Let’s go back to the idea we’re not likely to know what’s real anyway, because our antennae are tuned to block certain information, and large chunks of reality just aren’t available. So why is that, and can we do anything to fix it, more to the point.

Education helps, retracing the steps of people who faced the same obstacles before we arrived is a head-start, and a broad life-experience tempered with empathy and curiosity can be effective as well, but both require significant investment of time and commitment, and we’ll all so busy. Better it would be to acknowledge there are holes in our version of reality, and narrow channels of habituation that keep us from seeing everything there is.

Believe or not, that’s art’s job, its largest responsibility. From the renaissance forward, artists have been opening eyes, inventing and suggesting new ways of seeing. Each day people from around the planet cue up in front of Amsterdam’s Van Gogh museum to spend a couple of hours looking directly at his work. They emerge to a parking lot full of chirping birds, wind on their face, and the sounds of passing traffic in their ears, everything that was there before, unnoticed. How long does it last, a couple of hours, the rest of a lifetime, one thing sure, each person feels braver and more independent after seeing his example, more ready to see and accept what actually is.
 
How much can you see of world around you, and in what detail? It’s a question no one is prepared to answer, since how would anyone know? Everyone else might see the world the same way you do, but while watching the evening news it becomes pretty clear they don’t. Artists make suggestions, offer advice, and give examples of instances of time in which everything is accounted for. The photograph is recorded all at once, but in a painting every detail required attention and acknowledgement, and the craft to make it visible. In this way, the painting becomes a lens for the perception, elevating a chosen moment to full awareness, and like a laser, aligning all levels of thought and meaning into a picture of something. Some people find sensual pleasure simply in looking at art, lighting up parallel circuits, mixing memory and imagination.

Does it carry over into the everyday, and what’s the advantage? More thoughtful and more humane probably wouldn’t hurt any of us, and seeing more detail, becoming more aware of nuance and atmosphere can help to discern the truth from all the flotsam on social media, in the news, perhaps even in personal relationships. The individual or family who lives with a broad array of art is likely to be more open-minded, more ready to accept and ‘see‘ a greater portion of reality, and more equipped to appreciate each moment. Art is the renewer of a more open perception, lighting up thoughts and feelings in rooms seldom visited, an enhancer, and in the end a practical thing.  

art love -- not complicated

So, let’s talk about love, it’s a sacred thing, scary and complex, but maybe not so difficult to understand in a mechanical sense. In the overall field of our attention, love adds the element of attachment, a special sensitivity to a certain stream of information. Love makes the other person more noticeable in a crowd, easier to understand in a restaurant, and more desirable than anyone else in the room, such as that. Farmers love their land, the lay of the creek, the smell of the barn, just as almost anyone else who becomes intimately familiar with anything eventually falls in love -- it’s in the wiring, we’re born that way.

Mostly love is fleeting, and for a moment even pickup trucks can beguile, until the new model comes along. If only some way could be found to capture and hold this elusive quality, to burnish it and make it stronger. Consider the painting you bought in a pawn shop, off the wall in a restaurant, strolling the annual art fair, have you looked at it recently? This isn’t all on you, it’s the art’s job to make you notice. It has an advantage over whatever else you have on your wall just by being unique, direct from a human hand. If it’s thoughtful and deep enough, it will show you something a little different each time you look, and sooner or later, could take years, you’ll begin to experience that little burst of joyful recognition juice in your hippocampus each time you come across some detail you’d forgotten, sure feels like love.

The affection that people feel for art ‘that’s been in the family’ for years, perhaps bought to celebrate a new job or a new city long ago, has nothing to do with market value, the fame or obscurity of the painter, and is caused instead by a kind of enduring entanglement, they’ve fallen in love in a classic sense. It could be said that art is, in fact, the distillation of the humanity somehow lost in the extruded, vacuum-formed, and 3-D printed environment we inhabit day-to-day, comes in a form both portable and companionable, and as such is legitimately worthy of affection.

In this upside down version, the most important person in all of art is the citizen who buys and hangs original art in their own home, an investment made in their own future and quality of life, and an invisible constituency quite forgotten in most narratives. In their attempt to portray the world as seen, artists reveal much both personal and universal, and when the viewer recognizes their own experience, thoughts and feelings, in a work of art, it means they’ve found a new friend. Taking this new friend home means the artist can buy more paint, pay more rent, and get better. Over time, seen and lived with everyday, the painting bought becomes like family, a witness that can remind its owner years later of all the things it’s seen, more than a friend.

planetary deviations -- personal perspectives

Billionaire art collectors are a sad lot really, traversing the planet in search of ways to dispose of the loot. It’s their red wagon, their moral dilemma, their cross to bare and don’t we all sympathize? That extra large Rothko in the summer place is an impressive painting, takes up the entire wall, but mostly it just says, ‘I’m a Rothko and I cost an enormous amount of money.’ It can’t say much more than that, especially after having seen many, many just like it. If we’re being serious, no modern painting could really be worth millions of dollars, and no one should have that kind of money anyway, bad for the planet.

So what happens when polarity shifts, when gravitational fields realign and the planet’s axis tilts to a new angle? Suddenly everything looks different, and a value overlooked, really there all along, begins to become visible. It’s happening now. The body politic is undergoing a difficult and dangerous molting, and a new point of view will see things differently. Visual art can both express and even aid in this transition. All those high-end art auctions for the replicating relics of fame and notoriety will fall out of fashion, about the same time being ostentatiously wealthy becomes a social liability, in a more equitable world order. Visual art instead will provide a vehicle for the assertion of personal autonomy, and become a forum as well as for establishing community values and awareness.

Visual art has unique qualities not shared with other art forms. In this new technology musicians suffer from open access, self-published fan-fiction inundates literature, and on social media the photo-shopped president appears to be rescuing people in a rowboat. The only thing that can’t be faked or digitally simulated is a painting, each totally unique and irreplaceable, certifiably organic and made by a human. Will this simple fact imbue original art with intrinsic value, something desirable and worthy of ownership, and will the public, having seen examples of area produced art in alternative spaces, restaurants and salons, want to own some? Increasingly, yes.

dedicated one percent -- paying back

The council has just voted -- ‘The resolution would set aside 1 percent of any building project of more than $10 million to pay for public art to accompany that project. Also, 1 percent of any borrowing for other projects under $10 million would go into a separate pool of money for public art projects.’ Sounds swell on paper, a way to humanize the visual anonymity of glass-curtain exteriors, the brutal efficiency of pavement and traffic management, but what sort of art will it be?

Some weekday afternoon a group of people with the civic weight to make big decisions but the free time to drink coffee around a conference table are going to be given a big pot of money to buy art with. On the table will be a pile of proposals, somehow within shouting distance of their previously published budget, imagine that. The piece that looks most impressive, most provocative, without actually saying anything that could offend anyone, will come out on top, mission accomplished. The people involved aren’t self-appointed curators of community sensibilities, oh no, they’re not to blame. The same responsibility on anyone else's shoulders would most likely come out the same. It’s the backwards process -- collecting public money to reach a certain amount, searching out a likely location, and then issuing a call for proposals for future art to be constructed for this one particular spot. The long-term result will be cities festooned with outdoor monopoly tokens, site-specific curiosities, welded, molded, bent, and painted. They’ve created a whole new industry. 

This new entity in the art market engenders its own form of art, and breeds its own brand of 3-D creatives willing to weld, pound, and pour to express the progressive civic pride of just about anywhere. It’s a constant competition, cranial popping proposals shipped in all directions, all in the hope of catching the eye of some flyover burg with public loot to spend on art. Is it a step in the right direction? Probably. Public money spent to start the conversation, to engage the critical mechanism in the minds of common citizens, will pay back immensely when individuals begin to internalize the vocabulary of visual thought, and want to see, compare, and live with art of their own.

art’s part -- form’s function

Just don’t care if it’s realism or abstraction, historical religious or progresso appropriative. Here we assert it’s all one thing. Now your professional art expert slices art up into myriad distinct categories, periods and schools, and talks about each as though it was separate and unique, yet somehow interconnected and derived. They present art as a long cascade of evolving inspirations, a litany of artist heroes and their cultural explorations, and to stay in business the center of this roiling consensus becomes their professional compass. They have their point of view.

Step outside the categories and consider the whole pie, mesopotamia on back, to fifty seventh avenue uptown, all of flat art, all at once. We’re not considering message, just the ability of a created image on a flat surface that penetrates the shell of fuzzy, mind-blanking everyday expectations that surrounds each human, no matter who or where they are. What visual element or mysterious color resonance grabs the attention and focuses the mind, these days even more of a challenge because the background noise has begun to overflow the pot, bleeping and buzzing in pocket and purse.

A high price is paid for art in advertising, a usage that shills for whatever cause or product it represents, but in a pure form, art only represents itself. Just art can be an uncomfortable territory, and many the commercial artist who promised themselves independence one day, feels naked and afraid without a client to shoulder the moral freight along with writing the check. The white blank field of an empty canvas, so like the undulating walls of a cave, presents a window of communication between all humans, everywhere, one that transcends millennia, all languages and cultures, becoming history’s bulletin board of cultural attainment. It can be, and probably should be intimidating.

These days every shiny toy turns ordinary pretty darn quick, and yet the successful work of art burns through, and just keeps getting better. It overcomes habituation, becoming a beacon of what’s real in a dreamy landscape of movie fantasy, superfluous convenience, and an accelerating avalanche of obsolescence. What paintings do you remember? When in a museum, what caught your eye? If you saw that image every day, would it fade into the wall or stay fresh, more familiar and present through the years? If you only saw it visiting the museum, say, every five years, would it begin to seem like an old friend after the second or third time? That quality, that magnetic ability to draw and align your perceptual field, totally non-tech and arising only from an arrangement of color on a flat panel, turns out to be a fair accomplishment, really, and if the artist pulls it off, it doesn’t matter what the form is.

Andy’s viral influence -- getting well

Regular readers of ‘owning art’ may have noted an animosity toward Andy Warhol that seems downright obsessional, and perhaps I should explain. It’s possible I’ve been over familiar using his rather unwholesome visage as shorthand for a process, an infection really, with Andy serving as its main vector, its figurehead. It’s true Andy gave the impression that direct sunlight would turn him even more translucent, like a newt-boy hybrid in transition, and central-casting perfect for the part. It would seem to follow that a celebrity ghoul feasts on dead celebrities, Marilyn and Elvis come to mind, and a metro vampire drains the vitality from living cultural institutions to animate their lavishly deviant lifestyle, but he isn’t my concern and I find his renowned amorality artistically irrelevant. It was his introduction of a virus into the already fevered and deranged body of visual art that cranks my ire.

virus --  1.  an infective agent .......... able to multiply only within the living cells of a host. "a virus infection" -- a harmful or corrupting influence."the virus of cruelty that is latent in all human beings"     2.  a piece of code that is capable of copying itself and typically has a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data.

Take your pick, either will do. Viruses are dead fragments of living cells capable of replicating only within a living host, and then it’s curtains, all downhill, because once they’re in they replicate like crazy. So what is a soup can label, an interesting and conceptually challenging visual image, or a forgotten fragment of childhood memory buried so deep that seeing it again intimates something innately familiar and nostalgically appealing, don’t know why? Are his myriad portraits of Marilyn more revealing than the cover of a movie magazine from the fifties, no, not a chance, because it’s the same photograph. That Andy made a lot of money is way beside the point, it’s the corrosive effect his wholesale piracy had on art -- ‘a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data,’ that needs fixing now.

At some point the fever subsides, and the patient recovers, the outlook different. We recommend simple pictures of things, something from an art fair or a studio tour, not too expensive just as a starter. Slowly, as confidence returns, the average citizen may move up to art that costs more but will seem worth the price, because they want to own and live with it, on the mend with a healthy direct interest in visual art, more aware and more engaged than before.

art wars -- painting the resistance

Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones when cornered by divorce lawyers in courts of law cop to just being entertainers, testifying that what they say isn’t meant to be factual, just incendiary. Their hateful, stupid diatribes are only for the amusement of their rabid, socially degenerate audiences, and the first amendment protects them from liable liability. So just what the hell is going on?

So what if art turned out to be more powerful than nuclear weapons? A heavy nuclear exchange in SE Asia would be terminal for us all, but there might be some ways we just wouldn’t want to live, like drones in an ant colony, such as that. Whatever our fate, it isn’t about guns, not any more. It’s about art. The Kremlin has special openings for theater majors, video production people, and creative writers willing to sabotage democracy for a few bucks, a better car and nicer apartment. The russians want mock trials, staged 'spontaneous' demonstrations complete with counter protestors, and provocateurs willing to caricature any point of view and make it preposterous. This is not technology, this not weaponry, this is not economic leverage, just a little play-acting, a bit of thought paralyzing poetry, the mind control of consciously weaponized art.

Warhol is the great architect, the genius who invented the system. He screwed the culture for money and fame, demeaning our character, and sabotaging our notions of integrity and accomplishment. After all, ‘in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes,’ his most famous quote, makes actually striving for any achievement, all the hard work and dedication, seem pretty pointless. Well, everyone knows the russians love art. They’re using Andy’s techniques, fragments of public discourse whipped into a toxic froth of regressing familiarity that dissolves and diminishes our sense of self, and it’s not for the money, but just to watch us crumble as a nation, as an idea, out to eliminate the notion of personal freedom apart from state control.

We’ve had artists dedicated to making life better for all of us, inspirational and invested in human freedom, Arthur Miller, John Coltrane, Ed Hopper, all demonstrating discipline and self-sacrifice, striving always for maximum integrity and excellence, and providing an example of what a fully human existence can attain. The hour is late, but new art can sprout green from the rudderless fermenting pile called ‘contemporary,’ incestuous and inbred. All over, all at once, common folk need to cleanse their eyes, to see what’s actually there in front of them, and that means looking at and learning from art. Art from the neighborhood is a good place to begin. Seek truth.

the war of art -- fake news

How can you identify ‘fake news?’ On facebook one side posts a picture of two beefy idiots wearing ‘better russian than democrat’ tee shirts at a Trump rally, while the other side circulates a phony interview in which a democratic socialist agrees to abolishing private property. Both are bogus, phony and photoshopped, just cheap manipulations and not worthy of consideration by either side, but how does the busy citizen discern what’s real ‘when anything goes?’

Art was there first, of course, back in the eighties when honesty, integrity, dedication and accomplishment, all that stuff was declared obsolete, over and done with. A maniacally clever, brilliantly cynical artist, having ascended through the cutthroat milieu of advertising, understood and knew how to exploit the fundamental pressure points in the consumeristic mind. He managed to contrive a degenerative feedback loop by repackaging the culture’s most familiar and ingrained images, producing a screeching media art frenzy. This cheap trick, and it was such a cheap trick, eventually lost potency, petered out, leaving in its wake the desolation of conceptual art, tinsel and chaff from an abandoned carnival.

The Russians make movies, hold mock trials and stage fake events, plant absurd accusations and violate every expectation of honesty and integrity they can find. Using visual elements from old movies, exploiting incendiary stereotypes and reinforcing old bigotries, gosh, I wonder where they learned it all. Andy’s first great triumph and his most emblematic work of art, the complete set of Campbell’s soup can labels, reproduced and amplified the one most common visual image bored into the consciousness of every north american since the time they first rode in a shopping cart. It became a viral infection of the institution of art, itself, featuring high fever, followed by lowered expectations, and eventual listlessness and apathy.

We find ourselves being driven apart and penned in separate enclosures as though these Russians were the sheep dogs and we were the sheep. Well it’s art they’re using, not guns, and if we don’t snap out of it pretty quick baby blue will be all over. What’s the answer? Well, if art got us into this fix, maybe art can get us out. All over, all at once, let’s begin to look for our own self-respect in art, and screenprinted soup cans, no matter how astronomical the price tag, may not be the best place to start. Consider a real painting by a real person, someone who thought enough of themselves to paint it, and begin a day-to-day conversation with them. Between the two of you, back and forth, decide what’s real and what isn’t.

philosophy vs art history -- lost in thought

My university education prior to military service centered around philosophy, and when I returned with priorities rearranged, I instead sought the independence of studio life, and committed to a visual mode of expression. Philosophy is a verbal discipline which relies on logic, and substantiates its claims through reasoned argument. Philosophers may not agree, but they can carry on a conversation because rules apply, and their words have meaning. Writing about art is an impersonation of scholarly discourse, sounds like but isn’t, mostly just name dropping and convoluted references to more famous and favored artists, borrowed big words, a lot of artful puff and bluff, unreadable.

Art history has canonized the moment visual art broke free from depicting the visual world we share, stepping off into total abstraction just about a hundred years ago, calling it a great liberation and the birth of modern art. The philosopher, and maybe the social psychologist, might interpret this monumental breakthrough in slightly different terms, psychic alienation comes to mind. Maybe it’s time to take the early abstractionists at face value, deKooning, Pollack, and all their alcohol-reeking compatriots, blind drunk, waking up in filthy alleys and staggering home to drip and smear their anguish, their disappointment, their futile impotent rage, and that’s supposed to be at the least pleasant to look at? Taking their art seriously would be to risk suicides in museum parking lots, but scholars call their work ecstatic and celebratory -- how would that even be possible?

The painter, once they’ve acquired a rudimentary command of their medium, chooses what to paint, and that’s a first level of expression, a first hint of insight. Beginners usually don’t confront reality directly, but instead tend to copy types of paintings they’ve seen before, bucolic landscapes and snowy peaks, maybe portraits of celebrities never met, an art that’s secondhand to begin with. As a painter gets better, elements of their personality emerge and can be seen and identified in their work. This is called ‘authenticity’ and is neither conscious or contrived, and by this time the artist is probably presenting the actual world in unconventional ways, constructing an image that perpetually registers as a surprise to anyone’s casual glance. Now that’s a painting.

My philosophy side doesn’t care about big art’s shameless media shills, finds contemporary art humorlessly self-involved, and when placed in big museums an awful waste of real estate, but mostly I just don’t care, period. My artist side knows there are little artists’ enclaves all around in which artists are making each other better, competing and learning and trying new things. Egos are held in check by a general consensus on fair pricing, and in a few studios conventional visual limits are being pulled and stretched. Before too long these cells will merge, and you’ll find yourself living in a community aware of and concerned with art, and maybe you’ll join in. Don’t read about art, buy something and take it home.

inventing wealth -- finding value

Art dealer claims contents of storage locker he bought for $15,000 includes six Willem de Koonings............  Artsy Magazine, online
 
Will the art world believe anything? Six ‘unsigned’ deKoonings miraculously found in a locker of junk by gallery owner David Killen, what kind of art dealer buys unclaimed storage lockers? These works were ‘authenticated’ by some guy claims to have been a studio assistant to the deKoonings, probably the real painter. “In my opinion, they are [by de Kooning],” he told the Post. “There’s no doubt about it.” Guess that’s good enough, all anyone’s going to get. The article goes on, ‘the works may result in a major return on Killen’s $15,000 investment—the current auction record for a de Kooning....... $66.3 million. Killen plans to unveil the works Tuesday night at his West 25th Street gallery and auction them off starting in the fall.

Willem de Kooning, Untitled XXV, 1977, oil on canvas. At auction: $66.3 million.

This is so much better than stealing. The ‘victims’ write the checks themselves, figuring to get well when they donate the absolutely untraceable gestural exuberance to some colluding municipal museum for a big tax write-off, so guess who the real victims are. Politicians and business people try to hide their bribery and corruption, but this brazen conjuring thrives on publicity and seeks it out. Millions of dollars will change hands and no one will complain, all of them in on it you see, because in the end it’s the little people who pay. It stinks. Such a shame to burden art with excessive wealth’s shenanigans, shifting their burden down with the tax code. This auction house art business is so unsavory and its product so visually dissociated, that many serious, thoughtful, busy people are simply unmoved, and move on.

On the other hand, you may not have the power to change it all, but you could help it along in your hometown, while helping yourself as well. There’s an artist not that far away doing these charming quiet landscapes, been around a while and getting better. You ought to buy one, take it home and hang it where you’ll see it everyday. You can compare it to the one the neighbor bought, something to talk about besides some local team's season. Leave those phony auction records to the high rollers, profiling their loot for anyone who cares to look. Chances are you’d be happier with the art of someone who’s lived a life something like your own, finding their place in the same economy, driving the same streets, seeing the same sights, and by their talent and dedication nailing down a time, a place, a mood, or a memory all your own in a worthy vessel, a work of art that lasts a lifetime.