big-eyed art -- so helpless and appealing

I haven’t seen the movie, just the trailers and read some reviews, and since I’m not usually a fan of the director I doubt I’ll get there. I know about ‘Big Eyes’ because I was once sitting on a stool wondering why these pictures of odd alien children were hanging in this bar. I understood it was a west-coast fad flowing eastward, but the peculiar side-show appeal of the images was somehow too creepy to analyze. Mammals grow into their eyes which are pretty much the right size to start with. This leaves human babies and the babies of all our furry friends with big eyes at birth. This big eye association is wired in, and sympathy, nurturing, and the desire to protect all come awake when eyes are too large for the head, even though these inborn inclinations rarely make it to a conscious level. 

So what would happen to our built-in ‘baby-sensing circuits’ if someone made a painting of a waif with really big, absolutely enormous eyes? Guess they’d scream with all their subliminal might, and folks everywhere would vaguely register some sort of emotional tug, although not consciously of course. As a hook for art this is in itself a cheap trick, but there’s darker implication. This isn’t a pleasant world for the orphans in city slums, wearing ragged little tops and looking up ‘so helpless and appealing.’ This ‘big eyes’ business isn’t just kitsch sentimental, it’s poignantly unwholesome, but it isn’t Walter’s fault he got famous. Not really.

The movie, as I understand it, is primarily about aggressive salesmanship, personal betrayal, and their frequent association, who knew, but along the way there’s also some mighty snooty disrespect for any culture which would support such tripe. So who here today, I wonder, can afford to feel superior watching “Big Eyes”? Walter Keane, that trailblazing precursor to the whole ‘Warholian Era,’ arose from the primal ooze of breezy california abstraction, as barren and unyielding as the freeways. Even if it was repetitious and mindless, at least it was a picture of something. 

The folly of fashion inevitably becomes visible just a few years down the line, but the next big thing can seem so beguiling at the time. The real issue for our purposes here has to do with the sheep-like mentality of a public that can be herded and penned by the whistles and clicks of cheap hustlers, past and present. Can anyone say 'well that was the way it was then, but it’s wonderfully different now?' The actual answer to Walter Keane and his goofy art would have been, then as now, to buy something else.

artist as genius -- it’s just a gift is all

I’ve never been comfortable with the notion of artist as genius. There have been a few over a long span of time, but auditioning for the part takes an audacity makes me uncomfortable. Not intending to brag but I’ve been out there, working for wages, unclogging drains in rentals, using the once plentiful wire coat hanger under the car. Humility is the password out in the world of physical work and hostile landlords, and it turns out a great deal of the world’s population use it regularly as a badge of recognition. 

When Fidel came to the UN and stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria, he and his compadres went down to the market and brought back live chickens to grill on their balcony. They refused that glorious room service, so they said. This 'performance piece' was entirely opaque to his rich hosts, but brilliantly and eloquently spoke to poor people, all over everywhere. In the more rarified world of avant-garde art, there was an italian artist who had his own excrement canned and labeled as such, and the British Museum paid six hundred thousand pounds for one a few years back. Not only a titanic sendup of elitist gullibility and inbred institutional complicity, numbered individuals from the edition have been known to explode spontaneously adding a potentially kinetic element.

I’m not talking about the humility of shuffling feet and downcast eyes. I’m suggesting that spilling wet sloppy paint on canvas and using a squeegee is fair enough, but then pretending that this sad accident of an offhand afternoon is worth two decades of a pretty good income is sorta grossly ego-maniacal insane. Did I say that out loud? I don’t know where you get off with that. It takes a bloody genius to be able turn out one masterpiece after another, each like the last, or hiring a crew somewhere else to do it. In the world of big-time brand-name art this happens all the time -- often in the open. Say what you will about the corn-syrup sensibilities of Thomas Kincade fans, what about the people who like that stuff? Are they as shallow and vacuous as the art they buy, is that possible?

Contrary to what the media has to report that isn’t all there is to art. In fact, it’s fairly irrelevant. Art is the voice of connection with other minds and you get to choose your channel, just the cool kids at the moment or the mass of human-kind, backward and forward in time like stuff in the museum, and anyone can listen in. Painting as a secular and remarkably plastic medium for direct communication transcending languages goes back six or seven centuries, and the actual examples endure -- it’s an old conversation. To take part, artists don’t need to be geniuses, just to do their best with what they have. We’ve all been there.

take the A train -- the quickest way

Jazz, once a coursing tumbling mountain river full of energy and creative purpose, has spread out into the plain of general acceptance to become ‘jazz-like’ and ‘jazz-influenced.’ The genuine product can still be found on the radio in two hour segments deep in the weekend and jazz traditionalists workshop with students to try to keep it alive, but the notion of the individual statement within a known musical form is becoming archival.

Duke Ellington introduced a body of work which he performed at every concert, and his entire book became recognized as standards, playing on the radio until everyone knew each by heart. This universal familiarity became a starting point for creation of art, the place from which both artist and listener could leave together. Within the framework of these standards, Duke himself, and all other jazz musicians thereafter, modulated and bent, embellished and extended so that their individual contribution became apparent and even personally identifiable. “Your sound is like your sweat,” so said Miles.

To participate required an advanced level of musicianship on the part of the players, not only adept at fundamentals, but able to spontaneously compose their own statements revealing character and wit, all the while maintaining adherence to the original composition. There were requirements of listeners as well, and thorough saturation with those ten or twelve songs, humming through the workday, was the first. The second was enough attention to register when their expectations were being teased and tested, seen in a mirror, driven down side streets, with elements of rage, arousal, pain and conviction all riding along on popular songs practiced by every beginner. Jazz is a thoughtful deep music full of jokes and intimacies, and it’s somewhere on the radio if you can find it.

Visual art doesn’t need the radio since our eyes register the world around us all the time. Even so, the actual world has in recent years been discredited as a source for painting -- ‘copying nature’ it’s been called. With jazz fading as a cultural influence, perhaps some other form of art, perhaps some inclusive style of painting will convey what our language is too dumb to talk about. As in jazz, representational art empowers the viewer to compare new artwork with the cross-indexed library of their own direct experience and come to their own conclusions about the artist’s level of accomplishment, and beyond that the thoughtfulness of their interpretation. Within that conversation they may come to understand the artist and to recognize themselves. Even the less advantaged, poorly educated but observant citizen can do this.

what’s good -- the side by side test

How do we know anything about anything? A team of scientists conclude the human mind‘s basic function is comparison and that’s how we think, how we see the world, how we navigate our lives. Most folks know pretty quickly what’s the best quality for the most reasonable price but they’ll need at least two examples. We tumble through life picking up points of reference -- an exceptional sunset, the correctly fried egg, an epic performance, and whatever comes after rates on that scale. It seems almost mechanical and some say it is. 

For art the question about 'how good' is usually avoided altogether these days, and other ancillary facts and statistics are cited, usually a long list of past affirmations. Consensus replaces looking altogether. The new director of the local university’s art museum landed an artist who’s shown previously at ‘MoMA’ and the ‘Hirshhorn’, “and so deserves a giant show” without mentioning medium, content, or making any reference to the art at all. It’s just not relevant in the scheme of things. Straight up comparison, that most fundamental process for determining quality, has been largely ignored in favor of press clippings and proclamations.

Read once about a nervous Picasso before a national exhibit one on one with another famous spanish painter, Goya. Different styles from different eras, it didn’t matter -- Picasso was afraid of being blown off the wall. He reportedly came out of the exhibit much relieved because he thought his stuff held up. For Picasso, comparison side by side was the ultimate test of any art, and it doesn’t take a scholar to know the difference. Average people making day to day comparisons will eventually come to support the best BBQ in the district, are going to be drawn toward the most well designed automobile, and will be able to tell which piece of art is more compelling when looking at two pieces side by side. It’s all based on the way we think, what we know, and how we make decisions.

Ideally an art museum in the area would provide a context for what contemporary artists are doing, exhibiting objects that have endured unchanged for centuries, each recording the prevailing mentality of their age. Although representing many different forms, together they provide a standard of accomplishment for gaging the work of artists living in the surrounding area. Big cities do it best. Here, if we were lucky, a crew of profit-driven capitalists would import a lot of contemporary art just to sell hotel rooms, and anyone curious could go look. In the end ‘it’s all the same’ -- that’s what Picasso said. Just looking at art engages the machinery and leads down the path to liking some art more than other art.

one and a quarter seconds per -- museum marathons

Listening to a ‘great conversation’ on the public tv station between the urbane critic from the times and a newly-retired museum director renowned for spending copious amounts of someone else’s money acquiring trophy art for ever more prestigious institutions, a brilliant career. Some of the stuff they said I liked and any serious friend of Velasquez can’t be all bad, but museums like full parking lots and the bored attendance counters at the front desk and returns from the gift shop may not be the best judges of art for posterity.

The museum guy was lamenting the fact that the average museum goer’s average time in front of any particular work of art timed out at about one and a quarter seconds, really not enough time to comprehend what’s there. Well, there’s just an awful lot to see all accompanied by little tags of learned explanation, and it might be too much information for just one afternoon. The former director with his weeks, months, and years wandering the world’s major museums has had time to gaze at many illustrious works of art and so can speak with authority, but his day job is acquisition, funding, and revving up attendance.

Museums hoard all the great art available and ambitious directors take a chair in an ongoing game of monopoly -- rolling the dice, upping the ante, betting real money. They amass a big pile of really good art in big buildings on expensive real estate and they justify it all with projected attendance figures in great footstep-echoing halls. Their actual function is to serve as a reference library displaying what’s been achieved elsewhere, and raising the bar for the population in the surrounding vicinity, if the sports besotted six-packs would just show up. Well, with a bit of sympathy for the common man, everything all at once might not be the best way to experience art.

Paintings take time and physical effort to produce and they don’t give back much in one and quarter seconds. Try sitting on a park bench and see how long it takes to begin to hear the birds, to notice children playing, to consider the light and shadows under the trees. It doesn’t all enter consciousness right away. In fact, unless you’re distracted staring at your devise, there’s more to be aware of fifteen minutes in than when you first sit down. Paintings also require looking. Every feature was consciously put there to contribute to the final image, and new information, even a kind of unspoken understanding, will float to the surface if you can manage to look for more than a moment.

An easier approach than making the museum guards twitch while you sway on your feet trying to absorb some great work of art all at once, would be to buy something worthy and live with it day to day. Doesn’t have to be reproduced in books and worth millions. It just has to be the product of the commitment and practice it takes to become an artist, and engaging enough to you in the long term to spend money in the moment. Time at the museum might help you make such a choice. Instead of squinting for a second and a quarter at masterpiece after masterpiece pushed along by blockbuster crowds or simply hurrying to take in as much as possible in one afternoon, just live with four or five significant works of art, perhaps purchased over decades, for the rest of your life.

art -- capitalism’s high-wire act

In capitalism a raw material is extracted far away, shipped, refined, and extruded into all the stuff around. It’s complicated bringing a product to market and involves the efforts and livelihoods of many people in many places. The people who make the real money never lift a brick, far away, high up in the sky -- just the way it works.

Here is a person for whatever reason attempting to tame the enormously complex economic system directly, to remain independent while playing by the rules. They are going to try to take raw material, in this case canvas and paint cheap and available to anyone, and transform them into a product of so much value they can sell it and make a living. Wouldn’t that be a fine thing to pull off?

It’s both an amazingly egotistical and yet humble approach to living here, both a ‘calling’ and a sly attempt to bypass the fine print in the social contract. It’s egotistical obviously because someone thinks their talent and commitment could provide them with roof and sustenance, and modest because it’s a trade that traditionally involves scraping by doing other stuff.

All the same questions apply bringing any product to market -- will it be mostly sizzle, will it be substance? Quality is a conversation between the artist and the prospective owner, and the more knowledgable the buyer the nicer the chat. Exposed to the spectrum of art from around here a community could find its own true level of sophistication and taste, develop its own artists, and perhaps find its own regional voice. It's a transformation which builds slowly and yet seems sudden when it happens. Long experience shows the most authentic, accomplished, interesting art is found when people make their own choices, buy for their own reasons, and spend their own money -- capitalism’s better self and democracy’s genius.

solid state art -- no wires, no batteries

What does a work of art do? We’ve gotten over the notion that art is a pointless luxury purchased with what’s left over after closets are full of furs and seven car garages stuffed with exotic iron, but what is its function day to day? Oh, the smart set may drop a couple of hundred thou on some smear any talented grad student could reproduce, and probably did, but such trade seems frivolous and silly to the average citizen. Art as an investment seems cavalier even to those who value risk, and without any control, really, regarding authenticity it makes no sense at all. 

As decoration all that stuff in frames that ‘looks like art’ from factory outlets claiming to represent starving artists has that look about it, and for good reason. At the other end are sweat-shop conditions for people who, as a fact, are paid rather poorly. Even high quality reproductions of great works of art don’t lie very well, and aren’t likely to draw attention away from tasteful drapes and carpeting. Original art, on the other hand, exerts an influence over the room it’s in.

Does it compete with sixty inches of hyper-intense, slo-mo replay, guns a poppin’, burgers and pickups -- not much does including sunsets and waterfalls, but sometimes it’s off and art on the wall is a constant presence, drawing our attention and influencing how we see. With no wires or external source of energy art offers the example of directed focus and applied attention, and that’s not without value in a land of digitalized mass-produced everything. As a fact it’s this 3-D printed, special effects enhanced, hand-held ‘looking-glass’ reality we’ve wandered into that makes original art so potent. 

Art is a bit of protein in the high-fat, artificially sweetened comfort diet of modern living, and it’s going to taste pretty good even with a mediocre cook. Excellent art, you get to choose, will help stave off the soft bones and ego-depletion that being caught in traffic twice a day, endless tail-chasing conferences, and office pecking orders can bring on. This quality of visual art, this rejuvenation of the senses and grounding for the personality haven’t been emphasized much because salesmen are generally uncomfortable with those issues. Salesmen would rather refer to bluebook listings and cite reputation, prices at auction, and maybe offer you a deal because you got this special appreciation -- such as that.

Art is a machine, a technology from a different era perhaps, but one that still operates, still influences and enhances its owner’s perception and thought process, and all it needs to work is to be seen everyday.  

preparing the way -- art in public

I must have been out on the back forty when it happened. Oh yeah, I’d seen it coming decades ago and told everyone who would listen but that was nobody. Somehow the artist in this community went from social nonentity, a dreamy wastrel who won’t take a job to cultural superhero whose ideas, utterances, and public creations are inviolate, beyond community approval, official sanction, and you better not paint over nothing even if you own it. Where was I? 

Where was everyone else? Some local booking agent all of a sudden is contracting with world-trotting gunslingers who ride into town, emblazon their enormous creative expressions on any convenient blankness, and on their way rejoicing while the community sorts out conflicting feelings about what they’ve left behind. I personally couldn’t complain about any of it because this public painting asks all the right questions, and citizens have to sort out their own answers. It represents a mighty transition, like when evolution turns a corner.

Public painting itself doesn’t have a great future. For one thing there’s only so many blank walls that face the public and they’ll soon be covered, and then there’s the technical side. What does it take to prep a concrete or brick wall for a painted image and did they all do it? In any case, paintings normally shouldn’t be left outside in all sorts of weather, and without regular maintenance they won’t last long. It doesn’t matter. They will have done their job and faded away.

This infusion of international euro-pop mentality will arouse an awareness of what’s already here, what has been here all along, but off the view screen, under the radar, out of mind. These very large paintings are immensely impractical from the individual’s point of view -- they can’t be moved or even seen except when parking, but regular sized paintings in galleries, or for sale in restaurants and salons, can be taken home and hung in the living room. 

From this jump-start, artists will rise in the community mind from being the decorators of public utilities and providers of raw material for charity auctions to serious self-employed contributors. The quirky genius who flaunts society’s norms is slightly beyond the ambition of most artists, and simply being included in community life would satisfy many. All the grating controversy that accompanies public art is overcome when someone buys a piece and expresses their own opinion through ownership. 

Stars align, ancient locks begin to turn, and some new state of community self-concept is at hand, as has already been seen in several quarters. Art is about self-concept first of all, and owning some can ease the friction all this change can cause. Outside ‘public’ art will blossom and fade but the seed will germinate indoors, all around the town.

artful discourse -- who you gonna call

In my previous post I called into question the art criticism appearing in a progressive new media outlet -- called Under-main, local online journalism. I wish them well. I pointed out that other critics in our area, one for music and one for theater, seem clear and concise, informative and accessible to anyone with an interest, and yet art reviews, in media everywhere, tend to target a much smaller audience, mostly over around the u. It’s a defensive posture, really, making arcane distinctions to fend off the interest of a general readership, all to support an elaborate state-funded art industry hiding behind image ‘privatization’ and visual obscurity.

They’ve had a good run, but the rules are changing. 'Mass' became said in native languages, and critical writing and thinking about art will soon be discussed rationally, using household terms. This will happen because the garden wall is breached, pagans invade the temple, and art is going up everywhere, in salons and restaurants and big hotels. The exclusionary academic approach to art review will lose its power to exclude.

The public will notice and take an interest in visual art simply through exposure -- it’s interesting stuff. After having seen enough of it, and feeling more comfortable that the neighbors might be taking an interest too, people are going to start buying original art and taking it home. Doesn’t really matter how good it is -- it will always be the first piece. Many people feel this verging momentum toward acceptance and appreciation, the emergence of community taste and sensibility, and sustainability for people actually making art. Without the arrival of a comet or other devastation it’s difficult to see how it won’t happen.

I vent a little at the critic but it isn’t the issue. Where could you go to find direct and unbiased appraisal of art and I’m fairly sure a pile of degrees is not the answer. I’d trust Picasso, if he was available, or maybe some demonstratively accomplished painter from around here. Those who actually practice might tend to favor artists with similar vision, but mostly they understand the art form and will probably appreciate many styles of expression. For variation there may be more than one with something to say.

If you want to actually hear the direct explanation of why a painting was made why not ask an artist? It’s not realistic to expect the academic reviewer to be neutral anyway, so why not let artists write about themselves and each other. Independent artists around here are also working people, many with outside occupations, and  they understand the sacrifice and the commitment it takes to own original art and they respect it. Working people, in my experience, tend to respect artists and their work, and they’d come in if invited. Artists would be welcoming. 

“isn’t art, after all”..... no I don’t think so

from ‘thread of a doubt’ in under-main http://www.under-main.com/thread-of-a-doubt/

“Isn’t art, after all, simply a construction of our discourse about it?” so ended a recent review in a local online publication and it’s a much more interesting question than the subject of the review -- ‘does craft drag art down or does art elevate craft,’ the deadest of horses. So, is art, after all, just the physical manifestation of scintillating conversation or is it really something?

Now that’s a subject worth considering. If a work of art, or the work of an artist, never gets talked about or seen does it exist? Not according to the above, and it’s the same as the argument really as about that falling tree. Art happens in the space between what the artist makes and what the viewer sees, and at its best art is an attempt at communion at the deepest, most intimate, most human level possible. I guess I get to say that but if no one is listening, or looking, might as well be mute. Anyway art’s basic equation requires the participation of both parties, but I still think the art, not the discourse, comes first.

What we have here is a closed conversation about just the artists who work in the sanctioned form, but not every citizen can find the time, or really gives a rat’s ass, for these arcane distinctions with an advanced degree. I’ll speak for the left out, and I’m not talking about the artists who realized the situation soon enough and went ahead anyway. They do get to be artists whatever the cost. It’s the citizens who ‘have an interest’ who are left out, because they don’t feel in conflict about what it’s called -- high art or craft. Such a lofty parsing just won’t seem particularly pertinent to them on a burning planet, what with taxes and politics and other real issues.

Maybe the art critic could consider accomplishment as the other critics do. Tunis is big on musicianship and Copley maintains credibility by giving polite but objective assessments of how well local performers sing and act, and any interested person who has gone out to at least some of the events can generally understand their intent. They even get to measure what these critics have said against their own experience when they do attend, and will become more knowledgable and appreciate more as they go along. Critics can and do provide a service to these artists and the community as well.

This ‘art discourse’ about ‘found industrial repurposed’ or ‘intentional moves toward de-skilling’ does give rise to a brand of art but it’s a rarified art, insular and shy about the public and generally disdainful of its interests. Is that all there is? Is that all the discourse you got? Can’t you talk about something else -- originality and vision and the ability to create intentional images would be suggestions. This piddling about cascading derivations just keeps the public at bay so they won’t notice you haven’t done much but confer blessings on your friends without saying anything about art that helps. Worse than that. 

As for the exhibit itself, see the show if you can. Everyone with an interest in learning about art should see as much original art as possible and visit museums when they get to the city, because that’s how genuine discernment arises. Consider what the critic said about this show against what you saw when you get home.

emerging audiences -- who knew

So I’m wondering why is TV so much better than it used to be. I assumed, early on, that the ‘Sopranos’ was a ‘made for television’ rip on the Godfather movies and had to see an episode by accident before I started to catch on. It was more like a movie with top notch production values that went on and on, exploring the lives of characters in a way no movie could. Suddenly an audience appeared that wanted more, expected more, and like ripples in a pond television opened up and became more challenging.

In the case of the Sopranos the obvious difference was a new method of finance, subscription vs mass audience advertising. With salaries paid in advance, attracting the widest audience possible was no longer the first priority of story telling, and soon more naturalistic approaches to more significant subjects were being considered, and by commercial television as well. Seems the audience was always ready to be taken seriously, to take themselves seriously, but television had talked down to them since the beginning, since from the beginning public airways have been paid for by advertising. 

The ‘Mad Men’ of fifties period advertising agencies haven’t gone away. Oh, they dress a bit differently now and some have come out to much applause, but they still objectify everyone and everything, and many are headed for the bottle by the early forties just like several generations before them, burned out, cynical, and finally pushed to the sidelines. They aspired to be artists once you know, many of them, but somewhere along the line they decided to use their talent to make money. It isn’t that hard. Industry at most every level loves talent, and advertising agencies pay more for it than anybody else except, of course, the movies.

You just have to be ready to apply your talent to anything the art director throws across your desk. Sometimes it’s something nice, sometimes it isn’t, doesn’t matter. Your job is to attract attention to this thing, this service, this unwanted and unnecessary whatever, and we don’t care how, use your talent. It wears folks down, and worse than that. It turns them cynical about themselves and lowers their regard for fellow humans, how could it not? Still, there is no conspiracy. Turns out television has never really reached its full potential to educate and enlighten, even to entertain, because corrupted artistic directors looked in their mirrors and saw swine -- I need a drink.

Now it seems some production companies are getting to extend themselves, to tell human stories in a frank and honest way, because it turns out that’s what a lot of people prefer to watch. Who knew? What was needed was an alternative, and thank you HBO for finding the audience commercial television executives claimed wasn’t even there.

renewable mental energy -- art’s capacitance

All this conversation on ‘owning art’ can get sorta abstract. Sometimes there are artist’s names to google and always these testy assertions in an argument few have thought much about. When does it get real would be a reasonable question, so I’ll present a situation. Won’t apply to everyone of course. 

Assume yourself to be a middle-american, work-for-a-living sort of person with normal concerns and no real interest or experience with art, and you visit the home of someone for the first time. Maybe you’re there to install a new water heater or sell an insurance policy. Could be you’ve been invited by someone you’ve met socially or a colleague from work. Anyway, you look around and there’s art on the wall, genuine art -- you can tell. You could think what a fool to spend money on art, but chances are you wouldn’t. Most people wouldn’t.

You’d probably look at it. If some piece interested you, and you mentioned it to the owner, there’s a reasonable chance you’d hear a story about where it came from and maybe even a meeting with the artist. Just to yourself you might assume there was more depth to this person than you would have guessed. It’s difficult, actually, to have original art around the house and not be affected by it. It can’t be scientifically proven that those living there will notice more when they step out of the door, or be more discerning when they read the newspaper, but people who own art testify to that effect.

Art as a luxury frankly doesn’t have that much appeal because you can’t drive it, wear it, or have it for lunch. It just hangs on the wall, a pricy decoration. On the other hand, thinking of art as a functioning, sense-rejuvenating, humanizing factor in making a home more livable would be the more profitable way to look at it. Like the furnace and AC, like the stove and refrigerator, art pulls its weight, lightens the day and rewards the journey home.

two conversations at once -- differing destinations

Let’s acknowledge there’s a couple of conversations going on about art. There’s the big one in the back pages of New Yorker which involves all the intelligent, culturally aware folks eyeing the markets for underpriced crumbs from fabulous careers, and the quiet one over here. See, I don’t care about the money. I think an artist should be paid like a craftsman who gets to charge a little more per hour when they do a better than average job. I’d be content to let the quality of the product determine price and not the stratospheric crest of an imaginary wave, but that’s me.

To read in the New Yorker, “sells, at auction, for respectable six-figure sums, with the odd spike into the low millions” about an artist who made the same self-referencing statement on and on is just me eavesdropping on that other conversation. I understand fashion well enough. It’s about what other people want. Is it time-bound? -- to the year, to the season, to the day. People are always changing their minds since they don’t know what they want unless everyone else wants it. It’s a maze with no exit.

I can’t get over this messianic vision in which art, perhaps that picture on the wall by an artist in your town, transcends the cultural hammerlock that school, family, and ‘all over at the same time television’ imposes on everyone without anyone really noticing. It's true this notion of the liberating power of art has sometimes been open to question. I just find for about every third painting I see by Van Gogh I feel an almost mind-melding intimacy that comes across entirely without words, so I couldn’t explain it. It isn’t just him. Art from all over can be like that. 

After all, a consensus made of money can blow away when conditions change, and they will, but that’s not the sad part. The real shame is the low expectation on the part of people who spend millions on the colored monograms of fame only because they might go up in value. Maybe they will, but who could live with that off-handed, talent-deriding section of colored cloth up in the living room without the price tag hovering close by? Their grandiose game of liar’s poker, all hold, fold, and cold-eyed bluff gives art a bad name, and it’s also seriously beside the point.

Credentials don’t count for as much as doing the work, since each decision made once the canvas receives the first mark reveals the personality and life-experience of the person who makes it. There’s no reason to doubt when looking at a Jackson Pollock here was an alcoholic in temperament and method, and as such I’ve always found his work repulsive, but then I take him seriously. It means almost nothing to me that he was famous by proclamation or that any one of his 'painter’s drop-cloth' paintings is worth millions, respectable millions. Artists are attempting to reveal 'self', their own and everyone else’s, something that just happens automatically in the process of making art, and people see themselves in the work or they don’t. Considering the price tag first doesn't help. 

street art indoors -- the feral petting zoo

In the paper today, lex HL 9-14, a local university is presenting ‘Street Tested: Kentucky Graffiti Artists’ in their gallery. This in itself is an amusing idea, snarly defiant art insurgents participating in a sunday afternoon panel discussion, but maybe it will set some standards for fence and alley vandals in our fair city. Not that I’m not a fan. Never disappointed to be stopped at a train crossing so long as it’s composed of cars from all over. 

Somewhere in train yards, under threat of more than just justice, kids with spray cans make amazing art. They must be doing it for others like themselves because I can never figure out what it says and if I do I don’t know it means, but the color contrasts, the rhythmic balance and imagination crank very hard at fifty mph clicking past. They take these chances, train yards have private security, to send their tag out into the world and I’m looking.

Now that’s romantic and the art carries the load. Some of it’s so good and its reasons so pure, they don’t get paid, it almost justifies defacing the private property of some gigantic corporation. It can get out of hand. Chicago banned aerosol paint years ago so too bad if you want to paint a kitchen chair. Let’s face it, not everyone who wields the can has worked out the design beforehand or developed the deftness to apply spray paint, and not every blank space needs decoration.

Be careful what you sanction would be my suggestion to the progressive university, presenting semi-legal artwork “not meant to be auctioned to the the highest bidder” lest you find a heart in red spray paint on your own front steps. 

below grassroots -- politics of self

It isn’t just art about politics that’s political. It depends on how far you want to break it down. How a person feels about themselves has a lot to do with how they relate to other people -- how they treat other people, what they accept from other people, and pretty soon we’re talking politics. If you want to know how people feel about themselves look at their art.

Creating art is a human attribute and it follows us everywhere. A rigid hierarchical culture in Egypt yields the same art with minor variation for thirty five hundred years, while pre-Columbian ceramic vessels from the coast of south america reveal an individual inventiveness, ribald humor, and vivid imagination all indicating the cultural character of a long lost people. ‘Art history’ is about putting boxes in boxes, but history and art can be pretty interesting. Yes, the mentality of the renaissance was decidedly different from the preceding gothic era, and there’s a way we all know this. We see the art.

Nowadays is a free-for-all, all the influences churned together, and it’s possible to pull most anything out of the mix. In the present situation you’re on your own when deciding what sort of influences to come home to. Should you choose art that looks cool to all your friends or just what speaks to you personally? Do you choose art that reinforces your familiar view of life, or something closer to the edge? There isn’t any wrong since it’s just art, after all. If you’d like to own something of value buy original art, but no one gets to tell you of what. Decide who you are and buy the art that expresses it, or live with art you find appealing and find out who you are -- it works both ways at once.

reclaiming the pit -- flowers on slag heaps

The idea behind 'owning art' is reclamation and renewal of art’s grass-roots audience after the massive environmental degradation of abstract expressionist strip-mining, beginning about the middle of the last century. The reason this was done originally was largely political expediency in unrelated areas but as a result weeds abound in a wrecked landscape.

The forces behind the ascendancy of abstraction, in broad terms, were the extremely powerful who suffered severe discomfort at the universally understood painted criticisms made by Diego Rivera and others like him, they were legion. Abstractionists were also to benefit from a ruthless international competition in which the American government promoted abstract art as somehow more democratic and individualistic than the collectivized, state-glorifying representational art in Russia. 

Abstract art won't cause anyone in power to lose sleep at night and academics can hide their ineptitude behind it, but its riddles all seem goofy in the end. Side effects of removing the depiction of identifiable content from visual art have been devastating for the individual and society, since a most fundamental means of human communication was silenced. The marketing of art has elevated an incestuous royal line of ‘masters’, visual entrepreneurs who turned some minor conceit into a trademark, and that glamorous load in big time galleries has degenerated into monographic imbecilities in just a few generations -- google Hirst, google Koons, google them all.

Representational art, still derided as ‘illusionist’ by old-school abstractionists and their progeny, is capable of transmitting mind to mind much more information than just the time of day in a wheat field, as anyone who has admired Van Gogh will attest. The representational image engages the experience, memory, and mind of the viewer, and even more effectively of the everyday owner, and its sensibilities then participate in whatever the person sees. Did you think art was passive? For those who subscribe to the epic that has become known as ‘contemporary art’, come out from behind your tiara-snatching masquerade and join the rest of us, sighted uprights who can speak without language using pictures.

art's one way mirror -- the invisible audience

Art folks have some pretty insulting ideas about everybody else. Why if it weren't for the progressives in bureaucratic positions passing out grants art beyond big cities would probably die, and the reason so many galleries fail is cretin sports fans are taking up all the parking. In art school students are taught the common folk have no direct interest in petty mind games and that’s probably correct.

‘Contemporary art requires much more from its audience’ intones the resident expert and there’s no doubt. It requires faith, a powerful force shaking the world about now in its more fanatical manifestations, but in art it just entails believing nonsense has significance -- seems almost benign. Damien Hirst has reduced his product line to polka dot and spin paintings done by ‘assistants’, and it’s difficult to compare them to world art and still feel good about our culture, unless of course we just declare ourselves obliviously self-absorbed. Happens all the time.

Not everyone gets on the bus and that includes most people. It doesn’t mean they don’t like art, wouldn’t respond to art, or wouldn’t buy it. They might prefer a more authentic effort from the artist, an image more relevant to their own experience, and maybe a work of art which establishes its presence without a pound of paperwork. Where is this art you ask, and the answer is it’s always been around. It may not have seen sunlight for a while although with recent climate changes new growth is possible. 

This change of climate is simple exposure to the public, the first imperative of retail markets everywhere, and it’s happening now. More art is going up in businesses and shops, and galleries are claiming spaces within walking distance of the new 21C hotel. As more art is seen in galleries, hotels, and alternate venues all around town, worthy area-produced art will rise toward the surface and become visible to the local population. It would be wrong to suggest quality would go down since artists respond to attention and support and get better. People who spend their own money on art can self-educate pretty quickly too, and almost always recognize the better piece side by side. Eventually the art around here might become more relevant and authentic to the community, and more important to people’s lives.

unquenchable thirst - whiskey river bottled up

There’s an article in the paper today, here in bourbon country, about the burgeoning speculation in bottles of whiskey. There’s a picture of the proud collector of fifty four bottles of the same whiskey, a different label for each of the playing cards in a standard deck, plus both jokers. Somehow this sounds so familiar. Here are people paying fabulous amounts for whiskey they never intend to drink. The magic is in the bottle it comes in and not in the contents. We are now all required to assume this bottle contains an ambrosia so transcendent that if we ever to taste a drop we would immediately try to punch a best friend, abuse a spouse, and pass out contentedly for a three day coma but it could be just coke and vodka for all anyone will ever know.

Spirits are a product I’m not fond of but the parallel works for art because the medium has so little to do with the message. There’s a peculiar mechanism that takes hold when wealth becomes too staggering, and it’s happened in other cultures at other times as well. Rich folks wind up competing to piss away the most money, and without further discussion it’s blatantly unhealthy. The Northwest territories tried to pass a law against the ‘potlatch’, the celebratory burning of furs and breaking of canoes as a form of hospitality among well-to-do native peoples, but it was more likely hard times that finally made them see the light.

There’s nothing wrong with art, itself, but someone’s going to have to crack the lid, break the seal, pour a drink. Better yet let’s open up the bar. Some folks prefer coffee, juice -- there’d be more customers don’t you see? In fact, maybe we should lose the investment pitch altogether, collecting art like vintage cars and porcelain roosters. A better conversation whould be about owning art, living with art, and support for living artists from around here, wherever here happens to be. What’s in the bottle would suddenly be more important than the bottle, and what’s so wrong with that?

painting by numbers -- square one revisited

So what’s a painting about, any painting? Representational or abstract, it doesn’t matter. Here is a flat surface, probably rectangular but even that isn’t real important. On it is an arrangement of colors and the same questions apply -- does it have presence, does it command the space it occupies, and would a person continue to look at it even though they see it everyday? 

Could be minimal, could be contemporary, might be a visual cliche -- Van Gogh painted pots of flowers. However the artist chooses to get it done, historical or religious references, found labels and ticket stubs, appropriated cartoon characters or any other sort of image, doesn’t matter. It either enters your head or it doesn’t. Not only is the subject secondary to the main point of painting, it won’t be made better because a famous person painted it. Siqueiros, the Mexican muralist, could paint a raised fist that would read dynamically from a block away, but it was his paint and not his reputation that made this happen.

Might seem strange to knock down all the fences and let all the art mingle, hip to square, museum old to contemporary, famous and unknown, but these distinctions have always been plastic and arbitrary, the province of art bureaucrats and professional experts in their castles made of matchsticks. Does the art convey a message, well, maybe it does but that’s a separate issue. Could be about religious faith, celebrating a sports hero, or selling soap, and being good art would aid those causes, but they aren’t the art.

Starting from the same blank surface that’s always been there art has it’s own agenda, and a successful work of art is self-contained, true to its own logic, and speaks to the viewer in some fundamental way beyond the subject. It’s up to the individual to find, in the avalanche of visual sludge drifting by, the art that doesn’t get old for them. 

realism in art -- exalting the audience

Just saw a movie about people I’d never meet doing things totally beyond my everyday experience, yet every line and every gesture seemed completely authentic and totally human, based on what I’ve seen in my own life so far. It was a significant work of art and the last by one of the premier actors of his generation, Philip Seymour Hoffman, but somehow it seems out of place among the comic book heroes and undead horror-comedies. It was about spies, but Hoffman’s character didn’t leap from a helicopter onto the top of a moving train or do any of the other standard spy-movie stuff like walking calmly away from huge explosions and artfully dodging bullets.

For the audience who sees both it must require an enormous shifting of gears. The action movies seem so joyously filled with conflict and mayhem following plots that lurch along made up on the go as all manner of jagged 3-D objects fly out into the audience, and folks seem to love it. As guilty pleasure some of this stuff is pretty guilty. You’d think real life wouldn’t stand a chance. Real life is slow -- waiting for elevators, smoking a cigarette, talking in a car.

What we have here are two different visions of art and life. The fantastic movies are called escapism, meaning real life is tedious and stagnant so stimulate me so much I’ll forget for a while. Afterward the traffic leaving the parking lot seems to stand still and the burger from the drive-thru tastes flat -- no kaboom, no chases. The other point of view, called realism, uses its resources to recreate a situation and plot that people with common experience can self-verify as plausibly true. They leave the theater thinking about the story, the motives of the characters, and maybe even their own lives. A fair number seem to like it this way too. 

Side by side, box-office vs box-office, it’s hard to say which one wins since they compete for the same production dollars, in the end based on ticket sales. Wouldn’t it be interesting if realism began to kick fantasy’s ass, although this isn’t a prediction you understand. Just something in the breeze suggests that an appetite for authenticity and self-verification along with the dedication of serious actors and writers might turn the tide. 

saturday on the square -- close to the source

Owning art is about an organic approach to art consumption. It advocates for ‘farmer’s market’ style alternative venues in salons, restaurants, and local sourcing of free-range art. The appeal is health, of course, although the range of the our senses and the depth of our thought might be less apparent than the girth of our waistline. Like consumer advocates everywhere, part of the job is to deride the stuff in a can for being over-processed and lacking in nutrition. 

Department store art might pick up the color of the drapes but it will not register to anyone entering the room and they won’t remember it. Original art from a local hand will continue to gain attention, in part just because something handmade presents itself differently than a room full of manufactured furnishings. Some folks wouldn’t like this, much the same way those only used to fast food might balk at home-cooking, but that’s usually only at first. Original art imparts oxygen to a room, puts worn spots in perspective, maybe even expresses the owner’s attitudes and sensibility, and everybody notices.

I don’t know about art that sells for millions on some planet where the only way to prove your worth is to light your cigar with the biggest bill. I'm pleased to say it’s over my head. Here in our little community get used to the idea of ripe tomatoes perhaps with blemishes, beans you might have shared with bugs, and feeling good about your house, your day, your life because the art you own and look at everyday brightens everything else. The wave of the future is back to basics. 

Hope at the Hopewell -- the art of Paris

They almost tore it down, the 1909 Beaux-arts post office in Paris, KY, long known for tobacco and race horses. Instead they renovated it into the Hopewell History Museum with a big first floor gallery. In it they are currently displaying a recently assembled collection of all Kentucky based artists mostly from just before and after the turn of the twentieth century. 

Posted next to each painting is small biography -- academic training, trips to Europe, and the general arc of their careers, and that’s all interesting stuff but the paintings tell their own tale. The fact that some of them are first rate, more resolved and effective from across the room than up close for example, contains its own subtext. These folks made a living at it and it wasn’t because they were good since no one is in the beginning, but because they evidently sold enough work to eventually become good. Still, this isn’t about them. 

Somebody bought their art. Since many of the artists lived here, came back to here from other places, and seemed to thrive here with full time studios wouldn’t one suppose there was a native appetite for art. Not just that, but some buyers must have had pretty sophisticated taste since some of the artwork is. Stone fences lined dirt pikes and water was carried when these paintings were hung in parlors and admired by those who had traveled and seen the world. These paintings tell the story of a culture that supported her artists and through them expressed the outlook of their generation. 

This is a different time. Does any current generation cycling by see the value of engaging the world of the senses directly and honestly in images made by hand? Well, yeah. Back when these paintings were made building stone walls was winter work for field hands and now it’s a pretty good trade. Back then hand engraving was an art but a common one, and making paintings to be bought and hung in houses provided a living. With new technologies some occupations have become obsolete while others have increased in value and making paintings to buy and take home is making a comeback. 

shots fired -- seeking the source

It’s amusing that this community gets all excited about art but thinks of it as a sort of life-style accouterment, a finer thing, an uplifting diversion. It might suddenly seem more important if we were to realize art shapes our world and that Bruce Willis has more influence on our peculiar gun laws and our casual attitude toward violence than all our politicians. We seem to enjoy our dramatized mayhem but recoil when it leaks out into the real world.

This ain’t no game. The machinery you inherited gets you through the day and it works pretty well, but it processes just what you see and that pretty much decides what you look at. Within this looping and limiting mechanism lies the possibility of intervention. If your society seems caught in a self-destructive downward spiral we recommend fifteen minutes in the park every morning on the way to work just looking at trees, your green salad. On TV catch an occasional nature documentary or listen to an objective commentator, a healthy entree, and on your walls hang the original art of artists you know or care about, your vitamins. Avoid Bruce Willis. Let’s all get healthier together.

karaoke surprise -- for granted rethought

My idea of karaoke was drunken Japanese businessmen, or anyone else, taking turns trying to be Elvis and it didn’t sound appealing as a spectator. I confess I didn’t know much about it because I don’t drink nothin’, and this quirk has limited my cultural awareness in numerous ways, underexposure to popular entertainment being one. I have, however, been caught with a plate of ribs just as the sound track started, and to my surprise the waitress put down her order pad, picked up the microphone and sounded really good, just like on the radio. When the song was over she picked up her pad and went back to waitressing. The next singer was pretty good too and even the brave eight year old added a little to Johnny Cash. I decided to rethink. 

It’s easy to believe national talent tournaments are showcasing the near-future super stars of entertainment, but some pretty amazing music can be heard in dorm rooms and there are shipping clerk guitar players with something to say. Local bands with a few years together are better than the high fashion show bands on late night TV. Not as good as but better, more creative, more diverse.

Media up until just a few years ago had a way of narrowing the attention of the public to just three major networks each ruthlessly competing to be just like the other two. Perhaps because of the internet and cable we’ve entered a period of readjustment as a sort of transpersonal honesty begins to penetrate the realm of false advertising, the myths we’ve been living by. Even the business of big art has grown wobbly.

The cheek-by-jowl gallery districts in the heart of major cities are off-white high-roller tourist traps and their brand name monopoly on genius has been overrated. There are artists somewhere in your vicinity actually better than people who got famous, and that’s largely because fame is about fame and not art. We’ve been there. If you’re looking for the sly investment might be better to lose your money in a casino, so much quicker, but if some artist’s very best effort up around the house would make your day a little lighter it’s money well spent. 

owning art -- why so positive

Older artists I know are a generally pessimistic lot. After many cycles of hope and despair they’re wary of enthusiasm and don’t particularly like to see it in others. They accept with resignation that sports mania in neighborhood bars with instant replay and nostril hair closeups is just way too compelling to compete with, and that the attention of the average citizen will forevermore be devoted to less challenging pursuits.  Sometimes it might seem that way, but there are indications all around that it isn’t. 

There’s only one question that really matters concerning the future of art, and it isn’t about fund-raising, or national notoriety, or new digs for art schools. The number one national affliction is boredom, and flipping between elephants charging, family sedans sliding sideways, and more stuff, and more stuff, doesn’t seem to help. We’re noticing this together. Is there something more substantial than everything ever written illustrated with everything ever photographed in our pocket destined to be, oops, suddenly superseded by some totally new technical concept in the next hour or so? Maybe there is.

Is there an appetite for art -- this is the one wheel that turns all other wheels. Is there a reason a person might want to own something thoughtful, well-made, and totally unique, and the answer is more everyday, and that’s only a place to start. Would some essence of humanity, here and there on the wall, make the machine-made self-driving day more livable, the conditioned air more breathable, our time spent doing whatever seem more worthwhile, and the answer is yes -- that’s art’s function here in this new century. As more people are exposed to various forms of art the more they begin to appreciate some form, and nothing else really matters.

I’ve suggested in my first hundred posts, this is number 101, many of the ways visual art has been manipulated and suppressed by both private and institutional interests who found in art a vehicle for their own ambitions, and if all or any part of it is true it’s led to an interesting condition. The rubber band is drawn tight, the pendulum has been pulled back, the roller coaster tops the incline -- visual art is poised to make a comeback. The sheer capacity of this community, any similar community, to absorb new art is astonishing -- miles of sheetrock, soaring atriums, expensive furnishings with only lifeless department store art on the walls. If it was only a matter of money all that fancy landscaping stays when you move on but the art on the wall leaves with you, and we’re getting that feeling now. 

Art in your hometown is only approaching adolescence and with a little attention and support will mature into a regional identity with familiar artwork in the houses of friends and family, all around the town. It’s a comin’ whether I say anything about it or not.

subversive art -- slamming the world order

Cold hard fact is about a fifth of the US lives in the third world. What would the difference be if restaurant and service workers started out at fifteen dollars an hour? With average CEO pay hovering right around ten million dollars a year we’re really not going to consider negative effects -- three cents more for a cup of coffee, a quarter on a hamburger. We already know the economy would improve for these people and for everyone else as well, so it isn’t necessary to debate the point here. It’s a given.

What would art be like if these people had more money? It wouldn’t be all cool and with it, that’s for sure. The people lower down aren’t as interested in urban tribalism and group-think conformity, and are therefore more likely to actually look at and think about art. They tend to respect artists and art itself. They’d decide how much art was worth to them and buy some. This is because life experience has led them to an understanding of the broader human condition, effort and strain with only a slim chance of success, and they see these things expressed in art.

Sheet glass with a silver backing yields a faithful visual rendition of physical space while art reflects concerns and values in a human. Art closest to the daily experience, the strategies and execution that represents the individual’s own confrontation with the world, has a way of earning the affection of the people who live it. Right now they can only look and might not even do that. They don’t have the money to buy and the art they’re likely to see isn’t meant for them anyway. Works of art in galleries and contemporary museums seem to be only analogue artifacts of the career status of the artist and who gives a shit, really? It sure doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not they’re good.

Common people can express themselves through art by what they buy and live with, and that’s its function in a truly progressive society, wherever that might be. Now I’m going to say something interesting. We could wait for politics to evolve and there’d be the art, or we could choose self-affirming, perception-challenging art and bend society from the back side. So far it’s only a theory, but it’s at least a change we can make for ourselves and it's time to do something. An income disparity approaching that of the middle ages has collateral aspects few acknowledge, and the reduction of the aspiration and self-awareness of the majority to brand-identification is a big problem. Art is the answer. Game on.

ceo search -- defining the mission

Last night attended a meeting concerning the hiring of a new director for the central funding agency for arts in our community. They’re out to find some person with superior leadership ability who is also a strategic-planning, fund-raising guru full of passion for the arts. That’s not the hard part.

What’s the mission -- we don’t know. Do we want a teacup tipper capable of casting coils of flattery and guilt around the local business community and other well-heeled ‘givers’ thereby raking in the cash, or should it be someone who knows and cares about art and artists? Could the same person do both? Actually could they please be able to do everything because we don’t know what we want.

Here’s the bureaucratic dilemma -- do we use public money to midwife self-sustaining art commerce for the economic and spiritual benefit of the community, or do we perpetuate our charity-based institutions, most of all, us? Whining for the city, the state, the federal largesse to look our way seems insensitive, just does, what with conditions on the street. Soliciting businessmen and their accountants for a little chunk of write-off in exchange for their name on a plaque isn’t going to earn their respect. This approach will however give us the power to direct which favorites put on performances, what artists succeed -- an off-the-shelf small town byzantine court of cronyism. This really isn’t an option anymore.

The world changes and the charity model is rapidly becoming obsolete. Time to contribute to the future or grind on in futility and dwindling support -- don’t we complain? Broaden the audience or get out of the way. Actively facilitate community awareness and appreciation of art instead of engineering artistic dependency by dribbling out funds -- not enough to live on, just enough to keep hope alive. This new director should be working to make his or her job less important, the institution’s influence less, and instead improve the climate for ticket sales and direct purchases for visual artists by becoming a bridge between an increasingly interested community and its creative class. 

original art and free will -- somewhere deep inside

Heard this interesting radio program claimed wiring in the ear is receptive to the familiar but doesn’t like to process the unexpected -- they say it’s brain chemistry. They cited as an example the 1913 presentation of Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’ which caused a riot -- folks in black tie and tiaras went berserk and these scientists surmise the cause was a flood of rejection juice in the brain brought on by the music’s massive dissonance, which they had never experienced before. Next year it was performed again and the audience loved it. The composer was carried out into the streets.

Isn’t that the way it always is, only a little quicker?  Folks just aren’t fond of new experiences because new file folders have to be named and stored somewhere, and the familiar just saves automatic. Behind all that is this chemical reaction they’ve found takes it almost out of free-will territory. Cognition itself is biased toward prior experience, and that’s just the way the machine is set up. Too bad for original anything. It takes an act of will to consider something new and a little at a time seems advisable. Stravinsky wisely ducked out the back door when the first performance turned ugly. 

This is the reason second tier emulation can be the key to success in any field of art, and that originators are sometimes passed by -- consider music. Andy Warhol seemed to intuit this modern brain breakthrough by picking only the most familiar cultural and commercial images to call art, thereby releasing that little burst of recognition oil we all find so pleasing, don’t know why. Well wouldn’t say it’s poison but it’s definitely empty calories, just responding to stuff seen before. As harsh and alien as it seems at first, original art tends to scrape away the scales and illuminate the senses, and although lab results aren’t in yet, we believe this could be reduced to a reordering of molecules in the brain that happens when a person looks at a painting done by an artist they've never seen before.

From then on when they see the artist's work they're going to get a burst of ‘oh I recognize that’ clear and pure as county air. Sorta the man inside, drugs you can do just by looking, a habit you get fixed by thoughtfully considering works of art. In a world of moral potholes why not a good addiction, one that expands your humanity, brings continuity day by day and adds a few years -- try looking at and living with original art.  

art for common folk -- illuminati pass by

If you are a member of the art establishment, an arts administrator or private gallery director, maybe a contemporary artist/educator, there isn’t much here for you. All you’ll hear is bitching, the blubbering rant of the misinformed and I can accept that. Those who are less committed and still have open questions concerning art might see it differently. I’ll take a stand as a cultural wolf-boy wandering in all objective and direct, just another philosophy major with dirty hands. 

I do get it, the zaniness most of all, and there’s a looping dialogue at ultra high frequency in contemporary art that’s very immediate, conveyed at the very top with just eyebrows and wry glances, and destined to be very dated by the time a decade rolls around. The notion of ‘fashion’ as a conceptual context is all about exclusion, and it’s sometimes necessary to go to extremes to shake off general approval even at the cost of pain and stupidity, which interestingly enough doesn’t seem visible at the time. A pickup so low it scrapes the pavement, high heels so high the ankle turns, the extremely functional baseball hat reduced to a beanie by turning the bill backward are all attempts to leave the less cool behind by being impractical, even offensive, and it’s a never-ending race.

Personally I have no kick against common folk and even aspire to be one. I want something very different from art and I’ll assume it’s not just me. First I want to know what’s hard and what’s easy, so learning something about how art is made would be handy. Meeting an artist would help make a correlation between personality and the work produced, although they’re generally reclusive so just seeing several examples of an artist’s work over time may suffice. Finally I want involvement and most likely to be interested in artwork that references my own experience in some way. Can I learn which artist is extending themselves farther, accomplishing more, and asking a fair price just by looking and the answer is yes, simply by looking at a lot and buying something. At that point I’ll become an actual participant in art itself. 

tolerance for cretins -- room at the hotel

('no room for those who censor art' -- lex HL, 6-16)
Tolerance is funny stuff. You’d suppose tolerance was a general state of mind that should apply equally all around, but it isn’t. Sat in a coffeehouse one time with a citizen of a most tolerant society who told me the one thing they wouldn’t tolerate was intolerance, so don’t ever blow your horn in traffic there. Closer to home it’s the art people who are most strange when it comes to tolerance. Art people are against any censorship whatsoever, and sometimes what they do seems little more than a dare to anyone who might consider it.

There’s an attitude that would aggressively present graphic porn as personal expression in a public gallery, this actually happened in lex, but which won’t tolerate anyone who questions -- it’s worthiness as art, it’s appropriateness for presentation with tax dollars, the blatant absurdity of tawdry sensationalism pretending to be anything else. Open a window. In fact, let’s back off this notion that worthy art necessarily challenges and provokes altogether.

The new hotel, 21C, promises to present an array of art to the general public and not everyone has to like it. It doesn’t matter, they’re not trying to sell it. They sell hotel rooms. They’re exhibiting art as a sort of civic minded, extremely clever way to establish an unique identity in an overcrowded industry. Everyone’s invited to look. If they see something they don’t like they may begin to consider what they do like, and the principle will be served. It’s a good idea all around. Nothing will be presented as damaging to mind and soul as the four hours 7 to 11 on major TV networks, and if anyone really doesn’t like what they see they don't have to go back.

too many artists -- not enough audience

So here’s a problem called to our attention. Whereas there used to be almost no art at all, now we have too many artists for this small patch of audience. This complaint was posted yesterday by a musician in our town, same as your town -- it’s happening all over. They're thinking maybe if there was more money from the city, state, wherever, and maybe another commissioner in city government, an art czar, we could turn this thing around, set some priorities, maybe even keep a lot of musicians in marginal dependency by paying scale in empty venues.

Don’t know a thing about popular music but it’s art, right? Some artist or group of artists is attempting to create something fellow citizens will identify with enough to support them in their independent lifestyle. This alternative to hitching up to the corporation paycheck is so appealing there are too many enlistees. We have so many bands with rather small core constituencies the club owners can’t afford to pay them much, and don’t. How does this play out -- I wouldn’t know but it does sound like a healthy if harsh required step in evolution, and in the end the best musicians will wind up making their best music in a community that supports them, if they hang around. 

Should we intervene? Can we hasten evolution by nurturing progressive favorites, bands with consciousness-raising lyrics or proportionally diverse personnel, for example? Well, if your goal is dysfunctional mediocrity, if you want independence and creativity denied access, if you think a bureaucratic refuge for pointless degrees is something we should all pay for, go ahead. Visual art provides the template for what goes wrong. Public money should be moving traffic, providing services, making sure everyone eats, and investing in the future with what’s left.

Did anyone think art was easy? It’s a sad fact the soldiers who stormed Normandy were not the same smiling GI’s who kissed the girls in Paris, and being on the front lines of art can be gritty. At some point citizens in all similar places to where you live now will begin to recognize the work of area artists and soon after that to have favorites, all on their own. With an audience the shoot gets to blossom, the art gets a lot better, and an artist could live pretty well in the not too distant future. 

Can’t say what this means for musicians, but there’s the music, the collaboration, and the drive to get better. Decide what you’re worth and insist on it, play when you can. Expand your audience by demonstrating that live music is better, by speaking to the inner ear, and by being tight and responsible to the craft. Whenever it happens, it happens on its own.