artists' brains -- different from you and me

“Drawing on the right side of the brain: A voxel-based morphometry analysis of observational drawing” asserts that artists may have increased neural matter in the parts of their brains that deal with visual perception, spatial navigation and fine motor skills. Huffington Post-Apr 22, 2014

Goofy sort of research with elements of prank, but plausible enough to get a headline. It isn’t surprising that the physique of the athlete is generally superior to the average office worker. Athletes at all levels work their bodies in all sorts of ways beyond just practicing the skill-set for their particular sport to achieve a condition simply called ‘shape’. You can spot them in the supermarket loading up on bulk protein, a toned outline under tight skin, and maybe they inspire better choices among the rest of us, more fruit and less cake. Doing a brain-scan isn’t so convenient and even if it was true it would be beside the point. Of course the brains of artists are different because they ‘train’ -- they look at stuff. Does it make their brains bigger -- who cares? The fact is they see more and anybody can. 

To do it requires no sweat but it does take energy. One has to apply consciousness to mundane surroundings wherever one happens to be, and a surprising thing begins to happen. It’s been widely reported -- the more you look the more you see. Vision becomes “the only form of eating that produces its own meat”, a translation I’m sure but the intent is clear. The difference between the perception of an artist and coequally the viewer of art, and the rest of the population can’t be seen externally but it’s there. They’re seeing more in the same places. Their perceptions are in shape. 

presidential prophesies -- the future from the present

What harbingers do you take seriously? President Carter was an introvert who turned outward and embodied a concern for community felt in the hearts of many in his time. Bush, the backslapping extrovert quoting ball-scores and telling crude jokes, turns inward and becomes a painter after his stint as national ego in-chief and I wonder what it means.

George is really pretty good for a rank beginner and I wouldn’t deride him for that -- too bad he gets all that attention. He has the courage to be judged, takes that chance and comes out miles ahead of all those condescending noted authorities who ‘never played the game’. I’ll try to be more clear. There are people who assume rank and position in the art establishment with too few dues in the pot, professional chameleons who look all directions and change color with the crowd. They can’t decide if Norman Rockwell was an artist, a great artist, or not even and the tide moves back and forth every ten years or so. They don’t know what art is.

George will probably never be good having started way too late, but he’s put himself on that highway and something about it is so compelling, some part of himself was so thirsty for time in front of an easel that he’s willing to humbly accept an avalanche of ridicule and scorn just to be able to do it. His persona has softened and ‘decider’ no more, he devotes himself to looking at things and noticing stuff, trying to figure out how to make flat canvas say the same thing. Well, that’s George’s thing and we move on but he was a man of his time elected to represent all of us, and in the arc of his presidency somehow he did, ending in a bankruptcy no one expected. 

Still at the crest of a wave of national consciousness our most recent ex-president has concluded that self-discovery was the missing component, and so does a nation suddenly interested in art. It isn’t just him. Oh I’m as rational as the next but history with art as its expression can be read a couple of different ways, and the way things are going looks to me like artists are going to be the ballplayers in another generation or two.

Pussy Riot -- facing down the iron fist

Saw members of ‘Pussy Riot’ on Charlie Rose last night. Worst musicians and most fearless artists I’ve ever seen. Art stares back into the face of brutal soul-crushing authority while everyone else examines their shoes, and it’s the vulture who turns away. This is after journalists have been publicly poisoned, political opponents bogusly charged, tried, and sent to prison, and under the constant surveillance of the secret police. Art may in the end be the only solution. 

Pussy Riot is not about subversive lyrics, sly derision of those in power tolerated from above as feckless even useful dissent. It’s courage and defiance they personify, and they’ve willed it to ripple out from them through performance because they understand art isn’t passive. Art both reflects and directs self-image, the realm of possibilities for the individual and for their community, as totalitarian regimes have understood well enough. Those who would control minds fear art more than foreign armies, and their feeble attempts to subdue and bend it trace a real yet unwritten history of the twentieth century. Well documented are the darkly hilarious machinations of fascist and communist national cults trying to limit and restrict art only to make it more virulent and powerful.

Art in the west has been buffeted by different forces. Here art sells stuff and even sells itself. Ask Andy Warhol about politics and he’ll talk about carpeting the streets (saw the interview) but walking through his shop he’ll order more Lisa’s, “we can always sell those” (from a documentary). At least in a democracy there’s no attempt to control art from above, unless you count the NEA, myriad foundation grants, and state-supported teaching institutions everywhere. Here the artist doesn’t fear heavy footsteps followed by loud knocking in the night, but still there are challenges. The first is an almost totally alienated audience. Squeezed on one side by the vulgarity of commercialism and from the other by an academic establishment passing out honors and grants and hiring teachers from within a state-supported farm system, the general public opted out, walked away, and the vested interests said good riddance. Each takes a much bigger chunk from a much smaller pie.

Pussy Riot is a hard act to follow. Artists here can’t count on one sorta goofy performance resulting in a gigantic state show trial seen all around the world, and which in effect puts the state, itself, on trial. That’s a lot to ask. Here artists need to be honest with themselves and hope their example will endure, as paintings do, and ripple out at least a sense of independence and some notion of purpose beyond money. 

W shows his art -- the burden of fame already

W’s art is met with derision by all who opposed him politically, and they revel in his struggles, his vulnerability, his naive honest attempts to make images. It’s the same for all of us but he get’s pilloried as stand-in for every painter who’s taken those chances but never received even ugly reviews. This is a time of reflection he’s never known before, an attempt to struggle with limitation and doubt, and one can only wish he’d tried it sooner.

He claims as his inspiration Winston Churchill who took his painting quite seriously. He compared the strategy of making a painting to mounting a military campaign and it had more credibility coming from him than, say, me. Still, I’m pretty sure I know what he meant. Painting will teach W something about delayed gratification and cause and effect, even unintended consequences, and that’s all before he leaves the studio. He’ll also learn something about the hollow horn of art criticism from people who find profundity in a drip, a smear, some petulant display of ego-inflamed/such genius.

W just started and for that he isn’t so bad. Given a couple more decades at the easel he might be posing and resolving deep universal human issues, and who could doubt he’d make a better president?