bad art -- its job to do

There’s a lot of it out there, from senior citizen happy pines to gigantic art fairs in major tourist destinations. Seniors generally never attempt painting the real world and instead make safe little paintings of paintings they’ve seen before. Gigantic art fairs rent booth space by the square foot to freebooting hustlers who present art as a momentary entertainment, a glamorous and expensive time to be drunk. Both extend a magnificent service to the culture which supports them, as midwife to an eventual genuine and thoughtful discernment out among the general population. 

Intelligence seems to flow through humanity like a draft against embers, glowing and fading. The ancient Greeks were smart, not just one or two, but must have been most of them. During the renaissance an educated nobleman might have a conversation with a craftsman who would probably be articulate as well. Although from different sources with different cultural backgrounds the mentality of the today’s society unites in an aurora of electronic media shifting and surging over our heads, reporting back and reinforcing itself. A hard right turn in public opinion is possible, and in fact happens all the time.

Art has been off the view screen, not among ‘most popular picks’, or even much thought about among the general population until recently. That is, by the way, how the self-fascinated infantilism of Jeff Koons, as example (on google), became ‘preeminent’ -- by the default of the culture at large. That’s changing. Movies about artists, both shallow and deep, are being made, but there are also commercials shot in art galleries, more questions concerning art on ‘Jeopardy’, more art written about and seen. That brings us to what’s good about bad art.

Bad art -- cloying, ingratiating, poorly executed bad art implies by its very existence good art somewhere, it’s like a law of the universe. It may not be around here and might not have been seen by many, but it’s got to exist somewhere, and people being people will look for it. Logic and human nature have done great things together all along, and finding a mode of expression so individual it speaks in universal terms, so personal it provides connection with the many, and so handsome and well made it enhances the living space where it’s hung would be another feather.