It’s all about comparison. Some scientists claim that’s all there is, that we ‘know’ about anything strictly and simply by comparing, and those with the broadest experience can be said, all else being equal, to have the best perspective, and are most likely to be proven right most of the time. Things aren’t equal much of the time, and most of us are just following our hearts looking for the easiest, perhaps the most rewarding, the better of the two choices in front of us constantly. Humans will eventually get into everything, go anywhere, think all sorts of stuff unless their choices are limited by some system of thought that controls them.
Religion, not here of course, but back in the day in various places, gained traction by insisting blocks of knowledge were unthinkable and filling in the gaps with constant rounds of festivals and ceremonies. They aren’t the only ones who would try to manipulate people by limiting their choices, as regional text book controversies make clear, year to year. Keeping people in line becomes more difficult these days and uncouth dictatorships attempt to block the internet, to control the press, and to batten down on artists who are apt to think any way they want to. Balloons carrying leaflets have been tried just to import ideas that haven’t been thought on the other side before, and in the future massive drops of laptops would probably be more effective than bombs if closed-minded societies act up. Human freedom, it turns out, has to do with access to everything comparable there is.
So who controls art, in the name of what tribe? Well, not any more. Murals on blank walls next to empty lots are becoming ‘trial’ art for cities all over, erected with private money and chosen for public impact, haven’t seen an abstract yet. They won’t last outdoors in wind and rain on caustic concrete, but that’s not the point. The muralists are moving across the world, literally, criss-crossing past each other. They’re that crown of foam at the top of an enormous wave about to crash all around us, a realization of the expressive potency of visual art, long suppressed. The few non-profit galleries featuring subsidized art which have dominated small city art scenes for decades are about to be inundated by every manner of private gallery, art in restaurants, art in offices and in houses down the street. Every person, in the end, will have a chance to decide, among all the possibilities presented, the art that expresses best the way they feel. Could turn out to be a freedom they didn’t know they had.
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