populism -- art’s part

This blog is intended as an ongoing work of art, simultaneously appearing contrarian to those invested in the current art establishment and yet positive and reassuring to everyone else. This different approach could be called ‘populism,’ and I’m heartened that Bernie won’t back off the term ‘revolution,’ because he means people have to change their minds. This won’t be easy.

Art is taught as contrarian all on its own, setting out early on to dispel whatever thoughts might naturally occur to the uninitiated about reality’s visual interpretation. Heaping ridicule has been the typical strategy for reorienting the freshman class away from what they thought they were going to study, drawing and such, to the larger world of conceptualism, illustrating big issues ironically. These days I’ve heard they also attempt to teach skills that are marketable, a revolting development all on its own leading anywhere but the independent studio. It’s been tried over and over. 

The public is not art’s enemy. They mostly willingly support all sorts of art enterprise, including the schools, faculty and facilities, public projects of all sorts, non-profits and on and on. The public is also not art’s ward, its unwashed cousin, unable to relate to more than paintings of horses in sunny paddocks and sappy little cabins without driveways. Galleries find themselves caught in the middle trying to sell phony credentials, claiming “the value of art is what someone else is willing to pay for it.” Shame on you, you deserve to lose your lease. 

Given an array of art to look at, most folks can identify quality pretty quickly, even quicker if it’s for sale and they’re paying for it. Stacks of rough plywood, arrangements of ceramic globs, such as that, featured over on campus have held the public at bay for several decades, but a contemporary museum downtown, in the form of a 21c hotel, will drain their little duck pond. Many more folks will be deciding soon perhaps the art they don’t like -- good enough, since it might be the first time they’ve really thought about it one way or the other. There’ll also be tremors up the line, when super sophisticates begin the realize the glamour and exclusivity they’ve been paying for was artificial, and that it wasn’t really warm rain on their pants leg. Millions invested in art, snug in vaults and warehouses soaking up tax liability, could evaporate the moment public sensibility opens its eyes and turns its head. 

Owned art can be empowering, as a fact it’s a main effect. Art is the part of the normal human environment we’ve been lacking, having substituted mass-produced ‘design’ instead. Modern life works wonderfully well, warm and dry, but a little breathless, sorta sterile and machine efficient. Art direct from the hand of the artist is not just an autograph to be collected, but a vital component of the average person’s daily environment, a functioning solid-state ‘oxygen generator’ for the living room. It’s a folksy notion, that art could provide a spiritual essence usually lacking in modern decor, that it would also make moving into a new space feel more familiar and comfortable right away, even that it could eventually earn a promotion to the member of the family least likely to leave home, but it’s the populist way.