art's failure of nerve -- pain aversion

Art can be a dangerous business, people skating on the surface eating crackers and drinking wine, unaware of the thousand foot drop below. Visual art covers the human communication words can’t deliver, and reads the same no matter in what language the viewer speaks and thinks. That turns out to be a lot of territory, room to contain all sorts of meaning.

A mirror reflects the visual world faithfully and without comment, handy for driving and combing the hair. Art is the mirror of the inner self and reflects both ways, more of a meeting place that anyone can visit. That’s the dangerous part, art can be a frank and unforgiving territory especially for the artist. Seldom will a person feel more vulnerable than when attempting to draw a horse to show to someone else. Give it a try..... Now imagine showing it to the whole world, the best horse I can make, and the raw embarrassment becomes excruciating, so most folks don’t draw.

Artists learn to deal with it, although it infamously takes a toll, and more than a few chronically medicate to blunt the uncomfortable feeling of being somehow more than naked in public, apt to become defensive and melancholy when no one seems to notice. There is another strategy employed by some modern artists and their patrons which eliminates the problem of sincerity and self-revelation for practically everybody -- just don’t say nothing. Take a monochromatic green panel attributed to Elsworth Kelly, worth millions and millions. Just one color don’t say nothing, the visual equivalent of an even monotonous tone.

All we know about Elsworth Kelly from his art is that he’s rich, fabulously rich and famous, who else gets away with such ‘purity,’ and if you own a piece you must be insanely rich yourself, the circle completed. Sadly, it’s not a deep message, almost not worth canvas and paint. Ed Hopper, on the other hand, is himself present in every work he ever produced, even though he covered a wide range of subjects in different media, and this is also true of many other artists, some in your neighborhood. The operative question becomes how many people viewing his work, in the original and not as a poster or in a book, recognize something in themselves and their own experience, and the answer must be quite a few. 

How brave are you? Would you hang a piece of art you liked, knowing the in-laws would comment, that the boss over for dinner might see you a little differently, and even your spouse expresses surprise? Maybe as brave as the artist who attempted to say something about the world beyond and besides what a cameras sees, and in the process said something about themselves, about all of us. Art is big, can be. Art is a human conversation going back centuries, at least, and just peeking in at the door can be rewarding -- joining the club is buying a piece of art.