back from the dead -- paintings with your haircut

Did painting die? Haven’t seen it in a public exhibit for a while, these days they favor the conceptual. Seems painting was left on the platform when the ‘contemporary art’ train pulled away, standing there with its bags so forlorn. Lots of laughing, loud music, and fluttering banknotes trail behind as the train floats away on silvery rails of mutual affirmation through fantasy landscapes of refuge stuck together, plastic and spray paint, such as that. 

Thing is the ‘folk’ like painting, and take an interest when it’s around. The local example would be about a twenty five year run for an annual open exhibit called the ‘nude,’ presented by our area art league, which finally became so popular they went insane and started charging admission to the openings and still had parking on the grass. That’s about the time painting died for them, don’t know why. As academics came on board a new sensibility began to arise which preferred dealing with the human form obliquely, by innuendo and sly pun, fetishes and parts, in clinical terms, total dissociation. The content tended toward degeneration with a prejudice, sex acts and bruises and tits on a spoon, and so in the end they were left with just a big semi-formal social event spiced with live nude 'art models’ -- ‘eyes wide shut’ style, a travesty.

After soul-searching hiatus the nude has reemerged transformed into a new entity called ‘the body,’ a sophisticated pastiche of urbane and witty anatomical interpretation, but the product is unlikely to keep the desk volunteer awake on long quiet afternoons. Occasionally people wander in, lured perhaps by a swell review, and leave looking quizzical, unlikely to visit again -- there’s some questionable stuff. Sitting in their gallery to listen to a public talk about high-tone collecting, I found myself face to face with a grid of female breasts and arm-length black gloves doing odd semaphores reminiscent of playboy magazine circa 1955. I wasn’t sure of the intent, some irony wrapped in an enigma I suppose. It was brutally unappealing in several regards, and that may have been the point, but the sad fact remains that not many people are going to park the car to see it. The plastic revolver held to the lips of the naked lady signifying male brutalization, so it says on the wall, is patently offensive all around -- you nailed it. 

You guys took the wrong fork in the road, maybe you just got lost thinking the nude show was popular because the heathen public was coming to your gallery to see naked, but they really don’t care about that. They came to those exhibits because they like painting, and the ‘nude’ gave them a chance to compare painters from all over the US, some overseas. It was a pretty good exhibit.

They could do it again, of course, and so much easier now that the public is beginning to discover their latent desire for creativity and enduring value around the house. Pick out a theme with or without clothes, offer a prize, grant some recognition, and present the work of regional artists juried by a panel of people who own art, by people who make art, by anyone who actually participates. Experts and scholars, not so fast.

Painting didn’t die. It just fell out of favor with an extremely thin slice of public sensibility, a snooty self-selecting cabal of speculators and public funded literati who genuflect for the ultra-bored super wealthy, forever reveling in their cosmic uniqueness. It’s a gas. Fact is average folks like painting, pick it up pretty quickly if there’s enough around, and it’s going up in salons, bars, and restaurants all over town as we speak. ‘Contemporary art’ is too smart by half, and better beg a little harder for those tax-deductible donations and public funds if it expects to survive the onslaught of locally produced art bought and sold, area artists becoming recognized by their work, all part of a burgeoning art awareness that’s about to forget them.