fish story -- hunting whale

Sometimes have to laugh, at myself first of all. I think I’m Ahab, in a dinky little boat after a gigantic whale, the entire art establishment post WWII. I’ll die first, but I’ll beckon even in death lashed to the harpoons lodged in its back, my friend Starbucks having had a large part to play. Getting the whale to notice me is the first challenge, but I think if I keep launching my little missives I might hit a tender spot and get a response, get others to notice, finally through subtle argument convince the whale to expire on its own, or at least leave the water.

Big art has merged with exhibitionism, not around here of course, but the most progressive among us do want to be like them, the millionaires in magazines. Taking down pants in front of the Mona Lisa, such as that, the trick being to latch onto someone else's famous work of art, in some prominent place, and cause a fuss. Cut it finer if you want, up to you. The reverence for celebrity art, which I seem to lack, results from the enormous bucks involved, but I have  immunity, apparently, and think about the art instead. What would I need to say to convince you the only difference between a Damian Hirst ‘spin painting’ and the post card size you squirt yourself on a little turntable at the county fair are size, and a whole lot of money? You could see this for yourself, if you wanted, but these days such a fact doesn’t seem all that important.

No one knows what is important -- provoking the press, amusing the ultra-jaded, hits on the internet? Art, once a flowing river, has fanned out into swampy delta, no channel more than in inch deep meandering without direction. ‘Contemporary’ is an advanced sensibility no doubt, like the ripest cheese, but not everyone gets past the aroma, or, let me emphasize, cares to. There, I harpoon for the heart, another near miss but I keep trying. The whale suffers indigestion quite independently of me, and will roll over in another generation or two, anyway. Maybe sooner.

“you don’t have to call a glass dirty, you just have to put a clean glass up next to it,” as Rev Farrakhan used to say, and it’s happening now. Independent artists are gaining reputations, not at national fairs, in vanity operations far away, but around here by association and word of mouth, along with a greater opportunity to exhibit their work. Tangible art that can be taken home to become part of a living environment is coming out of studios newly rented all directions, like a wave passing through. The big fish will leave the room because with each passing day the broader community expresses an appetite for a token of life’s joy and pain more substantial than ‘monday night football,’ on and on. That’s art on the wall seen everyday, and art made by a friend, or someone met, or an artist followed through a career in your hometown does it better. 

farmer and artist -- not so different

Say this person is a farmer, outdoors sixty to eighty hours a week, all sorts of weather, all times of day. He’s responsible when anything breaks, when the creek floods and the wind blows, not all his animals like him, running a fever is no excuse. So one day he goes to town to sell a  few cows, and he decides while he’s there to see some art. Map in hand he wanders into the Cressman Center for Visual Art, up in louisville, and encounters ‘Nineveh’ featuring ‘vast hanging plateaus of grass,’ cited as the sort of project threatened by the philistines over at the capital. 

Yes, it’s thought provoking, but the thoughts our farmer has won’t entirely correspond the deep philosophic nuances the arts council, the gallery director, or the media art critic have in mind. This farmer may not find a little patch of sod under grow-lights to be as impressive, as evocative of nature, as soul stirringly profound as the funding agency might have hoped. He might think ‘not worth an afternoon’s effort,’ but he’s just uninformed, right, doesn’t know a thing about art. So long as he pays his taxes when he sells his cows, he’ll contribute to this ‘art’ whether he likes it or not, and that’s all we need from him -- such a progressive state, KY.

There’s an obvious presumption here, one charity-immersed culture wags fail to recognize, can’t seem to see. Who are they, with their sugar-water degrees and ticket-punched credentials, having coffee around a conference table in the long afternoon, to decide what people seriously engaged in the unforgiving quest for daily survival should support as art, anyway? Who are they to pass out state money, attention, and prestige, to conceptualists whose airy creations are a guaranteed affront to most of those who work? Let’s remind everyone at this point the farmer came looking for art, and if he recognized in a painting something he felt about his land, or was charmed some other way, he just might take it home -- he just sold his cows. 

Losing the charity-driven, bureaucratic side of art won’t end art. I’m betting, a long term bet, art would flourish among the very folks who’ve been resisting the art council’s progressive sensibilities up until now. There’s an appetite, no, it’s actually a need for relevant and meaningful art in the lives of people under the wheel, and it’s out there. The arts council doesn’t like it, won’t reward it. Say good bye.

painting -- what it's about

Most painting isn’t about the world at all, it’s about other art. Over to the senior center there’s a bit of paint going down, but they aren’t painting the world as seen. Here’s a pleasant meadow, a meandering stream with a most improbable little waterfall gurgling in the foreground -- not someplace they’ve ever been. It’s a painting of a painting, the kind they put up in senior centers, the kind the TV painter makes in thirty minutes, the kind of painting that stands in for grandma when she’s gone. There’s a place for that.

Uptown in big galleries art crawls forward looking sideways, artists and galleries hyper-tuned to the frequency of the immediate up and down the street, proffering art that will date itself ten years down the line. They inch forward together, similar in their fashion to the repetition and general sameness of so-called ‘western art’ in Santa Fe, just with a classier grade of tourist. Then there’s the fetish market for relics from famous deceased artists, ‘collectibles’ they call them without total concern for what’s on the front, and those seeking tenure are usually content going with the flow.

With sixty inches of NFL grinding away in the den why are we even talking about painting? Then there’s that. What is it about painting that should interest any human living today -- a reasonable question. Must be some odorless, colorless emission, a pheromone which goes straight to the brain without translation, because lots of folks respond. Every morning in Amsterdam a long line of people from all over the planet wait for the opening of the Van Gogh museum, some came for just this purpose. Gnarly purple olive trees and lemon yellow suns penetrate their skulls, start realigning parameters, increasing empathy, connection with nature, ecstatic joy. Folks emerge feeling like they want to do it again in ten years, alive and aware. Maybe that’s not an answer, but could be something to think about.

Painting is even more potent these days given the digitalized, homogenized, 3-D printed nature of everything else, its magnetic field is stronger, its gross tangible ‘realness’ a presence in any setting. Being famous is no guarantee, but best possible in that moment is, and a worthy hard-fought statement by a fellow human facing the same general circumstances is a good thing to hang on the wall and to look at everyday.

Bevin’s bathwater -- saving baby

Governor Bevin has fired the director of ky arts council and artists all over the state are incensed, they register displeasure. What we have here is a microcosm of the national earthquake, overwhelming pressure along a fault line no one seemed to notice. We did. Here at ‘owning art’ it’s no surprise to see the public finally heave their well-intentioned cultural overseers over the side, a populist purge overdue.

It’s not about art, is it? It’s about state and federal support for a style of art that doesn’t stir much interest in the larger community, so they dole out this tax-deducted, charity-funded pie for those ‘deserving’ -- and they get to decide. It’s mostly cool because everybody’s got a share, or might get one someday, at least lots of folks try. Dangling that skinny carrot turns out to be a major influence, grant applications under review, and it bends toward a sort of insular, canapé munching, quasi-participation in art, neither making or owning anything significant. What are we going to do?

Guess we’ll just have to look for support in the private sector. Try to make the case, long abandoned, that the product is worthy of its place in the dialogue of daily life, can contribute to the economic well-being of the community in a positive way, and significantly enhances the lives of the people who own it, such as that. Artists, throw down your crutches and find gallery space, organize a coop and start a gallery, put your stuff up in restaurants and salons, and connect to an audience if it’s out there. Time to find out.

anticipated obsolescence -- turning tables

There’s a lot more art activity, ‘art strolls’ in all directions these days, and sooner or later it will sort itself out -- won’t need my help. The condition that has prevented local artists from finding support on their own for a generation or two, small town academic monopolies on what was presented in galleries, both on campus and in the non-profits, what was written about, what was sanctioned as serious art, is essentially over, evaporating before our eyes and there’s a reason.

Exposure, plain and simple. All citizens have a dusty, mostly unused room in their heads full of gears and levers that they seldom visit, but looking at art turns on the lights. If they think about it at all they quickly begin to realize they like some of it less, some of it more, and before long with gears and levers engaged, they start making their own decisions about art. Taking on that largely private responsibility can ripple out into other areas, more cooking at home, a refocused conviction about larger issues, a more grounded and stable sense of self, such as that, but no need to get too far ahead.

Conditions are evolving so rapidly the complaint I register here turns rancid in hand, irrelevant, pages turning brown before our eyes, and if you go way back to the beginning of this you’ll see I said it would. As art finds its way around the grant funded, peer reviewed checkpoints, seeks and finds a broader audience, art production becomes self-sustaining, and pretty soon neighbors are noticing what’s on the wall. Won’t happen all at once, but sparks and smoke say soon.

Up until just recently most folks were actually afraid of art. Here’s the erudite arm chair interviewer, reading glasses pushed up on his furrowed brow, a world-traveled expert and authority on every level of human activity, yet he proudly proclaims he knows not a thing about art, the only deficiency he’ll admit to and he doesn’t mind who knows it. Lesser humans have been too self-conscious to even try, afraid of the secret opinions of family members, friends and acquaintances, just about anyone who might ‘know’ more about art than them, a self-imposed, life-limiting straight-jacket. Unbuckle and look around, it’s a brand new day.
 

art in trumpland -- seeking its own level

This wasn’t an election of a president. Trump is there by default, could have been some other populist outsider. This friends, by plenty enough to make the difference, was a red-neck repudiation of the arrogance and condescension of progressive culture mavens and academic think tank types, and as we all reevaluate, I realize I’m right there, too. Didn’t vote for Trump but something in the glee of his victory struck a chord in me as well. They didn’t care about his programs, they just wanted to see the other side soiled for a change, and the cry-baby post-election demonstrations make them feel good all over. Too bad there’s tomorrow.

Where from all this rage pundits shrug on the news, life too soft at the top to question much, and they all come to work in limos. Of rage I’ve had my share, but we use it in my trade, a reason to make that first cup of coffee -- can’t complain. They make it easy. This week on the news David Bowie’s art collection, up for grabs, was headlined by a ‘Basquiat,’ in at eight point eight million. Having to live with it would be sweet revenge for all poor people everywhere, but it’s probably destined for storage. Still, this particular artist makes the point better than anyone else in the universe so far. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s resume lists him as a graffiti artist before he met Warhol, his rocket to fame, but he wasn’t. He was just a vandal with a spray can in his hip pocket who went around defacing property, and he wasn’t much more than a vandal as a painter. That’s why we love him so much, so raw, so aching, so burned out, drugged out bored -- same old shit, his slogan. No, really.

That’s what they see out in trump-land, a carnival-grade celebrity cult siphoning off millions just to soak up the loot, to sop up the gravy, no wonder they turn their backs on art. The citizens who actually support much of this artistic endeavor work for a living, and by ‘work’ they mean engaging daily in something they don’t like doing, an unrelenting life-long effort with only incremental rewards. It isn’t that they’re offended by artists never wearing ties or fighting the morning traffic, just hanging around in studios smearing paint on canvas and getting rich like they say on the news, but the small town fact is they simply can’t relate. Some object that perfectly projects a crystalline disavowal of effort and discipline may not move them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t like art.

Their vote has been suppressed, they’ve been disenfranchised, demeaned, discounted. Trump was a mistake, but the pressure has been there for something more engaging and honestly felt, closer to direct experience and daily lives. Art’s new demographic will find in art a more measured and intelligent outlet than a pent-up paroxysm of despair and resentment one time in the voting booth. Balance is a natural state, and aren’t we all together? 

winners and losers -- studio sagas

Hillary works hard her whole life, contributes, sacrifices, and gets run over by a charlatan, a poser, a braggart with nothing to show except an array of nubile women, rococo glamour, and major excessive wealth, his own private plane. What’s that like? Same sort of business happens in the studio all the time. Here a painter sweats over a canvas, I’ve known several, trying to get the sky go behind the trees, putting a single dash of ultramarine behind every fallen leaf, aligning all the highlights and shadows, and never really satisfied. After five, maybe ten years of nights and weekends diligence, with little attention except in-law derision, they give up ultimately to become disgruntled at some menial job, cranky and critical at the dinner table.

There are others who instead focus on the appetites of the audience, the way a ‘reality’ star might, a much more successful route, and so much less strain. The public wants iconic, some would say simple, mostly it wants familiar so repetition is in order, and the game is about notoriety and publicity. Common formula really. It’s a button you push down until it pays, coins shooting out all over the floor, and grad students east and west keep trying different stuff hoping to catch a nod and take the ride. With the mind-warping audacity of a Damien Hirst, somebody like that, it’s possible to break the bank.

These are two separate enterprises even though they share the same name, a source of confusion to many. Thank goodness in art it’s not winner take all, just damned close. Looking back not many people would consider Bobby Rydell or Ricky Nelson as musical geniuses, even though they had hit after hit in the fifties-sixties, but the roots of that music remains because, by the original artists, it was genuine, heartfelt and inspiring, most agree. Turns out it’s not just a matter of artists making better art, but also of more discernment and judgement on the part of the audience -- in truth they support each other, can grow together, and both will benefit.

pandering to the masses -- new markets

What do you want from a work of art, and by art we’re talking about a design of some sort on a flat surface. There are many forms, but here we’re only concerned with the remarkable human ability to translate a flat design into lived experience, to derive meaning and substance from an image in the absence of words. It’s no small talent and oh so very human, examples going back about thirty five thousand years, long before towns, or farms, or, obviously, any words written down.

Before we found those pictures in caves we weren’t sure paleolithic clans even had thoughts beyond a few grunts, but turns out they were clever, observant, and even tried animation, some now-extinct elk galloping across a stone wall with eight legs. Ever since then, in isolated cultures around the planet, people have made pictures, in each case so characteristic of their particular point of view the archeology grad should be able to tick them off, or offer a reasonable guess.

These days there’s a little more stimulation out there than flickering torch-lit images deep in a cave, and art adapts. Art remains a refuge for the human psyche, a sacred garden under threat from the constant encroachment of machines, and the drowning of critical thinking under a rising ocean of ever more vapid ‘manufactured’ life experience. There are things to admire and relate to in works of art the digital overseers will never suspect, thoughtful testaments that unlock linguistic mental gates and allow minds to wander. So, in flailing for anything that floats in the current tsunami of social media and info overload, modern times, what sort of life-saver should you grab? We would suggest owning art with a few basic considerations.

A work of art should be well-made and well-presented first of all. Well-made is an indication of commitment since mastery requires a long, romantically underpaid apprenticeship, and also because this object is supposed to last forever, at least for the rest of your life. The best test of competency for the interested layman is, ‘does it look like anything I’ve seen before, and how much?’ People who have looked at more art get better at this, and some may even graduate to admiring just the abstract qualities of paint, but this a more rarified sensibility, a connoisseur‘s acquired taste, a gigantic bluff in most cases. Applying those advanced principles to portraying common images would be more satisfying to most viewers is a pretty good bet.

Does it, and will it continue to attract your attention when you enter the room? Hung above sixty inches of multi-media surround-sound a painting might be the tortoise in the race, but over years of changing couches art becomes more real, more substantial, and more valued. Largely a product of repetition and familiarity, perhaps, but learning to recognize the authentic personal statement that can carry the weight is going to be a tremendous advantage in a market so lost plumped resumes determine value. 

I imagine with all my heart that there’s a hidden constituency of art buyers whose values and tastes have gone unrepresented, demeaned by art’s bureaucrats and ignored in the media. They’re out there, waiting to be heard, ready to make their influence felt. There’s movement. The ambitions and desires of the larger demographic are contracting and coalescing around greater value -- more nutrition in the diet, more efficiency in transportation, and better stuff around the house. You can improve the patio, replant the landscaping, but you can’t take them with you when you’re transferred folks have noticed. Instead of jet-skis sleeping above the rafters in the garage, an investment in original art that travels well and bestows increasing pleasure over time is about to seem more attractive, to make more sense, to be more interesting.

siege mentality -- the good wait

What’s it like to be on the outside, looking up at the multi-billion dollar art industry, with a religion’s ability to construct its own reality and undergirded by a vast potential for heavy-duty money laundering? It’s a big castle with a wide moat, scholars and commentators, adroit dealers and clever pitchmen manning the towers. Calling them out is delusional, so I’m reminded, but I don’t feel alone. I think I’m just waking up early.

Art has been the caged and humiliated circus animal of the wealthy and high born long enough, it breaks its chains. Art isn’t an event that happens far away at boozy expos where the wealthy piss away inheritance, or is it merchandise to be presented at bogus auctions off in NY, held for the purpose of ratcheting up prices. Art is here, in your neighborhood, seeping out of the ground. We, me and all my friends behind me here, don’t give a damn about their cavalcade of brand-name artists making fools of everyone. Down here people paint the stuff they see, not for money heavens no, but from some urge inside to express themselves, and that turns out to be the same reason people want to own it.
 
Contemporary art has stayed too long under the hothouse lamps of public and institutional support and surely won’t stand the light of day, a public that doesn’t get it and doesn’t care. Any art that engages the public mind, however, causes a change in awareness and awakens capacities most folks have had all along. Once average citizens start noticing original art up in restaurants and salons, purchased and displayed by medical facilities, that old human habit of comparing takes over, and before long they want some. When money is involved discernment sets in quickly, potential patrons self-educate, and local art gets better geometric in a decade.

Those among you who have become immersed in contemporary art, trending toward graffiti this season is what I hear, verily you must be born again. Old Duchamp derided representational art primarily because he wasn’t very good at it, examples exist, and from that bitter well came the headwaters for much twentieth century art. There’s a new innocence abroad, and an arbiter of taste more authentic than paternalistic panels, grant committees, and credentialed curators. In the end the high walls of high art are just going to leach away, no battles to be fought, no showdown at the gate. Once the critical threshold is reached, area art becomes self-sustaining. At that point art goes up in average homes, artists support independent studios, and a regional sensibility asserts itself.