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.
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.
1 comment:
Well said! Especially that last paragraph.
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