The political cartoonist’s drawings that seemed childish and inept when first encountered, somehow manage to become more expressive and articulate when seen day to day. Once the artist’s vocabulary is assimilated the sense of humor comes through, caricatures are more astute, the comment more pointed. This isn’t a difficult process, in fact it’s automatic -- all it takes is exposure. Your human mind does the rest.
This has always been a primary obstacle for the original artist, yakking away but without being seen enough for anyone to absorb their language, and so the work isn’t ‘seen’ in the first place. The oldest cliche’ about the life of the artist has to do with the lag time between the making of art and its appreciation. So much different these days, with optional venues available, the gallery system loses sway. Uptown rent so high, competition so intense, and the aroused sharks in those track-lit off-white lagoons disquiet the tourists. The product as well is suspect, propped up with tinny testimonials -- listing one-person shows, articles written, honors received, previous price points. Too much art is up in public nowadays for their exclusionary marketing, cultivating a stable of clients constantly encouraged to trade up toward those bigger resumes, to more obscure art.
Murals on blank walls, placements in public venues, even businesses newly established for people to paint while drinking wine, all contribute to a general visual awareness, the acquisition of visual language out in the community. Once visual art establishes a voice that isn’t just trying to sell something, there will rise up a broader community ready to listen, bet they’re out there now. Art isn’t just for beautiful people anymore.
Monday, February 27, 2017
Saturday, February 18, 2017
artists vs galleries -- buying direct
Artists have few things in common with gallery owners, slightly different values and ambitions, life strategies and points of view, yet the gallery system remains the restricted bottle neck of art distribution. As a business the gallery is just a consignment shop for the artist, and an artificially-ranked pre-selected product line for patrons, little wonder it’s so difficult for artists to make a living and for average folks to acquire the art they want.
First of all the gallery business is not always about making money, sometimes more about losing money, handy for tax write-offs and a diversion for those who don’t need any. This is hardly ever the case for the artist, and as desperation is always a disadvantage, galleries still have the upper hand. Theirs is not a business based on volume, they're trolling just for the wealthy fish, with art as their bait.
They build their snares in the most expensive real estate they can hope to afford someday, austere sensory-deprived polar regions where the occasional curious fish swims in, perusing. They are approached with radar-like attention to shoes, demeanor, general finish. A few questions discern origin, wealth, and relative level of art awareness, tailoring the perfect pitch on the fly -- ‘let me show you something special.’ Not many artists want to know the details, the sly confidential glances over teacups it takes to unload their most serious efforts, and galleries think of the artists as innocent, unappreciative brats. There’s these contradictions built in.
Better would be to visit the galleries, pretend an interest just to listen to their spiel, it’s all free, and then go swimming in the wide ocean, art for sale up in restaurants and salons, in artists’ coops, in studios and artist-owned galleries open to the public. Buying direct doesn’t come with the nodding, smiling assurance that you’ve done the right thing, but then you won’t be paying a hundred percent markup for just holding your hand, either.
First of all the gallery business is not always about making money, sometimes more about losing money, handy for tax write-offs and a diversion for those who don’t need any. This is hardly ever the case for the artist, and as desperation is always a disadvantage, galleries still have the upper hand. Theirs is not a business based on volume, they're trolling just for the wealthy fish, with art as their bait.
They build their snares in the most expensive real estate they can hope to afford someday, austere sensory-deprived polar regions where the occasional curious fish swims in, perusing. They are approached with radar-like attention to shoes, demeanor, general finish. A few questions discern origin, wealth, and relative level of art awareness, tailoring the perfect pitch on the fly -- ‘let me show you something special.’ Not many artists want to know the details, the sly confidential glances over teacups it takes to unload their most serious efforts, and galleries think of the artists as innocent, unappreciative brats. There’s these contradictions built in.
Better would be to visit the galleries, pretend an interest just to listen to their spiel, it’s all free, and then go swimming in the wide ocean, art for sale up in restaurants and salons, in artists’ coops, in studios and artist-owned galleries open to the public. Buying direct doesn’t come with the nodding, smiling assurance that you’ve done the right thing, but then you won’t be paying a hundred percent markup for just holding your hand, either.
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
medicinal or recreational -- art’s mission
What’s the cure for everything, fans of the evening news want to know. Mostly it seems the cure for anything comes in the form of a pill, prescription or otherwise. Disease or unease, either way, ingest a chemical. On the other hand, it might not work for everything. The major malady of the day is shrinking attention-span, fractured thinking, and the creeping dread that the big drop on the digital roller coaster isn’t going to have a bottom, everyone starting to scream. The world speeds up, cascades of photographs flicker across the screen leaving a montage in afterimage, and every ad, every cause, every political agenda dive bombs the nervous system just to be heard -- it’s gotten brutal, people living in individual fortresses, with multiple locks and barbed wire over the door peeping out hardly seeing nothing at all.
Paintings, on the other hand, are slow. They can’t even be seen at the 1.5 second pace of average visitors to a museum, although they do provide benches for those who care to spend more time. Some paintings have more to say the longer you look, and simply slowing down to consider them can feel like meditation to the modern citizen. This effect becomes compounded when art is owned and seen each day, at home or in the office. As the 3-D printed, pressure extruded, recycled composite material reality we inhabit becomes more fluid, more uniform, more interchangeable, a made-by-hand object that remains unchanged for all the time you own it becomes increasingly unique, and can provide great comfort as time goes by.
Not all art will bring relief, quacks abound, but there are a few simple tests. For one thing, a copy of anything won’t have much potency, doesn’t matter how ‘accurate‘ it is. A vital component of an original work of art is the artist’s actual involvement, intention and execution, and technology can’t reproduce that part. Beyond that the artist has to invest their own life history, their vision, their total effort -- the reason it’s called art. Something funny happens. Those elements remain and radiate from the wall, becoming more noticed with passing time, more intimate and friendly with each decade. Your own life experience will guide you, and picking the right art is automatic.
The right art for you causes chemical interactions in your brain which you’ll experience as recognition, understanding, undifferentiated pleasure, you won’t know why. Your tastes may change, but the best guide will still be those sacred molecules ready to light up your cerebrum when the art you like comes into view. The art you eventually own will become your stepping stones across the digital tide washing around us, slowing you down, stretching your attention span, making you feel like a human again.
Paintings, on the other hand, are slow. They can’t even be seen at the 1.5 second pace of average visitors to a museum, although they do provide benches for those who care to spend more time. Some paintings have more to say the longer you look, and simply slowing down to consider them can feel like meditation to the modern citizen. This effect becomes compounded when art is owned and seen each day, at home or in the office. As the 3-D printed, pressure extruded, recycled composite material reality we inhabit becomes more fluid, more uniform, more interchangeable, a made-by-hand object that remains unchanged for all the time you own it becomes increasingly unique, and can provide great comfort as time goes by.
Not all art will bring relief, quacks abound, but there are a few simple tests. For one thing, a copy of anything won’t have much potency, doesn’t matter how ‘accurate‘ it is. A vital component of an original work of art is the artist’s actual involvement, intention and execution, and technology can’t reproduce that part. Beyond that the artist has to invest their own life history, their vision, their total effort -- the reason it’s called art. Something funny happens. Those elements remain and radiate from the wall, becoming more noticed with passing time, more intimate and friendly with each decade. Your own life experience will guide you, and picking the right art is automatic.
The right art for you causes chemical interactions in your brain which you’ll experience as recognition, understanding, undifferentiated pleasure, you won’t know why. Your tastes may change, but the best guide will still be those sacred molecules ready to light up your cerebrum when the art you like comes into view. The art you eventually own will become your stepping stones across the digital tide washing around us, slowing you down, stretching your attention span, making you feel like a human again.
Thursday, February 2, 2017
working class art -- on its own
‘When the U.S. Government Paid the Working Class to be Artists’, jan 31, artsy magazine online.
Saw this article about artists of the WPA, and the freudian admission in the title caught my eye. First of all you can’t hire someone to be an artist who hasn’t paid the dues, it isn’t day-labor. Even so there is a working class point of view, and some artists have it. The article says they discovered an old cache of thirties-era posters in a trunk somewhere, advocating worker solidarity, concern for the environment, book reading, such as that, just a few words with graphic content to convey the message. Some of them needed no words at all.
Rich people don’t like working class nothing, and that goes double for art. They were highly offended by Diego Rivera and his peasant army of painters and poster designers, communicating back and forth throughout the thirties, establishing common ground for the bulk of humanity, so subversive. The war consolidated control for the few, and the entire social consciousness art movement was denounced as ‘communist inspired’ -- tarred, feathered, rode out of town. In its place, most folks already know, came years and years of rich people’s art -- collectible, deductible, abstract and mute.
After the long repression there’s new conversation in an old language, the universal visual mode which requires no translation, yet conveys meaning and emotion, charm and consolation, and many layers and shadings of thought words can’t touch. Don’t trust translations, summaries, or critical reviews, usually produced by art’s hanger-ons, hogtied with words and concepts, consensus seeking unseeing nabobs. Use your own eyes instead, you’re qualified. We’re all qualified. So what if we’re working class, assigned to the economy’s infantry, subject to incoming from all directions. Art addresses that.
The time for government programs has past. Their self-perpetuating ‘peer group’ reviews failed to advance a common heritage, failed to make art accessible to the people who paid the bills or to produce an art sustainable on its own. Working class people, who isn’t really, are going to increasingly recognize in art an encapsulation of what they feel and experience, or they won’t. It isn’t up to anyone else. The essential silliness of the competitive acquisition cult at the high end of art’s media visibility hasn’t been helpful, but it’s not really relevant on a working class level, and no one cares. Art gets real when times get tight. It happened before, FDR had the vision, but this time uncle isn’t going to hold its hand.
Saw this article about artists of the WPA, and the freudian admission in the title caught my eye. First of all you can’t hire someone to be an artist who hasn’t paid the dues, it isn’t day-labor. Even so there is a working class point of view, and some artists have it. The article says they discovered an old cache of thirties-era posters in a trunk somewhere, advocating worker solidarity, concern for the environment, book reading, such as that, just a few words with graphic content to convey the message. Some of them needed no words at all.
Rich people don’t like working class nothing, and that goes double for art. They were highly offended by Diego Rivera and his peasant army of painters and poster designers, communicating back and forth throughout the thirties, establishing common ground for the bulk of humanity, so subversive. The war consolidated control for the few, and the entire social consciousness art movement was denounced as ‘communist inspired’ -- tarred, feathered, rode out of town. In its place, most folks already know, came years and years of rich people’s art -- collectible, deductible, abstract and mute.
After the long repression there’s new conversation in an old language, the universal visual mode which requires no translation, yet conveys meaning and emotion, charm and consolation, and many layers and shadings of thought words can’t touch. Don’t trust translations, summaries, or critical reviews, usually produced by art’s hanger-ons, hogtied with words and concepts, consensus seeking unseeing nabobs. Use your own eyes instead, you’re qualified. We’re all qualified. So what if we’re working class, assigned to the economy’s infantry, subject to incoming from all directions. Art addresses that.
The time for government programs has past. Their self-perpetuating ‘peer group’ reviews failed to advance a common heritage, failed to make art accessible to the people who paid the bills or to produce an art sustainable on its own. Working class people, who isn’t really, are going to increasingly recognize in art an encapsulation of what they feel and experience, or they won’t. It isn’t up to anyone else. The essential silliness of the competitive acquisition cult at the high end of art’s media visibility hasn’t been helpful, but it’s not really relevant on a working class level, and no one cares. Art gets real when times get tight. It happened before, FDR had the vision, but this time uncle isn’t going to hold its hand.
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