art of revolution -- self-verifying grassroots

There’s a revolution at hand simply because it’s time, the old system worn out and sinking slowly, its basic contradictions having come home to roost. The industrial expansion after WWII started the money percolating upward and we all got a taste, but thick foam has formed at the top and the fizzing has been getting less. Time to stir it up again. Right or left, it teeters, and technology will serve whichever, sane and sustainable or no place to hide.

Art has a part, an extremely asymmetrical insurgency down on the ground, behind the scenes, and it's partisan for the sane and sustainable, the full realization of human potential, the more humane and most pleasant side. Don’t expect the state to help with this. Committees will choose the art that fills the space closest to budget, with some left over for lunch and such, but won’t enhance the escalator ride all that much. The revolution is going to start underground, below the media’s academic erudition, behind the non-profit curator’s back, but you’ll see it coming.

Art will go up in restaurants and offices, direct from the hand of the artist to the eye of the viewer, like a live performance all the time, and it’s bound to connect person to person, what art does best. ‘One-day’ painting events draw figurative artists out in the open where interested citizens can compare their color sketches to familiar neighborhood sights. These are catapults against the art establishment’s insistence on exclusion and cutting-edge obscurity. When enough local art is seen, accepted, and purchased to become self-sustaining, art becomes a viable avenue for community expression and self awareness, and political concerns and environmental sensitivity are in there too.

Trust yourself to look at art, to see what’s there, to learn what makes it good or bad, it’s political. Ceding personal autonomy to higher authority has crossover consequences, and a good beginning at taking it back is accepting the responsibility to see and judge works of art. As a fact, the fascists hate art and artists, in case you needed a further hint, so join the revolution and see for yourself.