escaping oz -- the art of self

So what happened to art after WWII? Some have suggested a massive ‘failure of nerve’ in society, among both winners and losers, a collective inability to address a shattered reality. Abstraction, at the extreme end of the visual art spectrum, suddenly became virulent, and like an invasive species began dismantling and replacing the existing order. Any reference to the world we all share disappeared, to be replaced by psychological excavations, the artist’s inner being resplendent in drips and slashes, really? Sure, art evolves and in this moment, immersed in the super-star modern mythology, the pantheon of successive geniuses who brought us to here seems to make sense, but from the outside, to the newly arrived alien, to anyone with a historical perspective, to people right here and now with real and natural concerns about living day to day, it all looks sorta dumb. 

The closet-guilty super-rich attempt to impress each other by pissing away megabucks. This seems to happen in societies with great inequities, so quite often. The well-padded ultra-wealthy don’t care about art, and as a fact it’s probably beyond them, their metal unquenched by life’s rainy weather, so sad. They only respond to price tags, and their game-show auctions and accountant-driven cultural philanthropies are a wallow of corruption, and don’t their ugly art so testify? Jeff Koons’s giant knick-knack cozies exude this quality of skin-crawly revulsion, of innocence regurgitated, and that’s the beauty of it don’t you see? Maybe not. Just what the hell is going on? 

Art was kidnapped sometime last century, held hostage and forced to betray its sacred mission of enabling a perception of shared reality, of becoming an instrument of empathy and understanding for all to see. Somehow they privatized art, limited access, humiliated and abused it. Dealers and scholars joined in, sharing the advantages of secret knowledge, a sly conspiracy of winks and nods. They abetted the odd inversion of logic that made the accidental splash vastly superior to the intentional mark, books were written. Buy that, accept the industry’s tall tale, and a long succession of shallow sensationalist breakthroughs and celebrity trivia come your way.  

Who would speak for the victims of crime, the people who live in regular houses with little prints of birds and flowers on the wall? How come model homes never have anything but generic abstracts above the couch, those perfect examples of how to live? Where is art in the lives of everyday people, in their houses, in their offices, in the waiting rooms and reception areas they visit all the time? Stolen long ago, blindfolded and forced to kneel in their dollar-green emerald city before the fake magician, Duchamp, hiding behind his velvet curtain of twisted intellect, a vast con job. Time to wake up and realize the ability to judge art for ourselves was inside us all along. Heart, mind, and courage are yours to recognize, to own and live with -- no place like home.