For years, even decades after WWII, on remote islands in the south seas there existed a weird religion, the ‘cargo cult,’ the result of a sad misunderstanding. Isolated island peoples had witnessed the great war through a very narrow window. One day engineers arrive to bulldoze an airstrip and within a few days more large silver birds, C-47’s, begin to land and disgorge all sorts of stuff, machinery, ammunition, and K-rations. From the trees the native people saw everything and thought they understood. After the god-like warriors left, they cleared their own small strips in the forest and built rickety vine-lashed towers hoping to attract a large silver bird of their own. They sat and waited while the crops withered, becoming poorer and poorer hoping to be suddenly rich. Seems pretty quaint from where we are, wishful thinking plumb out of hand.
Damien Hirst can get away with stuff because he’s a darling of the super rich. He understands their superficial needs and wants, and this cynical insight provides his edge, his super-star advantage. Having blown through the best of everything, the well-positioned crave the pointless, the ingrown, to be sullied and lightly ridiculed, they don’t know why. They see through the sham, the tawdry goofiness of it all, and yet still embrace it, so sophisticated, and it sorta makes sense. The ultra-wealthy play poker with art, buying and crating ‘masterworks’ until the price goes up, and there’s nothing wrong with that -- if you’re so rich life is boring. What’s sad is to emulate those off-hand, self-mocking, seven-dimensional puzzle-pies out in the provinces where regular people have jobs and pay mortgages.
The kind of art rich people crave isn’t difficult to produce, since doing anything well is out of fashion, and that makes art totally open and democratic, is what you’d think. Since no one can say what’s good anymore, acceptance breeds acceptance, and cocktail-party personalities rocket to the top to fade out after a ‘season’ or two, a scene exciting and glamorous, but not an act that plays well in the provinces. Oh maybe the stray westward-leaning saudi prince, or perhaps a lost chinese billionaire might have flat tire on the limo and wander into some little strip mall art gallery only to recognize stuff like in their penthouse, but way too cheap to take seriously so won’t buy anyway -- silver bird lands, pecks around, flies away.
Art galleries struggle to survive and insist on blaming the customer for not being eager to step up and pretend to be rich, although some do. Non-profit galleries host well-attended social events, but their galleries stay sleepy and dark the rest of the month, and the museum at the U stopped charging admission, one suspects, so they wouldn’t have to report negligible attendance figures when budgets are discussed. What’s wrong with this picture, literally? From within the industry it’s easy to see it’s the lowbrow cretin culture, playoffs and pickups, that’s holding us back, common citizens too dumb to like art, but that isn’t what it looks like from the outside.
Charity professionals latch onto art as a socially benign gig, the perfect patient who won’t die and yet never gets well as long as they're running the show, so it works for them, but the retail end has been paltry. Embracing the highbrow sensibility of Manhattan has left all those brave-front, upbeat, small town gallery directors staring out through plate glass. It seems galleries are always popping up and flaming out, in what has been a remarkably unstable business. This will change, it’s changing now. Aspiring artists are increasingly abandoning the academic, institutional model, a life based on grants and stipends, insular and aloof in their hometowns, to find forms of expression more compatible with the local climate, more in tune with area expectations. It’s a place to start. We will all grow together, our own chickens here to hatch, silver bird fly on.
Saturday, April 28, 2018
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
art evolves -- the next small thing
The 1% grabbed 82% of all wealth created in 2017 ....... CNN Money
Unsustainable is the first word that comes to mind, so let’s just assume change. The world of tomorrow will be different, and there’s an easy way to get there, and the rest are hard ways. The easy way would be for a rising generational consciousness to finally find exorbitant wealth distasteful, and with cooperation and good humor ensure that the product of human energy is fairly distributed to everyone, or at least a lot closer to that than now. Art will seem to be the first to change just because it’s the most visible. That’s its job, to spread the word.
I predict art will again become a real thing, a solace and an expression for its owner just the way it used to be. Enormous wealth has caused an aberration in society’s artistic expression, and given rise to a velvet-rope cult of celebrity, a mega-inflated market in relics of the stars, and a to-the-bone corruption they think is funny, let them laugh. The art they extol tells their story, and it’s pretty clear they don’t know the difference between a genius and a rank opportunist, and can even be heard to say, ‘you mean there is one?’ Robert Motherwell, pick any of them, couldn’t be expected to to tell his own work from an awkward forgery, large ink blots, an expert stands less chance still, and either way what would you care? You could paint one yourself, but wouldn’t bother.
No wonder art seems superfluous, a pointless luxury, and somehow non-essential to everyday life, for most people. When change comes round, one day they’ll simply start to notice, in the end mostly a matter of exposure. The medical facility buys local art, creating open galleries seen by everyone, amateur groups paint outdoors and compare their work at the end of the day, and businesses begin to hang local art to much public approval, the world is turning. After long suppression, an awareness and desire for local art and pride in its ownership could go ‘viral’ in any upscale neighborhood almost anywhere, and trickle down as well.
Big art will go bust one day, with nothing to sustain it but a speculator’s consensus among millionaires. They’ll lose interest, consume conspicuously somewhere else, or maybe go out of style themselves. It’s pointless to deride their art, since they couldn’t care less what it looks like anyway. None of that will matter -- when area artists are recognized by their work, when studios and galleries are integral to local economies, and when average citizens understand that to truly personalize a home means buying art.
Unsustainable is the first word that comes to mind, so let’s just assume change. The world of tomorrow will be different, and there’s an easy way to get there, and the rest are hard ways. The easy way would be for a rising generational consciousness to finally find exorbitant wealth distasteful, and with cooperation and good humor ensure that the product of human energy is fairly distributed to everyone, or at least a lot closer to that than now. Art will seem to be the first to change just because it’s the most visible. That’s its job, to spread the word.
I predict art will again become a real thing, a solace and an expression for its owner just the way it used to be. Enormous wealth has caused an aberration in society’s artistic expression, and given rise to a velvet-rope cult of celebrity, a mega-inflated market in relics of the stars, and a to-the-bone corruption they think is funny, let them laugh. The art they extol tells their story, and it’s pretty clear they don’t know the difference between a genius and a rank opportunist, and can even be heard to say, ‘you mean there is one?’ Robert Motherwell, pick any of them, couldn’t be expected to to tell his own work from an awkward forgery, large ink blots, an expert stands less chance still, and either way what would you care? You could paint one yourself, but wouldn’t bother.
No wonder art seems superfluous, a pointless luxury, and somehow non-essential to everyday life, for most people. When change comes round, one day they’ll simply start to notice, in the end mostly a matter of exposure. The medical facility buys local art, creating open galleries seen by everyone, amateur groups paint outdoors and compare their work at the end of the day, and businesses begin to hang local art to much public approval, the world is turning. After long suppression, an awareness and desire for local art and pride in its ownership could go ‘viral’ in any upscale neighborhood almost anywhere, and trickle down as well.
Big art will go bust one day, with nothing to sustain it but a speculator’s consensus among millionaires. They’ll lose interest, consume conspicuously somewhere else, or maybe go out of style themselves. It’s pointless to deride their art, since they couldn’t care less what it looks like anyway. None of that will matter -- when area artists are recognized by their work, when studios and galleries are integral to local economies, and when average citizens understand that to truly personalize a home means buying art.
Friday, April 20, 2018
inattentional blindness -- seeing what’s invisible
Inattentional blindness is a psychological lack of attention that is not associated with any vision defects or deficits. It may be further defined as the event in which an individual fails to perceive an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight.
This is a difficult concept, that stuff right in front isn’t seen because it’s unexpected, or maybe we don’t care, but in any case it questions our belief in basic sight, don’t you think? The story goes that the ships that brought Cortez to Vera Cruz weren’t seen at first by the natives on the shore, and they assumed he arose from the sea, having never seen european ships before. Maybe it happens all the time. Could it be that while everyone looks at the same things, what they see is different, depending on how they assign their attention? It would explain a lot.
Did the person in front of you at the checkout use food stamps, and what frivolous non-essential did they buy? Is there a state trooper on the overpass? Are there any celebrities in this bar? Some people go through life without seeing or thinking any of that, but enough about other people, what about you? Driving to work how much do you see? Traffic lights, of course, and lane changes up to about four cars ahead, pulling into the parking space. A ball bouncing down a driveway should ring a bell, but clouds reflected in the lake, dogwoods on a hillside, the magic at dusk in the springtime when fireflies fill the fields might be missed. When driving it’s understandable, but how about the rest of the time? How much in front of you do you habitually not see at all, and how would you know?
Politics makes it fairly clear people on the other side are seeing something totally different, responding to different ‘facts’ in the same story, but only the ones that verify their own beliefs. They, those on the other side, have tuned their attention to stuff you don’t care about, and they’re not seeing anything on your side. We’re all on different pages, maybe not even in the same book, and getting worse everyday, what a dilemma. Art has a role to play, and it’s simple, but first, do you see paintings at all? This is a good first question for both layman and expert, for different reasons. The ordinary citizen may have believed the evening news, that art was a caviar-class trophy hunt for billionaires, or maybe they were intimidated by the priceless art in museums, and just never felt ‘invited’ to take area artists seriously. On the other hand, scholars and various sorts of experts perceive art though such an overlay of category and classification, whatever's on the canvas is opaque to them, and they only look at signatures and rank previous owners, such as that.
If you actually look at paintings, you’ll wind up seeing more -- doesn’t matter which side you’re on. Did the artist do something you wouldn’t expect, and have you finally noticed it? Maybe not the first time, but the third time, the thousandth time, or maybe each time you might see something you haven’t seen before. Did the artist intend that mark or was it an accident, and does it help define the image or perhaps reveal a character trait of the artist, thoughts like that. Paintings inspire these thoughts by degrees, but it’s the question you’ve asked yourself that causes growth, and art is just the hook, the facilitator, the nautilus equipment you use for the task. If you can decelerate your normal operating speed and direct your attention toward a painting, slow down enough to actually see what the artist presented, this readjustment will carry over, opening new channels in your head and sooner or later you’ll be seeing stuff new to you that was there all along.
Now I understand for many art is about something else, economic and social arrival, a barter in autographs, and I find all that status seeking and celebrity bumping remarkably uninteresting, leave it at that. Here at owning art we contend painting represents a prior technology, essentially dating to the renaissance, one capable of altering reality by opening and reordering the perceptual net, by stretching expectation and jarring awake complacency and inattention. Admittedly, there is an open question about whether painting has become irrelevant in a digital age, or if, as a result of our condensed modes of info consumption, original paintings have become more potent and more transformative than ever. Some paintings you might see in a museum of will advance from the frame to greet you when you come into the room, but that’s a pretty heavy dose for the average home, and some form of original art from a local painter you might know, or know of, or have seen before in other places, might have the same beneficial effects over time.
Maybe you won’t see the other side, they’re an obstinate bunch, but your world will seem less black and white if you develop an interest in art, looking at all of it and trying to see. Your inattentional blindness will grow less, your lenses will be cleansed and scales will fall, if just a little, and the world will seem wider and in more detail. You really don’t even have to buy a painting to gain this purely personal super-power from looking at art, but you’ll probably want to.
This is a difficult concept, that stuff right in front isn’t seen because it’s unexpected, or maybe we don’t care, but in any case it questions our belief in basic sight, don’t you think? The story goes that the ships that brought Cortez to Vera Cruz weren’t seen at first by the natives on the shore, and they assumed he arose from the sea, having never seen european ships before. Maybe it happens all the time. Could it be that while everyone looks at the same things, what they see is different, depending on how they assign their attention? It would explain a lot.
Did the person in front of you at the checkout use food stamps, and what frivolous non-essential did they buy? Is there a state trooper on the overpass? Are there any celebrities in this bar? Some people go through life without seeing or thinking any of that, but enough about other people, what about you? Driving to work how much do you see? Traffic lights, of course, and lane changes up to about four cars ahead, pulling into the parking space. A ball bouncing down a driveway should ring a bell, but clouds reflected in the lake, dogwoods on a hillside, the magic at dusk in the springtime when fireflies fill the fields might be missed. When driving it’s understandable, but how about the rest of the time? How much in front of you do you habitually not see at all, and how would you know?
Politics makes it fairly clear people on the other side are seeing something totally different, responding to different ‘facts’ in the same story, but only the ones that verify their own beliefs. They, those on the other side, have tuned their attention to stuff you don’t care about, and they’re not seeing anything on your side. We’re all on different pages, maybe not even in the same book, and getting worse everyday, what a dilemma. Art has a role to play, and it’s simple, but first, do you see paintings at all? This is a good first question for both layman and expert, for different reasons. The ordinary citizen may have believed the evening news, that art was a caviar-class trophy hunt for billionaires, or maybe they were intimidated by the priceless art in museums, and just never felt ‘invited’ to take area artists seriously. On the other hand, scholars and various sorts of experts perceive art though such an overlay of category and classification, whatever's on the canvas is opaque to them, and they only look at signatures and rank previous owners, such as that.
If you actually look at paintings, you’ll wind up seeing more -- doesn’t matter which side you’re on. Did the artist do something you wouldn’t expect, and have you finally noticed it? Maybe not the first time, but the third time, the thousandth time, or maybe each time you might see something you haven’t seen before. Did the artist intend that mark or was it an accident, and does it help define the image or perhaps reveal a character trait of the artist, thoughts like that. Paintings inspire these thoughts by degrees, but it’s the question you’ve asked yourself that causes growth, and art is just the hook, the facilitator, the nautilus equipment you use for the task. If you can decelerate your normal operating speed and direct your attention toward a painting, slow down enough to actually see what the artist presented, this readjustment will carry over, opening new channels in your head and sooner or later you’ll be seeing stuff new to you that was there all along.
Now I understand for many art is about something else, economic and social arrival, a barter in autographs, and I find all that status seeking and celebrity bumping remarkably uninteresting, leave it at that. Here at owning art we contend painting represents a prior technology, essentially dating to the renaissance, one capable of altering reality by opening and reordering the perceptual net, by stretching expectation and jarring awake complacency and inattention. Admittedly, there is an open question about whether painting has become irrelevant in a digital age, or if, as a result of our condensed modes of info consumption, original paintings have become more potent and more transformative than ever. Some paintings you might see in a museum of will advance from the frame to greet you when you come into the room, but that’s a pretty heavy dose for the average home, and some form of original art from a local painter you might know, or know of, or have seen before in other places, might have the same beneficial effects over time.
Maybe you won’t see the other side, they’re an obstinate bunch, but your world will seem less black and white if you develop an interest in art, looking at all of it and trying to see. Your inattentional blindness will grow less, your lenses will be cleansed and scales will fall, if just a little, and the world will seem wider and in more detail. You really don’t even have to buy a painting to gain this purely personal super-power from looking at art, but you’ll probably want to.
Monday, April 16, 2018
art for business -- a new perspective
So what would happen if, across the country, a class approaching their MBA’s decide all together, on every campus, to use their skills to benefit all mankind, and disappoint their fathers? Humans stopped evolving physically a couple of hundred millennia back, but human mentality changes all the time, adapts to new conditions and adjusts for the best outcomes, although not always before it’s too late. Those renegade business types better come along quick. Rampant commercialism promises more and more stuff, but it degrades and compromises the consumer, a classic case of blind expediency leading nowhere good, time to evolve.
The business people hold the reins on our dollar-driven way of life, great wealth rides in the coach, and scholars and professionals climb aboard to stay dry. It’s the business leaders who have the means to make change, and if they change everything changes. They’ve never really engaged with art, but there are nuts and bolts reasons to reconsider this valuable asset. We’re not talking ‘corporate collections,’ curated by a vice-president’s artsy niece, and destined to be forgotten in a warehouse, that’s been done. It could turn out purchasing and displaying original art in offices and production areas is less expensive and more efficient than other office upgrades, and provides a more effective influence on job performance and job satisfaction than motivational posters and attendance incentives.
Within an industry, original art stands out. Vendor representatives making endless rounds of similar companies notice and remember offices with art, and for businesses with a public interface, interesting art makes a positive impression on customers. Original art helps to convey both an established corporate identity and a progressive mentality, all at once. Art bought and displayed for the benefit of employees is a gesture of respect far less costly, and perhaps more appreciated, than lots of small bonuses, and an accomplished painting or two provides a daily example of commitment and attainment that will pay back for years to come in quality control. Thoughtfully displayed art in the conference room impresses prospective associates and intimidates the competition. In offices, reception, and even areas available to production staff, original art catalyzes innovation and forges group identity. There’s even an account for office expenses, so no one’s personal pocket gets dinged for good art on the wall.
For all those practical bottom-line reasons, do you think having art around might influence the way the typical businessperson thinks? Could be, art is insidious. For one thing, knowing about art, owning and living with art, could be considered a reward and compensation for a lifetime of dedication, and success, a reason for all the hard work. Purchases of art for the office could be the beginning of that. It does rub off, simple exposure to art stimulates curiosity, and the hook is set. Would art acquired for strategic corporate considerations begin to mellow out cut-throat industrial competition, engender more respect and fairness top to bottom, and make the world a greener, nicer place to live, probably not, but it could turn out to be the most visible sign that it’s happening.
The business people hold the reins on our dollar-driven way of life, great wealth rides in the coach, and scholars and professionals climb aboard to stay dry. It’s the business leaders who have the means to make change, and if they change everything changes. They’ve never really engaged with art, but there are nuts and bolts reasons to reconsider this valuable asset. We’re not talking ‘corporate collections,’ curated by a vice-president’s artsy niece, and destined to be forgotten in a warehouse, that’s been done. It could turn out purchasing and displaying original art in offices and production areas is less expensive and more efficient than other office upgrades, and provides a more effective influence on job performance and job satisfaction than motivational posters and attendance incentives.
Within an industry, original art stands out. Vendor representatives making endless rounds of similar companies notice and remember offices with art, and for businesses with a public interface, interesting art makes a positive impression on customers. Original art helps to convey both an established corporate identity and a progressive mentality, all at once. Art bought and displayed for the benefit of employees is a gesture of respect far less costly, and perhaps more appreciated, than lots of small bonuses, and an accomplished painting or two provides a daily example of commitment and attainment that will pay back for years to come in quality control. Thoughtfully displayed art in the conference room impresses prospective associates and intimidates the competition. In offices, reception, and even areas available to production staff, original art catalyzes innovation and forges group identity. There’s even an account for office expenses, so no one’s personal pocket gets dinged for good art on the wall.
For all those practical bottom-line reasons, do you think having art around might influence the way the typical businessperson thinks? Could be, art is insidious. For one thing, knowing about art, owning and living with art, could be considered a reward and compensation for a lifetime of dedication, and success, a reason for all the hard work. Purchases of art for the office could be the beginning of that. It does rub off, simple exposure to art stimulates curiosity, and the hook is set. Would art acquired for strategic corporate considerations begin to mellow out cut-throat industrial competition, engender more respect and fairness top to bottom, and make the world a greener, nicer place to live, probably not, but it could turn out to be the most visible sign that it’s happening.
Saturday, April 7, 2018
losing the NEA -- who will lead us
What’s going to happen next? Art will be there, but it will morph and change to fit the situation, adapt to new conditions, and have a different meaning to people coming along after, depending on their needs. The current situation in the heartland is one of depression and drought, independent artists waiting tables, unseen bird prints in the hall, normal for so long by now it’s just seems normal. Now, I don’t know where all those muralists hired by the WPA came from, painting in post offices and public buildings across the land, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t learn through on-the-job-training. They must have been around already and doing pretty well until the depression came along, so the notion our national culture never supported artists may not be historically accurate, however, it all came true in the fifties when high art flew away leaving a stunned population behind.
Popular artists, Grant Wood, Ed Hopper, Tom Benton, maestro Diego Rivera, and all the hometown practitioners disappeared, went underground, shunned by national media and lost to popular awareness. Abstractionists marched away at a right angle, turning art into an essentially literary enterprise, soaring scholarship and movie star fame, but their rote repetitions weren’t much to look at, and not all that popular. The early AbEx painters received massive government support because their giant paintings were exhibited as international cold-war declarations of free enterprise and unbridled egoism, existentially superior to the other side’s severely regimented bolshoi ballet, makes you so proud. A schism was formed, and high culture appropriated art as their exclusive marker of financial and social attainment. These new rich didn’t much care what it looked so long as it was obviously expensive, or at least looked expensive, taking their cues from slick magazines happy to validate any smear, for a taste of the take. Art became a status symbol, a monopoly token to collect, and ‘about to be famous’ became the secret sauce that made anything non-referential palatable.
Government became involved, big time. The NEA arose in the sixties, and banished referential painting of any kind, preferring to support more progressive, more adventurous and less commonly accessible forms, and for years figurative art was dismissed without a second look, so commercial, too easy, just dumb. Students who brought such paintings to class critiques caught ridicule from the instructor first of all, and playground rules applied. As a result, a wide uncrossed wasteland grew between a high culture, elegant and sophisticated brand-name collecting, and art for the masses, manufactured decorator art, posters and prints, and the substitute art available at the mall. There remained regional genre markets where representational artists took refuge and where the talented did quite well, but their efforts never enter a national conversation.
Well, it’s all over now. Local coops spring up, and amateur artists group together to motivate and inspire each other, making better art each day for themselves first of all, and local businesses have begun to allow local artists to exhibit on their walls because customers enjoy it. Social media enables local artists to become familiar to fans who come out to see their actual work, and maybe take some home. There are, incidentally, also a few psychological changes happening in society overall, and a national reassessing of personal identity plays a part in a new taste for art as well. The arid basin between a popular appetite for intimate individual expression, and the artists already living and working in everyone’s hometown is about to revive, and it’s already starting to rain.
The NEA will still beg for money, who cares? Art never asked to be a charity, to be crippled by abstraction, encouraged toward the pointedly abrasive, and then held up as an example of a poor disadvantaged and malnourished relic of culture that just wouldn’t survive without massive government assistance. There’s a name for that brand of madness, that sort of crime. Let Trump demolish the NEA, we’ll get by. Local art and artists are getting better, just as citizens are beginning to expect more, comparing area artists in public settings, and becoming familiar with what they do well. The new awareness engendered by this dark political interlude, the contradictions of our hypocritical society welling up and exiting the body politic like a rampaging boil, eventually will lead us to a new civility and rationality, and probably more art up in houses, with artists taking the place of athletes as heroes in hometowns. Wouldn’t it be nice?
Popular artists, Grant Wood, Ed Hopper, Tom Benton, maestro Diego Rivera, and all the hometown practitioners disappeared, went underground, shunned by national media and lost to popular awareness. Abstractionists marched away at a right angle, turning art into an essentially literary enterprise, soaring scholarship and movie star fame, but their rote repetitions weren’t much to look at, and not all that popular. The early AbEx painters received massive government support because their giant paintings were exhibited as international cold-war declarations of free enterprise and unbridled egoism, existentially superior to the other side’s severely regimented bolshoi ballet, makes you so proud. A schism was formed, and high culture appropriated art as their exclusive marker of financial and social attainment. These new rich didn’t much care what it looked so long as it was obviously expensive, or at least looked expensive, taking their cues from slick magazines happy to validate any smear, for a taste of the take. Art became a status symbol, a monopoly token to collect, and ‘about to be famous’ became the secret sauce that made anything non-referential palatable.
Government became involved, big time. The NEA arose in the sixties, and banished referential painting of any kind, preferring to support more progressive, more adventurous and less commonly accessible forms, and for years figurative art was dismissed without a second look, so commercial, too easy, just dumb. Students who brought such paintings to class critiques caught ridicule from the instructor first of all, and playground rules applied. As a result, a wide uncrossed wasteland grew between a high culture, elegant and sophisticated brand-name collecting, and art for the masses, manufactured decorator art, posters and prints, and the substitute art available at the mall. There remained regional genre markets where representational artists took refuge and where the talented did quite well, but their efforts never enter a national conversation.
Well, it’s all over now. Local coops spring up, and amateur artists group together to motivate and inspire each other, making better art each day for themselves first of all, and local businesses have begun to allow local artists to exhibit on their walls because customers enjoy it. Social media enables local artists to become familiar to fans who come out to see their actual work, and maybe take some home. There are, incidentally, also a few psychological changes happening in society overall, and a national reassessing of personal identity plays a part in a new taste for art as well. The arid basin between a popular appetite for intimate individual expression, and the artists already living and working in everyone’s hometown is about to revive, and it’s already starting to rain.
The NEA will still beg for money, who cares? Art never asked to be a charity, to be crippled by abstraction, encouraged toward the pointedly abrasive, and then held up as an example of a poor disadvantaged and malnourished relic of culture that just wouldn’t survive without massive government assistance. There’s a name for that brand of madness, that sort of crime. Let Trump demolish the NEA, we’ll get by. Local art and artists are getting better, just as citizens are beginning to expect more, comparing area artists in public settings, and becoming familiar with what they do well. The new awareness engendered by this dark political interlude, the contradictions of our hypocritical society welling up and exiting the body politic like a rampaging boil, eventually will lead us to a new civility and rationality, and probably more art up in houses, with artists taking the place of athletes as heroes in hometowns. Wouldn’t it be nice?
Monday, April 2, 2018
quoting Chris Hedges -- sorta
So I’m reading a Chris Hedges essay posted on fb, but only half interested. This guy is overbearingly strident, absolutely convinced of his own wisdom, and ready to kick anyone in his way, lookout. Get the feeling he’d kick himself to make a point. Then I began to notice a certain a similar brutalization of logic to fit the message he’s selling along with a withering contempt for establishment thinking, and realized in certain respects it sounded familiar.
I occasionally offer global solutions and suggest actions the individual might find within their power, like looking at and owning art, and each post attempt to present a few reasons for what I’m saying, but stripped down the complaints are strikingly similar, so I’ll present both versions, his and mine.
‘The ideology of neoliberalism never made sense. It was a con. No society can effectively govern itself by basing its decisions and policies on the dictates of the marketplace. The marketplace became God............... Those who questioned the doctrine were cast out like medieval heretics, their careers blocked and their voices muted or silenced. The contradictions, lies and destruction within neoliberal ideology were ignored by those who dominated the national discourse, leading to mounting frustration and rage among a populace that had been abandoned and betrayed.’ —- Chris Hedges
‘The ideology of contemporary art never made sense. It was a con. No society can effectively govern itself by basing its decisions and policies on the dictates of the marketplace. The marketplace became God............. Those who questioned the doctrine were cast out like medieval heretics, their careers blocked and their voices muted or silenced. The contradictions, lies and destruction within the contemporary art establishment were ignored by those who dominated the national discourse, leading to mounting frustration and rage among a populace that had been abandoned and betrayed.’ -- OA
I occasionally offer global solutions and suggest actions the individual might find within their power, like looking at and owning art, and each post attempt to present a few reasons for what I’m saying, but stripped down the complaints are strikingly similar, so I’ll present both versions, his and mine.
‘The ideology of neoliberalism never made sense. It was a con. No society can effectively govern itself by basing its decisions and policies on the dictates of the marketplace. The marketplace became God............... Those who questioned the doctrine were cast out like medieval heretics, their careers blocked and their voices muted or silenced. The contradictions, lies and destruction within neoliberal ideology were ignored by those who dominated the national discourse, leading to mounting frustration and rage among a populace that had been abandoned and betrayed.’ —- Chris Hedges
‘The ideology of contemporary art never made sense. It was a con. No society can effectively govern itself by basing its decisions and policies on the dictates of the marketplace. The marketplace became God............. Those who questioned the doctrine were cast out like medieval heretics, their careers blocked and their voices muted or silenced. The contradictions, lies and destruction within the contemporary art establishment were ignored by those who dominated the national discourse, leading to mounting frustration and rage among a populace that had been abandoned and betrayed.’ -- OA
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