I rant, I stay warm that way. Painting requires the approval of intermediaries to even approach the public, turning it into a passive position in the economy, and committed artists can sometimes be consigned to the bleachers while friends from school take the field. I shout from a few rows back, drowned out out by piped-in cheers, oh well. There is another sort of person, one who weaves speculation into action, who seizes the crest of an invisible wave and converts it into a fountainhead of energy and growth.
Yesterday a bunch of people set up easels on sidewalks and painted all over town, passersby kibitzing. Whimsical and serious, spontaneous and studied, talented and simply earnest, they put them all up last evening and had a party, great food and superior jazz that simply couldn’t be heard, too many people. Prices for an afternoon of painting were reasonable and red spots kept going up on tags, original art going home all around town. These were pictures people recognized, and comparing their familiar memories with these little framed images carried emotional charge, nothing wrong with it. It was a lively evening, peopled by the artists themselves, their friends, and a whole lot of other people who are just interested in art, and finally comfortable with a range of subject they understood and could relate to.
It doesn’t take much to point out what’s wrong. A bit of acid derived from official non-acceptance, the objective detachment of chronic underemployment, and the willingness to look a little further down the road can all contribute to uncanny insight, and the neurotic writes it down. The best I can hope for is a ‘last laugh’ probably so far down the road I’m not laughing anymore. It’s way more than refreshing to see someone actually focus an unrequited community-wide appetite for meaningful art into this charming garden of day-lilies, and then to scatter the seeds of serious art acquisition like dandelions puffs in the wind.
No comments:
Post a Comment