best bargain prorated -- art

It starts with a piece of paper and awkward attempts to make marks that will conjure any object from the real world in the mind of a viewer, a ball, a cylinder, or a pop bottle. At first you won’t want to show anyone and when you do they’ll probably make a joke. Well get used to it and anyway serves you right for caring what they think. If you intend to travel the narrowest steepest path art has to offer there won’t be anyone there but you, and what you think will be all that matters. Like traveling on a road in the mountains you might occasionally think you glimpse a section higher up but mostly the destination is lost in day-to-day trees. At the top there could be a pass but you might never get to even see it -- doesn’t matter. Traversing a glacier it’s never a good idea to sit and rest, it’s just so hard to start up again and with so many easier ways to get off the mountain it’s best to keep climbing.

The opponent of the artist is the blank canvas and allies should be tubes of paint but they’re not at all friendly, surly and rebellious and in no mood to cooperate with a greenhorn. They sabotage the clear and visionary concept and are quick to mutiny over simple commands. Without sturdy discipline they’ll make a mess pretty quick. Sometime after Malcolm Gladwell’s ten thousand hour apprenticeship, the time he claims it takes to get good at anything, the personality and perspective of the artist begin to show through whatever they paint. This is not a conscious determination and arises through simple practice, it can’t be helped. The subject of a work of art in the end is always the artist, since ten paintings of the same thing by ten artists will yield ten quite different paintings. On canvas what the artist reveals is not about the subject but about themselves, and it’s up on the wall to plum how much the viewer is ready to see -- it’s a two way conversation, shallow or deep.

In the end the art acquired over a lifetime speaks not for the artists, but for the person who has assembled the individual pieces into a living arrangement, each painting or print having become a familiar friend. Truly collecting art, knowing where each piece came from and something about its artist, thoughtfully arranging them room by room with each new abode, and never selling anything no matter how valuable it becomes will land a person in a fairly pretty comfortable nest in the long term. Not just for the painting you see but also for the long apprenticeship that preceded it, the person who collects art has hired cheap and is, without regard to profit or loss, making a very good bargain. 

isn’t art -- financial instruments

Seems some legally-trained art observer suggested that the banana wasn’t really art but an unregistered financial instrument. He reasoned, ‘As I saw artwork increasingly dematerialize, the more I realized that what you’re buying literally fits the definition of a security as adopted by the Supreme Court....... it’s even truer to say you’re buying a percentage ownership in the fame.’ Reaction was immediate and overwhelming. It’s like when you say something out loud that everyone knows already but no one else has acknowledged and you know right away it was the wrong thing to say. ‘“I was so drunk when I wrote this paper,” and he went on to explain how very drunk he was, oh please forgive me.

There’s a good reason the simple fact that the art market today is really another form of financial speculation should never be whispered in the same room with lay people. We must protect the sincere and simple faith of the flock is what they tell themselves. Art left long ago. To cite a period in Rothko’s career when he became intensely interested in ‘fuzzy edges’, invoking the grandeur and authority of modern art’s iron-clad liturgy, requires an aesthetic insight the average person will never attain -- this all seems so familiar. A Rothko painting made on a scale that would fit the average home would be a visual sink hole, less interesting than a bird calendar. Some museum in texas holds a series of Pollocks done easel size that nobody wants.

In general the population has become disillusioned about art, unsure of its premises and suspicious of motives, with many finally turning to sports with at least knowable outcomes and a rationale that reaches several levels. They’re not likely to be seduced with rotting bananas or much of anything else about art that attains national media attention. Outrage seems sorta cheap but it’s become the bloody mosh-pit of contemporary art, some peculiar amalgam of identity and ethnicity, edgy politics and above all a casual approach to actualization, any suggestion seems good enough. Have I missed something? The banana is a joke, I get that, and the punch line is when somebody pays a stupid amount for it making the artist just the setup person, it’s an old vaudeville act, ha ha. Still, it just doesn’t have the slightest thing to do with art, except perhaps to demean and humiliate it in the eyes of the world -- history sees you guys, from both directions.

People renounce their faith everyday. They open their eyes for the first time and suddenly see that art condenses and distills their own unspoken disappointments and aspirations, especially when it’s been produced totally unacknowledged and against all odds in some small town where it's imbued with qualities the facile grad-school comets of instant success will never attain. It’s not so difficult for the average citizen to begin to realize that super-bowls recede into the past one after the other, but a work of art owned and lived with never changes, an increasingly potent concept these days. What the artist managed to express and what the owner sees there is between those two, a long-term conversation that may mature and change as years go by. Real art is unlikely to spoil in a week.

Duchamp and the banana -- comes around

Modern art is hilarious and insists it’s deadly serious, financially overflowing and yet a cardboard sham, but the whole mess teeters on shaky ground. From way back some original fuzzy thinking has finally come down to this, a perishable piece of fruit attached to the wall in the most plebeian way possible, with duct tape. Is it so different, really, from a porcelain urinal entered in an art competition under a fictitious name long ago, on its way to becoming the most notorious single icon of modern art? Seen from the outside that episode seems nothing more than an adolescent prank by a second rate and derivative painter, the petty revenge of the rejected. Originally intended as a turd in the punch bowl, Duchamp was no doubt stunned and amazed to be declared a genius because of it. It was this peculiar inversion of parody and the real that ‘liberated’ art from a slavish reference to things seen, and converted the very notion of art into a puzzle to be thought about, written about, and talked about endlessly.

It’s little wonder an american culture distracted by a constant stream of advertising images, all with captions and voice-overs to explain what’s being seen, might miss the market-dictated descent of art into toxic self-effacement, and then one day the banana. So who steps forward from this vast assemblage of every possible definition of art to say ‘enough, too far, too dumb, and way too expensive?’ No one on the inside gets to make that claim, and that’s about everybody who shares the creed of modern art. If you bought the urinal in art school, well here’s a banana. Thanks for the money and the trivialization of art in the eyes of the public, it’s been a steal and surely robs the future.

Modern art isn’t superior to all the art there ever was, and in the end will only be an aberrant chapter in a long history of human expression first found in caves from way before the time of towns, before fame, and before money. The real obscenity here is not the banana for a hundred and twenty thousand in an edition of three, two sold at the fair and a third held for one hundred and fifty thousand to be sold to a museum -- it’s the whole enterprise, the publicity-seeking money-laundering charade of pissing away buckets of money because there simply isn’t anything else to do with it, it just keeps coming out of our sleeves. This won’t be cool much longer.

Art accurately reports and reflects the times, and spreads the message of an evolving consciousness the forces of control would always like to suppress and try to dilute with their state sponsored anti-art. Above and beyond, a vast network of charitable foundations and complicit museums traffic in the vastly inflated tokens of ponzi scheme art, all of it only a break-ranks run on the market away from total collapse. Time to flush the whole business and just look at art, it’s everywhere. Any open exhibit of a hundred pieces in your hometown will have one or two you’d like, maybe enough to own, and if the price turns out to be uncomfortable perhaps you should give up something else. Trust yourself. 

legalization -- there all along

Time to talk about dope, substances which alter perception, and to consider their relevance to art and their effect on both the makers of art and their audience. There are two major drugs in opposition in our culture, already almost equally divided between two different versions of reality, mingled together and yet living on different planets, seeing remarkably different stuff. The contrast in attitude engendered by each first became apparent in the Viet Nam era on both sides of the ocean as Jimmy Hendrix solos becoming a shared experience in clouds of smoke, while liquor-loving politicians and generals plotted strategy and carpet bombed. In Vegas, Sinatra appeared at the microphone with whiskey and a cigarette talking all patriotic like a war hero, apparently because he played one in a movie, but he only did it when he was drunk. We all know the drill, families have both, and haven’t all of us dabbled? Maybe it’s time to ask, when it comes to art can these different states of mind be seen? Artists are known to engage in fringy behavior in the first place, many experiment with substances and sometimes we can guess.

There are other drugs that influence art, variants and subgroups with their own characteristic intoxications. Beardsley I’ll bet was doing opium, he left clues. In a complex fantasy drawing a small pan can be seen throwing his pipe down in disgust, such as that. Picasso once allowed that the smell of opium wasn’t the worst smell in the world -- sometimes he talked backwards. Diz needed his ‘vitamins’ to blow real high and fast on his flugelhorn while Coltrane became so introspective he finally left all together, but society couldn’t sustain their particular predilections wide spread, coke and skag. It’s either booze or weed in the USA, each used as an escape from the oppressive dullness of sobriety, but they’re not the same.

Abstract expressionism arose in the early fifties, drenched in alcohol, its practitioners on their way to early graves. This drug shrinks reality and isolates its user on an island of dependency until finally they only see themselves, and this would include the ‘privatized’ vision they applied to canvas. As a painter Jackson Pollock was categorically nihilistic, his universe was chaotic and a tantrum was his response. It’s all there. His entire movement was enamored of drug store Freudianism which proposed a deeper wiser layer than this sorry twisted self-effacing rag we call a personality. This brilliant sub-conscious was bound to be a better painter, much more profound, and its extremely large color explorations featuring drips, smears, and pours were baffling and impervious to criticism from any corner. This sort of art values reputation and provenance, and a discernible price point, over whatever image is on the front -- a matter of taste who cares?

These days the variety of art available is staggering, a gamut of styles from first attempt accidental to compulsively precise renderings of almost anything, and the question becomes what does the public respond to. Well times they are a’changing and it’s encoded in the law. A native plant which could have caused a person just ten years ago to lose their vehicle, their house, the entire farm, along with their personal liberty, has suddenly unmasked, the menial despised reprobate morphing into the jedi hero here to save the world, a boon to agriculture, medicine, on and on. I wouldn’t know what artists are using, but do suspect that when the medieval sanctions are lifted for everyone, an art that was there all along will begin to be seen.

art for the poor -- actually owning

On the last page of today’s paper there’s a little filler article, ‘5 ways to freshen up a room this fall,’ and number three and four are about art. Number three suggests arranging a ‘collage’ of artworks on one wall, and number four notes ‘picture rails are chic,’ and suggests putting up narrow shelves to hold the art and avoid making all those little holes. The illustration shows a rectangular coffee table and a thinly upholstered bench in front of a wall full of art, sketches and prints. This apartment is identical to the other couple of hundred two and a half room efficiencies in this block, and if there was only some way to soften the stark brutality of this drone-like existence, to establish some notion of individuality and aspiration in this little box sanctuary. You could call finding art worth looking at number six.

That’s not what they say in the sunday paper. In the homebuyer’s guide there’s always a centerfold featuring a palatial contemporary million dollar estate with landscaping, pool, and tennis courts but there's never any art on the walls. At best the professional designer considers art an accessory and even at that an unpredictable element likely to influence everything else, so some sort of abstract complementary to the carpet and drapes is a daring as it goes. Folks who live at this scale have so much stuff to do -- they can jump in the pool, watch gigantic television, and maybe hang out with friends in one of those pristine department store displays they call living rooms. By an large people who live this way are too insulated, too distracted, too sated to be interested in art, and it shows.

On the other hand, it’s not unusual for poor people to know an artist or two, neighbors also getting by with old cars and paying low rent, and a piece of their art is a friendly reminder of that person. Along with maybe a painting or two handed down and a couple of sketches, an arrangement of art can be made that reflects the personality of a home’s inhabitants. A wall covered with art, different styles in different shapes and sizes, tends to take the attention away from worn places in the carpet, a chipped and dented formica kitchen set, and the odd mix and match thrift store furniture many folks start out with, and sometimes live with all their lives. If the art is pretty good those things won’t seem so important. Not just that, but a poor person is more likely to be familiar with success and especially defeat and has had to scramble to adjust to conditions as they are. As a result they're more likely to revere the accomplishment making art at all represents.

The rich have enough money to buy art, but mostly they just want to outbid their friends, and vacuous non-objective time-bound trophy art is their reward, a DeKooning on everyone’s yacht so chic. Poor people must sacrifice to own art, ensuing trips and foregoing newer furniture, an investment in a future more humane and realized than various kinds of fighting for entertainment and name calling politics are likely to provide. A product made by hand, the creation and expression of a single human being ought to have reasonable value against all else made by machines, and poor people feel the financial bite of adding it to their lives, a certificate of ownership they’ll feel whenever they see it ever after.

art’s job -- perceptual aerobics

The world you live in is as broad and as deep as your perception only, reflecting just what you pay attention to, and for some it can be extremely limited. In totalitarian states the world of the masses is kept as small as possible, limited to symbols of authority and ritual, the leaden oppression leavened with a constant round of parades, noisy festivals, and pointless competitions. By contrast, here we have freedom to see anything we want, experience the world anyway we choose, on paper at least, but instead we’re presented with a constant streaming of commercial messages suggesting what we should buy and what we should think and who we should vote for -- a closed box.

If you’re going to try to find your way out by thinking, good luck. You’ll find the language you’ve been given has been constructed like a fish trap, narrower and narrower, until you find yourself active and aggressive, passive and fatalistic, and won’t know why. Are there subjects and verbs in your thoughts or just states of being, logical conclusions or mindless conventions, all sticky webs to crawl out of. If you would like to broaden your own horizons, don’t read reports and go to lectures, try using your eyes. Just look at stuff. The more you look the more you’ll see, and there isn’t any end. The suggestion was made long ago, that ‘seeing is the only form of eating that provides its own meat,’ probably more graceful in the original, and in its time, but the paradox is clear.

A good place to start seeing more is by noticing shadows, clouds in the sky, anything you might normally take for granted and dismiss. For you it isn’t there, not even if you want it to be. Stand at the rim of the Grand Canyon with the warm updraft in your face so much like the subway, you’ll get that part, but you’ll wonder why other people are taking pictures, it’s just a big hole. Same goes for large swaths of experience other folks seem to value, since for you these realms don’t exist, living a monochromatic  life, nothing much beyond traffic and the evening news, what’s for dinner? Well OK, maybe you aren’t as limited as that, but what are your limits, really? Compared to everyone else, how wide is your perceptual net and how much in your immediate surroundings are you aware of and responding to -- there’s no way to know this directly, but it’s fairly certain anyone can make improvements. 

A work of art is like exercise equipment for perceptual tone and fitness, not actually productive in itself, but a stand-in that will ultimately make seeing everything else easier. Deciphering a painting requires levels of recognition the mind usually bypasses in a normal day. You may think you see a city street, an arrangement of fruit and flowers, bathers on a beach, but your visual apparatus had to scramble to figure it out. The artist is leaving cues, making suggestions, leading you toward conclusions about what you see, but it’s really just colors on a flat surface and not that thing at all. It’s up to you to engage and apply your own imagination to make the image work, to recognize and find meaning in the clever imposter. As a result of looking at art something changes, and senses are on alert, jolted awake by some artist tricking them so boldly, and the average person is bound to notice the difference. Spend two hours in a museum looking at landscapes and then go for a drive in the country, a perfect sunday afternoon, and the question won’t be asked again. There’s not a lot of theory here, really, just a practical rational suggestion that art doesn’t just hang on the wall, it pushes the walls back, expands the vision and opens the mind, that’s its job. 

islands in the streaming -- works of art

There’s nothing wrong with the way you live, not so different from others in your neighborhood, but how does it compare with the life of average humanity in, say, the last hundred thousand years, our time on the planet? Life just slides by these days, new models every year, new kinds of media, updates all directions, the kids keep up but will be back in the pack soon enough. There was a time not so far back when the chestnut tree down by the livery would become even taller and more robust in a lifetime, but no one even noticed. The prominent buildings in the town were constructed at least a lifetime ago and for common citizens might as well have always been there. Life had signposts, safe harbors, stable anchorages, and all this formed a foundation for facing the world. No need to look back with nostalgia, but it might be handy to account for what’s been lost, and to consider our own inborn psychology, how we construct our identities and see the world.

For the thoroughly modern person adept at surfing the digital tide all around us, go be free, don’t let the nasty organic flesh part of existence, so subject to fatigue and breakdown, inconvenience you over much. Any remaining, average people who find themselves here but who see further than the latest app, who feel some kinship with people of different times and even respect them for their accomplishments, might want to consider owning art. It’s this era’s personal hitching post, so nice to come home to, and even makes the new place home whenever you move. From the moment you acquire it, art’s never supposed to change, that’s the deal. Art carried home under the arm and hung on the wall will always be there, absorbing and recording major events in your life, reading back when you look at them years from now.

Original art burrows into your brain, bonds with your point of view, and becomes an old friend before it’s over -- ask anyone, anyone who actually owns art, although that’ll exclude all sorts of arts administrators and academic experts willing to live with reproductions, it’s all the same, right? If you intend to spend real money don’t listen to them, don’t listen to anyone, just look. The artist has been putting colors on the canvas trying to find common ground with someone, anyone, maybe you, and it’s something you just recognize. If gallery personnel go buzzing in your ear about famous celebrities who collect the work, honors and awards, understand they’re discussing price, selling you up, it’s just their job. Focus your attention on the piece in the room that looks back at you, simple as that, and do your best to go home together. 

art, art, everywhere -- but not that much to see

You’d guess people must love art. There’s art up everywhere, in offices and reception areas, across from the elevator, in waiting rooms and down the hall, even in rest rooms.  Smears and spatters are popular, patches of color to coordinate with carpet and upholstery, and in molded gilt framing it’s all so common as to be easily unseen, not even noticed. Seems a lot of famous, big time art sold at auction isn’t all that difficult to emulate, and sweatshop factories in low wage countries produce stuff that looks sorta similar on an assembly line, strictly for export. Just order from a catalogue, take it out of its box, hang it on the wall and forget about it.

Let’s start over. All painting is an arrangement of colors on a flat surface, going all the way back in human history to the smoothest, flattest cave wall that can be found. Sorry to say, all those separate categories of abstraction and realism are only in your head, arbitrary distinctions propagated by aesthetic scholars and salaried academics busy damming up their own little duck ponds. Forget all that, it just makes understanding art more difficult. A successful work of art attracts and holds the attention, no matter its form, or how much it costs, or who painted it. It’s a simple test, and it depends on two things -- the talent and ability of the artist to create a design which compels a person to look, and the viewer’s open-minded willingness to consider this alternative to their own experience.

It’s this interaction, the engagement of the viewer with the artist, that is the essence of art, and it’s in the space in between where art happens. This quality of art may be missed by people who only consider price and reputation, and many more, almost all of us, have just become visually numbed by all the meaningless art up everywhere. For the individual artist it’s an interesting challenge and worthy of a best effort, creating an image so compelling it causes people to look up from their devices, which even stretches their attention span back out to seconds, minutes, and hours week to week, so that they enjoy having a painting around even more over time. How to go about it is an open question. There aren’t any requirements, and there aren’t any rules. Here’s your canvas flat and white and your colors and brushes are close at hand, so with all of the history of art behind you and all the stuff that hasn’t been thought of yet, make a picture that a typical twenty-first century person, slowly drowning in digital quicksand, is going to see and want to look at.

Sounds hard but it could be even easier these days. Original art has permanence which can be a grounding influence, and it’s the sole possession that becomes more noticeable, more present with time rather than fading into its surroundings, like a permanently charged battery of human effort and intellect there on the wall. No matter the current state of affairs, in this uneasy time of transition it’s the artist’s job to establish the value of visual art in the lives of ordinary citizens, and they have to do it with pictures. Without always knowing why and for no one reason, average people are beginning to look.

the art of class struggle -- what's seen by who

The blog ‘owning art’ is really about class struggle, has been all along. We’re talking revolution, but not with guns and barricades -- it’s like a mental thing, an altered vision. As denizens of a small planet we’ve flogged materialism about as far as it wants to go, tearing up the landscape for short-term gain, enforcing our will with explosives, and imagining money was the most important thing. We find ourselves teetering at the edge of a gaping void with the momentum to go over. Religion has attempted to stay relevant and offer consolation, but delusional optimism expressed through cheesy rock lyrics just makes it all seem worse, and the sincere suburban dad in jeans who preaches vanilla self-satisfaction will be renewed for asses in the pews, not spiritual insight. Fads and gurus, diets and pills, nothing works. Sorry to spread the news, but the very structure of present society had better evolve in a hurry or it’s curtains for the lot of us.

A thoughtful person suggested that human societies began to evolve in an organic manner when the brain became so large that childbirth became problematic, physical evolution having reached its limit. If we track the progress of humankind over the last three millennia, prosperity has tended to generalize, and so has the freedom to realize individual potential and to seek unique destinies, just feels good, although old forms lay in wait to reassert themselves. Corporate control of mass media has helped to resurrect the old monarchies and dynastic fortunes, the lot of them living behind security walls and bulletproof glass. It recalls a time when an extremely wealthy few dictated what art would be for everyone, and their endlessly replicated sky-pie mythology became the visible analogue of their hidden corruption, false piety and opulent excess, and wouldn’t you know, here we are again.

The art of the international art fairs speaks for itself, and it’s a coded smirky entanglement of half-baked social causes, board game tokens and trivial conceits, we get it. With world-weary sardonic disdain, the ultra-wealthy believe it because it’s absurd, and it’s as though the middle ages never left. Let’s leave them there. Their stuff is way too expensive and a tad chic for the average house anyway. Doesn’t it follow that if there’s a change in the mentality of the general population and average people are left to ponder questions of personal identity, citizenship and selfhood, that their seeking would be reflected in visual art for all to see?

Turns out the answer to corporate avarice, abusing working classes and thriving on inequality, doesn’t depend on changing anyone’s mind. The solution is the emergence of a new mentality bursting from MBA programs everywhere, a trans-generational cadre of future CEO’s with a different set of values, people who as a group see their role in society in broader terms. J P Morgan just this week announced they aren’t going to be doing it that way anymore, ripping off pensioners and evicting widows. It was an acknowledgement of pressure from below, an industry wide movement. Other fundamental changes are happening all around, you keep score. The point is humanity is changing direction, and anyone around for more than a couple of decades has been a witness to the flux. Art’s mission in this period of transition is to convey a new consensus, mind to mind, and it’s about to acquire a significance for average people it hasn’t had before. If you’d like to participate in the changeover, the demise of corporate feudalism and the advent of trans-national environmental cooperation and equitable distribution, or whatever happens next, taking an interest in art may help you keep up.

It’s not easy to decide what to like at first, but no need to overthink it. Just look at bunches of art, and what everyone else is thinking will somehow come through you, let it happen. It won’t be long before your friends, and new ones you haven’t met yet, will all begin to like a similar sort of art, and no one will know exactly why. If the source of the art taken home and hung on the wall is local, affordable and knowable, something interesting takes place. As the audience gains sophistication, production in local studios, no longer dependent on outside income, will get better to match -- more time at the easel, simple as that. It’s a mutually rewarding relationship that after long suppression seems suddenly about to awaken all at once with original art displayed in businesses, up on city walls, and even used to lure tourists to upscale hotels. There’s a large enough array of art available these days for the average person to begin to recognize themselves, their interests and attitudes, just by looking. Everyone has this capacity. Visual art, inclusive and accessible, can be the universal channel for new definitions of self and peaceful reconciliation among communities, soon to prevail everywhere. Despots despise art because it can’t be censored, figurative images need no translation, and even though no words are spoken somehow art communicates a revolution in the head.

visiting independent studios -- the nuclear reactors of art

Previously a post suggested that art studios were each outposts of a separate sovereignty, neither geographically bound or limited to a particular era. This pervasive nation with its own standards and codes of conduct, its own notions of integrity and honor, can be found existing within the matrix of any semi-free society with an open economy. Can’t deny there are extravagant studios in the movies, and trust-fund dabblers can have anything they want, but that’s not how most studios begin, clearing out storerooms and repurposing garages. Founding a studio is a romantic enterprise in itself, already defying reality.

It’s not possible to aspire to be a serious artist without one, the studio is the artist’s most basic tool. No one makes much progress if they have to put it all away to prepare a meal, and the resentment of inconvenienced housemates isn’t conducive to creation -- art needs a separate space. Still, it isn’t reasonable to expect a studio to pay for itself for a long, long time, maybe never, and just the obligation of rent becomes the cornerstone of the artist’s commitment, a constant reminder to either be steadfastly productive or use the money for something else.

Once in a studio, the struggle begins, since without a boss there’s no job order to fill, no clear indication of what to do first, and there’s also no time clock, no scheduled breaks, and, perhaps most relevant of all, no paycheck. Without a customer, and at this point without a product to sell, there’s no clear indication of how to fill up the day. Once in a studio the artist is figuratively and literally faced with a blank page, the existential dilemma made graphically clear, finding themselves at a null point before stepping off in a new direction. The clear directive is to simply work, to paint and draw enough to find a voice while trying not to burn through a ton of supplies, since that money ain’t coming back, and to not waste time because the studio is being paid for with a day job.

Becoming rich and famous isn’t usually the prime motivator for those who step out on this path -- that’s on a different avenue in another part of town. Some are damaged people attempting to find wholeness, while others may be seeking relief from a mind-numbing occupation or perhaps they just enjoy spending time alone, and after all, it’s an inherited human trait, the desire to make things. Still, sorry to say, in most cases the world will be against the person who tries -- family members tend to be skeptical and in-laws don’t hide contempt, academics at all levels sneer reflexively while galleries demand that an artist be successful already, asking where else do you show before they even look. It’s a grueling soul-depleting gauntlet, and the attrition rate is high. For some the day-job wins out, a talented and motivated person working a semi-menial occupation might rise quickly, or just become addicted to a regular paycheck. Others learn to sustain themselves by adopting some regionally accepted genre, replicating a single subject over and over until they’re good enough to enter a local market, where some may thrive, but many artists with something original to say may as well stuff notes in bottles, since without a window to the public they’re likely to become isolated on an island of their own.

Studios pop in and out of existence at probably a greater rate than the galleries, the entire enterprise of art is in a constant state of ferment. They exist on a spectrum from new-age trendiness to bare-bones desperation, while many are productive and efficient workshops, and since they were just an empty space before the artist moved in, every inch reveals the personality of the artist perhaps more candidly than their art. Visiting several studios in an afternoon, look for local tours, reveals a lot about how art is made, offering the opportunity to ask questions and observe works in progress, all the while assessing the commonality and uniqueness of each situation. For anyone interested in truly learning about art, appreciating and eventually owning art, it’s a very good thing to do.

David Brooks mentions art -- a reaction so revealing

David Brooks in the times is known for political opinion and he wrote a column about art, it was in today’s paper -- ‘Who will teach us how to feel?’ reprint HL 7-26. He was responding to an article in ‘T magazine,’ which asked artists and museum curators ‘to name the artworks that define the contemporary age -- pieces created anywhere in the world since 1970..... Most of the pieces selected are intellectual concepts or political attitudes expressed through video, photographs, installations or words.’  He cites examples.

I was already aware he had written something because earlier in the morning I had seen online the withering ridicule heaped upon him by what seemed like the entire industry, and it had a familiar ring. It was a line by line, post by post, rebuking of the first order, dripping with ice cold condescension, mean and bitter, eloquent and deadly, these are literate people. With only a slightly larger vocabulary it sounded just like what the russian trolls have been saying about Obama on facebook, a piling on by hangers on, the cultural equivalent of a virtual lynching. Just who are these people, the only ones qualified to discuss these high-brow matters? They’re just a lot of wealthy folks with free time, a high court of stuffed shirts with enormous influence over a fake industry, propped up in the end by public money. Theirs is an art characterized by half-baked gestures, crude signifiers mostly exalting impotent rage -- the cocktail party conversation of the ‘smart set.' They seem to think art is their own exclusive archdiocese, and by proclamation they’ve excommunicated David Brooks, but most of us were never baptized and don’t care to be, you self-important morally and ethically adolescent trust fund nobodies.

These guys don’t seem to care much about the visual part. The art and artists they’ve selected are all about what art ‘says,’ a coded and by-the-moment confirmation the insider intuitively understands, but it’s definitely not about how it looks, and at the risk of sounding unforgivably naive, wasn’t this category of human endeavor once called ‘visual’ art? I know you guys have moved on, but have you looked down recently? Pity poor Brooks, wondering if art shouldn’t convey something significant, 'widening the repertoire of ways we can feel and can communicate feelings to others,' and we just can’t laugh hard enough. Well, he didn’t come up with it on his own, not that long on imagination, it’s not his job. His occupation involves identifying the swells in community thinking before new ideas break on the shore, and being the first to say them out loud. He’s called a pundit, and this time he may be on to something.

It’s all a sham, all that emerald city art, and someday soon we’ll all wake up back in Kansas, where art is something that encourages us to look and see and think, even to realize capacities we didn’t know we had. Art supplies are sold everywhere and people are making paintings out to remote corners, and it can’t be for the money plain to see. What they accomplish is as sneered at by art’s self-appointed inquisitors as this poor political columnist, educated and living in the world, but who doesn’t know enough to ‘stay in his lane,‘ and other rude comments. They’re a dying breed, these cultural racketeers, this cabal of tricksters pretending to have the last word about what art ‘is.’ As their enchantment ends, the whole tawdry mess will eventually be dismissed as the aberrant expression of society in chaos, as art itself escapes back into the lives of ordinary people, everywhere, all at once.

futile ventures -- optimal results

Alchemy as a physical practice is questionable from a couple of perspectives, both practical and motivational. While modern science shows elements can transmute, this usually involves the release of huge amounts of energy. Our sun is transmuting at this moment, but this isn’t a business for the medieval backroom laboratory, and the part about becoming ultra rich is a fantasy for the extremely poor in any society, but to sacrifice participation in the world just to one day be able to buy your way out of it sounds like a great waste of effort.

Alchemy as a metaphor, on the other hand, can be quite useful, especially in these times when so much of our world needs transmuting, the search for some process that converts dark political undercurrent into cooperative enlightenment and individual autonomy, for instance. Modern media may not hold the answer, and actually tends to add to the problem. Something happened to change the culture post world war, mid-century last, and it spirals down to now. The advent of television enabled mass manipulation by commercial interests in everybody’s living room, and the lowest common denominator began to dictate how we saw ourselves. About the same time the extremely wealthy began to treat art as a plaything, a trophy of wealth itself, just a pampered and predictable house pet on a leash. The sitcoms were stocked with demeaning stereotypes, and art got stupid too.

Now I’m not saying a monochromatic panel by Ellsworth Kelly isn’t the pinnacle of a particular moment in the cascading evolution of contemporary sensibilities, but pretending this square of fabric is worth millions of dollars is just a way to steal art from the public, and to distort the notion of art, itself, substituting instead a zombie horde of replicating smears and splotches. These 'emblems of arrival' can easily be sold to the upward aspirations of new money crashing in from all corners, sucking the planet dry. That’s some pretty base bullshit. Converting the sneering disdain of the ultra elites into any value still held by the part of humanity that produces more than they consume, day by day, is beyond our biggest atom smasher, and way too large a task for art’s credentialed gurus -- best start over.

Just this weekend, rain or shine, area artists paint outdoors in this town, a few hours to depict just what they see, and, oddly enough, just what the person looking over their shoulder sees too. They’ll have a party that evening to compare what each artist has captured to what regular citizens have seen before and gotten used to, take for granted. For many, it’s an eye-opening experience, ready for the sun to come up on the same streets, but noticing more than the day before. Quaint it may seems to the super rich and their retinues, invested in the myth of runway art, each season some brilliant yet derivative hot new thing -- tiresome, sure it is, but what they think doesn’t count, not anymore, not when compared with the experience of actual art in a hometown, opening clogged perceptual pathways and broadcasting its friendly affirmation all year round. If art could do something like this for an individual, for a community, the abstract notion of alchemy might not sound so impossible.

anonymous art -- other side of the tracks

Kentucky has always had cultural aspirations. I myself grew up in Florence, an upstart bedroom community with no city center, just housing tracts invading corn fields, and only recently I was having lunch in an open-air cafe in Paris, under cover on the platform of a refurbished train depot next to the tracks. It was raining just slightly, so pleasant, and along came a train. Two diesel engines were laboring, it turned out to be a very long train. I’m never disappointed to be stopped at a railroad crossing so long as I’m near the front, because trains are festooned with graffiti that sears my eyeballs at about forty-five mph whizzing by. Individual designs are almost always typographical, and I can sometimes see letters, but I’ve never been able to make out a single word, it’s not important.

The skill level can be uneven but most are ingenious, each in a unique cohesive style that locks every part into a tight zany cartouche, maybe three or four a car -- they don’t paint over. Mostly it’s about the color. Colors from spray cans slingshot against each other, odd compliments and metallics pop, with flourishes so visually intelligent you’d like to meet the artist and pay homage, maybe share a smoke. Who does this art, and why? Sometimes mind-blowing, please stop the train, this person applied some thought, probably worked it out beforehand, and it must have taken a couple of hours to put it up, all the while sneaking past train yard security. Do they stand back to admire it before never seeing it again, watching it roll away across the country -- my tag, my slice of genius, my anonymous declaration of existence? I’m pretty sure they don’t get paid, and fairly certain they are subject to arrest. It’s a pure, exciting form of art.

At the other end of the universe, a so-called graffiti artist has claimed the title of most expensivist recently alive artist, an insolent ignoramus with a spray can in a hip pocket always ready to commit vandalism on other people’s property, Jean-Michel Basquait. Something wrong here. I’m sure the radically wealthy, residing far above ground in major urban centers, must know more about art than folks around here, down at ground level. Even so, I’ll suggest that if Jean-Michel Basquait’s paintings were done the size of notebook paper, the resident psychologist would be consulted, and they’d have concern. In any case, I wouldn’t want to see his stuff on a boxcar, and most certainly not in the house, although I’m sure it’s fine for the ultra-wealthy, a fitting reward. Personally, I've lost what art means, to them, and I’m starting not to care. You can sit with a coffee and watch the art roll by, in Paris. 

cars and art -- punctuating mechanical evolution

In esquire magazine, back in1965, Tom Wolfe called the automobile, particularly the customized and personalized west coast version, america’s only true art form. The qualities he documented weren’t about safety, or comfort, or drivability. Back then there were four domestic car companies, each producing several makes, and they all put out new models every year -- it was glorious. About august of each year they’d start dropping hints about major style changes coming up for the new year, exotic paint jobs, fins and chrome, but underneath it was the same old bedsprings on wheels they’d been making since before the war. The windows rattled after a year, the seats came apart in two, and the steering column would crush your chest in a head-on, but those weren’t concerns at the time. Safety and efficiency didn’t stand much chance against young women in bikinis posing next to rocket cars, headlights galore and horsepower.

Influence from the outside finally changed things. The Japanese, along with others, brought a new set of values, efficiency, economy, dependability, all such as that. After about a decade people began to see the difference, and now all cars drive better and last longer. Average folks aren’t stupid after all, but in a crowd can be manipulated, forced to choose among limited options, and finally diminished in spirit and even physically maimed for the benefit of the few. Turns out those same few also pick the art. Right out in public they juggle millions, swapping sanctified ‘signature’ art back and forth. It’s a form so pointless and devoid of meaning that the bottom ninety five percent don’t see anything there at all, and let them get away with it, evading legitimate taxes and acting like they’re smart. Still, can’t fault fellow americans. All the abstract art up in motel lobbies and corporate board rooms seems to lend a kind of legitimacy, but as art it’s mute, has nothing to say, and after a while no one expects more.

All this begins to change when people become aware of other options. One day an organization forms to paint murals in the town, and local art begins to be recognized in businesses, in restaurants and such. Before long someone organizes a public painting event or a studio tour, and the community responds. When people begin to realize there’s more to individual identity and self expression than driving a snazzy car or drinking a certain brand of beer, visual art becomes the preferred way to make the house speak for its owner, mood and attitude, a silent reminder of who you are when friends drop by -- and even when home alone.

Eventually the detroit aesthetic favoring all that extra iron, the byzantine grillwork and the star trek inspired dash, just went away. The major domestic auto makers changed their business model, and began providing a more worthy value to their customers. Similarly, once a common citizen sees enough original art to awaken their own dormant ability to find and recognize meaning and substance, some of the miasma of our long commercial stupor lightens and big soup cans can be seen by light of day. Opening that door, finding solace and commonality in works of art, grants the individual a new arena for self-discovery and expression, of self-regard and autonomy. Paintings from the neighborhood, and perhaps a little beyond, are literally worth more than all the ultra expensive stuff on the news and featured in national magazines, and won’t cost near as much. Times are changing, and finding a sense of self in our current cultural free-for-all, and nailing it down with a few pieces of art, is becoming a more common strategy. This isn’t science fiction anymore.

collecting vs owning -- consciousness tech

What’s real? That’s something we really don’t know because all we have are our perceptions, and they’re pretty malleable, easily altered by preconceptions and individual prejudices. Not only that, memory turns out to be selective and morphs with time, and in this soup of sensation we call daily life mostly we’d just like a little agreement from others around, some verification of what we see. All we want is some truth, a version we at least recognize, and it isn’t always easy.

Comprehension of the world is some function of past experience, a compilation and sorting out, but basically limited by everything we’ve seen and felt so far. The senses are fresh and wide open when we arrive, but it’s all input with no way to discern even where we are. We cry a lot. Slowly, by putting stuff in our mouth, bumping our toes and being scratched by grandpa’s beard, we begin to make sense of the mess. Human history is quick to point out there are more than a few ways to do this, and we’re likely to begin with the template available at the time from our clan, tribe, or nationality. Did spectral demons from another dimension preside from the top of pyramids during blood ceremonies in mexico before the conquest? Did Jesus demand that heretics be burned at the stake, can humans shape-change into different animals, do ancestors influence our lives -- some have thought so and that’s the world they saw, and the world they lived in.

It’s a pretty mechanical business. We’re hard wired to run almost any software available, and accept any reality we’re given. There are few ports for individual entry, and not many opportunities to alter or rewrite, so we wind up prisoners of our own histories, limited to only see and comprehend what we’ve seen before. Where are the levers found, who has keys to the control room -- there’s got to be some way out of here. A word of caution: if you desire to broaden your perceptual net and add depth and texture to your daily reality, don’t go scrolling on the internet. It won’t be helpful, since to a large extent it's a large part of the problem.

Consider art instead, a solid-state psychic generator for your wall. Art is a hand-hold on a slippery cliff-face, a paddle for our drifting canoe, the practical device that little by little cleanses the eyes and renews the ability to process the wealth of visual information, and the range of possibilities, that continually comes our way. On the first level, the artist’s optimum effort for the week it took to make it represents a unique and singular gesture in our tech-driven, drive-thru culture. Over time, the work of art becomes the only enduring presence as everything else, clothes, furniture, and cars, morph and change. Beyond that, if the artist requires you to supply what’s been left unsaid, each time it’s seen your attention will be triggered, becoming more alert and receptive, and eventually you’ll find yourself noticing more generally, the color of the evening sky, the fountain in the park.

If this sounds farfetched, don’t take my word, just follow my suggestion. Spend an afternoon with some original landscape paintings by committed artists, bound to be available locally, and then take a drive in the country. Luckily for the device dependent media-savvy urbanite, the effect will be even more pronounced. The detail and texture of visual experience will be substantially enhanced, almost startling, as when crimped antennae begin to unfold. What’s real will always be open to question, but art in the house helps us see and process more of what shows.

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Your aunt’s old silver tomato slice server has a collector value, I saw the estimate on TV. Anything, it seems, can have a collector value so long as the supply is limited, and its scarcity has been certified. Nothing wrong with collecting, but valuing art by how much someone else might be willing to pay for it can yield pretty ugly. A serious person instead buys the art their older selves would like to own, and spends pro-rated for all those years.

chrome bunny -- updating the golden calf

 -- A shiny stainless steel sculpture created by Jeff Koons in 1986, inspired by a child’s inflatable toy, sold at Christie’s on Wednesday night for $91.1 million with fees, breaking the record at auction for a work by a living artist....  (may 15, new york times) 
 
Jeff Koons’ rabbit is an obscenity. Not obscene like young folks earning a couple of dollars fucking for a camera, really seriously obscene like lives twisted and robbed of meaning, systematic rapes and mass degradations, environmental genocides for profit, and all such human misery condensed and represented by this little chrome lump. Maybe you’ve never thought about where all that putrid money comes from, but part of it is out of your own pocket, a daylight robbery that also degrades your senses and very conception of self.

-- As a symbol of American excess, Koons’ Rabbit becomes somehow more poetic through its $91 million purchase. If beauty is relative, and if the value of art is relative, then so is its price. The most important thing to remember about the extravagantly priced Rabbit is that the money doesn’t mean it’s good. It just makes it a billionaire's conversation piece. (wash examiner)

This art, ironically, reflects just who they are, the oligarchs and hereditary barons of our capitalistic, nominally democratic, social system, and it isn’t pretty -- petty, stupid, and vile would be closer. To be graphically clear, this rendering of a mass-produced, throw-away novelty typically found at a carnival as the culture’s highest artistic expression, valued at ninety one million dollars, is really all that can be expected from drug dealers, gun runners, and dynastic freeloaders.

-- For decades, “it was understood that you don’t challenge people on how they make their money, how they pay their taxes (or don’t), what continuing deeds they may be engaged in—so long as they ‘give back.’” Now, there are signs this compact may be cracking. (new york times) quoted in Artnews online
 
By ‘give back,’ of course, they mean spread the loot around, making sure tax-supported institutions have a taste, and since donations beget write-offs, everyone's happy and satisfied as the tax burden crashes down on little people. Does anyone really think this factory-made monopoly-token bunny is really worth more than a few hundred dollars? It looks too cheap and throw-away disposable to put in the garden, but in a three year old’s room, maybe. The international ultra-wealthy have reduced visual art to this deadpan idiocy, astronomically unattainable and yet not worth having, effectively isolating thoughtful citizens who are unable to find each other with and through the medium of visual art.

Clumsy at first, a grass roots resentment, naive and reactionary in its earliest expression, will mature into a planet-wide reckoning with this untitled royal cabal, the financial overlords bleeding our planet and robbing our future. A sign that common citizens are beginning to find themselves, and relate to each other, will be when art seen in local galleries, and in the homes of friends and family, changes to viewer-friendly, sense-verifying, and locally sourced, created by artists living the same life as their neighbors.

historic mural and the emoji totem -- dumber

At the university they’re advocating the destruction of a historical mural depicting ideas they find offensive in a modern context, while at the same time, with great fanfare, they’re installing a stack of emotionally color-coded emojis somewhere on campus, at first glance age-appropriate for three year olds on a playground. Visually it’s pretty ugly unless you happen to like extruded plastic in bright toy colors, art fabricated in a sign shop somewhere. Its message runs perhaps a quarter of an inch deep, check your mood via emoji -- it isn’t art for adults. Overall, this is not a forward play.

It’s art that tells the story of consciousness, that’s its job, that’s what it is. If it’s impossible to see in the present, history can be pretty graphic. The smartest people in the epic called western civilization were the greeks, who flourished slightly before the christian era, and we know about them through their art. It’s their thinking that rules the world today, specifically Aristotle, the legitimate father of all our communication systems, and everything else we do, building bridges, writing laws, and seeking success in our daily lives. How did they get so smart?

Seems it must have had something to do with art, how they used it, and to what ends. The quickening of the greek mind likely began when a few gifted artists began to express their intelligence in marble statues, all that remains, and from their example ordinary people began to realize capacities they didn’t know they had. It’s amusing to note that in their democratic state, attendance at theatrical examinations of human frailties and conceits was mandatory. The state insisted its citizens ramp up, contend with complicated thoughts and get smarter. We’ve never heard their music, and their painting has mostly vanished, but what has survived in stone is intimidating. Contractors with modern machinery struggle to restore the Parthenon, and no one today could build a new one.

Of course, they were conscious of what they were doing, favoring human intellect over the unseen supernatural, and art was their instrument. The element communicated that went deeper than the myth depicted, was the level of thinking that could translate the story into stone. It’s still pretty awesome. Seems pretty crazy, really, that after all the centuries between, our government buildings, stately houses, and important churches all have greek columns serving no structural function whatever. The ancient greeks represent a lofty aspiration, and our last reminder of their intellect and grace is the face we present to the public, an artificial facade. Yet, better still are the vestigial columns of past glory than the demoralizing triviality of pop culture, non-offensive plastic public art.

collecting or self-discovery -- investing vs owning

As a child I remember seeing the famous seminal magazine cover with face of Jackson Pollock over the question, ‘is he the greatest living painter in the United States?’ It was a most provocative question, and I’ve been thinking about it off and on ever since. Even at that age I’d already had direct experience with mid-western angst and insecurity transformed into rage and mayhem by saturation in copious amounts of alcohol, and Jackson Pollock’s art never seemed all that mysterious to me, each painting a feckless tantrum by a talent-challenged bum. Can’t be kind, don’t know why. Invoking Freud to justify his betrayal of consciousness was the same sort of rogue genius all alcoholics use to explain the girlfriend’s black eye, a fender crushed against the wheel, why the boss is a jerk. Seeing Jackson riding up in the front coach, I just never got on the train, and modern art chugged away and left me.

Somewhere down the line the uptown dealers turned the enterprise of art into a game of competitive acquisition, and the resume indicating consensus approval became more important than the art, a revolting development. Along came artists like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, less concerned with art than arousing the sodden attention of the ultra wealthy with just the right whiff of novelty, the lot of them too jaded, too insulated, and too complicit to comprehend art about real life, it would burn their eyes. Even out here, far from that penthouse paradise of social ascendency, those who presume to officiate good from bad art, your exhibition and grant committees, the critics and writers, along with cadres of academics at all levels, follow the lead of the major metros at about a ten year interval, another form of trickle down.

I don’t care enough about million dollar art to not like it, no more concerned than the average citizen, since we all know the rich are different from you and me. In museums, in galleries and pawn shops, I’ve seen paintings that made me respect and admire some person I’ll never meet, perhaps someone no one has ever heard of, and I just don’t have time for the trademarked gold-chippers, none of them capable of recognizing their own work from a fake. If the world survives all that stuff gets recycled, but visual art about how the world can be seen will be needed once again to show us the way, to help us find ourselves.

sight vs words -- visual conversations

Sight is universal, and all humans understand pictures, just as we can see the extinct animals our ancestors painted on cave walls, but language is tribal, the grunts, whistles, and clicks all learned associations to real objects, a true exercise in abstraction. There are political implications here, but rather than point them out, perhaps it would be more convincing to consider how various systems of political order respond to visual art. The most repressive governments just round up all the artists and imprison or kill them, case closed, but others employ various forms of censorship, harassment, or, in the case of democracies, systematic exclusion. How did it happen here?

The saga of the Rivera mural at Rockefeller Center, in the early nineteen thirties, was a confrontation between referential visual art, representing universal human understanding and solidarity, and the raw power of dynastic wealth seeking the fragmentation of society into manageable camps competing against each other. Well, it’s pretty clear big money kicked visual art’s ass, blasting universal understanding to pieces using jackhammers, and posting armed guards to prevent any photographs ever being taken of Rivera’s finished mural. (The mural was later re-created by Rivera in Mexico.) This was followed by the both private and government sponsorship of mute, non-objective painting, in the media, with grants and prizes, and with recognition and prestige. Big abstract paintings went up in all the big banks in New York. (late in life, Nelson Rockefeller attempted to make amends by offering reproductions of his own collection of european masters, in his mind and by his words an altruistic gesture, in a self-financed gallery on fifty-seventh avenue.)

Once you’ve seen an example of the signature art of the so-called ‘modern masters,’ you’ve seen them all. Beyond that, I also don’t care about ‘conceptual art,’ and it’s not about not understanding. The statements on the wall are dense, self-referencing, and it requires a ton of effort to squeeze any of that meaning out of, or into, the thing there on the floor, perhaps suspended or free-standing. It’s ugly, or perhaps best to say not visually compelling, and they’re pretty emphatic that it wasn’t meant to be. That's not the point, since off-hand and unskilled makes it more real don’t you see? I’m all for artistic freedom, but why are we, all of us, paying for this stuff? Why does the government, along with major corporations and tax-code surfing agencies of all stripes, seem so interested in promoting art without visual content that mostly fails to interest all but the smallest segment of society?

Art needs to find its voice, up from the ground, in a time when forces from above are seeking to keep us distracted, to trivialize and demean us, and keep us at odds with each other. The current political polarization of the entire nation is about fifty-fifty, a tribute to their algorithms, but we don’t have to take it, anymore. More people are painting, more people are looking, and when more people start owning original art, conversations will become more civil, points of view will broaden, and truth and character will be easier recognize, trust me. Somewhere there’s a painting that seems to evoke the same bridge, a similar pot of flowers, an evening light that you already have in your head, and regardless of your knowledge of art, perhaps in spite of it, you’ll find yourself assessing it, comparing it, maybe even wanting to own it. In any case, people who like the same art you like are potential friends, and a community becoming aware of its own artists is likely to discover bridges never crossed before. They’ve kept representational art at bay for seventy-five years with government cash, producing a mountain range of art no one wants to look at, but as part of larger societal transitions, the visual side of the mind, humanity’s common ground, is about to assert itself, again.

the mural -- seeing wrong

A historic WPA era mural on campus depicts kentucky’s agricultural and frontier past, and it makes some folks uncomfortable in a modern context. So, which is more important -- the message as a work of art or the work of art as a message, and wouldn’t it be better to separate the two. 

As a work of art, it’s a pretty nice mural. Probably not as dynamic or intense as a Diego Rivera, but like his work, it references the real world and captures part of it. As a message, it’s very difficult to look back and know the intent without understanding the artistic tenor of the time. The very element the students find most objectionable, people of color in menial occupations, could have been a truth revealed, raised to consciousness, the point made that labor for the benefit of others was unfair. Given the times, the artist probably thought of herself as progressive, with a cause and a message, just not the message the student think they see there today, but that was long ago, a different time.

What’s left is the art, humanity’s heritage, and it’s a shame when it’s disrespected. The Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed eight hundred year old buddhas carved in sandstone cliffs because the message of peace and tranquility offended their religion, and Isis in Syria reduced antiquities to rubble, mostly because it appalled the rest of the world, but we sorta wish they hadn’t done it. During the middle ages painters illustrated stories people no longer believe, who cares about virginity and how important is immaculate conception these days, but rather than destroy it, the art is respected because it’s a great accomplishment to be able to paint that well, and it’s enough.

Closer in John Hunt Morgan on his horse, a locally renowned confederate general, has withdrawn from the courthouse to be among his fellow confederates in their section of our stately cemetery, and for his own safety and social order generally, it's a prudent retreat. He's been accused of representing an early twentieth century social order known as ‘jim crow,’ an institution of racial repression, rather than portraying the flower of southern chivalry, a point of view in sharp contrast with those who commissioned the statue in the first place. This is a case, once again, of the message outrunning the art, and it’s a different message this time around, but the same work of art. Perhaps this is art's major attribute, that it doesn't change. It may acquire a patina, may dim with time and incense smoke like the Sistine Chapel, but art is essentially permanent, made to outlive generations, while how it's seen changes with the times.

Maybe the message, fickle as the wind, isn’t as important as the enduring work of art, watching generations turn while remaining a testimony to the human ability to render subtle nuance in molten metal, converting intention and thought into material form. It was a year in the studio before it went to the foundry, and every detail was captured in the pour. Historically speaking, it has the face was of a local businessman and his horse, Bess, was transitioned to male -- it was never more than a lost age’s fantasy, anyway. As an embodiment of historical accuracy, it had its flaws, but it was less about the truth than an excuse to cast a big chunk of bronze. As a work of art it seemed a pretty impressive lawn ornament, there in front of the courthouse, and as for meaning, however it was meant originally, homage to a colorful local hero or elevated symbol of oppression, let it go. It's meaning in a modern context is just a sticky non-verbal fake baby best avoided. 

This mural was part of the building, and was mostly responsible for the character of an otherwise prosaic hall. Removing it smacks more of red guard excess than reasonable civic conversation, and actually seems dangerous and unsettling to the notion of free expression. Instead apply your fervor and intensity to present time and its deficits. That way it’s possible to respect, even admire the art already here, and always feel free to make something better if you're dissatisfied, the real way art moves forward.

art of exclusion -- wealth recognizing its own

Seems among commercially successful artists there’s a disproportionate number born wealthy, some probably poor artist noted. May not have been a scientific survey, but sounds plausible. Obviously, a first advantage is the convenience of being funded. So much nicer to have a comfortable studio, maybe with a small kitchen and shower, why not? It’s also good to have enough room to stretch really large canvases, and just having all that canvas, along with tubs of paint, good brushes, and adequate lighting, all paid for in advance sure sounds swell. These advantages could make the life of an artist a shade easier, but they don’t, by themselves, guarantee commercial success.

Growing up among rich people, now that’s an advantage that’s difficult to duplicate. Someone’s unused storeroom can be rented cheap for a studio, and canvas by the foot and occasional bargains for paint and brushes may cost a few meals out, but anyone is free to paint anything they want, right? Still, in the real world no one can deny there’s a distinct ‘wealthy person’ sensibility, and the artist seeking to enter the market knows their work has to appeal to this rarified aesthetic. Typically, wealth prefers an art that projects exclusivity, that implies an insider’s secret knowledge and an elevated sophistication the hired help see through in a minute. This mute international style is brandname conscious and consensus driven, but just because an artist becomes adept at off-hand and arbitrary color placement doesn’t mean the established order will let them in. A few rich relatives conspire to launch a career, just how rich people business is done, and this secret ingredient won’t be mentioned on the resume, but can usually assumed all around.

Without such olympian intervention, artists from the middle class fall back to teaching on college campuses where they continue to practice rich people’s art on a salary, and teach it to students, round and round. Ordinary citizens who work for a living don’t seem much interested in this kind of art, and that’s just fine with with the industry. They cast their nets for larger fish, overstuffed with inherited wealth and tax-evading cash. Everyone lies. Their sales pitch revolves around sky-rocket fame and uncharted earning potential, rather than the visual character of the non-objective place-holder going into storage. So the question is, what normal person really cares about multi-million dollar speculations on the repetitive relics of modern art, with its unreal values and mass distortions?
 
Let’s start over with a visual mode that each person can assess from their own lived experience, and build a visual vocabulary that expresses the aims and attitudes of an emerging public awareness based on commonality and inclusion. If this sounds like art populism, it is. Original art has weight and influence. It can evoke both maturity and progressive thinking in offices and waiting rooms, enhance fond memories of food and familiar surroundings in pubic establishments, and help make a home into a private sanctuary, a source of solace and rejuvenation. To do all this, it doesn’t need to look like it cost a million bucks.

agony and art -- dancing partners

Some wag facetiously asks if making art requires suffering, and the answer is, probably, but only as practice, spiritual conditioning, the getting ready to make art. No way around it, the original part of art causes stress, in fact making anything that wasn’t there before is experienced as non-specific discomfort, and it’s a universal human condition. Life may get you ready, but at the moment of creation the experience is one of mild to severe unease, and that applies to landscapers, and engineers, and entrepreneurs, anyone who asserts their own ideas about anything, and makes something new.

Getting good at anything that requires skill can be fun, and following recipes or copying from examples, with instructor at elbow or hours of practice alone, breeds satisfaction and contentment. Diligence is rewarded, and in due time friends and acquaintances might be impressed, but any wrinkle, any flavor, or any progression of notes that wasn’t there before has a cost. I’m appealing to the reader’s personal experience for verification of this simple formula, aware that many of us avoid even rearranging the furniture just to escape it. It also seems true that very creative people sometimes attempt to assuage the anxiety they accrue with drugs and alcohol, evidence of the high price that’s paid, eventually.
 
Art is all of human endeavor distilled down to an essence. Someone has been able to compress their own aspiration, disappointment, everything they’ve ever experienced into a picture of something, and you have the ability to decipher the depth and awareness they applied when making it, it’s like a miracle or something. Really it’s a level of awareness all humans possess, but it’s also a room hardly anyone enters, waylaid by digital media, and confused by the ‘famous for being famous’ world of art. Accept that we recognize more than we realize, and that we can tell internally when the art we’re looking at resonates with our own experience, with our own angst and its resolution. Someone made this picture, and in these unsettling times, you might find it’s a comfort to have so much in common with a stranger.

showtime -- big art’s thin disguise

On Friday evening, Gagosian director Sam Orlofsky tweeted about the sale, boasting that the gallery had “set a 7 figure world record for an artist within three hours of the artwork being revealed, and the purchaser never seeing it in person.” from artsy magazine online
 
The painting in question is a dark smeary mess, but extremely large, millionaire size, and destined for storage, since who would care to look at it for more than ten seconds, or in this case, at all? Hey, all you winners, do us all a favor and toss art out the window of your limo as you zoom by, and buy yourselves some time -- you never understood or cared about it, anyway. That brand-name ‘signature art’ you auction back and forth, artificially inflating enormous prices, reveals just what barbarians you really are.

Your usurpation of art as a cover for money laundering and tax evasion, beyond the cheap hustle of peddling fake culture to new money, will eventually find you out. An afternoon’s scrawl, pulling millions at auction on the evening news, is perhaps the most blatant and visible affront to working people you could devise. If you continue to bait them with your privilege and excess, they’ll become belligerent and unreasonable, even irrational and willing to sacrifice their own interests just to expressed how pissed they really are. It seems their voices will finally be heard, even if it takes electing a civic saboteur as president to get their outrage across.

The collapse of your empire of brand-name blue-book art, warehoused fortunes reduced to dust, would mean a great liberation for art itself, and for common people. The malaise may recede when the citizens begin to see themselves and their commonalities more clearly through the medium of the art, both accessible and attainable. Of course sooner or later, newly empowered, they’ll come for you, alter the tax code and pull the plug on your philanthropic write-off racket. (As soon as some city council bolts, so starved for resources that it puts the museum’s collection of modern masters on the market for cash, it’s all over, and their true market value will be revealed. This almost happened in Detroit a few years ago, until so-called philanthropic entities rushed it with a fat donation to the trash collectors union. Actually happened, see owning art jan 2014 -- https://owningart.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-case-of-330-million-dollar-finger.html, and also read its rebuttal.)

Visual art can become a great solace to common people, a verification of personal autonomy and worth, first as an example of value beyond models of mass consumption, and of an expression too individual and personal for algorithms to grasp. The fair price of art is its value to the person who intends to own it and make it a part of their life, negotiated against the time, skill, and vision of the artist, which should be a reasonable and rational bargain in a regional market increasingly aware of its own art and artists.

entering the eye -- Archambeault

James Archambeault, locally renowned nature photographer, recently passed with a nice article in the paper, and testimonials reflected the larger community’s view of his work. Six books of photographs and many calendars, he took photographs of just what was there. ‘I didn’t invent Kentucky,’ he’d often say, modest in his craft. Even so, it’s said he’d wait for hours for the right light, a favorable angle of the sun, and with patience and a loving eye he produced his pictures.

His photographs were of nothing special, and that’s sort of interesting. Mares with foals at their side are grazing as the mist rolls away while traffic congests on the way to work every weekday, who notices? Sunlight falls through the trees and dapples the creek as ATVs bounce down a cowpath, it’s always there. Jim was thinking abstractly, the sky in a pond against the weathered paint of the barn, beguiling the attention, but he used visual terms that were already familiar to any citizen who drives just a few miles out of town. Having once seen at his work, people look the same things but see them differently, and in some cases, see them at all. So many of their statements boil down to ‘he made me see and appreciate’ what was and is always there, day by day.

What artist wants more than that? Oh, I suppose having glamorous associates must be fun, and oodles of money with open afternoons sounds great, but that’s business, amusing the rich, and art is more serious than that. Some folks actually believe that seeing the physical world with more clarity enhances an individual’s sense of self, a far-fetched theory at this point, but just a new appreciation for the quality of light down by the lake at dusk would be enough. Whatever image goes in through the eyes, art’s attempt is to penetrate the forehead, to alter perception, if only by example. People look to artists like James Archambeault to verify their own experience, and to help them find commonality with others who share a sense of values beyond the lowest-denominator sensationalism found in commercial media.

Mary Boone’s atonement -- big house to big house

On Thursday afternoon, the iconic New York gallery owner Mary Boone was sentenced to 30 months in prison. She had pleaded guilty in September to charges that she falsified her expenses to give the impression that the gallery was losing money. Boone admitted to transferring $9.5 million from one bank to another and claiming it was a deductible business expense; other “business” expenses included almost $800,000 for an apartment renovation and a $19,000 shopping spree at Hermès and Louis Vuitton.   Artsy Magazine, online 2/14

Her lawyer ‘argued Boone’s crimes were due to a history of anxiety, depression, and addiction brought on by childhood trauma, and claimed that she had since found religion and clean living.’ No one necessarily believed any of that really justifies cheating on taxes, and closer to the truth would be, 'your honor, that’s just the way we do business.' She was operating in a realm where people piss away money just to impress their close social acquaintances, where sacrifice and honest effort are devalued, even demeaned, and no one knows or cares anything about art that sells for less than six figures and up, no limit. Every day she was helping high-roller clients manipulate the tax code, buying, trading, and donating to major civic institutions at enormously inflated prices, all tricks to hide their burgeoning seam-splitting dynastic wealth.

Surprised she was when agents showed up to explain that while she was enormously rich, she wasn’t wealthy enough to cheat outright. They deserve each other, the ultra rich and vultures like Mary, all of them cozily scamming each other, while the law is usually more concerned with petty crime, common bank robberies and such. Whatever they’re about, it has nothing to do with art, more like high stakes poker in which every play is a bluff, where every card has only momentary consensus value, and where the enormous pot of money in the middle stinks of tax fraud, money laundering, and larceny. What we have here is a political problem, so pervasive as to remain largely unseen, while the art is visual evidence of the debilitating distortion concentrated wealth causes throughout our culture. Time to look elsewhere.

changing the station -- using art

There’s a direct line between Warhol and Trump, same shallow values, same offhand derision of authority, originality, integrity of any stripe, nothing but glamour and greed the live long day. This mutual agreement on basic principles might seem strange at first, since many of Trump’s supporters don’t seem to know or care much about art, but art eventually permeates and influences the entire culture, and we live with it’s legacy. All the media people were aware of Warhol, and they spread the message like a red tide, name recognition is a form of celebrity and fame in itself has meaning, all of it framed in a sneering anti-intellectualism. Trump and Warhol knew and admired each other, and it had nothing to do with art -- kindred spirits plain to see.

Now that we know where it leads, it’s an insight we can use. Don’t expect the choice you make about which piece of art to buy to change the world. That will only happen when a lot of other people begin making similar choices, but you’re not in control of that. No one can tell you what to like, while all around a lot of other people are becoming more interested in self-verifying, experience-based referential art, and it seems to indicate a changing mood in the country. A blown-up soup can label won’t satisfy this crowd, too pointless and way too silly. Someday you’ll see one in a used furniture store for fifteen bucks, so sad.

On the individual level, this means the art you buy and live with influences how you feel about yourself and how you see the world, and put that way it sounds like a worthy investment. How you go about it is simple, just buy what you like, and sooner or later you’ll begin to recognize yourself in the art. Now a dealer says something similar, but with a twist -- they say, ‘buy just what you like, but always consult a reputable dealer, to make sure you’re not making a serious mistake.’ You don’t need them. Each of us has equipment on board that makes it easy to decide which piece of art we like best when looking at two, and it’s simply a matter of ramping up, expanding the field by looking at more art, and anyone can do it.

Art is the iceberg tip of ground-swell movements, not a reflection and not the cause, but the visible part of a society’s transformation, the communication mind to mind of a changing ethos, a new set of values along with a more autonomous sense of self. You won’t know just when it happens, but one day you’ll find yourself looking at art, and you’ll know it’s time to reconsider everything.

women and art -- picturing self

So sorry women in art have been treated unfairly when it comes to monetary success and fame, as recently there’s been much complaint, but fame is not our beat -- wrong universe. Might note that in most art schools, half of faculties and three quarters of the students always seem to be female, and it’s been that way for generations. I don’t know what any of it means, but prefer discussing the finished product rather than in its maker’s gender, national origin, or political concerns. This information might be nice to know if the art is worthy, but can be unreliable when used the other way around.

There’s a national movement, perhaps it’s global, an emerging sense of transition, an overdue process for us all, but the ladies seem to be first to leave the station. New interpretations of classic popular songs are sometimes comical, but seriously reflect the rejection of paternalistic norms generally accepted for centuries. Well, OK. Everyone sees this happening, but once the shackles have been broken, once tradition has been questioned and found guilty, who is the new person going to be? Does she buy new clothes, make new friends, all the while staring into an existential abyss big as a black hole, suddenly solely responsible for defining who she is? Just guessing here, attempting to empathize, but can it be so different?

I’m suggesting independent professional women, and any who aspire to be one, should become a major market for original art over these next few years. Serious and thoughtful art in the office reflects the integrity and judgement, the maturity and awareness of the person guiding the enterprise, a credential people feel rather than think about. Everyone notices. Serious art also sets a standard for staff, while adding an element of job satisfaction, company identification and loyalty difficult to match by just bumping paychecks periodically. At home, art on the wall influences the conversation, sets the mood, and reveals the host in a way department store furnishings cannot.

Choose art with visual gravity, that draws your attention, and that causes you to notice more of the world around you. A well-chosen work of art can become a handhold to pull yourself up another notch, to seize your own autonomy and to redefine yourself and your aspirations. This functional advantage, buying and owning art as a life enhancing mechanism, while it should be of special interest to anyone seeking personal transformation, as a basic technique isn’t gender specific, and would actually work for anyone.

mental-health alternatives -- delving self

‘Millennials need mental-health care, but struggle to access it’ .......Philadelphia Inquirer, 1-16
The article begins, ‘When Aishia Correll struggled with her mental health a few years ago, she thought she had nowhere to turn. So, she began painting and that became her therapy.’

The rest of the article is about the need for mental-health providers to take insurance, such as that, and doesn’t mention painting as an alternative to psycho-therapy again. I’ve heard that Sigmund Freud once remarked that ‘artists are people involved in self-therapy,’ and he didn’t seem to mind the competition, although some artist could have made that up. So you’ve been thinking all this while the sole ambition of the artist was to beguile and please you, and the only motive was to separate you from your cash. Actually the quest of the artist really has very little to do with you, and it certainly isn’t about money.

Making art that’s only about seduction turns out to be a very lucrative trade, and brings big bucks indeed, but that sort of talent gravitates toward advertising, high-tech production. Fact is creatives with deadlines wouldn’t bother with brushes and canvas, or all that time alone. In contrast, there are folks right around you who put in forty a week at a job they only tolerate, and then attempt to paint on weekends and instead of watching TV in the evening, and they’re not struggling with it to become rich and famous. Would they like to earn a living that way, every single one, but most would acknowledge it’s as unattainable as walking to the moon. What are they trying to prove?

Someone in your family, down the block, in all directions has made the attempt, has purchased supplies and set up a little workspace. Trade places with them for a moment, and stare at a blank white surface. This is the same blank surface that DaVinci confronted centuries ago, as has every artist since, good or bad, and it’s an awesome place. You can find yourself in there, but at the same time, since everyone else will be able to see you too, it can be scary. The first thing you’ll discover is that making marks on a page that will remind anyone else of a farm animal doesn’t come easy, and when someone guesses cow instead of horse, you’ll feel a small ripple of personal satisfaction, if a cow was what you were going for.

No one can teach you how to do it. Each mark requires an intention and presence that simply can’t be achieved in fluctuating emotional states, floating on delusion or obsessing over trifles. Painting imposes certain conditions, requires its own disciplines, and to a large extent, that’s the therapeutic part, but once mastery on even a rudimentary level is achieved, something else takes over. The artist becomes revealed in the canvas. It’s a mirror not concerned with the face that grows old and changes, but with sobriety and character, vision and belief, a bottomless well as deep or as shallow as the artist and viewer care to go. So remember, as a last resort art can be your mental-health provider when clinics are full and not taking more patients.

the myth of patronage -- censorship and control

Has the Catholic Church ever been a great patron of art, like it says in all the art history books? Not really. They weren’t art patrons, they were purchasers of art, in the same way modern ad agencies support legions of commercial artists. They had a story to tell, and they hired the most accomplished artists around to make it seem real. These artists were hired guns, and may or may not have believed it themselves.

That can’t be all the art made in those periods, although it does seem to be about all that made it through. The church was censoring art, no doubt, and limiting commercial trade, probably, but those painters didn’t get that good overnight. Endless annunciations would be boring, but other work from the era hasn’t survived. What we have here is not so much an example of patronage as it is wall-to-wall ‘mind-control,’ using art as a bludgeon, and only now that the spell has lifted can we even consider those paintings purely as art.

These days the role of the church, as the major patron and arbiter of aesthetic tastes, has been assumed by a secular bureaucracy, the NEA, accompanied by a vast academic establishment, and like the church before them, the whole mess supported by all of us. Oh, I know their in-house geniuses organize ‘peer-group’ reviews to pass out government largesse to their own, and that those generous and arbitrary foundation grants are carved from the common tax base, but no need to dwell on that part of it now. Just consider the art. Progressive, perhaps, but it’s good to remember the working translation of the term ‘avant-garde’ is ‘no one likes it,’ because if they did, it would be time to move on to something else. It’s a sad fact that actually producing artwork ordinary people might enjoy and relate to is considered ‘selling out’ to the state-supported crowd.

Theistic or secular, this notion of patronage from above is too self-serving to be of much use to art, or in any way fair to the general population. Whatever the motive, it’s the mechanism that’s flawed, so please put that money to other uses. Obviously, their help hasn’t helped, since the art they’ve championed hasn’t penetrated the heartland, and independent artists are still working day jobs. There also isn’t much original art up in houses, looks like their messianic mission to elevate the masses has been a failure. Nothing left for non-profits in each hometown, in the face of shrinking government patronage, except to attempt to re-knit the bond between area artists and their neighbors, and to acknowledge and legitimize the earnest efforts of independent studios. Make it a mission to display area-produced artwork in thoughtful, accessible, and informative groupings, friends of art after all. 

ugly beauty -- seeing change

If you want to see ugly, even beyond the decomposing corpses of Damien Hirst or the graffiti skulls of Jean-Michel Basquiat, really ugly, go back to the eighteen eighties and look at a Van Gogh pot of flowers. That feller just doesn’t know how to paint is what you’d think, since that’s what everybody thought at the time. It’s little wonder no one buys any, and he deserves his life of abject poverty -- case closed. It would take a couple of decades, and a lot of other painters following at safe distance, before his work became ‘visionary,’ and he was labeled a genius.

He didn’t wait around to see it, too shy and reclusive for recognition, and adulation would have made him most uncomfortable. His subsequent fame doesn’t change the fact that when he was making them, his paintings were just about unbearable, broadcasting a searing desperation to know the viewer intimately, to grab them by the lapels and look deeply into their eyes. This made the art establishment most uncomfortable and they shunned him, but it wasn’t their fault. They weren’t even wrong. The paintings hadn’t had time to mature, and ordinary eyes weren’t accustomed to that much truth and commitment.

Unlike fine wine, with time the paintings didn’t change, but in a curious way the people who saw them did. Van Gogh’s paintings were ugly, raw, and way too intense for most at the time he was making them, but the world would catch up eventually. This lag-time is way too common to be an accident, or just Vincent’s bad luck, or some ongoing failing of society to appreciate it’s geniuses. It’s actually an indication of art’s true role in community life, as a harbinger of change and social evolution. In our own time, it’s difficult not to draw direct parallels between the art, the values, and the morality of Andy Warhol and the mentality of Trump and Trump-ism. From about a three decade perspective it sure seems Andy foresaw, even predicted, the politics of future.

Times, they are a changing once again, and art will lead the way, or perhaps reflect in the moment a movement of minds. Lead or follow, either direction, it’s art that makes change visible. Totalitarians around the globe understand this, and they attempt to limit the future by stifling and controlling art, and by harassing independent artists while supporting those who portray their stunted vision. In a free and open democracy, those who are open to the future and want to find themselves in it, will find solace and inspiration in art. Galleries will have to face a more enlightened public as a new wave crashes ashore, and washes away ticket-punched resumes and herd-mentality marketing, art’s sleep mode. As a new era approaches, people will use art to propel themselves forward, redefining their sense of self, and attuning themselves to a larger humanity simply by owning works of art they find appealing. This newly generalized appetite for personally relevant art ignites and sparks to life when enough art is seen in public places, when enough options are available, and these days, could come about even more quickly if and when media steps in to magnify and accelerate what would be happening on its own, anyway.