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.

organic reformation -- from the inside

Baptists not so long ago opposed any style of dancing, and Catholics banned all forms of contraception, along with meat on friday, but these days the preacher wears jeans and presents an inspirational monologue as part of a sunday morning’s entertainment, a live TV production with a house band and studio audience. Better or worse, who’s to say, but something significant has changed right in front of us, and it’s changing still. While there’s occasional bickering over bathrooms, and alternative identities are still novel enough to have a parade, much that was once fenced off and out of bounds is now accepted, and by tomorrow won’t be an issue.

Yet with all the social upheaval it’s still not necessary for anyone to change their attitudes about art. If you’ve reached your emeritus status as an authority on art after having cut your eye teeth on abstract expressionism long ago, don’t give up your love of all the greats, the splashers and slashers, with their raw inchoate yearnings expressed with such elegance and verve. Just don’t expect your creaking recitations of modern art’s tired genealogy of geniuses to mean much to a new audience with a fresh interest in visual art. Isn’t it time to wonder -- is there more original art up in public places because people want and expect to see it, or is it the other way around? This can never really be determined, but without a doubt, there’s more art up in public all the time. 

So for all you people out there desperately waving your arm above the digital quicksand, there’s a solid-state device you can buy. An original work of art is be like a mental lifesaver floating above the swirling vortex of one-use disposability sucking us down. The picture on your wall won’t change ever again, and that’s a good thing, a reassuring thing, but more importantly, its unique character will in time become a homing beacon for your conception of self. Acquiring original art is not about decorating the nest, or conspicuous investment, or impressing the in-laws, anymore. The high-end art galleries in major urban areas will be in heavy arrears on their uptown rents one day soon, and niche galleries in strip malls will thrive when the common folk finally realize they can have legitimate art in their lives. Reflecting this shifting landscape, non-profit art organizations, charged with representing and promoting the collective sensibility of their communities, will turn their focus inward and feature a more responsive, more accessible, more authentic art produced in regional studios.

The art won’t change, it’s all been there all along, but there’s a new consensus about its importance, based on evolving conditions. In the first place, a much broader audience will simply inundate the establishment notion of ticket punching access to reputation and respectability, and sweep it away. Scholarship aside, the real key to ‘understanding‘ art in a visceral and intimate way, is simple exposure, looking at lots of art. This lights up areas of discernment we all possess, and in the end true sophistication is simply seeing what’s there. It won’t be necessary for anyone to make a conscious decision to re-imagine art, it’s an organic process. Somehow over a short period of time, a diverse cross-section of average people will independently experience the same curiosity, as everyday more people wake up interested in art.   

art’s SciFi-- midwifing the future

Sorting sunday’s paper, the ‘home-seller’ section is a tabloid tucked in the middle. In the centerfold of the home-seller is a home to envy, expansive rooms, perfect lot, loaded with conveniences, and the very pinnacle of gracious living -- but there’s never any art. There’s a alternative lifestyle that’s never considered, simple functional furnishings and significant art in every room. That approach wouldn’t turn fat commissions for agents, and so will never be featured, or even considered -- as a way to live, as a house to come home to, as a sanctuary for mind and spirit instead of just a swell place to watch the game.

I’d rather see those dollars go in the pockets of creatives than the cruising sharks of property acquisition, but that’s my own self-serving bias, and doesn’t count for much. It’s the world that’s changing, and has nothing to do with me. Exhibit number one would have to be the new hotel chain invasively occupying second tier cities, using the lure of original art to rent rooms at a premium. The concept is so successful they’re being emulated throughout the industry. Only a few years back the whole idea would have sounded naive, even flaky, and wouldn’t have been successful, but society is transitioning as we speak.

Maybe that’s enough to make the case, that clever entrepreneurs are cashing in on trending public preferences, but what if it’s deeper than that? What if the mentality of the nation, and of much of the world, were bending in a new direction and choosing art as a means of spreading the word? Art would become midwife to the emergence of a new mindset regarding the environment, possibly limits on personal wealth, and on each person’s regard for themselves and others.

It would be insidious, clandestine, a subtle revolution below civil authority’s radar. One day you could find yourself looking up at an original painting in an office or waiting room, somehow a little more interesting than whatever was there before, and before long you’re seeing original art all over town, in restaurants and bank lobbies, even up on the sides of buildings. Pretty soon people will want to talk about it, express an opinion, and sooner or later, you’ll come to have an opinion, too -- probably without knowing just when it happens.

Try to imagine a tabloid in the sunday paper featuring paintings by local artists, articles about the work, and even an agency of direct exchange, a means of putting art up in houses all over town. Don’t stop there. A few years from now there might develop a public awareness and affection for local artists as well as athletes, not ‘one and done’ transients, but neighbors whose work can be seen throughout an entire career, followed closely by everyone who already owns their art, and by anyone else simply interested.

What would change if all that happened, original art going up in middle class houses? Would the hometown seem more amiable and considerate, more open to new ideas and tolerant of diversity -- probably. Would owning art help common citizens develop a new awareness of their own autonomy, and along with it an evolving sense of fair distribution and public responsibility? A case could be made. If there’s a chance you haven’t noticed, it’s already begun, and maybe someday, not so far off, original art will become coin of the realm when everything else can be copied, simulated, and falsified. Mission complete, return to earth.