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.