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.
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.
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