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.