class warfare -- art’s front lines

Does a secret cabal of extremely powerful people control the rest of us by manipulating the media, the economy, even the arts, herding us like sheep from some mahogany-lined bunker, as has been alleged from time to time? If those guys exist they’re just part of a larger dynamic, playing their part in a grander scheme. Human consciousness evolves and little monads like us are swept along, even the really rich ones. Turns out the cabal has been there since robber baron days and electronic media has given them the means to domesticate and control a compliant public, to divert them with sports and tell them what to think on the evening news. Media drugged and docile, the common citizen pays exorbitant prescription prices and credit card fees, while generally ignoring art which they’ve been led to believe is way overpriced and most probably meaningless. This is by design. The assault on figurative art began back in the early thirties when the Rivera mural for Rockefeller Center was commissioned and then destroyed before it could be seen, and thereafter began a campaign to discredit and destroy figurative expression altogether. The advent of the insurgent abstractionist movement of the forties and fifties was mostly a shadily-financed sham, no one bought in the beginning, and the modernist regime has ultimately resulted in the reduction of art to a pursuit novelty and notoriety, portrayed in media as little more than a commodity for consensus-driven speculation.

That was art in the old world where stinking wealth was flaunted, millions pissed away on hideous carnival novelties and commercial flotsam masquerading as art. Is it over, probably. Ordinary people who have been threatened with extinction could be expected to question their condition a little closer, and might turn to art for solace. Some will begin making it, threadbare monks setting up studios in storage rooms and garages while working menial jobs to pay rent. One day they wake up with a yen to paint, to say they were here and to stake a claim in a world and a lifetime that passes quickly. Many will just find themselves interested, won’t know why, and they'll start looking at art. What they’ll see there is the character and wit of someone like themselves, only perhaps a bit more independent, more ready for sacrifice and less tied to the wheel. They’ll admire that.

When original art goes up in houses and apartments displacing sports posters and bland reproductions, it will be a sign the american populace is beginning to resist the siren song of salvation through acquisition, driven to pursue the best deal possible while being fleeced. Would wide-spread art ownership change the character of the population making them more independent and resilient, without doubt and that’s the very reason relatable representation art was sabotaged in the first place. Even so, as the world turns the mexican muralists have returned after almost a century of exile and are currently under quarantine at the Whitney Museum in NY. When it reopens their message of cultural unity and class consciousness could burst forth once again. In any case, when average people feel empowered to judge what art best represents their particular point of view new communities arise, and purely commercial interests feel threatened. Will the cabal on high resort to surveillance fascism creating a dark gray world with comics for literature and sullen brutality for entertainment? They’ve thought about it, but art is on the other side. Art is about cultivating and fulfilling human potential, expressing longings and urges, disappointments and ecstasies in an elevated area of our intelligence where words won’t even reach. Turns out art is the pill you take to wake up and recognize yourself as more than a consumer on a treadmill, with your own personality and point of view expressed through the art you hang on your walls.