I understand how difficult it is to give up an addiction having wrestled with tobacco years ago, and withdrawing from a religious or political cult is bound to cause psychological distress as well, so I understand my beam of morning sunlight on the floor won’t be welcomed. The institution and industry of modern art, international jet-set art fairs and such, is going to quiver, fade and disappear in a puff of financial collapse and resource redistribution. It’s beginnings were shady and it flounders in scandals, arms and drug dealers laundering dirty money and there's the lying cheating way they do business, all in the service of an art so repetitious and uninteresting it can be sold by the artist’s name alone.
Let's decompress. Way back at the beginning didn’t the idea of ‘accidental’ art ever bother you just a little? I took studio classes at two universities during the seventies and both times the painting instructor introduced their class by pouring paint on a large piece of canvas laying on the floor and squishing it around. The second one turned it over and started embellishing whatever soaked through, an altogether original approach and a solid breakthrough. Repeating this performance at the beginning of each semester guaranteed a steady income, along with unlimited paint, canvas, and studio space. Maybe best of all every term the institution provided fifteen or twenty fresh young faces all eager to please a demigod with the power of grades, but the other art teacher who didn’t turn the canvas over got all the same stuff. So what was their lesson really?
Accidental music can be interesting sometimes, random horns in a traffic jam, railroad cars screeching and banging on a really cold morning, the din in a crowded restaurant with poor acoustics, but very few people would buy a ticket to sit and listen. So why would anyone spend ten seconds staring into an accidental Jackson Pollock painting? If farm animals can make art essentially indistinguishable from multi-million dollar masterpieces, what does that say about art, about life, about us? Try stepping out of your own skin for a moment. If someone were to explain that the very notions of virgin birth and chastity among the unwed were really psychological devices of draconian social control and sexual exploitation so diabolical they would enslave humanity for centuries, some among us wouldn’t like it hearing it. If you truly believe in modern art with its pantheon of successive pop celebrities and the sanctified brokering of their holy relics, in the phony press with its compromised critics and the tax-supported academic establishment keeping accessible art out of the hands of common folk, maybe what I've said will sound offensive and in a similar fashion. Well, it's a similar load.
Rothko, Pollock, and the rest of their movement went for really large canvases, too big for an average person in a regular house to even get through the door, so much the better. There’s dramatic effect in scale and in a spacious gallery big paintings are impressive, but the museum has one of each on exhibit and five more in the stacks, all acquired as tax-break donations bringing the church’s traffic in indulgences up to date. Resurrection in this season seems more appropriate this time around, and art about what all eyes see has returned after long exile, ready to kick some ass and clear the temple. While figurative art isn’t in itself the truth, it is a way to the truth, and having it around cleanses the glass and sharpens perception, but mostly it returns to each individual the joy and responsibility of judging on their own, unbinding and releasing the potential for personal growth.
Let's decompress. Way back at the beginning didn’t the idea of ‘accidental’ art ever bother you just a little? I took studio classes at two universities during the seventies and both times the painting instructor introduced their class by pouring paint on a large piece of canvas laying on the floor and squishing it around. The second one turned it over and started embellishing whatever soaked through, an altogether original approach and a solid breakthrough. Repeating this performance at the beginning of each semester guaranteed a steady income, along with unlimited paint, canvas, and studio space. Maybe best of all every term the institution provided fifteen or twenty fresh young faces all eager to please a demigod with the power of grades, but the other art teacher who didn’t turn the canvas over got all the same stuff. So what was their lesson really?
Accidental music can be interesting sometimes, random horns in a traffic jam, railroad cars screeching and banging on a really cold morning, the din in a crowded restaurant with poor acoustics, but very few people would buy a ticket to sit and listen. So why would anyone spend ten seconds staring into an accidental Jackson Pollock painting? If farm animals can make art essentially indistinguishable from multi-million dollar masterpieces, what does that say about art, about life, about us? Try stepping out of your own skin for a moment. If someone were to explain that the very notions of virgin birth and chastity among the unwed were really psychological devices of draconian social control and sexual exploitation so diabolical they would enslave humanity for centuries, some among us wouldn’t like it hearing it. If you truly believe in modern art with its pantheon of successive pop celebrities and the sanctified brokering of their holy relics, in the phony press with its compromised critics and the tax-supported academic establishment keeping accessible art out of the hands of common folk, maybe what I've said will sound offensive and in a similar fashion. Well, it's a similar load.
Rothko, Pollock, and the rest of their movement went for really large canvases, too big for an average person in a regular house to even get through the door, so much the better. There’s dramatic effect in scale and in a spacious gallery big paintings are impressive, but the museum has one of each on exhibit and five more in the stacks, all acquired as tax-break donations bringing the church’s traffic in indulgences up to date. Resurrection in this season seems more appropriate this time around, and art about what all eyes see has returned after long exile, ready to kick some ass and clear the temple. While figurative art isn’t in itself the truth, it is a way to the truth, and having it around cleanses the glass and sharpens perception, but mostly it returns to each individual the joy and responsibility of judging on their own, unbinding and releasing the potential for personal growth.
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