So am I the only one who sees a direct connection between Warhol and Trump, a classic case of art preceding life so clear we could have seen it coming. I never liked Warhol for almost exactly the same reasons people now hate Trump. I’m not making Warhol responsible for what’s happened or even his fans, and will concede many of Trump’s supporters have never heard of Andy Warhol, but that isn’t the point. A case is being made for art as a prophetic reflection of the near future and what example in human history could be more graphically clear?
The awful science-fiction fact is that Warhol and Trump aren't really people like you and I, but instead are some sort of alien mollusk inhabiting a human shell and none too gracefully in either case. The terrain they literally see is as different from what regular people see as the vision of some other life-form, which they are. These creatures inhabit a fluid universe composed solely of the responses of others and and have almost no regard for physical reality. Trump could have a private chef but he’s happy with fast food, his great mind can’t be bothered with three dimensions. Both have been acknowledged as master manipulators of fame and social influence, and each is notorious for making decisions based solely on the emotional response of their audience, the very truth determined strictly in terms of popularity.
Such persons are well suited to retail and right at home in the fashion industry, but modern mass media has given them wings. A mediocre mentality unencumbered by a bunch of education and devoid of any notion of moral obligation or responsibility, it’s simply lacking, has a huge advantage over regular humans who feel constrained by verifiable facts, who use reason, and who display empathetic feelings for others. The success of these two similar personalities, neither of them very smart, reveals a culture lulled into a stupor by sit-coms and crime shows and delivered to commercial and financial carnivores like livestock to slaughter. The place they’ve led us is pretty grim, everyone teetering at the edge of an abyss devoid of meaning, where accomplishment is jeered at and momentary fame fills everybody’s dreams.
Using simple logic we can find our way out by the same way we came in only this time we look at art that speaks of integrity and commitment, that registers in the higher compartments of our mind and that challenges the way we’ve always seen the world. Does such an art exist you might ask, and oddly enough its very existence is determined by who’s looking and why. In a mutual quest for awakening and self-realization, area artists and their patrons collaborate on making the regional product better, raising standards and priming expectations in an ongoing conversation back and forth. This ain’t no picnic and there aren’t many solutions left except to paint a better world that alters the vision and aspiration of humanity toward something more sustainable, more conscious and more humane.
The awful science-fiction fact is that Warhol and Trump aren't really people like you and I, but instead are some sort of alien mollusk inhabiting a human shell and none too gracefully in either case. The terrain they literally see is as different from what regular people see as the vision of some other life-form, which they are. These creatures inhabit a fluid universe composed solely of the responses of others and and have almost no regard for physical reality. Trump could have a private chef but he’s happy with fast food, his great mind can’t be bothered with three dimensions. Both have been acknowledged as master manipulators of fame and social influence, and each is notorious for making decisions based solely on the emotional response of their audience, the very truth determined strictly in terms of popularity.
Such persons are well suited to retail and right at home in the fashion industry, but modern mass media has given them wings. A mediocre mentality unencumbered by a bunch of education and devoid of any notion of moral obligation or responsibility, it’s simply lacking, has a huge advantage over regular humans who feel constrained by verifiable facts, who use reason, and who display empathetic feelings for others. The success of these two similar personalities, neither of them very smart, reveals a culture lulled into a stupor by sit-coms and crime shows and delivered to commercial and financial carnivores like livestock to slaughter. The place they’ve led us is pretty grim, everyone teetering at the edge of an abyss devoid of meaning, where accomplishment is jeered at and momentary fame fills everybody’s dreams.
Using simple logic we can find our way out by the same way we came in only this time we look at art that speaks of integrity and commitment, that registers in the higher compartments of our mind and that challenges the way we’ve always seen the world. Does such an art exist you might ask, and oddly enough its very existence is determined by who’s looking and why. In a mutual quest for awakening and self-realization, area artists and their patrons collaborate on making the regional product better, raising standards and priming expectations in an ongoing conversation back and forth. This ain’t no picnic and there aren’t many solutions left except to paint a better world that alters the vision and aspiration of humanity toward something more sustainable, more conscious and more humane.
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