democratic art -- domestic influences

Moses was appalled when he got back. He’d been up on the mountain considering the meaning of it all and while he was gone the people erected a golden calf, these days frankly reproduced as the bronze bull on wallstreet, and it’s an expression of base materialism plain and simple. When just stuff is worshiped greed sets in and the people begin behaving like pigs, doesn’t matter the time or place. Pretty soon their civilization crumbles and they go back to cooking over an open fire and living with animals, waiting to start over.

Moses decided to give them something else to think about, like when the vet distracts your dog before it gets its shot. He said look over here and see these stone tablets given to me by the one and only god, and drag yourselves away from doing better than your neighbor for a moment that you might see life differently. The commandments aren’t particularly bad advice in a general sort of way but that’s not the point. Humans are capable of incandescent attainment and we have the examples of DaVinci, Beethoven, and Einstein, and we have the art of the ancient chinese, the egyptians, the meso-americans and the greeks, but when things get good we can backslide.

Convenience comes in handy and having household machines that help with the chores should leave us free to read a book, to visit a museum, to expand our universe and live up to our potential, wouldn’t that be great? To see how we’re doing let’s look at our art since after all, it’s the way we judge all the civilizations that came before us. It seems we’re in trouble. The scrapping and replacing of the last century’s monuments, righteous and necessary no doubt, reveals an easing of standards that’s less than comforting, and millions and millions of dollars for dogshit art at auction is a ‘let them eat cake’ formula for disaster. Somehow just having more free time hasn’t made us better.

It was an eye-opener to me and a novel notion of democracy when I read that attendance at the theater in ancient greece was mandatory. Utilizing their art and literature they were imposing intelligence and rationality on the population. Every citizen was being to asked to measure themselves against the culture’s highest ideals, and it seems to have worked well for a few hundred years, average citizens accomplished and thoughtful with lives well lived. Here we have our own version of democracy and each of us decides what to look at and what to think about on our own, it’s that way in writing. We also have more choices, from the imbecilic to works of art that are smarter than we are, and we get to pick and choose which to live with and see every day. Does it make a difference, the greeks thought it did. 

the soul's reflection -- the grifter's gift

Study Finds That Abstractions Don’t Elicit Universal Emotional Responses Among Viewers   artnet news, august 11, 2020
“Aesthetic effects are not universally shared but rather are highly determined by private evaluation,” it stated.
 
Turns out abstract art is pretty much a blank slate and you take away only what you brought with you, everyone projecting their own meanings on a square of pure improvisation. Now that’s freedom but it isn’t communication since it’s been determined definitively there’s no universal meaning in abstract art, and maybe no meaning at all. Back when the abstract expressionists first ascended they had all the meaning, subconscious supremacy and action immediacy, all such as that, and it was the representational artists who had nothing left to say and besides we’re not even looking at pictures of anything any more no matter what. Literary people fanned the flames of abstract expressionism realizing before anyone else that it truly was a blank slate and they could write anything they wanted about it. They were free to fly, constructing counterpoints of airy conjecture that would baffle their editors and leave the general public in the dust.

This inherent meaninglessness of abstraction is desirable in certain quarters and corporate entities particularly prefer its non-committal qualities for conference rooms and offices, a splash of color for muted business interiors without revealing even so much as personal taste, conceding not even that much advantage. Fans of abstract art also include anyone mentally lazy or just disinterested who find it convenient for breaking up blank wall space in waiting rooms and such since who looks anyway? To be fair some abstract art does get lots of attention but only as the price tag begins to swell to gigantic proportion and overshadow the art, ironically in itself something recognizable after all.

In the end there’s only art, all together, and we have centuries and continents of it already laid down. In our era of general prosperity some knowledge of art should reasonably be the common heritage of everyone, not just the gated reserve of the insanely rich and those who long to be like them. Down the street and around the corner someone is painting what they see, don’t know why. Their work won’t be valued by the establishment since they still haven't found the first step on the ascending ladder of certified affirmations the industry calls a career. This is the time when their work will be cheap, before the general population begins to awaken to their own human potential, abruptly weaned from sports and stadium concerts, shut out of bars and forced to cook at home, even bored enough to pickup the coffee table book and actually look at the pictures. Pretty soon they’ll be able to see the art in front of them too, and the buyer’s market for pictures of things will be gone.

the art of time-binding -- personal markers

Heard a story about how Marc Chagall deep in his nineties was shown a painting he had done around nineteen twelve and after looking for a moment he started to cry, so sweet such a quaint old man. His patronizing fans could not travel back with him to a drafty studio, his friends and the life he had back then, but the painting sent him down a long dark wormhole and left him smoking his pipe close by a wood stove, the smell of turpentine in the air and horses in the street, good times. Paintings have a way of absorbing events and experiences and then releasing them back during a moment’s contemplation, places lived and things seen.

To be clear I’m talking about real art and not whatever someone happens to have on the wall at the time, as easily forgotten as last year’s calendar. Original art from the hand of an artist has a presence museum posters or mass produced mall art don’t possess, similar in a way to the difference between music in live performance and anything recorded. It’s an argument that can be settled only by direct experience, and it’s the reader’s responsibility to verify this simple fact on their own. Assuming it’s so, by depicting a moment’s experience within a matrix of skill and manual effort, time is arrested and the artist manages to put a foot in the revolving door of daily experience.

A painting bought when young for too much money at the time, to celebrate graduation or the new job, to mark an arrival in a different city or just because you didn’t want to let it get away, will pay for itself over and over in the years ahead. From the date of purchase the painting forgets its artist and begins remembering the life of its new owner going forward. A few pieces of original art becomes a personal entourage, inhabiting the walls each time there’s a move and in between witnessing daily joy and strife, finally becoming a repository of all that mileage as close by as a cup of coffee and a moment to reflect. Art can bind a lifetime together by halting and gathering time in significant moments, creating islands in a constantly-streaming river of memory and enabling more potent and tangible recollections than a tumble of old photos and videos with no artistic value of their own.
 
Time is flapping at the edges these days, the great wars overlap as centuries collapse and history becomes a blur, while possible futures are trending on a highly volatile and virulently contagious form of instantaneous group-think right there in everybody’s hand. The very act of painting speaks of a different time frame and the painting in itself insists on an extended attention span to even comprehend its image. Over time there’s also reason to wonder why it still seems so fresh and compelling when everything else in the room has become familiar and largely goes unnoticed. Art is a time-binder, a recorder and witness that lives with you and is seen every day, not sequestered on a bookshelf or compressed in a digital cloud, and having it around provides perspective on the years as they flow by.