carts before horses -- identity art

Picasso is the pied piper who led twentieth century art astray but it wasn’t in his paintings, it was in the marketing of his name. In his prime, Picasso made art all day long, everyday, taking time out for lunch and using the fish bone in his art that afternoon. He didn’t care what you thought of it, and that was part of his charm, but it was his becoming internationally famous that changed art. Thereafter the name in the corner became more important than the image, the actual art. Even though he made art across a wide range of styles, from assertive statements miles ahead of his contemporaries to almost thoughtless scrawls, all that needs to be said to establish a piece of art’s status is just the name. For the remainder of the twentieth century art slowly transformed into a managed and manipulated pantheon of personality cults, with ambitious artists striving for fame like horses in the derby. In galleries, patrons were encouraged to place their bets and live with the results.

I could suggest this way of looking at art is backward but this is about art, and words will never convey the what the art says directly. It’s a fact that a clever forgery of a famous piece of art that would cost tens of millions is worth absolutely nothing, and probably no fun to look at either. Who would really want to own a genuine Jackson Pollock if he’d never become famous and just happened to live next door? I could go on but we all have eyes. It’s the cross-eyed offspring of signature art that currently informs the art aware, and all around art is being solicited from check-list identity groups, anyone neglected or excluded because of who they are as a member of a maligned minority. Sorry, you’re a little late. In this quaintly southern town our local celebrity artist, Henry Faulkner, was notoriously, almost belligerently, gay decades ago, so that ice has long been broken, and nationally gayness is almost assumed.

Art, believe it or not, is quite democratic, and the insight and attitude embodied in the image doesn’t reveal who made it, although similar sensibilities might recognize each other through art. Frankly, it’s not that important, who made it. It’s interesting to learn about the artist, but it’s a side street, an add-on, something extra you can in time forget so long as you hang on to the painting, putting it up wherever you live and seeing it everyday.