planned obsolescence -- a barnyard turnaround

I wrote this blog for a number of years to express frustration at an art world which had rejected me, it was mutual. A less obsessive sort would probably have moved on, found some semi-creative niche in the big world of commerce and concentrated on comfort, but I took on the challenge of moving the mountain. Partly heroic, I liked the idea, but I didn’t have much choice. Family issues had shuffled my priorities and reconnection to others and to physical reality, itself, would shape how I came to conceive of art. This was, in fact, the way I found myself standing on the wrong side of the fence, when more exclusionary and non-objective forms were receiving support and recognition.

Occasionally along the way, I’ve offered the aside that what I was saying would become obsolete when the art world began to move on to the new reality, which would be about now, really. So let’s keep score. I said a new generation of DA’s would go after the money laundering and tax evasion among major art donors, and that at some point a run of deaccession by major museums would deflate the market for ‘masters’ and collapse all speculative investing. At this point it could be said to be teetering.

I also suggested that a grass-roots reawakening in hometowns would reestablish representational art as a forum for thoughtful expression, and a lattice for connection, empathy, and trust among neighbors. Of all the many forces pulling and twisting present day society, the rise of studios and galleries from underachieving rental properties, outdoor painting events, and murals on blank walls all indicate an interest in representational art within communities is being renewed.

I even predicted that the very facts of origin and duration would make original works of art inherently valuable in a world of swirling images and ephemeral facts, each of us standing in digital quicksand. The fact that one person made it and it’s the only one there is, will have increasing potency, and if some element of humanity comes across, inhabitants of a one-use world may value it instinctively, without knowing why.

It was my outside hope to connect with other rebels, undercover jedi knights working regular jobs, painting on weekends and waiting to be seen, or people looking at art and seeking a doorway, but I know they’re out there. My squeak just doesn’t carry very far, like whispering into a hollow log, but I haven’t been entirely wrong so far. Words have been discredited lately, Orwell predicted, but pictures supersede languages, and a painting can be a nod back and forth among many, as well as a verification of self, and an individual’s anchor against the tide.