'entry points' -- points of view

lilies      40"x40

I went to a panel discussion hosted by a progressive hotel entitled, ‘entry points,’ a provocative name to a ragtag band of artists, all in search of a sliver of access to the ‘audience,’ a mythical population, and at this point still largely imaginary. It could have instead been called, ‘cascade of credentials,’ with an extensive listing for each panelist in the form of a handy brochure. Of the four panelists, the two artists presented radically, indeed polar forms. The first was theatrical in myopic and rigid black and white, while the other artist said nothing at all, and instead ran a rather lengthy video of free-form visual gibberish, with the disclaimer, ‘if flashing lights make you feel ill, look away.’ The other two were curators, who didn’t really have much to add. I didn’t detect a single point of entry for the creatively under-appreciated, no website, no email address, no secret door, but, to be fair, when the questions began I slipped away. The refreshments were grand and the coffee was excellent, thanks.

We here at ‘owning art’ have never had much sympathy for artists, dreamy freeloaders who think other people should value their precious expressions. The independent ones are art’s prospectors, rough and antisocial, with pick and shovel and beans for supper, they could’ve had a day job, and the dayroom directors over at the university have already schemed out their retirement. It’s the audience that’s due concern, that needs to be aroused, and it’s they who could use more information. It would be more productive to address that sleeping beast with one eye only half open, potential art consumers, nodding listlessly on the empty calories of common culture, all the while longing for something worthy and enduring they can hold on to. In its most condensed and portable form, that’s going to be art. Art is what this society lacks, and while competing ideologies thrash around, and seeds of discord sprout even in an innocent art forum, some notion of social cohesion and solidarity should also be planted.

I’m all for a campaign called, ‘entry points,’ but not for those craven opportunists who listen to music in their studios all afternoon, or on weekends, of whenever they find time to work. They’ll show up if you whistle. This progressive hotel should definitely be hosting ‘entry points’ events, but for business executives, for professional forums and associations, and for anyone in the local population who feels intimidated and discouraged by the condescending and fetishistic art they’ve been presenting, so far, in their galleries.

A program called ‘entry points’ could be designed for the local population, aimed toward developing an audience who might one day begin buying and living with art, and supporting area artists. Along with panels of local artists, their galleries could begin featuring worthy art produced in the area. These exhibits would draw more foot traffic from the community, achieving an integration with area awareness, while establishing a regional identity for a traveling public. With their acknowledgement, many artists’ careers might become self-sustaining, as the community gains the confidence to make aesthetic choices. If the home-office of this corporation, well-intentioned and commendable, can unravel its own mission statement, it might consider curating from another point of view, and redirecting their interesting and possibly branded concept, ‘entry points.’

back to the source -- pictures

bovines     48"x48

The reality we inhabit is as deep as anyone cares to go. There’s always more to see, and all that’s required is to look, but even so, the world we all inhabit has been getting shallower, until it’s mostly just surface. Maybe you haven’t noticed. Advertising cultivates lowest denominators, and that’s fine with the overlords, since the mass of human flesh concerned about what brand of beer to drink, or what sports franchise to root for, is so much easier to herd and exploit. Those dead-eyed zombies cashing in on war and famine have an ongoing beef with art, and a raging dislike for artists, mostly because they wake people up, arousing their sense of self and causing them to question their place in the world.

In totalitarian countries, they pump out their single-world view, manipulating the masses and dulling their aspirations. These terror states just throw independent artists in jail, or worse. Any art that doesn’t promote their program of control is labeled degenerate and making it becomes a crime, fairly simple, but in open-market societies the approach has been more nuanced. The state, under the guise of progressivism, devotes massive amounts of public money to promoting an art no one really cares for, until serious people begin to lose interest. As though on a sacred mission, they inundate galleries and museums with the non-objective and self-referential, a style turned out in great quantities by the salaried wing of their vast art bureaucracy. Either way the goal is similar -- reducing their fellow humans to a drone population intoxicated on festivals, parades, and sporting events, never asking where they’re headed, or who’s in charge.

Societies, at large, are just going to have to work this out. Will the essential human spirit emerge from the ashes of the twentieth century, and wizened by all the cheap lies, finally assert itself against the dumb narcotic miasma they’ve cast over the land, with sitcoms, cop shows, seven layer lotteries and overlapping rounds of season-long tournaments. It looks like a long-shot from here, but we have to live our own lives in the meantime, right? Maybe we should ask, each as individuals, what is it about visual art that has it censored and controlled in one society, and reduced to a poker chip by another? What are they afraid of, and could it be somewhere hiding in plain sight?

Millionaires have attempted to turn art into a signifier of elitist sensibility, the market begets a branded commodity, there’s even a form of state-sponsored secular idolatry, and it would be best for the serious person to see through all of that. On the walls of caves, millennia before the dawn of history, people made marks in charcoal and ochre, and with our pampered modern eyes we see long-extinct animals as they were. Have you been taking that for granted? It’s an amazing human attribute, and it’s the crux of what they’re concerned about, pardon me boys, those mollusks in the star chamber, high above us.

Visual art enters the nervous system through a service door, at a level not accessible to intellectual thought, and responding to it is experienced more as a kind of knowing, or even better, can sometimes seem like remembering something long forgotten. If the beguiling image is only attempting to sell you a product, it’s empty promise can seem stale, no matter how talented the artist. On the other hand, an original piece of art, even if the product of only sincere and honest effort, already embodies an example of an aspiration that goes beyond a desire for money, since it’s an arduous apprenticeship, and the nervous system knows it. I may not share a meal, but I’d sit and watch the sunset with a cave-person anytime. We’d compare portfolios.

revival in the heartland -- seeing salvation

Religion isn't really about worshiping a god, that’s just a cover story. The basic mission of them all is altering reality. Civilizations located in arid climates didn’t necessarily revere the rain god, but sought to flatter it with great ceremonial displays of affection, along with the occasional sacrifice ......so it would rain. We’re modern people, and we can cut out the middlemen, even though they be legion. Instead we can talk about bending reality directly, without all the incense and chanting. 

First of all, it would be handy to decide what’s meant by ‘reality.’ Is reality just what you perceive, based on your own little bundle of life-experiences and unquestioned habits of thought, or is there something real out there independent of us, that we could all see together? The answer is ‘no, there isn’t,’ or, if there is, we can’t know it. All we have is this little machine that sorts all we see into discreet comparisons with stuff we’ve seen before, we call it thinking, and constantly discards the rest. If you’ve evolved ahead of the rest of us, and can see around corners and understand time, none of the rest of this applies to you, but for any remaining, you’re living in a box and the walls are defined by where you’ve been and what you’ve seen, perhaps along with what you’ve read and thought about, and that makes all of our realities a bit different.

Instead of religion, consider art, and it’s ability to shape and alter reality by exercising and stretching the flabby physique of the perceptual net, by tuning and calibrating personal discernment and stretching out the attention-span, and by opening up silted channels of sight and dredging out harbors of thought. Something else art does for us, has always done, and that’s to give us an island to swim toward, all of us are adrift in this sea of infinite possibility. Religions have all employed art to shape the reality they wanted, angels in clouds and demon enforcers below, but we don’t have to do it that way anymore.

Could looking at art cause rain to fall on parched crops, probably not, but no one knows how effective sacrifice at the temple is either. What art can do it is offer new possibilities to the nervous system, knocking the needle out of its well-worn groove, and the person probably won’t even know it's happening. Even so, in time they’ll begin to notice more detail in their surroundings, they'll listen better, and for some reason even good food will taste better. This is altering reality, as real as it gets. In the larger world, being more open to the array of possibilities at almost every moment should lead to better outcomes, and when the notion of irrigation arises, the rain god becomes less relevant and sacrifice goes out of style.

As identity silos become slimmer, as music becomes more fundamental, and as advertising covers every visible surface, wouldn’t now be a good time to unclog reception channels pounded shut by invasive stimuli, and utilize art for altering your own reality, tuning in to the world we all see, together?
 

art -- the only thing that floats

Two people are having a conversation. A dog enters the room. One person loves dogs, sometimes even more than people, and this dog is so friendly, wagging and saying hello. The other person doesn’t like dogs, had no animals as a child, and finds all that wagging and head bobbing disturbing and maybe threatening. Do they see the same dog? They’ll both agree they see a dog, even a brown dog, but it isn’t the same dog. If you’ll concede that through each other’s eyes the dog would be unrecognizable, consider it also applies to the room, the sky, the car one of them is so proud of, and even to each other’s faces, so different from what they see themselves in the mirror.

Politics makes it obvious, people seemingly are living on different planets while inhabiting the same space, but it's revealed in more than the alternative facts on the evening news. The most obvious difference in individual perception has to do with attention to detail, how much information is extracted from any given scene. The native american of the southwest probably sees a bit more in a desert landscape than a typical tourist, peering through tinted glass while doing seventy five across what appears to them a wasteland, but it's also true for two passengers on a bus sitting side by side. After the sensitivity has been determined, there are individual preferences concerning what to scan for. Some folks are only interested in essentials, navigating rush hour traffic and driving a hard bargain, while others tend to notice colors, highlights and shadows, the texture and mood of their surroundings. These are generally the artists and their fans.

The second group reaches out to the first by making art, presenting an invitation to open some of the closed doors in the skull. The first group appreciates this enough, once they've gone through a few doors, to share some of their efficiently gathered loot. For many loosely allied reasons, pubic and private, this transaction has been gaining traction recently. The human spirit doesn’t appreciate being squeezed down into brand-loyal consumer units, and a reckoning is at hand. Words are dead. The doublespeak of advertising bestows love on kitchen products, and politics has muddied the waters even more. 

Artists make pictures that anyone can see in their own way, yet to all they’re a signpost to a fuller awareness and understanding of the tangible reality we all inhabit. There's ample testimony that living with a favorite painting influences how the world is perceived. Having art around makes the evening light turn lemon yellow, more wildlife appears on drives in the country, and with greater discernment, even the news that's ‘between the lines‘ starts coming through.

Quality of life has become an issue, now that competitive efficiency has everyone stretched thin to keep up, so many anxious, feeling depleted and dissatisfied by the canned gratifications streaming up from their device. Something seems to be missing. What happened to the blue of the sky, the taste of a cooked meal, or the little burst of joy at the first crocus coming through the snow? The list goes on. In this peculiar liquid point in history, when the increasing current seems to indicate a waterfall up ahead, the art on the wall becomes a lifesaver, a flotation ring to hold on to. Spend a little money and get something nice.

ding dong twentieth century -- Dorothy waking up

The twentieth century left a peculiar art legacy, one distorted by market manipulation, cults of personality and notoriety, and massive clandestine and public government interference. The gauntlet was dropped back in nineteen thirty one when Nelson Rockefeller commissioned Diego Rivera to create a fresco mural for the ground floor of Rockefeller Center, and after six months of labor had it jackhammered down before the public had a chance to see it, or even for any photographs to be taken. The rules were enforced by armed security people.

The rich guys had spoken, ‘that’s what we think of your brotherhood of man in pictures bullshit -- now get out of our way.’ With government money they nurtured a breed of artist so corruptible they’d make nonobjective messes on a canvas and turn them in for cash, a special program for artists in new york that was more like welfare than the other NRA art programs. It was an incubator for the abstractionist movement, and many of the early ‘masters’ had this blind and generous program on their resumes. Since the second world war, government money for art schools, for grants and foundations, and massive tax breaks for art philanthropy have rewarded the abstract and conceptual, and cavalierly demeaned and excluded visual art that any working, home owning, tax paying person might like. They in fact made a point of supporting art which had no chance of commercial success, since no one would pay for it, and for several generations it was their code, their mission, and their badge of honor.

Their cover story for this massive distortion of the entire realm of visual art was the international competition with the soviet union after the war. The reds were all snooty with their ballet, their classical music, and their deep humanistic literature, so we countered with huge, highly individualistic abstract expressionist paintings, our cowboy artists fiercely proclaiming their existential freedom by splashing and dripping. Along with wall-to-wall support at home, the state department exported their gigantic works of art to a europe still destitute and devastated by war, with lavish openings and planted positive reviews. They also used tons of money, wasn’t their money, to deride as retrograde and backward any form of representational art, and art students in schools everywhere were ridiculed for even attempting it. It turns out it wasn’t really about the russians, was it?

Early in the century the mexican muralists had given mexico a national identity, helping it overcome exploitation by foreign powers by healing its social and political fragmentation, speaking eloquently to a largely illiterate population. They were even influencing the american artists hired by the WPA to paint in post offices and public buildings, and worker solidarity and farmers rights were frequent themes.

Somebody up top decided to fix the problem, this threat of social solidarity, by pulling the plug on pictorial art altogether, eliminating the vehicle of discontent right front of the whole court -- the mad king cuts out the tongue of the jester. Instead they substituted an irrational art, proclaiming it from all corners to be more profound, more insightful, and even more beautiful in its ugliness. Abstract art ascended and pictorial art of any sort was banished and condemned, seemed like from all corners, as backward and dumb, and for several generations no culturally aware person would even look at it. The mexican muralists and their movement wouldn’t be heard of again for the rest of the century.

As the twenty first century establishes itself, the corruption of the institutions of art, the money and reputation laundering, the tax evasion and transparent fraud, but mostly the elevation of vile nonsense, have tended to sully the twentieth century’s art legacy. Time to start over. We face a harsh reality in which words have robbed of meaning by the doublespeak of politics, entertainment shows up in garter straps, and as advertising creeps on to every visible surface, many humans find they ‘can’t get no relief.’ More and more they find themselves categorized as a predictable consumer unit, and their life choices limited to coke or pepsi, ford or chevy, and my team verses the rest of the league. ‘There must be some way out of here’ is what many of them are thinking.

Art is starting over as a grassroots movement across the land, you must have noticed. Several factors contribute to a new awareness of visual art, but the spirit that animates them all is simply appetite, a desire to emerge from the consumer cell of mind constricting algorithms to become again fully human, empathetically linked with others through the expression of art, a fundamental human capacity they managed to block with interference for a while. Much comes across in original pictorial art that advertising bleaches out, conveying messages that are felt rather than thought, providing insights and observations that aren’t trying to get you to buy something. You should get aboard, the train’s leaving, real art in people’s houses is about to start happening, and more art is being seen in public everyday. When people look up and begin to notice, the product will get better quick since comparison is what we do, and after all that constriction art’s future contribution to community life is bound to be joyful.

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.

who really pays -- real art thieves

A new generation of prosecutors promises pursue the tax manipulation going on in major art transactions, such as art bought at a bogus auction for an absurd price, and then donated to a museum for a write-off right away, black ties and limos. These are essentially thefts by very wealthy people from those who contribute to their opulent lifestyles with actual sweat, occupational stress, and physical effort, and the brandname artworks they use for collateral mean no more to them than squares of colored cloth. That’s awful and needs to be fixed, but there’s a more insidious crime going down. They also stole the art.

It’s up for debate -- are common folk too dumb to appreciate art, or are they too smart to pretend to like something they don’t? It’s going to be difficult to argue that rich people are more intelligent when you look at their art. The emotional charge of a color field painting made by an artist weeping into their whiskey is undeniable, until you consider there might be a thousand of them out there, maybe more, no one knows. Present these paintings any way you like, but in the end any one looks like all the others.

People who earn their livings forty hours at a time don’t dream of acquiring such rarified markers of genius, they’re too smart. Working people aren’t charmed by the notion that an afternoon of clever and audacious paint application can be worth more than their lifetime total income, and tend to find themselves unmoved when they see the results. Oddly enough, the one thing that’s out of bounds for serious art these days is any possible appeal to common taste. This dictum exists so rich people can feel smart and it makes the market manageable, but what happened to the art that used to hang in homes, and where are the artists who made it?

Turns out it’s one of art’s first lessons, learned when any particular person shakes themselves free of the mythology of modern art, its celebrity movements and sensational breakthroughs, and just starts looking at art for themselves. Art is about self-discovery first of all, and sooner or later realizing the ultimate decision about what you like is yours to make.

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.

the future of art-- art of the future

Paintings are meant as seductions. Each is a device to beguile and entice the senses, and in this age of scalded nerve endings, advertising excesses and entertainment overload, it’s not easy. Paintings are tangible entities not likely to change for several lifetimes, so they’re able to bond with the mind of their owner, becoming more real and present over time instead of fading into the background. Initially, however, they must cut through the fog of digital goo that surrounds us all to impinge the mind and enter consciousness. That means they must catch the eye of the inattentive and distracted, which describes a great many who don’t usually expect too much from art. It’s an interesting challenge.

Art is a collaboration, not a one-way street. The artist contributes the image and the viewer is receptive, and so the completed circuit is made. The often struggling, independent artist feels pressure to meet an audience’s prior expectations, just hoping to stay in their studio. Even so, some instead choose to express themselves in real time, and since to be in the moment is to be ahead of general awareness, it’s the more visionary but much riskier path. It supposes that the evolving consciousness of a coming generation appears on the easel first, the product of isolated effort and self-revelation. It works because we’re all connected, and painting can be a source of insight into the mind and vision of a coming generation. As peculiar as this sounds, examples abound.

The experience of art requires audience participation, and the conscious presence of the viewer. The artist probes for access, chooses images and applies techniques that maximize penetration, that slip past the perceptual thresholds and mental turnstiles to pull at the attention and engage the machinery of recognition and awareness. A successful work of art resonates, rings in the senses like a tuning fork, a deep visceral sensation never fully described in words. Works of art can suggest new possibilities to tired, bored eyes, and like a water can in a dry window box, can cause new growth to appear in the form of more detail and texture in everyday life.

Look at all art available, and wait until you recognize yourself, you’ll know. Some artist somewhere has found a key that unlocks how you think and feel, and others, all around, are having the same sensation. Art is part of human mentality, and though it seems to have lost its way over several generations, yoked and compromised by advertising, actively obscured and declawed by federal subsidy, still it rises to the surface, honest and direct, the fulcrum of personal sanctity and self-determination. Buy a painting from an artist in your area and hang it in your home where you see it everyday. Participate in a movement, and reclaim your ability to see for yourself what the world has to offer.

windows and bridges -- art’s practical functions

We all live in boxes we build ourselves. We begin construction at birth, and by now it’s as big as all we’ve experienced. Much of it is inherited, and in the beginning cues come from family members, and then from teachers and peers, and there’s the amount of travel and stuff read, all of it altogether. The size of the box and its contents varies immensely person to person, so much so that conversations can be difficult between them. Windows and bridges are what’s needed, yet somehow the internet has been slamming doors and removing connections back and forth, drawing in the cell walls on everyone’s already pre-packaged sit-com existence. Does any of this sound familiar?

Art won’t answer the question of why we’re here, no matter how much we’re willing to spend, but it does offer questions. These questions enter the nervous system somewhere below a conscious level, and art on the wall is broadcasting a strange set of signals for internal recognition circuits to sort out. Without being aware of it, looking at art refreshes and recalibrates the senses so that the birds will be singing in the parking lot when you leave an art museum. They’ve been there all day but you didn’t hear them going in, and there might be other stuff you’ll begin to notice all at once, clouds in the sky, shadows on the lawn. Art can open a window but it’s up to you to crawl through and begin seeing what’s always been there. Owning and living with art is a technique, a method and plan, to become more open to the world.

I was amused at an article setting out to review the symbolism in Picasso’s ‘guernica,’ when it’s pretty certain that every human who ever lived, going all the way back to the stone age, would get the gist right away. Visual art doesn’t require translation, and we understand painters without speaking their language. In the turbulent goulash of images all around us, enduring original art can be a touchstone, an oasis of genuine human value in a commercial grey-zone, and a lifeline of affirmation for individuals who have become increasingly isolated in the digital crowd. Chances are if you find yourself liking a particular artist, let’s say someone from your hometown, it’s possible others who also like the same artist will share similar values, and might turn out to be friends. Art is a way to represent yourself, so that others might guess less about who you are, and so that you might know them a bit better. Windows and bridges for sale.

non-sexual abusers -- short-circuiting joy

Digital Addictions Are Drowning Us in Dopamine...  from the Wall Street Journal, 8-13

Rising rates of depression and anxiety in wealthy countries like the U.S. may be a result of our brains getting hooked on the neurotransmitter associated with pleasure.

Deep in florescent-lit caverns media engineers remotely drill into your noggin to squeeze out every drop of dopamine until you’re down and dysphoric, fogged out and bleak of brain. That’s their job. They continually masturbate the entire population without touching them, seducing them instead with chimes and likes and all sorts of whacko affirmations. What we have here are blank-face zombies in all directions, and they want to eat your brains because theirs have dried up and blown away from too much screen-time.

Could a work of art cure this condition, probably not, but a house full might mitigate. Works of art stretch the attention span back out so a person can taste a well-prepared dinner, enjoy a drive in the country, or have a deep thought. Limit screen-time and reserve a little dopamine for the real things in life, outdoor adventure and exploration, family events and personal relationships.

Suddenly we realize we are all essentially on our own, each of us comparing what we see to what we already know, and social media has revealed how widely that varies person to person. Orwell predicted the contamination of language, debased as much by advertising as by politicians, and the notion that pictures can convey meaning and express commonality is reemerging in daily consciousness. Yes, art is antidote, the decontamination and recovery from all that digital diddling online.

painted mirrors -- the face we choose

‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, please tell me a big fat lie,’ is the beginning of a fairytale, but turns out it’s true. Nobody else sees what you see in the mirror even though the silvered plate glass is one hundred per cent accurate. Those shades and that pompadour do sorta make you look just like Elvis but no one else sees it, and that goes for whatever the rest of us think we see in the mirror as well. We look at least slightly different to everyone on the bus, and that pretty much goes for the rest of the world as well. Turns out that everything we see is rooted in what we’ve seen before and limited by the span of our own experience. We’re not so complicated.

Babies arrive as hardware in search of software, and they imprint on everything until they eventually adapt to their family’s values and conception of reality. In adult life a broader experience yields a greater perspective and a wider, wiser view of life, and many people love to travel, sample ethnic food, and read books that extend their own experience into new realms. Movies and mass entertainment can insinuate artificial experiences into our personal version of reality, and as our culture comes ever closer to the dramatized ‘escapism’ of our leisure time, maybe it’s time to make a few rational choices about how we see ourselves.

Art won’t fix things, it’s not a panacea, just nice to have around to humanize the house. The artist makes a design on a flat surface that engages the machinery of recognition and when that channel opens a person might somehow see themselves, and can even see straight through the art to the artist. When such a piece of art hangs in their house it becomes a reflection of their character and passion for life that never changes, that doesn’t wrinkle and age like the image in the bathroom mirror. A few pieces of original art reveal their owner’s true identity, and help to remind them everyday of who they really are.

visiting the zoo -- art in a museum

The difference between seeing art in the museum and art in someone’s home is similar to the difference between seeing wild animals at the zoo or roaming free, lions in an artificial habitat vs squirrels in the backyard. One informs the other, and it’s not difficult to imagine the caged cat would trade its fangs to be like the squirrel, living its authentic life. The art museum is also an instructional institution and should cover the gamut of what can be done with paint from the gothic up through the sudden rise of the renaissance, witness to rationality displacing the medieval mind, and forward to the non-objective irrationality of modern times. Drifting through the galleries it’s possible to let the gravity of your own interest guide you to the period and the style that most speaks to you.

This is information to take home and to look for among the artists who paint in your area. Anywhere up on a wall is the authentic home of art where it can participate in family life and recount it all years later when you’re old. Finding the appropriate art for your outlook and lifestyle is an automatic process and doesn’t require special knowledge. Just look at all the art you come across until a painting looks back at you, an eerie feeling at first and almost always a surprise. The piece you finally buy may or may not be tame, depends on the artist, but it’s probably willing to make friends for just a little attention now and then.

It will be a sad world when all of the wild animals have gone extinct except those bred in captivity, and when all the art worth having has been hung in museums. It’s good to remember that Rembrandt wouldn’t be happy in your humble house, and worth more than the entire neighborhood who could sleep at night, but the painting that was made in spite of having a full-time job just a few miles away could have just as much to say, maybe more, to someone like you.

There are three parties necessary for the practice of art. There are those who make it, those who buy and own it, and third are the fair-minded brokers who facilitate the exchange. Everyone else, all the administrators and experts along with the million dollar charade of stupidly extravagant wealth, aren’t really required. Somehow they’ve wedged themselves between the direct and universal expression of visual art and the appetite of average people for human connection and individual aspiration. Art as a vital component of daily living belongs up on the wall in houses where it can influence the lives of everyday people, and make the entire community more pleasant for everyone.

science and art -- are they compatible

Scientists claim they discovered the “gate of consciousness”
published tuesday in Cell Reports, “The findings reveal a gateway in the cortex where sensory information has to pass through in order to reach its destination (conscious access).” Co-author Zirui Huang is a research investigator at the University of Michigan Medical School. 

In summary, “Conscious access to sensory information is likely gated at a site intermediate between primary sensory and transmodal association cortices but the structure responsible remains unknown. We report results from functional neuroimaging performed to determine the neural correlates of conscious access using a volitional mental imagery task, a report paradigm not confounded by motor behavior.” 

They’re trying to say that out of all the stuff going on in front of you all the time you're only paying attention to some of it because something elevates it to consciousness. By some mechanism it crosses a threshold and you notice a ball bouncing into the street or the smell of coffee in a morning cafe. These scientists used a big magnetic resonancing machine to find out where in the brain that happens. No real application of course, pure science, but it’s interesting because artists have been searching for that same spot since way before what we consider knowable history.

Their technique is slightly different and it begins with a blank surface, flat and smooth. On it they create a design using colors in contrasts and intervals, and their purpose is to find that button in your head and push it. From all the way back to the beginning, the important thing about a work of art is its gravitation pull on the attention and awareness of the viewer, and its price at auction doesn’t enter in and even subject matter is secondary. I feel fairly confident the vast majority of all artists of all times, everywhere, would back me up on this assertion, we family.  

“The artist is someone who knows how to touch the pressure points in the humanistic mind.” I overheard that in a diner before the long dark road east out of kansas city, and he must have been talking about that spot.

an ex-president’s appeal -- the power of paint

I’ve started watching the late evening talk shows for the monologues at the beginning and skipping the celebrity guests there to sell a book or promote a movie, but held on for the former president, W, and his portraits of immigrants just published in a book. I’ve followed his art career from the shattered, penitent realization of the enormous responsibility he had taken so lightly and the wrong that was committed in his name, just guessing, up until now, when he intends to use his newly acquired expressive skill to influence the national mentality -- like a superpower.

As a painter he was awkward and unsure of himself at first but willing to endure the public abuse of art critics and comedians to bare his soul and expose his personal reconstruction, and such honesty and openness were at least disarming. His early paintings were approximate, sometimes barely recognizable, and they had a primitive almost child-like quality. His family and the world thought him addled and in psychic retreat, so sad, but he paid his dues everyday, you can tell. He doesn’t need the money and he’s famous enough already, so what is he after?

What must have begun as a psychic retreat, time to wrestle with what can be imagined vs what can be achieved on the ground level, eventually transformed into an avenue of redemption and an assertion of personal perspective. It’s good we saw the early stuff and don’t have to believe he came out of nowhere with this book. He’s a lot better than he was, and although he paints each immigrant from photographs, he also tells each individual story and his portraits say more about each person than their photo. He intends to use his portraits to humanize refugees and immigrants and to make them individually visible in the american mind. Art critics don’t need to be involved, and W is self-possessed enough these days to stand his ground with comedians, still has the self-effacing chortle.

From has-been buffoon to most relevant and seriously influential painter in america isn’t bad for ten years. Laura says ‘he goes to the studio everyday,’ as in at least I know where he is, and I believe her. Is he good, maybe not like those olympian color-field expressionists worth all the millions, but you’d have to say he’s taken charge, that he commands and the paint listens. I’d be willing to bet that given good health and all things equal he’ll be a lot better ten years from now, since now that he’s found himself again he doesn’t want to stop. Good for him, he’s bound to be happier but what does his most visible transformation say to the rest of us -- that character and truth can be expressed in paint, tangible and immutable, and we can all see it. Now isn’t that interesting?  

the persuasion caper-- art democratic

I recently received a six by nine inch envelope with the title: 2021 WHITE HOUSE COMMEMORATIVE PRINT in the upper left-hand corner. On the back a faux handwritten note cautioned, ‘artwork enclosed -- do not bend!’

Regular readers will be aware I’ve been out early about the resurgence of visual art as a major influence on the mentality of the world of tomorrow, and suddenly it’s today. Inside was a piece of quality card stock with a rendering of the white house, an image five and a half by four and quarter, and it was cleverly dated with the addition of two german shepherds standing at attention on the lawn.

The letter said, ‘This vibrant painting was commissioned by the Democratic National Committee from renowned artist Dan Kessler. It captures what I feel is the essence of the White House, that is now reinstated as a symbol of our enduring democracy. When looking at this beautiful print of the White House, please remember.........‘  and it goes on.


It probably was a pretty nice painting with a greater sense of contrast and depth, but at four by five inches it’s more of a smudge and a mite trite. It’s accompanied by an engraved ‘certificate of authenticity,’ which states, ‘This certificate hereby confirms the authenticity of the accompanying limited-edition fine art print. This print is an authentic reproduction of the original work of art. This image is a special limited edition commissioned by the Democratic National Committee.’

That's a lot of fluff for a postcard but it’s just a baby step, why make fun? Someone, actually a whole committee, decided the way to grasp the minds of their voters and focus their attention was by using original art, in this case several times removed, and then ask them for support. It was a brilliant notion poorly translated in a mass-mailing, but the impulse is based on a solid premonition. The significance of visual art in realigning our sense of connection and community is just around the corner. 


sixty nine million isn’t enough -- art that isn’t

‘This Is Going to Be a Billion-Dollar Piece Someday’: The Buyer of the $69 Million Beeple NFT on Why It’s the Greatest Artwork in a Generation  artnet news, march 12, 2021

It looks sorta like a flotilla of plastic refuge accumulating on the ocean or maybe a compacted street carnival, surely nothing very appealing and where is this thing? The last part is easy because it isn’t really anywhere and it’s not a thing, it exists as a digital conglomerate only. Imbedded in its grainy pixilation is an endless slide show of snapshots, a tar pit of blind associations. There’s only one thing interesting about it and that’s the humongous price tag, and ironically it's been paid for with crypto cash. It doesn’t resemble a work of art so much as a brazen swindle, and yet perhaps this transaction is not so different from the regular commerce in modern masters. Millions of dollars are assigned to replicated signature icons on a volatile and arbitrary, ethically-arid and opaque market. It’s all crypto.

This sordid media event isn’t really worth a busy person’s time and attention, and that’s the charm of it don’t you see? The image is so meaningless and the price so outrageous that the average person won’t notice the hand is really in their pocket and the art is being stolen from their wall. Just like your typical crime syndicate, the high-roller art market will eventually burn down the territory and rounders tend to abuse their golden goose if you know what I mean. Reckoning is in the air. The taxman has been sniffing around their phony philanthropy, and the dirty source of all that sanitized black-tie money, so civic minded, is also being questioned. As a sign of the panic that’s just around the corner, major museums have suddenly started casting excess modern masters overboard to lighten their liability. They call it ‘deaccessioning’ and over night multi-million dollar works of art, mostly by old white guys, start backing up on eBay.

They’ve finally reduced the notion of art to a financial feeding-frenzy over something with no material existence, so maybe it’s time to let multi-million dollar art just float away. Those huge paintings were meant for museum walls and not for houses, and their grandiose ambition comes through loud and clear despite otherwise meaningless drips and smears. Sometimes salaried artists at the university attempt to emulate some current trend and people who subscribe to art magazines may discuss, but self-supporting artists surviving out in the community don’t usually follow the trades, and there are reasons. For one thing those large over-powering abstractions in the museum look a lot less impressive room size, and there’s a museum in Ft Worth still trying to unload its easel-painted Pollocks, small, dark, and infinitely sad.

Any artist who makes the effort on their own, finds a room and buys their own supplies, most likely won’t have time to chase a mercurial sensibility in a luxury art market far away. If the artists working other jobs to support their art didn’t have a need and desire to say something to those around them they probably wouldn’t bother. With seventy million dollar bullshit being celebrated on the evening news it isn’t easy to even have their voices heard, but that’s changing. The artists have been here all along, but the public is seeing more of their work these days. At some point seventy million dollars for non-existing art won’t seem as relevant or as interesting as having a local artist or two up on the wall in houses all down the block.

cultural fire sale -- cashing in the masters

The current controversy in the art news is about art museums beginning to ‘deaccession’ parts of their collection, to sell off surplus masterworks moldering in the stacks when they might be converted into much-needed cash. This has suddenly become an issue for major institutions now that money laundering restrictions are being applied to fine art and tax-code revisions are on the way. There’s lots of posturing about respect for a sacred trust but with the flexibility to adapt to changing conditions, and it’s funny because it’s all bullshit. They can say they’re selling off old white guys to diversify, to properly maintain the collection, or to pay the help a living wage so noble, but they’re really just trying to beat the rush. They refuse to acknowledge that a glut of serially replicated masterworks seeking their own true level in an open market will lead to an entire system of value being wiped out, herds of ultra-expensive Rothkos and Pollocks going extinct.

Does this mean art will die, or just come down in price? If a painting by someone internationally famous suddenly drops from fifty million down to whatever it might bring against the artists from the community, side by side, it still might come out on top, but if it’s too big for the average house no one may want it anyway. Against a formerly fifty million dollar painting some of that local stuff may not be so bad, a little less stylish but with perhaps more to say, and given the direct support of their community area artists would get better and say more. Somehow I don’t feel sad for the establishment, rank upon rank of authorities and administrators floating away, locked in an airy castle erected by strip-mining the culture. Great while it lasted.

When it’s revealed that the painting bought at auction for an astronomical price and donated to the art museum is joining five others almost just like it already in storage and only two of them genuine, the glamor drains away. Fifty million dollars for a modern painting is stock-market speculation on a crypto-commodity, and this money-mill hijacking of art devalues and derides sincere attempts to find a singular voice at a level where average people live. More than that, this aesthetically-innocent, accountant-driven barter in trophy art appropriates and exploits society’s appetite for self-expression, but as we speak their pirate dynasty implodes. Major donors have been accused of humanitarian crimes, forgeries are being found out in the lab, and the minions are in full rebellion, wanting more money and telling dirty secrets, but worst of all the public is changing its mind. Instead of supporting modern art's grand charade they’re about to go looking for sense-affirming and world-verifying, locally-sourced and personally-relevant art in their price range and buy some.

some way out of here -- painted doorways

To utilize art, to make it pay back, to find its function in daily life it’s necessary to consider our own limitations and the barriers we have built-in. We’re prone to habit, actually it’s worse than that. Anything we come across goes through an extensive recognition process shuffling through stacks of images stored in memory to match up with what we’re seeing and give it a name. In familiar territory the sorting goes by too quickly to notice, but as a tourist in a strange environment it’s occasionally possible to witness a lag time figuring out the scene in front of you. Your search function has had to reach further to find comparative information, and sad to say, if no matches are found you’re not seeing it.

This might sound strange but examples abound. The old line coach sees things on a football field the average fan never considers and a horse breeder appraises characteristics of a horse no one else notices. It sure seems the world around us is as broad as our own experience, a box that’s only as big as the places we’ve been, and most who travel say they see more when they get home. If it turns out our minds really work this way, only recognizing what’s been seen before, then how do we expand our field of vision and become more aware of the texture and detail in daily life? This becomes an increasingly pertinent question these days with a population enthralled in transitory screen images, which, along with the monotony of rush hour traffic and the uniformity of many abodes, flattens experience and limits the range of our perception.

Art extends vision and depth of awareness by stretching what the mind accepts as truth, or at least by posing the question. Strolling in the museum a particularly powerful painting can produce a sense of vertigo as the senses recalibrate to accommodate its bold assertions, and chances are the sky will seem bluer and birds will be singing out in the parking lot. Most art doesn’t work so quickly, but people have it around because it enhances their ability to see everything else. At this particular time especially, art is an escape hatch from the sense-narrowing mass-media world we inhabit, and an artist’s vision hanging on the wall reminds us of how much there is to see.

old art, new art -- saying hello

from cnn, jan 13   A warty pig painted on a cave wall 45,500 years ago is the world's oldest depiction of an animal
It's now thought that the capability to create figurative art -- that references the real world -- either emerged before Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa and headed for Europe and Asia more than 60,000 years ago or that it emerged more than once as humans spread around the globe.
 
That’s a very old picture of a pig and it raises some interesting questions. More than tools or weapons, art reveals a higher consciousness, and this pig provides a point of connection, mind to mind, across the ages. Since we’re the first to see it, it must have been meant for us and even though we’re modern people with cars and telephones, we still see a pig. That says a lot about being human since any animal, bat or bear, that wandered into that cave since didn’t see anything at all.

This picture doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t know already about warty pigs, they haven’t gone extinct, but it’s remarkably revealing about our distant ancestors, artists long before they made pots or wove cloth. Not just that. If some modern artist made a picture of a cow and time traveled back, these cave dwelling people would recognize it right away. This form of expression and even communication seems right for us since in our natural state we’re ‘sighted’ animals, with half our brain devoted to deciphering what we see. Very recently mass communication and its sidekick crass commercialism have made most of us more comfortable but also cheapened and diminished our lives, and loyalty to the home team has replaced more individual responses to our very complex existence.

It’s a freaky fact that humans didn’t lose the ability to create and understand figurative art until the twentieth century when a new regime of non-objectivity took over. Referential art of any sort was derided all the way back to the pig, and Simon Schama, knighted and renowned art authority, remarked that it was ‘such a feeble idea, to go around copying the world.’ Well he’s a heavyweight, he weighs down wikipedia, but wait a minute. This notion of accessing higher realms by abstractly applying paint in your own unique way sounds pretty feeble all on its own and its product isn’t real compelling. Maybe it wasn’t such a breakthrough after all.

The fact remains that a picture of anything isn’t likely to impart any new information about its subject, but through the act of depicting the world the artist is revealed. It’s not mysterious. The viewer compares their own experience with what the artist has painted and a conversation takes place. An example of a first line might be: I made a picture of a pig so that you could see it forty five thousand years from now and know that I existed. It’s not about the pig. Isn’t it remarkable that after mountains, seas, and deserts, civilizations come and gone, after forty-five millennia representational art still ends up saying essentially the same thing?