without art the world collapses --

Without art we would all fall back into immediacy without the ability to imagine what lies beyond our senses. Humans discovered this long, long ago, and have been making art ever since -- art that created the singular realities each culture shared. Monumental and sacred art of the past were less poetic expression and more about creating a reality that favored the few who hired the artists. These days nothing’s changed. First you have to accept that most every surface you see is some application of art -- menus, cars, clothes, as well as the oil-slick advertising which spreads to cover every surface. Movies and TV shape lives by example, and we’re wired to incorporate all of it as though it was real. We can’t help it -- the art around us determines our world.

Stone lions won’t make us fear the king and floating cherubs don’t have us believing in heaven -- anymore. The present crew of media manipulators have been hired just to get our money, and they bend reality so we’ll spend freely. It works but there’s a downside. We all know this. Occasionally serious and dedicated artists seize the controls and produce movies and other kinds of art that present broader possibilities, and we call it art mostly because it was made for some other reason. It’s a discernible quality. What’s left for the individual is to decide what art to have around.

original vs reproduction -- it’s all the same, isn’t it?

To believe original art is somehow better than its digital-perfect clone requires a shamanistic view of art, or is it Marxian? Either would work and both are about work. When those on the production-line combine their labor with raw material they own some part of the thing created, and focusing intense concentration, chanting and ritual, on a physical object imbues it with an indwelling presence. By either point of view, primitive or progressive, putting effort into manipulating inert material instills a value that remains. Digital reproductions, identical and one dimensional, are facades without backsides, airy spooks with no value as art. It becomes problematic when a new one, or a thousand, pops out with only the momentary pressure of a finger. Negligible effort inserts a fat zero into either equation.

Marx was chiefly concerned with fair compensation for individual effort and many artists would settle for that, but in the older view the original object is sum of the artist’s thought and effort up until that point which will perpetually radiate into any room. The difference between original and reproduction is the difference between having a musician come to dinner with you and your family and then play in your living room, and listening to the digital replay later on the finest system available. The sound is all there, probably better, but it isn’t the same, not even close. Original art is more than the image -- by almost any system of value, even if it’s simple rarity, one-of-a-kind from the hand of an artist has inherent worth no picture of it could ever have.

representational art -- just the smallest slice

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”
Edgar Degas

Art is the biggest word in the world. It has industrial meanings, legal meanings, advertising and entertainment meanings, all aside from the many kinds of visual expression it covers. Representational art is just the smallest slice -- art that lies in the tension between believably real and yet obviously made. It isn’t our eyes that decide what’s real. A lifetime of distilled experience is constantly interpreting what goes on in front of us, and representational art slips in through the back door while it’s being decided. No one reaches for a wine glass in a still life, and yet feeling the convincing presence of a wine glass broaches an age-old, inborn question, and it doesn’t go away. In the difference between the actual thing and its painted representation there’s a lot of room to get to know the artist and to listen in on a conversation that’s been going on a long time. If the artist, in person, has a sense of humor, suffers compulsions, is given to dreamy nostalgia or searing intensity, all that shows up when they paint -- a flower, a truck, or a portrait. These qualities are not consciously intended by the artist but appear automatically as they paint the world around them, and that’s how their work reads back when it becomes a part of a daily environment.

art's part -- the organic root

A terrible event has happened, terrible enough to overcome the calloused threshold of our attention. For a flashbulb moment we see the landscape we inhabit. With that sudden objectivity it should be possible to see much of what we call entertainment in this culture is simply psychotic, and should only appeal to psychopaths. It’s being made by perfectly sane artist-professionals who have hired out to sell stuff, and they lie about reality to stimulate artificial needs. Inevitably total immersion commercialism is dragging the entire society down to a lowest denominator lizard mentality. The collateral effect is to make our common daily experience kinda creepy and weird, and that’s being nice.

I wouldn’t claim special knowledge, but don’t tell me art doesn’t profoundly affect the everyday. Yes, what you look at, choose to look at, shapes the world you live in and it doesn’t matter which old book you find it in. Our present-day direction doesn’t disagree. Independent artists, many currently employed in other areas, offer personal interventions to this price-is-right stampede toward degradation but so far society has pretty much ignored them. Art on the wall is more potent in the long run than flickering view screens, and if the artist has more to say than just give me money it will seem like fresh air every time you look at it.

Picasso's economy

Once in Los Angeles I saw a Picasso painting -- a woman’s head, as placid and monumental as a Greek statue, and up close it was made with a single line and maybe a thimble full of sepia on a white ground. No mistakes, no restarts, not the slightest stray mark anywhere. It was like seeing a tight rope walker poised above a waterfall, the matador kissing the bull on the forehead frozen forever there on a museum wall. Chinese court painters of a thousand years ago would have been knocked out if they’d had a chance to see it. It’s the one piece I remember after all day looking at art.

art and automobiles -- the next big thing

For decades cars in the US were bought and sold in terms of style with sensational new models unveiled each fall. Mechanically the same configuration lasted about seventy five years -- front engine/rear drive, drum brakes, leaf springs in back. The ignition system changed once or twice but mostly the American automobile remained the same bedsprings with wheels sporting re-sculpted sheet metal every year. The dashboard clock never worked more than a couple of weeks, door handles were made of pot metal and eventually broke off, the seat covers started to fray in the first year and the windows rattled after they’d been rolled up and down a few times. They were sold to consumers by offering stylish new models every year -- two tone paint jobs, towering tail fins and lots of chrome but underneath the same dangerous poorly built chassis rolled on for decades. Mechanical failures became chronic somewhere short of a hundred thousand miles and it became practical as well as cool to trade for a new one. Then the Japanese offered an alternative by building efficient, durable, safer cars that were homely and dependable. Soon car making everywhere started becoming more rational, more responsible, and began to display a little dignity, while everyday citizens got better milage and paid for fewer repairs. The next big thing, it turns out, had us on a treadmill all those years and was really holding us back by just pretending to be new.

nuts in shells -- seasonal musings

So, what good are shells to the consumption of nuts? I’m pretty sure no nuts need to be sold in shells because it’s so easy to get them out and all that wasted space and all. I bought roasted peanuts in the shell figuring the squirrels would like the salt but when I got home I started eating them myself. In a bowl shelled peanuts don’t hold my interest. Oh, I might eat a couple but mostly I’ll ignore them. Crushing the dimpled husk and sorting out the nut, on the other hand, soon leaves consciousness altogether and starts happening on its own. Even more compulsive is prying apart bivalve pistachios and yet they’re even less interesting than peanuts in a bowl with the shells removed.

This time of year down at the store there are open bins of walnuts, hazelnuts, and almonds in their shells, representing a lot of work for every nut and an occasional finger mashing if you use a hammer. So much easier, you’d think, just to grab a handful of machine-sorted nutmeats and gobble all that goodness. We want life easy, right? Convenience rules our lives and insulates us from toil and strain yet nuts seem better when we break them open ourselves. Just an observation is all.

If the same math could be applied to art requiring some level of participation from the viewer, say a recounting of relevant experiences in an effort to find common ground with the artist, it might be key to drawing maximum enjoyment from a work of art. Of course it would always be easier to watch TV, but without the engagement and effort on the part of the viewer, it might be not as satisfying.