time binding -- starting from now

The successful painting doesn’t recede into the background, and won’t become unnoticed no matter how many times it’s seen during a day. Historical allegory, fruit in a bowl, total abstraction, doesn’t matter -- that’s not part of the test. As a fact, the significant work of art becomes more present, and its influence permeates the interior it occupies more completely, the longer it’s lived with. It’s the way, in the long run, you can tell. 

Visual art has gimmicks galore that fool the eye, cloud the mind, and its salesmen manage to change the subject most of the time. Novelty provides a jolt, celebrity porn vamps sensation, and the ‘relics’ of famous artists have fan appeal, but it don’t mean a thing if it doesn’t engage the eye and mind on an ongoing basis. All artists are driven by this one goal, to draw the attention of the viewer, sometimes only for a few seconds, designing logos and fast food menus, movie posters and fine art. Mostly they clomp along together, travel in a pack, all seeking to impinge at the apex of group awareness at the moment, because that’s where the money is. 

Our reality these days flashes by minute to minute, but art lasts a long time. The museum has fresh, just-painted looking works from five hundred years ago. Far from being obsolete, the enduring quality of a work of art will become more dear as lives dissolve in digital, that universal solvent melting and merging humanity into an ant farm with barracks for drones, I digress. A standard for quality in visual art becomes important, and how to recognize significance will become a practical matter. 

If you’ve never cried in front of a work of art, you may have to take my word for it. Let me explain. When a visual artist manages to touch a place inside that you didn’t know was there, tears come to your eyes. Doesn’t happen very often, can be totally unpredictable and it has nothing to do with being sad. It’s more like a reflex, the automatic response to a tickle deep down, and not totally unpleasant when it happens. Short of that, try visiting a museum after a ten year absence. It can be like meeting old friends, reviving old memories, and a couple the paintings will be glad to see you, welcome back. This experience also requires personal verification. 

The object of these essays is to suggest these time-binding qualities can also be found in paintings from the neighborhood, and to acknowledge sincere attempts at self-expression made without the ambition of stardom and fame, or perhaps even the hope of earning a living until conditions improve. When visual art becomes visible to enough of us, earns its attention and respect, there’ll be peace in the valley -- better be soon.

‘el hipnotizador’ -- paintings that change

Ran across a miniseries about an itinerant hypnotist, ‘el hipnotizador,’ on latin HBO, and started watching even though it was in portuguese, I think, with subtitles in spanish, and I speak neither. It was visually so rich, the plot seemed so surreal and strange, and the music mingling symphonic emotion with scratchy sound effects was so evocative, scene for scene, that I decided to watch a few of episodes anyway. Some weeks later I discovered the same series with english subtitles and watched again, this time with dialogue.

In the second season, Arenas, the hypnotist, arrives in a strange colony peopled by state-funded zombies, suicides who had been reanimated and implanted with artificial memories, living out bland but contented lives. His presence jostles their memories and they start to recall their prior existences, and why they had wanted to kill themselves. The whole experiment is run by a painter who has put his abstract paintings up all over town as a kind of early warning system. When people start to see butterflies in his paintings, it means they’re about to ‘wake up.’ 

Now that’s a novel idea, paintings that aren’t static at all but which move and resolve when consciousness changes, still, it’s the most plausible part of the plot. The renaissance is an enshrined example, there in your hometown art museum, of humanity changing its mind, seeing reality in a new way. Linear perspective, an expression of Aristotle’s rationality, redefined the world in paintings first of all, and then in the minds of all who saw them. It’s difficult to imagine how strange the new art must have looked at first to the medieval mind, or how it started clicking into place when another consciousness arose.

Art isn’t frozen on the wall but exists in the interaction between artist and viewer, a collaboration, a conversation. All art is abstract when you think about it. Raphael, himself, was only making colored designs on cloth, and it’s the viewer who perceives depth, recognizes steps, and trees, and clouds. Wouldn’t it be peculiar if a representational painting were suddenly seen as abstract, colors and patterns in relation only to each other, the internal world of the artist made visible? Wouldn’t it be crazy if one day you looked into a piece of art and saw something you’d never seen before, even when you’ve looked at it every day? Would it be like waking up, maybe a little, a bell ringing far away. 

The artist doesn’t have answers, only method, yet in the execution at the top tenth of their ability some things come across, how to say, unintended.  Universal and poignantly real, no matter what they happen to be painting, certain values of character or wit rise to the surface past the pot of flowers, a desert sunset, the modest portrait of young person unknown, grown old and deceased by now. Are we all hypnotized, they ask this question several times, and no one ever really says for sure, but wouldn’t it be prudent to now and then look at paintings intently, ready to see them change?

are we real -- Pinocchio’s curse

from Neuroscience & Mind -- Of Course You Aren’t Living in a Computer Simulation. Here’s Why.    Michael Egnor Dec 28, 2017

His reasons weren’t convincing at all, and ended up saying if you were in a computer simulation you couldn’t ask the question, but why wouldn’t that also true of pure organics, whichever we turn out to be. In any case, we ask the question all the time, and have for millennia. It wouldn’t be the first time this reality has had its authenticity called into question. In biblical times there was, so I’ve read, a school of thought that identified Jehovah as a renegade, and his little creation an unauthorized franchise, a second-rate knockoff, but they didn’t know about computers. It’s beginning to seem more plausible these days.
 
In this moment, bots can do almost anything better than we can, flying our planes and driving our cars, and they can be programed to be reinforcing and friendly, totally empathetic yet devoid of emotion, only feigning any concern or feeling at all. Guess I’m just being sentimental, also not a machine trait, but I like the inefficient part, the quirky mental response to an eon of evolution, storms and drought and wars and wonder at the stars, all coded for us in junk DNA, the part we still can’t decipher. It extrudes in the form of art.
 
Without a past, it’s difficult to see how machines would ever like art, accepting reality as flat, without irony or humor, joy or regret -- how boring. Well, it’s going to take a lot of simulations before some wise machine ever begins to notice with longing the toxic swirling sunsets on its organically extinct chunk of rock, or doodle it out on its view-screen. In this age, it’s humans making art to express their individual and unique response to being in this maze, attempting to navigate the algorithms of karma, looking for meaning, offering to hold hands.  

consolidating wealth -- recognizing value

The world today is awash in competing political systems, clashing world views, and they batter against each other while we watch, times are uncertain. Where’s your money, in a bank? Good luck. History is not entirely reassuring about numbers on paper in uncertain times, and any sort of investment is risky. Wouldn’t it be convenient if wealth could be stored in an object like charge in a battery, some form with recognized value that remained fairly constant and objective, no matter how imaginary currencies fluctuated. 

These days visual art won’t work, too bad. It’s tangible enough, and when well-made should outlast its owner essentially unchanged, a unique and time-defeating asset, but no one can agree on its value, so sad. Everywhere the price of art is blatantly artificial, from the wild-west absurdities of the trophy market, to just four hundred dollars for a sweet little landscape in a gallery, it makes no sense. ‘The price of art is what someone else is willing to pay for it,’ intones the mind-reading gallery director, and that about sums it up. 

In another country, at another time, Bob says to Mike, ‘say that artist seems to be getting better, did you find that painting in a gallery?’ Mike says, ‘no, I met the artist on a studio tour and bought direct. I’m making payments.’ So then Bob says, ‘that’s a good idea. I’d like to own a painting by that artist someday, too.’ They’d both know about what to pay for a painting of that quality, no mind reading involved. This is because art for sale would be so common even ordinary people could form an opinion about whether it was good or bad, and have some idea if the price seemed fair. If people began to see the same things in art, to recognize similar signs of quality and accomplishment, then ownership of art would constitute a form of wealth, there on the wall, as well as a source of pride and inspiration, so much more rewarding than numbers on a ledger. 

Money shrinks, gets stolen, can be manipulated, it’s undependable. Real wealth lies in things that retain value no matter what the currency does, up or down, but there have to be standards, a reserve of knowledge shared by many people. Not everyone, but enough people understand the jump shot, the layup, the double dribble to make basketball a viable activity, and athletes who do it better are much admired and rewarded, like that. Art hasn’t gotten there yet, but it will if the changes happening now continue, if our ship comes back on an even keel and sails on. The value of art for the individual remains intangible, beyond calculation, but a rational market makes acquisition of art for the home plausible, means that bought art retains value, and that each individual buys with the confidence of personal knowledge, knowing what they want.

collector vs real value -- seeking price

One thing that confuses many is the difference between ‘collector value’ and ‘real value,’ since just the term ‘value’ itself has leeway. It’s also good to remember that value isn’t always the same as price, although we’d like to keep them relative. The dominant mode these days, collector value is ‘what other people are willing to pay,’ and it seems there’s someone willing to buy about anything, old and no longer produced they like special. When there’s plenty of plenty the operative component of value is rarity, how difficult it is to obtain and possess this thing. That’s about it. If it freezes in the tropics the price of bananas goes up, and since there’s only a certain number of toy firetrucks circa 1920 and earlier still around, their price goes up too. It’s a big competition out there, everyone trading up toward more and more hard to get stuff, and the eventual winner will be the one who pays most for the rarest thing of all, the Ty Cobb baseball card, the queen’s buggy whip. Well, times aren’t always good, and collecting isn’t for everyone.

In tighter times, the main measure of value is utility, and it makes the more convincing claim on how much we should want something in our lives. The whole notion of rarity in art is grossly manipulated anyway, at the top a restricted ranking of cornball trademarks. They do it in front of everybody, so there’s no reason to go through it here, but there are other terms of value they leave out. Original art in the house makes life better, improves outlook, brightens attention, just does, ask someone that owns. They’ll testify that in a world of digital fast food, original art contains mental nutrients that radiate out into the room anytime the lights are on. How is it possible to obtain this benefit, you might ask.

Any mark made on paper by someone truly trying to express themselves has more value than the mona lisa momentarily on your iphone, and it goes up from there. An expression made after years of practice and life experience is rare enough, but also comes additionally fortified with an inherent worth that gives back. A painting is not just an inanimate oddity, but becomes a contributing family member, witness and repository of memories more poignant and relivable than endless files of photos. How much should you pay for an object you may keep the rest of your life -- hard to say, but don’t listen to the dealers, for them it’s business. Instead self-educate. Buy some art, and then compare it to what you see for sale, trust yourself.

visual art resists -- witness to the revolution

Trump is not the cause, he’s merely a symptom of a hysteria no one wants to acknowledge -- I hate to tell ya. The ultra wealthy are abusing the golden goose again, and she can’t take much more. People around here approach adulthood wondering who their highest bidder will be, grooming themselves to receive a higher station, a better income. It’s a stifling system that becomes more tenuous and uncertain the further down you go, and these days vast majorities groan under the downward pressure of wealth’s rampant consolidation, everyday watching while others slide over the edge.

Nowhere is the peasant’s nose pushed deeper into the manure pile than when it comes to big international art, visible for all to see. Here the super wealthy burn off excess cash like gas flares over oil refineries, wallowing in the guilt pit of pointless extravagance, and the financial manipulators climb aboard as well, seeing a chance to cover outright theft -- I must mean perfectly legal creative accounting, and everyone can see that too. 

It’s a trifle, you’re likely to say. Surely job insecurity, fear of losing identity against competing ethnicities, and a shattering of traditional norms of behavior are all more important than what’s hanging on the wall. Maybe. On the other hand, a diet of fast food and the mental mayhem of action entertainment squanders human potential, who wants to disagree? If your tribe is warm and dry for a little longer, ignore these deficiencies while you can, but we float above a caldera of seething resentment, wasted talent, and stunted dreams, and that brings us back to art.

A sports poster on the wall isn’t a sufficient reflection of a fully formed adult personality, just isn’t. People could use a little affirmation of their own uniqueness, as well as a creative connection to the human condition. Why come to think of it, if we didn’t live in a culture starving for meaning, gasping for equitable distribution, and longing for an adequate education, we wouldn’t be in this fix, now would we? How much can we change by tomorrow?

None of it, but we can watch the system heal itself. The transformation will be expressed through art, harbinger of a general awakening. As a sign of this change, art would start going up on city walls all around the planet, a broad enough array for people to begin understand the power and potency of visual expression, and to find themselves in art. Leading businesses would endeavor to project a progressive yet mature image by owning and displaying worthy art, and a hotel chain might even arise requiring a premium price just to sleep in the same room with original art. Sounds like fantasy SF, or surely would have a couple of decades back, but seems a fairly safe bet by now, since it’s all happening already.

What change in mentality -- what new politics, morality, and self concept, both individually and collectively, would a renewed interest in visual art represent? More independence and self-reliance, along with a more humane and open relationship with other people would seem reasonable, and maybe even a path to self-realization and fulfillment would present itself. All in all, it suggests a future just a bit brighter than being reduced to the paranoid, shrunken, back-biting drones the oligarchs would prefer, inmates of a mind-control ant farm. They’ve used their money to elect Trump, to degrade us, to make us dumb -- resist with art.

art’s efficiency -- simple means

Making art is about efficiency -- making simple means go farthest. These days it’s possible to digitalize and manipulate images, change color with a stroke, borrow from anywhere, print on anything, so why is the Mona Lisa still a thing? Why would modern people bother with painting at all?

Painting is caveman basic. Ground minerals suspended in oil are applied to stretched fabric, light and portable. It’s meant to be hung on a wall, perhaps embellished with a frame, and a discreet source of light would be helpful. There is no alien technology filched from a crashed saucer, actually there’s nothing new at all. It’s a system largely unchanged for thirty five thousand years we know of, the application of pigment to a flat surface representing the world in two dimensions.

The implements used have largely remained the same as well, animal hair at the end of a stick being the most common, and mediums have improved but still serve the same function, beguiling the eye. Primitive maybe, but not a bad place to begin if accomplishment is measured in sheer distance from start to finish, from materials utilized to statement made. It’s about efficiency, the guiding principle of an artist's life, anyway. Will concede the popular image from movies and such is one of cocaine and limos, artists rich like their patrons, but it’s a sad fact that the artistic community waited a couple of decades longer to take hot showers than everyone else, and it hasn’t changed that much. Independent artists live on the edge, and don’t waste nothing.

Technology, it turns out, is a six dimensional crutch, the kind of kinetic assist that leaves the body weak and wasted, statements posted on endlessly updating platforms, as unsuited for significant art as scratching love letters in the sand. It’s so much easier, in the long run, to start further back up the road where’s there’s less traffic, more miles to roam. Visual art made on an easel already represents a different time-scale, a concentration of effort and attention on an instant, a momentary glance otherwise destined to be lost in the flow of a day’s passing. By convincingly portraying actual experience, the painting establishes a portal on memory that widens each time it’s seen, an enduring image that seems to expand with familiarity, to reveal more with time. That’s old school. 

Vision and talent make the job easier, but diligence and effort crank the process over, condensing a moment’s observation into a tangible, visible chunk you can hold in your hand, hang on your wall. What make it good? A simple answer is miles down the road, how much depth of feeling and sense of presence can be wrung from simple stuff. This becomes the greatest efficiency of all, producing an object of significance and value almost from thin air.