gaslighting art -- distorting the picture

Gaslight is an American 1944 mystery-thriller film, adapted from Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play Gas Light, about a woman whose husband slowly manipulates her into believing that she is going insane.

Gaslight, an incandescent open flame, preceded electricity providing light for dark interiors. Dim, detrimental to air quality, and obsolete so long ago it hardly comes up in conversation, the term has been used quite a lot recently to describe the the president’s approach to politics, based on the movie. He changes his mind, makes false accusations, cites extraneous and irrelevant facts often made up on the spot, so they say. He does this so he can get away with stuff, so the real stuff gets buried out of sight, and to control the news-cycle, and does it work -- I don’t know what do you think?

Where did he learn to do that stuff? Trump and Warhol knew each other, admired each other, learned from each other, although they probably weren’t friends, just guessing, doesn’t matter. Is a half-eaten decomposing peach a work of art, might be, depends on context, and made up on the spot, yes, it can be. What is not a work of art? Pretty much anything goes but original pictures of something seen, we’re too sophisticated for that old ‘personal vision’ routine. Copied from a magazine, peed-on, and poorly constructed make it through check-in fine, but artists with something serious to say about our shared reality are stopped at the door, told to wait in the parking lot. The natural audience for art, a population by and large seeking for something, anything, more meaningful in their lives than increased horsepower and greater convenience, have been ‘gaslighted’ for a couple of generations now, so confused about art they can be taken monstrous advantage of from 57th avenue right down to main street, your hometown.

How did it happen in the first place? It’s there in the art. In the beginning the various components of traditional picture making began to dissociate, to each claim predominance over the others, color field, optical effects, even ‘flatness’ became its own thing, so sad. From there art started to copy stuff, commercial labels, the work of older better artists, until finally it’s nothing but cobwebby conceptual evidence of some transcendent totally-disconnected mental state, and has to be institutionalized on college campuses and tax sheltered in the public square. Art out on the economy, once so noble, has been reduced to a collectible token of fame, like the vanishing glass clorox bottle sought after in flea markets. From the highly progressive nature of recent exhibits presented in non-profit public galleries, it looks like art has been near gaslighted to extinction, raw plywood workshop scraps pinned to the wall over at the u, such as that.

The cure -- visit a museum when in a big city but don't bother with contemporary, get to know local artists back home by their work, and visit enough commercial galleries to understand how art is priced in your area. Avoid the brokers, the guides, the establishment’s special agents who gaslighted themselves long ago in the name of interesting careers living off the creative work of others. Could that be said another way? Maybe, but the point is that perceptual acuity, self confidence, and personal autonomy are there in the art, in paintings plain to see, and you might find them by looking, but not by listening, all I’m saying.

art history’s curve ball -- myth-making monkey business

I have a book titled, ‘the naked truth and personal vision’ pub 1955, back when the notion first began to appear that representational art was, always had been really, doomed to pitiful failure, plebeian, dumb, and way too easy. This is because, from the first line of the book, the representational artist ‘can never achieve his ideal of the naked truth: the exact duplication of the original.’  Just last night, Sir Simon Michael Schama, CBE, FRSL, FBA, an English historian specializing in art history, a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University, and host of the lavish nine episode survey, CIVILIZATION, again asserted the same notion, that exact reproduction of nature simply isn’t possible, is it, throwing in the snide little barb, ‘what a feeble idea, this copying of the world.’

Wait. Let’s back up. I’m not convinced that ‘exact duplication’ was ever a goal of representational art, and further think I can safely guarantee there’s never been an artist who attempted to eat the pear they just painted. The ‘feeble idea’ Sir Simon belittled was never actually an idea at all, and so dismissing it is hardly an act of genius, sounds more like sleight of hand, maybe some form of Obi-wan suggestion. If you buy this rubber chicken in the first place, everything else they’re going to say will make sense, no matter how goofy it eventually becomes, look around. Their deviant first premise, ‘the accidental mark is exponentially superior to the intentional,' is an asinine assertion really, and it’s always accompanied by the bogus slur that 'representational art is boorishly easy and reveals a lack of creative imagination,’ something like that, it’s not my argument.

There it is, the unspoken oath required at the door, the velvet rope of modern art, and if you don’t say it, think it, believe it, you can’t enter. You're pretty sure it isn’t true, because drawing stuff is hard, but that’s the beauty of it, don’t you see? Suspension of your personal judgement in favor of complicit affirmation from the officially anointed, like the two unassailable experts above, is sure to advance your white wine sophistication, but sadly will also pretty well guarantee you’ll never really see or understand visual art. Actually, even with all their degrees and self-sure style of delivery, from what they seem to be saying, it’s not entirely certain these cultural potentates see or understand art themselves, so ready to dismiss Raphael and all the rest.

The naked truth is that making marks on a flat surface that reminds someone else of something they’ve seen before in three dimensional reality is very difficult, and this is a proposition that can be tested anytime by anyone with a pencil and piece of paper. Experts at all levels should give it a try. Not only is it hard to do, but you’re likely to be judged by your miserable failure, is it a horse or a cat, so you’d have to be brave to even try. Artists are just like you but some of them take that risk, leaving themselves open, even vulnerable, to the judgement of others, just by attempting to depict the real world, and there’s nothing feeble about it. Owning a painting that exhibits character and accomplishment, while verifying and extending your own experience and personal vision, is really pretty neat, like having a tight rope walker always performing in your living room.

painting the town -- lasting impressions

I rant, I stay warm that way. Painting requires the approval of intermediaries to even approach the public, turning it into a passive position in the economy, and committed artists can sometimes be consigned to the bleachers while friends from school take the field. I shout from a few rows back, drowned out out by piped-in cheers, oh well. There is another sort of person, one who weaves speculation into action, who seizes the crest of an invisible wave and converts it into a fountainhead of energy and growth.

Yesterday a bunch of people set up easels on sidewalks and painted all over town, passersby kibitzing. Whimsical and serious, spontaneous and studied, talented and simply earnest, they put them all up last evening and had a party, great food and superior jazz that simply couldn’t be heard, too many people. Prices for an afternoon of painting were reasonable and red spots kept going up on tags, original art going home all around town. These were pictures people recognized, and comparing their familiar memories with these little framed images carried emotional charge, nothing wrong with it. It was a lively evening, peopled by the artists themselves, their friends, and a whole lot of other people who are just interested in art, and finally comfortable with a range of subject they understood and could relate to.

It doesn’t take much to point out what’s wrong. A bit of acid derived from official non-acceptance, the objective detachment of chronic underemployment, and the willingness to look a little further down the road can all contribute to uncanny insight, and the neurotic writes it down. The best I can hope for is a ‘last laugh’ probably so far down the road I’m not laughing anymore. It’s way more than refreshing to see someone actually focus an unrequited community-wide appetite for meaningful art into this charming garden of day-lilies, and then to scatter the seeds of serious art acquisition like dandelions puffs in the wind.

art’s plaintive plea -- the last day

Today is the 'last day,' just like three days ago they told me there were only three days left, times a running out, better place my bet, get my order in, for what? Why to give them my money, of course, and for a worthy cause I’m sure, my civic duty, a community responsibility. They have a motto, ‘arts everywhere,’ slightly reminiscent of the local art league’s ‘art for everybody,’ and a self-promotion strategy emerges. They say, ‘And when art is everywhere, good things happen for everyone. Good things like supporting 1,185 full-time jobs......' and maybe we can guess whose jobs they mean. I think they must mean their own.

Charity can be a great business, there’s no product and no objective standard for success. Art seems a benign cause to latch onto, no one sick or dying, but still, hiring a lot of people to think up catchy phrases may not be the best use of those art dollars. These are simply not the metrics that I care about, since I don’t got a degree and wouldn’t be hired on full time anyway, and maybe attitude. I want to know how many artists don’t have full time jobs, or even part time jobs, working in the studio all day. I’d like to know the economic impact of actual art bought and sold on the local economy, and I’d expect non-profit art agencies to be concerned as well. Mostly, I’d like to know how much original art is up in all the otherwise well-appointed homes here about, and how much of that was acquired locally from artists we’d all recognize.

We don’t have numbers, we have eyes, and in those terms there’s not much to show for dispersing all those ‘funds.’ The awful truth may be that a vibrant, self-sustaining art market, with local, regional, and tourist interest just might put the non-profits straight away out of business, the patient recovers and walks out the door. Let’s talk about money, your money and how to spend it, my humble suggestion. Money spent directly on art may not be deductible, a pittance anyway, but there’s a premium involved. You’ll become the owner of an actual piece of art that will probably remain in your possession right through old age, still looking at it years from now. Do what you want, but this logic is gaining traction all around the town, and someday soon will begin to seem obvious to just about everyone, take your time.

preventive medicine -- art’s time-release

Take the opioid crisis, so why are people from all walks of life becoming addicted -- so many, in fact, we’ve had to start helping them instead of putting them in jail? I’m going to guess at root it’s boredom, mind-searing, relentless, and unquenchable, driving people to seek any sort of relief. The cause of the affliction is simple enough, people have been looking at too much stuff. There’s no limit for a machine, happily converting heaps of data and never sleeping, but humans have finite capacities and running up close to red line all day takes a toll.

The instinctual response to boredom is to pile on more stimulation, hire a band, install a strobe light, pour hot sauce on the pancakes, but when you’re close to saturation already, cranking it up still more can cause shutdown. Finally all food is bland and ordinary, sex feels like it’s always in rehearsal, and music is just a lot of screaming and banging, maybe you’ve been there. The short-term fix for some has been narcotics, which can effectively cancel boredom temporarily, but they eventually wear off, and a bigger, meaner boredom takes its place. The short-term fix has unfortunate long-term consequences.

Modern art surveys usually begin by asserting that paintings used to be just pictures of things before cameras came along, but there have always been differences. A photo is an impression of reality in a hundredth of a second, but a painting might take a week or more to produce, with every mark, every color, put there by the artist’s hand, the image filtered through their mind and personality. Such enduring objects have an influence merely by their presence in a room, and provide a gentle antidote to the intrusive updating streaming from the ubiquitous device. Paintings slow the mind down, necessarily, because otherwise they can’t be seen at all. As the rest of reality recedes into an endlessly replicating uniformity, unique art objects like paintings become an ever more potent influence on the confidence and well-being, creative thinking, and appreciation of just about everything by the people who see them everyday. Somehow they feel less bored than fellow citizens, they don’t know why.

deKooning vs the cows -- seeing a difference

Are you culturally savvy and artistically astute? Then tell me, can you tell the difference between a Willem deKooning painting and one done by a farm animal, maybe a cow, just by looking? Not just you, could an expert, could deKooning? No doubt he’s a giant of modern art, his work worth millions with influence in all directions, so who am I to impugn his work? Well I didn’t, and that wasn’t the question. The answer to the original question is probably not, especially later on when his work became more lyrical, as alcohol-induced dementia overtook him, so sad. None of this is about me at all, or even deKooning, it’s about you and just what you are willing to believe, and by what authority. This is a test. If you aren’t familiar with deKooning or the art of farm animals there are plenty of examples online for comparison, so look a few up and let’s begin.

Take ten images by each lined up in any order, and then try to sort them by artist, and for extra credit assign reasonable price tags to each. Why should this be hard? Now a real expert doesn’t even bother to look at the front, doesn’t care really, and instead audits the paperwork back to the dealer, scrapes a little off for spectroanalysis, before pronouncing a work as unbelievably expensive or a barnyard curiosity. How dreary.

What does it mean, this genius/bovine confusion? I don’t know. I’m asking you, what do you think? This is the most important question of all, because finding the confidence to decide what your eyes see, instead of relying on someone else’s professed expertise, is going to come in handy for more than art, in time becoming an advantage across the board. Are you telling me, am I telling you, that being in charge of my own taste in art affects the clothes I wear, the car I drive, the way I think of myself? Yep. The art you own is like an ongoing conversation you have with yourself, with the artist, and with a time and place. Farm animals have a quiet dignity but lack the consciousness to keep up their end, mostly just dabs and smears, so ‘lyrical.’

Art will find out how gullible you are, and the ‘experts’ will tell you some pretty silly stuff just to see what you’ll go along with. The best thing to do is look at all the original art you come across, and learn to listen to, and then to believe your own responses. Sooner or later you’ll trust yourself to like the art that speaks to you, and learn to trust your own eyes.

losing my religion -- secular art

A few years back I met a man who went about touting the early work of Marcel Duchamp, and one thing becomes clear, as it must have been clear to Duchamp, himself, he was never going to be a famous painter. His retreat into intellectualism and puzzle-box obscurity is the ‘damascus road revelation’ for a gigantic modern art industry of cohabiting galleries, auction houses, and slick national magazines, along with phalanxes of educational and cultural professionals, all the while providing cover for the talentless and chronically deskilled. Seems ironic that his ‘breakthrough’ piece, the anonymous urinal in the famous armory show of 1911, could also be seen as an adolescent prank, an early example of disgruntled trolling that, against all odds, accidentally made him famous.

From that bolt of olympian insight, a controlling and self-serving institution has arisen with a glorified origin story and a pantheon of most earthly saints. Proud of its open-minded acceptance of every sort of expression, still it has no use for dissidents and exiles unbelievers -- too big to be a cult, it must be Modern Art. Going way back, really, I’ve always been suspicious of the opportunistic visionary, and the smarmy, insular hierarchies their sycophants attempt to impose on just about everybody. I don’t dissent, not any more. I walk away. No one has to come with me, but I won’t be alone. The desire to make art, to see art, to commune through visual art is more basic and universally human than any particular culture or civilization, and the human race has standards. Call me atheist if you must.

Take a pot of flowers. Is it trite, not worth a glance, essentially invisible to the artistically aware and educated person? That’s a choice, but if you look all along at every flower painting you come across, you’ll begin to see a lot more than flowers. Van Gogh made such paintings, long a cliche before he came along, and yet people experience a sort of emotional gravitation standing in front of one of his paintings having nothing to do with sunflowers. If all you can think about is the price tag, you might be missing something, just saying. I would explain it further, but words trail off, you do actually have to be there. All around, in your hometown, there are men and women earnestly attempting to paint what they see and revealing themselves in the process, can’t be helped, and isn’t that the reason, after all, it’s called art?

As they get better, the human connection in their work becomes more potent, and at some point you might say their interpretation strikes a chord, something like that, but of course words fall short. One thing sure, they won’t ever realize their full potential unless they get to do it everyday, which most of them would be doing if they could, and that won’t happen unless friends and neighbors, folks like yourself, buy something. What greasy oligarch from whatever continent outbid his obscenely rich buddies for some scrap of fame doesn’t really matter to anyone, not even to them for more than a minute, and it sure doesn’t matter around here, any here where you happen to be. Oh I know the ‘church,‘ if you get my drift, has a list of things you shouldn’t see, simply refuse to acknowledge, like paintings of pots of flowers, such as that, but we’re pagan around here and we like our art visual. Avoid the hymns and liturgy of cloistered academics, and instead look for art in alternative spaces and upstart galleries. Find an artist from the neighborhood and be a fan, on your own.