Sight is universal, and all humans understand pictures, just as we can see the extinct animals our ancestors painted on cave walls, but language is tribal, the grunts, whistles, and clicks all learned associations to real objects, a true exercise in abstraction. There are political implications here, but rather than point them out, perhaps it would be more convincing to consider how various systems of political order respond to visual art. The most repressive governments just round up all the artists and imprison or kill them, case closed, but others employ various forms of censorship, harassment, or, in the case of democracies, systematic exclusion. How did it happen here?
The saga of the Rivera mural at Rockefeller Center, in the early nineteen thirties, was a confrontation between referential visual art, representing universal human understanding and solidarity, and the raw power of dynastic wealth seeking the fragmentation of society into manageable camps competing against each other. Well, it’s pretty clear big money kicked visual art’s ass, blasting universal understanding to pieces using jackhammers, and posting armed guards to prevent any photographs ever being taken of Rivera’s finished mural. (The mural was later re-created by Rivera in Mexico.) This was followed by the both private and government sponsorship of mute, non-objective painting, in the media, with grants and prizes, and with recognition and prestige. Big abstract paintings went up in all the big banks in New York. (late in life, Nelson Rockefeller attempted to make amends by offering reproductions of his own collection of european masters, in his mind and by his words an altruistic gesture, in a self-financed gallery on fifty-seventh avenue.)
Once you’ve seen an example of the signature art of the so-called ‘modern masters,’ you’ve seen them all. Beyond that, I also don’t care about ‘conceptual art,’ and it’s not about not understanding. The statements on the wall are dense, self-referencing, and it requires a ton of effort to squeeze any of that meaning out of, or into, the thing there on the floor, perhaps suspended or free-standing. It’s ugly, or perhaps best to say not visually compelling, and they’re pretty emphatic that it wasn’t meant to be. That's not the point, since off-hand and unskilled makes it more real don’t you see? I’m all for artistic freedom, but why are we, all of us, paying for this stuff? Why does the government, along with major corporations and tax-code surfing agencies of all stripes, seem so interested in promoting art without visual content that mostly fails to interest all but the smallest segment of society?
Art needs to find its voice, up from the ground, in a time when forces from above are seeking to keep us distracted, to trivialize and demean us, and keep us at odds with each other. The current political polarization of the entire nation is about fifty-fifty, a tribute to their algorithms, but we don’t have to take it, anymore. More people are painting, more people are looking, and when more people start owning original art, conversations will become more civil, points of view will broaden, and truth and character will be easier recognize, trust me. Somewhere there’s a painting that seems to evoke the same bridge, a similar pot of flowers, an evening light that you already have in your head, and regardless of your knowledge of art, perhaps in spite of it, you’ll find yourself assessing it, comparing it, maybe even wanting to own it. In any case, people who like the same art you like are potential friends, and a community becoming aware of its own artists is likely to discover bridges never crossed before. They’ve kept representational art at bay for seventy-five years with government cash, producing a mountain range of art no one wants to look at, but as part of larger societal transitions, the visual side of the mind, humanity’s common ground, is about to assert itself, again.
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Saturday, April 13, 2019
the mural -- seeing wrong
A historic WPA era mural on campus depicts kentucky’s agricultural and frontier past, and it makes some folks uncomfortable in a modern context. So, which is more important -- the message as a work of art or the work of art as a message, and wouldn’t it be better to separate the two.
As a work of art, it’s a pretty nice mural. Probably not as dynamic or intense as a Diego Rivera, but like his work, it references the real world and captures part of it. As a message, it’s very difficult to look back and know the intent without understanding the artistic tenor of the time. The very element the students find most objectionable, people of color in menial occupations, could have been a truth revealed, raised to consciousness, the point made that labor for the benefit of others was unfair. Given the times, the artist probably thought of herself as progressive, with a cause and a message, just not the message the student think they see there today, but that was long ago, a different time.
What’s left is the art, humanity’s heritage, and it’s a shame when it’s disrespected. The Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed eight hundred year old buddhas carved in sandstone cliffs because the message of peace and tranquility offended their religion, and Isis in Syria reduced antiquities to rubble, mostly because it appalled the rest of the world, but we sorta wish they hadn’t done it. During the middle ages painters illustrated stories people no longer believe, who cares about virginity and how important is immaculate conception these days, but rather than destroy it, the art is respected because it’s a great accomplishment to be able to paint that well, and it’s enough.
Closer in John Hunt Morgan on his horse, a locally renowned confederate general, has withdrawn from the courthouse to be among his fellow confederates in their section of our stately cemetery, and for his own safety and social order generally, it's a prudent retreat. He's been accused of representing an early twentieth century social order known as ‘jim crow,’ an institution of racial repression, rather than portraying the flower of southern chivalry, a point of view in sharp contrast with those who commissioned the statue in the first place. This is a case, once again, of the message outrunning the art, and it’s a different message this time around, but the same work of art. Perhaps this is art's major attribute, that it doesn't change. It may acquire a patina, may dim with time and incense smoke like the Sistine Chapel, but art is essentially permanent, made to outlive generations, while how it's seen changes with the times.
Maybe the message, fickle as the wind, isn’t as important as the enduring work of art, watching generations turn while remaining a testimony to the human ability to render subtle nuance in molten metal, converting intention and thought into material form. It was a year in the studio before it went to the foundry, and every detail was captured in the pour. Historically speaking, it has the face was of a local businessman and his horse, Bess, was transitioned to male -- it was never more than a lost age’s fantasy, anyway. As an embodiment of historical accuracy, it had its flaws, but it was less about the truth than an excuse to cast a big chunk of bronze. As a work of art it seemed a pretty impressive lawn ornament, there in front of the courthouse, and as for meaning, however it was meant originally, homage to a colorful local hero or elevated symbol of oppression, let it go. It's meaning in a modern context is just a sticky non-verbal fake baby best avoided.
This mural was part of the building, and was mostly responsible for the character of an otherwise prosaic hall. Removing it smacks more of red guard excess than reasonable civic conversation, and actually seems dangerous and unsettling to the notion of free expression. Instead apply your fervor and intensity to present time and its deficits. That way it’s possible to respect, even admire the art already here, and always feel free to make something better if you're dissatisfied, the real way art moves forward.
As a work of art, it’s a pretty nice mural. Probably not as dynamic or intense as a Diego Rivera, but like his work, it references the real world and captures part of it. As a message, it’s very difficult to look back and know the intent without understanding the artistic tenor of the time. The very element the students find most objectionable, people of color in menial occupations, could have been a truth revealed, raised to consciousness, the point made that labor for the benefit of others was unfair. Given the times, the artist probably thought of herself as progressive, with a cause and a message, just not the message the student think they see there today, but that was long ago, a different time.
What’s left is the art, humanity’s heritage, and it’s a shame when it’s disrespected. The Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed eight hundred year old buddhas carved in sandstone cliffs because the message of peace and tranquility offended their religion, and Isis in Syria reduced antiquities to rubble, mostly because it appalled the rest of the world, but we sorta wish they hadn’t done it. During the middle ages painters illustrated stories people no longer believe, who cares about virginity and how important is immaculate conception these days, but rather than destroy it, the art is respected because it’s a great accomplishment to be able to paint that well, and it’s enough.
Closer in John Hunt Morgan on his horse, a locally renowned confederate general, has withdrawn from the courthouse to be among his fellow confederates in their section of our stately cemetery, and for his own safety and social order generally, it's a prudent retreat. He's been accused of representing an early twentieth century social order known as ‘jim crow,’ an institution of racial repression, rather than portraying the flower of southern chivalry, a point of view in sharp contrast with those who commissioned the statue in the first place. This is a case, once again, of the message outrunning the art, and it’s a different message this time around, but the same work of art. Perhaps this is art's major attribute, that it doesn't change. It may acquire a patina, may dim with time and incense smoke like the Sistine Chapel, but art is essentially permanent, made to outlive generations, while how it's seen changes with the times.
Maybe the message, fickle as the wind, isn’t as important as the enduring work of art, watching generations turn while remaining a testimony to the human ability to render subtle nuance in molten metal, converting intention and thought into material form. It was a year in the studio before it went to the foundry, and every detail was captured in the pour. Historically speaking, it has the face was of a local businessman and his horse, Bess, was transitioned to male -- it was never more than a lost age’s fantasy, anyway. As an embodiment of historical accuracy, it had its flaws, but it was less about the truth than an excuse to cast a big chunk of bronze. As a work of art it seemed a pretty impressive lawn ornament, there in front of the courthouse, and as for meaning, however it was meant originally, homage to a colorful local hero or elevated symbol of oppression, let it go. It's meaning in a modern context is just a sticky non-verbal fake baby best avoided.
This mural was part of the building, and was mostly responsible for the character of an otherwise prosaic hall. Removing it smacks more of red guard excess than reasonable civic conversation, and actually seems dangerous and unsettling to the notion of free expression. Instead apply your fervor and intensity to present time and its deficits. That way it’s possible to respect, even admire the art already here, and always feel free to make something better if you're dissatisfied, the real way art moves forward.
Monday, April 8, 2019
art of exclusion -- wealth recognizing its own
Seems among commercially successful artists there’s a disproportionate number born wealthy, some probably poor artist noted. May not have been a scientific survey, but sounds plausible. Obviously, a first advantage is the convenience of being funded. So much nicer to have a comfortable studio, maybe with a small kitchen and shower, why not? It’s also good to have enough room to stretch really large canvases, and just having all that canvas, along with tubs of paint, good brushes, and adequate lighting, all paid for in advance sure sounds swell. These advantages could make the life of an artist a shade easier, but they don’t, by themselves, guarantee commercial success.
Growing up among rich people, now that’s an advantage that’s difficult to duplicate. Someone’s unused storeroom can be rented cheap for a studio, and canvas by the foot and occasional bargains for paint and brushes may cost a few meals out, but anyone is free to paint anything they want, right? Still, in the real world no one can deny there’s a distinct ‘wealthy person’ sensibility, and the artist seeking to enter the market knows their work has to appeal to this rarified aesthetic. Typically, wealth prefers an art that projects exclusivity, that implies an insider’s secret knowledge and an elevated sophistication the hired help see through in a minute. This mute international style is brandname conscious and consensus driven, but just because an artist becomes adept at off-hand and arbitrary color placement doesn’t mean the established order will let them in. A few rich relatives conspire to launch a career, just how rich people business is done, and this secret ingredient won’t be mentioned on the resume, but can usually assumed all around.
Without such olympian intervention, artists from the middle class fall back to teaching on college campuses where they continue to practice rich people’s art on a salary, and teach it to students, round and round. Ordinary citizens who work for a living don’t seem much interested in this kind of art, and that’s just fine with with the industry. They cast their nets for larger fish, overstuffed with inherited wealth and tax-evading cash. Everyone lies. Their sales pitch revolves around sky-rocket fame and uncharted earning potential, rather than the visual character of the non-objective place-holder going into storage. So the question is, what normal person really cares about multi-million dollar speculations on the repetitive relics of modern art, with its unreal values and mass distortions?
Let’s start over with a visual mode that each person can assess from their own lived experience, and build a visual vocabulary that expresses the aims and attitudes of an emerging public awareness based on commonality and inclusion. If this sounds like art populism, it is. Original art has weight and influence. It can evoke both maturity and progressive thinking in offices and waiting rooms, enhance fond memories of food and familiar surroundings in pubic establishments, and help make a home into a private sanctuary, a source of solace and rejuvenation. To do all this, it doesn’t need to look like it cost a million bucks.
Growing up among rich people, now that’s an advantage that’s difficult to duplicate. Someone’s unused storeroom can be rented cheap for a studio, and canvas by the foot and occasional bargains for paint and brushes may cost a few meals out, but anyone is free to paint anything they want, right? Still, in the real world no one can deny there’s a distinct ‘wealthy person’ sensibility, and the artist seeking to enter the market knows their work has to appeal to this rarified aesthetic. Typically, wealth prefers an art that projects exclusivity, that implies an insider’s secret knowledge and an elevated sophistication the hired help see through in a minute. This mute international style is brandname conscious and consensus driven, but just because an artist becomes adept at off-hand and arbitrary color placement doesn’t mean the established order will let them in. A few rich relatives conspire to launch a career, just how rich people business is done, and this secret ingredient won’t be mentioned on the resume, but can usually assumed all around.
Without such olympian intervention, artists from the middle class fall back to teaching on college campuses where they continue to practice rich people’s art on a salary, and teach it to students, round and round. Ordinary citizens who work for a living don’t seem much interested in this kind of art, and that’s just fine with with the industry. They cast their nets for larger fish, overstuffed with inherited wealth and tax-evading cash. Everyone lies. Their sales pitch revolves around sky-rocket fame and uncharted earning potential, rather than the visual character of the non-objective place-holder going into storage. So the question is, what normal person really cares about multi-million dollar speculations on the repetitive relics of modern art, with its unreal values and mass distortions?
Let’s start over with a visual mode that each person can assess from their own lived experience, and build a visual vocabulary that expresses the aims and attitudes of an emerging public awareness based on commonality and inclusion. If this sounds like art populism, it is. Original art has weight and influence. It can evoke both maturity and progressive thinking in offices and waiting rooms, enhance fond memories of food and familiar surroundings in pubic establishments, and help make a home into a private sanctuary, a source of solace and rejuvenation. To do all this, it doesn’t need to look like it cost a million bucks.
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
agony and art -- dancing partners
Some wag facetiously asks if making art requires suffering, and the answer is, probably, but only as practice, spiritual conditioning, the getting ready to make art. No way around it, the original part of art causes stress, in fact making anything that wasn’t there before is experienced as non-specific discomfort, and it’s a universal human condition. Life may get you ready, but at the moment of creation the experience is one of mild to severe unease, and that applies to landscapers, and engineers, and entrepreneurs, anyone who asserts their own ideas about anything, and makes something new.
Getting good at anything that requires skill can be fun, and following recipes or copying from examples, with instructor at elbow or hours of practice alone, breeds satisfaction and contentment. Diligence is rewarded, and in due time friends and acquaintances might be impressed, but any wrinkle, any flavor, or any progression of notes that wasn’t there before has a cost. I’m appealing to the reader’s personal experience for verification of this simple formula, aware that many of us avoid even rearranging the furniture just to escape it. It also seems true that very creative people sometimes attempt to assuage the anxiety they accrue with drugs and alcohol, evidence of the high price that’s paid, eventually.
Art is all of human endeavor distilled down to an essence. Someone has been able to compress their own aspiration, disappointment, everything they’ve ever experienced into a picture of something, and you have the ability to decipher the depth and awareness they applied when making it, it’s like a miracle or something. Really it’s a level of awareness all humans possess, but it’s also a room hardly anyone enters, waylaid by digital media, and confused by the ‘famous for being famous’ world of art. Accept that we recognize more than we realize, and that we can tell internally when the art we’re looking at resonates with our own experience, with our own angst and its resolution. Someone made this picture, and in these unsettling times, you might find it’s a comfort to have so much in common with a stranger.
Getting good at anything that requires skill can be fun, and following recipes or copying from examples, with instructor at elbow or hours of practice alone, breeds satisfaction and contentment. Diligence is rewarded, and in due time friends and acquaintances might be impressed, but any wrinkle, any flavor, or any progression of notes that wasn’t there before has a cost. I’m appealing to the reader’s personal experience for verification of this simple formula, aware that many of us avoid even rearranging the furniture just to escape it. It also seems true that very creative people sometimes attempt to assuage the anxiety they accrue with drugs and alcohol, evidence of the high price that’s paid, eventually.
Art is all of human endeavor distilled down to an essence. Someone has been able to compress their own aspiration, disappointment, everything they’ve ever experienced into a picture of something, and you have the ability to decipher the depth and awareness they applied when making it, it’s like a miracle or something. Really it’s a level of awareness all humans possess, but it’s also a room hardly anyone enters, waylaid by digital media, and confused by the ‘famous for being famous’ world of art. Accept that we recognize more than we realize, and that we can tell internally when the art we’re looking at resonates with our own experience, with our own angst and its resolution. Someone made this picture, and in these unsettling times, you might find it’s a comfort to have so much in common with a stranger.
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
showtime -- big art’s thin disguise
On Friday evening, Gagosian director Sam Orlofsky tweeted about the sale, boasting that the gallery had “set a 7 figure world record for an artist within three hours of the artwork being revealed, and the purchaser never seeing it in person.” from artsy magazine online
The painting in question is a dark smeary mess, but extremely large, millionaire size, and destined for storage, since who would care to look at it for more than ten seconds, or in this case, at all? Hey, all you winners, do us all a favor and toss art out the window of your limo as you zoom by, and buy yourselves some time -- you never understood or cared about it, anyway. That brand-name ‘signature art’ you auction back and forth, artificially inflating enormous prices, reveals just what barbarians you really are.
Your usurpation of art as a cover for money laundering and tax evasion, beyond the cheap hustle of peddling fake culture to new money, will eventually find you out. An afternoon’s scrawl, pulling millions at auction on the evening news, is perhaps the most blatant and visible affront to working people you could devise. If you continue to bait them with your privilege and excess, they’ll become belligerent and unreasonable, even irrational and willing to sacrifice their own interests just to expressed how pissed they really are. It seems their voices will finally be heard, even if it takes electing a civic saboteur as president to get their outrage across.
The collapse of your empire of brand-name blue-book art, warehoused fortunes reduced to dust, would mean a great liberation for art itself, and for common people. The malaise may recede when the citizens begin to see themselves and their commonalities more clearly through the medium of the art, both accessible and attainable. Of course sooner or later, newly empowered, they’ll come for you, alter the tax code and pull the plug on your philanthropic write-off racket. (As soon as some city council bolts, so starved for resources that it puts the museum’s collection of modern masters on the market for cash, it’s all over, and their true market value will be revealed. This almost happened in Detroit a few years ago, until so-called philanthropic entities rushed it with a fat donation to the trash collectors union. Actually happened, see owning art jan 2014 -- https://owningart.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-case-of-330-million-dollar-finger.html, and also read its rebuttal.)
Visual art can become a great solace to common people, a verification of personal autonomy and worth, first as an example of value beyond models of mass consumption, and of an expression too individual and personal for algorithms to grasp. The fair price of art is its value to the person who intends to own it and make it a part of their life, negotiated against the time, skill, and vision of the artist, which should be a reasonable and rational bargain in a regional market increasingly aware of its own art and artists.
The painting in question is a dark smeary mess, but extremely large, millionaire size, and destined for storage, since who would care to look at it for more than ten seconds, or in this case, at all? Hey, all you winners, do us all a favor and toss art out the window of your limo as you zoom by, and buy yourselves some time -- you never understood or cared about it, anyway. That brand-name ‘signature art’ you auction back and forth, artificially inflating enormous prices, reveals just what barbarians you really are.
Your usurpation of art as a cover for money laundering and tax evasion, beyond the cheap hustle of peddling fake culture to new money, will eventually find you out. An afternoon’s scrawl, pulling millions at auction on the evening news, is perhaps the most blatant and visible affront to working people you could devise. If you continue to bait them with your privilege and excess, they’ll become belligerent and unreasonable, even irrational and willing to sacrifice their own interests just to expressed how pissed they really are. It seems their voices will finally be heard, even if it takes electing a civic saboteur as president to get their outrage across.
The collapse of your empire of brand-name blue-book art, warehoused fortunes reduced to dust, would mean a great liberation for art itself, and for common people. The malaise may recede when the citizens begin to see themselves and their commonalities more clearly through the medium of the art, both accessible and attainable. Of course sooner or later, newly empowered, they’ll come for you, alter the tax code and pull the plug on your philanthropic write-off racket. (As soon as some city council bolts, so starved for resources that it puts the museum’s collection of modern masters on the market for cash, it’s all over, and their true market value will be revealed. This almost happened in Detroit a few years ago, until so-called philanthropic entities rushed it with a fat donation to the trash collectors union. Actually happened, see owning art jan 2014 -- https://owningart.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-case-of-330-million-dollar-finger.html, and also read its rebuttal.)
Visual art can become a great solace to common people, a verification of personal autonomy and worth, first as an example of value beyond models of mass consumption, and of an expression too individual and personal for algorithms to grasp. The fair price of art is its value to the person who intends to own it and make it a part of their life, negotiated against the time, skill, and vision of the artist, which should be a reasonable and rational bargain in a regional market increasingly aware of its own art and artists.
Saturday, March 9, 2019
entering the eye -- Archambeault
James Archambeault, locally renowned nature photographer, recently passed with a nice article in the paper, and testimonials reflected the larger community’s view of his work. Six books of photographs and many calendars, he took photographs of just what was there. ‘I didn’t invent Kentucky,’ he’d often say, modest in his craft. Even so, it’s said he’d wait for hours for the right light, a favorable angle of the sun, and with patience and a loving eye he produced his pictures.
His photographs were of nothing special, and that’s sort of interesting. Mares with foals at their side are grazing as the mist rolls away while traffic congests on the way to work every weekday, who notices? Sunlight falls through the trees and dapples the creek as ATVs bounce down a cowpath, it’s always there. Jim was thinking abstractly, the sky in a pond against the weathered paint of the barn, beguiling the attention, but he used visual terms that were already familiar to any citizen who drives just a few miles out of town. Having once seen at his work, people look the same things but see them differently, and in some cases, see them at all. So many of their statements boil down to ‘he made me see and appreciate’ what was and is always there, day by day.
What artist wants more than that? Oh, I suppose having glamorous associates must be fun, and oodles of money with open afternoons sounds great, but that’s business, amusing the rich, and art is more serious than that. Some folks actually believe that seeing the physical world with more clarity enhances an individual’s sense of self, a far-fetched theory at this point, but just a new appreciation for the quality of light down by the lake at dusk would be enough. Whatever image goes in through the eyes, art’s attempt is to penetrate the forehead, to alter perception, if only by example. People look to artists like James Archambeault to verify their own experience, and to help them find commonality with others who share a sense of values beyond the lowest-denominator sensationalism found in commercial media.
His photographs were of nothing special, and that’s sort of interesting. Mares with foals at their side are grazing as the mist rolls away while traffic congests on the way to work every weekday, who notices? Sunlight falls through the trees and dapples the creek as ATVs bounce down a cowpath, it’s always there. Jim was thinking abstractly, the sky in a pond against the weathered paint of the barn, beguiling the attention, but he used visual terms that were already familiar to any citizen who drives just a few miles out of town. Having once seen at his work, people look the same things but see them differently, and in some cases, see them at all. So many of their statements boil down to ‘he made me see and appreciate’ what was and is always there, day by day.
What artist wants more than that? Oh, I suppose having glamorous associates must be fun, and oodles of money with open afternoons sounds great, but that’s business, amusing the rich, and art is more serious than that. Some folks actually believe that seeing the physical world with more clarity enhances an individual’s sense of self, a far-fetched theory at this point, but just a new appreciation for the quality of light down by the lake at dusk would be enough. Whatever image goes in through the eyes, art’s attempt is to penetrate the forehead, to alter perception, if only by example. People look to artists like James Archambeault to verify their own experience, and to help them find commonality with others who share a sense of values beyond the lowest-denominator sensationalism found in commercial media.
Friday, March 1, 2019
Mary Boone’s atonement -- big house to big house
On Thursday afternoon, the iconic New York gallery owner Mary Boone was sentenced to 30 months in prison. She had pleaded guilty in September to charges that she falsified her expenses to give the impression that the gallery was losing money. Boone admitted to transferring $9.5 million from one bank to another and claiming it was a deductible business expense; other “business” expenses included almost $800,000 for an apartment renovation and a $19,000 shopping spree at Hermès and Louis Vuitton. Artsy Magazine, online 2/14
Her lawyer ‘argued Boone’s crimes were due to a history of anxiety, depression, and addiction brought on by childhood trauma, and claimed that she had since found religion and clean living.’ No one necessarily believed any of that really justifies cheating on taxes, and closer to the truth would be, 'your honor, that’s just the way we do business.' She was operating in a realm where people piss away money just to impress their close social acquaintances, where sacrifice and honest effort are devalued, even demeaned, and no one knows or cares anything about art that sells for less than six figures and up, no limit. Every day she was helping high-roller clients manipulate the tax code, buying, trading, and donating to major civic institutions at enormously inflated prices, all tricks to hide their burgeoning seam-splitting dynastic wealth.
Surprised she was when agents showed up to explain that while she was enormously rich, she wasn’t wealthy enough to cheat outright. They deserve each other, the ultra rich and vultures like Mary, all of them cozily scamming each other, while the law is usually more concerned with petty crime, common bank robberies and such. Whatever they’re about, it has nothing to do with art, more like high stakes poker in which every play is a bluff, where every card has only momentary consensus value, and where the enormous pot of money in the middle stinks of tax fraud, money laundering, and larceny. What we have here is a political problem, so pervasive as to remain largely unseen, while the art is visual evidence of the debilitating distortion concentrated wealth causes throughout our culture. Time to look elsewhere.
Her lawyer ‘argued Boone’s crimes were due to a history of anxiety, depression, and addiction brought on by childhood trauma, and claimed that she had since found religion and clean living.’ No one necessarily believed any of that really justifies cheating on taxes, and closer to the truth would be, 'your honor, that’s just the way we do business.' She was operating in a realm where people piss away money just to impress their close social acquaintances, where sacrifice and honest effort are devalued, even demeaned, and no one knows or cares anything about art that sells for less than six figures and up, no limit. Every day she was helping high-roller clients manipulate the tax code, buying, trading, and donating to major civic institutions at enormously inflated prices, all tricks to hide their burgeoning seam-splitting dynastic wealth.
Surprised she was when agents showed up to explain that while she was enormously rich, she wasn’t wealthy enough to cheat outright. They deserve each other, the ultra rich and vultures like Mary, all of them cozily scamming each other, while the law is usually more concerned with petty crime, common bank robberies and such. Whatever they’re about, it has nothing to do with art, more like high stakes poker in which every play is a bluff, where every card has only momentary consensus value, and where the enormous pot of money in the middle stinks of tax fraud, money laundering, and larceny. What we have here is a political problem, so pervasive as to remain largely unseen, while the art is visual evidence of the debilitating distortion concentrated wealth causes throughout our culture. Time to look elsewhere.
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