through the eyes of others -- art antagonisms

This election shows that it’s not different tribes we belong to, we live in different places in an alternate universe and we’re never going to agree about anything until we line out a playing field in the middle somewhere and agree on some rules. It’s unreasonable blaming art for any of this since art is just an afterthought after all and really not capable of defining the differences we perceive in each other. On the other hand perhaps if we could see today’s art through the eyes of others we’d begin to understand the chaos all around.

We’ll look through a common set of eyes, in this case male, and what you mostly remember from your high school experience are three years on the varsity, starting left guard senior year. There’s a lot about the culture you don’t understand. You don’t know why any of the cartoons in new yorker magazine are funny, and you’re left out by references to past wars or politicians you’re very vague about. You might be an intelligent practical person capable of running a big farm, able to make quick consequential decisions, and be kind and humane toward your family and friends, but you will not be transported by the piece of art that just sold for thirty times the price of all that soil and all the tears, sweat, and triumph of a lifetime on a family farm. It’s probably just going to piss you off. Well you’re just going to have to live with it and ignore it, but if you ever get the chance, you’re going to vote for Trump. It’s a disaster but I don’t blame you.

I don’t agree with your politics but I’m down with your point of view. An article noted that it was interesting how many rich kids wind up being successful as artists, and it isn’t just the trust fund studio or the early sponsorship of the parents’ friends -- an obligatory and empty gesture, they’ll give it to the maid. Their real edge of course is growing up with rich people’s art, the kind that says my offhand gesture is more potent and meaningful than ten years of your gardener’s toil and he’s compensated very nicely. Not everybody likes that kind of art. To make it bald-faced perfectly clear some worthy and productive people find the art presented in media to be patently offensive. Perhaps the cultural progressives thought they just didn’t care or that they wouldn’t notice, but over a hundred million dollars for the ugliest dumbest art possible, to be fair that is its charm, makes people so mad they tend to overlook their own self-interests.

There’s a simple fix to all of this but it’s going to make a lot of rich people wail and gnash their teeth. Float thirty or forty prime Rothko paintings on the market, everyone attempting to unload all at once, and see how many millionaires jump over the hedges to snap them up. At one time the Marlboro Gallery held seven hundred and fifty three of them and that isn’t all there are, who knows? Even with all the status-seeking new money flooding in it’s a good bet this gravy train will soon grow rancid, and once prices start to retreat there’s likely to be a period of free-fall to some more rational consideration of actual value, and who knows?

Maybe we should reconsider our approach to education and not separate out the gifted and privileged to run things and preserve the culture, but that’s a political discussion. When it comes to visual art let all the Warhol fast-food art, to be fair its charm, seek its own level against more organic and locally-sourced, more conscious and accomplished picture making. When the people who support this economy find some form of expression they can relate to maybe it will help to disarm the rage of frustration that pollutes our politics.

a miracle or something -- turning heads

Artists, I only know a few, are mostly solitary dreamers, every afternoon in front of an easel alone with their fantasies. They imagine friendly openings in their hometown crowded with average people like themselves. The guy who works on their car says he thinks their stuff is swell and he’d sure like to have something above his service desk, so the artist says well the next time I need a repair, a big repair, and he says great idea, and so does the dentist, such a nice little town. Then the artist watches the evening news during a pandemic and sees all the talking heads sequestered at home.

These people aren’t the artist’s neighbors, they’re articulate and educated public figures immersed in urban culture and interacting at all levels all day, that’s their job. You’d think with an entire nation visiting them at home they’d find some credible piece of art to use as a backdrop on the wall behind them. I wouldn’t fault them for sticking to the facts, but it becomes clear pretty quick that art isn’t a high priority in their hi-rise urban dwellings, so how likely is it going to be that people in this little town are ever going to pay more than a nickel for something more personal than a sailing ship from the mall? In this moment you’re eavesdropping on a common solitary conversation in front of easels everywhere, and this sense of futility becomes an element in the paint and it’s an extra load to carry.

Well finally what happens is they all turn their heads at once, it’s like a miracle or something. One day some hard to place commentator with a peculiar point of view logs in with a visually compelling and thoughtful painting his cousin who drives a food truck made on the wall behind him. It lends credence to what he’s saying, and he's remembered. Like aroused sharks all the home-bound pundits are out looking for art that fortifies their well-reasoned points of view, but as usual they’d be behind the general population who are poised at this moment to begin valuing the art produced in their own hometowns. This dearth of art on the walls in middle america is like a desert waiting for rain, and then everything blooms overnight. In this season of magical thinking with things not even considered battering each moment’s expectations and in the realm of infinite possibilities it could happen. At some point some level of saturation will pass and each morning a few more people everywhere will wake up wanting to look at art without knowing why. Artists are also optimistic against all odds and that's in their paintings too.

the end of art history -- a rebirth for art

‘The End of Art History,’ by David Carrier, from hyperallergic online, 9-26,
“Writing a global art history demands that we give up historical thinking.”

What he’s trying to say is that if we consider the contributions of everyone we’ll have to abandon this artificial orthodoxy we’ve imposed on all of art for the last seventy five years, and it’s back on the streets for us. So what is the ‘historical thinking’ we have to give up and where did it come from in the first place? Does it have anything to do with evolving cultural consciousness or is it more of a fish trap for just the financially fattest tuna constructed by critics and scholars for their friends the marketeers, all of them in the same leaky boat?

The history of 'art history' in the twentieth century is all about exclusion, narrowing the the acceptable form of expression to an arbitrary and impenetrable ‘signature’ style that requires an implicit compromise to even be called art. Through many breakthroughs and redefinitions, these days just an impertinent thought takes the place of all that skill, and even though the public sector seems to be doing great there’s nothing left to sell to the public. The real reason to give up on the artificial construct called ‘art history,’ the frenetic pursuit of novelty, notoriety and outrage, is because every taboo has been excised and all former standards breached until there’s not much left to say. The art most valued by our culture according to the price tag has been reduced to time-bound posturing, hollow sensationalism, and it’s ugly.

The ‘discovery’ of pouring or splashing or dripping in some unique new way probably wasn’t as significant as all the art history books say it was, and what it produced isn’t worth what they claim it is now either. They’ll get theirs when it all comes tumbling down, when all their hermetic double-dealing is exposed to the open air of a free market. Museums will begin to deaccession from the stacks, cautiously at first, and the plantation workers, all those exploited and underpaid employees with art degrees, will begin to unionize and expose the dirty practices of their gentile institutions. Oh, you say that’s all happening now and it’s already rolling downhill? Can the end of ‘art history’ be far behind?

No one I know or have ever met is likely to spend 20m on a retread Rothko for their restored castle with eighteen foot ceilings, ‘it’ll be great for the great hall.’ Maybe we should look at something else. It might be nice to have real art on the wall in a modest real house, a bit of individual character to flavor all the manufactured stuff we all live with. Caution is advised -- don’t buy an art magazine, they’re shills for the industry, don’t go to lectures by anyone who doesn’t make art, and don’t believe the gallery when they tell you how much anything is worth. Most of all forget anything you’ve learned about ‘art history,’ we're starting over. Just look at all the art you see in public always noting the price, and before long you’ll recognize a bargain because you’ve also learned to recognize actual accomplishment. Now you’re ready to buy some for the house.

one world -- separate planets

I proposed in a previous post that humans all inhabited different planets depending how they imprinted on the world as they found it, the world itself being open-ended and full of possibility. This time I offer examples of two different planets residing in exactly the same orbit as reflected in the points of view of two contemporary writers concerning the same subject, paintings in the western canon from hundreds of years ago. In this case it’s handy that the traditional linage of western art allows so direct a comparison, and when seen from this long perspective it turns out to be a telescope on our own times too.

One dispatch came from the CNN news wire and was titled, ‘One of the last privately-owned Botticelli portraits could sell for over $80M.’ In it the ‘head of Sotheby's Old Master painting department said that it could "very well be the next painting to surpass the rarified $100 million threshold." In doing so, "Young Man Holding a Roundel" would become the first painting to achieve a nine-figure sum at auction since Claude Monet's "Haystacks," which fetched over $110 million at Sotheby's New York last year.’ This report comes from a planet of avarice and greed where people are aggressive and mean, and where no matter what anyone has it’s never enough and art is just another thing to have.

The other, oddly enough side by side in the same media, came from the New York Times Magazine, 9-23, written by someone who had gone on a pilgrimage to visit the paintings of Caravaggio in the little churches up and down the coast of Italy where he traded his talent for board, beans, and sanctuary. The trip was summed up this way, ‘A painting made by someone in a distant country hundreds of years ago, an artist’s careful attention and turbulent experience sedimented onto a stretched canvas, leaps out of the past to call you — to call you — to attention in the present, to drive you to confusion by drawing from you both a sense of alarm and a feeling of consolation, to bring you to an awareness of your own self in the act of experiencing something that is well beyond the grasp of language, something that you wouldn’t wish to live without.’ This planet has more parks, and the people are friendlier and more humane.

fantasy futures -- concrete consequences

Oh you shouldn’t find fault with the ultra-wealthy, they make the world go around. That’s what they tell us and what they tell themselves, but it’s really the people they hire that do all the work while they enjoy their assets. They know that if they decide to play golf, or go skiing, or never come back at all things will be just fine because their executive secretary knows more than they do and doesn’t really need them. I’m not sure anyone does since they’re not much more than retread old world gentry, mostly just a bunch of high class thieves just like last time, and they hire out the stealing too, retaining only the best tax lawyers and art advisors, sometimes different offices in the same outfit.  

I suppose there are good rich people out there, and if lottery money fell from the sky my own meager character would be tested, but the money at the top all comes from the bottom, that’s obvious. Do people on the bottom struggle to stay warm and dry and are they forced to consume unwholesome food because it’s cheap? How about the middle class, warm and dry but somehow perpetually dissatisfied with the shiny new products that never bring the happiness portrayed during time-outs and pitching changes. Turns out it isn’t just the money they’ve been stealing. Each person’s self regard has to be pretty battered or they wouldn’t be changing their hair color or buying a truck that belongs on a construction site just to improve themselves, and to be truly fulfilled, satisfied, and finally happy.

To cover their crimes the very rich stole art and turned it into a neutered and near-sighted house pet on a golden chain, and they steal a lot of money that way too. Would you pay millions of dollars for a painting by Mark Rothko? They’re all pretty much alike, that’s what makes them a Rothko, and no one has any idea how many were made or even who made them all. It would have been just like a job for one person to make so many so similar, hundreds. All significant no doubt, but drive, passion, and emotional intensity, maybe not after the first one or two, and the formula is so easy to copy that forgeries abound, and who can say otherwise? Publicly shy private art museums, philanthropy’s most classiest tax shelters, are getting antsy about their phony assets and trying to float the fifth Rothko in their stacks for cash, the parking lot needs paving, and there’s been wailing and gnashing of teeth throughout the entire industry all the way to the top.

When the international art industry eventually collapses in an avalanche of measured and responsible museum deaccessioning, leading to portfolios for pennies and investors wedged in all the exits, ordinary people will begin to discover organically-produced, locally-sourced original art all around them. Full of vitamins instead of empty calories, hormone free and unadulterated, friendly and challenging at the same time, a painting that represents the very best the painter could do in that moment has its own charm, and it broadcasts a good feeling out into a room. Over time the artist’s affection and regard become mutual and having it around just gets better, people say. In this dollar driven and competitive world we’ve inherited, each person deep down yearns for verification that’s there’s something more important than money, and some find that character, truth, and communion are things we can share through art, what it’s really for.

It’s the dawn before the world of tomorrow, a brand new day in which either great wealth tightens and consolidates it control and art as a channel of human expression and sincere communication drowns in cheap advertising like a swan sucked down in a cesspool, or material assets are distributed more evenly and art and artists become a feature of community life everywhere, contributing to the genuine sense of well being and satisfaction a fully realized and secure people deserve.

multiverse controversy -- picking a planet

What are the chances of a multiverse, myriad realities next to each other like the bubbles in beer foam? I don’t know about out there, but I suspect we’re living it everyday, each set of human eyes looking out on a slightly different planet. There’s temperament, some set of predilections from a previous life or a unique toss of genes, no one has explained it, and that’s allied with experience, everything that’s ever happened to a person, remembered or not. Their interaction forms a distinct planet inside each person’s head and it’s going to be slightly different from the planets inhabited by family members, and maybe very different for someone across town or totally unrecognizable from that of a person in another country at a different time.

As we intermingle we begin to sense how alone we really are and that our disagreements with others can’t all be explained because they’re too dumb to see the same truth we do. They seem to have their own truth. This engenders an underlying unease, a subliminal terror at losing touch, and nominally free citizens scurry under the skirt of the nearest tribal identity, a sports franchise, a mega-religion or a political party. Business won’t help. They’ve been using our anxieties against us, urging us to huddle next to their brand names and to be loyal to their products, but there’s not much comfort there. Truth be told that’s actually how we wound up in this wretched place to begin with.

Being alone in the universe can be scary. That’s why there’s art. Throughout history art has been used to link up the population and standardize their planets. We’ve been through a difficult period, wars and political assassinations, disease and injustice, crime and climate change, and each of us could use something to hold on to. Art as it’s presented in media these days hasn’t been much help either, the domain of an ultra-wealthy sensibility manifesting an ironical self-loathing, but there’s a groundswell of hometown interest in hometown art under our feet. After a long drought art is being seen in neighborhoods again, and people are finding solace in artwork that celebrates the commonalities and visions they share, on the planet they’d prefer to live on.   

Trump as avatar -- art as antidote

Trump is the avatar of resentment. His genius is composed of it and it’s his power. Hillary and her clan seemed to think everyone who counts would see things her way. Well this is a wake up call for the woke. The general population has grown confused and moody on an empty-calorie cultural diet of escapist entertainment and endless sporting events created only to con them into buying things they don’t need for a promised life that doesn’t exist. Someone better start pumping value back into daily existence like quality universal education, affordable decent housing for everyone, and something to believe in and hold on to or we’re going to have a mess on our hands.

This isn’t about politics, it’s about life with no meaning, no attainment beyond the envy of strangers, and the meager and fleeting joy in buying a bigger pickup or getting a new tattoo. Humans as animals can only be abused so long and then they begin to agitate, to deviate, and to express their repressed aspirations. The machinery of state long before Trump arrived has been manipulating institutions and incentives to loot the value created by the economic system and move it to the top, and what we have here is a predictable reaction. Devotion to Trump is not about his policies, blind and ignorant vandalism mostly, but in his robust ‘fuck you’ to all that benign ‘we’ve got your back’ bullshit from a government devoted to marketing lives and selling its citizens cheap to large corporations.

As an emergency measure, I’d suggest an IV of original art, organic and locally produced, at least until the fever subsides, anxieties abate, and people begin to find enough satisfaction and fulfillment in their own lives to stop finding fault with each other. Art is the distillation of a culture’s perceptions, its needs and desires, and all systems of control seek to manipulate and neuter it. In totalitarian states artists are imprisoned and art is destroyed but in a capitalist democracy a tax-driven institutional obscurity is used to muffle honest expression and to deny independent artists access to their own communities. At some point artists and the public will begin to find each other through alternative venues, outdoor painting events and organized studio tours, and psychic healing will begin. After that honorable work for a reasonable wage with enough free time and societal support to pursue whatever the hell anyone wants would be nice, finally a healthy place to live and no Trumps nowhere.