school days

What if art school was sabotage? Maybe not a conscious effort to pull up the ladder, to cripple future competition, to strangle a serious voice, an authentic art, the possibility of a self-sustaining career; it would be more like an unseen institutional imperative, an inbuilt self-preservation mechanism, a poisonous coating of goo around the profession of being an artist.

How does anyone expect to learn about becoming an artist from people who have never sold art for a living, never paid for their own studios or art supplies, and have no life experience beyond the insular confines of campus? It’s sorta like going to a priest for marriage counseling. What they know about is keeping their head down and progressing, year by year, toward the department chairmanship – art is their day job.

The awful truth, kids -- Duchamp was pulling a prank, and had the dumb luck to be taken seriously. Art is about finding hidden places in common with others, and it’s not the same thing as just hiding. Everything they told you is wrong.

abstract truth

Peter Schjeldahl, resident visual art critic for the New Yorker stated while reviewing a MOMA exhibit of Abstract Expressionists from the fifties, “They embraced abstraction as the shortest route to universal meaning and significance.” It’s a patent absurdity, one that undermines our culture, our thought, and our integrity.

Visual art, like music, has been a manifestation of human expression since the beginning, and while flutes and drums have been lost to time, paintings still survive on rock walls. Visual art preceded writing by millenia, encapsulating and conveying meaning, and representing us, one to another. It isn’t tool-making that separates us from the rest of the animals, but the making of art, and these days, it separates us from the machines, too. Only humans make art, and only humans recognize it.

Abstract art is a negation of meaning, and its early practitioners were nihilistic, disappointed because art is difficult, and because life is hard -- lessons learned at the open end of a bottle. Suicidal drunkenness ‘in’ isn’t going to yield anything pleasant coming ‘out’ – abstract expressionism is ugly. The rise of abstraction paralleled other fundamentalist reactionary movements seen since, and the destruction of the twelve hundred year old sandstone Buddha by the Taliban embodies the early abstractionist’s attitudes toward the foundations and heritage of visual art.

After a devastating purge, life usually returns chastened and different, brighter and with new vigor. Time to jettison the whole mess – the enormous state apparatus of schools and grant agencies, the celebrity status of cynical hustlers, and the gallery system with its dollar rankings based on some invisible consensus and sheer mystery. Time to wake up. Time to start over.

blame art

It isn’t Rush and Sarah caused the violence – they’re just bumps on the log. The awful fact is that art is real. It shapes our perceptual net, tells us what the world’s about, and it forms the reality we share. Can anyone face the idea that it’s our entertainment that makes it seem natural to carry instant mayhem in the coat pocket, in the purse, under the front seat? Our gun laws are bald-faced irrational, and it’s because crime shows have been substituting intimidation and violence for our own natural memories, which have become seriously diminished while we’re watching crime shows. Avid TV watchers, action movie addicts, video gamers are all here to testify they don’t feel safe outside without a gun.

Why would art do that to us? It’s because this art is in bondage, sold into slavery and prostitution, destined to give us distorted visions of life because it’s being used to sell us something – spotless kitchens, the suburban pickup truck, medicine for the dreary lives we lead, unable to relate to each other while dodging phantom spies and dope dealers in every parking facility. Well, we can say we didn’t know we were poisoning ourselves, our culture, the future of the planet and everything on it, with just a little vicarious ultra violence, but the proof is in the way we pass out real guns and ammunition.

The fault is not in our stars, but in our taste for art – most popularly a pastiche of gun violence and pornography, or maybe just gun violence pornography. We don’t think art is real – we say all this gore is cathartic, an entertainment, an honest depiction of anyone's life, and we’re fooling ourselves. If you want to think better thoughts, look at better art.

words can't follow

Art works because each of us feels alone, and art is the way back to a friendlier place. Nothing is much friendlier than sharing a deeply held truth about yourself with others, even if it’s only you and the artist. Thoughtful people look for and sometimes find themselves in art. Maybe they find the art they would have made if they’d just given up their career and devoted themselves to art for decades, or maybe they feel connection, an empathy for a piece – they don’t know why. Now if someone else, maybe a total stranger, seems to like the same piece, chances are better than average they’ll have other things in common – a fondness for ethnic food, a tendency to drive too fast, a preference for city life, even though they may not speak. Whatever it is they’re responding to can’t be talked about directly. That’s because words can’t follow everywhere pictures can go – it's the reason we have art around.

Also see "The More Things Change, The More Art Remains True."  Published in Business Lexington, December 24, 2010:  http://www.bizlex.com/Articles-c-2010-12-20-96436.113117-The-more-things-change-the-more-art-remains-true.html

published in Bizlex

It’s been a while since I blogged. For one thing I had an article published in Business Lexington, a mashup of two previous posts called “Putting Creativity on the Payroll”, suggesting that CEO’s put an artist on the payroll just to be an artist, and one on buying from local artists, "Art Destinations Need Patrons Who Prize Hometown Art".  (See links below.)  The intent is to foster an indigenous movement which supports working artists and recognizes their contribution as members of a progressive and humane community.

I think art movements begin with awakening audiences, not with genius artists, and why not here and now is my question. We look around to find ourselves in a desert, miles and miles of seamless walls and nothing but decorator prints and couch paintings. Information and exposure is all the water we need.

The way we were……….

 Essentially I think there are artists everywhere, and the variable factor is audience, which has been suppressed by both commercial and academic interests. The business side wants to narrow and control the product producing artificial scarcity, while the state-supported side wants to avoid the scrutiny of just about everybody while getting paid. They both promote an exclusionary art which justifies itself through a consensus of self-interests, and each affects a manner aloof and condescending toward the general public. This isn’t the time to argue with them, and prove them wrong -- it’s time to do something else.

http://www.bizlex.com/Articles-c-2010-10-14-95608.113117-Putting-creativity-on-the-payroll.html 

www.bizlex.com/Articles-c-2010-11-24-96181.113117-Art-destinations-need-patrons-who-prize-hometown-art.html

actual censorship

Where is the art you don’t get to see, haven’t had a chance to own, that will probably never be made? It’s been censored. No, not because it was obscene or unwholesome, heavens no, but because it was accessible, direct, and might appeal to the general public. The very people we hire with our tax dollars to decide what art is worthy of our notice have been hanging out a carrot on a string, getting a free ride, and the donkey has been us. They do this by staying slightly ahead of the curve, out toward the cutting edge, and if too many people start to like it, they move on. They sponsor a stable of artists who would be completely unsustainable on an open market, and promote them as being superior to artists who might be able to support themselves if they had access to the galleries, the grants and prizes, the press attention currently monopolized by the non-profits, the universities, and all other entities supported with public money and not by the dissemination of art.

They exert control through blatant censorship and call it being progressive, contemporary, and not limited to the narrow provincialism of the people who buy their lunch. Oh, they pretend to promote art, but artists don’t thrive in their communities. They’ve made art an amputee in everyone’s hometown, a sacrifice to charitable events, and expect artists to decorate various street utilities around the town for degrading pittances. Maybe that’s not the visibility for art we need. Original art direct from the hand of an artist who has something to say about the world, has acquired the ability to say it, and who wants to find common ground with the viewer, might appeal to a lot of people. It might supply something they’ve felt missing in their lives, given the chance. Let’s give it a chance.

Instead of handing over your money to some guilt-driven fund drive, for which you receive nothing but the assurance they’ll be back for even more next year, buy a piece of art from a local artist you like, and hang it where you’ll see it every day. Simple as that.

artists are stuck

Artists are stuck in menial jobs all around you. They started out devoting their main efforts to making art, and tried to earn a living with what was left. This technique, known as “earning a living with the left hand”, has been a common device of long tradition among artists. Some bail pretty quickly, finding sustenance with diminished aspirations in advertising, if blessed with degrees they teach, and still others dive into the state-funded, non-profit art apparatus where they crush the dreams of others for meager but regular pay. They most all flirted with the notion of life as an artist early on, but sensed the butter was on the other side.

Some artists took up a manual trade, figuring they’d be tired but could save their mind for reading and thinking about art. “Just another construction worker with an art degree” the last time I saw a friend. Some became cooks, clerks in art supply stores, whatever it was, they went home and made art, at least they did in the beginning. Soon they found the wide-open territory of visual expression was narrow and restricted, after all. Their straight-ahead sincerity was casually dismissed by academics who favor the stylish offhandedness of art made on a salary -- derivative, contrived, good enough to get paid.

They found the cost of studio space, the equipment they needed, the stuff to make art – canvas, paint, brushes are all bought at the sacrifice of everything else beyond bare necessities, when earning a living with the left hand. If they wanted the companionship of another person, that person had to make all the same sacrifices – a lot to ask. So, most of them gave up – see previous post ‘upside down’. They’re out there now, cranking out some semi-functional craft, stuck in some meaningless job, defensive and self-conscious around professional siblings at Thanksgiving. But they aren’t the hurting ones……..

It’s you, and all your fellow citizens – new houses, endless floor plans, neutral colored walls to the horizon, and what are you putting on them? Tired animal prints, florals to pick up some color from the drapes? You’ve been robbed. All the art those people would have made, if your local art authorities had not closed doors in their faces, isn’t there. The living they might have made, not as flamboyant international celebrities, but as respected contributors to community life and well-being has been diminished, diverted, didn’t happen, and they aren’t the only ones poorer.