‘undeniability’ -- the driving wheel

The life of an independent artist can be interesting. 'Earning a living with the left hand', the age-old herculean task of the independent artist, means pursuing menial occupations and during free time unclogging drains in rentals and changing fan belts on old cars -- any of which requires at least two hands. Every moment of studio time is borrowed time. There’s no money and no prospect of money since the artwork the independent artist produces isn’t being seen anywhere at the moment. There’s a chance for exposure, maybe finding a patron or selling a piece of work, if they can somehow be accepted in a competition, receive a grant or some shred of recognition. Not likely.

Most independent artists are capable people qualified for some profession or at least finding institutional refuge, but they chose to take a stand, to look for compensation by contributing to the culture on their own. No one is good enough to do this when they start so there are hours, months, years of practice for which they are not paid. In fact, the space they use, the supplies they buy, the time they spend are all done at sacrifice to the rest of life. Not only that. 

There are in-laws who seriously believe the artist somehow isn’t suited to real work, specifically the condescending brother-in-law, and at the holidays sometimes more settled siblings can’t resist a little good-natured sarcasm. Other people’s expectations are a load, and an aspiring artist must bide their time with grace. Luckily the humility of the hourly wage and stretched thin credit helps to keep the ego tamped down, and, of course there’s always frustration and failure in the studio, the obstinacy of the material, the beyond-the-horizon nature of the destination.

Across town there’s a crew of artists with parking spaces, and several other advantages -- income, respect, studios and tons of supplies, with access to galleries and printing services. A university professor has a very different lifestyle and a very different approach to art, since theirs is a different constituency. Slick as it sounds it’s a bargain some pass on, but that’s not the point. Seems the people they went to school with now make all the decisions about who gets accepted in competitions, and who receives grants, and what sort of art rates attention in media, and their hothouse state-supported franchise can sure seem like the only game in town.

So what does the independent artist strive for, what’s the motivation? This isn’t going to be an easy question to answer. Some just want to support their studio and look for acceptance in terms of sales in a local genre market, but there are those who make art out of personal experience and an inherited tradition which transcends time-bound politics and momentary cultural trends. These have a special problem.

There’s no forum for what they do. A lot of people who make honest efforts at independence, time and energy, give up at some point and hire out half their talent. If they never reach their potential, I might suggest that artists who receive only enough support to stay in their studios are going to get better. A cigar box full of rejections from local and regional competitions, arduous grant applications pre-destined to flush on arrival, and stony indifference from gallery directors who only read resumes can, on the other hand, harden the attitude, temper resolve, and burst into flame in front of an easel. Can’t say why -- some folks just like going up hill.

Unspoken is the secret quest that secretly unites these by now extremely independent trekkers out where sign posts are faded and reliably wrong. They seek the grail of ‘undeniability’, each in their own way. They’re trying to create a work of art so compelling, so articulate, so profoundly universal that even a totally apathetic art establishment will have to notice. It’s a very steep hill. If you challenge them they aren’t going to like your stuff, period end, but painters all around are trying anyway. It’s out of this impossibility they find the drive to get better and isn’t that what being an artist is all about? 

Anyway that’s the way it’s been. When the organic local-source food movement finds art, and when area artists begin to appear in alternative spaces, restaurants, salons, and offices, the public will begin to realize what’s been missing all along. ‘Undeniable’ will merely have to be accessible for independent artists to survive and for their work to be up all over town.

cold light of day -- art turns itself around

What do you say in the morning to people who believed the world was going to end the night before? They gave away all their stuff, told off the boss, perhaps even relinquished their dignity somehow and now in the cold light of day turns out they’d been misinformed. You want to be polite but the fact we’re all still here is going to be uncomfortable for a while.

Jackson Pollock and his Freudian mumbo-jumbo just didn’t want to attempt painting. He’d tried and found a reason to give up. He’d drink until his conscious mind passed out and let the ‘id’ do it for him. Problem is the id, when it paints at all, just makes a mess -- drips and squiggles mostly. Farm animals and pre-schoolers use some of these same techniques to achieve better or worse results, who can tell? He did have exquisite timing, although it must have seemed like blind luck to him.

Somehow his movement managed to take the art out of art and left only the signature so that major museums display the icons of modern art like national flags, treat them like blue ribbons in a trophy case, and presume reverence of all who enter -- hushed tones and reduced lighting. There they are, name them off from having seen the same artwork, or one almost exactly like it, in every museum visited, in every text book thumbed through over and over until they’re just expected to be there, an example of each.

Recent investigations seem to indicate much of the stuff you see in a museum or in an uptown gallery is probably fake. After the first fifty or so of essentially the same work of art the inspiration must fade and artists are in effect copying themselves, or paying someone else to do it, or the piece in question is completely bogus although in the end it really makes no difference. The numbers claimed at auction are all fake, backstage bids made by shills with cell phones -- they used to actually set up prop phone booths. These phony headline grabbing auctions have the effect of jacking up the price for a given brand-name artist across the board and as a grift it’s breathtakingly shallow. The gigantic cold checks they write back and forth are for tax purposes, to pump up prices, and to impress common folk via the evening news. They’re all in on it.

Is it time for an art revolution -- can’t be bothered. It’s an argument not worth winning. Ken Kesey advised ‘just walk away’ and in the end that’s what’s going to happen, anyway. It will be uncomfortable at first, like when trophy laden institutional collections begin to hiss and deflate, when academic dogma starts sounding blatantly absurd and the glitz of big international art expos is exposed as just a high-end hustle, but as more original art from regional studios reaches the public a new sensibility will arise based on individual inclination and taste, and art will turn itself around.

twenty eight million dollar popeye -- too much spinach

It’s ugly. It was human once you know. Started out as a caricature of a stereotype and then became it’s own stereotype, misshapen and distorted with a sad chaotic life, idiotic and predictable enough for longterm residence at the back of the daily paper. It was made into a plastic figure to be sold as a toy with requisite royalties paid no doubt, and then copied much larger by technicians somewhere and presented as art, signed by Jeff Koons, and royalties paid probably not. (see below) Recently it sold at auction for more than anybody’s lifetime income I’ve ever met. Was it worth it? 

What is it might be the first question. It does have the distinction of being an almost temple-ready embodiment of the grease-trap leavings of industrial commercialism. It isn’t where I’d like to dwell or spend any time at all but that isn’t the point. This unlovely thing’s job is to sit somewhere and declare to all the tired hungry people of the world I’d rather piss away twenty eight million dollars on this than help you -- worth every penny. This isn’t a discussion of art, is it? Economics, politics, unbridled porcine avarice perhaps, but not much art to identify with for the less-than-idle less-than-rich. There’s no bottom rung on that ladder and that’s the beauty of it, don’t you see?

Fine with me. It doesn’t seem interesting. Trying to emulate that elevated sensibility here in the provinces would be like a sad ‘cargo cult’ waiting for a caravan of wealthy sophisticates to come through town loading limos with grad-school imitations of what’s in all the magazines. Attempting to appeal to the aesthetic tastes of a class of people who by every purchase, in every activity, and with every breath are trying to shed their common connection with the rest of humanity sounds too much like work. Well Jeff Koons and his customers can sit in sand-boxes filled with money, but we have better things to do with our time. Making pictures, looking at them, hanging them on the wall and recognizing ones you haven’t seen before is a completely different gig, and something you can do in your hometown. 

http://igaming.org/casino/news/steve-wynn-buys-28-million-popeye-statue/ 

who are you going to believe -- me or your lying eyes

The Connoiseur, by Norman Rockwell

My favorite abstract expressionist painting was by Norman Rockwell for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. While considering another topic I googled it and it was much as I had remembered, but the commentary added an interpretation I didn’t really see. What I see is a republican business-type standing nose close trying to fathom the unfathomable. It’s a joke about abstract art. That’s what I thought first time I saw it and it still looks that way, maybe more so. Good for Norman.

That’s not what the commentary underneath says. It suggests the rigid character with hat, umbrella, and gloves is a stand-in for the artist himself, and that’s bald-faced absurd. He appeared in his own artwork often enough to see how he portrayed himself and it isn’t him. Not just that, but from behind this scholar imagines stand-in Norman to be smiling at this work of genius. I know it’s a lie but I’m never sure if it’s intentional or simply the ‘cult’ in culture, the mysterious ‘art-historical’ ability to see what isn’t there. He says,””Always fascinated by modern and abstract art, Rockwell designed a cover in which he could acknowledge his appreciation of the genre. In 1961, Rockwell's studio was temporarily transformed into an abstract expressionist's workplace as he painted The Connoisseur, a painting about the relationship between conventional and modern art. By placing his back to us, he leaves the interpretation of the museum visitor's reaction to the viewer. If we can assume that he is a surrogate for Rockwell, we may also assume that the gentleman is smiling approvingly.”

This isn’t revisionism. It’s in your face lying, we have eyes, and it’s been the tenor of art scholarship for six or seven decades. It’s the history of art for the gullible among us and, of course, the art professionals who choose to believe what they’re told instead of what they see. Norman made if very clear what he thought of “modern and abstract art” by the way he painted throughout.

http://www.nrm.org/thinglink/text/Connoisseur.html   

artists' brains -- different from you and me

“Drawing on the right side of the brain: A voxel-based morphometry analysis of observational drawing” asserts that artists may have increased neural matter in the parts of their brains that deal with visual perception, spatial navigation and fine motor skills. Huffington Post-Apr 22, 2014

Goofy sort of research with elements of prank, but plausible enough to get a headline. It isn’t surprising that the physique of the athlete is generally superior to the average office worker. Athletes at all levels work their bodies in all sorts of ways beyond just practicing the skill-set for their particular sport to achieve a condition simply called ‘shape’. You can spot them in the supermarket loading up on bulk protein, a toned outline under tight skin, and maybe they inspire better choices among the rest of us, more fruit and less cake. Doing a brain-scan isn’t so convenient and even if it was true it would be beside the point. Of course the brains of artists are different because they ‘train’ -- they look at stuff. Does it make their brains bigger -- who cares? The fact is they see more and anybody can. 

To do it requires no sweat but it does take energy. One has to apply consciousness to mundane surroundings wherever one happens to be, and a surprising thing begins to happen. It’s been widely reported -- the more you look the more you see. Vision becomes “the only form of eating that produces its own meat”, a translation I’m sure but the intent is clear. The difference between the perception of an artist and coequally the viewer of art, and the rest of the population can’t be seen externally but it’s there. They’re seeing more in the same places. Their perceptions are in shape. 

presidential prophesies -- the future from the present

What harbingers do you take seriously? President Carter was an introvert who turned outward and embodied a concern for community felt in the hearts of many in his time. Bush, the backslapping extrovert quoting ball-scores and telling crude jokes, turns inward and becomes a painter after his stint as national ego in-chief and I wonder what it means.

George is really pretty good for a rank beginner and I wouldn’t deride him for that -- too bad he gets all that attention. He has the courage to be judged, takes that chance and comes out miles ahead of all those condescending noted authorities who ‘never played the game’. I’ll try to be more clear. There are people who assume rank and position in the art establishment with too few dues in the pot, professional chameleons who look all directions and change color with the crowd. They can’t decide if Norman Rockwell was an artist, a great artist, or not even and the tide moves back and forth every ten years or so. They don’t know what art is.

George will probably never be good having started way too late, but he’s put himself on that highway and something about it is so compelling, some part of himself was so thirsty for time in front of an easel that he’s willing to humbly accept an avalanche of ridicule and scorn just to be able to do it. His persona has softened and ‘decider’ no more, he devotes himself to looking at things and noticing stuff, trying to figure out how to make flat canvas say the same thing. Well, that’s George’s thing and we move on but he was a man of his time elected to represent all of us, and in the arc of his presidency somehow he did, ending in a bankruptcy no one expected. 

Still at the crest of a wave of national consciousness our most recent ex-president has concluded that self-discovery was the missing component, and so does a nation suddenly interested in art. It isn’t just him. Oh I’m as rational as the next but history with art as its expression can be read a couple of different ways, and the way things are going looks to me like artists are going to be the ballplayers in another generation or two.

Pussy Riot -- facing down the iron fist

Saw members of ‘Pussy Riot’ on Charlie Rose last night. Worst musicians and most fearless artists I’ve ever seen. Art stares back into the face of brutal soul-crushing authority while everyone else examines their shoes, and it’s the vulture who turns away. This is after journalists have been publicly poisoned, political opponents bogusly charged, tried, and sent to prison, and under the constant surveillance of the secret police. Art may in the end be the only solution. 

Pussy Riot is not about subversive lyrics, sly derision of those in power tolerated from above as feckless even useful dissent. It’s courage and defiance they personify, and they’ve willed it to ripple out from them through performance because they understand art isn’t passive. Art both reflects and directs self-image, the realm of possibilities for the individual and for their community, as totalitarian regimes have understood well enough. Those who would control minds fear art more than foreign armies, and their feeble attempts to subdue and bend it trace a real yet unwritten history of the twentieth century. Well documented are the darkly hilarious machinations of fascist and communist national cults trying to limit and restrict art only to make it more virulent and powerful.

Art in the west has been buffeted by different forces. Here art sells stuff and even sells itself. Ask Andy Warhol about politics and he’ll talk about carpeting the streets (saw the interview) but walking through his shop he’ll order more Lisa’s, “we can always sell those” (from a documentary). At least in a democracy there’s no attempt to control art from above, unless you count the NEA, myriad foundation grants, and state-supported teaching institutions everywhere. Here the artist doesn’t fear heavy footsteps followed by loud knocking in the night, but still there are challenges. The first is an almost totally alienated audience. Squeezed on one side by the vulgarity of commercialism and from the other by an academic establishment passing out honors and grants and hiring teachers from within a state-supported farm system, the general public opted out, walked away, and the vested interests said good riddance. Each takes a much bigger chunk from a much smaller pie.

Pussy Riot is a hard act to follow. Artists here can’t count on one sorta goofy performance resulting in a gigantic state show trial seen all around the world, and which in effect puts the state, itself, on trial. That’s a lot to ask. Here artists need to be honest with themselves and hope their example will endure, as paintings do, and ripple out at least a sense of independence and some notion of purpose beyond money.