sports and art -- flipping the fan base

Not a secret many sports enthusiasts probably aren’t much interested in art, whereas art people are apt to express seething resentment about the entire sports establishment, the adulation of athletes, the piles of money. It’s an uneasy relationship. Still we’re all just people. We want the same stuff no matter what form it comes in, and it’s only in the manner of delivery where conflict lies.

Human competition, we compare all things, ranges from grisly mortal combat to slow games of chess, yet the same values pertain at all levels. We like to see fair, so rules are written and games are devised so that certain human attributes rise to the surface. From our comfortable couches we admire courage and selflessness, which are often totally separate from athletic ability. Honesty is enforced, and just this morning’s paper reports a basketball player’s pocket-change fine for feigning contact for advantage, later detected on slo-mo replay. One reason even thoughtful people follow sports is for this apparent transparency, all about a contest with the same rules they once played by, at some level, growing up. 

While newspapers seem to evaporate day by day, sports sections remain robust with three or four feature writers banging away with insight and information. These folks aren’t cheerleaders because readers would soon lose interest. They’re contentious with coaches, second guess athletic directors, and minutely analyze the mumbled interviews of the teen-age participants. Their job is to provide access and understanding for a public interested in more than just a scoreboard summary. It isn’t just about winning and the public tends to encourage an underdog. Fans are said to be fickle, mainly because they idolize an abstract ideal and not the athlete who embodies it momentarily, and it’s in these heroic terms they’d prefer to see their own lives. What’s so wrong with that?

Politics and business aren’t subject to the same objectivity and the editorial opinions in the paper can hardly can be tested by the real experience of an average reader. Where else can those tests of endurance and determination, dedication and accomplishment be documented for all the world to see besides in the championship finals of some made up sport? Art embodies all those attributes we admire with the distinct advantage of being tangible, ownable, and only gaining in significance as years roll by instead of fading into a cloud of statistics and tattered memories. It isn’t a matter of changing values. It’s about finding them in a more thoughtful mode, one that humanizes the nest and makes the business day more palatable. Learning to recognize those universal human aspirations in art takes much less effort and memorization than following the most humble sports franchise, and understanding accumulates quickly. Looking at all the art available and knowing something about how it’s made and who makes it are all it takes.    

alternative spaces -- jumping over turnstiles

Can’t sell art just anywhere. The setting has to provide enough dignity for art to be taken seriously, since the same piece of art won’t look the same in a gallery or hanging on a fence in the park. This requirement for a formal presentation becomes a bottleneck in the distribution of art, and that’s where the sharks lay wait. Gallery facilities are either public or private, paid for by all the citizens or strictly for profit and that’s about it. 

Public galleries can be spacious and inviting, well lit with sparkling conveniences, ample publicity and close-by parking, but after a perfunctory cracker and cheese opening these galleries remain mostly dark and unattended the remainder of the month. Periodically they show grade school children or sunday painting seniors, and overall the offerings of the public gallery are uneven. Private galleries ascertain the level of sophistication and the financial status of the visitor in a few moments of general patter and remain interested only if they sense the possibility of selling something. Choose old shoes from your closet and roam at will with no more than a nod, if that, coming and going. They look on art as merchandize and are more interested in resumes than whatever it looks like, and that’s they way they sell it too. If only there were some other way. 

Occasionally a business which deals directly with the public will provide wall space to some local artist and they do this for a number of reasons. Some folks like art and for just helping the artist meet their customers they can have original art on the wall for free. Others might figure they’re paying so much per foot of floor but the walls are a bonus so why not keep the place fresh and interesting for patrons with changing art. In business offices original art can lend gravity to the conference room, look progressive in reception areas, and inspire creativity all along the line.

Let’s say it caught on and friendly competition for displaying the recognizable work of regional artists reached a tipping point. Suddenly original art would appear in salons and restaurants, in business and professional offices all over town. Long suppressed, a creative surge from studios would be met by a rapidly developing taste and appreciation in the community, and art would begin to flow off alternative venue walls and into homes and personal spaces. This public access to the independent artists in their midst would yield an authenticity and level of accomplishment neither the ‘art as charity’ or ‘art as portfolio investment’ models have been able to provide.

‘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.