art, art, everywhere -- but not that much to see

You’d guess people must love art. There’s art up everywhere, in offices and reception areas, across from the elevator, in waiting rooms and down the hall, even in rest rooms.  Smears and spatters are popular, patches of color to coordinate with carpet and upholstery, and in molded gilt framing it’s all so common as to be easily unseen, not even noticed. Seems a lot of famous, big time art sold at auction isn’t all that difficult to emulate, and sweatshop factories in low wage countries produce stuff that looks sorta similar on an assembly line, strictly for export. Just order from a catalogue, take it out of its box, hang it on the wall and forget about it.

Let’s start over. All painting is an arrangement of colors on a flat surface, going all the way back in human history to the smoothest, flattest cave wall that can be found. Sorry to say, all those separate categories of abstraction and realism are only in your head, arbitrary distinctions propagated by aesthetic scholars and salaried academics busy damming up their own little duck ponds. Forget all that, it just makes understanding art more difficult. A successful work of art attracts and holds the attention, no matter its form, or how much it costs, or who painted it. It’s a simple test, and it depends on two things -- the talent and ability of the artist to create a design which compels a person to look, and the viewer’s open-minded willingness to consider this alternative to their own experience.

It’s this interaction, the engagement of the viewer with the artist, that is the essence of art, and it’s in the space in between where art happens. This quality of art may be missed by people who only consider price and reputation, and many more, almost all of us, have just become visually numbed by all the meaningless art up everywhere. For the individual artist it’s an interesting challenge and worthy of a best effort, creating an image so compelling it causes people to look up from their devices, which even stretches their attention span back out to seconds, minutes, and hours week to week, so that they enjoy having a painting around even more over time. How to go about it is an open question. There aren’t any requirements, and there aren’t any rules. Here’s your canvas flat and white and your colors and brushes are close at hand, so with all of the history of art behind you and all the stuff that hasn’t been thought of yet, make a picture that a typical twenty-first century person, slowly drowning in digital quicksand, is going to see and want to look at.

Sounds hard but it could be even easier these days. Original art has permanence which can be a grounding influence, and it’s the sole possession that becomes more noticeable, more present with time rather than fading into its surroundings, like a permanently charged battery of human effort and intellect there on the wall. No matter the current state of affairs, in this uneasy time of transition it’s the artist’s job to establish the value of visual art in the lives of ordinary citizens, and they have to do it with pictures. Without always knowing why and for no one reason, average people are beginning to look.

the art of class struggle -- what's seen by who

The blog ‘owning art’ is really about class struggle, has been all along. We’re talking revolution, but not with guns and barricades -- it’s like a mental thing, an altered vision. As denizens of a small planet we’ve flogged materialism about as far as it wants to go, tearing up the landscape for short-term gain, enforcing our will with explosives, and imagining money was the most important thing. We find ourselves teetering at the edge of a gaping void with the momentum to go over. Religion has attempted to stay relevant and offer consolation, but delusional optimism expressed through cheesy rock lyrics just makes it all seem worse, and the sincere suburban dad in jeans who preaches vanilla self-satisfaction will be renewed for asses in the pews, not spiritual insight. Fads and gurus, diets and pills, nothing works. Sorry to spread the news, but the very structure of present society had better evolve in a hurry or it’s curtains for the lot of us.

A thoughtful person suggested that human societies began to evolve in an organic manner when the brain became so large that childbirth became problematic, physical evolution having reached its limit. If we track the progress of humankind over the last three millennia, prosperity has tended to generalize, and so has the freedom to realize individual potential and to seek unique destinies, just feels good, although old forms lay in wait to reassert themselves. Corporate control of mass media has helped to resurrect the old monarchies and dynastic fortunes, the lot of them living behind security walls and bulletproof glass. It recalls a time when an extremely wealthy few dictated what art would be for everyone, and their endlessly replicated sky-pie mythology became the visible analogue of their hidden corruption, false piety and opulent excess, and wouldn’t you know, here we are again.

The art of the international art fairs speaks for itself, and it’s a coded smirky entanglement of half-baked social causes, board game tokens and trivial conceits, we get it. With world-weary sardonic disdain, the ultra-wealthy believe it because it’s absurd, and it’s as though the middle ages never left. Let’s leave them there. Their stuff is way too expensive and a tad chic for the average house anyway. Doesn’t it follow that if there’s a change in the mentality of the general population and average people are left to ponder questions of personal identity, citizenship and selfhood, that their seeking would be reflected in visual art for all to see?

Turns out the answer to corporate avarice, abusing working classes and thriving on inequality, doesn’t depend on changing anyone’s mind. The solution is the emergence of a new mentality bursting from MBA programs everywhere, a trans-generational cadre of future CEO’s with a different set of values, people who as a group see their role in society in broader terms. J P Morgan just this week announced they aren’t going to be doing it that way anymore, ripping off pensioners and evicting widows. It was an acknowledgement of pressure from below, an industry wide movement. Other fundamental changes are happening all around, you keep score. The point is humanity is changing direction, and anyone around for more than a couple of decades has been a witness to the flux. Art’s mission in this period of transition is to convey a new consensus, mind to mind, and it’s about to acquire a significance for average people it hasn’t had before. If you’d like to participate in the changeover, the demise of corporate feudalism and the advent of trans-national environmental cooperation and equitable distribution, or whatever happens next, taking an interest in art may help you keep up.

It’s not easy to decide what to like at first, but no need to overthink it. Just look at bunches of art, and what everyone else is thinking will somehow come through you, let it happen. It won’t be long before your friends, and new ones you haven’t met yet, will all begin to like a similar sort of art, and no one will know exactly why. If the source of the art taken home and hung on the wall is local, affordable and knowable, something interesting takes place. As the audience gains sophistication, production in local studios, no longer dependent on outside income, will get better to match -- more time at the easel, simple as that. It’s a mutually rewarding relationship that after long suppression seems suddenly about to awaken all at once with original art displayed in businesses, up on city walls, and even used to lure tourists to upscale hotels. There’s a large enough array of art available these days for the average person to begin to recognize themselves, their interests and attitudes, just by looking. Everyone has this capacity. Visual art, inclusive and accessible, can be the universal channel for new definitions of self and peaceful reconciliation among communities, soon to prevail everywhere. Despots despise art because it can’t be censored, figurative images need no translation, and even though no words are spoken somehow art communicates a revolution in the head.

visiting independent studios -- the nuclear reactors of art

Previously a post suggested that art studios were each outposts of a separate sovereignty, neither geographically bound or limited to a particular era. This pervasive nation with its own standards and codes of conduct, its own notions of integrity and honor, can be found existing within the matrix of any semi-free society with an open economy. Can’t deny there are extravagant studios in the movies, and trust-fund dabblers can have anything they want, but that’s not how most studios begin, clearing out storerooms and repurposing garages. Founding a studio is a romantic enterprise in itself, already defying reality.

It’s not possible to aspire to be a serious artist without one, the studio is the artist’s most basic tool. No one makes much progress if they have to put it all away to prepare a meal, and the resentment of inconvenienced housemates isn’t conducive to creation -- art needs a separate space. Still, it isn’t reasonable to expect a studio to pay for itself for a long, long time, maybe never, and just the obligation of rent becomes the cornerstone of the artist’s commitment, a constant reminder to either be steadfastly productive or use the money for something else.

Once in a studio, the struggle begins, since without a boss there’s no job order to fill, no clear indication of what to do first, and there’s also no time clock, no scheduled breaks, and, perhaps most relevant of all, no paycheck. Without a customer, and at this point without a product to sell, there’s no clear indication of how to fill up the day. Once in a studio the artist is figuratively and literally faced with a blank page, the existential dilemma made graphically clear, finding themselves at a null point before stepping off in a new direction. The clear directive is to simply work, to paint and draw enough to find a voice while trying not to burn through a ton of supplies, since that money ain’t coming back, and to not waste time because the studio is being paid for with a day job.

Becoming rich and famous isn’t usually the prime motivator for those who step out on this path -- that’s on a different avenue in another part of town. Some are damaged people attempting to find wholeness, while others may be seeking relief from a mind-numbing occupation or perhaps they just enjoy spending time alone, and after all, it’s an inherited human trait, the desire to make things. Still, sorry to say, in most cases the world will be against the person who tries -- family members tend to be skeptical and in-laws don’t hide contempt, academics at all levels sneer reflexively while galleries demand that an artist be successful already, asking where else do you show before they even look. It’s a grueling soul-depleting gauntlet, and the attrition rate is high. For some the day-job wins out, a talented and motivated person working a semi-menial occupation might rise quickly, or just become addicted to a regular paycheck. Others learn to sustain themselves by adopting some regionally accepted genre, replicating a single subject over and over until they’re good enough to enter a local market, where some may thrive, but many artists with something original to say may as well stuff notes in bottles, since without a window to the public they’re likely to become isolated on an island of their own.

Studios pop in and out of existence at probably a greater rate than the galleries, the entire enterprise of art is in a constant state of ferment. They exist on a spectrum from new-age trendiness to bare-bones desperation, while many are productive and efficient workshops, and since they were just an empty space before the artist moved in, every inch reveals the personality of the artist perhaps more candidly than their art. Visiting several studios in an afternoon, look for local tours, reveals a lot about how art is made, offering the opportunity to ask questions and observe works in progress, all the while assessing the commonality and uniqueness of each situation. For anyone interested in truly learning about art, appreciating and eventually owning art, it’s a very good thing to do.

David Brooks mentions art -- a reaction so revealing

David Brooks in the times is known for political opinion and he wrote a column about art, it was in today’s paper -- ‘Who will teach us how to feel?’ reprint HL 7-26. He was responding to an article in ‘T magazine,’ which asked artists and museum curators ‘to name the artworks that define the contemporary age -- pieces created anywhere in the world since 1970..... Most of the pieces selected are intellectual concepts or political attitudes expressed through video, photographs, installations or words.’  He cites examples.

I was already aware he had written something because earlier in the morning I had seen online the withering ridicule heaped upon him by what seemed like the entire industry, and it had a familiar ring. It was a line by line, post by post, rebuking of the first order, dripping with ice cold condescension, mean and bitter, eloquent and deadly, these are literate people. With only a slightly larger vocabulary it sounded just like what the russian trolls have been saying about Obama on facebook, a piling on by hangers on, the cultural equivalent of a virtual lynching. Just who are these people, the only ones qualified to discuss these high-brow matters? They’re just a lot of wealthy folks with free time, a high court of stuffed shirts with enormous influence over a fake industry, propped up in the end by public money. Theirs is an art characterized by half-baked gestures, crude signifiers mostly exalting impotent rage -- the cocktail party conversation of the ‘smart set.' They seem to think art is their own exclusive archdiocese, and by proclamation they’ve excommunicated David Brooks, but most of us were never baptized and don’t care to be, you self-important morally and ethically adolescent trust fund nobodies.

These guys don’t seem to care much about the visual part. The art and artists they’ve selected are all about what art ‘says,’ a coded and by-the-moment confirmation the insider intuitively understands, but it’s definitely not about how it looks, and at the risk of sounding unforgivably naive, wasn’t this category of human endeavor once called ‘visual’ art? I know you guys have moved on, but have you looked down recently? Pity poor Brooks, wondering if art shouldn’t convey something significant, 'widening the repertoire of ways we can feel and can communicate feelings to others,' and we just can’t laugh hard enough. Well, he didn’t come up with it on his own, not that long on imagination, it’s not his job. His occupation involves identifying the swells in community thinking before new ideas break on the shore, and being the first to say them out loud. He’s called a pundit, and this time he may be on to something.

It’s all a sham, all that emerald city art, and someday soon we’ll all wake up back in Kansas, where art is something that encourages us to look and see and think, even to realize capacities we didn’t know we had. Art supplies are sold everywhere and people are making paintings out to remote corners, and it can’t be for the money plain to see. What they accomplish is as sneered at by art’s self-appointed inquisitors as this poor political columnist, educated and living in the world, but who doesn’t know enough to ‘stay in his lane,‘ and other rude comments. They’re a dying breed, these cultural racketeers, this cabal of tricksters pretending to have the last word about what art ‘is.’ As their enchantment ends, the whole tawdry mess will eventually be dismissed as the aberrant expression of society in chaos, as art itself escapes back into the lives of ordinary people, everywhere, all at once.

futile ventures -- optimal results

Alchemy as a physical practice is questionable from a couple of perspectives, both practical and motivational. While modern science shows elements can transmute, this usually involves the release of huge amounts of energy. Our sun is transmuting at this moment, but this isn’t a business for the medieval backroom laboratory, and the part about becoming ultra rich is a fantasy for the extremely poor in any society, but to sacrifice participation in the world just to one day be able to buy your way out of it sounds like a great waste of effort.

Alchemy as a metaphor, on the other hand, can be quite useful, especially in these times when so much of our world needs transmuting, the search for some process that converts dark political undercurrent into cooperative enlightenment and individual autonomy, for instance. Modern media may not hold the answer, and actually tends to add to the problem. Something happened to change the culture post world war, mid-century last, and it spirals down to now. The advent of television enabled mass manipulation by commercial interests in everybody’s living room, and the lowest common denominator began to dictate how we saw ourselves. About the same time the extremely wealthy began to treat art as a plaything, a trophy of wealth itself, just a pampered and predictable house pet on a leash. The sitcoms were stocked with demeaning stereotypes, and art got stupid too.

Now I’m not saying a monochromatic panel by Ellsworth Kelly isn’t the pinnacle of a particular moment in the cascading evolution of contemporary sensibilities, but pretending this square of fabric is worth millions of dollars is just a way to steal art from the public, and to distort the notion of art, itself, substituting instead a zombie horde of replicating smears and splotches. These 'emblems of arrival' can easily be sold to the upward aspirations of new money crashing in from all corners, sucking the planet dry. That’s some pretty base bullshit. Converting the sneering disdain of the ultra elites into any value still held by the part of humanity that produces more than they consume, day by day, is beyond our biggest atom smasher, and way too large a task for art’s credentialed gurus -- best start over.

Just this weekend, rain or shine, area artists paint outdoors in this town, a few hours to depict just what they see, and, oddly enough, just what the person looking over their shoulder sees too. They’ll have a party that evening to compare what each artist has captured to what regular citizens have seen before and gotten used to, take for granted. For many, it’s an eye-opening experience, ready for the sun to come up on the same streets, but noticing more than the day before. Quaint it may seems to the super rich and their retinues, invested in the myth of runway art, each season some brilliant yet derivative hot new thing -- tiresome, sure it is, but what they think doesn’t count, not anymore, not when compared with the experience of actual art in a hometown, opening clogged perceptual pathways and broadcasting its friendly affirmation all year round. If art could do something like this for an individual, for a community, the abstract notion of alchemy might not sound so impossible.

anonymous art -- other side of the tracks

Kentucky has always had cultural aspirations. I myself grew up in Florence, an upstart bedroom community with no city center, just housing tracts invading corn fields, and only recently I was having lunch in an open-air cafe in Paris, under cover on the platform of a refurbished train depot next to the tracks. It was raining just slightly, so pleasant, and along came a train. Two diesel engines were laboring, it turned out to be a very long train. I’m never disappointed to be stopped at a railroad crossing so long as I’m near the front, because trains are festooned with graffiti that sears my eyeballs at about forty-five mph whizzing by. Individual designs are almost always typographical, and I can sometimes see letters, but I’ve never been able to make out a single word, it’s not important.

The skill level can be uneven but most are ingenious, each in a unique cohesive style that locks every part into a tight zany cartouche, maybe three or four a car -- they don’t paint over. Mostly it’s about the color. Colors from spray cans slingshot against each other, odd compliments and metallics pop, with flourishes so visually intelligent you’d like to meet the artist and pay homage, maybe share a smoke. Who does this art, and why? Sometimes mind-blowing, please stop the train, this person applied some thought, probably worked it out beforehand, and it must have taken a couple of hours to put it up, all the while sneaking past train yard security. Do they stand back to admire it before never seeing it again, watching it roll away across the country -- my tag, my slice of genius, my anonymous declaration of existence? I’m pretty sure they don’t get paid, and fairly certain they are subject to arrest. It’s a pure, exciting form of art.

At the other end of the universe, a so-called graffiti artist has claimed the title of most expensivist recently alive artist, an insolent ignoramus with a spray can in a hip pocket always ready to commit vandalism on other people’s property, Jean-Michel Basquait. Something wrong here. I’m sure the radically wealthy, residing far above ground in major urban centers, must know more about art than folks around here, down at ground level. Even so, I’ll suggest that if Jean-Michel Basquait’s paintings were done the size of notebook paper, the resident psychologist would be consulted, and they’d have concern. In any case, I wouldn’t want to see his stuff on a boxcar, and most certainly not in the house, although I’m sure it’s fine for the ultra-wealthy, a fitting reward. Personally, I've lost what art means, to them, and I’m starting not to care. You can sit with a coffee and watch the art roll by, in Paris. 

cars and art -- punctuating mechanical evolution

In esquire magazine, back in1965, Tom Wolfe called the automobile, particularly the customized and personalized west coast version, america’s only true art form. The qualities he documented weren’t about safety, or comfort, or drivability. Back then there were four domestic car companies, each producing several makes, and they all put out new models every year -- it was glorious. About august of each year they’d start dropping hints about major style changes coming up for the new year, exotic paint jobs, fins and chrome, but underneath it was the same old bedsprings on wheels they’d been making since before the war. The windows rattled after a year, the seats came apart in two, and the steering column would crush your chest in a head-on, but those weren’t concerns at the time. Safety and efficiency didn’t stand much chance against young women in bikinis posing next to rocket cars, headlights galore and horsepower.

Influence from the outside finally changed things. The Japanese, along with others, brought a new set of values, efficiency, economy, dependability, all such as that. After about a decade people began to see the difference, and now all cars drive better and last longer. Average folks aren’t stupid after all, but in a crowd can be manipulated, forced to choose among limited options, and finally diminished in spirit and even physically maimed for the benefit of the few. Turns out those same few also pick the art. Right out in public they juggle millions, swapping sanctified ‘signature’ art back and forth. It’s a form so pointless and devoid of meaning that the bottom ninety five percent don’t see anything there at all, and let them get away with it, evading legitimate taxes and acting like they’re smart. Still, can’t fault fellow americans. All the abstract art up in motel lobbies and corporate board rooms seems to lend a kind of legitimacy, but as art it’s mute, has nothing to say, and after a while no one expects more.

All this begins to change when people become aware of other options. One day an organization forms to paint murals in the town, and local art begins to be recognized in businesses, in restaurants and such. Before long someone organizes a public painting event or a studio tour, and the community responds. When people begin to realize there’s more to individual identity and self expression than driving a snazzy car or drinking a certain brand of beer, visual art becomes the preferred way to make the house speak for its owner, mood and attitude, a silent reminder of who you are when friends drop by -- and even when home alone.

Eventually the detroit aesthetic favoring all that extra iron, the byzantine grillwork and the star trek inspired dash, just went away. The major domestic auto makers changed their business model, and began providing a more worthy value to their customers. Similarly, once a common citizen sees enough original art to awaken their own dormant ability to find and recognize meaning and substance, some of the miasma of our long commercial stupor lightens and big soup cans can be seen by light of day. Opening that door, finding solace and commonality in works of art, grants the individual a new arena for self-discovery and expression, of self-regard and autonomy. Paintings from the neighborhood, and perhaps a little beyond, are literally worth more than all the ultra expensive stuff on the news and featured in national magazines, and won’t cost near as much. Times are changing, and finding a sense of self in our current cultural free-for-all, and nailing it down with a few pieces of art, is becoming a more common strategy. This isn’t science fiction anymore.