original art -- the industry’s stepchild

There’s a big problem for original art just for starters because its lip-service advocates don’t really like it. The scholars don’t like it because they live by analyzing the evolution and mutation within a limited bloodline, and galleries insist on something similar to art that’s much more expensive. Interior designers don’t like original art at all because it dominates the sofa and carpet where the margins are fat, and don’t pull out a wad of millions and expect to find anything serious. In that range speculators bid on a Rockwell or a Rothko with equal fervor and it has nothing to do with the art. They’re buying a known brand and hoping to unload it tomorrow for more so whatever’s on the front doesn’t count, it’s just a poker chip.

The awkward fact is that art made directly from life can seem abrasive, unfamiliar and raw, especially after seeing similar work online or reproduced on a poster. It can be as quirky and idiosyncratic as the artist and you’ll find their personality is oddly reflected in the way they portray the world. If the sum of their life experiences and all the art they’ve ever seen filtered through the prism of their mind happens to coincide with what’s currently written about in media and pushed in galleries they’ll be rich and famous pronto, but that’s unlikely. As truly original art their product can’t even find a venue since there’s no established consensus on its value. Gallery directors don’t even know what they’re looking at without a record of prior sales, and deep down academics resent actual artists in exactly the same way sports writers are jealous of athletes.

Why artists continue to work anyway while earning a living at some menial occupation (‘with their left hand’ from an old artist proverb) is a mystery born of discontent probably, but in any case they choose it. Equally important, along with making art is the looking, completing the circuit and sharing mind to mind with the artist, but also with all the others who look at it as well. Painting is far from obsolete these days, and as the floor and walls dissolve in digital goo and we argue on the phone with non-humans, it’s just about the only thing that’s real. Original art is the one thing left in the house that could last for a lifetime, just for a start. If it’s compelling enough, over time bonding takes place and a comfortable friendship develops. A few pieces of original art become something to hold on to.

The art establishment’s empire of certified acceptance and bluebook evaluation largely excludes truly original art and inevitably degenerates into a cascade of mediocrity and cheesy marketing. In this moment a rank opportunist is selling fabulously-expensive paintings of evenly spaced dots claiming there are ‘no two alike,’ while another is having a series of stupidly-expensive museum-sized sculptures fabricated that revel in the mentality of toddler-hood. The only thing dumber would be a panel of one solid color, oh you say someone already did that. The lucky thing turns out to be that all humans have the equipment onboard, may be dusty, to decide for themselves when an artist has been able to express something they’ve only felt, or perhaps made visible something they didn’t know they knew. Just understand that it’s in your human nature, some would say the very way we think, to constantly make comparisons. We’re doing it all the time anyway, so consciously use it on the art you see around town.

Don’t attempt to look at one piece of art and try to decide if it’s good or not, you’ll need an expert. Instead put up two paintings and consider which of the two you like better, almost anyone off the street can do it. Don’t be afraid of liking dumb art to begin with, just put it in the bank and move on. Soon you’ll find something you like better, by comparison. Everyone up and down the block might take their own journey but in the end the art that hangs in people’s houses will reflect and express what they all have in common as well as their differences, and in the richest, most advanced society ever on earth, the notion of everyday people seeing, discussing, and owning art is not too much to ask.

smashing atoms -- colliding worlds

At the cern collider in switzerland they’ve been unraveling reality, pulling smaller and smaller threads until they’re down to whimsically named little wiggles of nothing, and now they want to build a bigger one to go even further. They’re hot on the trail of how it all works and it’s a glorious quest, but what can be done with the answer? Just how far beyond the human realm do they need to go, because the territory they’ve entered is an odd sort of real.

This brings us to Schrodinger's cat, the physicist’s favorite quantum paradox. There’s a cat inside a box and your logical mind says it’s either alive or dead, but in a quantum reality it isn’t either until you lift the lid and look. Somehow this also applies to all the dancing little particles that form the substance of the world, and all the way up on a human scale it sounds suspiciously like a person’s perception forms at least part of reality. This is a loose translation of endless blackboards of computation since these deep thinkers tend to be rather shy about the theological implications of the various dimensions they’ve encountered. It’s all much easier with pictures.

It’s just natural to assume the world looks the same to everyone but present day dissent and discord say otherwise. Two equally intelligent people can watch the same evening news and each totally miss what the other saw. What we have here is two different sets of experience and belief, the individual continents of our personal worlds, and we’d all get along better with more overlap. Don’t expect much help from scientists, this insular order of monks are totally removed from the world until their funding is cut. This is a job for art and artists, who even without funding have been here all along.

Look at a photograph and see what you always see but look at a painting and see what the artist saw and this will be different. The artist represents their experience as faithfully as their skill set allows, and the viewer compares it to what they see on a normal day, mission one complete. Artists can go farther. In their paintings they can encode attitudes and insights about life and living, although this isn't directly intentional and more a product of process. The viewer recognizes and assimilates this information but not at a conscious level, so just looking lets it happen. Does looking at art alter reality? With a bigger atom smasher maybe we could find out, but no doubt it changes the way the world is seen, and maybe the way we all see it together.

the mural and the emoji -- art for the ages

The mural in the foyer of the university’s chapel has become a contentious issue, a WPA commission to visually chronicle the history of kentucky, but it’s difficult to imagine what depiction would be deemed politically correct these days, or maybe the day after tomorrow. The school administration says we’ll just move it, no big deal, but they know it’s part of the building and can only be destroyed. Black students find the mural highly offensive because they’re depicted as field workers, but the history of this country and the history of the world are flush with offenses against people and pretending they never happened won’t make anyone safe, as a fact just the opposite.

Changing the world by replacing the art seems to indicate that art is pretty important and it’s all important if it shapes the world we live in. The mural in question reads like a hieroglyph. It’s a complicated junction of many different ideas, each image a trailhead for its own journey into a dark and bloody land, how we got here. Human slavery was part of that history but we don’t think that way anymore and that’s one of the things this mural makes explicit. Still art can be read different ways at different times by different people and this conversation is the way we eventually find commonality, and that’s this mural’s job. After all these years its purpose is finally revealed, but that six-sided irony aside, it’s a pretty nice painting. It’s a real work of art and not wallpaper, not school emblems or a trophy case, and compared with the other original works of art on campus it has something to say about raw intellect and depth of scholarship quite apart from what it literally says about our past.

Across campus at the entrance of the art museum stands the recently installed emoji mood totem, a stack of five plastic spheres depicting happy at the top in bright yellow and sad at the bottom in blue. Red is in the middle, maybe on top, who cares, it belongs on a playground and not for the older children. All students of every hue should be alarmed at the slippage. There was a ceremony for its placement with the president of the university and all, and that’s a cynical and mercenary betrayal of the whole notion of education, but I’m not going to do anything more about it than to compose this little sermon. Picturing them side by side the message is clear and until they destroy the mural, anyone can see it.

mega-merchandizer -- Andy’s art

I’ve always been out of step with contemporary trends in art and I’m resigned, but at no point is this divergence greater than when it comes to Andy Warhol. An exhibit of his work recently opened at the Speed Museum in louisville. To me he’s the diva ghoul of art, from his early days peddling photos of fatal car wrecks to robbing the graves of celebrities and shamelessly selling their tragic personas, all such as that. He’s notorious as well for a total lack of empathy for those in his circle and a lack of interest in anything that didn’t benefit him directly, a model in kind for our current president, imagine that.

Still, I’ll attempt to see the other side. When Andy came along art had stumbled, the dominate mode had been rudely transitioned to pure abstraction and average folks never bought in. They were suspicious at first but gradually just lost interest which was fine with the marketing moguls and state supported academics, both camps willing to collaborate on an obscurity only the extremely intelligent, culturally aware, and financially secure could comprehend. This dearth of art for everyone else was barren ground, and Andy and his industrially prolific factory were the perfect invasive. He changed art wall to wall no doubt and to the scholar that’s enough. To them it’s all about influence and legacy and Andy leaves a wide wake, there’s the president.

I grew up in a house with two commercial artists wed to retail marketing and that was Andy’s beginning too, so I see what he did. Andy was never really an artist and didn’t claim to be. ‘Art, that’s a man’s name‘ was his standard reply to a bothersome reporter. If you had called him a retailing genius you’d have likely gotten a very rare hug, a wink for sure, because he was. There have been family dynasties built based on his principles, all in retail. The bare-knuckle fashion industry mentality rampaged across old fashioned artistic notions like intellect and vision, already in distress, and made art all about social standing and glamor, the very same things that sell shoes and dresses.

I’m more interested in art not made for money and wouldn’t you know, it’s everywhere. Reducing art to multiples of whatever can be sold has cheapened art, even the notion of art, to a point where artists just about everywhere can’t make an independent living. Instead they paint for pure passion and the hope that their work will be seen and recognized by someone somewhere someday. If they can get enough practice in to be revealed in their work perhaps they’ll make friends with others who think like them and receive their support. Art taken seriously at a local and regional level could lead to a viable and wholesome exchange and become an organic self-sustaining element of community life fostering mutual respect and understanding, why not? One thing is fairly certain, there will come a day when the iconic and sought-after soup can label will be just a soup can label once again, but the painting bought direct from the artist twenty five years back will have become much more valuable, regardless of its current market price.

changing symbols -- bending what’s real

Altering reality by manipulating symbols is a magical business sure enough, but these objects that are being attacked are also works of art. Once completed, works of art are worthy of consideration based solely on their level of accomplishment. An insightful and profound painting from the hand of an unpleasant person with questionable politics and despicable morals by current standards might still be pretty good. In our current climate the level of art is hardly considered, yet each object’s symbolic strength has grown immensely. Statues in the park or on the courthouse lawn that stood for years out in the elements, from folksy weather-chewed infantryman of indeterminate allegiance to lofty generals who were a year in the studio and took six months to cast, are suddenly much more significant than when they were when erected.

During this period of slightly demented politics the confederate general, Robert E Lee, as represented by a bronze statue blazes incandescent, a demonic presence that radiates oppression and tyranny across the land, so pull him down, bash and humiliate him, good riddance. Sad to say it was this same zeal that destroyed much of the art and architecture of antiquity, and history isn’t pleased. A plaque in various languages to explain simply and directly who the general was, what he did and the cause he represented, would be repurposing the indelible mark the sponsors intended by making it out of bronze, forever highlighting an episode in our history that should never be forgotten. Most of the rest of the civil war monuments are lifeless and unworthy, and should be melted down for all the new statues going up to take their places.

But wait a minute, might be a problem here. The list of candidates seems endless, forgotten and neglected heroes each worthy of memorial tribute no doubt, but where are the artists to make their likenesses and what foundry is going to cast them in incorruptible bronze for ages unborn? It may be the artists capable of such craft have been as neglected as the long list of candidates, and expertise in pouring large chunks of bronze with intricate detail has grown scarce and cost prohibitive. The plan, if there is a plan, is to tear down the offensive works of art, art that the artists themselves had hoped would last a thousand years, long after the confederacy and even the united states had been forgotten, and replace them with what? Three-D printed photo-replicas in plasticine or maybe press a button holograms that wink and smile? Whatever form the new tributes take, they probably won’t last a thousand years or even past the next new set of causes.

Better it would be to respect the art along with the artist and the workers who translated their vision into dark impervious metal, and channel all that symbol bashing fervor into organizing for institutional change, while at the same time might be nice to revere the the lost monuments stashed away in parks and under the trees to real heroes who moved us all forward.

lonesome Ed -- pandemic resonance

Visual art is not about thinking. Thinking about art is possible but thoughts are made of words and we’ll call that form ‘literature,’ criticism or commentary, poems or jokes, doesn’t matter. Visual art is about perception and attention and it enters the brain on its own channel and is interpreted in its own set of circuits. In a fundamental way art conveys information directly into the mind of the viewer without using words, without verbal thinking.

This is very difficult concept for writers about art to grasp. Their business is primarily selling their own words and they look for action metaphors and clever associations no one else has considered, and even come to think of themselves as full partners with artists. They don’t really see the art because they don’t know how to look, so they make up stories. Recently there’s been renewed interest in Edward Hopper for all the right reasons but it’s significance is missed by the literary crew. They’ve been happy to relate the solitude of his subject matter to the pandemic, a clever and superficial reading of his recent popularity. Odd isn’t it that the mexican muralists are also being rediscovered, and this shifting of public taste toward representational art could be bigger and more lasting than a disease.

The quality that made Hopper perhaps the premier painter of the twentieth century with ultimately the greatest influence on the future of art wasn’t in the lady looking out a window, a few patrons at a diner or a lady sipping tea. Anyone could make those paintings and they do, closets full of them, but those are ideas in words and they weren’t his secret. Sad to say the essence of his greatness is mostly lost in reproduction, and in a magazine or on a screen you see just a schematic of the actual art. In a museum his paintings seem to generate their own light and are alive with detail from across the room. He’s not particularly interested in the people, their rivers of internal angst or even their motive for being there. For him figures were static props put there to demonstrate his main concern. He wanted to start with the same paint box everyone uses and pull from it a totally uncanny representation of afternoon light streaming in a hotel window, the descent of evening in empty city streets. These are the very same things everyone else has seen themselves, yet depicted with an immediacy and tangibility that both enhances the flavor of the viewer’s own experience and suggests seeing the very same things more deeply.

I can say this with some authority because I read what he said about his art and I believed him, while critics and commentators invested in abstraction have no ears for the qualities of representational painting and never see beyond subject content. Representational art is about seeing the world through the eyes of others, and if you have the opportunity to see original work from the hand of Van Gogh, or Ed Hopper, or any painter who made it into the museum you can compare it to what you see back home. It’s not wrong to think about art, but learn to pay attention to your own responses because visual art enters the mind without climbing the stairs, while all that witty prose about it never makes it past the ground floor.

the art of dreaming -- waking up with art

Some people have accused the president of lying and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t look at it that way. It’s more likely he thinks of what he says as ‘salesmanship,’ deal-making lingo, and he doesn’t necessarily see the connection between what he says and what actually is, and in fact there’s no connection. He’s speaking to a population that’s asleep, more of an opiated stupor, and they hear him in a dream. Here’s how it works. The super bowl happens in the middle of the NBA season and basketball playoffs overlap with the beginning of major league baseball. The world series is played in the middle of football season, and they’re building a new stadium for soccer but who knows where they’ll fit it in. That takes out the middle hump of the population, they might as well be asleep. Their minds are filled with trades and statistics and their emotions are drained, elation with each touchdown turning to anger and frustration with each interception, and they talk that stuff when they’re not watching. When the cycle is suddenly broken, as it has been, some will wake up and begin to wonder what their congressman’s been doing, how other people are living and maybe even how they’ve been living themselves.

Women have recently found themselves let off at a bus stop that’s existentially nowhere, nothing but a faint horizon line and a light blue mist. The old movie parts won’t fit anymore, and they've had to set off in some new direction and redefine themselves from scratch. They call it being woke and it seems to be literally correct, a percentage of mainly younger women measuring each step as a conscious choice and looking for meaning in the mirror. Everybody has been confronted with the ubiquitous skull on everything from mud-flaps to baby clothes and the dawning realization that it’s a sign of imminent death, and the pandemic possibility of premature mortality has sobered up a few. It’s a bit like a slow thawing, a population emerging from its old shell and in this vulnerable yet mutable condition capable of assuming a more cooperative, eco-friendly and sustainable way to behave on the planet. How do these newly questioning citizens communicate and how does the word spread of a new community consciousness? Now would be the time to suggest the actual value and utility of art.

If you feel the need to spend fifty million dollars on a painting that’s essentially only a big price tag with some color smeared here and there, there’s no law says you can’t. You’re dreaming, of course, and the world will shake you awake soon enough, but everyday folks participating in art, making it, buying it, owning it and hanging it on the wall makes the transition to a new awareness quicker and easier. Art on the wall will make recognizing the like-minded less of a guessing game and leads to better conversations, and as a bonus art broadens and deepens perceptual function and you’ll see more detail in the world. Will a piece of art alter the universe and bend reality, maybe not enough to notice, but it can provide a bit of traction in a very slippery place for the determined climber, attempting to realize their own human potential, awake.