democratic art -- domestic influences

Moses was appalled when he got back. He’d been up on the mountain considering the meaning of it all and while he was gone the people erected a golden calf, these days frankly reproduced as the bronze bull on wallstreet, and it’s an expression of base materialism plain and simple. When just stuff is worshiped greed sets in and the people begin behaving like pigs, doesn’t matter the time or place. Pretty soon their civilization crumbles and they go back to cooking over an open fire and living with animals, waiting to start over.

Moses decided to give them something else to think about, like when the vet distracts your dog before it gets its shot. He said look over here and see these stone tablets given to me by the one and only god, and drag yourselves away from doing better than your neighbor for a moment that you might see life differently. The commandments aren’t particularly bad advice in a general sort of way but that’s not the point. Humans are capable of incandescent attainment and we have the examples of DaVinci, Beethoven, and Einstein, and we have the art of the ancient chinese, the egyptians, the meso-americans and the greeks, but when things get good we can backslide.

Convenience comes in handy and having household machines that help with the chores should leave us free to read a book, to visit a museum, to expand our universe and live up to our potential, wouldn’t that be great? To see how we’re doing let’s look at our art since after all, it’s the way we judge all the civilizations that came before us. It seems we’re in trouble. The scrapping and replacing of the last century’s monuments, righteous and necessary no doubt, reveals an easing of standards that’s less than comforting, and millions and millions of dollars for dogshit art at auction is a ‘let them eat cake’ formula for disaster. Somehow just having more free time hasn’t made us better.

It was an eye-opener to me and a novel notion of democracy when I read that attendance at the theater in ancient greece was mandatory. Utilizing their art and literature they were imposing intelligence and rationality on the population. Every citizen was being to asked to measure themselves against the culture’s highest ideals, and it seems to have worked well for a few hundred years, average citizens accomplished and thoughtful with lives well lived. Here we have our own version of democracy and each of us decides what to look at and what to think about on our own, it’s that way in writing. We also have more choices, from the imbecilic to works of art that are smarter than we are, and we get to pick and choose which to live with and see every day. Does it make a difference, the greeks thought it did. 

the soul's reflection -- the grifter's gift

Study Finds That Abstractions Don’t Elicit Universal Emotional Responses Among Viewers   artnet news, august 11, 2020
“Aesthetic effects are not universally shared but rather are highly determined by private evaluation,” it stated.
 
Turns out abstract art is pretty much a blank slate and you take away only what you brought with you, everyone projecting their own meanings on a square of pure improvisation. Now that’s freedom but it isn’t communication since it’s been determined definitively there’s no universal meaning in abstract art, and maybe no meaning at all. Back when the abstract expressionists first ascended they had all the meaning, subconscious supremacy and action immediacy, all such as that, and it was the representational artists who had nothing left to say and besides we’re not even looking at pictures of anything any more no matter what. Literary people fanned the flames of abstract expressionism realizing before anyone else that it truly was a blank slate and they could write anything they wanted about it. They were free to fly, constructing counterpoints of airy conjecture that would baffle their editors and leave the general public in the dust.

This inherent meaninglessness of abstraction is desirable in certain quarters and corporate entities particularly prefer its non-committal qualities for conference rooms and offices, a splash of color for muted business interiors without revealing even so much as personal taste, conceding not even that much advantage. Fans of abstract art also include anyone mentally lazy or just disinterested who find it convenient for breaking up blank wall space in waiting rooms and such since who looks anyway? To be fair some abstract art does get lots of attention but only as the price tag begins to swell to gigantic proportion and overshadow the art, ironically in itself something recognizable after all.

In the end there’s only art, all together, and we have centuries and continents of it already laid down. In our era of general prosperity some knowledge of art should reasonably be the common heritage of everyone, not just the gated reserve of the insanely rich and those who long to be like them. Down the street and around the corner someone is painting what they see, don’t know why. Their work won’t be valued by the establishment since they still haven't found the first step on the ascending ladder of certified affirmations the industry calls a career. This is the time when their work will be cheap, before the general population begins to awaken to their own human potential, abruptly weaned from sports and stadium concerts, shut out of bars and forced to cook at home, even bored enough to pickup the coffee table book and actually look at the pictures. Pretty soon they’ll be able to see the art in front of them too, and the buyer’s market for pictures of things will be gone.

the art of time-binding -- personal markers

Heard a story about how Marc Chagall deep in his nineties was shown a painting he had done around nineteen twelve and after looking for a moment he started to cry, so sweet such a quaint old man. His patronizing fans could not travel back with him to a drafty studio, his friends and the life he had back then, but the painting sent him down a long dark wormhole and left him smoking his pipe close by a wood stove, the smell of turpentine in the air and horses in the street, good times. Paintings have a way of absorbing events and experiences and then releasing them back during a moment’s contemplation, places lived and things seen.

To be clear I’m talking about real art and not whatever someone happens to have on the wall at the time, as easily forgotten as last year’s calendar. Original art from the hand of an artist has a presence museum posters or mass produced mall art don’t possess, similar in a way to the difference between music in live performance and anything recorded. It’s an argument that can be settled only by direct experience, and it’s the reader’s responsibility to verify this simple fact on their own. Assuming it’s so, by depicting a moment’s experience within a matrix of skill and manual effort, time is arrested and the artist manages to put a foot in the revolving door of daily experience.

A painting bought when young for too much money at the time, to celebrate graduation or the new job, to mark an arrival in a different city or just because you didn’t want to let it get away, will pay for itself over and over in the years ahead. From the date of purchase the painting forgets its artist and begins remembering the life of its new owner going forward. A few pieces of original art becomes a personal entourage, inhabiting the walls each time there’s a move and in between witnessing daily joy and strife, finally becoming a repository of all that mileage as close by as a cup of coffee and a moment to reflect. Art can bind a lifetime together by halting and gathering time in significant moments, creating islands in a constantly-streaming river of memory and enabling more potent and tangible recollections than a tumble of old photos and videos with no artistic value of their own.
 
Time is flapping at the edges these days, the great wars overlap as centuries collapse and history becomes a blur, while possible futures are trending on a highly volatile and virulently contagious form of instantaneous group-think right there in everybody’s hand. The very act of painting speaks of a different time frame and the painting in itself insists on an extended attention span to even comprehend its image. Over time there’s also reason to wonder why it still seems so fresh and compelling when everything else in the room has become familiar and largely goes unnoticed. Art is a time-binder, a recorder and witness that lives with you and is seen every day, not sequestered on a bookshelf or compressed in a digital cloud, and having it around provides perspective on the years as they flow by.

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.