rivera vs rockefeller -- art's other history

Throughout the ages people in power quickly learn the minds of the masses can be manipulated with art, and they attempt to limit what people see in order to control what they think. In the twentieth century the free press made this sort of censorship impossible, so those wielding great wealth hatched an extravagant scheme to steal art’s ability to speak the truth by canceling its ability to say anything at all. They called their poison apple ‘modern art.’

A lie within a lie would be pretty hard to crack but since we all have eyes maybe we can find the truth anyway. The first lie goes like this......   After the second great war the world was divided into two opposing camps, one that believed in collective will and the other that was based on individual self-interest. They named this period of bilateral confrontation the ‘cold war’ and it unleashed unrestrained competition on all fronts. America’s best minds from its best families decided they’d do their part by managing the cultural conflict, the battle for hearts and minds. They asserted american preeminence by demolishing the elitist reserves of old europe with the brute force of lots of money.

The truth is they were never really concerned about the russians, walled in behind an ‘iron curtain’ that we ourselves created and made to seem more powerful than they were on the evening news. There was, however, one person on earth the ultra-wealthy actually feared and that was the politically progressive artist, Diego Rivera. In mexico he and his compatriots had proven the power of visual art to bring about social change. The mexican muralists had raised and united the consciousness of a regionally diverse nation, previously convulsed in factional revolution. These painters were committed to social justice and economic reform and to the alarm of bankers in NY their movement was spreading into the US, largely through WPA commissioned murals in post offices and public buildings.

In the years before the war the financial barons conceived an elaborate plot to humiliate and vanquish international progressive thought as expressed through visual art. Nelson Rockefeller and his clan lured the prominently progressive Rivera with a chance to paint a mural in the lobby of the newly constructed Rockefeller Center, a building made of steel that might last a thousand years. He accepted their bait and after several months working day and night, at the moment he accepted their check they jack-hammered it down without allowing any photographs to be taken. In all the history of art and in the course of civilization this was one barbaric gangster statement. (this mural was later recreated in Mexico city). They then began a massive clandestine campaign to eliminate the voice of visual art altogether.

The cold war became their cover story for thrusting abstract expressionism upon the world. It was used like a cultural battering ram to bully and upstage the other side’s classical ballet, their music and literature. To drive home the notion of american ideals they sponsored an art so profoundly individualistic that only the artist knew what it meant, and they pushed hard with tons of public cash for all art thereafter to be ‘non-objective.’ A gigantic government agency was formed to enforce a virtual ban on representational art at all levels, the outwardly beneficent NEA with its myriad affiliations. They assured everyone they were being progressive by only supporting an art that no member of the general public could possibly relate to, as this was in fact their guiding principle. The origins and the means of this massive cultural manipulation and distortion have been documented with names, dates, and deeds, and their sins are confessed by their successors in nostalgic terms as perhaps over-zealous patriotism, but that’s just another lie.

The truth is it’s time for artists to spend more time in the studio and less time as cooks and servers, sweeping floors or delivering stuff, all such as that. This will require recently stressed and newly awakened citizens to begin buying original art to hang in their homes. Actually looking at all the art available, hanging in salons and restaurants, in offices and reception areas, tends to negate just about everything taught in school, and occasionally it arouses thoughts and feelings the very wealthy would like to keep to themselves, or at least eliminate for everyone else. At this moment and after long exile, Diego Rivera returns with a major show at the Whitney in NY, and the potency of articulate and universal visual images will go rippling out in all directions, invading art schools, and then galleries, and finally going up on the wall in peoples’ houses.

biblical appropriation -- visual redemption

Ezekiel was lifted up in a vivid dream and came down on a great plain covered with human carrion, nothing but rags and bone, and heard the lord’s command to preach. Ezekiel suggested to the lord that they might not be able to hear and the lord said ‘preach anyway.’ Once on tv I saw a black guest pastor harangue an affluent white congregation with this story and I wondered if they heard. Visual artists with something to say face a similar dilemma, a public that won’t listen and doesn’t look, but it’s not entirely their fault.

The self-loathing celebrity tripe marketed to status-seeking new wealth leaves ordinary people so disinterested they’ve failed to notice the dirty millions being laundered by donations to museums and rigged auctions, but that rock is being turned over now. The question rephrased for the visual artist would be ‘ but can they see,’ and the answer comes back ‘paint anyway’ and maybe they’ll begin to look. Like in Zeke’s dream, the people in the valley would then begin to put themselves together and turn back into living flesh, but it starts with the eyes.
 

the faith-based commodity -- art worth millions

Some people see an artist’s easel as a magic doorway with fame and fabulous riches on the other side, but very few pass through leaving most who make the attempt lost and bitter dreamers. For the lucky ones who enter through a side-door the process is so simple, just stretch canvas on a wooden frame and cover with color and suddenly it’s worth millions just because of who you are, you media-darling certified genius you. You’ll have to admit it’s pretty amazing compensation for an afternoon of work when other people struggle and sweat a whole lifetime for less. Just how do you and your friends pull it off?

Glad you asked. The intricacies of the high-end art market might be over your head so let’s just say we operate a quasi-religion with a predetermined list of saints and we do quite a robust commerce in their relics. Each piece of their art is like a ponzi-style banknote promising a big profit when a bigger fool comes along, and it’s going to go on forever is what we pray. It’s tricky because the value is virtual and it’s just blind faith that says that this piece of canvas is worth fifty million dollars, fifty million dollars. If for an instant that faith falters the so-called art is liable to be seen, actually seen, as just a blotchy mess on canvas that some artist could have used to make a picture, and fifty million, poof.

Art is worth something, quite a lot actually, but it isn’t out of an ordinary person’s price range and they won’t have to pretend to like it. First it’s necessary to shed the utter nonsense of the art’s mega-ministries, and instead look at enough art, it’s all around, to know when something is good and being sold at a fair price. Anyone interested can do this, looking in restaurants and salons where art is hung and going on studio tours to find a bargain. The ultra rich don’t own art and it’s possible they don’t appreciate it either since to them it’s all about tax breaks and social standing, but average folks just getting through their day deserve an example of the very best someone like themselves can manage on their own.

pulling down the temple -- breaking chains

Deaccession is in the air, all the rage, changing out the old art by old white guys and bringing in all minority, gender-specific, and underrepresented art, all above board and absolutely legitimate. Oh the standards might slip a bit but we haven’t been concerned about aesthetic quality for several generations and think of all the money, why we’ll all be rich. It’s being done for only the best reasons and now they can pay their starving-wage staffs, mostly unemployable art majors who manage the stacks and sweep the floors, and they can pave that parking lot and also acquire a few pieces of art by women and minorities, so neglected. 

Fact is they, any art museum, didn’t buy that forty million dollar artwork in the first place and now they’re trying to sell it. It was purchased at auction by some visionary philanthropist, so generous, who wrote it down on their tax form and deducted the price from the same tax pool we all pay into, leaving nothing but a paper chit for their fair share. Now alarms are sounding, the establishment courtiers have been aroused and the whole business of deaccession has been declared out of bounds, a betrayal of trust, and liable to blow the whole racket, ripping down the green curtain to reveal a bloated tax-evading parasite that’s been calling itself art.

If you want to see deacquisition hit overdrive rewrite the tax laws and watch all those heavy art lovers scurry back to their yachts and start pitching modern masters overboard, because the prices are going to tank. Consider the work of Mark Rothko with an easily recognized signature style and approximately a thousand examples of his work floating around. If anyone has a more accurate accounting let’s hear it. Anyway at about forty million a piece, a high of eighty-six million in 2012, that comes to 40,000,000,000 dollars worth of colored cloth poised to hit the market more or less all at once. It’s a disgrace and betrayal no doubt, but there are several points of view and there will be some who won’t mind when it happens. Pulling down the temple, don’t mind if I do.

waving at the door -- the senses say bye-bye

The world is leaving us, fading away, and we won’t look up long enough to see it go. The world is rain in the face and wind in the hair along with the smells of cooking and leather and sweat and shit, all avoided these days or discounted as minor inconveniences. Modern folks also neglect their bodies applying an array of sauces to processed food while packing on pounds, and they live vicariously through digitalized surrogates, lovably dysfunctional sit-com families, peak athletes in play-offs, and ruthless unstoppable killing machines. Sure looks like curtains for a commonly shared reality and there doesn’t seem to be a thing anyone can do to slow it down. Artists claw at the ground but are swept away as well, inundated by knock-off imitators from all directions and a market that craves familiarity and repetition.

Along with a planet on fire, a disintegrating democracy, and a world pandemic these are interesting odds for anyone considering a career making art. Did I fail to mention that creating by-hand is nearly an obsolete notion and even the idea of a thing unique in itself has almost left the language? It’s going to be a tough row to hoe, a thankless penniless futile assignment, a snow-swept lonely trek up a remote mountain but fools sign up anyway. While it may be the case that there’s no license exam or advanced degree and all anyone has to do it look in the mirror and say I’m an artist, let’s reserve the title for people actually making art independently against all odds. They’re providing a rear-guard, a last-ditch effort to reclaim physical reality and the sheer ability to see, touch, taste and smell the world directly.

through the eyes of others -- art antagonisms

This election shows that it’s not different tribes we belong to, we live in different places in an alternate universe and we’re never going to agree about anything until we line out a playing field in the middle somewhere and agree on some rules. It’s unreasonable blaming art for any of this since art is just an afterthought after all and really not capable of defining the differences we perceive in each other. On the other hand perhaps if we could see today’s art through the eyes of others we’d begin to understand the chaos all around.

We’ll look through a common set of eyes, in this case male, and what you mostly remember from your high school experience are three years on the varsity, starting left guard senior year. There’s a lot about the culture you don’t understand. You don’t know why any of the cartoons in new yorker magazine are funny, and you’re left out by references to past wars or politicians you’re very vague about. You might be an intelligent practical person capable of running a big farm, able to make quick consequential decisions, and be kind and humane toward your family and friends, but you will not be transported by the piece of art that just sold for thirty times the price of all that soil and all the tears, sweat, and triumph of a lifetime on a family farm. It’s probably just going to piss you off. Well you’re just going to have to live with it and ignore it, but if you ever get the chance, you’re going to vote for Trump. It’s a disaster but I don’t blame you.

I don’t agree with your politics but I’m down with your point of view. An article noted that it was interesting how many rich kids wind up being successful as artists, and it isn’t just the trust fund studio or the early sponsorship of the parents’ friends -- an obligatory and empty gesture, they’ll give it to the maid. Their real edge of course is growing up with rich people’s art, the kind that says my offhand gesture is more potent and meaningful than ten years of your gardener’s toil and he’s compensated very nicely. Not everybody likes that kind of art. To make it bald-faced perfectly clear some worthy and productive people find the art presented in media to be patently offensive. Perhaps the cultural progressives thought they just didn’t care or that they wouldn’t notice, but over a hundred million dollars for the ugliest dumbest art possible, to be fair that is its charm, makes people so mad they tend to overlook their own self-interests.

There’s a simple fix to all of this but it’s going to make a lot of rich people wail and gnash their teeth. Float thirty or forty prime Rothko paintings on the market, everyone attempting to unload all at once, and see how many millionaires jump over the hedges to snap them up. At one time the Marlboro Gallery held seven hundred and fifty three of them and that isn’t all there are, who knows? Even with all the status-seeking new money flooding in it’s a good bet this gravy train will soon grow rancid, and once prices start to retreat there’s likely to be a period of free-fall to some more rational consideration of actual value, and who knows?

Maybe we should reconsider our approach to education and not separate out the gifted and privileged to run things and preserve the culture, but that’s a political discussion. When it comes to visual art let all the Warhol fast-food art, to be fair its charm, seek its own level against more organic and locally-sourced, more conscious and accomplished picture making. When the people who support this economy find some form of expression they can relate to maybe it will help to disarm the rage of frustration that pollutes our politics.

a miracle or something -- turning heads

Artists, I only know a few, are mostly solitary dreamers, every afternoon in front of an easel alone with their fantasies. They imagine friendly openings in their hometown crowded with average people like themselves. The guy who works on their car says he thinks their stuff is swell and he’d sure like to have something above his service desk, so the artist says well the next time I need a repair, a big repair, and he says great idea, and so does the dentist, such a nice little town. Then the artist watches the evening news during a pandemic and sees all the talking heads sequestered at home.

These people aren’t the artist’s neighbors, they’re articulate and educated public figures immersed in urban culture and interacting at all levels all day, that’s their job. You’d think with an entire nation visiting them at home they’d find some credible piece of art to use as a backdrop on the wall behind them. I wouldn’t fault them for sticking to the facts, but it becomes clear pretty quick that art isn’t a high priority in their hi-rise urban dwellings, so how likely is it going to be that people in this little town are ever going to pay more than a nickel for something more personal than a sailing ship from the mall? In this moment you’re eavesdropping on a common solitary conversation in front of easels everywhere, and this sense of futility becomes an element in the paint and it’s an extra load to carry.

Well finally what happens is they all turn their heads at once, it’s like a miracle or something. One day some hard to place commentator with a peculiar point of view logs in with a visually compelling and thoughtful painting his cousin who drives a food truck made on the wall behind him. It lends credence to what he’s saying, and he's remembered. Like aroused sharks all the home-bound pundits are out looking for art that fortifies their well-reasoned points of view, but as usual they’d be behind the general population who are poised at this moment to begin valuing the art produced in their own hometowns. This dearth of art on the walls in middle america is like a desert waiting for rain, and then everything blooms overnight. In this season of magical thinking with things not even considered battering each moment’s expectations and in the realm of infinite possibilities it could happen. At some point some level of saturation will pass and each morning a few more people everywhere will wake up wanting to look at art without knowing why. Artists are also optimistic against all odds and that's in their paintings too.