From John the Baptist to Robert Frost                                                                                                            page 2

But ye of the limited attention have a couple of challenges placed before you.  First, although you see everything at once, you won’t perceive even part of it without some work. Given that our media-mad universe continues to expand, it gets proportionally harder to travel beyond sensation to sensuality. Second, the art itself has to deliver and this is where taste, experience and judgment come into it. Andy Warhol or Jackson Pollock may be one person’s art but someone else’s garbage; absolutes do not live well with art.  And FYI: All of this business has absolutely nothing to do with fame or market value. Some of the greatest art is created by the little known as well as by the famous.  Inversely the same is true for the worst art.

I once saw the statement: “Art Saves Lives”. This is only true perhaps in the sense that if you make art you can’t also make war.  But I prefer “Art Enables Living”.

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Years ago a friend made the semi-serious though completely idiotic observation that the best way to deal with an art museum was to run through it.  That limp joke has been drained of its humor because it’s become quite easy to do just that. Our short collective cultural attention span has allowed us to be satisfied with a Thomas Kincaid (for those that don’t know better) or a Jeff Koons (for those that do) where instant gratification often stands in for racing through museums.  We should demand better but, like politics, we get the culture we deserve because collectively we own and shape what we have.  Art requires our thoughtful and sustained attention before it fully reveals itself. We also need to hold artists responsible for what they express. 

An artist in the recent Whitney Biennial creates an installation purporting to offer “art therapy”. It’s a cutesy little idea embroidered with humor that recalls Charles Shultz’s Peanuts character Lucy offering her ‘Psychiatric Help’ for 5 cents.  He has no idea what the actual discipline of art therapy is (perhaps unaware that it even exists) nor does he care. When confronted with viewers seriously seeking some sort of help he neatly sidesteps responsibility plus any thoughtful criticism by exalting the experiential aspect of the piece. In other words whatever happens, good or bad, is chalked up as positive regardless of the outcome.  I don’t find fault with stupidity of this installation as much as I do with curators that include stuff like this.  It’s frightening that our ‘venerable’ institutions of higher learning graduate artists, art historians and future curators that wind up this shallow.  Then again, considering how academic institutions are also mired in commerce, I guess I’m not entirely surprised.

Un-tethered sensation or experience is not enough if it adds up to nothing beyond itself.  Art fails to be art when you walk away from an exhibition in which the work is so innocuous that nothing can be recalled 10 minutes later.  This is not to be confused with very subtle imagery which can nevertheless be quite compelling.  (Years later I still remember the gripping Ad Reinhardt retrospective I saw the Museum of Modern Art).  If you think this has something to do with taste you’re damn right.  But taste must be cultivated through time, experience and thought.

I recall a particular Monet landscape that includes a pond and poplars and I’m still amazed at how the trees appear to be actually swaying in the breeze. At first I was seduced by the magnificent variety and complexity of the color combinations, a veritable feast for the eyes.  With repeated viewings I eventually began to wonder at the construction of the color and imagery and how it relates to seeing. This required an expansion of my experience based primarily on viewing which then led me to discover the animation implicit in much of Monet’s work.  Now I’m intrigued with the concept of motion (yes, the dreaded ‘c’ word) so realistically activated in a static image while at the same time still able to lose myself in the sensual enjoyment of the color.  As a sideline, the color caused me to consider its affect on spatial relationships within painting.

Eventually this diminutive painting draws me into a consideration of my relationship with time.  The imagery looks nearly as fresh as the day it was painted, the vibrant colors and texture don’t age as you would see in a photograph.  The painting seems to stand outside time and I wonder about that, if it’s actually possible, and if so, are paintings somehow portals into such a possibility?  But perhaps it’s a question of perception versus experience in which case I wonder as I wander, slowly through an exhibition, which is more realistic.  So here is this painting, well over a hundred years old that remains ageless in many ways.  Meanwhile my tactile enjoyment and appreciation of the piece does not diminish but only deepens with time. 

Art is expansive enough to offer esthetics, sensual pleasure, theory and concept, all in one refreshingly low tech format.  You don’t need complex computer networks, electronics or batteries to enjoy it - just some natural light will do. 

None of what I describe happens instantaneously but requires repeated visits to a work of art with a lot of time spent looking and thinking.  It doesn’t come with a casual glance or running through an exhibition.  Art has many wonderful secrets to release but it demands that you stop, look, perceive and think - again and again.  And don’t think that classical art has a lock on the experience; you don’t have to go back to a Monet. It’s out there for you, right now, in the contemporary art world.  After seven years of looking and writing about art, and exclusively abstract art at that, I know its there, I’ve seen it  in museums, galleries and artist’s studios.  The problem is that it’s a little harder to find these days with that super highway of media clutter cutting right through the middle of our culture.

All of this I’m telling you is for everyone; except that it isn’t.  The message is universally and democratically available to all - it’s free; but what’s offered has to be earned. Most won’t bother because in reality, art does not and never has profoundly affected the masses (the job of politics).  Sensations are always easier and gratify quickly like fast food or porn but, because the demands are small so are any lasting impressions. Money won’t speed it up either - you can buy the objects but no one can own art. 

Besides, that lunatic with the bike, he looks a bit scary, maybe he’s even a little dangerous - best to just keep moving along.  Anyway, there’s an art museum up ahead kids, so get your running shoes on - we gotta move.

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