From Robert Frost to John the Baptist

Oh it’s a long forlorn haul from ‘two roads diverged in a yellow wood’ to this lone voice ‘crying out in the wilderness’.  Bob Frost had it right that ‘… and choosing the other [road] just as fair, for it was grassy and wanted wear’ has made all the difference. But knowing this hasn’t made the trip any easier.  And unlike John the B., I’m not a Wildman covered in skins, wandering through the wastelands, eating wild locusts and honey while proclaiming the word of the Lord. My declarations are more humble, sensual and of this earth. 

There I am - that guy over on the service road with the bicycle yelling at all of you in the cars rushing down the freeway. In my small way I’m telling you that you’re hurtling yourselves toward cultural hell like the last shit-stream curlicue fling down the old toilet.  I holler my alternative message, competing with the thunder of your traffic but few of you give listen. Some shout back insults, notable only for their lack of originality, but rarely does anyone stop (something I’ve become accustomed to).  Yet all I want is for you to stop and look.

I’m easy to recognize: the lunatic still making abstract paintings; true believing that this activity and these objects are crucial to living.

Less wilderness and more wildermess, my wasteland is quite simply, American Culture. No vipers, scorpions or other poisoness critters inhabit my domain; still, toxic life-killing entities exist all the same. Look around and you see it easily. Entertainment, politics, commerce and culture have become indistinguishable; all of it bound and tethered by a common denominator in which everything is for sale including you.  Information technology has never been better or faster but what does it deliver? A format that provides a platform to enrich and inspire our lives for the betterment of humanity? Ha! Consider the hundreds of email solicitations I receive each day to make my penis larger, to engage in all kinds of sex, to purchase illegal software, to get a fake college degree, to buy questionable pharmaceuticals, to doll out private financial information. To steal my good name. And yet give the devil his due - I would not have my forum without the web.

We wallow, here in America, within a vast overflowing cesspool of cheap, instant gratification, of sensations over sensibilities.  Cristo and Jean Claude decorate Central Park with those flaccid orange curtains for a couple of weeks and we are seriously expected to accept this as art.  Why? Because it’s big, it’s sensational and due to the insidious over-blown cult of personality running wild today, because it’s Cristo.  Watching the lighting of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center amounts to the same thing only it’s better because it is a community event, steeped in tradition and offers something bigger then itself.  Cristo, on the other hand, just dolls out 1970s re-treaded concepts in an oversized way like wide ties and flair-legged pants.

Most of the energy allocated for Cristo projects is consumed by the legal/commercial sideshow hustle to get the thing done rather then the end product.  The thing is, The Gates could have been so much better had the final product not felt like an afterthought: imagine lighter, multi-colored fabric really billowing in the wind to create dynamic sculpture, a variation on the shapes and proportions of the forms, the objects themselves more effectively interacting with the environment to open an authentic dialogue about art and nature.  The installation could have been a visual feast instead of possessing all the sensuality of a spent condom drooping on a bedpost in the morning.

So in this fetid soup of multiple distractions we call contemporary culture what is this all important message the world needs to hear?  It starts with an admonition to shut up and pay attention.  Turn off the shit box, get your ass off the couch, shut off the computer and hang up the cell phone.  Try to muster an attention span greater then a chimpanzee for short while and Look.  I’m simply asking you to look, to take some time to look, not think, but to look (thinking comes later). 

Try this: Choose a single painting that appeals to you in some fundamental way (the colors are pretty, the images are appealing, the paint smells good or bad, etc).  Now see if you can let pure perception rule for at least 15 minutes by simply looking at this single work of art.  But do so without thinking or judging; just try to absorb everything you see.  After 15 minutes run a reality check on your senses and emotions. Are you stimulated or repulsed by what you see or do you feel nothing?  Would you come back to this painting for another sustained look? Was time affected? Did it seem like you were looking for about 15 minutes or longer or shorter? 

In this little exercise I offer a small gateway into art appreciation because it really begins (and continues) with the fundamental act of viewing which leads to perceiving which is everything to visual art.  Thinking, judging and creativity all come into play eventually but more as a matter of experience (and yes, some creativity is required to perceive art).

If you can’t do this simple exercise then read no further  you’re all done here.

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Visual art has a curious and unique relationship to time when compared to other art forms.  Watching any performance from movies to television commercials or sustained reading of anything imposes a linear progression through time.  The narrative begins, progresses and ends typically in a logical sequence.  Logic is not required; you can begin in the middle of book and jump all around but no matter how you approach it, for these art forms the chronological experience remains a clean line from start to finish.  By its nature visual art throws everything at you in a single shot.  Look at a painting and it looks back at you with a large open stare that imparts the totality of its expression. You never loose your place, there are no gaps if you leave and return, there is nothing to rewind. Of course no one is immune to the sequential imposition of time on living.  It’s just that visual art imposes no dependencies upon it as do other art forms. 

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 too 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 is 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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What Price Artistic Freedom?

So… do you sell anything?

Hell No! Is my gut response for how I’d like to respond to the question most non-artist Americans tend to ask first when you are ‘outed’ as an artist. The exception to this tendency is only found in specific neighborhoods in certain places like New York City. My initial exclamation would then be followed by trying to educate the poor ignorant sap as to why selling your art is the very least interesting part of being an artist.  But of course none of this takes place because the exercise ultimately proves futile.

In this country it is pummeled into the populace and very well understood that the measure of what you do (and ultimately of whom you are) is directly proportional to how much money you make doing it.  Case in point: Me.  My day job pays very well and, aside from the skill and experience it demands, the financial sector I traffic in is all about making (or losing) money.  The more you make for your handlers the more valuable you are perceived  inside and outside of the company.  Now, consider how many works of art I sold last year.  Surprise, surprise - most non-artists are far more interested in my day job.

Would you want to earn your living from your art?

Hell yes! Is my knee-jerk response to this question; or was, until a few years back.  Like many struggling artists my fantasy has been to make the art I want and have a passel of wealthy, educated and devoted collectors to buy it (preferably dewy-eyed while in the presence of my work).  Naturally my paintings would be valuable and unique commodities garnering huge sums of the filthy lucre.  Maybe I would do well enough to easily afford around 3000 feet of loft space in New York (top floor of course with requisite sky lights). An expensive lifestyle perhaps, but not really so excessive and it would definitely have no complications. 

As expected, reality is vastly different as it must be to breathe life into the fantasy. To begin with, every lifestyle is fraught with complications and compromise.  These days my studio time is severely restricted due a plethora of demands and constraints daily living imposes (I won’t bore you with the boring details).  But despite the frustration over this which pokes up from time to time like an enflamed hemorrhoid, in the grand scheme of things I have so very little to complain about. (Besides, in this part of the country you don’t have to go too far to find people with real serious problems).

So there I’ve teetered for many years between sweet fantasy and sober reality.  Yet, after drilling deeper into the question of living from my art and trying to figure how it might actually work, a string of provisos and caveats complicates things.  It mostly boils down to: Yes, but without market pressures, taxes or ‘Suits’ interfering with my work and forcing compromise to my artistic integrity. Ergo: my day job is safe for the short and (most certainly) long term.

Would you do this work if you didn’t get paid for it?

Ah, at last a question I can answer with an uncomplicated ‘Of course’ bathed in the actualities of my existence. Yes I would. Yes I do  as much and as often as possible. Getting paid to do it now, when that occasionally happens, is just a treat, something as unexpected as it is superfluous. Let’s face it; anyone still making art at my age no longer cares so much about the remunerative awards. For me the other benefits to this activity are so much more important that the act of making art has crystallized into necessity.  Put another way, I can exist without art but I don’t think I could live without it.

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There are three flavors of artist freedom that run a spectrum from most free to least free to the most free again. At the top of heap are the Taste Makers. These precious lucky few, through a combination of luck and talent, have achieved stratospheric levels of broad cultural influence. These folks are not to be confused with celebrities who are merely famous (their vacuum of talent is often filled in with bullshit). I’m talking about the giants of esthetics here, artists like Cezanne, Picasso and Pollock who have helped shape the culture in their time. 

Artists having achieved this level of stature and sphere of influence are most free on two fronts. On a broad cultural level they determine what the citizenry of Artworld, the critics, galleristas, curators, collectors and many artists, pay attention to. As often as not this elite group are also freed of financial burdens, though not without years, decades or even entire lifetimes of struggle to hold it together. Consider Van Gogh, who barely made a Guilder while alive but whose influence and importance was tremendous after his death. These Masters of the (Artworld) Universe make the art they please and every thing else, including market forces, falls in line to follow whether in their lifetimes or beyond.

At the far opposite end of the spectrum from the Taste Makers are the Unknowns, the multitudes making art that are near completely ignored by Artworld.  I submit for your inspection the author of this piece as a member in good standing of this community. We lost souls pursue our creative activity for a limited audience (or none at all) scraggling out an artistic life on the outskirts of culture. Nevertheless, we bask in artistic freedom’s glow. How so? Playing well outside the mainstream means we can go into our studios where nobody but ourselves gives a shit about what we do there.

I’ve come to recognize that although I have a limited audience my appreciation of quality over quantity has increased. In other words, I am far more interested first in what a few people I respect and trust think about my work over a quantified reaction from the masses.  Art is not made in a vacuum of course and it is open to everyone; but the magnitude of the response is no measure of the quality of the work.

Filling out the middle portion of the spectrum are the ‘Tweens which is where artistic freedom gets complicated, especially in the past 40 odd years. Once upon time (New York in the 40s and 50s) galleries were edgier for promoting artists not initially (or ever) commercially viable. Galleries would often partner with their artists in the promotion of new ideas. The business plan, such as one applied, was that the commercially thriving artists in the stable were successful enough to allow the promotion of all the gallery artists.  So it was possible to get work shown even if it took years for it to catch on critically and financially.

These days the promotion of art is weighted toward pure commodity where the advancement of creative thinking often ends up as a by-product.  At face value it’s easy enough to condemn the commercial galleries and even the artists who actively participate in the commerce of their product. But times being what they are, this criticism gets watered down by the brutal fact that everything has become so expensive, especially in cultural centers like New York. To simply live or operate a gallery in the city (not even Manhattan) has become close to impossible. 

Back in what Jed Perl characterizes as the ‘Golden Age’ in his book New Art City, artists could once get by for a whole lot less. This allowed them to focus a significant portion of their time and effort on the art. Now no one gets by without either a trust fund or a full time job that pays fairly well. In such a milieu it’s only natural that artists would seek a compromise between their passion to create and their need to earn their daily bread.

Enter the Career Artist  Where ‘Image’ is as important as or more so than ‘images’ and self-promotion requires the same skills as the Dealers.

Over the years I’ve observed an interesting correlation between commercial and artistic success in that the increase of one is often directly proportional to the decrease of the other.  Take for example Jeff Koons - a brilliant, talented salesman, a veritable master of spin with a particular ability for getting other people to invest their money in his projects. (Does it come as a surprise that he was a successful trader on Wall Street for a number of years?)

Credit where credit is do and Kudos to Koons for his highly successful skill at self-promotion; but poor Jeff is incapable of making art. Mundane objects heavily dependent upon spin to perceive them as art  yes and well done. But are they credible works of art? No; not even in a Warholian sense (a dubious category in itself).  On the far opposite side of Mr. K’s commercial success I can name dozens of artists that I know and/or have written about over the past several years who make wonderfully engaging art. Some are better known to Artworld than others and while none have the household-name cache of Koons, unlike him they understand the intrinsic, true value of what art is and does.

So bobs an artist in these turbulent, uncertain seas of conflicting interests.  What to do? Cash in and accept all that delicious dirty money at the risk of selling your esthetic soul? Or accept no compromise to the purity of artist integrity and risk remaining unknown and unsupported?  As with most extremes the answer lies somewhere in between. Naturally the easiest thing is to take the money and skip off to the Garden of Earthly delights. But real courage and ultimately sustained long-term satisfaction is placing the art over commercial reward.  This brings to my mind a couple of artists.

Van Gogh again and the more famous of the two who sold maybe 2 paintings in his lifetime?  Poor Van Gogh (literally and figuratively) - half-mad with a very limited audience confined to his brother and just a few others who appreciated his art at the time. But he knew what he did and why it was important and he never let go of it despite his depravations and illness. Saint Vincent is one of the patron saints for us Unknowns and not because commercial success flooded his work long after he could enjoy it.  His true success is measured by the broad scope of his influence beyond his lifetime and the staying power of his creativity and self expression. Collectors pay incredibly vast sums to own the objects he created but neither they nor anyone else can own his art.

On the other hand, a friend of mine and one of the best contemporary painters I know, once walked away from overwhelming commercial success.  Sometime back in the 80s he was fortunate to be discovered in a group show and was subsequently picked up by a very prestigious gallery.  His work sold well; so well that the gallery would take anything he had available even if it was barely dry.  He would sometimes receive a call from the gallery saying their truck was in his neighborhood and asking if he had anything for pickup. Eventually the commercial pressure to produce became too much and he ended up leaving the gallery. Today he continues to make beautiful and engaging paintings but under his own terms.

Success or Suckcess?

I think about this anecdote from time to time and wonder what I would have done.  Oh sure, it’s easy enough to say now that I too would have just walked away from the commercial pressure.  But how easy is it to break out of that hard plastic bubble of success?  After staying at this for so long and finding a deep appreciation for the simpler rewards what would it be like to be bombarded with all the attention and a pile of money? The tragic answer to this question is evident from Mark Rothko’s suicide to the contemporary hell Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan were put through on a daily basis. Their experiences provide a counter-weight to whatever fantasies I harbor for living the high life off my art. Success is revealed as another one of those double-edged sword conditions.

One artist that was able to resolve this was the composer Charles Ives who explicitly did not want to live off his art. His compromise? To work for an insurance company (of all things) while continuing to compose his music.  Ives was able to work within in a larger sphere of influence while protecting his artistic freedom and his art from the effects of commerce  yet another inspiration for all artists.

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Most everyone likes cake, especially when it’s frosted (except maybe die-hard communists and the Taliban  too decadent for both). Some of us are still thrilled to get that piece with the frosting rose on it.  And this is how I’ve come to see commercial success for my art.  My cake, as it were, comprises my time in the studio, the magnificent, sometimes very strange give-and-take struggle to create, my delight in the resulting objects and the pure pleasure they give me to look at them.  My frosting is represented by exhibiting the work and those roses, those are my sales; not many of them you see - but they are a nice treat.

Given the limited amount of time I get in the studio it is all that more precious to me; perhaps much more so than if it was unlimited.  I’ve come to understand that my greatest success and rewards are found there, in the experience and act of making art. Now, I won’t lie and say that I don’t want more exposure and even commercial success, even enough to scratch a living from. Yet I know that both are potentially fleeting, in and of themselves an illusion and even a potential threat to my artistic freedom. I’ve eventually discovered a functional symmetry between profound satisfaction with this unadorned cake of mine and the striving to add the frosting and roses.  I don’t need the trimmings and sure, too much sugar may be bad for me… but would more than just a little be so bad?

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Geek Art

I was a Teenage Conceptual Artist! Okay, so my confession is nowhere close to admitting adolescent werewolvery.  And okay, okay, I was no teenager when I dabbled a bit in the black craft known as Conceptual Art.  But the dalliance, lame as it was, remains a minor scandal in my psyche and now at last the dirty laundry can be aired. How did I, a respectful (if not respected) devotee of sensory esthetics stray down such a tawdry path  if even briefly?

It all began innocently enough, as such deviations often do, one hot summer many, many moons ago whilst living in Rochester, Minnesota.  I was stranded on a tiny cultural island of my own making surrounded by a sea of white-coated medical professionals.  Rochester is home to the world-famous Mayo Clinic of course.  Pilgrimages to that place were all about the failings of the physical human body and had nothing to do with art. My affliction was all about artistic exile instead.  Nevertheless I did what I could to keep myself engaged given the circumstances by making paintings, silk-screen prints and whatnot.  One day I happen to look at a map of the United States and experienced a creative brain fart. 

It was the simple abstract forms created by the borders of the states that first caught my eye.  This was reinforced with a second look that revealed ‘lines’ created by natural elements like rivers or man-made ones like major highways.  It all totaled to a fascinating visual perspective of something familiar yet not depictive.  The best and most interesting shapes were created by the western states like Montana, Arizona, Wyoming and Nebraska.  Maps typically use color-coding to better distinguish the different borders and I wanted to play with that convention by creating my own maps with my own color coding.  I wasn’t really interested in cartography per se; I wanted to celebrate maps purely for their visual qualities.

I thought Nebraska in particular cut a rather attractive abstract shape due to a number of interesting elements.  There is that fat panhandle created by Colorado rudely jabbing its Northeastern corner into Nebraska’s Southwestern extremities. There are those two wonderful rivers, the Missouri and the Platte that help further compose the state. The Missouri winds and defines the irregular eastern border to create a necessary visual tension and counterpoint to those razor-straight boundaries on the north, west and south.  The Platte - like a long gently crooked and dopy smile dipping south - breaks up the flat expanse of the wide open picture plane and is perfectly placed (visually) in the lower portion of the state. 

Yet another admirable trait for Nebraska is that the shape is not immediately recognizable as a particular state (unlike, say, Minnesota).  So it’s quite easy to be seduced by Nebraska’s somewhat anonymous shape.  Initially you might grote on its combined borders as an engaging abstract form.  Then later you might be pleasantly surprised to recognize it as Nebraska; like seeing an older actor in a contemporary movie you remember from years ago. “Hey”, you might think, “isn’t that Nebraska?”  Then, you’d look again and perhaps confirm it with someone else and both of you would be subtly pleased with the momentary recognition.

My riffing on Nebraska’s abstract shape resulted in the following (recent) image:

From these philosophical questions I moved on to consider the large expanse of the form as tied into the great vastness of the mostly flat farm land that makes up the place.  This was driven by family trips I took as kid traveling by car from Minnesota to the west coast. My recollected images of Nebraska comprise freshly ploughed black soil expanding to the horizon or alternatively, a sea of corn, wheat or soybeans filling up the enormity of the space. As we traveled along through that open landscape, the tedium (for us kids) was barely relieved by the occasional punctuation of a town with a couple of grain elevators and a water tower. These personal impressions having been etched into my memory helped shape my vision of what I came to think of as Black Nebraska.

Having established a solid correlation between the objectivity of the image and the subjectivity of memory another speculation emerged. I wondered how people live in such places immersed in such quantities of land, isolation and loneliness. Now this applies to any of the large Midwestern states where the latter plus endless farm work tends to compose the Zeitgeist enormity. Residents of places like rural Nebraska must forge an existential accommodation to living within so much social separation. I developed a desire to get this into my image to fully express a common state of mind about the state of Nebraska.

Eventually a large scale concept began to get legs. I would create a conceptual portrait of Nebraska in which all of my ideas and more would play a part.  I considered contacting the Governor of Nebraska to congratulate him and the people of his state for living in a wonderful embodiment of an abstract image. His response or even lack thereof would somehow be incorporated into the piece as a sort of cultural response from the citizens.

I thought about taking a trip to Nebraska and collecting some of that black dirt I remembered and would work it into the image as a realistic medium.  I could take onsite photographs as ‘documentation’ to establish a visual dialog and contrast between the ground-level actuality of place and my Birdseye view abstraction. The image, the initial spark for all of it, would need to be much larger to handle the immensity of the ideas I planned to dump into it to make the concept work. 

Nebraska was only the beginning  the idea evolved into creating a comprehensive portrait of America one state at a time. “Today Nebraska, tomorrow America, the day after - the World” flitted through my enthusiastic mind.

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So what happened?  In a word: nothing.  I had done my research and all the ideas were in place to be acted upon but I didn’t act. Why not? Because the images demanded more freedom then the concept would allow. My goal for creating a conceptual portrait of Nebraska became such an imposing dominance that the initial spark of interest for me was in danger of getting lost. The beauty of the abstract forms would disappear into a clutter of distractions.

My idea of Nebraska was also tainted by a singular positive view of the place. My preconceived ideas arrived full born with little to be learned from the end product. But look at the image I created and what do you take away from it?  Yes, the notion of rich black farm soil remains as a valid interpretation. But a scorched-earth desolation P.O.V. is equally viable.  The unresolved positive-negative conflict expressed simply by the esthetic says so much more with so much less.  Inevitably concepts need to grow out of the images rather than the other way round and their interpretation cannot be confined or controlled by anyone including their creators. The reason I continue to make paintings and collage is because images alone are able to express everything I want and need to. Concepts (or content) take care of themselves and no help is required from sideshow distractions which run the risk of converting the images into illustration.

According to legacy Conceptual Art doctrine (circa 1970s) visuals such as photographs were redefined as documentation and it was incorrect to take them at face value. But this cheap trick insistence of being told how to engage a piece is artificially forced. It’s like going to Starbucks to order a medium coffee which they insist on calling a goddamn ‘Grande’. If I see photographs of something I can’t directly experience like Robert Smithson’s ‘Spiral Jetty’ I totally get the ‘it exists but you can’t really see it’ aspect.  Wrapped up in the piece is the explicit intent to create art that functions beyond the art object. But regardless of the artist’s intent the photographs are no different then any other visual images as to how they are engaged.

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Actually, Conceptual Art has been with us since humans began making marks to communicate information and no, I don’t mean through images. I’m talking about writing as a perfect medium for conveying ideas. Think about it - no ‘object’ is required with the exception of the manuscript which is only a container for the words.  In this sense the term documentation is honestly, aptly and accurately applied.  Text offers nothing more then the abstraction of ideas  pure concept without conflict or distraction (God knows it factors big time for most Conceptual Art shows  look at Barbara Krueger and Jenny Holtzer who have inversely turned words into objects). Writing communicates ideas, inflection, emotion and cadence all while stripped bare of direct sensory experiences.

Geeks are Masters of the Conceptual Cultural Universe.

But wait  contemporary culture offers something even better - the computer! Yes, as with most everything else these days computers do it better and here emerge as the ultimate Conceptual Art medium. I’m specifically referring to computer code - the stuff that makes reading this text possible for example. Software code has that unique ability to weave truly beautiful sequences of logic without any notion of an object or sensory experience. (Higher mathematics and branches of science like physics also come to mind).  This is as purely conceptual as can be had and is applied to even the most mundane utilitarian functions like making spreadsheets go, databases fly, word processing work or giving games their animation edginess.  Code Monkeys are arguably some of the greatest contemporary Conceptual Artists.  Their arcane medium, computer languages (C++, Java, Perl, etc), is almost impossible for the layman to understand without some level of study, experience and understanding. Here too is found a similarity to other art forms. (An exception frequently occurs for visual art where most anyone comes armed with an ‘expert’ snap opinion about the quality of a work of art unburdened by actual expertise).

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I’m now years removed from my Map project and even my earlier disdain for Conceptual Art has evaporated.  The legacy paradigm never really worked out the twists and turns required to stuff concepts in as the prime driver for visual art.  Label it whatever; images were always too powerful to be so contained despite the artists’ desire to have it otherwise. Still a number of artists had some success in creating compelling art that dispensed with the traditional art object.  But if concept alone is not permitted to drive the car it is nevertheless one of the passengers. 

Ideas matter for consciously or unconsciously sparking and sustaining creativity. Additionally, ideas provide a very necessary critical dialog in response to unfettered, intuitive emotion.  Without concept, art is chaotic and an unintelligible mess.  With only concept, art is rigid, sterile and runs the risk of devolving into pure design.  In anything deemed art the two have to be present in some proportion to each other. They are often like that bickersome married couple - fire and gasoline opposites  who are particularly interesting for the dynamic fireworks their relationship sets off. They can’t live with each other and they can’t live without each other.

Initially a work of art stimulates the eye in some way. The response might as easily provoke revulsion as it does pleasure.  But the a priori reaction to the esthetics provides a gateway for the expansion of ideas.  This marvelous portal is something that we get to revisit continually with time and experience even within a single work of art.

 Archive Directory         

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ArtWorld

From the brochure:

Come to wonderful, enchanting and exotic ArtWorld! 

Spend many a languid hour on our beautiful beaches along the edge of the Sea of Hues.  Behold the spectacle of the Cubist Canyons. See if your heart can take the Action->Painting->Adventure ride.  See history reveal itself in the Theatre of Multiple Imagery. Wonder at the images of people long dead whose countenances live on with force and vitality. Walk the Halls of Uncompromised Aesthetic Principals and have your integrity checked and challenged. Come visit the veritable capital of the ‘Imagine Nation’.

Your senses will be tickled pink (cerulean, viridian, magenta or mars yellow  yes we have all the colors)! See the famous 2-edged sword that alternately dispenses genius and madness.  Play Russian roulette with the Success/Failure gun. And no trip to ArtWorld is complete without a visit to the birthplace of the original Starving Artist. You get all this and more when you come to ArtWorld! So what are you waiting for? Come to ArtWorld today. Come Everyday!

Have you ever been to ArtWorld?  If you don’t know what it is or where it is or how to get there then no; you’ve never been. It’s like asking someone how much their new car cost: if you need to ask you probably can’t afford it. Well you can afford ArtWorld - everyone can. The lingering question is whether you will you pay the price.  It is a handily accessible destination and elegantly uncomplicated for those with the means though utterly impossible for those without.  But isn’t that the nature of travel  if you’ve got it you get to go and if you don’t, well… same story with ArtWorld.  Once upon a time when the fabric of my life was woven from simpler material I used to live there sometimes for long periods. These days I’m reduced to brief visits stealing myself away when I can to its fertile landscapes  a middle-age miscreant - as life and events have pressed their all consuming demands on me.  “But what is ArtWorld?” you, the uninitiated, ask.

The first thing to know is that the travel brochure, like all advertising, takes a quite few liberties. Strangely though, this plays well for ArtWorld where subjectivity and perception thrive like exotic plant life in warm climates.

How do you describe a place as vast, beautiful, stimulating and even sometimes frightening as ArtWorld?  To portray it as either a physical entity or a state of mind is simultaneously right and wrong.  After a few trips you will quickly understand that contradictions abound tying in as they do with the aforementioned twin pillars of subjectivity and perception.  ArtWorld is what I’ve come to understand as a slippery locale  dynamic, ephemeral and experiential. At the same time it is possessed of solidly physical qualities and dimensions which never remain static. The shifting coordinates are such that a particular way you are used to taking there can be lost one day.  But no worries  you can just as easily find another. The population too is indeterminate; a shifting milieu that numbers in the millions to a single individual (you). 

Time does not function in ArtWorld the same way it does in the Real World. Time is more elastic, far less structured and its measurement is of negligible importance. With my comings and goings to ArtWorld I’ve noticed how perceived time varies. Occasionally time speeds up but mostly it slows down with the advantage that the time spent in this wonderful place is extended.  How would financial consultants put it? The ROI (return on investment) is always excellent. It is much greater actually, when compared to a lot of other places.  Personally I have never gone to ArtWorld without returning a richer, more enlightened, homo sapiens for the experience.

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Now I just realized that I might cause a misunderstanding by distinguishing ArtWorld from what I’ve called the ‘Real World’.  This suggests that ArtWorld is just a fantasy and stands outside the bounds of actual experience while in fact the opposite is true.  The notion that daily existence is somehow more real is questionable when you consider the many illusions it thrusts upon us as truth.  (Start with a topic like ‘politics’ and how deeply do we need to scratch to reveal delusions constructed on lies?)  Day-to-day-to-day reality can be a dramatically volatile enterprise ranging from ecstatic to tragic a lot of which is beyond personal control. But let’s face it, everyday life for most of us is wrapped up in the tedious bundle of repetition and routine. Real? Really? Perhaps - but certainly not with a monopoly on reality.

Contrast this with ArtWorld with its honest re-accounting and fundamental understanding that perception drives everything we experience. Here the concept of a real-world absolute truth does not function.  A different truth exists in ArtWorld, one that is relative and subservient to perception as the pre-requisite to all experience.  Your truth is true for you based on your sensory and cognitive perception just as mine is for me. Collective truth is garnered by an agreement of those perceptions through which reality is constructed.  But you and I may also disagree on our perceptions of something and who is right? In ArtWorld we are each correct, at least for ourselves.  Real World demands more certainty (the more the better) and struggles with relativity. But ArtWorld is just the inverse by fully acknowledging, supporting and promoting it.

But where precisely is ArtWorld, you may wonder?  It’s in New York City. It’s also in far-flung Marfa, Texas, the remote community and former military base Donald Judd bought back in the 70s.  It is available wherever there are people that make and appreciate art.  For me ArtWorld is a mere 10 steps or so from my back door, along a stone path to a sweet and small green building with a bright blue door. This private sanctuary serves as my escape from the daily demands of Real World and as a personal portal to ArtWorld.

Such is the nature of a place like ArtWorld - fluid and flux where ‘New’ is constantly reinvented and rediscovered. 

So it is that at a given point in time a former garage becomes another address in the community of ArtWorld.  But wait awhile - that same physical place might eventually revert to its pedestrian function and poof! that particular portal is gone.  It might seem as though ArtWorld is simply a state of mind which, though true, is not nearly the whole story.  ArtWorld constitutes a marriage between the imagination and the esthetics of physical objects and places.  Does this mean that you can find it everywhere?  No. Although ArtWorld is all around it must still be sought out.  There are many ways to get there but beware of false paths and fake doors that might seem to go there but instead land you square in rotten place like MendaCity.

Once you hurdle the first prerequisite, which is believing that ArtWorld exists, how do you get there?  Well, you don’t have be an artist - though it certainly helps. But you’ve got to open up one of those many doors I’ve mentioned and pass through.  Sounds easy, right?  Yeah… except that the key to accessing ArtWorld is not really about going somewhere as much as it’s about letting it permeate, transport and transform you internally.  You become altered by the experience and although you’ve made a physical journey (to a museum, a gallery, a studio) at the same time you serve as a destination for ArtWorld to reside. So the admission price is mostly about your openness to access, the willingness to be profoundly affected and then to actually be moved by your interaction with art. Everybody can go to ArtWorld and I sincerely wish everyone would because there is no room in it for all the crass, vile and evil crap we have deal with in the Real World. The cost of the fare to ArtWorld is measured in time and commitment, you see, which is why it’s not for everyone.

The denizens of ArtWorld care little about superficial abstractions such as money. They are more interested in other, more profound abstractions.

If all this sounds too ephemeral you should know how important materialism is in ArtWorld.  I don’t mean obtuse consumerism but simply the engagement of things physical through direct experience and perception.  A lot of people with a lot of money go to ArtWorld but so do a lot more people with little or no money.  The filthy lucre is not what gets you in or keeps you there. If you own art objects you may hold a bit of ArtWorld real estate.  But first, what is your relationship to those objects? If you appreciate their intrinsic value then: Welcome to ArtWorld.  If they are simply investments or baubles to brag about like that vile character, Gordon Gecko from Oliver Stone’s film Wall Street, then you’ve only collected souvenirs from a place you’ve never really been to.

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Like anywhere else people die in ArtWorld - though this usually means artists. The place can be all consuming and occasionally that two-edged sword of genius and madness takes a tragic swipe at someone. Artists run the risk of wanting, of needing to be in ArtWorld all the time. The danger is that too much stimulus, pleasure and an overall engagement with all things esthetic can bend the mind in strange ways. Because ArtWorld is so very far removed from pedestrian existence the span and depth of the division can be overwhelming.  Put another way, ArtWorld offers such a splendid reality that daily life can seem crushingly dismal.                                                                                                                                                           

I can only take you so far to ArtWorld with words but to know it is to experience it for yourself.  As you now realize it’s only a few steps away at any given moment and the admission price is more demanding then expensive.  But I have to go now  I’m long overdue for another visit.  Maybe I’ll even see you there.

 Archive Directory         

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A Conversation

The following conversation was presented very late one Friday night on a cable talk show.  I had dozed off for awhile in front of the tele after a long hard week of the daily drudgery. When I woke up sometime later, this was on. I don’t recall the station or what the show was called.  Come to think of it the whole thing might have just been a dream.  I can’t quite say; but somehow this conversation was retained in my head verbatim and so I spill it onto these pages. The show began with a host’s voice…

“…very pleased to have with us tonight, three giants of human existence, please welcome, Art, Science and Theology!”  (Thunderous applause).  “Now I’m just going to fade into the background and let the 3 of you have at it.  Folks aren’t they truly magnificent  another big hand for them please! (More thunderous applause).”

Science: Well I’ll start off by saying I think both of you are full of crap.

Art: Nice to meet you too!

Theology: Now wait, there’s no need for…

Science: I mean really, what do either of you have to offer that is concrete; that can be measured or judged as useful?

Art: Useful? (Barely audible)… pompous prig.

Science: Right! (To Art) you, what do you put out? Pretty baubles for the rich and wistful fictions - in short, a fantasy view of life, a distraction of what is real.  (To Theology) and you, you produce nothing for the world.  You spin fairy tales for humanity promising some sort of ‘after life’ that you can’t even articulate and far less prove. What after life? The only life that exists is what’s physically in front of humanity based on what can be seen, heard, evaluated and measured!  And add to this you’ve been a real pain in my ass over the centuries.

Theology: But that is an over simplification of…

Art: And what do you offer?

Science: I give humanity the actual, the pragmatic, the useful, the measured  the knowable.  I provide reality.

Art: Hmmm… And that includes technology of course?

Science: You’re damn right  all the modern advances that have improved humanity’s existence.

Art: Such as?

Science: What? Are you too ignorant to think of examples? The automobile and computers immediately come to mind. Look at the advances in medicine and the exploration of space.  I have provided the greatest of advances to make life better for humanity which is far more than what you offer.

Art: Okay, now that you’ve filled up your gas bag lets see if we can’t stick a pin in it to let some of that hot air out. Those wonderful automobiles of yours also kill thousands annually while contributing significantly to pollution.  Your computers? Yes they have proved useful but also for devising the instruments of war such as nuclear weapons that threaten the existence of all of humanity. Your advances in medicine are notable… maybe.  But they have also needlessly prolonged the lives and suffering of the very sick.  And space exploration  a few dirty rocks were plucked from the surface of the moon, so what? Before you get too high up there on your marble pedestal remember that you are a double-edged sword.  As much as you help humanity you also hurt.

Science: (Very agitated) A few dirty rocks!  Why, you ignorant… don’t you even know what it took to send a man to the moon?  The technology and the effort were unfathomable. Nearly immeasurable.

Art: (Yawning) well, those pictures of the earth from the moon  yeah, those were interesting.  But I still say you do as much harm as good  how do you answer that?

Science: (Glaring) Yes I’m misused, but it’s not true that the destruction equals the benefits. The good I provide to better mankind far outweighs the bad.  Anyway, how is beyond my capability.                  

Theology: So you can be used for great good or for great evil?

Science: I don’t understand the concepts of good and evil unless they can be quantitatively explained.  I can only say that I am not responsible for how I’m used or misused.

Theology: Then who has that responsibility?

Science: I suppose humanity has the moral responsibility for how my advances are applied.

Theology: And where does Humanity find its morality?

Science: I don’t know  I’d have to conduct analysis of the question, postulate a theory…

Theology: Forget it!  I’ll tell you: morality is not simply left to humanity  it’s my territory. With my ‘Fairy Tales’ as you call them I provide humanity with its moral compass.  As you’ve just implied, humanity can as easily use you for good or evil. Well I’m the one who instructs them as to what is right and wrong.

Science: You’re joking! A moral compass, you say? How many wars are started in the name of religion?  How many are persecuted because of you?  How often are my talents used for your ends?  And how many minds have been shut to me because of you?

Theology: Valid questions.  Yes, it is true that I, like you, have been misapplied, distorted and twisted by factions of humanity for their own ends.  But though horrible things are done in my name this is the antithesis of who I am. Unlike you, when I’m misused in this way it’s deeply painful.  Evil and hypocrisy are what I battle constantly and although I offer guidance I have no control over how humanity behaves.  And I have no interest in closing minds to you  you represent no threat to me.  This is yet another misuse of me by the ignorant who confuse us as somehow being in competition.

Art: (chuckling) Well… at least I’m the cleanest on the morality question  In and of myself I don’t get people killed.

Theology: Really? What about artists that run afoul of political authorities and then suffer for it, even die for it?

Art: Well, what about it?  It’s the same sort of misuse you just described for yourself.  Even the most abstracted, non-narrative imagery can provoke such a reaction from dictatorial governments or ignorant religious factions that are threatened by freedom of expression. Why are they threatened?  Because they can’t control it and manipulate it to their own ends.

Science: Alright, but who cares?  If you weren’t in the world what would be missed?

Art: A lot more then if no one had brought back your stupid moon rocks. Look, if I wasn’t around neither of you could exist either.

Science: What! How could I possibly have even the remotest dependence on you?

Art: Do you think scientific innovation springs simply from the practicalities you’ve laid out?  You couldn’t possibly advance without the contribution creativity makes to intelligence.  Scientists are incapable of innovation without creativity or imagination which is my purview and focus.

Theology: And why do I need you? I have of words at my disposal to convey my message.

Art: Yes, but without me your words would just be mechanical and the expression would be dry and uninspiring.  Look at all the great religious texts and you find some of the greatest poetry and lyrical writing. And what happens when people can’t read as was the case in past centuries?  Magnificent stained glass windows and paintings were created to tell the stories and to inspire humanity with your message. You’d have none of this without me.

Science: You spin a sweet vision which I’ll grant is your expertise, but it’s all just too relative, too unspecified.  Where are the measures and the proof for what you say?

Art: I have none; I don’t traffic in such things  at least in the objective way you mean.

Science: Well I do and there’s too much subjectivity in this for me.  Why, to swallow all of this would be to… to make a leap of…

Theology: Faith?

Science: Precisely! And I have no interest in that! I only know what can be theorized, perceived and then proven true or false.

Art: But how do you know for certain that what you perceive is true?

Science: What do you mean?  I observe and verify those observations with experimentation which reveals the truth.

Art: Absolute truth?

Science: Yes, absolute truth based on those principles.

Art: But suppose my observations differ from yours, suppose I perceive differently.

Science: Give me an example.

Art: Suppose one person’s perception of the color green is different from how a second one sees it.  Suppose what the first sees as green is what the second actually sees as red. They both call what they see green but in actuality the absolute truth is that it’s not the same thing.

Science: But how can you prove such a ridiculous notion?

Art: I can’t - just as you can’t disprove it which is precisely my point. Perception is the foundation of how humanity engages the world and truth is based on a mutual agreement of what is perceived.  Absolute truth may exist but it’s outside the reach of humanity.

Science: But it’s absurd to think that the world functions based on agreed opinion. Humanity requires facts to know what is true.

Art: Why? Humanity constantly arrives at truth through agreement. What is known to be truth, even absolute truth, for one generation can change and be different even reversed for another as new, better or additional information becomes known.  This is why absolute truth is never available, because the inherent subjectivity of perception corrupts the purity absolute truth demands.

Theology:  I agree. A set of beliefs held up as absolute truth at one point in time can shift with the culture.  And yet some ideas remain constant and don’t really change  they are just rediscovered or reinterpreted for a new generation.  This is what I know as ‘divine truth’.

Science: Isn’t that the same thing as absolute truth? If so, how can you be a relativist with regard to truth?

Theology: Yes, it is the same thing.  But I can’t say I know with certainty what absolute truth is  humanity doesn’t know either.  There is only belief in it which, by the way, is what you also practice…

Science: What!? I don’t function on a belief in absolutes, I prove them.

Art: No, you attempt to prove them. Your facts, your absolute truths proven from yesterday, are overturned by new facts today which may be overturned by additional new facts tomorrow.

Science: But that’s just progress, better information…

Art: Exactly! Truth is relative and slippery and therefore not absolutely knowable.  Look, all three of us strive for absolute truth but in very different ways and through us humanity is never able to actually attain it.  (To Science) you try to prove absolute truth through observations, experimentation and known facts and as close as you get, you still come up short. (To Theology) you believe in absolute truth but as you concede it comes down to a matter of faith  again unreachable.

Science: And what about you  what absolute truth do you strive for?

Art: My absolute truth is rooted in the primacy of perception and the recognition of its subjectivity. I only know what is as taken in through the senses which provides both my proof and belief in an absolute truth that is nevertheless wholly unknowable by humanity.

Theology: I think the modern era has constructed artificial barriers between us. For example, during the Renaissance the distinctions were less important. It was a time of great religious art  great for religion and art together and individually. And scientific innovation, technological advances, took place without distinguishing who was what by some label. 

Science: Yes and how long did it take for Galileo to be persecuted by the small minds of the Catholic Church?

Theology: Nobody claimed the Renaissance put to rest bigoted idiots.  Still the point I was trying to make is that I think all of us offer some unique and useful to humanity despite and sometimes even because of our disagreements.

Science: Always the conciliator, eh?

Theology: (Smiling) yes - part of my job description.

Science: So are you too in such complete agreement all the time?

Art: No, not at all.  You may not believe it but in many ways I am closer to you.  Like you my focus for humanity is on tactile experiences rooted in the here and now. Though we both are rooted in human history I think you’ll agree that neither of us is concerned with immortality.

Science: Then how do you account for all the religious art that has been created through history?

Art: My subject matter incorporates all of human interests and endeavors.  When religion is the broad cultural focus this is reflected in my subject matter. In the modern age there is fascination with technology and the result is that you are incorporated as my subject matter.  But this represents only one of my components; it’s not all of what I am.  Just like you I can be put to many uses.

Science: Even destructive uses?

Art: Destructive?  Hmm… I don’t think in any overt way.  Maybe a better term is negative uses. I can be used as propaganda for example. Sometimes people are hurt or even killed because of how I’m used, or actually because of the subject matter attached to me. But also like you it’s not my business to deal with the morality of how I’m applied.  It’s just that the consequences for humanity are not as widespread when I’m misused as they are with you.

Theology: And again, the question of morality is where I step in. Since neither of you care about whether or how you are misused it is my responsibility. I’m the one to provide guidance for right and wrong even for not only how both of you are applied but also how I’m understood.

Art: I don’t rely on you for any help. Humanity expresses what they express and that is enough for me.  If the creative expression is right or wrong, let humanity decide that for itself.

Theology: And they do  but not in some sort of vacuum.  If Humanity doesn’t look to me for moral direction, fine.  At the very least they turn to a sometimes colleague of mine, Philosophy.

Science: Also a colleague of mine  say why isn’t Philosophy participating in this tonight?

Art: Scheduled for another show that includes Music and Politics. The elephant not in the room...

Science: (To Theology) I still don’t get how belief is tied to absolute truth.

Theology: You won’t understand because it can’t be quantified or proven. In fact faith is the antithesis of proof  believing beyond proving.  And yet even if humanity thinks it knows something as we’ve already discussed they don’t really in any absolute sense. (To Art) you and I part ways in that your absolute truth is based on the primacy of perception whereas mine is based on faith. And don’t think I totally advocate an after-life for humanity  that is a part of me and not fully embraced by all of humanity. Like both of you I am rooted in the ‘here and know’ and what I offer is to make life better for living humanity.  This is based on core human values such as the power of love and forgiveness to sustain life.  Indeed, my contention is that these values are needed by humanity to fully engage life.

Science: But all of that is so loose and ephemeral…

Theology: Loose maybe, but ephemeral, no.  All of this is my absolute truth.

Science: What about evil - isn’t that also your territory? How does evil factor into belief?

Theology: If there is a force, a being, a something directly unknowable to humanity for great good in the world, then the opposite is also true for me. Between these too forces of good and evil lies humanity which is allowed a choice between them.  I advocate for choosing good because the choice means humanity gets their heaven or hell served to them right here on earth.  There is no need to wait for an after-life for this.  Humanity suffers or lives well based on their choices.

Science: I no more believe in evil than I do in great good.

Theology: Well, isn’t that the devil’s first trick  to get you to not believe in him?

Science: I would say that so-called evil is actually the result of psychological abnormalities that…

Theology: Yes, yes, I know  and with more and more analysis you could eventually explain the human condition.  And perhaps you would be right in many instances but far from all.  Humanity is rife with individuals and behaviors  good and bad  that are beyond your analysis.

Science: So what you can’t explain is chalked up to faith?

Theology: And what you can’t explain is passed off to more analysis.

Art: We’re beginning to talk in circles. What it comes down to is that our varied approaches are distinct, separate and necessary for humanity. But there is some overlap.  I wonder if humans could live well or long if any one of us was absent.

Science: Well, I don’t know that I’ve changed my opinion of you two - your arguments require further  yes I’ll say it - analysis.

Art: I wouldn’t expect any less of you.

Theology: But now as to that matter of what faith is…

At this point I dozed off again and never did catch the end of the show.

 Archive Directory         

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The New York Myth

… If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere, it’s up to you New York, New York…

So Sinatra would have all of us rubes throughout the land believe - which includes anyone not native to the city.  As I completed my graduate studies in North Carolina in the very early 80s, New York represented the fantasy of commercial and critical success for my art.  It was just me  - and countless thousands of others with the same dream in a long, long line that reached all the way back to Podunk, U.S.A. Naturally the odds of success were stacked against us. But the fuel for such fantasies is that you will be one of the very few to rise above all the others on the merits of your pure genius. New York represented the pinnacle of that success.

From afar New York is terrifying given the way it scales in everything from grime to crime to big bright lights. As you think about it little things pop up in your head like all those toilets flushing each day  where does it all go and what do they do with it? But the Godzilla question is how to possibly make a life in this impossible place?   I found out back in 1985 as I rattled into town from Minnesota driving a Ryder truck that mostly held artwork, art supplies, a 400 lb table saw and unaccountably, an ancient diminutive refrigerator. I had my first couple of New York freak-outs the night before I even got to town and both were classic. The first was that an apartment a friend was supposed to sub-lease to me the next day was suddenly no longer available.  She decided not to leave the city after all.  The other was that the $3000 bank check I had would not be available for about 10 days until after I opened an account somewhere.  So like many another new comer, I arrived in New York without money or a place to stay.

I made some hasty arrangements to camp out with some friends who had a place near Red Hook in Brooklyn.  I parked my truck outside the ramshackle old building they were practically squatting in and eventually we got all my stuff inside except for that little refrigerator. The place was an authentic dump  the ground floor was an abandoned Laundromat where one friend lived.  A tortured staircase ascended two more floors.  The place was a fire trap begging to explode and came provisioned with a population of rats that could be heard running in the walls at night.  In short, it was perfect for feeding the romantic notion of the impoverished artist on the cusp of discovery and subsequent greatness.

Mike K. let me move in with him on the second floor for what was to be a month until I could get a place of my own.  The next morning he appeared with a cup of coffee for me and said, “Well I got some good news and some bad news for you.”  “What’s the good news I asked?”  “We don’t have to move your refrigerator in.”  “Really,” I said, “You already did it?”  “Nope somebody stole your truck… Welcome to New York buddy!”  This completed a triad of personal New York freak outs and so marked my official arrival to Gotham. A month later I moved in with another friend into the Singer Building on Broadway near Prince Street to share a loft space (an upgrade in my romantic fantasy).  It was supposed to be a 4 month sublet but in a typical turn of fate for this city (an up-tick this time) the tenant moved in with her boyfriend.  I stayed for 7 years.

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The New York Myth took a long time to build  at least for visual artists. Prior to the 1940s New York was just a large American city and not the big deal it would eventually become (‘new york’ before ‘New York’). The local art scene was intimate and for the most part ignored by the art institutions and galleries who still looked to Europe for great art. Throughout the 1930’s many artists worked on W.P.A projects, receiving government stipends to create murals in public buildings like Post Offices or simply to make paintings.  Then the Second World War began and the seeds of the New York Myth were sown.

The war drove a lot of European artists to New York to seek refuge for the duration.  The local guys and gals were intimidated by the influx, particularly of the Surrealists, and experienced some insecurities within the great shadow cast by the newly arrived Europeans.  In this soup began the famous conversations at the Waldorf Cafeteria on 6th avenue that eventually morphed into the creation of The Club. When the war ended most of the Europeans went home and the domestic abstract artists (who were mostly immigrants themselves) began to forge a truly American art  Abstract Expressionism. It was about this time that the New York Myth began to immerge.

In his book, New Art City, Jed Perl refers to the 40s and 50s as the Golden Age in New York though not only because the visual arts flourished.  Be-bop emerged as a potent force and a terrific wealth of literature and theater was created. For artists, musicians, composers, playwrights, writers in the rest of the country Mecca was still in the east only for them it was called New York City.

After the war and with the subsequent commercial success and ‘art star’ status for some like Pollock and De Kooning, New York assumed the mantle of World Art Capital.  Naturally this opened the floodgates to a large influx of artists and even more poseurs.  Subsequently irreparable damage was done to the rich and intimate New York art community that had flourished around 8th street for so many years. All of the original artists had struggled in near poverty while continuing to believe in their art.  The rapid success must have been overwhelming which including ratcheting up the rivals and competition between the artists. For some like Rothko and Pollock the tragedy was poignantly intimate. Even as the New York Myth was gaining a foothold the essence of what created it was dying.

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By the early 60s The Club had disbanded, Pop art and rock music swept in with a garish vigor that consumed the scene. Bohemians were out, hipsters were in and Happenings were happening. Master of Fine Arts programs began to flourish in Universities and the New York Myth had matured and was solidly established throughout the land.  The mantra for many artists, but especially the newly minted MFA graduates, was to make it in New York.  If you happened to actually be a city resident the Myth seemed ridiculous because you knew the real score. This gave you license to plaster a smug bemused expression on your face at all these hicks coming to town looking to lap up some fame and maybe even some culture. The irony is how many city residents were once new arrivals themselves (and often within a very short time span).

Among some the Bohemian remnants remain: A friend and excellent artist was recently berated by a semi-acquaintance for not being dedicated enough to making art.  What was required to prove the devotion?  To live in a derelict, rat-infested building, leave her husband and only focus on her art!

What did we know; us hicks?  One thing  that New York was the biggest scariest place that most of us had ever seen.  And what wasn’t there to scare the living shit out of anyone from the outside?  At the head of that long list was that item about the sheer impossibility of how live there. During the infancy of the Myth, it at least seemed to be an easier proposition.  Once upon a time you could get by with a cold-water flat, one or two shit jobs to make expenses and still have plenty of time to make art.  But gradually the commercial aspects of the new Mecca began to overwhelm. The notion of living in New York, particularly Manhattan, seemed more and more unfeasible for outsiders.

That mantra of the Myth, Make it in New York, once meant developing your art in an intimate community through a free and engaging exchange of ideas.  This was a core belief for serious artists and it was a large part of what drew me here. But the impetus shifted over the years so that becoming rich and famous through your art took on a greater appeal. By the mid 80s when I hit town this version of the Myth was a fait accompli and it seemed I got to New York about 35 years too late.

Myths are beacons from the past that influence current actions and the golden light of the New York Myth continues to draw creative types to its light like moths.  But what does that beacon represent today  enlightenment or a bug zapper?

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I lived in Williamsburg in Brooklynfor a few years after leaving Manhattan  on North 9th Street just off Bedford Avenue. At that time this very ethnic area was already evolving into the artists’ community that 8th Street, Soho and the East Village once represented. In many ways the neighborhood has stubbornly consistent  many of the same Polish meat markets, bodegas, pizza joints and other places remain. The area also retains a beat up and particularly Eastern European quality to it despite some signs of forced gentrification. What you don’t see is how expensive it’s become to live there.  Each year more artists are forced to either move further away or to suck up the high cost of living to remain in closer.

New York will most likely remain the art capital of the world for some time. But this is not indefinitely guaranteed or at the very least the nature of what this means could change significantly. As the city continues to become more and more expensive a tipping point may appear in which artists considering New York realize that where they are - Minneapolis, Austin, San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, Charlotte, Atlanta or Albuquerque - might be a whole lot better after all. At risk for New York is the depletion of its creative and intellectual capital as innovators find more accommodating communities elsewhere.  And what would remain of New York’s appeal? It may be reduced to simply a market for art in which a corresponding art would prevail in the form of commoditized, product-oriented objects.  This already appears to be a prevailing trend in many galleries who are likewise squeezed by the economic pressures.

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Myths fade slowly and the changes are measured in a collection of impalpable small shifts as occurs with global warming.   Since my arrival in New York commercial success has mostly eluded me. But I got what I really came for, what the Myth promised me  an immersion in a community of dedicated artists and the sharing of ideas. I didn’t find 8th street, the Waldorf Cafeteria or the Club.  But I found a piece of the same thing through informal weekly discussions of art and ideas with like minded artists every Friday afternoon at Café Dante. My painting improved as a result and I matured as an artist.  Could I have found this elsewhere?  Very likely, but New York still had the particular power, momentum and population to make for a richer experience. My fear now is that what I found and enjoyed so much is an endangered experience facing potential extinction.  I’d like to think I’m wrong.

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The Beauty of Failure

Drive across the U.S. from one coast to another and depending on how you make the trip, you will find a shocking level of standardization.  Stay only on the interstate system and a consistency of cheerful green signs provide you directions and a limited variety of convenient on & off ramps that deposit you where you need to go (traffic congestion tends to deviate from any measure of norm). Along the way you can check into any number of hotel chains and get a meal at any one of countless chain restaurants.  The next day you can drive another 600 miles or so, check into the same hotel chain and eat in the same chain restaurant as the night before. And everything is pretty much the same - except the landscape.

A room in a Hampton Inn, Marriott Courtyard or Day’s Inn in New Jersey is virtually identical to one in Missouri, Colorado or California.  Eat at an Applebee’s, Ruby Tuesdays or Wendy’s and the menu is also nearly identical in each place. Travelling this way across the U.S your lodging and dining experiences are guaranteed to be neither poor nor great - just indistinguishable. You avoid staying in a dump or eating in a toilet. But maybe you miss stumbling on a little jewel of a hotel or savoring a surprisingly fantastic local meal.  The thing is, without the risk of one you won’t find the other.

‘Standardization is a sweeping the nation’ like… a flu virus.  As a culture we have lovingly embraced uniformity in so many parts of our lives.  We like having a Starbucks, MacDonald’s or a Wal-Mart wherever we travel if for nothing then the comfort of familiarity.  If we didn’t they wouldn’t be everywhere because the business model wouldn’t be feasible. And why contain it to just the United Status?  We’ve generously passed on many of our standardized preferences globally.  No matter where we go we can always find some piece, large or small, of market-driven Americana.  We’ve not fully globalized yet mind you, but just how far off is the ‘Big-Mac Falafel’?

Cultural homogeny is certainly not confined to restaurant or hotel chains.  It has long coursed through the veins of the greatest of our mediums: television.  Every now and again someone comes up with a brilliant and entertaining concept that despite all efforts to the contrary makes it to that little screen and is warmly embraced.  For those that remember ‘All in the Family’ back in the 70s, there was plenty of initial controversy for what eventually became a hit show.  Comedy, drama and sometimes disturbing content were brilliantly combined. Even the format was revolutionary, presenting a closed-circuit TV reality not often seen since the 50s.  Once ‘All in the Family’ was established as a smashing success it wasn’t long before a string of lesser clones sprung up like mushrooms after a downpour (The Jeffersons, Maude, and Sanford & Son for example) and the form was quickly saturated and eventually was lost in mediocrity.

Due to the copy factor broadcast television today has devolved to doling out endless multiples of so called “Reality Shows”.  In this the lowest cultural common denominator has been struck where actual human pathos and humiliation rather than a fiction of it is flaunted for entertainment. And the last stop for this iterative process? The vulgarity of un-varnished voyeurism: peeping into the lives of celebrity burn-outs like Ozzie Osborne and his dysfunctional family  a modern variant of the ancient Roman Coliseum.

Uniformity, homogeny and standardization are hardly bad concepts in and of themselves.  In fact they are crucial for ensuring human rights, safe medical practices, building codes, automobile and airline safety standards, educational measures plus several million other things that we need and prefer to be and work the same. But advertisers and marketers love these concepts too because they help to reduce risk and ensure predictability for profit margins.  And here is where the trouble begins for art and culture.   

In America the shopping mall has emerged as a major cultural icon along with advertising is the most ubiquitous of our art forms.

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A generation ago artists represented the vanguard of the non-conformity. It was all so easy given the buttoned-down world of gray flannel suits and the conformity that was a hallmark for the 50s.  Then you could stand out from the crowd (all the squares) with something as simple as not wearing a tie in public. Today it takes a lot more to express the same thing. Outrage has been the rage for so long and over-exposed that unconventionality has long been institutionalized.  We’ve had too many years of tattoos, piercings, radical hairdos, Piss-Christs, Madonna’s portrayed in animal shit and a general carnival atmosphere of novelty, cheap sensation and tawdry scandal. What does ‘cool’ mean anymore now that it’s been absorbed and over-used in advertising?  And of course unconventionality is (and in one way or another has always been) linked to sexual expression.  Mind you, we still look; but rather then express shock we more often yawn.

The Abstract Expressionists crafted a uniquely American art movement in which style, per se, was abandoned. This represented a definitive break with the European traditions and you see it based on the art that was produced from the period. On one shore were the coolly cerebral paintings of Ad Reinhardt and Barnet Newman (the Abstraction).  On another were the emotionally charged works by Pollock and De Kooning (the Expression).  In the dynamic sea between sailed a multitude of artists that leaned one way or another or struck up their own course. From one perspective these collective artists could be seen as an eclectic mess.  But from another the emphasis on individual expression discouraged any easy pigeon-holing of the art.  The artists were as much in charge of their image as they were of their images and this was large factor in making the art.

Since then a sea change quietly took place and the tail began wagging the dog. Image came to supplant the importance of images.  As a sign of these times: Recently, a friend who teaches art at one of the universities in the city compared end-of-year open studios between the 4th year undergraduates and the final year graduate students.  He had given up going to see the grad students because they were, he said, “Ready for their close up and preening for their first Chelsea show”. The art was structured to sell a message with a marketing goal in mind and was, in his opinion, uninteresting. By contrast he found the undergraduates’ art to be far more satisfying because they were still fully engaged in experimenting with self-expression. Their art was not yet infected with career-driven strategies. 

But who am I to judge? At the end of graduate school I wasn’t much different. I was determined to make a serious ‘statement’ that would get the attention of ‘Art World’. To that end I developed a tight sense of style that I held on to for quite awhile; though not with an overt marketing strategy in mind. Shortly after arriving in New York I played the ‘What does the market want?’ game for awhile until it became stifling and personally unfulfilling. Obviously I didn’t play it well enough because it did not yield the expected results.

Graduate student ambitions are one thing, exhibiting artists are something else.  In the past 7 or 8 years, having paid particular attention (as a critic) to what is shown in New York galleries, I’ve noticed a growing trend toward product-oriented art. Too many shows have manifested into highly stylized paintings presenting slight variations on a theme. Often the variations are so slight that within minutes of leaving a gallery you can’t remember or distinguish one work from another.  This constitutes a school of painting I call ‘Logo Art’.  Logo artists create pieces that are memorable for a recognizable look but without depth.  As long as the product sells the artist will keep making the same thing, sometimes for decades.

By itself subtle variation is not necessarily bad. The distinction is in how it’s approached and why.  Recently the painter and photographer, Claire Seidl branched out into printmaking to create several intaglio mono-types in which only 4 plates were utilized.  The imagery on the plates was minimal and remained constant.  What did change was the myriad ways in which they were combined and printed to produce a rich variation and layering of color and contrast.  The default standardization of the base images were worked into a quiet orgy of sublime deviations of the medium that beautifully balanced and served the art. What makes this approach so different from Logo Art?  It’s the authentic exploration of uniformity and contrast  creatively confronting limitations - rather than working up slight variations to cement a sense of style on the cheap.

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Now enter the Eclectic Artist  the antithesistator of style, the ‘open thinker’, Trier of things (new or old).  Once called ‘bohemian’, but always a square peg in a world lousy with round holes. If, as they say, it’s ‘lonely at the top’ up there in the bright light of the world, a different loneliness persists in the dark, chill bottom where commonly exhibitions are for an audience of one. Naturally this results in the flattest of sales figures. Why all this? Because the Eclectic Artist is genetically allergic to pigeonholes, categorizations and well, all those round holes that marketers create and live for.

But if eclecticism is taken too far then anything goes, nothing stays and chaos reigns.  This anarchy fringe insists that whatever they create is art simply because they say so (the last several Whitney Biennials have heavily invested in this concept). Rules, standards, discipline and critical reaction are all gleefully chucked overboard. The problem is that if everything is art then nothing is because some sort of distinction is required.  Suppose that the only color anyone could see was red.  Everything from the sky to the land to the sea including all inhabitants, plant or animal, would be some shade of red. The only distinctions would include contrast and intensity. But red, as a hue, would not exist because no other hues would be available to distinguish from it. While it’s true that criticism and opinion about art is rife with flaws and open to endless debate, such a dialog, in some form, is necessary for art. 

A colleague who used to teach art at Pratt Institute told me once about a student who claimed that some trash on her studio floor was as much art as what was on the walls.  His response: ‘No, what was on the floor was garbage and what was on the walls ‘might’ be art’.

Every artist needs to find a personal sweet spot between the pillar of discipline and the post of dynamic eclecticism (though preferably leaning toward the latter). A parallel continuum has success and failure at either end. One of the prime directives for standardization is the elimination of failure (removing the risk). But art, like invention, is one of those weird endeavors that require failures before magnificent success is possible.  To the extent failure is removed from art making is proportionate to the level of mediocrity achieved.  Commodity-driven art is typically safe fare because markets hate risk.  Anything that sells well is because the consumer is comfortable in knowing what they are purchasing.  Art and artists have traditionally had a hard time with this concept because it clashes with the passion and motivation for self-expression.  We all want to do what we want to do and not what some else thinks we should. That includes consumers - a.k.a. ‘collectors’. 

Ironically even the most radical of anti-bourgeoisie artists, having achieved commercial success, turn toward bourgeoisie conventions like hiring contemporary conservators to repair or restore their work when the non-archival materials do not hold up for ‘fall off’ the work.

The best failures are those that lead to something unexpectantly unique and profound. Great ideas or approaches sprout up when provided with the fertilizer of experimentation and watered with persistence. It means having a helluva time trying all sorts of crazy stuff  a paradise of self-expression that maintains all that undergrad energy.  But it also includes an added and vital layer of maturity. The worm in this particular apple is sorting out the magnificent from the magnificent failures. What should stay, what goes and how do you distinguish the two? This is a constant challenge that is most often settled by the distance of time. Eventually artists are either given to the ages or lost to them - usually fairly but too often not so.

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The Naked Truth

The Man steps up to his private little stage to confront his personal universe.  Behind him lies the plain pedestrian existence that all of humanity slogs through each and every day. Like everyone else He too habitually makes the trip there to earn his daily bread. Quite often he feels out of place in that world but nevertheless maintains the smiling mask of conformity. Sometimes it becomes more serious and he flies too close to the crazy edge of losing his sense of self, of forgetting who he really is.  Identity theft by routine and mendacity loom as very real threats to his being. But like most others he plays the game of ‘go-along-to-get-along’. As time has marched on, he has come to regard this part of life as more and more surreal while slowly experiencing a disconnect from it.  It’s as though his finger tips are quietly growing numb extending to his hands. Day after day, year after year he seems to be losing his grip on daily life.

But just now, within this slice of pleasurable candid reality he balances on a thin line between all that and all this.  The proportions of his personal universe generally range from 6 x 8 inches to 6 x 8 feet and his portal to it opens on the white nothingness of a blank piece of paper or a freshly primed canvas.  He stands before the vastness of possibility knowing exactly what he wants to do based on ideas already sketched out on paper, in his mind or from his dreams. Or maybe he has no clue and trusts to providence or his Muse to guide him.  These days he is rarely terrified by the prospect of having no ideas.  He has past the half-century mark after all, has been around and knows things.

Rapidly he does something to the surface with paint or charcoal and the germ of an idea is laid down. Or maybe he begins by arranging some torn pieces of paper or sketches something out on glass with paint then presses paper to it creating a quick monoprint.  By whatever means the internal dialog has begun between him and this image and at some point he sits back to take it all in. His looking is creatively dynamic as numerous possibilities for what he might do next flash through his head. Ideas collide within and ricochet off his knowledge of art history and his personal history of art  the creative territory already explored. New possibilities emerge as he looks and thinks, looks and thinks; which can go on for an hour or more. 

And sometimes he falls asleep while looking and thinking.  He falls asleep because it’s usually late when he finally gets to make art after a long exhausting day.  Maybe the espresso he had after dinner is not strong enough to counter the day’s exhaustive toll.  But eventually he rouses himself back onto the stage to perform more of the visual magic. Then follows another period of watching and contemplation.  This cycle persists throughout the creation of a piece. The concentrated gazing grows in duration as the work matures. This has as much to do with the raw seduction of sensual pleasure as it does with the complex interplay of the visual dialog.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Then, one day the work is done.  Or maybe it just looks done. Maybe it’s finished enough and he doesn’t want to screw it up.  Maybe he believes it’s complete but wants to live with it for awhile. Whatever the reason its time to stop, let some time pass and eventually give it a fresh look. And after a period of time then what? Does his creation get to live? Does it require additional cosmetic surgery to address some newly revealed imperfection? Or should the image just be put down like a sick animal and the materials recycled into something new?  Throughout all the activity, the working, the looking, the thinking and the reacting, during the whole process anything is possible. The beauty of success or the personal tragedy of failure dance together like one of those sparring couples expected to divorce someday but whose marriage somehow outlives everyone else’s.

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Like a neurotic Tarzan our Hero swings from the mighty tree of ego to the unsteady sapling of low self-esteem.  One day he sees himself as a great personage marching in time with the great artists of history, albeit a man of his own time. Even though he is disconnected from any empirical evidence to sustain this truth it doesn’t really matter.  In the orgasm of creativity his oversized Ego is right there beside him whispering sweet nothings into his ear and egging him on.  And he appreciates this company because it gives him license to proceed confidently unburdened by any reservations. Yes he critically evaluates his progress with the imagery and adjusts accordingly based on a dialog with the esthetics.  But he does not question the importance of the work at hand or whether it is worthwhile. When any clouds of doubt appear his ego pipes right up to shoe them away.

But one day the winds change, the barometric pressure drops and he wakes up to question all of it.  Maybe he exposed his work to a particular slice of the outside world and the reaction was disappointing in that none was forthcoming.  Or maybe his Ego decided to take a vacation at an inopportune time.  It could be large or small, the trigger for this, but here he is now dropped un-gently into the Valley of the Doldrums. He questions his art and his ability to make art. These images he has long labored over  are they worthy or just crap? Has he been wasting his time? How dare he compare himself to the great artists of history?  And why hasn’t his Ego called to check in, that bastard? When will he be back from vacation?

As a freshman in college the Man, a young man, had shown his high-school art work to his counselor.  The counselor was a well meaning individual but no artist and as they discussed his curriculum it was decided the Man would sign up for an advanced printmaking course.  Why bother with the basics? His high school art clearly demonstrated how far advanced he already was.  So he went out, registered for the advanced class, bought the book for the course and the required supplies.  Later he happened to see the printmaking teacher and mentioned that he had signed up for his course. The teacher’s reaction was one of great surprise. The end result was that the Man had to take all the intro classes just like every other freshman schnook.  It was an early lesson for him of paying too much attention to his Ego.

Fast forward about 7 years to where the Man is completing his first year in a Master of the Fine Arts program.  It has been a personally devastating year with 3 of 4 studio visits complete and he is beaten down and no better for the experience.  He openly questions whether he ever was or ever will be an artist (any notion or reference to ‘great’ is A.W.O.L. from the internal dialog).  Whatever he was or will be, for the present He doesn’t believe he is an artist and it’s not only due to the critical response from the faculty.  But he manages to rethink, regroup and figure what he needs to do next and he does it. Some quietly conservative and competent paintings emerge at the end of the year. But his greatest personal achievement is to have finally committed to pure abstract painting (his greatest obstacle that year).  And so for awhile he leaves behind his uncertainties about his artwork and doubts about being an artist.

Since then he has swung many times between those two opposing and unequally dimensioned trees though a new intensity for it ramped up after his move to New York City. But eventually he learned how to manage the boom and bust cycle between the outrages of his Ego and the depths of low self-esteem.  The resulting blisters he initially carried on his rear-end due to the repeated ass-kicking process following many a manic episode eventually hardened to calluses. Those boom/bust extremes have not gone away but they bother him less with the great unreeling of time.

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A boy lies sobbing on his bed.  He has recently turned 13 and his voice has the braying quality of a newly minted adolescent. He stands at the cusp of growing up; one foot steps forward to adulthood while the other remains firmly rooted in childhood. This day has been particularly hard for him.  He has recently put together a magnificent musical trio with 2 other 13 year olds.  But he has had a long and difficult history of interpersonal problems with the kid playing drums and today all of that came to a head.  Then his parents, with the exquisite timing such creatures possess, laid a big speech on him about getting more serious with his music.  Add to this that he is also physically exhausted and now the weight of it all has collapsed him into a spasm of tears and anguish. 

The boy is a musical prodigy with a specialty for composition and improvisation.  He plays the piano with a style and maturity that is well beyond his years.  His musical preference is jazz and his compositions are often moody but always rife with feeling.  His parents are extremely proud of him of course, but feel he needs to become more disciplined and serious about his talent  hence the lecture.  To begin with, they want him to document his compositions but fail to realize that for all his capabilities, he is not prepared to do this on his own.  He fears disappointing them maybe but definitely feels overwhelmed.  So he has gone to his bedroom for a meltdown.

Downstairs his parents hear his sobbing and their hearts break for him. After a short while the Man goes upstairs to the boy’s room.  He takes the boy into his arms to hold and comfort him just as he did when the boy was a small child. The boy tries to tell him why he is upset but the Man has a hard time understanding at first between what has become howling and the boy’s thirteen year old voice. Eventually a lot of information comes out, much of it unrelated to anything about the lecture.  Suddenly the boy blurts out the he doesn’t want to grow up and hates how is body is changing.  And then a heartfelt question rends itself from deep within: “What is meaning of life anyway?”

This is frightening to the Man at first, coming from this (to him) still young boy, but also a deep nerve has been struck since the Man has often wondered the same thing; lately with more frequency. What answer should he give?  The most immediate and honest gut response is, “I have no clue.” But he can’t say such a thing to this fragile creature he now holds close.  So he crafts some sort of answer that he guesses is probably unsatisfactory. Nevertheless it will have to suffice until he can think of something better. Eventually the Boy calms down and the two of them sit quietly together for awhile.  The emotional storm is over now and the Boy comes back to himself  a consummate nut-job: cutting up, joking and laughing.

Later, in the repose of thought when everyone in the house has gone to bed the Man reconsiders the boy’s question, his initial response to it and what a better answer would be. He might have begun by telling the boy that the question is as old as humanity, that anyone who thinks deeply asks the same thing and that there are numerous possible answers. For the boy in particular his love of music and self-expression are very important reasons for giving meaning to his life.

He would continue by mentioning that having a career is certainly important and even a noble activity for what we require to sustain us live like food and a home. But in large part it is the arts that give meaning to our lives - especially for creative people. But to ask what life means is not a singular event because the answer continues to evolve.  So the question requires patience and must be revisited from time to time.  As the boy grows up and experiences life he will find his own way to life’s meaning - as long as he keeps looking. And one way to do so is through his art.

He could have told this to the boy at the time but given the circumstances it’s a certainty he would not have been heard in full. So he will broach the subject again at a more favorable moment, maybe while the two of them are walking the dog in the evening.

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Back in the studio the Man has shed the mask he wears all day long for the benefit of everyone else.  Most people in his daily life would see his art-making as frivolous, a hobby at best, if he allowed them into this part of his life.  They would not understand (or care) how important his imagination is for anchoring him to his identity.  But in the relaxed solitude of creativity He doesn’t give a damn what anyone else thinks about him or what he is doing. For these brief encounters at least, he is as free as is possible; his only obligation is evolving the imagery on the stretch of canvas or piece of paper in front of him.  If he fails completely in the struggle to bring the imagery to life it doesn’t matter - he treasures the experience of trying.

In the role of creator immersed in his personal universe with his ego at one side and his Muse at the other, the Man (like all artists) has the audacity to imitate God.  Is God displeased? Well that’s doubtful given that God has endowed many of His creatures with the talent, skill and desire to express themselves in such a way. If Walt Disney’s maxim ‘imitation is the highest form flattery’ holds any truth then God is most certainly pleased. As God-imitator the Man lords over his images and decides which live or die over the passage of time. This activity he’s engaged in is an antithesis to death and destruction. In his private sanctuary the Man partakes of a purely honest affirmation and God-like love of life.

And so in the studio it is not is about money or politics or countless other fruitless trivialities. It is simply a place where an intercourse takes place with these images in an exquisite dance. Tangible realities and a knowing engagement with materials is occurring. A hyper-reality unfolds within a rarified capsule of specialized time that ignores and defies that other reality. When making art the Man is most revealed in a transparently naked honesty. Does he feel sorry for himself that his creative time is so truncated? He does not. Yes, he wishes he could have much more of it; that the majority of his time could be devoted to making art.  But he considers himself very fortunate for truly knowing who he is, what he values and what gives meaning to his life.  He also realizes that he is luckier than most for knowing this.

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Deconstructing Andy

Just what is it about Andy Warhol that I’ve found so annoying all these years? Is it the commercial success and fame he achieved?  Is it the obvious shallowness of his images and that this constitutes the content of this art?  Is it because I think he represents an antithesis to the visual in visual art  a sort of ‘painting’ assassin?  Is it that he was obsessed with and constantly strove for celebrity status?  Or is it that he and others were a side-show distraction that eventually mushroomed to consume the circus known as Art World?  In some measure I suppose all of the above factor in. But once upon a time my opposition to Pop Art was once far more voracious then today. I simply hated it.  But I’ve mellowed with the years due to maturity and knowing more things. Still, Andy remains an irritant like the proverbial strawberry seed in a wisdom tooth.

A few years ago Lou Reed and John Cage put out an album called ‘Songs for Drella’ which provided a particularly personal take on Warhol’s life with a different honesty then his ‘Diaries’ offer.  The songs chronicle a bittersweet history revealing the complicated relationship Reed (especially) and Cage had with him. The album helped me to regard Warhol from a different perspective and my outlook softened on him as a person.  Still I’ve not changed my views of him as an artist. I still think his work, as well as many of the Pop Artists, is overrated.  If art is compared to a sumptuous feast, Pop Art is the dessert table  all of it very sweet and tasty but not where you go for nourishment.

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To take Warhol seriously, indeed to fully consider Pop Art overall, is to accept the premise that the purely mundane can become art based on the recognition and authority of the Artist.  An explicit goal wrapped up in this concept is the breakdown of distinctions between so called ‘high’ and ‘low’ art.  Pop Art emerged as a visceral reaction to the 20 odd years when Abstract Expressionism dominated the art world.  As with any movement, the time had eventually come for something radically new and Pop Art danced into the Lime Light. The new movement promised that the masses would finally get art that was immediately accessible.  This took the form of mundane images from Warhol’s soup cans to Lichtenstein’s blow ups of dramatic cartoon images.  The shift from Abstract Expressionism to Pop coordinated precisely with the same transition occurring with music where Rock was supplanting Jazz as the popular music. In both cases the new form was lighter, offered near instant gratification and was less demanding on its audience.

Pop Art delivered a satisfying poke in the eye to traditional notions of what art was supposed to be.

What Picasso was for Cubism, Dali represented for the Surrealists and Pollock for Abstract Expressionism, Warhol emerged as the emblematic Pop artist.  He is synonymous with the movement and found status as a household name (with plenty of self-help to make it so).  But fame had always been a primary driver for Warhol and he achieved it, though with tragic consequences culminating in the 1968 Valerie Solanas shooting that almost killed him.  In many ways renown represented both content and subject matter for his art.  Look at some of his most famous images: Marilyn, Elvis and Mao and all rendered in those flat bright colors, devoid of personality and stripped of humanity or other content to reveal only their statuses as cultural icons. 

On the other hand, with all that notoriety and his unadulterated chutzpah Andy attempted to elevate mundane images and objects to the level of art.  But who would seriously look at a Brillo box as an art object or image of it without his authority in drawing attention to it?  The question is what matters most: the images by themselves or their context and the authority of the artist?  Strictly as images or objects Brillo boxes and cans of Campbell’s soup in the Supermarket are one thing; as oversized images in an art gallery or a museum they are supposed to be something else. But how do the images or objects, on their own, differ by where they are and who places them there?  Is it possible to transform low art or (non-art) into high art simply by moving it to a different location? If so then you could (and eventually people did) put anything into a gallery or museum and its status would be elevated.  All of these questions and the answers to them combined to define content for a great deal of Pop Art but especially for Warhol’s work. 

Campbell’s and the makers of Brillo must have loved all the free advertising generated by the focus on their products as popular art  an oblique effect of Warhol’s art.

Of course the inverse was equally possible. If the mundane can rise in stature by virtue of context and the authority of the artist what is to say that an exhibition space or an artist are not diminished by the inclusion of the commonplace?  And what about the dependency on an art context for these objects and images to determine content? The assumption is that context is the overriding factor for determining the content of the images. But images are always more powerful then context or an artist’s intention.  This is because any image in and of itself is open to an independent interpretation.  But context was something that Duchamp had adequately addressed a generation earlier and with far more depth, thought and subtlety of humor.  Duchamp’s goals were genuinely provocative in questioning the context of Art World plus the nature of what art really is and how it functions within that context.  Warhol was on to the same thing but with shallower goals and priorities. 

As already indicated, another of Andy’s prime directives was the presentation, as well as his own pursuit, of fame. Look at how his images of celebrities are rendered. In these images he seems to have extracted only the patina  the thin veil of what celebrity reveals which is telling enough. The imagery is ready-made for gift shop miniatures with all the depth of a logo design or a publicity kit.  One interpretation of the work is that it shows the shallowness of what celebrity is.  Persona is revealed as a masking the personal.  When Warhol shows us his multiple Marilyns the images are imbued with poignancy in presenting a character called ‘Marilyn Monroe’ that had gone beyond the control of Marilyn herself.  (Monroe acknowledged this herself: She was once out in public with a friend looking very ordinary in a scarf and sunglasses and said, “Do you want to see her?”  Then she let her hair out, removed the sunglasses and was immediately recognized as her celebrity persona). With this a consideration of the content opens with a question. If he was investigating the shallowness of celebrity as part of content and subject matter, how does his own pursuit of it factor in?   Was Warhol presenting irony or was he hopelessly immersed in it?

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After Pop Art battered down the barriers to high art, a new wave of like-minded people flooded in.  Over the years the inconvenience of common standards was dispensed with because now anyone could call anything art and no worries.  For me this ran the gamut from an artist I read about in England who swept dust into piles on the street (As I recall one of the winners of the dubious ‘Turner’ prize) to a show I saw of a woman who displayed her used, dried-out, tampons on a gallery wall.  The new atmosphere eventually gave us Serrano’s Piss Christ and Hirst’s experiments with animals in formaldehyde. Credentials were now more then ever based on the cult of personality (or simply on the bizarre) rather then on the quality of art objects which began to look like by-products. Most critics and contemporary museum curators eventually got with the program and so traditional ideas and attitudes toward art continued to unravel throughout the next couple of decades.  But eventually an artistic heir-apparent to Warhol emerged in the persona of Jeff Koons and Koons was ready-made for distributing ready-mades.

In the 90s it was telling that at many crowded exhibition openings I attended in New York almost no one was looking at the art on the walls and the primary topic of conversation seemed to be everyone’s personal real estate.

If Warhol is a watered-down version of Duchamp then Koons is a watered-down version of Warhol; though Koons’ real mentor and inspiration was Dali (another supreme salesman of image over images).  The well-tread path of questioning art and context had by now become institutionalized.  Koon’s twist was to encompass crass commercialism as subject matter with huckersterism as content.  By now images of soup cans, Brillo boxes or Elvis had come to look rather quaint. The genius of Koons was the application of his persona and salesmanship as an art medium. In essence Jeff was and is a curator of commercial cultural crap which he scales up to oversized proportions and sells Art World on the old concept that these objects of his choosing are art.  It was a repackaging of the same old story  art by authority and persona of the Artist beyond what the objects or images are.

So within a critical or historical context what does Koons bring to the table beyond what has already been covered? Apparently not a whole lot it seems. If Warhol explored the cult of celebrity in his work while achieving it, Koons explores the culture of consumerism and salesmanship while masterfully practicing the latter. And the same lingering questions exist for him as did for Warhol with a slight twist.  Is Koons a true believer in his own pitch or is he playing an angle  a last laugh on ArtWorld?  He does not claim any sense of irony with regard to his work and presents it on face value (which leaves the critics scratching their heads in puzzlement).  Apparently what you see is what you get and what you get is consumerist kitsch scaled large (with a connection more to another Pop Artist  Oldenburg - then with Warhol).

But naughty Jeffery overreached back in the early 90s with his infamous ‘Made in Heaven’ show at the Sonnebend Gallery in SoHo.  In the aftermath, it seems that, hmmm… maybe there was a limit to what was acceptable as art after all. A minor indicator of the cultural divide was my experience at the opening.  With exquisitely bad taste (in view of the gallery) I had the audacity to bring a bottle of beer (premium beer in my defense) into the hallowed space and was subsequently scolded by a Sonnebend minion for my offense.  Meanwhile, not more than a few feet away, were the most blatantly tasteless images of Koons with his wife of the time  Cicciolina (Ilona Staller) - engaged in all manner of explicitly sexual acts. The moment reeked of irony and was one of the very best experiences I had at any opening before or since.  But this show was the straw that broke this camel’s back and Koon’s career collapsed - for awhile. 

Koons subsequently dropped out of the public glare and it wasn’t all about the show.  Not long after his marriage also came to a bitter end.  But like all great salesmen (especially in this country) he rose up from the ashes of failure and is back in full force cajoling money out of the idle rich to fund his current projects.  But credit where credit is due. Yes, Koons’ objects and images are fatuous, tasteless and completely devoid of content.  True, absent even of the bare thread of irony to hang by, I can’t think of a reason to see a show of his work.  Yet, whether knowingly or not (the latter is my perception) he may have taken the concept of art and context to its logical end. In continually persuading Art World to fund his projects, show his work and give him critical press he reveals something well beyond the art objects which is the seduction of good pitchman. Maybe this gives Koons (and all of us) the last laugh in a ‘the Emperor (who is Art World here) has no clothes’ sort of way.  If so, he gets credit for having come full circle back to Duchamp. Yet I wonder whether he is thoughtful enough to appreciate this.

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So what is to be done with the Andys and Jeffs of the Art World?  Do we censor them?  Of course not because the next question is who does the censoring?  Then if they can be censored then why wouldn’t any other artist potentially get the same treatment?   And in truth, though I once condemned Warhol and though I still find his work has a Formica depth compared with other artists (even other pop artists such as Rauschenberg and Johns), I also recognize that Pop Art was reflective of the sea change taking place in the culture.  There was that large cultural shift taking place in all creative forms as we moved from the 50s to the 60s. Sex and drugs and Rock n’ Roll swept through the country and Pop Art participated, celebrated and promoted the change. 

In the 60s a new generation had taken over and with the old rules, standards and boundaries were knocked down and a spate of hedonistic creativity took place. Where once the aspiration was to become an adult the new impulse was the opposite.  And what was not to like about? Art didn’t have to be opaque and ponderous; it could simply be amusing  let the critics do the heavy lifting to sort out meaning and significance. The 60s evolved wildly like some sort of kaleidoscopic psychedelic rollercoaster ride with ever increasing quick gratification and a corresponding decreasing attention span.

Within the realm of Pop Art nobody had the patience anymore to spend a lot of time with the images to absorb their meaning. It was a fait acompli that senses triumphed over sensibility.

But there is an underlying problem with Pop Art that time has revealed which is its inherent existential nature.  Any figurative imagery reflects a cultural moment but so much of Pop Art in particular is trapped in it like an insect in amber. When you look at Warhol’s imagery today it has accumulated an odd tarnish of nostalgia.  Once definitive icons of popular culture, today those silk-screen images of Marilyn and Elvis instead offer a poignant reminiscence (given their individual tragic endings) of the 50s and 60s culture. Apart from understanding that cultural context and Warhol’s obsession with celebrity what else does the imagery by itself provide?  Very little as far as painting is concerned; like those cans of Campbell’s soup there is a limited shelf life.

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Great painting relies on imagery that exceeds the period in which it was created.  Today we can look at paintings that are, say, 500 years old and a couple of options are available.  There is the art historical context in which the narrative is analyzed to understand the subject matter.  But then there is also the wide array of the purely visual which is independent of the narrative or art history. It is this that lifts a great work of art out of its mooring to time.  It’s not as though Pop Art is incapable of achieving this but that it’s less possible.

I’ve made my peace with Warhol and Pop Art.  I get the ideas being presented and can even riff on the crazy raw energy this work exudes along with the ‘anything goes’ perspective it brings. I react to it precisely the same way that the hedonism and raw energy of rock music gets me pumped up. But it’s not nearly enough on its own. I know too much about what I want and need which means making repeatedly trips to encounter a work of art, a piece of music a film or book and coming back evermore enriched.

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Painting in the Age of Electronic Communication

I ripped off my title for this piece from Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.  That essay focused on tying art to Politics as a contemporary concept and provides a criticism of the art object as unique.  As Benjamin wrote: “For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art for its parasitical dependence on ritual”.  The ritual refers to the primitive, feudal, or bourgeois structures of power and its further association with magic (religious or secular).  There is a nice Socialist appeal to this notion I suppose, but it is seems rather dated today.

For one thing, Benjamin assumes that the problem lays with the art rather then the audience.  With mechanical reproduction art is supposedly open to everyone.  But what do we end up with today  art that inspires the masses because it’s accessible to everyone?  No, instead the gamut runs from someone like Tom Kincaid with his sappy, sentimental and badly rendered paintings knocked out as ‘product’ to the lowest common denominator of pornography. Perhaps Warhol was the best shot at making art for the people but the average citizen will be hard pressed to own one of his works today.  I agree that art is open to everyone but you only get from it what you put into it.  In other words, the masses need to get up off their lazy asses and do some work for their reward or else they get the art they deserve. 

But today we are well beyond the allure of physical machines. For a long time now the fascination that began with computers has since morphed into all sorts of other electronic gear.  And all of it just gets smaller and increasing complex each year.  The boom-boxes of the 80s and 90s have been compressed to iPods small enough to clip on to your shirtfront (and fortunately can only be heard with headphones).  Our telephones go with us everywhere and seem to do everything except brew coffee (so far).  It is all so mesmerizing even as it is fleeting though no one seems to notice this or care.

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Many of us spend most of our time each business day in great danger, constantly exposed to what is surely a cancer of the soul.  It is something I call ‘Death by Cubicle’ and it is caused by living way too much in the moment.  Take for example a particular document, a spreadsheet say, which becomes a crucial faux-artifact around which an entire day (or more) revolves.  Quite often the content in that document (which need not exist on paper) must be addressed immediately or maybe by the end of the day (EOD in short-speak).  This thing which is composed of pure concept has the power to provoke manic behavior and wildly contrasting emotions in the persons who are invested in it.  The outcome can devastate or elate its victim once the thing is completed; depending, of course, on the result.  But regardless of how it comes out, for better or ill, the dictatorial aspect of the thing is eventually rendered toothless once the clock has run out. It can then be safely discarded, buried as it were in the memory hole.  No worries  a fresh new document will most likely take its place the next day setting off the whole crazy rat race again.

Over-exposure to such a routine risks having your whole world defined by a temporal, unsatisfying existence.  Another marker for this in the corporate world is when a staff turnover takes place and one or more people leave or are tossed out.  Too often it’s simply POOF! And suddenly they are gone (the corporate machine has become very efficient at ‘disappearing’ people in the last couple of decades).  No longer a part of the daily landscape these people who may have been around for years, are all too quickly out of mind as well as sight. It makes no difference whether they were liked or not, the effect is the same.  In a way it’s like witnessing a death:  “Say, what happened to Joe  wasn’t he just here yesterday?  What’s that? Gone you say?  Hmmm… too bad. Well, back to work then.”

Electronics were supposed to be another category of labor-saving devices what with their speed and efficiency for getting large tasks done. Instead, as with many other technological advances, they just speeded everything up instead.

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So much of our contemporary world is spent in the ‘moment’  what I like to call the eternal now. If you wear a digital wristwatch you see what I mean  no past or future is offered as with analog watches  only the current moment is available, the time right now.  We don’t futz with our watches anymore either, no winding, resetting, etc.  Digital watches don’t require those little activities that help jam a marker in the eternal now.  And if the damn thing breaks we’ll just throw it away and buy a new one.  New watches are cheap enough - time itself has become a cheap commodity, easily and frequently spent.  Only time isn’t really cheap - it’s just been cheapened.

The richness of experience is too often reduced to segmented moments colored with self-importance and inflated in an isolation that fails to weave a tapestry of the whole.  The frenzied contemporary environment fakes us out into thinking our lives are much bigger and more important than they actually are from one moment to the next.  The eternal now has many of us trapped into collectively forfeiting the importance of remembrance and reflection. Such cultural narcissism can even compromise public safety as when someone receives a text message that just has to be read and responded to immediately even though the recipient is driving a car fast enough to potentially kill someone (including themselves) in a moment of distraction.  Vanity is inflated to the extent that it assumes the mantle of reality in the virtual landscape.  It’s easy enough to float along in such a world until BANG!! - your car hits a guard rail or a pedestrian, that goddamn cell phone is knocked from your hand and you are belly-up with the concrete staying power, realism and un-ignorable finality of injury or death.

But why be so grim and dramatic?  In reality the tragedy is more mundane and subtle then such extremes.  For those of us that daily plod our way to the workplace at the end of the day, at the end of it all, what is left?  Who will remember or care about all those business documents we made come out right, those all-important-in-the-moment emails that were sent? What sort of legacy does technological speed and efficiency engender?  Not much it seems because the experiences and the objects left behind are transient and historically inconsequential.

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In our contemporary global electronic milieu where and how does art, particularly something seemingly archaic as visual art, specifically painting, fit in - if at all?  A reasonable question from the contemporary culture is why anyone would still bother to make paintings today. Many would conclude that it’s all been over for a long time and anyone with the desire to see it should just visit a museum (or even more easily go online). At times it seems there is no longer room for contemporary painting what with all that sexy technology to get jiggy and creative with these days. 

How does something as un-cool as painting compete with all the clever apps you can download on your iPhone?  And what are oil paint and watercolors when you get to play in Photoshop?

Despite the deluge of flashy electronica over the past decade or two, painting still offers something valuable which addresses how we relate to time. Unlike electronic communication painting is not dominated by the existentialuality of being trapped in the moment.  Conversely painting offers timelessness because it is inclusive of the past, the present and the future all at once. How is this possible?  Start with a relationship to the present which differs from the notion of the eternal now.  The present of any painting is most often rooted in its subject matter, the narrative of what is depicted.  This may seem less so with overtly abstract art but it’s still there; the qualities that identify a painting with a particular era.  Think of the religious themes and subject matter that define Renaissance art or the sort of abstraction explored by the American Modernists versus that of the Abstract Expressionists who soon followed.  It is those qualities that locate a work of art in a particular period of time, its own present.

Painting channels the past and future even as it moves through time.  Unlike verbal or written languages imagery is far more accessible; albeit the interpretations of what is seen will vary considerably but that just goes with the territory.  The history of visual art spans from say, the Lascaux cave paintings to now. Imagery and approaches to art-making have changed constantly through time to establish that history. But even as change occurs, imagery and how we process it has and always will be inclusive of some constants such as a visceral, sensual response to what we see. 

Today we can only surmise what the cave imagery meant to the contemporary culture that created it (the jurisdiction of art historians).  But simply, as pure imagery, it still speaks to us today outside of its history as it will to future generations.  This reveals another distinction between technology and painting in that progress is only inherent to the former.  Painting or any of the purely visual arts shift (or even evolve), but this differs from marking progress.  Paintings we make today, on a broad cultural level, are not necessary better or worse then from any other cultural period. All we can attempt to discern is the difference between good and bad art.

An important contrast between painting and technology is the materiality of paintings versus technology’s virtuality. Given their uniqueness as physical objects, paintings can only be encountered live - ‘in the flesh’ as it were  no other experience will do (in contrast to Benjamin’s argument for reproduced imagery).  While it’s possible to see images of paintings represented online or in books this can’t compare with the actual thing. A painting is tactile and conceptual with a particular relationship to light and how it is reflected from its surface.  Seeing is ‘literally’ believing when it comes to paintings and with that experience comes a grounding in reality.

Paintings are things, objects in the world that present one reality while approximating another.  Technology comprises devices in the world that only facsimilate realities.

Technology has increasingly become portable and accessible nearly anywhere depending on the device and its software even as it evolves into smaller.  Once the province of science fiction, today it is not inconceivable that one day a chip of some sort can be planted into our brains bypassing the need for any other devices.  In this case virtuality will have very likely cross-pollinated with reality and (God help us!) we may no longer know the difference.  (Consider some aspects of our media-driven culture, so called reality and political shows for example, and we seem to be well on our the way done that road).

Paintings provide and/or alter their own context on a couple of levels.  First there is the perspective of the time period in which they were created  a defined array of moments in history. Some measure of a painting is inevitably based on when it was created.  Then there is the context in which paintings are presented at any moment in time whether it is in a raw studio space, a gallery or a museum.  Paintings are affected by and affect where they are shown.  They shape context as they are shaped by it.  A work of art by an unknown artist in the studio is one thing but the same painting hung in the contemporary wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art takes on an certain aura.  Or maybe it doesn’t, maybe it cheapens the space and rather then living up to the importance of where it is.  Or perhaps with time it comes to exalt the space to go above and beyond the institution.

Not so technology which is both non-committed to context and easily accessible anywhere  “Have computer (or cell phone, iPod or Blackberry), will travel” is engrained in us.  Techno-context such as it is remains confined and limited to whatever particular device is required for the interaction.  Looking at images from one computer screen to another can vary a great deal depending on the make, size and age of the machine. But the presentation itself never wavers  those images glow back at us through the device and never with their own reflected light.  Images in such a setting are ubiquitous and lose their uniqueness of presence and place. In so doing they also forfeit value; they are more easily disposable.

So what conclusions are to be drawn: Painting good, electronic communication bad?  Well hardly.  Each offers something valuable within its own sphere of influence.  The trouble begins when one tries to supplant the other which nearly always seems to be technology trying to replace painting.  This is impossible since, as already pointed out, painting offers an experience that only it can deliver on.  Try it any other way and what remains are conceptual mind-games.  As already described painting is fleshy, sensual, tactile and demands a time commitment before its secrets are revealed.

Technological communication in the arts works best with the performing arts.  The films and music and we experience are other-worldly compared to anything that has come before.  But even the distribution and exposure of still images has benefitted immeasurably from technology. The website on which these words and images are presented is a testament to that.  You can’t experience the paintings directly here but you can get exposure that may further prompt you to see or even own the work presented.  The trick is to try and imagine those flickering internet images as creating a representation of the real thing without being fooled that they are somehow one and the same.

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A Critique of Critics

"Pay no attention to what critics say. No statue has ever been put up to a critic." 

This quote is attributed to a number of people but the original source seems to be the Finish composer Jean Sibelius (1865  1957).  The Artist part of me applauds this statement, at least in relation to the so-called ‘Pros’ out there writing for the mainstream publications.  For many of my ilk the professional critic is an anathema.  Why? Because they so often don’t get the art, these expert viewers, and too often the prime directive is not the art but other interests and agendas. What do they really know about the art, we ask?  Who invited them in for commentary on this thing we struggle with? Who the hell are they are to say anything about our art?

But then… there is the Art Critic part of me with a bevy of several art reviews under my belt having written about wide diverse of art, albeit confined within the general perimeters of abstraction.  Prior to writing about art it was difficult for me to remove my artist persona and put on my objectivity suit.  The impulse was to be drawn to the sort of art I make - painterly abstraction.  Yet, I found that I had something useful to say (in my humble opinion).  For example, grid painting was something that when encountered in a gallery or museum compelled me to run to the next set of rooms.  But after sustained viewing of (i.e. writing about) work by various grid painters like Joseph Albers, Donald Judd, Pat Lipsky, Gudrun Mertes-Frady and others I’ve come to accept the genre as well as to appreciate its content and importance. I still can’t say I like it any more now then I did before but my attempts at art criticism have at least expanded my personal oeuvre.

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Sibelius tells us to pay no attention to the critics which is a polite way of saying they are always full of shit. In so doing he also makes the case for the artist as the sole authority on their work.  I think most artists would agree with this (unless of course they are being stroked by those same critics). In making art we artists are involved in a highly narcissistic activity; the imitation of God as it were, as creators.  Like a parent we don’t like it when critical things are said about our creations (even if they are true) because we have a deeply intimate relationship to our art. Everything we do is good, indeed great.  If it wasn’t we would have fixed it while we were working on it.  How dare anyone point out something is wrong with art that they cannot know as well?  No one except I the Artist is truly qualified to have a final say on my body of work. Ergo: The Artist is always right about his or her art, right?  If so then the logical conclusion is that all art is good; at least from the artist’s perspective.

It can be expected that the critics disagree with Sibelius.  “Okay”, they may say to him, “No statues; so keep your stinking statues, but don’t you dare ignore us”.  Yet critics care little about what artists think - their target audience is much broader.  Ideally critics should function as an objective interface between the art and the viewers. If the critics are lucky they might even teach the artists something. But critics don’t aim to affect or influence artists as was once true of the generation that produced Clement Greenberg.  Based on their objective stance no one except a critic is truly qualified to have a final say on an artist’s body of work.  Ergo: The Critic is always correct in their opinion of the art, right?  The logical conclusion for this argument is that a critic is required to truly understand the art.

Compared to the past, contemporary criticism is a whole different animal in measure with what the art has become.  The cult of career for both camps has overshadowed a dominion once ruled by ideas.

Okay, okay, so admittedly this brief summary of artists and critics is simplistic.  While there some of each who match their description in full, in truth most share some portion of these characteristics.  Both camps are responsible for distinguishing objectivity from subjectivity and both require some proportion of each. Yet artists and critics are deeply invested in their egos, which for the former is manifested in the art they make and for the latter in their opinions about the art. And neither can truly survive without the other, at least given their mutual idealistic objectives.  It’s like witnessing a marriage between a couple who bicker and fight for years but who never break up even as all of their contentedly married friends do.

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But what of the poor viewer tangled in this web of conflicting egos and demands to get their attention for the art? The artists ask you to look at their work and the critics want to tell what to look at. Who do you trust between the two? There is no easy answer to that question because it requires an informed opinion, one based on a combination of time, experience and personal taste. But once achieved viewers will know what art is worthy of their attention and which critics can deepen the experience of it for them.  It’s a stretch for most but there are viewers like that do exist and sometimes we call them collectors.

So I’ve referenced critics in reference to viewers. But artists actually have their own critics, those particular individuals they need for an outside opinion about their work. Most typically these critics comprise other artists, colleagues and friends trusted to offer relative objectivity.  Idealistically the quality and the fabric of this criticism are such that the emphasis is weighted toward ideas and esthetics within an informal context.  Artists require this type of input, in part, as a check on the excesses of their egos.  Taken in the right way such criticism has the power to inform, instruct and even shape an artist’s work.  But artists are a naturally competitive lot and the driver for some of this criticism (as with most human endeavors) is not always for the most noble of reasons.  As an artist, the trick is to find people you trust and then be open and objective enough yourself to honestly consider and process what they have to say.

Years ago, when I was still living in New York, the artist and critic Stephen Westfall paid me a studio visit.  I was in a transitory process at the time  an egotistically delicate period in which I was no longer entirely happy with the body of work or ideas I was pursing. At the time I was trying to incorporate the whiteness of the wall with cut-out, painted images on Masonite and canvas but struggling toward a satisfactory result. Stephen was generous with his time and talked a lot.  Much of it wasn’t directly useful but at one point, after reviewing the painterliness of my imagery, he commented with a question  “Why don’t you just paint?”  This simple question stating the obvious resonated with me.  Thereafter I dropped my attempt at the conceptual interaction with the wall and went on for the better of a decade to create personally satisfying abstract paintings. Would I have done so without his observation?  Maybe, but that question asked at that time and in that context was just the spark I needed to re-ignite my creative fire.

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Taste is a major factor when looking at art and judging its value (outside of monetary worth). An open question is whether such a supremely subjective concept has any possibility for objectivity. The tired maxim “I don’t know much about art but I know what I like” argues that only taste is necessary; not even knowledge or experience is required.  The arrogant stupidity of such a statement is embarrassing (or should be) for anyone expressing it (at least without irony). The first implication is that a first impression is all that is needed to render worthiness. This is true of anything without depth such as most of our contemporary pop culture  by design there just isn’t anything beneath the surface.  The mistake is in assuming the same notion for art that is possessed of multiple layers of meaning not immediately evident at the first encounter. The second implication is that, unlike most anything else, with visual art everyone assumes artistic authority and expertise based solely on what they happen to like.

Suppose you required brain surgery and someone, not a doctor, shows up and says, “I don’t know much about brain surgery, but I know where to cut”.

Too often first impressions are incomplete, overly subjective and not to be trusted; at least without the gravity of experience.  Art with any real depth demands more time to reveal itself and won’t compromise on this.  “You think you know me, that you understand me?” says a painting, “The lunatic that created me spent many difficult hours to do so and under some shitty circumstances. So I’ve got plenty to tell you.  But if you think you can know me with one quick, side-long and dismissive glance well, move along  you bore me!”  So it is why taste cannot be left only to subjectivity.  A first impression is fine for the initial draw  whether you are intrigued or repulsed  but if there is no reason for a second, third or fourth look something is wrong with either the viewer or the art.

If subjectivity alone cannot be trusted can objectivity be applied to taste?  It seems hard to imagine how given the personal and intimate nature of taste. But it is possible if turned over to experts, those with a particular talent for it.  This is the theme and conclusion of an 18th century essay by David Hume called, “On the Standard of Taste”.  It’s an old bit of writing but the ideas it presents are ageless.  At one point Hume references a particular anecdote to illuminate the concept. The story goes that there were 2 brothers in a village who were said to be particularly gifted for discerning taste in wine. As a test of their skills a group of citizens produced a cask of premium wine and asked them both for an evaluation. After each had sampled it, the first said he denoted a very slight taste of iron.  The second brother said no, it was just a hint of leather that was detected.  They were both ridiculed soundly for these fatuous observations.  But later, when the cask had been emptied, lo and behold  an iron key on a leather strap was discovered.

Hume’s larger point is that objective taste requires a particular aptitude of which most of us are not self-possessed of. So the alternative is to seek out those with that particular skill. Does this come automatically and quickly?  As with anything of value, it does not.  The onus remains on the viewer as well as the artist to choose their taste-makers (i.e. critics) based on experience, comparison, trust and somewhat on their own subjective taste.  In other words, it may take a while but eventually most anyone can discern the bullshitters from who has the goods.  Where do you start? You’ll have to invest in time and experience to find out.

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The best criticism is always constructive.  For a thoughtful person this is easy enough to recognize because the intent is transparent within the content.  Instead of relying solely on pre-formed opinions, concepts or experience a good critic is open to learning something new from a work of art. Negative reviews are bound to occur and there is certainly nothing wrong with this; indeed they are necessary. But what drives a review good or bad? Is the basis for it a thorough analysis of the work with the goal to enlighten the reader (and even the critic)? Or is the output an exercise in ego masturbation and/or fashionable trash-talking?  I am always distrustful of anyone too over-confident in their opinions about anything but especially something as indefinitive as art.

I recall a horror story in which an undergraduate student at a major university known for its emphasis on the arts was having her work reviewed by a faculty member.  The so-called teacher went through the student’s portfolio casually separating out the images with the distinction, “This is good” or “This is shit”.  The presumptive self-superiority of this reaction is curiously exquisite in its complete uselessness.  What is anyone to do with this information like this except to dismiss it for the conceited self-pleasuring that it is?  Unfortunately most undergraduates are too intimidated to say something back like, “Well, you might be right about my work… but you are definitely full of shit”.

Tom Shales, the film critic for the Washington Post, used to occasionally do reviews for National Public Radio.  I can’t recall a single positive review from him on NPR though and after awhile I began to wonder if maybe he didn’t really despise movies.

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So who knows better and more about art, the artists or the critics?  My gut says go with the artists first. But the thing is, once they have completed their work and released it into the world, like a child it stands independent of their influence.  The best an artist can offer, post-completion, is a particular informed opinion that may be interesting and true but is not necessarily definitive.  Of course this is not a bad thing; but the artist’s opinion just needs to be understood for what it is  an opinion. And the critics? For the pros, trustworthiness has been in question for some time since the bottom line of most art magazines over the past few decades has been driven via the advertising provided by the galleries and museums.  Maybe it’s going too far to suggest that good reviews are tied directly to advertisers. But I believe a correlation can be made as to which shows and galleries are featured in publications based on who is paying for advertising. This casts some shadow of a doubt on the objectivity of the reviewers.

Ultimately it still remains on the viewer to sort the two out. In that effort perhaps it is the tension between these constituencies that is most valuable  the dialog between the creators and the professional viewers.  The best critics will have something useful to offer in their reviews.  The best artists are open to constructive criticism and have plenty of interesting things to say about their work.  The worst of both are enslaved to their egos.  And the reality for most (as with any set of extremes) lies somewhere in between.

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