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June 10, 2016, What’s All The Fuss About
What’s all the fuss about?
Why were hundreds of hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives sacrificed for art? Those objects that hang on walls or on pedestals in great temples of culture. Places where we preserve and reflect a way of life none of us can imagine having lived. The American Alliance of Museums says there are approximately 850 million annual visits to American museums. More than the yearly attendance of all major-league sporting events and theme parks combined. In 2014, the world market in art was nearly 58 billion dollars. A federal agency, the National Endowment for (all) the Arts was about 15 million dollars. I believe it fair to say there are more square feet, horizontal and vertical, devoted to the visual arts than all other art forms.
Why is it all that work of mostly dead fellows is so revered, regarded as sacred… so valuable? Why do powerful people boast about it, steal it, kill for it, and weep in its presence? Why did Nazis steal it, the allies try to bomb around it and Leon Black pay $120,000,000 for “The Scream” when there are four others like it out there. All by the same painter?
Why does the UN claim the destruction of art and historical “art”-ifacts is a crime against humanity?
What’s all the fuss about?
Why is it, when they were alive the people who created these masterpieces meant so little and when they were dead so much? Other than academics why is it most people do not care what the creators had to say verbally even after they are dead? How did or do they create such objects?
Does anybody consider the artist’s very different view of the world might enlighten them further and ease our way into the future? The one artist’s saw while they were alive. Their visions, the ones they painted and sculpted, are the very ones people remember long after our time has passed. And yet, in our time, nobody seems very interested in the meaning of the work, to say nothing of the creator’s intentions. Art too often today is entertainment and thus its memory fleeting as yesterday’s soccer game. The proliferation of “art fairs” is a factor.
By what measure can we ever know the best artistic successes? A question for all artists and the rest of us. Artists are about questions. We are not about answers. That is for others to consider so do not look for answers here. Artists don’t follow your rules because we don’t know how and perhaps we don’t care. Maybe that is what scares or intimidates so many.
What is it artists say aloud that frightens others or is so off-putting?
The artist’s voice, as well as their work, is vitally important to us now. Perhaps needed more than ever before. The mission of art changes with the times. Believe that, know it, and consider a new kind of relevance as you read these pages.
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June 17, 2016, Essences
Essences
Deep in every issue, every thought and idea is a quintessence sometimes called the fifth element. A test: If it isn’t there, the ideas are most likely irrelevant to the moment. Essence is what many of us search for, and often in vein. Because it is frequently elusive, we give up in despair. When we never even tried to get there, we had been easily diverted and thus strayed off into a place of no resolution. It happens to us all. There have been many greased pigs in my life.
The evidence of this lies in peripheral information that isn’t central to the issue but makes us feel as though we have accomplished our goal when we really haven’t. A tough love issue in art. Another test of what is addressed and written in this book. We tried but often never even came close. It is so discouraging. It is so not, what art is about. What is worse, not only did we deceive ourselves but others too since they fell for it.
Digging into the center, looking for the prime causation and theory of everything is rowdy business. We are usually in unfamiliar territory. To get there, we have to travel uncharted waters of the mind using unapproved methods. In short, we have to do the unexpected, what is often formerly unrecognized. It’s not exclusive to art, but it is an essential part of it.
Artists are interested in something more than causation that seemingly contradicts the art-science relationship in favor of the art-mathematics relationship. Let’s first agree on this: Fine Art is not the best or only predictor of things, it is simply one of many and better than most. Artists are interested in, captivated by and especially inclined to look for patterns. This is a reflection of their top-down matching aptitudes. Over the past 30 years, there have been many examples of artists using patterns for this purpose, particularly in painting. A tip-off to what today is the major shift in how we view the world. Patterns reveal but you must consider them in the largest sense big data, sometimes trends or ideas, not just visual expressions.
The largest shift in how we look at things is more pronounced and references to this in the media increasingly common. A major change in our perception was a feature article in Foreign Affairs Magazine titled “Big Data”. We have grown less interested in causation or why things happen, we are more interested in results. Perhaps a repeat of the events of post World War II’s outbreak and hence epidemic of consumerism. The sheer volume of data far outstrips detailed examinations and with algorithms, our personal abilities to generated them. We live in a time of implication and consumption, rather than consideration and explanation. We live in a world of indeterminate structures. These constructs have come to be relied upon even though we cannot specifically verify their over all integrity. There may be nuances but only for a few, those with more time, equipment, and money. We have intuited reliability. It is a short cut through the morass of fast moving change. It is Baysian. Think about indeterminate structures next time you look out the window of the airplane… at the wing, it is a statistically defined indeterminate but presumed reliable structure. It is not known in detail how the structure behaves by the square inch, foot or perhaps meter. Implication has been considered economically sufficient. Nothing new here, we have done this forever, Ah-ha-Men.
In art, the importance of pattern recognition has been depicted graphically, mathematically and for the discerning eye, or those interested, quite subtly and without drama. Drama-less is perceived as apparent mindless repetition of the subject for no ostensible reason other than visual boredom or alleged objectivity. Conformity?
“Not so Virginia, not so.” We do not have to scream the obvious for there are many ways to illustrate the point. If the painter chooses, the painting on the wall punches us, assaults our visual systems and jerks us into the moment, but there are alternatives. “There are always alternatives Virginia, if you chose you could be Susan and still be the same. My friend the Cheshire Cat will show you how.”
Massive data, used to identify not so much causes but the effects and therein lays the differences than formerly relied upon tedious statistical analysis. Close examination for purposes of pinpoint accuracy and reliability. All has changed for with increases in the speed of everything including our demands for instant diagnosis and treatment, we care less about what the cause is or was, in favor of what to do about it. For pattern recognition to work we need long term memory collection of countless images with which to compare things. As a distinguished problem solver, using advanced methodologies and science, Brad Morantz reminds us images can be affected by what we consider logic and thought. In other words, images are quite individualized rather than institutionalized. However, the institutionalization of images remains a cornerstone of cerebral model building. What you see as a teacup, as an artist I may interpret and see quite differently, no matter what pattern we try to force upon it. We will leave the causation issues to others who have more time, equipment, and money. We will instead ask, has the algorithm merged with data for them to become the same?
What surrounds us each day, in the media and our conversations are usually the easy mind numbing, mind filling, mind bloating fillers. Many times, it is flammable, and opposing sides bunch up rapidly for known and unknown reasons. With torches in their hands like those depicted in movies, they roam the streets of yesteryear. Looking to seize the moment and make it theirs. The subtlety may be there but only for a few, those with more time, equipment, and money. We think this is what makes for a good debate, robust conversation, and sometimes a western type shoot out, maybe even good taste. However, no, it does not make for meaningful insight upon which we can move forward. It is violent for the sake of individual agendas and self-justification. In retrospect, we sometimes identify the essence but there are few among us who can do that. “Ladies and gentlemen please welcome the artist.”
A nice thing about the isolation of the studio, it is usually calm. As if standing midway in a curving tunnel, we can choose to look to the light or the dark. As new work evolves from idea to object, artists have an ongoing dialogue with themselves, trying to see if new ideas fit, poking, experimenting with them, and then doing it again. Searching for essence. It is not at all, unlike what the research scientist does except for one important difference. We are not pushed or accountable to standards of productivity or applicability. Those criterions belong to others.
I walk and talk on the periphery with intention and create work there as well. Choosing to look into our shared experience rather than out from it. Listening and watching my reflection, I see this as a sometimes weakness and try to avoid it. Try, as we will, one just does not push to or from the core all the time. The most important idea is there are many ways out of the core or essence and in there lie questions that mean more to the artist than the answers. Which one to choose or how many pursued?
There is an obvious luxury artists have since they don’t have to make policy or decide in moments of crisis. That seems to be the work of others and we should not have to be so included just to be relevant. You made and favor the world of specialists but we chose that of the generalists. Most of the quality observations artists present today and before are rarely for immediate consumption. They offer up ideas in the form of a question and it is for others to reform or remold it into something more applicable and useful for the people’s collective. Not all questions are posed for immediate response; some are for another day when the need is more apparent or relevant to many rather than a few. Imposition was far beyond the artist’s brief. They are without awarded or designated portfolio. Considerations of the abstract expressionists beginning in the 50’s provide such an example. In the heat of their revelations, others out there in “the world” were to actively engaged to give far-reaching visions much thought. Change was happening to fast, the offerings to tempting and the taste need too immediate to take time for a testevin. Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, a senseless tradition of the past they concluded. The race continued just as it always has but perhaps with less grace. Hi-Fi, television, chromed cars with fins and no more socks to mend.
Creating and leaving one’s creation behind is a normal pattern for some. In my case, on one fateful occasion it was imposed by another’s’ criminal intent. Such things occur when the load gets too heavy and the soul to light. In some cases the process can be seen as accumulation and readjustment and in others vacuousness. In the best of circumstances, when thoughts accumulate and manifest themselves in a work of art we have unloaded the increasingly heavy burden of consideration. Once the work is complete, we have a visual data picture that is, like the compressed digital image, reduced in size and weight. Makes it portable, easier to move forward, backward, sideways up or down. Most of us will move diagonally.
Retrospective essence is a reflection of how we got/get to the issues today, how we participate in the issues and what affects the issues are or will have on us. Way too much for a 120 second time slot on evening news. Thus, we have come to prefer and are accustomed to the sound-byte report accepting its lack of depth. Pundit’s interpretations, ones we assume they will think through for us, like a TV dinner. After all, essences have and are things some spend entire lifetimes thinking about. For those who love to think about it, searching for the quintessential is delicious lip smacking good. For those who rail against such thinking, howling, “get to the point or bottom line,” it is nothing short of frustrating heart attack material.
No matter, where one is on the spectrum of consideration, essences will eventually rule. It is strong stuff and hard to change. The difficulty is some are faster to develop than others; some take generations to manifest themselves in a way we can see and perhaps put to good use. There are many issues I deal with in my work. I try getting to the core, the crux, the essence, but must settle for being comfortably reconciled to the notion several, if not most, I will never understand. Important is: understanding is worthwhile pursuing.