reclaiming the pit -- flowers on slag heaps

The idea behind 'owning art' is reclamation and renewal of art’s grass-roots audience after the massive environmental degradation of abstract expressionist strip-mining, beginning about the middle of the last century. The reason this was done originally was largely political expediency in unrelated areas but as a result weeds abound in a wrecked landscape.

The forces behind the ascendancy of abstraction, in broad terms, were the extremely powerful who suffered severe discomfort at the universally understood painted criticisms made by Diego Rivera and others like him, they were legion. Abstractionists were also to benefit from a ruthless international competition in which the American government promoted abstract art as somehow more democratic and individualistic than the collectivized, state-glorifying representational art in Russia. 

Abstract art won't cause anyone in power to lose sleep at night and academics can hide their ineptitude behind it, but its riddles all seem goofy in the end. Side effects of removing the depiction of identifiable content from visual art have been devastating for the individual and society, since a most fundamental means of human communication was silenced. The marketing of art has elevated an incestuous royal line of ‘masters’, visual entrepreneurs who turned some minor conceit into a trademark, and that glamorous load in big time galleries has degenerated into monographic imbecilities in just a few generations -- google Hirst, google Koons, google them all.

Representational art, still derided as ‘illusionist’ by old-school abstractionists and their progeny, is capable of transmitting mind to mind much more information than just the time of day in a wheat field, as anyone who has admired Van Gogh will attest. The representational image engages the experience, memory, and mind of the viewer, and even more effectively of the everyday owner, and its sensibilities then participate in whatever the person sees. Did you think art was passive? For those who subscribe to the epic that has become known as ‘contemporary art’, come out from behind your tiara-snatching masquerade and join the rest of us, sighted uprights who can speak without language using pictures.