feral artists -- free-range art

Today we consider ‘free-range’ art. No, not the kind that pecks a nice green lawn during the day, cozy in a coop at night. We mean ‘free-range’ -- sleeping in woodpiles, running from the foxes, not always looking your best. There are artists over at the university on salary and talented entrepreneurs who find a genre and make art for an established market, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but verily they’re doing ok.

Our concern is for the waitress, mechanic, delivery driver who aspires to one day give up the day job, and to that end spends evenings and weekends in any studio they can afford -- above a garage is sometimes available. Maybe their dream is to ‘break-through,’ suddenly blaze incandescent with glamour and limos, but most just want to paint full-time, someday. Their first goal is paying-the-bills self-sufficiency, and too much thinking about what comes after just turns out counter-productive.

Something interesting happens in a vacuum. Without the attention of the local credentialed critic, tactfully and resolutely ‘not accepted’ in area competitions, and after having cast uncounted grant applications into a black hole, the truly independent artist experiences a kind of lightness. There’s no venal agent demanding more of that stuff like you were doing before, no fawning hangers on expecting you to buy lunch, fancy openings not so often. Slightly eccentric in the eyes of neighbors might turn out to be the only recognition the independent artist receives, how else to explain making art that’s not selling?

With no outside influences, inside a bubble of indifference, the independent artist feels free to follow personal inclinations to make the best art they can. Talent, experience, and vision combine a lot of different ways, and the output of independent studios just about anywhere is more varied and more interesting than all afternoon in SoHo. Now admittedly, without a little cracked-corn occasionally, people give up and move on to something more practical, and those who persist may never reach the potential they envisioned, but if neighbors were to suddenly notice, a crew of field-wise, self-motivated artists would flock home to roost.

art pills -- smarter already

A hundred years back this country was mostly rural. People lived with animals, carried water into the house, faced trips to the outhouse in all sorts of weather. Sometimes they’d resent city folk with their paved streets, indoor conveniences, opportunities to go to high school, such as that. There arose a genre of whimsical anecdote meant to level the field a bit, an ongoing dialogue between a visiting ‘city cousin’ and the experience-wise ‘country cousin.’ 

So one day ‘city’ asks ‘country’ how come you know so much, and ‘country’ says “simple -- it’s these smart pills we find laying in the grass.” After a couple of days ‘city’ says he’s “beginning to suspect those smart pills are really just goat turds.” “See there,” says ‘country,’ “you’ve already become more intelligent.” Turns out to be a little parable about self-reliance and the tough-love foibles of wide-eyed gullibility. It could be a story about art. 

Cy Twombly’s “Untitled” 1968 sold on November 5 in Sotheby's, London for $70,530,000. (Photo: Sotheby's) - See more at: http://indianexpress.com/photos/lifestyle-gallery/record-breaking-moments-paintings-by-picasso-van-gogh-in-the-top-10-most-expensive-artworks-auctioned-in-2015/7/#sthash.hmdMe38P.dpuf

If this piece of art, “untitled,” was the size of a piece of note paper it would be adjudged by all who saw it as the daycare product of a hopelessly challenged sixty-five IQ, not that there’s anything wrong with that. If you, worldly and sophisticated, like art of similar ilk I’m not affected, but must admit it’s way over my head. Just a seventy million dollar goat turd to me. In the end it’s a matter of self-reliance, of individual judgement, even of personal expression that determines what sort of art you like, what sort of art you buy. 

Cy Twombly is out of your league, anyway, so consider something closer to home and think in terms of hundreds, maybe thousands, instead of tens of millions. Attributes which you might admire can be found in the art of individuals from somewhere in your neighborhood, and the amount you pay probably won’t be reported on the news. In this case it should be the country cousins, all of us around here, who turn out to be too smart in the first place. 

reviving the dripper -- doubling-down in Dallas

There’s a big Jackson Pollock retro in Dallas and a review caught my eye -- “Museum exhibitions don't often reverse the conventional wisdom on a major artist,” going on the suggest “a 180-degree turn.” Thinking that it would be strange indeed to remove the keystone from the entire edifice of modern art, found out it was really a reevaluation of his “failed” period, easel versions of larger drip formats, upgraded to something better. That’s a relief. He was the famous ‘icebreaker,’ and didn’t Life Magazine ask in a 1949 story, "Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" History questions the motive here. 

His singular accomplishment was to “unhinge line from its ancient role as the means with which to describe a figure against a ground,” and that represents a giant leap forward, don’t we all agree? In his work, “suggestions of linear figures (or fragments of figures) are self-evident — heads, eyes, birds, claws, reclining or seated nudes, ghostly specters and more,” but it was up to the viewer to find them, like faces in clouds and popcorn animals. 

The real problem with his “failed” period was not realizing the success of his drip method had largely been a matter of scale, that ten feet of anything is pretty impressive, but the same thing the size of a traditional painting not so much. In this gallant effort a large tax sucking institution down in Texas is hoping to generate a little interest in merchandize too long on the shelf. Good luck. I’m sure millions will move back and forth on paper. 

Down in Texas they like to ‘head’em up’ and ‘drive’em to market,’ not so fast. If you suddenly feel the quivering urge to “reevaluate” those failed little messes just because they say so, your herd instincts are strong but you’re not likely to find much joy in art and not much personal affirmation, that is unless you’re an emotionally deprived, ego-maniacal terminal alcoholic like Jackson. Maybe there’s a market in Texas, but that’s far from here. 

We would all like to belong, and if you’re willing to pay the dues to join the cultural elite, to invest in tokens representing your financial commitment to status ascension, buy one of these little orphan Pollock’s for an insane price and show all your friends. Should however caution those living in Kentucky that once in a while folks might suspect you’re a rube with too much money. 

ground floor -- coming up

My notion from the beginning was to keep saying the same thing over and over in different ways until it turned to taffy, and we’re almost there. The medicinal bleeding of creative energy to support non-profit institutions is about to be staunched, with artists seeking, and finding, alternative ways to display and actually sell their work. A curious public is finding its way around the dour gatekeepers of academic grant committees and credentialed curators to discover art they find relatable. In this humble blog strident heresy transmutes to maudlin cliche in about a hundred and fifty posts. 

Hasn’t completely happened yet, but the earth moves as we speak and in the right direction. The art at auction gaining national media attention, ‘pre-auction estimates in excess of millions and millions,’ is news from another planet, another galaxy, and the laws of physics are different here. We hear vegetables should come from close to home, just healthier they say, and art from around here might turn out to be more beneficial also, in several ways. We’re just getting sprouts now, but watered with a little money directly spent on art and won’t the garden grow.

The new hotel, 21c, and the murals above the parking lots have been accelerants thrown on a fire about to happen anyway. I didn’t predict that part, but momentum snowballs. The ground-floor of actually owning art has arrived, as local folks tentatively begin to notice, to discuss, to have favorites. There is still the possibility of catching some artist in transition from scuffling for studio rent to paying down the credit card, a good time to acquire a piece of art which will assume its true value once the habit of buying art has settled in.  

populism -- art’s part

This blog is intended as an ongoing work of art, simultaneously appearing contrarian to those invested in the current art establishment and yet positive and reassuring to everyone else. This different approach could be called ‘populism,’ and I’m heartened that Bernie won’t back off the term ‘revolution,’ because he means people have to change their minds. This won’t be easy.

Art is taught as contrarian all on its own, setting out early on to dispel whatever thoughts might naturally occur to the uninitiated about reality’s visual interpretation. Heaping ridicule has been the typical strategy for reorienting the freshman class away from what they thought they were going to study, drawing and such, to the larger world of conceptualism, illustrating big issues ironically. These days I’ve heard they also attempt to teach skills that are marketable, a revolting development all on its own leading anywhere but the independent studio. It’s been tried over and over. 

The public is not art’s enemy. They mostly willingly support all sorts of art enterprise, including the schools, faculty and facilities, public projects of all sorts, non-profits and on and on. The public is also not art’s ward, its unwashed cousin, unable to relate to more than paintings of horses in sunny paddocks and sappy little cabins without driveways. Galleries find themselves caught in the middle trying to sell phony credentials, claiming “the value of art is what someone else is willing to pay for it.” Shame on you, you deserve to lose your lease. 

Given an array of art to look at, most folks can identify quality pretty quickly, even quicker if it’s for sale and they’re paying for it. Stacks of rough plywood, arrangements of ceramic globs, such as that, featured over on campus have held the public at bay for several decades, but a contemporary museum downtown, in the form of a 21c hotel, will drain their little duck pond. Many more folks will be deciding soon perhaps the art they don’t like -- good enough, since it might be the first time they’ve really thought about it one way or the other. There’ll also be tremors up the line, when super sophisticates begin the realize the glamour and exclusivity they’ve been paying for was artificial, and that it wasn’t really warm rain on their pants leg. Millions invested in art, snug in vaults and warehouses soaking up tax liability, could evaporate the moment public sensibility opens its eyes and turns its head. 

Owned art can be empowering, as a fact it’s a main effect. Art is the part of the normal human environment we’ve been lacking, having substituted mass-produced ‘design’ instead. Modern life works wonderfully well, warm and dry, but a little breathless, sorta sterile and machine efficient. Art direct from the hand of the artist is not just an autograph to be collected, but a vital component of the average person’s daily environment, a functioning solid-state ‘oxygen generator’ for the living room. It’s a folksy notion, that art could provide a spiritual essence usually lacking in modern decor, that it would also make moving into a new space feel more familiar and comfortable right away, even that it could eventually earn a promotion to the member of the family least likely to leave home, but it’s the populist way.