art pulls a plow -- reaping the sowed

So what does art do? Well, it soaks up wealth, actually hides wealth at the top end, those six and seven figure masterpieces fodder for creative accounting, philanthropy and loopholes, such as that. This is, in fact, the side of art most likely to make it to the evening news, and it’s also the way, by and large, art is sold. “The price of art is what someone else is willing to pay for it,” hark the gallery maven’s oily refrain. For the most part the charts and schedules they pull out to establish legitimacy and consensus approval of an artist are beside the point, unless of course you’re trying to hide your insecurity and feel safety in numbers. They have the numbers.

Art can also be a signifier of cultural station, emblematic of tribal affiliation, along with all levels of aspiration to same extending down to quaint. Did I see a Jackson Pollock, enamel drizzled on a sheet of styrofoam, over the bed in a cheap motel in Missouri? Yep. Entrepreneurial arty types cast about trying to find some trademark, some pattern which can be repeated over and over so that everybody can own a little piece of their eventual celebrityhood. The successful ones produce an easily identifiable trophy art, and friends and acquaintances already intimate with the price points are duly impressed.

Art, just as an idea, pulls an enormous train of bureaucratic agencies and non-profits, teaching institutions and grant bestowing foundations, all shielded from the exposure the average fast food worker has to taxes. They’re also shielded from outside scrutiny, always striving to promote an art several leagues beyond common sensibility, justifying state support because no reasonable person would buy any. Art staggers under the weight. 

That said, there was a painting my father brought home, from a pawn shop probably, with no discernible provenance whatever, a wood hut in deep snow, such snow, melted and refrozen on top, crusty and glistening in the sun over deep violet shadows. It got away. I wish I could see it again. I wouldn’t care if it wasn’t worth a dime. This is a reason for art I couldn’t explain, and having read a bit, feel satisfied no one else does a good job either. I will suggest that a painting, most especially these days as our group mind dissolves into a digital data base, is quiet testimony to a more enduring connection to physical reality, the realm of the senses, the front yard of the individual.