I've re-engaged the lifelong struggle to peal away illusion and personal lies. It is so easy to lie to ourselves; to imagine a self we want to be or wish we were or, -perhaps more tragically, believe we could never be. I suppose art has a lot less to do with artists than I feel comfortable admitting. Good art, enduring art, is alive in the viewer. It is kept alive this away, arguably life is breathed into it only after someone sees it.
There is power in the making of things, what we call creation. I don't know if art is really creation at all in the true sense. We tend to combine and assemble and re-arrange at best, but I'm skeptical about the position that anything is truly created. Really so-called creativity is another mask of self. This person is creative and so we can categorize them and convince ourselves that we know them and then move on to whatever is next. I wonder how much we actually know about people, because I wonder how much we truly know about ourselves.
I read a John Waters quote this morning that said something to the effect of it is contemporary art's job to destroy what has come before it. So even our creation is imbued with, -or perhaps inseparable from destruction and violence. If my job is to destroy; to dislike the art that is immediately before me with such intensity that I feel compelled to make things whose purpose is to obliterate it, I'm just not sure I'm up to the task. Honestly, I don't know if I want that job.
At this moment, I honestly don't know if I even am an artist. I don't feel comfortable with that label. I think Pop art was funny for about 15 minutes and there were only 2 or 3 people who understood the emptiness of the joke in the first place. The rest were just a herd. Abstract Expressionism, much as I personally relate to it, needed to be made fun of to be sure. It had become a religion. But the hecklers became the stars and then the criticism became the new religion. There are legitimately times when art should be serious, and maybe we've come to that time once again. It's time to talk frankly about the 2-ton balloon dog in the room.
We're seeing the resurgence of greed that mirrors the 80's. So perhaps it's natural to assume that the art should be as bloated and spectacular as ever to comment on it. The sad truth is that those who drive the engines of greed and power and money are not now, nor have they ever been threatened by ironic art and smug artists. How do you take the teeth out of an artist who criticizes the wealthy? Make them wealthy. Not too much, but just enough. Add a little celebrity to the cake and you suddenly have no opposition any more.
The best work I've ever done has been without any monetary goal in mind. I've pondered lately how much I enjoy installations like the one I did last year. It just exists in a moment in time, in a physical space and then that space is gone. Those paintings will never sell, despite the fact that I think they are quite amazing. I'd be lucky to get $2000 each, but I know even that is ambitious where I am. So I wrestle with the dilemma of having them locked away in the dark for no one to see. I wonder if that's right. I wonder if I should give them away, because at least someone might have the opportunity to find resonance in them. But this is against the rules. I'm supposed to get as much as I can for them. I'm supposed to ascend in the system so that they garner 5-figures each and in doing so become "good."
My friends can't afford that. I can't afford that. So who exactly are these made for? People whose houses I will never be invited to? People who would never consider me their peer, even if they truly held me in some sort of awe for what I do? I have people who have bought my work and never offered to show me how it looks in their home. As if the work is allowed there, but I am not. These are people I know personally. Our children have played together. But the distinction of class is clear.
I have long ago dismissed the idea that I will ever be famous. I'm not concerned with that. Honestly, I am probably not very well equipped for it anyway. I just want to work. I want to work at something I feel is meaningful and in my heart I believe that art can be so. If I walk away from this, I just wonder if I am shirking some responsibility to things greater than myself. Simultaneously I wonder if I'm just delusional to believe I could ever take part in something great to begin with.
Dear Christopher,
ReplyDeleteRemember way back when when we first became fascinated by the possibility of a pencil or a crayon? We didn't know or think about selling it and we only very vaguely wondered - if at all - what anyone else might think. We were pure then and understood that it was an inner voyage that had nothing to do with anyone else - let alone an art world. An art world which now becomes a burden and a curse which all too many of us use to measure ourselves or each other as if this was some kind of competition. Sales, strategies, critical acclaim and celebrity somehow get detrimentally mixed into our sincere meditation and irony doesn't let earnestness in the game any more. The more quietly poetic among us are mocked or even worse ignored and dismissed. You are right that the flavor of the month effectively defangs and drains the profundity from the enterprise. The result is that the loudest and the shrillest seem to reap the rewards - except that it isn't the reward that we originally wanted anyway. Nor is it in the end the one that satisfies or brings meaning.
Remember we are the poet kings of our own worlds. Render unto Caesar what is his and don't measure yourself by his coin. Only a very few are destined for "greatness" whatever that is and by whose decision? The rest of us are the foot soldiers and the monks copying the manuscripts that are the flesh and bone and are doing the heavy lifting in the human "creative" endeavor - which as you point out is not really creative at all but actually more of a synthesis.
The world needs us far more than it knows.
And we need each other.
your friend,
Robert