Greetings art lovers - Blogging ain't easy, uh huh uh huh. Art at best is easy as pie indeed these days it might be the pie. I remember the first time I saw the films of the liberation of the concentration camps in newsreels at the neighborhood cinema.It was like looking at the human condition and realizing the depth of the hatred in this world. Why the Jews were scapegoated over and over in history, made demons by the propaganda machine. I remember those newsreels put the fear in me about life and about difference because difference seems always an issue as now with Muslims who have become demonized the way the Communists were the boogieman after the war. Same goes for artists who are seen by some elements in the society as little more than bums. A threat to the order of things the prioritization of work requires workers who give their youth and good health to the boss man and as they age are castoff and replaced by younger healthier workers. In some ways the art trade has become very academic, indeed sometimes it seems like no one makes art without a steady teaching gig. And the best of the students are apt to have teaching gigs themselves one day, no tenure no benefits hired semester by semester for years without long term contracts. Academic freedom by definition requires tenure as a prerequistite for freedom to teach and do research. But even as the profession became more academic it also became less free. Freedom of speech such a basic freedom and most especially in an art school seems everywhere to be dangerous, controversy attends art work rich with content and brimming over with life! We live in a giant passive aggressive society that doesn't wish to be reminded of it's shortcomings including the shortcomings of art and schools of art. Truth in art the sort of Rosetta Stone of the practice of art seems to have been kicked to the curb by a narcissum the West has about it's culture, it's awful films and brainless television. Art is a criticism in the sense that it offers alternative visions of how things could be. I recall during the Vietnam era when many of the minimalist artist rose to prominence that it struck me that that art was a sort of corporate abstraction, an emblom of the state's power, Frank Stella made sweetly designed paintings that had next to nothing to do with the world he lived in, it was as if art no longer had to do with real things with the suffering in South East Asian of which we were the author. And the empty geometries filled the space where art might be if they weren't already drafting artists into that insane slaughter whilst the successful corporate astractionists became rich men and the work became just too hip for words , styling covering the image of a horrible war that drained our country of moral substance and left us vacant. Hence God Save The Queen and her facist regime - of the SexPistols. The darkness of our culture always has a sweet cover, the decoration takes our minds away from the genocidal actions of the governments, abstraction as done by minimalists is a camouflage it keeps our politics pure and imageless. It's not that abstraction should be abandoned but rather the image itself of humans should not be seen as a lesser thing less important that these giant geometric objects sitting outside corporate headquarters or begetting yardage awards at museums, most square feet of geometric decoration. The image artist can be quite abstract but somehow the image is never entirely forsaken. The work tends to be smaller more intimate and more humanistic. When I was young I tried to make heroic New York style paintings with tiny images. I wanted to see if the two schools could be brought into one work. That painting is up at the Walker Art Center now in an exhibition named Midnight Party designed by Joan Rothfuss. That painting drove me insane day by day until really understood that the price we pay for our investigations is often greater than we suspect. I'm not sorry I made the giant painting or the nearly two years it took to make it or that it engendered my madness and my recovery over several more years no I think you have to do something like this to find your way into yourself, into your life. My intelligence was never in question but my sanity was because I just sailed too far into my own vision, I found myself discovering the sort of artist I had become, I was fearless but I was defeated by my own limitations as a human. Was it worth it? I'm still working on my project, I'm still engaged by my ideas and I still feel like my work is never done.But some small rewards have come, and I've always felt the artist is digging forward towards a more beautiful and more just outcome. We each tour this world named our life, we do what we do and we perish and leave somethings behind, maybe I knew this before most of you because you just know you have to do your work before time runs out. But I hate to spoil a party just remember you don't have forever to get it on!
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