Zeitgeist

Must be something in the air.... Related to my dystopian rant forwarded to me from a friend.

Bollocks

There will be no essay on "Welt am Draht" or "The Perverts Guide to Cinema". Why bother to write when it has been said so well and more importantly I have nothing to add.

See the films and think for yourself.

I see the world as being determined in part by our language systems and games, not outside of us but as an extension of who we are or believe ourselves to be. This countries moral rot and decay is because nearly the entire population buys into a concept of capitalist reality that is morally reprehensible, both right and left from high unto low.

For over 30 years the American public at large has been fed an increasingly unhealthy diet of propaganda about capitalism and a false notion of democracy. This has led to a culture that was already adverse to self-reflection to go even deeper into mediocrity.

Both political parties represent opposite sides of the same corrupt coinage. The sheer number of people from both political spectrums who unwaveringly believe the tripe they are sold that I have met is staggering. More, the lack of inquisitiveness or desire to learn more or actually have their own experience of reality unmediated by the likes of the system, a system that desires this ignorance because it leaves the politic impotent and easily controlled is mind numbing.

Not that I believe I hold the keys to truth but I understand the complex mechanics of language, psychology, ones personal history and the life lived, that is, if one bothers to be in it.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” -Socrates

But this is nothing new, it is touched on in “World on a Wire”, “The Perverts Guide to Cinema”, “The Matrix”, “They Live” a ton of other serious films, trashy movies, literature, art, poetry and philosophy and ultimately the bible, “Let the Dead Bury the Dead (Luke 9:60).”

We live in a society, not culture but a society that privileges self-centered narcissism and ones personal needs or wants over all and you can see it in action every day from the smallest way that people act towards one another to the large social sphere. The greater good, be damned, the planet, be damned, those enslaved around the world, be damned.

If you’re not pissed off about what is happening in the world, you’re not paying attention.

If you’re sitting on your chair and not trying to change it in some way, even a small way that seems insignificant then you’re part of the problem.

I hope the silicon robots win over the carbon zombies, I wonder what kind of art they might make.

1979-1980 London Calling

I was at my friends house, we were two weird outcasts in a large suburban high school in upstate New York, the kind of high school that was a breeding school for future Greek Fraternity hazing of the worst kind, izod shirts with upturned collars and docksider shoes.  I had long hair that was an unruly mess and had, despite my small size a reputation of not to mess with, cause I was completely willing to get into it, or at least it seems in hindsight.  Nothing scares a much larger opponent than staring them in the face without backing down, they’re so use to timidity that to have someone stand up breaks their paradigm, not that I knew what paradigm was back then.

My friend pulled out this album with incredible excitement, “you have to listen to this.”  He drops it on the turntable and starts playing “London Calling”, the crashing guitars, the sheer aggression of the sound in comparison to the standard fare of our FM diet was…honestly, hard to grab onto.  I had a difficult time with music at that time, Fleetwood Mac, Bread, Rush, Journey and a ton of real dreck that I couldn’t identify with but I could understand the music saccharine as it was but here, hear was this noise.   But that noise seeped into me, that afternoon my friend laid down The Specials first album and then I understood.  This was music that was addressing my alienation and then in its unfolding filled me with a sense of direction, that direction, growing up in a conservative town with kids my same age so willingly desiring to fill their parents shoes, to follow without question what was given to them, given what felt, smelled and tasted like some horrible corruption of the self, a denial of the self and in its replacement was a self full of hollow aspirations.  Ideals that led to the Reagan era and hence to the shit we live in now.   I spent my high school years in a town that wasn’t that much different in values than Columbine, my saving grace was that my parents gave me when I was younger access to art, music and literature that I didn’t understand at the time but it was there, it was on the bookshelf, it was there if I wanted to seek it, questions were ok, my family life was hell but that, that other access that they gave me, made up for it in the long run, even in the short, in hindsight.

I appreciate that Painters Table and other blogs sometimes link to me but art is not made in a vacuum.  My approach to art, to life to everything, goes back to those days.  Those days wandering around NYC with my mom and sister in tow going here and there, there in ways not unlike De Kooning’s “Gotham News” as I said earlier in this blog, growing up after leaving the city on a farm with no indoor plumbing with my Grandfather who road his motorcycle at the age of 63 out to Mexico, a Grandfather with long white hair who always held court at dinner about politics, culture, more politics, science, art and architecture on that freezing farm house while his father, a former auto and aircraft engineer scowled in rage at the injustices he experienced in his life.

I wonder where this resistance to the status quo comes from, for me it may not appear so oblique (my sister however is of the 1%), my son, now 11, my son, who is bi-racial told me over a year ago that he felt Obama was elected to make sure black people wouldn’t protest over his policies, policies that have been detrimental to our democracy.  A man who made many promises of hope but then has amped up the national security state, has gone after whistle blowers with a vengeance not seen in any other administration and and and and I keep my politics to myself, his mother is very conservative despite the fact her father was one of the last socialists from the Caribbean.  My son comes out with that nugget.

Is it genetic and culture?  I think so.   In reading Paul Corio’s blog tonight after having dinner with him and Mr. Stone from HenriMag and with my background in animal behavior and science come to this conclusion, most human endeavors are based on a human need to be accepted, social recognition and sexual recognition from the opposite sex are of so much importance, more importance than we even acknowledge.   The Industrial Arts Complex doesn’t know where to turn but they want something “real” because they know they live in a world of navel gazing lies.   And then, then they have to have the nerve to say, you need to be an “outsider” to succeed, succeed at what?   They wouldn’t recognize an outsider if it were to slap them in the face because the complexity of the dialogue is beyond them.  Duchamp might have said the artist in the future will be underground, he or she would have to be as this artworld doesn’t have the nerve or gumption to look out beyond their narrow world view, it is not surprising, they’ve received everything from books and not from both books (I don’t want to devalue books and learning for truthiness) and the real world lived, they’ve never looked into the mirror and saw fear, the feelings of being a fraud, death and meaninglessness.  Only on that reflection of the true nature of ones meaning and being can there ever be a gasp and perhaps, perhaps if ones ego is strong enough to say No, does one struggle and say, I will make meaning.

And Jesus said, the meek shall inherit the earth, he failed to mention, that it would be six feet under.

And mea culpa for this nostalgia and rant, the year 50 beckons shortly, 50 that I wasn’t sure many years ago that I would make, 50 that makes me wonder for the future of my son, 50 that makes me wonder where are we going, 50 that makes me wonder, who the hell am I and have I done any good works worthy of my ambitions, hopes and aspirations.

Coming soon, Welt am Draht et al.  Perverts of the world unite.

Coming soon...

.. I hope. Have been struggling with an essay regarding digital this and that, in the interim... some viewing recommendations as I will be writing about Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "Welt am Draht" known as "World on a Wire" and also the brilliant The Pervert's Guide to Cinema with the funny and illuminating Slavoj Zizek. I highly recommend you watch the Zizek clip to the end as you will have an enjoy a hearty laugh. You can find the full version of Welt am Draht on Youtube and hit the CC button for the english subtitles and bits and pieces of The Pervert's Guide

art comment...

Occupy Paul Corio

Confluence

I had planned to go to the studio yesterday but instead got side tracked into working in sketchbooks; spending time cutting things out, gluing, arranging, painting, wondering, reading from time to time, eating, taking a nap and before I knew it, twas too late. I know when the time is right and more when it is wrong, wrong after a certain hour because haste becomes the subconscious driver, for me that is never good.

During the day, thoughts about recent conversations with a colleague about art and work, work in this case being on our art, not labor to earn a living, came to my mind. Why the distinction between labor and work? The confluence of several themes, not related to my art practice but dominant within the greater industrial arts complex came towards one another and when I ‘bounced’ out of bed this morning, they had met. Even without the first cup of coffee the confluence of these micro events was being built into an edifice and a structure, which I needed to get down on digital paper.

Now the occasional reader may ask, why do I bother to acknowledge this minutia, why not get to the heart of the matter? Well I write this more as a conversation with myself somewhat; conversational is of interest, not lecturing or brow beating. The minutia is a way of marking thought and place and the background is the soil of life lived practical experience, which has helped form and sometimes focus my thoughts.

This is in contrast to what will follow.

I’ve mentioned previously that I studied zoology with an interest in animal behavior, besides that though I minored in Philosophy and received a somewhat practical liberal arts degree. I’ve kept only a few text books from those college years: “Food Production and Its Consequences” by Philip E. L. Smith, “Population, Evolution and Birth Control” assembled by Garrett Hardin, “Invertebrate Zoology” by Robert D. Barnes, “Earth” by Frank Press and Raymond Siever and finally the one book that I still bring up in conversation and will do so now, “The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844” by Karl Marx.

One of the hallmarks of today’s successful artist is that they actually don’t make anything, save for the occasional old fart like Terry Winters. I say old fart, as I am one too although not quite as “old”. It is common knowledge that Damien, Jeff and a litany of others never get their hands dirty. Hey neither did Donald Judd and even in the days of long old, works were fabricated by assistants and the master would come in to touch it up. But the level of involvement by artists in the conception, fabrication and production of their work has gotten to an all time high or low depending on your preferred nomenclature, it is as if, to actually physically interact with your ideas made material is retardataire.

I know for a fact of an artist who had a late mid career retrospective in France who exhibited more than a small handful of working drawings for sculptures and the actual sculptures, these sculptures along with the drawings were conceived, fabricated from low unto high by the assistant and the artist came in to later sign and back date the working drawings. This artist never chose materials, colors, size, anything! Wow, must be good to be the king, or queen in this case.

What does this have to do with good old Karl, well relax, I’m not going to go into some long winded theoretical monologue about capital, just a few quotes as food for thought.

From Estranged Labor

It is just in his work upon the objective world, therefore, that man really proves himself to be a species-being. This production is his active species-life. Through this production, nature appears as his work and his reality. The object of labor is, therefore, the objectification of man’s species-life: for he duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he sees himself in a world that he has created. In tearing away from man the object of his production, therefore, estranged labor tears from him his species-life, his real objectivity as a member of the species and transforms his advantage over animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him.

(3) Man’s species-being, both nature and his spiritual species-property, into a being alien to him, into a means of his individual existence. It estranges from man his own body, as well as external nature and his spiritual aspect, his human aspect.

(4) An immediate consequence of the fact that man is estranged from the product of his labor, from his life activity, from his species-being, is the estrangement of man from man. When man confronts himself, he confronts the other man. What applies to a man’s relation to his work, to the product of his labor and to himself, also holds of a man’s relation to the other man, and to the other man’s labor and object of labor.

In fact, the proposition that man’s species-nature is estranged from him means that one man is estranged from the other, as each of them is from man’s essential nature.

The estrangement of man, and in fact every relationship in which man [stands] to himself, is realized and expressed only in the relationship in which a man stands to other men.

Hence within the relationship of estranged labor each man views the other in accordance with the standard and the relationship in which he finds himself as a worker.

||XXV| We took our departure from a fact of political economy – the estrangement of the worker and his production. We have formulated this fact in conceptual terms as estranged, alienated labor. We have analyzed this concept – hence analyzing merely a fact of political economy.

Let us now see, further, how the concept of estranged, alienated labor must express and present itself in real life.

If the product of labor is alien to me, if it confronts me as an alien power, to whom, then, does it belong?

To a being other than myself.

Who is this being?

All italics are in the original and the bold mine.

I knew an artist, a now well known artist, Hugo Boss winner and the like, before he became a hot tomato. We worked together, work as in labor, and I also worked with him on a few of his projects, I appeared in a video of his and performed in several of his performance works. He was complaining one day about how he felt constrained by his gallerists and was tired of making his “thing”, his brand. My thought upon hearing that was that he was estranged from his own practice, I knew he did not have a studio and was working only through ideas. Hey ideas are great, they are necessary and a lot of work suffers because it is thin on ideas. We have two extremes, work that is idea less and the other, all ideas and no praxis.

The studio practice for me has been an invaluable laboratory to conduct R & D. I get an idea into my head and make it in the studio into a tangible physical structure but along the way, as I work, as I struggle, as I play, other ideas form on seemingly their own accord, almost independent of me. I see how a material operates with another, a color against another, a form or picture in struggle and the work hints at me, sometimes yells at me, do this, do this!

In this dance and in the learning over the years about the physical nature and limits of my materials I have been transported to a place I could never have imagined being. That trip has been of utmost importance, it has allowed me to become aware of my potential. Only in the working within this physical realm could I have gotten there. Ideas lead to other ideas but if they just are of the mind they tend in my opinion to wither in potency. We do not live just in our heads but inhabit a body, in fact the head is just a part and extension of the body.

The body knows itself and comes into being by its interaction with the physical world, not just human to human contact but actually knowing and understanding the materials. A great chef knows the freshness of their food, if it isn’t fresh they know how to dress it the best way possible. A lot of great recipes and sauces were invented to mask the severe lack of freshness, more like rot and how did they arrive at this? By taking the time to interact with it, to play with it and with the accumulative life experience of the kitchen they know which spice or other thing will punch it up.

Food isn’t theoretical, it is real. We share food, we share our meals and we converse, sometimes over a good bottle of wine about the food and life. Food is a necessary staple but also a gift that we share as SOCIAL ANIMALS. And I dare say, art is a similar thing but now we are inundated with recipes for art and not the actual meal itself.

Another river that came into confluence was regarding young internet artists or artists who use the web and social networking as their meme. Upon reading some of what I would say are amateurish manifestos, more of the same cynicism and recipe art with the real goal being getting attention and being taken seriously was the constant theme of “Branding”.

The problem with Branding is that it circles the wagons and says this is it, this is our stand, this is mine. In fact there was this kind of generational ax to grind, as this is ours and you can’t touch or have it. No community meal there, no desire to share, no desire to give. Branding means coming up with a commodity and a tagline, branding is death incarnate, it is the death in the guise of individual expression that denies the social aspect of sharing and the ability, one would hope of personal evolution and hopefully larger social political engagement with the great ills we face. This is the great irony of the social network, the individual branding has shown a lot of the same unquestioning mindset, visual lack of appeal and more banal SAMENESS. Branding in their terms was said in complete seriousness and lack of irony. I’ve had it up to here with irony but branding in today’s culture needs a good solid whack down.

There is much to be thought about in regards to how the internet is changing our way of communicating to one another, it is as shattering as the printing press, but this was/is not it, just old conceptual ideas in new window dressing.

It was and is to my mind the continued infantilization of culture, more so here in the United States. Where else can the 40’s be the new 30’s? If that is so, the the 20’s are the new teens and interesting as adolescents are in their rebellion, most want to be loved.

Maybe more later, now it is time to go to the lab.

Market

A lot is written about the market in regards to art and somewhat deservedly so, however, the market for art has been around since the Dutch Golden Age in various forms and guises. Previously to the artist being unmoored from the patronage of Church, Royalty or the Political elite, well you had the Church, Royalty and the elite supporting artists and those artists had to work within confines of subject matter and materials, a certain amount of lapis lazuli might be required, etc.

With the Dutch Republic came the artist out marketing his talents. If you were Vermeer you were a minor painter; Hals, Rembrandt and others painted the Burghers, the New Wealthy middle class and you had a beginning to what we now call genre painting, landscape, still life et al.

Come the French and the Industrial revolutions and traditional patronage is shattered. You have Courbet and Manet setting up their own exhibitions outside of the official salon (the original DIY?) and others, the Salons of the Impressionists, the Independents, etc. etc., all vying for attention and all hoping to sell their wares and make a living. Reading the accounts, letters and various journals, correspondence and fictional accounts from that time illustrates that it was not an easy time for artists if you were not officially sanctioned and deemed of import.

I touched briefly on this in current obsessions.

What distinguishes today’s market versus those of the not so distant past, is that there seems to be no valid cultural ambitions or artistic motivations that, at least for me, address the concerns of art as a vehicle of personal or cultural import.

We no longer have the shadow of movements, for better or worse. Me, I am ambivalent about movements, maybe even hostile. Ab Ex, Pop, Conceptualism, Minimalism, Body Politic, Earth Art, blah blah blah. Each one of those “movements” has some wonderful and amazing stuff and more than a fair amount of dreck.

Arts importance is gone, if it was really ever there to begin with, as far as the general public is concerned. Before the time of absolute visual gluttony, artists worked on a variety of levels. Painting of course but also doing what we now call design work for festivals, coronations, engineering, what ever was needed in regards to visual production.

The advent of the printing press and cheap forms of photographic reproduction with offset printing and then the growth through technology of film, television and now video cameras and cheap gear galore has completely “democratized” production.

But this democratization hasn’t raised standards, the ‘standards’ that were, dropped dramatically. Look at the amount of tumblr’s, youtube videos and the incredible variety of blogs (perhaps mine included) and then add to that the array of illiterate comments, especially in political blogs and you can see for yourself that we live with a lot of trite shit that looks, smells and voices the same. If I had a nickel for every young person I’ve met over the last ten years who was in marketing or branding, well I would be living on the coast of southern France.

But back to the Market…
When the last gasp of Post-Modern societal critique was exhausted in the 90’s so was the death of ‘movements.’ And with the death of movements, which for the most part are or were attempts to codify or “Brand” a certain way of thinking or visual style, the art world at large, the galleries, the museums and sadly to say a lot of artists were free to address what their prime concern was, MONEY.

Is it any wonder that we have so much tired, lame, poorly conceived and for the most part visual literature or illustration, if one can be so bold to call it “literature” more like some trashy beach read, bad visuals for poor uninformed thinking, exists?

The last bastion of this is the repeated ad nauseam “Institutional Critique”, because that is all they have left in their arsenal to prove their cultural worth, when at the end of the day, the art fairs, the biennials, the triennials, the documentas, etc. all they provide is the circus, just like the official salons of 19th century France.

As an artist, who, partial disclosure, was briefly active in that circus I say BOLLOCKS. Is it depressing at times? Certainly. Does it affect my studio practice? NO.

The point of art is to be art and what we have passing officially as art is nothing but window dressing, hence Meissonier, one of the most celebrated and financially successful artists of the 19th century, whither him now?

Same as it ever was.