Under the piles of Christmas crap

The Christ child is the potential inherent in the innocence of the newborn. This is the trigger of love, hope and possibility despite any of life’s failures and suffering.

The cows, asses and sheep are our animal nature, which is always with us. It is our link to nature’s creation.

The angels are our where our yearnings long to be. They long to sing with the choir of like souls.

The shepherds remind us that we must roam to express freedom but we also know that someone is concerned lest we stray too far.

The Magi remind us that birth is a miracle and that wealth and power are useless without humility.

Mary reminds us of the power of any act that emerges from purity.

Joseph reminds us that love is not sex and that living things must be nurtured until they ripen in maturity.

What's it worth?

Suppose someone jabs a hole in a Picasso or throws some paint on a Pollack. Does that decrease the value of these pieces? Of course, we naturally first think of their monetary value. That's just how we are. $124 million for a Francis Bacon, dethroning the perennial newsmaking of Van Gogh. We won't stop here, and there will be a new champion painting by a champion artist. The art is the commodity that creates the value that seduces the capitalist with lots of money to spare to make it his very own which makes the art for everyone just for one.

A different look at value places the power and meaning of a piece in its reflection of the artists ability, life, vision and courage. The art then becomes the accumulation of the artist's contribution and all the meanings through time sprout in each viewer who sees the piece. This is how the piece lives and endures and belongs to all.

Why religion has failed

First, I believe that religion is the only human construct that has any chance of helping create a peaceful and equitable global human community. Certainly government, the judiciary, the educational system, philosophies, economies will never solve this problem. Religion is the only one that has at its core the values that have a chance to work.

Religion, for the most part, is about dressing up to socialize on Sundays, finding a safe haven from a fluid world through rigid dogma, doing a bit of guilt relieving charitable work now and then, leaving the sermon for the oversized TV in the mcmansion.

I admit this is cynical and I'm as guilty as anyone. But look at the world. Almost every conflict is religion based. We merely peck away at the vast discrepancy between the haves and the billions of have nots. We can't say it is what it is. It's what we've made it. Religion as an institution and we who practice it.

Religion has failed because God is not running it. Humans are. Humans have built into religion walled compounds, territoriality, rigid dogma, ancient grudges, protected hierarchies, elaborate mansions and adornments. These are the gifts humans have added to the few basic tenets necessary to build a decent human life.

Why am I telling you this when I  myself don't know what to do about it? I don't really know.

You're not a real...

You're not a real human being until you've confronted suffering.

You're not a real man until you've acknowledged your feminine self or a real woman until you've acknowledged your masculine self.

You're not a real artist until your educated intuition has taken you deep into yourself.

You're not a real citizen until you think in terms of others.

You're not a real adult until you are responsible to yourself and for others.

You're not a real elder until you embrace wisdom in your voice.

You have no real voice until you master a language to  speak it. 

When is contemporary art contemporary art?

I've heard it said that any ant made now must be contemporary art. I suppose at a time when anything seems to be art, that could be a sensible statement. But it's also an easy way out.

What makes contemporary art contemporary is not that it's made now, but that it could only be made now. It tells us what it means to be human now. It uses materials and approaches that come out of now. It flings art history forward into the relevant now. It makes us confront who and what we are now.

Art and life

Art is not life but comes from life. Art is no more human than you are. No more intelligent than you are. No more interesting than you are. No more profound than you are. One of its main tasks is to help you see yourself reflected in the world and the world reflected in you. It activates what's potential in you and in those your work engages. It reveals to you what was there but hidden in the places where light would not otherwise enter.

All that said, art is still not life.

A thought for the day

Your art must always be smarter than you. That way it will take you to unexpected places, reveal your deeper self to yourself, make you ask yourself stretching questions.

A challenge

Justin Bieber just emailed  me a personal challenge. He challenged me to get one blog follower for each million of his. He's promised me that if I reach this goal, I will have a feature role in his next music video.

So if you like this blog and think it's worth checking in, please pass that long to your friends.

Much appreciated.  Best, Gary

A brief, cynical history of 20th century art (amended)

I let the first version of this go too soon. Here's a second try.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, science was presenting the world with a new vision of the material world and the place of humans in it, a world which could not be seen, but whose structure could be understood and visualized in abstract form. Surface gave way to underlying structure. Cezanne had begun to see this, and the Futurists, Cubists along with Gabo, Pevsner, Moore and others explored this new vision. The Surrealists and Dadaists investigated human behavior and psychology with the same artistic curiosity.

As the century unfolded, New York became the art center of the world, and the United States became a global power. Abstract Expressionism asserted itself as mainstream art practice. Here was the beginning of art propped up by theory, art dumping its social and moral responsibilities, art avoiding serious subject matter, art hiding in the comfortable arms of formalism.

New York, as commercial and media center of America, turned its provincial gaze on art and turned it into a commodity, something to be marketed and invested in, something for cognescenti, but certainly not for the masses. The beginning of a work of art, the mark, became its end. The end was Minimalism, whose sterile theory became the Emperor’s new clothes.

When youth culture, with its financial punch, asserted itself, fine art, like corporate America, dove enthusiastically into pop culture. Not to critique it, but to make a living from it. Pop artists began careers, made names, made lots of money and eventually became parodies of themselves, wound up stunted in their growth as artists.

Fortunately, art began to right itself, as it always must do. Alternative spaces and media, art centers emerging globally, artists making what they must make come hell or high water, young artists believing in art for the right reasons, all emerging amidst the perceptive, but cynical critique of Postmodernism. Race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and many other social issues became the stuff art is made of and about.

Immigrant artists abandoned their own countries for New York, where they encountered the hoped-for notoriety and media attention with its uncertain consequences. They addressed their issues far from the source of the issues themselves, but under the corrupting stare of the New York art world.

Now, as America’s position of world dominance becomes shaky, so does that of New York’s dominance of the art world. Now, as America searches for a way toward a freedom based on humane values lived out globally, the art world must search for a place where the highest motives can thrive.

A brief, cynical history of 20th century art

At the beginning of the 20^th century, science was presenting the world with a new vision of the material world, one which could not be seen, but whose structure could be understood and visualized in abstract form. Surface gave way to structure. Cezanne had begun to see this, and the Futurists, Cubists along with Gabo, Pevsner, Moore and others explored this new vision. The Surrealists and Dadaists investigated human behavior and psychology.

As the century unfolded, New York became the art center of the world and the United States became a global power. Abstract Expressionism asserted itself as mainstream art practice. Here was the beginning of art propped up by theory, art dumping its social and moral responsibilities, art avoiding serious subject matter, art hiding in the comfortable arms of formalism.

New York, as commercial and media center of America, turned its provincial gaze on art and turned it into a commodity, something to be marketed and invested in, something for New Yorkers, but certainly not for the masses.

When youth culture, with its financial punch, asserted itself, fine art, like corporate America, dove enthusiastically into pop culture. Not to comment on it, but to make a living from it. Pop artists began careers, made names, made lots of money and eventually became parodies of themselves, stunted in their growth as artists.

Fortunately, art began to right itself, as it always must do. Alternative spaces and media, art centers emerging globally, artists making what they must make come hell or high water, young artists believing in art for the right reasons, race, class gender, sexuality, ethnicity and many other social issues are the stuff art is made of and about.

Immigrant artists abandon their own countries for New York, where they encounter the hoped-for notoriety and media attention with its uncertain consequences. They address their issues far from the issues themselves but under the toxic stare of the New Youk art world.

As America’s position of world dominance becomes more shaky, so does that of New York’s dominance of the art world. As America searches for a way toward a freedom based on humane values lived out globally, the art world must search for a place where the highest motives can thrive.