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The Art is Not in the Painting: part 3
Three (toward a personal aesthetics)
I stood for a time letting my eyes take in the zinnias in bloom. Took them in. Into my body, into the structure of my cells, the chemistry of my body. I let my gaze fly easily from one to another, like the insects, the little flies disguised as bees, from flower to flower, to the leaves that embraced them in their green cloak—returning again and again to an orange blossom that drew me to it. This will be a painting, I thought, but not a painting anyone would recognize as zinnias. It will be a painting that I will make with my eyes, guiding brush or pen, moving from point to point on the page. It will be a painting those little bee-flies will help me make. We will make it together: flowers, bees, the fold of green, the press of my feet on the sidewalk telling me it was time again. Time returned, telling me to move on. Till the next time.
——
One
The art work is an eidolon. It exists in the memory and experience of those who have seen the object that engendered it. It is not the physical object. The eidolon is as powerful as the number of people who have viewed, read or heard it, and carry it with them. The power of the eidolon is that of a shaper. It alters and shapes perceived reality. Its power is cumulative and collective.Two
The artist views a face, a garden, a city street, patterns in broken pavement, an image in a dream: hears tone and timber in a voice, birdsong, wind: feels in their own body how bodies move — or all of this and more in the torrent of words that surround them. This is the compliment of what might become the eidolon, but is not yet. It is, for now, only a private vision, a kind of pain, unease, something that does not want to remain private, where it will become a disease, a symbiant that may fade and die—or kill its carrier… or find voice and body, form and duration in the thing we misname, as ‘art.’ It first becomes the eidolon as the artist takes it in, standing aside even as they make it, to see, listen, move beside it as it moves from their body, into what its becoming. The artist may feel this as healing—but what it heals, what it saves them from, is the unborn thing, the art that found no becoming in the world, where it gathers power and being in the view of others.
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Broken Silhouettes in the Park
Source: Broken Silhouettes in the Park
Artists and Gentrification
Why burn the flag?
Burn the flag for 4th of July!
The USA is NOT North Korea. So why, one might ask, why–and what is the point of burning an American flag on the 4th of July?
The neoliberal, capitalist police state have developed a different strategy for control than the totalizing states like North Korea, the GDR before the fall of the Berlin wail, or the USSR in its worst periods. It’s, obviously, highly selective in its oppression, by class and race, but the harsher realities and more visible suppression imposed on blacks and other semi-marginalized people, are a prime instrument of control of ‘favored’ classes.This lesson is always clear: ‘this is what will happen to you if you take it on yourselves to exercise the rights you believe you have. Like … read the comments.
You know how they go: “If he’d not made eye contact with the cop! If she’d not asked for a warrant! If they’d just let the cops do what they…. ”
And after that, It doesn’t take many arrested, beat up flag burners, to create a powerful incentive to restraint, from acting on this perfectly legal act of free speech, an act, the only harm of which, is to cast doubt on oppressors and annoy their unthinking, patriotic supporters. Or any other act of legal dissent–it gets people thinking–even people like me, who don’t give no FUCKS… “is this an action (however legal), I’m ready right now to take on the several years of legal wrangling, post arrest–that will justify the disruption?So burning a flag–involves a kind of legal triage. A totally legal act! But one, living in 2017 America, one has to weigh the significant consequences.
There are people now facing charges that could bring up to 70 years in prison, for begin swept up in a cop kettle at the J20 inauguration protests. Some, caught as observers, who had no part of the actions; some were street medics, there to treat and give medical aid to ANY who needed it, some were journalists–doing their constitutionally guaranteed duty.Nope. This is not North Korea… but look how it works out. Look how effective it is in silencing dissenters. Those who might otherwise bring to light the horrific, violence being perpetrated across the planet on those we would exploit… and in push come to shove, exterminate! On those calling to account our rape of the environment, and those demanding that we stop our drive to pump gasses into our atmosphere–that will end human life on this planet!
So don’t think, cause I can burn that fucking flag–and you a million others do the same, that this is sign of how much better ‘we’ are…Cause “we” aren’t. “We” are the ultimate machinery of Money and Death.
Prepping to make art, from found materials
A few weeks ago, I picked up an 8×7′ piece of heavy, cotton duck canvas, painted on one side. Cut into 4 pieces. Been thinking how to use a couple old, wood window frames I found. I’ve used them as frames, before, both for paintings, and assemblages, so thought I’d try stretching a piece of canvas to the back side–using it as both stretchers and frame. The painted side, a thick coat, so couldn’t do much ‘stretching,’ but got it reasonably tight. Canvas wasn’t seized, and really soaked up the gesso. That’s a second window frame behind in the photo.
Art & Capitalism: the problem won’t go away.
The interface between making art, and making a living, is the most politically charged area in the life of any artist. This is where the artist engages most directly with the monster of capitalism and Empire, both as a maker of art, and as a citizen of the human community. I don’t understand why so many artists are so reluctant to seriously engage with the problems we face in this arena. This is something I’ve been thinking about — for years, and yet, the most typical response I get from working artists: on commodification of our work, on how to live by our art, of the corrupting influence of investor driven gallery gatekeepers–is a curt dismissal, as though I were an impertinent 12 year old. “I need to make a living–what am I supposed to do?” But of course, never asked as a serious question.
And of course, I have no answer. No one person does, because it’s not the kind of question that any individual can answer alone. —Artists have to figure out–together–how to control the outcome of our work–or we will be controlled and used to the ends which the Empire of Money and Death sees fit.First–acknowledge the problem. Then, pledge to work together to applying ourselves to find cracks in the walls where we can expand and live. We cannot continue to be artists under capitalism. Because, under capitalism, we will only be permitted to do what supports capitalism–that is, no longer artists, but technicians of the machine, and entertainers, distracting the masses.
“When Hate is Glorified, Institutionalized and Merges With State Power”
Two years later, Facebook acknowledged that “malicious actors” had created “fake personas” to spread misinformation on the site, updating this a week later with the admission that “any person’s Facebook account could also become the target of malicious actors… who could potentially access sensitive information that might help them advance harmful information operations.”
How did we get here? How is social media being deliberately utilized to evoke anger, hatred, bigotry, and…
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Things you wouldn’t think you could do with pastels
Skill and Expression Win the Day It’s always exciting when we hear about emerging talents in the painting and drawing fields we are passionate about. Here I’d like to introduce you to seven pastel artists whose work demonstrates a level of skill and expression that has caught the attention of critiquing artists and specialists in […]
via 7 Emerging Pastel Artists to Watch Out For — Max Mallie’s Blog
The Annihilation of the Universal
In the organic composition of capital, variable capital defines a regime of subjection of the worker (human surplus value), the principal framework of which is the business or factory. But with automation comes a progressive increase in the proportion of constant capital; we then see a new kind of enslavement: at the same time the work regime changes, surplus value becomes machinic, and the framework expands to all of society.
—Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
Isn’t it true, our fear of Artificial General Intelligence, of these radical creatures of our imaginal dreamtime futures and present unfolding’s mask our inhuman core? Our fear of losing jobs to the machines, of being obsolesced by the new conditions of society, being not only replaces but condemned to exclusion and annhilation? Haven’t we begun to realize the thing we fear most is the buried truth of our own inhumanity, that the West –…
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Jacob Russell's Magic Names 