Tag: Art

An artist’s manifesto

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Up from the basement studio–preparing a block for a woodcut, and began a painting that will be 20 in my Pavement series. I may do this to the end of my days. I see years of possibilities in this–and the metaphor of broken foundations is exactly where my head has been. Who knows what may grow out of the cracks–what we can build from the rubble.
All our high culture (especially “high culture”)–white Euro-American, grew in the service of kingship, empire, and from there–slavery, war, capitalist economic colonialism and expansion to the end of life on the planet. What is there to do, but renounce it–all of it. Build a new world from the ruins.

(reworked) #355 Missing pavement block, 2nd Street

#355 12x17cm

12×17 cm watercolor, ink, acrylic on paper. Pavement Series 19

Reworked this a bit. I was standing there, gazing at this… the missing block of sidewalke,  and noticed the guy selling photos near by. I explained what I was doing… how beautiful that missing pavement block, the patterns of stones and cig butts… I think he thought I was an hallucinating homeless dude. I told him, I saw this in color… like, ya know?

A Classic Drawing Book: Everything is Political!

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You can find telling social information in places where you might not expect it–though for Andrew Loomis, who worked as a commercial artist, it shouldn’t be surprising. I downloaded a PDF of his Figure Drawing for All it’s Worth–first published in the 30’s, out of curiosity, because I remembered it from my uncle–who also was a comercial artist, and whose drawing always bore the mark of that style.
What struck me as I read the text and looked at these highly idealized figures, was how uncritically this was presented. No indication of awareness of the social and political impact–the unrealistically idealized figures, in proportion–their nordic whiteness, the not entirely implicit marginalization and exclusion of anything outside of those lines. One comparitive set of figures is partiularly telling. From the “heroic” 9 1/2 head tall figure on the right, to the 8 1/2 head ‘fashion’ figure, the “normal-ideal” 8 head figure, standard for comerical art, to the 7 1/2 head figure on the left (naturally), described as unpleasently “squat” and not suited for or acceptable for commerical work–drawn with a droopy, black mustache–the undesirable southern or eastern European. It goes without saying, there were no black bodies, or Asian faces.
Again, what struck me was the absolute silence, the total absense of any critical understanding of the role played out here in comodifiying certain bodies and devaluing others, it’s racism–all that it was teaching besides how to draw (some types of) human figures.
A drawing book from Reagon’s mythical White America.

What would a Free University look like?

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Years ago I lived in a communal house. Expenses were divided proportional to income. For those willing to to do this, a house or loft space with 6 to 8 people (more would be better), would free people with those academic skills our late zombie capitalism continues to marganialize (the better to control and confine what is taught to ‘productive’ job training)– to teach and mentor, especially in the arts (the most inclusive definition of what that means) as alternatives to preditory graduate programs designed as institutional income generators.

We need to seriously think about, plan and experiment with education outside the academy– for all the humanities, creating non-hiarchal, student participatory teaching models and measures of competence as alternatives to grades and degrees,  not modeled on existing institutions, but freely drawing on their rescources, becomeing predatory parasites of the predatorys at the top of the educational food chain.

This is not a utopian idea–this is what MUST be done if education in other than science and business is to survive outside the jaws of our corporate masters into the rest of this century. Whatever the personal sacrifices requiered (which more and more, means giving up nothing but the illusion of tenure and financial security), this is the cost of creative and intellectual freedom. It’s time and past tiime to renew the idea of the “free university,” not one modeled on existing institutions, but as decribed here–aa living cooperative communities.  It’s time and past tiime to renew the idea of the “free university,” not one modeled on existing institutions, but as decribed here–aa living cooperative communities.

Vanessa Place — Gone With the Wind

Vanessa Place Gone With the Wind.

In reading her her defense, it’s important to keep in mind that what a work is, and its intended goals, are always divergent: the work is always more than its intentions, or its interpretations. In this case, her stated purposes, however elegantly argued, can never be more than another one of an infinite number of possible interpretations, in this case, these stated goals are stripped of aesthetic insulation (not parody), and meant to participate in the ‘real world.’ There seems to be a not entirely explicit argument that the harm this work might cause is more than counter balanced by the unacknowledged (if not invisible) mastery it exposes… that is, exposes if you substitute her argument for the thing itself.
Many years ago (1971) there was a performance artist, Chris Burden who had a friend shoot him with a 22 rifle, I believe in the hand. His explanation was that shooting someone was ‘as American as apple pie.’
My reaction at the time was to ask how this would have been different had the friend been directed to shoot him in the heart, or had he himself gone out on the street, declaring this to be a performance, the central goal of which, was to erase the distinction between the aesthetic intention and its real world consequences. It seems clear to me, that in erasing the lines between the aesthetic and the real, subsuming the later in the former, we have annihilated human meaning on both levels, pretending to a god-like stance, as something akin to a pure act of nature, like an earthquake or lightning strike. In the face of this, those powerful lawyerly arguments sound to me as nothing more than defense of exactly this, on the grounds that, because the social conditions being appropriated are themselves presented to us as meta-human realities, it is justified to imitate them, even to creating the same kind of harm. Or maybe there is no implied justification, but rather, an assertion of art as pure nihilism.
I read her explanation. I am not convinced.

Write a Novel Not for Humans

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What if I want to make art, but not for humans? What would a novel look like? And do I need to have in mind a particular sort of non-human? Cats? Stones? I think I like stones better. Not as companions, but to make art for. A novel for stones.

First off, it wouldn’t have words. That would save the blank first page anxiety. Probably wouldn’t have pages, although it might. Rocks do tend to layer up. You see? Not such a strange idea—when you stop to think about it; I mean, rocks have written the history of our planet, right there for us to read—and they didn’t have us in mind when they were writing it. That’s getting close to what I mean—not having in anything in mind. Except it not being for humans.

How tiresome. All this art and poetry for humans, like we’re the only things in the universe that matter. But maybe that’s what we are… we humans. A novel in progress. A work of art for everything and nothing not-us. A kind of dance, actually. Yes. More like a dance. Or improv theater—one-of-a-kind and never-again. If only we’d stop doing it as though it were only for us. If only we knew how.

Looking at it that way—in the larger picture, removes me from the question, takes it out of my hands. All well and good that this is a project for all human kind, but what about me? That’s where we all end up, isn’t it? What about me? Pretty much sums us up, don’t it? Humanity… one big multi-act circle jerk.

Doesn’t mean we don’t matter, that we’re not important. Every single one of us. Think of the millions and millions and millions of micro-organisms dependent on us. On our staying alive. When we go, they go. Some—someplace else, some, forever. Like us. Every man… and woman… every gendered or genderless human—is an island. A densely inhabited island of things that are not us.

Maybe I could write a novel for them?