John Berger: Who is left to speak for us?

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So sad at the loss of John Berger. I would so love to have been able to meet, and talk and… just spend time, mull shit over with him. So few… like, almost none… of those who write about art, or even those who DO it… when it comes to thinking, and talking about it… who I feel like… get it.

Capitalism–and who got this better? –fucks up our minds–as artists. There is no model for what constitutes ‘success’ for an artist in this capitalist world, no collective model, but … like our art, that which we make for ourselves.

One less now… who did get it.

More alone than ever.
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Yesterday I went to Penn Book Center and bought a copy of Landscapes… opened it on the El on the way home… pages flipped to chapter 3. The Basis of All Painting and Sculpture is Drawing.

In March of 2015 I wrote THIS POST

I sat there the rest of the way home… and felt like John Berger was there beside me… holding my hand.

#624

31″ x 24″ Acrylic on Masonite. Not sure I’ve reached the end of this ‘kaleidoscope’ series, or pushing on to a new phase. I started out with some heavy, black bars, horizontals and verticals and connecting beams; the idea was to devise a scaffold, like beams of a building with the walls torn down–but again, like related paintings, giving the illusion of depth through layering, not geometric perspective.
It didn’t work, or didn’t work the way I’d anticipated. Those bars were too heavy and defied being pushed into the background until they were almost completely covered over. They did work to divide the rectangle and give it some structure, but without nearly as much depth as I would have liked. Some of that was a problem with value; was this light coming through dark, or light over dark? –a struggle that isn’t resolved here. Got more what I wanted in the other pieces (#604, 612, 615).
That I’m not satisfied suggests that there’s more to explore in this mode.
624

View portfolio here ART BY WILLARD
For photos on this blog:CLICK HERE, and scroll down.

#622 – with page from Goby’s Journal: Stasi Trump Jesus and the Subjunctive Voice

18″ x 24″ Acrylic on wood.
Layering. Interested in giving an impression of depth, without resorting to geometric perspective. Pollock, of course… but also, the illusion that one is looking at something… both real, and mysterious, like Hubble photos, or electron microscopy… in color. right click on photo for more detail.

622
View GALLERY HERE.

… I’m thinking of using this piece of a packing crate for a frame. Paint it black.
packing-crate-622

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Goby’s Journal: December 23, 2016

Stasi, Trump, Jesus and the Subjunctive Voice

In an age when anyone who hears us speak, in person, or through social media, students in our classrooms, our patients or customers–when anyone might feel empowered by the Trumpocracy, to report you, to troll you, to try to get you fired, blacklisted, kicked off a plane…
It would be well, were we to revive the long neglected subjunctive voice.
To polish our skills at not quite saying what we mean.

If one were to imagine oneself, say, in 1956 East Berlin, one would find ways, even in front of a class, of speaking to those who “had ears to hear,” without giving cause to those who would take you down, were they so inclined. Which brings to mind–that phrase, “those who have ears to hear” — the language used by Jesus in the Gospels: speaking in parables. Jesus, too, lived under a hostile power. How much of that language was made to pass safely through the Roman occupation?

We aren’t at that level, yet… of Stasi, say… where no one, not even our most radical friends, can be trusted, because anyone can be made to be an informant. Let them only describe what will happen to your children, your aging parents, should you refuse. But this is where we are headed.

I have heard stories. Some reported in news, some seen on social media. Would that it were true that nothing of the kind had happened to anyone I know.

Be careful. Don’t say anything in private you wouldn’t say in public, cause… nothing is private. Learn from poets how to say more and less and other than what you mean.

#619

20″ x 16″ Acrylic on canvas
There’s no message here. Just colors. Useless… because, to pursue what is of no use, in a world where nothing is valued, and everything is used…a world where Death, with all leaders and all parties as its agents,  uses us all, this, in itself, is an act of defiance and rebellion.
619

View GALLERY HERE./>