"The Neo-Cons and the Con-Temps " © 2007
Top Image: "Last of the Great Buffalo Hunters" (Detail) [Paint, Leather, Ceramic, and Glue on Wood] (c) 1987 Robert Arneson, Denver Art Museum. Below Image: "Feather Sculpture #2" (Zoom Fuzzy Detail) [Willow, Feathers, Buckskin] (c) 1994 Truman Lowe, Denver Art Museum.
Contemporary Artists are the Neo-Cons of the Art World. Not that much difference between them and George Bush and his minions.
Now that I have your attention, let me explain and let me define a few terms too. And maybe give you a message of hope for the future of Art too.
Modern Art is pretty much everything from the late 1800's up to the 1970's. From Picasso to Pollock. Also Matisse, Calder, Warhol, Christo, Arneson and everything good and powerful in between. Modernism dealt with the ideas of abstraction, emotion, and life in the modern world, but it still had an eye for design, color and form. Contemporary Art, on the other hand, is Stuff that is called Visual Art that comes out of New York, Los Angeles, London and a few other U.S. and European cities since the late 70's and 80's. It's about some sort of idea about something, usually shocking or political, and has absolutely nothing to do with Beauty and very little to do with Design. The idea is the thing, what the eye sees is secondary. Most everyone who isn't involved in the Art World thinks it's pretentious, or meaningless or ugly, or all the above and most times they are right. Those inside the Contemporary Art World see it as cutting edge and original and forward thinking, and they are only right about it being original. Each bowel movement is different from the next. Same can be said about most of this shit.
People say it's not Art. They are wrong. It's Art. It's just bad Art.
[Brief aside: It's seem bizarre to me that people call Bad-Art, Not-Art. If you go to a crappy movie, you don't come out and say 'That wasn't a movie.' If you go to a concert and it sucks, you don't say that it wasn't music. You just say that it's shitty music. Only visual art has this distinction and it think I know why. Because people hold Visual Art up to a higher standard, to an almost religious height, which makes sense since some of the most beautiful Art ever made was spiritual. We have higher expectations of Visual Art. It must be beautiful or at the very least well done and well produced. It must be transcendent. It must not be merely entertainment or a joke. It must be not just a bumper sticker or a sign that someone needs therapy. It should lift us up to be better or at least lift up our spirits a bit.]
And sadly, Art which was the primary source of human creation for thousand of years is now a distant 4th at best, behind Music, Motion Pictures, and The Internet. The number of people that go to an opening at a small city Contemporary Art museum or gallery on a Saturday night is less than the number of hits I get on my little Stu-Blog in a day. Not that my blog is all that wonderful but you get my drift.
And why are they, the Contemporaries, The Con-Temps, like the Neo-Cons and George Bush? Consider this. The Neo-cons look like Republicans but they aren't really. They are not fiscal conservatives. There are autocrats. They are bullies. They will break the bank. Same said for the Con-Temps. They looks like artists and act like they like art but they don't. They like themselves and people like themselves and no one else. They are an exclusive elite club, like the Neo-Cons, in which members can only enter if they fit a very narrow definition of Cool. Preferably Cool with a lot of Cash. The Con-Temps aren't interested in Beauty or Peace or Building Community. They are selfish and self-centered, only wishing to build in their power, ego and prestige. Same can be said for the political Neo-Cons. Chaos, be it War or economic downturn builds more opportunity to make money from cronyism and from buying low and selling high. Same with the Con-Temps. Cronyism is a key. You sell each other shit. It's a visual circle jerk in which everyone must grab the cock of the guy next to him. And finally, there is an orthodoxy to both the Neo-Cons and the Con-Temps. It's my way or the highway. Believe in my socio/political worldview or my narrow artistic worldview, and everything is fine. But if you don't, I'll bring you down with bombs, bribery, or vicious ridicule. All with a smile of the self-righteousness on their face. No 'live and let live' in these folk. No love and tolerance from them. But they may give you a sales pitch that says that they do love and appreciate you and your differences. Don't believe it. They are either trying to take something from you, or force something on you.
And I'm not just speaking sour grapes. I was what they called a Conceptual Artist in Art School in the 1970's. Leashing myself to trees. Burying myself in fire brick in the center of campus while the cameras rolled. Painting outlines of traffic dead on city streets in the middle of the night, and getting in trouble with the law. I had some Big Ideas, and I had my shtick, my rap about those Ideas. But looking back, I had a couple of good pieces but most of my work was unfocused, marginally produced and smelled of Marijuana smoke. But even back then I wasn't completely sold on the idea, that The Idea was king and that The Visual was a serf you raped in the fields. I was making yearly pilgrimages to the Hirshhorn Museum in D.C. to see Rodin's "Burgher of Calais" and "Balzac". I've loved Calder since I was a kid. And my experimental 8 mm films from Art School did have some heart, not just brains.
Of late, I'm shopping around getting a book published of my Art and Words. Not going so well but I have friends who are helping. I may end up self-publishing at some point, when I get an extra 5000 dollars from somewhere. Anyway, the reason I'm working on books is I'm tired of dealing with the Entitled Rich (and I'm not talking about the Generous and Soulful Rich, so to my two rich Michaels I know, I'm not talking about you). I'm tired of them talking down my prices, of being fickle and arrogant, and I suddenly realized a few years ago that it's par for the course these days in the Visual Arts. I'm expecting a pig to be a pony. And I like books for I can sell them to people like me: the Struggling Middle and Working Class who always have enough money for a good CD, a good movie or a good book. I want to be another good book they can buy.
And I believe there is hope for Art. I hear that students out of high school are demanding that their university Art professors teach them how to draw better, sculpture better, craft better and if they don't, they leave and go to a school that will. I visited the Disney School of Animation in L.A. a few years ago and saw amazing draftsmanship on butcher paper hanging in the lobby after a critique. Master illustrators like Charles Vess are finally getting their due. Chihuly has a multi-million dollar glass chandelier in the Bellagio Lobby in Vegas. The elegant furniture of Scott Baker is winning awards. And Crane Day, weaver extraordinaire, can be found working magic with the mohair wool just ten feet from my studio door.
I think I'll to go to my studio now, and play my mandolin for a while. Play it through my Roland Cube with the Chorus and Reverb settings at 10 o'clock. My little ambient songs are quite pretty, I think, and quite Modern. And not Contemporary in the least.
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