Art Blog

You know a lot has happened since the stock market collapsed. I stopped reading all the articles on CNN about the economic turmoil and Paul Kruger’s column.  Sure I took one semester in high school and I recognize some vocab… but really I don’t go much further than Checking/Saving accounts and the bottom line of my paycheck.  I can offer absolutely nothing of value to the debate/discussion about what should happen with our economy; and I would be an absolute and total fool to think that reading the NY Times and CNN will grant me the understanding to do so.

Why do people invest in Art? Well, why does anyone invest in anything?  Hopefully because they believe there is an actual and material value to the investment - although the magic of art investments foils the usual bottom line value.  Paint + canvas + time = how much?  Let’s see, 4 quarts of Behr paint from Home Depot @ $8.50/ea, 3′ x 6′ canvas is about $66 from some online store, and let’s paint a painter $150/hr, for 6 hours (I’m feeling extremely generous)…. the material value is $700.  But, show me that same equation, but throw Jackson Pollock in it and now is: Pollock*(paint + canvas + time) = $143,000,000.  How is it that Pollock himself was able to increase the value by 20.4 million percent?

Jackson Pollock

That is where decisions come into play.  Pollock did not one day just one day unconsciously begin to dribble paint and decide it looked cool.  No, Jackson had thought deeply on the construction of an image.  He investigated how lines were conventionally formed on a painting.  He knew that conventional methods broke the rhythm of lines.  He knew that color, unbroken lines, and rhythm were shackled and somehow needed to be freed. He pushed these elements to their absolute limit.  When a person views a painting by Pollock, a person is witnessing the visual evidence of Pollocks sweeping hand and moving body as he constructed these vibrant and unhinged paintings.  We witness the moment in history when paintings literally separated from the canvas.  We see the layers of incoherent lines that at the same time boldly show a deeper harmony than what had ever been painted before.  How is it that nobody had seen this obvious and plain fact: this is materially only canvas and paint!  The obsessive need to mimic nature, like with Adolphe William Bouguereau , had already been eliminated.  You possibly (hopefully) may find those trompe l’oiel repulsive at this point.  But even Rothko, who brought painting to it’s epic completion and absolute maximum, was bound to the edges of the canvas.

This Pollock represents more than can be addressed in this short blog.  What Jackson Pollock did for art was construct epic paintings that represent his movements and his decisions, and these changed art forever.

Since his time, there have been more self described artists than the sea has sand.  Most thoughtlessly construct visual images without making conscious decisions about their construction.  Without thinking, they use methods and symbols developed decades ago, and combine them in the most obvious and boring ways.  The thing is, a person cannot contribute anything meaningful to Art if you do not make conscious decisions.  And many people are extremely foolish to think that a few basic courses in art and a couple trips to the museum will turn them into an artist.

Part I

Today while I was doing my daily run down of websites for news and entertainment, I ran across an article on CNN about synesthesia.  It was pretty interesting.  It seems a few researchers are trying to quantify this condition in the human genome.  The findings so far have shown how complex the condition is.

Imagine if whenever you heard a violin, you saw streams of burgundy?  It’s as if you would always see the brilliance of everyday life.  I believe that knowing about the idea of synesthesia is good, since such a tiny percentage of people actually are born with the ability to see sounds.  Now, there are other ways to experience synesthesia that are not quantifiable… Like feeling color.  And just being aware of this actual occurrence in our universe does help our minds to grasp how deep and rich something as common as the color green really is.  What if you experienced green as a feeling or a sound?  It’s a possibility that someone standing next to you is experiencing green that way.  If that is the standard, then next time you are on a hike, please remember that the green that surrounds, from a universal standpoint, is flowing as vibrant as you can possibly imagine.

I think the unifying factor in these three is that time is a huge part of many of their compositions. For instance, Jasper Johns style starts in his material.  He chooses to use wax as a painting medium. The dullness of the composition has an affect where the observer easily ‘enters’ or ‘connects’ with the painting, so there is no battle or negotiation between the subject(viewer)/object(painting). There is no hurry to focus on any particular place of the composition, there is a gentle period of taking in what lies before you at a meandering pace. Very unassuming, and not demanding in anyway.

Contrasting Johns w/Rothko is a good way to understand the meandering of Johns. Rothko relaxes the viewer, gives a pleasant experience of color and rhythm. Like Johns, a Rothko experience cannot be simulated by a poster or .jpg file… but its the best we have to work with! Rothko makes you happy to enjoy color, and to enjoy laying paint out on a canvas in a harmonious manner. There is no pretense to any “great” narrative, no pretense of a didactic motive. Pure experience. On the other hand, Johns teaches you to slow down and meditate on the menial tasks of living; relaxation and enjoyment is not the motive of his paintings. The “Coat Hanger” forces you to take your time. Don’t rush, take the time you need and want without feeling you have to go faster. Rothko shows you the experience of pleasure in living without regard to time. Johns teaches you the satisfaction of patient and deliberate living.

Hiroshi Sugimoto is a favorite of mine right now. Still living, so I don’t believe you can purchase his stuff as a poster yet, 600 bucks a print isn’t enough to price out the poster level art collectors. Anyways, his photograhs make me really just sit still. Most photographs connect the viewer with the idea of a narrative; they are wondering what happened before and after the moment of time frozen. Not so w/Sugimoto, and that makes me stop and wonder what it is that makes these prints so outstanding. I’m not even sure how I think when I’m looking at his seascapes. I guess all I can say is I’m totally impressed with his photographs. I can’t even say they are calming, or exciting. I get both. All I know is I definetly find them interesting and enjoyable.

It seems that every decade has a particular word expressing social admiration/acceptance.

60s - Hip
70s - Groovy
80s - Bad
90s - Cool

I don’t mean that there aren’t a lot of different words used in the decades vernacular, but that certain words are more or less associated with the prevailing attitude of the contemporary culture of that time.  So for the 60s, the popular and accepted person was Hip, “with it”, in the know of the latest fad.

In the 90s, Cool was the opposite of Hip.  Just think about the actually meaning of “cool”.  The Cool guy is a little more than an arms distance away from the norm.  He’s close to what is the latest trend, but he is not a follower.  Just a little bit removed, and not sentimental.  That attitude really pervaded many people.  A burning issue would come up, and the cool thing was to be just detached enough to not do anything.  A sense of independence and disconnection from society was really the “cool” thing.

Well now, the new “cool”, the new “hip”, the new “groovy”, is the hipster.  He is the ‘cool hip’ guy.  But it is not the latest fad that pulls the hipster, in fact the hipster remains “cool” to what is “hip”.   Surrounded by misinformation, virtual realities, and exaggerated and deceptive research the hipster must navigate through the whirl of visual information designed to mislead.

What I find interesting is that now a person who is really “with it” is one that is not easily taken in by an onslaught of visual images.  Here s a comic illustrating the person who is pulled along by what is the latest and greatest:

On the flip side, the hipster is fed the same stimulus but filters for what is real.  A person must remain cool to what they see in order to not be taken in by a clever scheme.  The hipster is seeking to find what is real in substance.

Just think about back in the 40s/50s when a poster would be the front of a nations propaganda.  This is a telling mark of how little visual images a person was confronted with on a daily basis.  Sure, there were a few videos, but how often did a person see a movie?  Hardly at all.  Posters were the only way to affect the population.  Here are a couple examples.

(Click on image to see archive of American posters)

Characteristics of a hipster are pretty easy to list.  Common portrayals are associated with education, music, healthy food, and technological savviness.

This reminds me much of Guy Deleuze’s “Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia”.  I cannot honestly say that I’ve been able to read the entire book, or even totally understand.  What I learned from courses at school is that the world is illustrated to be like a giant electric circuit.  When there is resistance, this actually increases the current of the system.  So for example, the flower power of the 60s created hippies who left a corrupt system.  They piled into vans and lived in a world outside of the system.  And what happened?  Well, the system only increased it’s power over them.  Can you vote w/o being registered at an address?  Can you convince society that pollution will destroy the world without going to college, becoming a respectable scientist, and publishing real studies?  No!  So unfortunately, hippies really couldn’t affect the system.  The system just grew a stronger choke hold on poor, uneducated people.

Now if you take that same circuit, and where you are connected to that circuit, you insert energy and you offer zero resistance, the current stays low, the voltage around you decreases, and you are able to have a measure of freedom to move.  It’s like the Chinese finger trap.  Stop resisting and you are freed.  So, instead of resisting the circuit, you give into it: you become educated, you find a job that affords you the free time and income that will give you the freedom to pursue what you find most valuable (whatever that may be).

So whatever you decide, whether it is to buy organic food or genetically modified, whether to buy a house valued higher than anyone can actually afford, you really need to make the most educated decision possible.

New iPhone app! (If you do not have an iPhone, just keep reading to hear a little bit about Chris Jordan)

The sort of high resolution images available with Seadragon is really amazing.  I just downloaded this app, and I highly, highly

Orion Nebula

recommend it.  Right now I’m browsing the photographs of Space, like the Orion Nebula. The universe is beautiful.  And I do not use ‘beautiful’ to describe much of anything.  But it is really fantastic that you can scroll around and see these sort of captivating photographs of the universe.

Here is a screen shot I took on my iPhone of another image.  This is the Color Flower.  You will find it under “Technology & Web”.  It looks really neat, but the zoom in is really what makes this app fantastic!

A little reminiscent of Divisionist, huh?  Well, under “Art” is a project from Seattle based artist Chris Jordan. “Running the Numbers” is featured.  You know how we always hear all these massive statistics that are shocking, like 2.3 million Americans in prison?  That’s a huge number that we can’t actually envision in our minds.  When you hear 10% of all Americans are in prison, well that makes more sense to our brains.  We can easily imagine 1 in 10.  Well, Chris Jordan is using another method to help our brains  grasp the magnitude of those sort of statistics.  Here is a quote from Jordan on the front of this section on Seadragon:

“Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or two million plastic bottles consumed every five minutes.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society…. that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.”

Ok, so look at something he has done in “Cans Seurat, 2007″.  You simple could not appreciate this image on your phone without this app; you could not zoom in enough. Here are some screen shots:

A statistics I got off of Jordan’s website: this image was constructed with 106,000 aluminum cans.  That is 30 seconds of aluminum can consumption in America.  Wow.  So that little girls face is constructed of more than the 27 cans shown in the most zoomed picture. —>

If you can, download the free app.  Here is an article on techflash concerning Seadragon.  There is great potential for this sort of image viewing on your hand held device.  Otherwise, still check out Running the Numbers, and American Self Portrait for more images from Chris Jordan.