I just finished watching "The price of Everything" on Netflix and I am all the more confirmed that the marketplace has killed art. After impressionism, expression and minimalism came kitschism, because that is what is fashionable now and selling for 75 million...consultants are telling rich people that a piece of art is stupid and meaningless and that is why they should buy it. And they do, for millions. It is all a con game using artists as pawns with no integrity ethics or rules. At the end of the documentary finally the truth is told that history is ruthless and it is very doubtful that the biggest selling artists living now will remain in history books, rather it is more likely they will be cut out. So artists, you have a choice to make, do you want fame and money now or have your art stay in history and be immortal?
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Conceptualism is still alive and well except on screen now instead of paper and canvas ...a theme that is talked about with little regard for the quality of the visuals themselves. The theme maybe important but if presented in an uninteresting manner loses its impact. And you have to present written contexts next to the visuals to know what is going on. Even in this latest AGO show the larger photos on metal were shit...simply badly done...and the portraits were not enhanced by all that glitter. Kitschy. I liked the theme but found the art ho-hum, except for maybe one image...the video was also boring, albeit meant to shock...the previous show at AGO, by Rebecca Belmore had much more depth and quality of artistic merit. It was brilliant...there was a video that actually spoke about reality and moved you..not conceptualism...you understood it without having to go and read about it. You felt it.
Have you ever noticed that when you are an artist, you like to talk about how everybody has their own vocation and that you were meant to be an artist, especially if you have family money to rely on......and if you are a garbage collector you talk about survival in this shitty world...and you are sure that you were really meant to be an artist....so the first opportunity you have at piling paint on a page...you are inspired tp pursue the career of an artist instead and if you are a good business man/woman, you might actually eke a living, especially if you happen to be digitally savvy...you don't even need to know how to draw or paint or design or think or anything else in the art profession..., just squish some pixels in a program on the computer.
Galleries now often don't want to show paintings and drawings as being passe and only contemporary art which means hanging used stockings on a stick (installation) or presenting a boring video in a loop. Did you notice that the more boring the photo the larger in size as if size were to compensate for actually saying something or beauty. Mixed media is the new catch phrase....again usually meaning a few brush strokes on a photo, large of course! The Turner Prize 2018 was given to a woman who made a "film" on a I Phone, meaning she overlapped some images and recorded some trite thoughts on top about herself of course...blah blah blah....this is the largest prize an artist can get...there are a lot of brilliant movies ...this in comparison is really mickey mouse. A truly great painting, that is alive (as Van Gogh said a painting should be) that effects you would have been more worthy to receive such a prize...me thinks. Play in the mud when it is raining you will have the same effect as expressive painting...
All of life can be creative...people ought to be taught to live creatively, to wash dishes creatively....that is the problem people have been led to believe that only art is creativity...art is a profession, a vocation, like medicine...which can also be creative. Because of this confusion between art and creativity the arts are rapidly disappearing as a legitimate profession and are inundated with kitsch...by daubsters. Doctors will soon be prescribing art, music, acting...Such BS... Art is a profession, not a cure all...or drug. When looking at good art, listening to good music, watching good acting you are transported and maybe healed of some emotional malady...but making everybody do art who is not meant to be an artist will simply create what is happening now...kitsch...and kill the artistic professions. Maybe artists should practice medicine. In Art of Living Programs the emphasis is on learning mindfulness, stress free techniques and meditation. Which will make you a creative individual in any profession...it is a way of being in the world. Doing a lot of art can also change you over a long period of time, if you are immersed in it daily. And you are disciplined! But most people find it too boring and strenuous to meditate regularly. It is the boredom in fact that gives you break throughs in the meditative process and changes you. It is the only way to get out of your egos for awhile. However most hobbyists do art maybe once a week if lucky and then focus on the production end of it, so it really does not effect their life in any significant way. And then they quickly want to expose it and sell it to their friends to be affirmed. The art usually communicates nothing significant, like finger painting and can feel good in the moment. And you don't have to go to school for 4 years. I watched a bit of a Netflix original called "Discovery". It is about a scientist who helps people through machinery to have an experience of life after death, what he calls consciousness that does not die after our bodies do.
So everybody gets a taste of nirvana and what do they do? Immediately want to commit suicide to get there. That is the problem with scientists they have great analytical skills but no wisdom. He figured people want happiness and he would show them how to get it. But if that scientist was a religious person with true experience of the mystical he would know that suicide might get you to a totally different place than he imagined...there are ethical and moral issues and also the issue of meaning in life. Why are we here suffering. He did not bother to think of that. Obviously we are not meant to be just happy in this lifetime, we are meant to learn and grow and through time if we successfully accomplish our life goals we will be awarded with afterlife bliss. We can not only rely on science, we need to also have spiritual values and as it turns out we need some kind of guidance from people in the know, wise mystical people. I watched a video by Lady Gaga who supposedly sat next to the Dalai Lama, without allowing him to speak, and espoused simplistic cliche about life. Amazing what an ego these hollywood types have. If she was in the least bit aware, she would have been awed by his presence and engaged this brilliant and holy man (yes, holy, because he did the work that got him there) in answering life's questions. What has she accomplished in her entertainers life besides taking off her clothes? Not much I would think...but she sees herself as a saviour of humanities soul...hahahahaha Unfortunately science and hollywood are not enough to guide us to the next level of existence...we need real guides. I have been to a few art shows in Toronto, not many...but I must say that beside Rebecca Belmore's at AGO and Edward Burtynky's I have seen nothing but milk-toast. It seems that artists here feel guilty if their painting actually has some quality of a good painting in terms of succulent paint, great colours something to communicate. They take special pains to show the viewer that he/she was not really trying to paint. It is a kind of jaded approach to art. The Gladstone show had a title for it, "Why the F*ck Do I Paint"...and honestly after seeing maybe a couple of reasonably painted works I honestly can answer that I don't know why they bother..
And yet I am pretty sure if they put some enthusiasm and life into their work, and lost the cynical attitude, they would probably all be pretty good artists. WE HAVE ACTUALLY COME NOT VERY FAR FROM BEING CAVE-MEN DESPITE ALL THE MARVELS OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY!
WE THE FLOWER CHILDREN OF THE SIXTIES, THE ONES WHO TALKED A LOT ABOUT LOVE NOT WAR, WHAT DID WE REALLY MEAN? DID WE REALLY MEAN LOVE AS IN COMPASSION OR SEX AND ORGIES? WE TAUGHT OUR CHILDREN TO RAPE AND PILLAGE THE EARTH. WE TAUGHT THAT ME COMES FIRST COUNTRY, COMMUNITY LAST. WE CREATED THE CAPITALISTIC SELF-ABSORBED FREEDOM-LOVING MESS THAT EXISTS. WE USED FREEDOM TO MEAN DO WHAT YOU LIKE, VOMIT WHERE YOU WILL WITH NO REGARD FOR THE OTHER! AND IF NO ONE FINDS OUT, CHEAT, ALL IS FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR. MORALITY WAS THROWN OUT THE WINDOW IN THE NAME OF FREEDOM. AND OUR WORLD NOW SHOWS WHERE THAT PHILOSOPHY LEADS. TO CHAOS DEVASTATION, EXPLOITATION, LACK OF RESPECT, LACK OF COMMUNITY, COUNTRY, LACK OF RULES IN ANY PROFESSION, ESPECIALLY ART, IT IS ALL JUST A BIG GAME WHERE THE WINNER TAKES ALL! EVEN IF WE WERE NOW TO SURVIVE THE DEVASTATION OF NATURE, WITHOUT ACHIEVING BACKBONE AND MORALS AND RULES TO LIVE BY, WE WON'T SURVIVE. THINKING YOU ARE A SPIRITUAL PERSON ON YOUR OWN WON'T HELP, UNLESS WE ARE WILLING TO CURTAIL OUR INDIVIDUAL FREEDOMS FOR THE GREATER GOOD. It is always interesting to me how the West can misquote and misinterpret some of Eastern teachings.
Existentialism as interpreted by Camus and especially Nietzsche unfortunately has led to some seriously arrogant egomaniacs like Hitler who believed that he was Superman...taken from Nietzsche, who took the term of superman from Indian philosophy while removing the cosmic aspect of it, implying we are all gods and can do what we like. Indian philosophy says that if god is in us we can only access him/her by acting like the goodness he/she is. We are responsible for our actions says Camus. There is only death, the abyss so do what we like. Don't bother looking for meaning of life as there isn't any. This thinking leads either to amassing money (why not) or suicide by folks who can not come to terms with impermanence of life and see no point in it. In Indian philosophy we are a drop in the ocean...and there is an ocean of light, radiance and so on that we also need to be accountable to. We can call it God or Universe or whatever but it is the realization that we are here on earth to grow and learn and the meaning can be experienced through various methods such as meditation...Life is MUCH larger than man... Kierkegaard was a theologian who had an experience back than and could say, sometimes you just need a leap of faith,when you reach the abyss, if you are not capable of experiencing. The intellect is not cut out for this kind of understanding. Make a new New Cultural Policy for the Arts that is called “Creative Canada”.
According to “The Walrus”, Jan. 30 2018, “Creative Canada promises nothing short of an epochal “transformation in how we view culture and creativity.” The stakes are indeed enormous: the resulting policy will influence how Canadians get our information, determine the fate of the nation’s most important cultural institutions, and shape the contours of the Canadian imagination for decades to come. What Minister Joly has delivered, however, is a paean to Silicon Valley, a gift to American technology firms, and a vision of Canadian culture as governed by web analytics and productivity tools. Creative Canada is all media and no message, a cultural policy that reflects little of Canada and none of our culture.” In other words Creative Canada is turning artists into into tech entrepreneurs is a triumph of Silicon Valley values, with all media and no substance! There is no value in being an inspired, original artist any more except in the service of the marketplace according to Creative Canada Plan. Margaret Atwood's book, “ Handmaiden's Tale" prophesizes the future. That is the real role of an artist. According to this new Creative Canada policy a book like that would be of no value to their plan of being an innovative tech entrepreneur developing business or technology. This plan is the death of art in Canada! All that tax money you throw at these so called artists is going to a bunch of charlatans who are sociopathic enough make it look like they are doing art while developing communities and business and technology. Art can inspire, beautify, make you aware of your sensual and spiritual nature, of the meaning of life, but not become engineers or business tycoons. Art is needed in our life to uplift us from the mundane, not wallow in it. Van Gogh created such amazing beauty that scientists are now saying his brushstrokes are an exact reflection of fractals in nature. Do you really think that if he had to develop technology or do business he would have been able to paint energy and not just surface nature? He did not sell anything in his life ergo he was also a bad business man, Because you can’t do both, be a good artist and good business man at the same time, it is like wanting the light on and off at the same time in a room. Impossible. The Creative Canada Plan is killing culture in this country not enhancing it. It is only enhancing commerce and capitalism. History will be the judge of our art and art world and NOT the marketplace or how well artists thrive in it! All artists can do is keep their integrity. As an artist of many years I can tell you right now, that technology will not only NOT save the world but push it further in the wrong direction, in the direction of robotic living devoid of humanity and soul, of further exploitation of nature and the death of compassion and humanity. History will be the judge of our art and art world and NOT the marketplace or how well artists thrive in it! All artists can do is keep their integrity. Queen West Art Crawl is on at Trinity Park today and tomorrow. I remember when it first started years ago, it was a juried exhibition and you had to be a professional artist to get in. It was worth seeing and some people actually sold or found galleries through it. Today anybody if they pay the money can show. So I saw a sign "I love life and colour" and really awful colours thrown on a canvas. I am happy the person loves life and colour but really wish she/he wouldn't call herself/himself an artist.
It seems that communicating anything real in art has gone out the window. It is all about decorating and selling now. |
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December 2018
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