My Overriding Goal Of Becoming A Force Of Nature

Happy New Year. So can we start the 90's revival already? I suppose I have some irons in the fire, but some are secret. The econopocalpyse has slowed my artistic production, though a shift is immanent. Let's just say it's about to behoove me to do smaller, more easily transportable works. I will never be free of an unfinished big sexy painting on my wall, but it's time to dust off the drawing board, eh?

So it seems my teaching career is on hiatus for now. I don't know what those kids are going to do. They were already robbed of my Bauhaus inspired digital media curriculum, and now I don't even get to teach Intro to Art Concepts anymore. I have to go back to self-rightously rambling about what art is to strangers at after parties. When you get paid to do that, you're a professor. When you don't you're just an asshole.

I painted my father, and a family therapist bought the painting. I figured my mother would get jealous so I started a painting of her. It was originally going to be a painting of a giant shark with a naked woman in its jaws, taken from a Spanish men's (read: fucked up violent porn) magazine. But I decided to paint my mom instead. I'm keeping the original title though, -- Tiburon.

So this Saturday at the Torrance Art Museum (all the cool kids who eat together at lunch call it the TAM) are some sexy shows that I'm involved with in various ways from tangential to directly. You should go to their website and try to find me, Where's Waldo style. I'm trying to figure out a way to show up in people's dreams next. Not necessarily that way.

I feel closer to my overriding goal of becoming a force of nature more than ever these days, though I can't exactly explain why. I have begun helping to facilitate some outside exhibitions for RAID Projects, so if you are one of my international fans, let me know if you know of any groovy art spaces that would like to do an exhibition exchange with us. You know, if you like being in shows and stuff. Still a ways off, but we here at RAID are consolidating our mafia and are poised to strike.

Anti-Christ by Lars Von Trier is the greatest date movie ever. Take your partner, parents, and clergy to the best feel good family film of '09. Seriously it's good shit. Hard to recommend without fully interviewing the recommendee, but if you think you like film, (as opposed to just "movies") get involved. Saw The White Ribbon by Hanenke the other night. Again, not for morons. I think he's giving a talk tomorrow. Must queue up Funny Games. The original. And the remake.

There's a whole gaggle of new cats here at RAID now. As soon as I get to know them and we share links, I'll be spreading the love, probably on the RAID blog. The only way I make friends is if they live in the same house with me. Seriously, my anti-social behavior is only evolving as I get older.

The Perfect Gig

So for the past two semesters, I have taught “Introduction to Art Concepts” at Santa Ana College in Orange County, California. This is a class that is also known at other schools as “Art Appreciation”, among other titles. The SAC catalogue description reads thusly –

“A study of the visual arts in relation to both personal and cultural expressions. Fundamentals of visual organization, color theory, terminology, historical art movements and concepts will be studied.”

It’s a good time. It’s the perfect gig for me. The material is structured in the various textbooks pretty much all the same. Starts with some working definitions or art and why it’s important, its purposes and where it’s found. Next it goes into formal language, visual elements, principles of design, things like that. Then it takes each medium, one by one, and then a fast forward through the history of art. The history half is the standard narrative of the Western tradition with a detour after the 18^th century to cover non-Western art traditions.

It’s a lot of material to cover. 16 weeks to generalize about some 5,000 odd years of human beings doing every visually apparent thing that didn’t fall under the category of “eating” or “fucking”. (Though personally I think all art is about sex and death.) It is up to me what I emphasize, what I leave out, what I include, and what spin I put on everything. Some things I personally try to emphasize are:

-- How to write, speak, and most importantly chat about art intelligently. (As well as how write, speak, and chat well in general.)

-- How you “have to get smart to get art” and how knowledge of it can give one a creative edge in any discipline or walk of life.

-- That the story of art used to be just be the story of white, (seemingly) straight European males, and that contemporary art today cannot be understood without knowledge and reclamation of artists from formerly marginalized groups (females, people of color, queer, “outsider” art) and non-western traditions.

-- The ideas of the avant-garde eventually trickling down to mainstream society; art as the “R&D department” of culture. Specifically how many of the prevalent digital methods of information consumption and production today (like the website you’re reading right now) are products of ideas first put forward in art.

-- Art history as a history of reactions, and the external (non-art) circumstances that dictate particular movements and trends.

-- How formal language, knowledge of relevant contexts, medium-specific associations, and art history can all be used to conclude content and/or meaning from a particular artwork. (The last two is more generally referred to as “critical thinking” to use pedagogical language.)

What I want to know is what else should be included? Or more correctly, what shouldn’t be excluded? During the history phase of the class, it’s a pretty fast rundown of the greatest hits of art, and many artists fall through the cracks to present a more generalized story. What are the most important art concepts that should be taught in “Introduction to Art Concepts”? If you could teach anyone without an art education only a handful of things, what would you show them?

Bas Jan Ader Was an Exception to Lots of Things

So as an artist and teacher, it occurs to me often the larger question of ‘Why is art important?’ I imagine it is obvious to many who would even be reading this, but I feel that articulating it is another matter entirely. Then I imagine there are those that feel art is not important, but that’s why it is important, that sort of thing. As a community college instructor, the obligation falls upon me regularly to explain why an art education can be beneficial to several different walks of life and disciplines. And I honestly do believe it is. Much of the conventional wisdom around this is centered around the idea of creativity, and indeed I spend some time going into what that is and means with my “Introduction to Art Concepts” students early in the semester, as do the texts associated with that course.

I fancy it a sublimation of the survival instinct; if your life depends on it, you will get real creative, real fast. Artists are people who attempt to engage in creative processes without (usually) being in unforeseen life-threatening situations. I know what you’re about to say, but Bas Jan Ader was an exception to lots of things. But perhaps it is an instinct that needs expression in order to be a healthy, happy person….maybe.

One of my other sales pitches for the importance of art is referring to it as the “R&D department of culture”. Sometimes I like using THE MAN’S corporate lingo -- sometimes I even preface it by saying “If culture was a corporation, art would be the…”. Having insight into the strategies behind artworks and artists, with whom creativity is their business, can give one an edge in any discipline, over those who are not art educated. For many of us this is painfully obvious. The avant-garde does indeed trickle down to the mainstream, where it creates totally boring things like jobs, capital, supply, demand, products, etc. Don’t believe me? Reality TV? 70’S PERFORMANCE ART. Ikea furniture? MINIMALIST SCULPTURE. Photoshop? RAUSCHENBERG. Hipsters? WARHOL. I actually think that’s the litmus test for the avant-garde to cross over into “history”, but that’s another topic altogether.

We currently are all feeling the burden of those boring things I spoke of earlier, and there is a scramble for solutions towards relieving that burden. In many ways creativity is at a premium right now. However it gets solved, it will be a solution that has existed before, in some way; as any artist will tell you, originality is just a myth.

800 Page Dick Joke

It' s been a little while. Art season started last weekend, saw some shows. Nothing blew me away....with the possible exception of...

Chinatown. It looked good. Sort of in general. Which makes me happy, because I live downtown. I want downtown to have art I like. Looking back on what everyone had, Michael Lazarus at Sister Gallery wasn't bad. I remember liking Eric Sall's paintings at Acuna-Hansen.

Mark Moore Gallery's 3rd annual Ultrasonic International was up and running. Roberts and Tilton's new space in Culver City opened, but I guess I forgot to walk inside. I was in a mood.

The new show at the Geffen Center is good for some laughs. Good follow up to the Lawrence Weiner show.

If I seem a little bereft of opinions, its probably because I've started teaching again, specifically an Introduction to Art Concepts class (some schools call it 'Art Appreciation), and my mind has been occupied with explaining the basics of what art 'is' to people who have little or no experience with it. This is the kind of fine challenge I relish sinking my teeth into, and, like much of my teaching have taken on the seriousness of it to the point of emotional exhaustion. I love it.

The young people in my class seem to have an aversion to non-representational painting, which interests me deeply, being a painter who loves and appreciates painting of that 'genre'. When I taught 2D Design, by the end, I had most of the students making super-tight Ellsworth Kelley / Theo van Doesburg / Barnett Newman-esque mini-paintings, and they could talk about them. Hmm.....

Besides all that, I finished reading Gravity's Rainbow. I have been making dents in this sprawling tome since December, along with a readers guide that was indispensable. After all of it, I think I can say that I know exactly what Pynchon was doing with GR, and what it is, as whole, and it is this:

Its an 800-page dick joke.

I realized this about 30 pages from the end, and that explanation somehow satisfies a lot of my instincts about the novel, and its overall concerns. Layered, researched, and complicated, yet also juvenile, self-indulgent, and scatological. So I've pretty much committed to reading all of Pynchon's output now, but I must have some lighter reading for the immediate time-being. I began many flings and affairs with other books while I was with GR, and now they will get my full attention. And I've got Daybreak 2250 AD, apparently the first modern post-apocalyptic novel, penned by one Ms. Andre Norton.

Two shows of interest coming up -- Friday, Sept. 19th, my friend Amanda Browder is throwing a show entitled "Um...My Gallery", which I will be taking part in, right here at Raid Projects (602 Moulton Ave, LA 90031). I imagine things will start around 6-ish, hm? Do come.

And, on Saturday, Sept 27th, "Neosapian" at the Cal State LA Fine Art Gallery opens, curated by M-L Flemington. And you are required to attend that as well.

























ps
Be sure to check out Bad at Sports, a super art world podcasting destination, for your listening pleasure.

" "

I can't seem to get any of my thoughts past the declarative quip stage.  Perhaps writing more like this will help.  Until then, this is a greatest hits collection of things I know I think I believe (that wasn't non-committal), all in the succinct, poetic style I have been getting drunk and saying too loudly to people over the years...

"Painting is the most legitimate form an image can take."

"Hanging anything on a wall is a painterly act."

"The two most frightening things in life are art and love."

"All art is political."

"All art is narrative."

"All artworks are documentations of a performative activity."

"Painting is undead.  And as we all know, the only way to kill the undead is to kill the brain.  So as long as there are brains in painting, it will never die."

"Video art is people exercising their ability to make their own TV to watch, which is exactly why its not on TV."

"The consequences of being seduced by practicality are just as painful as the consequences of being seduced by poetry."

"Poetry is the only thing that illuminates the night (Godard).  The moon illuminates the night.  Therefore, the moon is made of poetry.  That's why all the bitter hearts say its made of cheese."

"I'M A FORCE OF NATURE!!!" (I have never said this with my indoor voice)

"Its better to go too far, than it is to not go far enough." (I stole this from someone, I know.)

"There is no thinking in painting, because in painting, painting is thinking." (Not me, but Gerhard Richter.  But its the best.  And I swap out the word painting for whatever.)

"Commit to making a mas...." you know.

"You gotta get smart before you get art."

"I'm just trying to live poetry."

I know there's more.  The quotes around them somehow make them seem less serious...interesting. If anyone out there remembers any I've missed, don't hesitate to chime in.  Or if you have something else to add.  These things I say are supposed inspire debate, not end it.