2011

Now I am not really into resolutions.

I rather like to plan. I think a good plan for this year is to just get good and serious about my art work. Yeah, I’m not going to accept any more exhibition rejections. 17 December 2010, that’s the last rejection I’m accepting from an exhibition jury.

So how am I doing this? By deciding to. I’m only submitting to exhibits with substantial awards. Like an investment, my art business investment. And the other thing is to do more self promotion. Maybe display somewhere locally. You know rent a hall or something, throw a big ME event.

Been reading Seth Godin, “Small is the New Big”, very perceptive guy. Quite funny at times also. What I’m taking away from him is, one is the captain of ones own ship. Things aren’t going the way you want? Change course! Pretty simple.

As the year progresses I’ll keep you up to date. Of course I’ll have to be more consistent posting here, and I’ve got some good ideas along that line.

Stay tuned.

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Gatekeepers, critics, and invalidation.

Now I find recently even more “gatekeepering” and invalidation of integrity.

Financial Times in October 2010 did a piece about how the brilliant photographer Annie Leibovitz has no standing in the “art” photography market. Long short on it is because the gatekeepers don’t like the way she plays (who she is!).

As Jeffrey Boloten, a managing director of an art consultancy, puts it: “You do have to play by the art market rules.”  Apparently Leibovitz has failed this test, and therefore her credibility among the “movers, shakers and brokers” of the art world is low.

Well then isn’t it about time to dispense with the “movers and shakers”? I don’t suggest Annie follow the lead of Hazel Dooney an Australian artist of uncompromising personal integrity when it comes to her art and the relationship she has with the appreciators thereof. However, I would suggest a serious re-examination of how Annie wants to approach the marketing of her oeuvre.

I would consider the model of Jack Vettriano the painter/”postertier”. If only because Annie’s work falls into the multiply reproducable form and logically could (should) be marketed that way. To claim unexclusivity causes a lessening of the “art” of something as Mr. Boloten proposes “Rarity is essential and it is something that photography does not naturally have,” simply shows the gatekeepers don’t even know what art is. Vettriano’s work is not less impactful, or appealing, or interesting because you can get an example for $50, and more than a couple people have. Art is a communication from the artist to an audience.

And exclusivity, Ha! There are several hundreds of prints of various Ansel Adams photographs, and yet a single one, of over 1,000, “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941” fetched $518,500 at auction.

Of course we’re not comparing apples to basketballs here as Adams is dead and the auction was secondary market, none the less 500k is not chump change.

The artist needs to be first true to their own vision, make their own statement, and bypass the gatekeepers. As the battle cry Ms. Dooney suggests “Art is war”.

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Rise of the critic, fall of Art.

In previous posts I have lamented the loss of direction, purpose, and even meaning that I see in Art. This is attributable to the rise of the “critic”. When appreciation passed from the patron, the one actually paying for it, and the public, over to the professional critic the purpose and meaning of Art got lost. Hijacked is maybe a better term.

From pre-history until the 18th century, practically, art was commissioned by a form of patron. This might be the church, a guild, or the portrait sitter, nobility or otherwise. Then in 1648 with Cardinal Richelieu’s founding of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture (Academie de peinture et de sculpture), in Paris, the taste of art started to shift and come under the influence of “official” critics. These at first were peers, working artists, but as their “responsibilities ” pulled them away from creation into teaching, administration, and production of art, ie. the studio factory, the Academy masters became gatekeepers holding up the status quo as the epitome of expression. Until by the latter 19th century appreciation is dictated by the “critic” who either has no particular experience in the medium, or is a failed practitioner. The critics lack of perception and support of the status quo thus dismisses and derides a new window of communication being opened by artists like Degas and Manet.

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a word

What is the Foley credit in film making?
“Foley” is the reproduction of everyday sounds for use in film making. These reproduced sounds can be anything from the swishing of clothing and footsteps to squeaky doors and breaking glass. The best Foley art is so well integrated into a film that it goes unnoticed by the audience, yet helps to create a sense of reality within a scene. Without these subtle, crucial background noises the movie would feel unnaturally quiet and uncomfortable.
Jack Foley began what is now known as Foley art. He had started working with Universal Studios in 1914, during the silent movie era. When Universal needed to get on the “talkies” band wagon, in 1927, Foley became part of the sound crew. Because the microphones used for filming could not pick up more than dialogue, other sounds had to be added in after the film was shot. Foley and his small crew would project the film on a screen while recording a single track of audio that would capture their live sound effects in real time. Their timing had to be perfect so that footsteps and closing doors would sync with the actors motions in the film.
Much of Foley’s methods are still employed today though today sounds do not have to be recorded live on a single track of audio. They can be captured, or electronically produced, on individual tracks and then precisely synced with their visual counterpart.

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What I was thinking.

I was downtown today and saw a street protest going on. Their chant was ” Torture is a war crime!”. I wasn’t able to make out who or what they were accusing of torture.

They missed the whole point; war is a crime.

Later I saw one of those ‘mechanical’ street artists doing his robot show. He wore military fatigues, but he was painted all gold.

The politics and the art leads to todays thesis; “Art is War”. It’s a war against the unaesthetic, the unimaginative, the unappreciative. A war of eye-opening, convention questioning, storming the status quo.

Art since before the Lascaux caves in the Paleolithic era has been a form of door for people to see beyond their daily existence.

As the cave painter invokes the magic of successful hunts; as the 15th century Van Eyck, in the Ghent alterpiece, tells the story of the Old Testament or Michaelangelo the story of creation. As Manet tells the aesthetic of “The Dead Toreador” or the “Execution of Maximilian”. As Picasso gives an anguished wail over Guernica and shows us a bull’s head in a bicycle seat Bull’s Head (Tete de Toro) so it mires in the frosting of Thiebaud’s cupcakes and so it loses touch with the people.

Why? What can be done about that?

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Welcome

Jeez no posts since November? What can I be thinking?
I went on a time warp journey a couple weeks ago. Since I graduated from university many years ago I’d had virtually no contact with anyone from there. Actually just an actor, named Jacque, and a photographer, Carl. Both whom I’d bumped into a couple of times over the years in Hollywood.

Well one of my dance instructors, Nancy Lyons, was retiring at the end of the year and a retrospective concert was being performed. As I’m only 2 hours away now we went.

Not only has the campus sprouted buildings all over and the trees are many years taller, but the sleepy little town down the road is surrounded by apartments and housing developments. I spoke to 6 or 7 people I’d known, some I recognized, some I didn’t immediately.

Overall a delightful evening. The variety of dancers was more than the usually lithe, taut, muscle machines. The variety of dances was all Nancy. I particularly enjoyed the slightly formal ‘White Pause’ an early piece from 1984 the program says was converted from a solo to the group piece for these dancers. It converted well, with nice synchronicity and detailed floor pattern. The performance that impressed me most was Collette Van Gerwen in the solo ‘Lure’, look for that name cause this gal is good. The piece is from 1986, a few years after I’d been with Nancy, and I’d guess she is at her prime here. It has lyricism, humor, and strength.

When I danced in Nancy’s company we did some fun pieces, show for kids; some tongue in cheek; Procession; and the usual “dance” stuff. I was too serious a person then to see the purpose/value of humor/insouciance, but that changed one night on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. Claire Porter showed me humorous dance can be ‘serious’ dance, but that idea then led to what is “serious” anything; and then ‘ding’ everything got less “serious”. I’ve built on this through experiment, experience, and much study in other areas and now view Life as the game it is; and if it ain’t fun you ain’t playing hard enough.

More soon.

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