Artistic Onanism in Jersey City
Well, it didn' t take long for the "inspiration" for a new post to hit me. Although no one may, as of yet, be reading this, hopefully we will get some visitors, even more hopefully we will get visitors who comment, and (dare I dream) eventually visitors who comment in an educated and even possibly interesting fashion.
I will take this opportunity to use my soapbox to sound off about one of my passions- Art. More specifically, Art as it is often displayed in Jersey City, my current hom
e.
Jersey City is a fine place to see Art. Not that the art itself is necessarily fine, but it is in fact there- and there somewhat regularly. This is far superior to the situation in my hometown, a tiny berg in East Tennessee, where Art typically referred, in some fashion, to Bob Ross or the estimable Mr. Garfunkel.
I love photography. One of the reasons I love it is that, during our short stay on this mortal coil, I would like to see as much of that coil as possible. And photography, particularly the photography of others, allows you to see things that you would otherwise never see. Like this photo above, for example. How often do you get to see a gay cowboy trundling down 5th Avenue in a giant mock saloon hauled on the back of a flatbed truck? Not as often as you would like.
But now you get to see it, because I saw it and passed it ont o you. By the way, my first little toe dip into the world of onlineiana was with my local community bulletin board, JClist- the finest local resource available to residents of Jersey City, and this was the photograph I chose as my Avatar. It was generally well recieved. I then went on to use it on a website where I discuss technical and aesthetic elements of photography, and was told I needed something a bit more acceptable for the "general public." I myself thought that 5th Avenue is about as general public as you can get, but I suppose the public here, and the public in Peoria are somewhat different. Lo, the heavy hand of the red states reaches even unto the banks of the Hudson.
But I digress, as I am wont to do.
Photography ought to show you something you have never seen, or show you something you have seen in a new and interesting manner. I generally take what one would call "travel" photographs- that is to say, photos that happen to be wherever I am travelling due to business or in the sparse free time that my job allows me. I do Travel photography for a variety of reasons; I could wax on about broadening the mind, new vistas, reaching across cultures, &tc, but the fact of the matter is that I do travel photography because I like to travel. Also, I can afford to hire neither models nor studio space to do the hot hot girlie pics that really sell.
Photography can be done about pedestrian things. My friend Beth likes to take photos of hands. Everybody has hands, well, most everybody- but Beth's pictures of hands, though they are common objects, are not common photos at all. They capture and hold your interest. As ALL photos should; if one is going to have the balls to hang them on a wall and call them Art. Photography suffers under a serious lack of respect, artistically speaking, vis a vis things such as painting. After all, we just point and shoot, right? A painter actually has to paint. That requires work- so many folks look at photography as sort of a surrogate Art form for the lazy or untalented painter. and I don't really blame them.
Much as the current writers of hollywood sitcoms and movies have lost sight of the fact that an essential element of comedy is actually being funny, so too have many contemporary artists lost site of the fact that Art, to be good Art, must say something. It must have artifice. It must be interesting. I recently went to a show of photographs at a local bar which shall remain unnamed, as (coward that I am) I one day wish to display my own work there, that sucked. They were simply rank. A 5x7 photograph of a woman, standing dead center, on a sidewalk in a street. For the price of $100. The woman was neither beautiful enough to entrhall, nor ugly enough to fascinate- she was simply forgettable in every respect. As was the street, and the sidewalk. It wasn't even properly exposed, nor exposed improperly enough to, again, be in the slightest bit interesting.
It is not enough for a photographer to point and shoot, they must also see. And their sight must be informed by some sort of aesthetic vision. A great many people who pass themselves off as photographic artists have neither practiced nor thought about things such as symbolism, or even basic elements of composition. These elements are as active, or should be as active, in fine art photography as they are in painting.
There once was, quite a while ago, an artistic tradition shared by all the all the artists of the west. There was a golden artistic thread running through the western tradition from the medievals to the impressionists (I am sure some Art Historians are howling about this, but I don't care- I am suspicious of the relegation of criticism to the exclusive sphere of the "experts."). This tradition became, eventually, oppresive and insufferable. It also produced a lot of schlock. Not good schlock, like the aforeseen Gay Cowboy, but bad schlock, like the painters who were trying to imitate Mucha, but sucked. So the modernists rebelled against tradition, and that rebellion reached its apotheosis in the likes of Andy Warhol. Modern art subverted the old school.
But here's the thing- most of the great subversive artists, whose project was to undermine old status quo's, understood the status quo they were attacking. They used that status quo as a point of departure, and their art said something interesting about the old status quo, and about the new society that was forming about them. That knowledge was hard won, and came about through study and tireless application.
The lesson that the current generation of artists seem to take, in the main, from these rebels was that their art was different, and nothing more. the deeper lessons they failed to learn. So now art is different for the sake of difference alone. The first question an artist has to ask herself while preparing for her work is "what am I going to say, and why am I going to do it in this fashion." The answer should not be simply because it's new, or no one has done it before. I don't beleive anyone has ever base jumped from the top of the Old Jersey City Medical Center- that doesn't mean its necessarily a good idea; although I would certainly like to see it.
Simply finding something new can be easy. And often soulless. And I fear that is why people do it. Because to be a good artist, and this is especially true for the ""pure" visual artist (and here I think this diverges from photography, which is somewhat more documentary; a strange mix of art and craft) the artist must be familiar with the culture his art is located in. And that requires intellectual work, and reflection.
It is one thing for art to critique society- this is, besides being beautiful or interesting in its own right, one of its major functions. It is even appropriate for art to critique art's critique of society. But, at some point, when we critique criticisms of other's analyses of those that critique abstract art that may or may not be related to pure visual beauty, or social commentary or, well, anything of substance; we become lost in an endless masturbatory hysterises. I fear that this is, in the main, the status of most Art as it is currently practiced. The worst sin against aesthetics, it bores me.
This is not to say that all artist's in Jersey City or elsewhere engage in this sort of higbrowed onanism. It's just that it is depressingly common.
Please, no more people on street corners. No more "paintings" that consist of pieces of fruit dipped into pigment and then stuck repeatedly on 16 foot long canvases. This is my request to the artists of Jersey City. Tell me something interesting.
As an aside, I myself have an exhibition running through the month of April at Subia's Market, 506 Jersey Avenue, in Jersey City. Come and pleasure yourself.
I will take this opportunity to use my soapbox to sound off about one of my passions- Art. More specifically, Art as it is often displayed in Jersey City, my current hom
e.Jersey City is a fine place to see Art. Not that the art itself is necessarily fine, but it is in fact there- and there somewhat regularly. This is far superior to the situation in my hometown, a tiny berg in East Tennessee, where Art typically referred, in some fashion, to Bob Ross or the estimable Mr. Garfunkel.
I love photography. One of the reasons I love it is that, during our short stay on this mortal coil, I would like to see as much of that coil as possible. And photography, particularly the photography of others, allows you to see things that you would otherwise never see. Like this photo above, for example. How often do you get to see a gay cowboy trundling down 5th Avenue in a giant mock saloon hauled on the back of a flatbed truck? Not as often as you would like.
But now you get to see it, because I saw it and passed it ont o you. By the way, my first little toe dip into the world of onlineiana was with my local community bulletin board, JClist- the finest local resource available to residents of Jersey City, and this was the photograph I chose as my Avatar. It was generally well recieved. I then went on to use it on a website where I discuss technical and aesthetic elements of photography, and was told I needed something a bit more acceptable for the "general public." I myself thought that 5th Avenue is about as general public as you can get, but I suppose the public here, and the public in Peoria are somewhat different. Lo, the heavy hand of the red states reaches even unto the banks of the Hudson.
But I digress, as I am wont to do.
Photography ought to show you something you have never seen, or show you something you have seen in a new and interesting manner. I generally take what one would call "travel" photographs- that is to say, photos that happen to be wherever I am travelling due to business or in the sparse free time that my job allows me. I do Travel photography for a variety of reasons; I could wax on about broadening the mind, new vistas, reaching across cultures, &tc, but the fact of the matter is that I do travel photography because I like to travel. Also, I can afford to hire neither models nor studio space to do the hot hot girlie pics that really sell.
Photography can be done about pedestrian things. My friend Beth likes to take photos of hands. Everybody has hands, well, most everybody- but Beth's pictures of hands, though they are common objects, are not common photos at all. They capture and hold your interest. As ALL photos should; if one is going to have the balls to hang them on a wall and call them Art. Photography suffers under a serious lack of respect, artistically speaking, vis a vis things such as painting. After all, we just point and shoot, right? A painter actually has to paint. That requires work- so many folks look at photography as sort of a surrogate Art form for the lazy or untalented painter. and I don't really blame them.
Much as the current writers of hollywood sitcoms and movies have lost sight of the fact that an essential element of comedy is actually being funny, so too have many contemporary artists lost site of the fact that Art, to be good Art, must say something. It must have artifice. It must be interesting. I recently went to a show of photographs at a local bar which shall remain unnamed, as (coward that I am) I one day wish to display my own work there, that sucked. They were simply rank. A 5x7 photograph of a woman, standing dead center, on a sidewalk in a street. For the price of $100. The woman was neither beautiful enough to entrhall, nor ugly enough to fascinate- she was simply forgettable in every respect. As was the street, and the sidewalk. It wasn't even properly exposed, nor exposed improperly enough to, again, be in the slightest bit interesting.
It is not enough for a photographer to point and shoot, they must also see. And their sight must be informed by some sort of aesthetic vision. A great many people who pass themselves off as photographic artists have neither practiced nor thought about things such as symbolism, or even basic elements of composition. These elements are as active, or should be as active, in fine art photography as they are in painting.
There once was, quite a while ago, an artistic tradition shared by all the all the artists of the west. There was a golden artistic thread running through the western tradition from the medievals to the impressionists (I am sure some Art Historians are howling about this, but I don't care- I am suspicious of the relegation of criticism to the exclusive sphere of the "experts."). This tradition became, eventually, oppresive and insufferable. It also produced a lot of schlock. Not good schlock, like the aforeseen Gay Cowboy, but bad schlock, like the painters who were trying to imitate Mucha, but sucked. So the modernists rebelled against tradition, and that rebellion reached its apotheosis in the likes of Andy Warhol. Modern art subverted the old school.
But here's the thing- most of the great subversive artists, whose project was to undermine old status quo's, understood the status quo they were attacking. They used that status quo as a point of departure, and their art said something interesting about the old status quo, and about the new society that was forming about them. That knowledge was hard won, and came about through study and tireless application.
The lesson that the current generation of artists seem to take, in the main, from these rebels was that their art was different, and nothing more. the deeper lessons they failed to learn. So now art is different for the sake of difference alone. The first question an artist has to ask herself while preparing for her work is "what am I going to say, and why am I going to do it in this fashion." The answer should not be simply because it's new, or no one has done it before. I don't beleive anyone has ever base jumped from the top of the Old Jersey City Medical Center- that doesn't mean its necessarily a good idea; although I would certainly like to see it.
Simply finding something new can be easy. And often soulless. And I fear that is why people do it. Because to be a good artist, and this is especially true for the ""pure" visual artist (and here I think this diverges from photography, which is somewhat more documentary; a strange mix of art and craft) the artist must be familiar with the culture his art is located in. And that requires intellectual work, and reflection.
It is one thing for art to critique society- this is, besides being beautiful or interesting in its own right, one of its major functions. It is even appropriate for art to critique art's critique of society. But, at some point, when we critique criticisms of other's analyses of those that critique abstract art that may or may not be related to pure visual beauty, or social commentary or, well, anything of substance; we become lost in an endless masturbatory hysterises. I fear that this is, in the main, the status of most Art as it is currently practiced. The worst sin against aesthetics, it bores me.
This is not to say that all artist's in Jersey City or elsewhere engage in this sort of higbrowed onanism. It's just that it is depressingly common.
Please, no more people on street corners. No more "paintings" that consist of pieces of fruit dipped into pigment and then stuck repeatedly on 16 foot long canvases. This is my request to the artists of Jersey City. Tell me something interesting.
As an aside, I myself have an exhibition running through the month of April at Subia's Market, 506 Jersey Avenue, in Jersey City. Come and pleasure yourself.
posted by Justiceiro at 3:56 PM
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