There is no art in politics

After a day at the Met I was reminded of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; they do lunch really well. That should tell you everything.

They had another Bacon show. The Met does Bacon well. They have given him more tada than almost anyone, and no doubt for a variety of reasons. And they don't do a lot of tada! The Louvre does tada. Moma can do tada. The National Gallery does it really well! But these blueblood institutions generally work hard to keep art in its place. And nobody keeps contemporary art in its place like the Met. And then there's Bacon! And yes, he's part of the process!

It is well known what Bacon thought of his so-called peers. Nannynannypoopoo! So who better than this twisted Brit to help keep those folks down! Which isn't to say his paintings aren't of great interest; they are. Still, hard not to be amused by the politics. This is a museum that makes you walk up the steps and then presents you, after all the banners, with a train station of a front room! No, train stations do tada better!

Do I resent this? Being an artlover and all. I have better things to do with my bile. Still, there's Bacon...

-- Post From My iPhone

Nielsen Closes

Yesterday was the last day of the last show at the Nielsen Gallery in Boston. After over four decades of service to the New England art community, they are closing their doors. No artist living in the region needed to be told what a sad day it was.

If you wanted to watch baseball, you went to Fenway; if you wanted to see painting, you went to Nielsen. Not the ICA, not the MFA, not Krakow: Nielsen. It wasn't always pretty, but you always got the real thing. The raw, beautiful, awesome real thing. It was up close, intimate, intelligent, engaging. They didn't just lay out a meal, a buffet; every show was a feast, a feast for almost half a century. I don't know how they did it. It must have taken a toll. And now they are gone.

Nielsen is famous for championing one artist. Porfirio DiDonna. He is their greatest success and maybe their greatest disappointment. But that is another story, suffice it to say that an art world hopelessly governed by fashion never pointed its fickle finger his way. A brilliant painter who died young, DiDonna got from Nielsen what every artist wants from their dealer: someone who believes in them completely and loves everything they do. A mother's love. There isn't an artist in New England who didn't want to show with Nielsen at some time or other. 

One of the things that made Nielsen special and unlike anyone else in the business anywhere in the world is that they were always sitting right there when you walked in the door. Nina Nielsen and her partner/director, John Baker. Until recently they never had more than a desk separating them from any artist, collector, art lover or crackpot walking in off Newbury Street(that could be all one person in my case). They were always available to talk about anything with anyone anytime. I've been in galleries all over the world, and that is uncommon, especially for a world class venue. Most dealers have an army of personnel that protect them from everyone. They are sometimes three rooms deep, behind locked doors. Nina Nielsen and John Baker greeted the world out front with incredible warmth every day forever and fed it a world class menu of painting and sculpture. No one ever went away hungry.

I came to Boston from Manhattan and parts unknown almost twenty years ago. Yes, I had written a cover article on Porfirio DiDonna for Arts that would have made any artist's mother happy, but in a town that tells you up front to go to the back of the line, they welcomed me into their family; they let me play.  One catalog essay, one invitation to show solo, one summer show, one sale, a few meals, and plenty of lively conversation. I'm very grateful for what they've done for art, for Boston, and for me.  I probably wouldn't have moved here if they hadn't been here, and now that they are closing, it will be strange without them. 

John Baker said it was strange to be in the gallery now that they had announced that they were closing. He said it was like being at his own wake. Alive. I was there to pay my respects and say goodbye, but it was weird. I wished I hadn't gone. I don't like funerals, mostly because the one person you would like to see isn't there. In this case they were there, and that was weird. You end up being grateful to talk about anything but the elephant in the room. You talk about stupid stuff. You don't talk about the deceased. We didn't even touch on the last show. I talked about buying art at auction. I was stupid. It was weird. My  other problem is that I cry when I'm sad. Always have. Lassie, Charlotte's Web, you name it. This made me sad, but I didn't cry, not this time, and I still haven't. It is a death to be sure. The only art sanctuary in the whole Northeast is gone. The only place you could go into and know that art was alive and well and mattered, and was all that mattered, is gone. If you want art now, you will have to make it yourself, find it yourself, look for it somewhere else; Nielsen is closed for business, for good. Thank you for the memories, and happy trails to you both. You will be missed.

Love Me, Love Me Not

You have to pity the poor artist who is not an art lover. I've known a few. Where does that leave them? Hard to imagine. It becomes them against the world, the art world. Every artist is a rival, an enemy really, deeply; every work of art hanging anywhere becomes a loss, a failure, a travesty, a place they aren't. Sad thing.

I won't mention Richard Tuttle. There, I did it. He despised the artist art lover. Almost pitied the artist art lover. Can we make that one word? Artlover? No? Ok. Anyway, like I said, you've got to pity the poor artist who isn't an art lover. You can't get around the built in unhappiness; they are making something that they don't love. It becomes just an extension of the self that they love, but nothing more.

I don't know if I was an art lover or an artist first. Just for the record, yes, I call myself a painter. I used to believe that the term artist was reserved for those who achieved some lofty place and made something recognized as art. A term like genius. You just couldn't go around calling yourself an artist anymore than you could call yourself a genius. Well, I don't believe this anymore; in fact I think it is mean. One more exclusionary tactic by the gatekeepers. Assholes, sorry. One word.

I loved art as a first memory kind of thing. I watched my mother, who was a hell of a sculptor, making a giant head of her lover out of terracotta clay in her bedroom! My dad had abandoned us after they divorced. Went to Europe and bought himself a sports car. Two words. 

The head was extraordinary. It was of Arnold Steinhardt, the violinist. He had a large head himself. I was hooked right there. Transfixed. WOW! Art by example. Artist by example.

My mother had art in our house. Resnick. Kline. And yes, Chagall. I liked Chagall, and I still do. Got grief for it from the non art lovers who thought they were my teachers when they were just my jailers. 

My first loves were Franz Marc and Toulouse Lautrec. Hard not to like as a kid. Color and movement and animals and the dance of life. Like Chagall. Love and Art. And I carried a pad with me everywhere I went, as my mother would tell everyone. And I had my first studio in Rome at the age of ten, the windows above where they filmed Roman Holiday ten years earlier. Where I did my first mural. Where I received mural instruction from Gino Severini, the great Italian Futurist. Hooked. His daughter hung my paintings in their art collection, next to Calder and Fontana and her father. Hooked. One word.

So I didn't just draw and paint. I started hanging other people's things on my wall. I started celebrating what other people made, honoring their work, as a boy.  What could have been nicer it my mind, to be a part of this thing, this phenomenon, this experience, this celebration of life called art. Make it, share it, love it.

In art school things can get ugly. Not enough love to go around. Art students get ugly. Ugly but it's mine. RISD was like that. Sure, people had their heroes, but it was a ruthless competition, and of course you were judged by who were yours. Couldn't like Chagall. But I started collecting the work of my teachers and friends.  Still, the rallying cry at RISD was cool; fuck art, let's dance.

When I went to New York, I traded with everyone I could. And of course, I still have the Resnick. I rescued it from storage and restored it after my mother threw a shoe and missed another boyfriend. Looked at it everyday, and everyday it showed me something different. Still does. Remarkable. One word.

More later...

Quiet

Martin Mugar makes difficult paintings. He doesn't ask a lot of the viewer, but what he does ask doesn't come easy. Of course if you are attracted to their physical nature, their color, their texture, to the way they are made, then this isn't a problem; you're in. But if you're not in, if you're not inclined toward the way they posture themselves, the way they attempt to tempt you, yes, if you're not seduced by the candy-colored, taffy pulling fact of them, then you aren't going to get past that, and you will never be in.

Martin Mugar's paintings are not about the candy-colored taffy pull. That is the road to what his paintings are about. It is the candy-colored taffy pull road. It is how he gets there, not where he goes, or where he is going; and it is the road to where the work takes us; but...but it is not its destination.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Either you go or you don't go. If all you've gotten from Martin Mugar's paintings is the candy-colored taffy pull, then you haven't gone. Period. If that's all you got then you didn't get anything. If that's all you saw, then you didn't see jack.

So what is it that is going on? What is it that is so difficult? Well, it's easy; Martin Mugar wants us to listen. Listen as in look. Look and listen. For the record, this is all anyone wants, but Mugar demands that we listen harder because his work is the sound of a butterfly flapping its wings. It is the sound of a flower petal falling. It is the sound of the tide coming in. These are sounds nobody hears. We are all deaf from the noise.

Don't think that this is oooouuu...about subtlety. That is the common misconception. Quiet and subtle are not always the same. This is not a value war. This is about perception in the larger sense. Artists challenge perception; their own and everyone else's. Martin Mugar is in love with the quiet. It is why he lives in New Hampshire instead of New York. It is why he likes to sail. It is why he likes to paint. He wants us to listen to his paintings and he makes it hard if all we're going to see is candy-colored taffy pulls. We can pull all we like. Not going to happen. He says he just wants the viewer to be patient, but what that really means is for the viewer to give him the time of day, and then he wants them to listen to his paintings the way he likes to listen to the wind filling his sails. He is gambling that if and when we do listen, his paintings will carry across the water and fill our sails as well.







Dennis Cowley is making this same bet. It is why the work is so compatible with Mugar’s. He is putting all his money on those of us who can see a million shades of gray, and everyone else, well, they can just do whatever it is they aren’t doing. Dennis Cowley spreads a silk cloth before us and gives those who have the time, who give him the time of day, a dejeuner sur l’herbe that is a feast like no other. Because on this silk cloth he dances his amazing dance, a Fred Astaire across the surface as nimble and as inventive as a summer breeze. It is a picture of what photography is all about to him, why he loves it, why he uses a dark room like a great chef uses his kitchen. Dennis Cowley purports to being an unbeliever, but it is only by the standard of today’s religion. If we look at his photographs, they are not really pictures of anything so much, they read as abstract shapes, but if we listen to them, well, really listen, we can hear his god, we can hear what he loves.

Dennis Cowley doesn’t talk loudly or a lot. He’s betting that if he listens, then we will follow his lead, and that if he speaks quietly, well, with all the noise, he might have a better chance of getting his message across. Picasso said something about art being like birdsong, something about that hearing its beauty is not only enough, but it. What it’s all about and maybe only about. There are those who believe gratitude is all you need to be fulfilled. It is connected to this. If you hear the birdsong, and are grateful for that in that truest, simplest way possible, then that’s it. The rest is crap. Dennis Cowley gives us a chance to see what he sees through his eyes. Just what that is depends on the photograph.

These particular photographs were taken on the Cape. On the beaches of Wellfleet while he was a guest of the Fine Arts Workshop in Provincetown. They percolated in the camera but they came to life in his new dark room/studio in his new home town after New York, Marblehead. This is where he brings his magic to bear. This is where his lifetime of experience, his heart, his mind, his dancing feet fly across the stage. Yes, these are pictures of a beach, and they aren’t. If that is all we see, then we aren’t seeing much. We’re seeing the road sign, and not where it’s pointing. They are more like letting us roll in the sand, float on the air, the whisper of blade against blade, the smell of salt, and yes, the whoosh of moment in time and space. Dennis Cowley gives us a place to be where almost more than anything else, we can just be, be still, and hear whatever it is we need to hear. He doesn’t really ask that we listen, and if we don’t, well, it’s our loss. He provides the water. We drink at our own peril. What is fascinating is that he really doesn’t ask us to listen, invite us to listen, demand that we listen, or even tempt us to listen. No, what Dennis Cowley does is this: without being haranged, lectured, or courted, he gives us art that is that rare opportunity, the plain old basic once in a lifetime chance to just be ourselves, to be quiet, and relax, and listen, and yes, maybe stretch our legs a little.

Keep the faith; forget the rest!

Rule number 2 comes right after Rule number 1(which is that there are no rules). 

Rule number 2:make yourself; don't let anyone else make you anything, because they can't without your consent. Don't let anyone make you unhappy, or crazy, or the bad guy, or a guru, or a saint, or a black sheep, and especially: don't let anyone make you a rebel! Rebels are condemned to servitude. Slaves. B to the other's A. A goes left and B can only go right. That is the sad myth of the rebel. They will never be free; they will always be fighting for freedom, which of course means what: that they aren't free. This stuff bears repeating.

Art has always been the sanctuary of the rebel. Art attracts rebels like San Francisco attracts crazies. Where else can they go? But the rebel is a myth. The rebel is B to the oppositions A. The rebel is in opposition. Don't be a rebel! The rebel is the classic victim, just in denial. The rebel deludes themselves into thinking that they are powerful, when the opposite is true. They are the victim.

So many of us think everything is paper/plastic. That we have no choices. Just two options. Either/or. For or against. Paper/plastic. The classic Western dichotomy, although the Easterns have their version of the black and white polemic: yin and yang. The Greeks saddled us with this thing, this symmetry, this duality, this either or. But we have to consent to it to make it true, to make it our master. To say that it is the ultimate male construct probably goes without saying. It is the way our minds work best because it is the ultimate oversimplification, and the ultimate neurosis as a result. It is the ultimate mind game. Men have historically been frustrated by the failure of women and children to get on board with this. On board is part of it. It takes consent, or force.

It is the fork in the road. I'm really guilty of that one. I'm always talking about the fork in the road. It took my family to get me to get back to myself, to get back to my off-road self. Life often seems to place us at the fork in the road, but it is what one might call the established authority that wants us to accept this dilemma-oriented view of life. If we conform, make the correct choice, we are good, accepted, in the flock; but if we make the other turn, the bad choice, against the grain, then we are rebel, cast out. We are not free. Door one and we are embraced, door two and we get shunned. It doesn't matter what is behind either door, really. At a different time and place they can actually switch. 

Again, consent is the thing. I've told this story before. When I was a kid I didn't do my homework. I figured they took enough of my time when I was in school, and when I went home I had better things to do. I went in my studio and painted. At Exeter I did the same thing. It caused a stir. I skipped sports after lunch and went to the art building and painted. I made my own choice. I wasn't rebelling. I had something better to do. You have to just say get out of my way. People flip out. Teachers, headmasters, they flip out. Anarchy! What if everyone did that? That is always the argument, isn't it? Well, let's find out, no?

So was I oblivious? What is that? Can you be more aware by choosing a form of obliviousness? I believe we can choose to preserve qualities like innocence and this obliviousness. I think another word for these things might be faith. When you're out in the middle of the ocean or a lake, well, you could drown. What is going to get you to shore? Swimming hard, yes, but maybe not. If you can float, you can take your time and find your way. Floating is the best way to find your center, your breath, your faith. The "I can do this." You can't panic. You can't lose your breath. I know about this. I've drowned.

There is a cartoon of a guy in hell whistling and one devil says to the other "We aren't getting to this guy."  I've always related to it. I was that guy. It is the do your own thing no matter what or where you find yourself thing. It is survivors who didn't let surviving or the thing they survived define them; and these people are often described as people of faith. Faith is a hell of a thing, no pun intended. It is not rational. You get on a plane and it is a hunk of metal that sometimes goes down. Faith is not denial. Faith does not say we are not going to crash. Faith says, if we crash, then it has been a great ride! Faith does not mask reality. Faith accepts that thing about reality about which we have no control. I accepted the consequences of not doing my homework or not going to sports. You make your choices and you live with them. If other people are jumping up and down about it, well, that is their choice. We can't get caught up in what others are jumping up and down about no matter how much they try to make us.

So here comes my Richard Tuttle Asshole moment no. 322. It really bugged Tuttle that I didn't conform to these sorts of forks in the road. He would chuckle about my naive belief that I didn't have to be a rebel, that I just did my own thing. He called it me trying to change the system from within, which he didn't believe was possible.  Anyway, I wasn't trying to make that kind of change. The rebel kind. Richard was a rebel. So Richard would try to teach me some protocol. He even gave me a demonstration of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, complete with priceless tea bowls in his crappy 11th Avenue apartment where he lived like a hillbilly. He tried to impress upon me that if you didn't do the right number of turns of the bowl, you were insulting your host beyond belief. I didn't care. I wasn't impressed. Richard's neurosis was that once you know the rules you only have two choices; to accept or reject them. To go along or rebel. 

This sort of thinking is a trap of course. The great philosophical trap. It is a closed construct. You can't get on the outside according to the powers that be.  Faith here is absurd. Faith is anathema. It was to Tuttle. Bush thinking: you're either for us or against us. He, Tuttle, tried to teach me some reality, some "ways of the world" stuff,  some protocol, some etiquette, some manners that my parents had apparently overlooked. He was so frustrated that I failed to accept the logic of this "the way things are done" stuff that he thought was so inescapable, that he finally shunned me. His parting words were scribbled on a drawing he sent me:"I don't want to be your alter ego." How telling. How perfect. 

Of course  I never consented to be his alter ego, anymore than I ever consented to do my homework. This was not my idea, it was his. I couldn't make him be my alter ego. That required his consent. He set himself up as a guru all by himself. He misunderstood my curiosity. I never consented to the guru thing. I had something better to do. I was being his friend. One of many, of course. I often refer to him as my one and only mentor precisely because he turned out not to be a friend. I knew plenty of older artist friends who somehow thought that they were my mentors, but not so. I only thought of them as friends. I suppose it would be accurate to describe Tuttle as someone I once knew a little that talked with me a lot. And I liked that. I like conversation.

But...consent is the thing!

Make yourself. Don't let anyone make you anything. If that makes you weird to them, then so be it. It doesn't make you weird or a rebel because they call you that. This is your life. If you are an artist you can do what you like, what you believe, what you love, what you are curious about, what you can imagine, what you feel. You can do what you feel like. I grew up being constantly informed that doing what you felt like was bad and selfish, and having a mind of your own was not a good thing but instead a nuisance. 

I didn't conform to these people, but I didn't rebel either. I just did what I did, and strangely enough always managed to prove them wrong, without intending to do so. I had better things to do. Your choices don't have to be to conform or rebel. Life is round. It is a rainbow of colors. If everyone in the room thinks you should be one thing or another, that is their problem. If they get angry, or punish you, or shun you, that is their problem. It only becomes your problem with your consent. Don't give it. Have faith. Have better things to do. 

Beyond Work

We have no use for things that don't work. That's understood. Cars, lamps, plumbing, and yes, even paintings, they have to work or we have no use for them. They are just wasting space. Garbage. 

There are a lot of people who only talk about whether or how paintings work, however, and I find this at the very least, distasteful. I can't help it, it's just something you don't talk about as far as I'm concerned. Again, I don't know how else to say it; it is in bad taste. I heard about someone who on their blind date couldn't accept a gift of chocolates because it gave them, you know, I'm sorry, I can't even spell the word. It isn't squeamishness, we all get it, know about it, but you don't talk about it, especially in the same sentence with chocolate! These are plumbing issues! You just see that they are taken care of. Things have to work. It is understood.  Beyond that we have to be... beyond that. Needless to say the blind date didn't get to first base.

The same is true in painting. These people who talk about whether and how something works don't get to first base. The critics, and teachers, and students, and artists who talk about this stuff never understand why they never get asked out again.

Painting, even when it is about nature, is the language of the unseen. It is what people need to be talking about but never do. It is like love. No one, except maybe the French, ha ha, talk about it. You have these people who meet, apparently fall in love, shack up, get married, move to the burbs, and the subject never comes up again. It is why they are together in the first place, but it never comes up again and they wonder why they go insane. Just yesterday I heard about a person who makes her children play an instrument. They have to take lessons and practice. No talk about love. Loving the music. Loving the instrument. Loving the sound, the way it makes them feel. It's like they want them to be able to do it without love in the first place, so that when they let the love die, they won't miss it. Again, needless to say, the kids quit their instruments and music as soon as they could.

This was another asshole moment, number 489, that I had with my mentor, the artist Richard Tuttle, when I was a very young painter.  He had the same protestant hang-up work ethic thing. He hated these people who loved art and loved making it. Of course I was one, and he hated that about me and tried to grind it out of me. 

If this guy on his blind date had spoken the language of love, he would be shacked up right now with a do not disturb sign on his door. Art is like the language of love. You have to be there, or you're just crazy in the burbs.

Nobody talks about this stuff though. They just talk about whether things work. Dry basements. That sort of shit. Sorry.  That's the thing, no one ever talks about what's on the inside. They act like THAT is in bad taste. Fine to talk about plumbing, but dont' talk love. That is the messy thing. 

Everybody is just talking about the wrapping on the package. You meet people, and you can see that they have maybe taken care of their exterior. It is painted. Pretty front door. Maybe some nice plants or flowers, but what women don't understand about men is that men are going to have to go inside at some point.  When men grow up, smarten up, they start getting hunches about what it is like in there before they rush inside. Young men and fools rush in. What is it like in there? Who is home? Is it warm and sweet and smart and comfortable, or is it icy, is there a cold draft, is it dark and scary, is it toxic? Is there screaming coming from the basement. The same is true for men, of course, and the complaint is that usually the door is rusted shut and the lights are out. Better to just sit on the porch.

The really tough thing about painting is that for all the talk about good art, and good painting, when mercifully you get past the part about whether it works or not, it is really subjective. It is about whether you like it or not. It is. You can't get around this. Nobody wants to admit it but it is true. It comes down to whether or not someone likes it, and who those people are. Are they people in high places with power? That's all. Are there enough people in high places with power that like it? Lots? This is hard for people to accept. It is just the way it is. Now there are lots of reasons why people like things, and it is a little like the sausage metaphor, you are happier not knowing. 

That's the thing. People don't want to know. They want to get in the car and have it drive. They want to turn on the light and read. They want to flush the toilet and have that bad stuff gone(except the French, ironically. They interpret their shit because it tells them what is going on with their health and well-being)! People want to have a painting sit there and work!( The fact that the French can talk about love and art might explain why they are so smart, dammit,  and why everyone, even Republicans, love Paris.)

You make paintings and either people go or they don't go. They like them or they don't. The other stuff is politics and power. Everyone likes a winner. If you are a winner, they like you no matter what. They want you around. They want it to rub off. But painting is not a race. It is not a contest. You can't cross the finish line first. When it is all said and done it is just whether what you've done is appreciated by the people looking at it. And then of course, who are the people looking at it. If you're making sushi for people who want pizza you're going to have a lot of rotting food on your hands. Either make pizza, or move to somewhere where people love sushi, OR, just make enough sushi for yourself because you're the only one whose going to be eating it. Makes sense, right. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. You can make the best sushi in the world but if they want pizza you're out of luck. You can't force people to eat anything. 

So don't think you're going to win people over to your sushi if you make enough of it. I know artists with warehouses filled with sushi hoping everybody is going to start appreciating it; and then of course they will be ready. Hey, I make sushi because I like it, and I make enough for me and my family and friends.  I don't expect to have anyone else like it. I don't suffer because no one else likes it. I only suffer if people I care about who I think care about me are unkind. I don't care if they don't like my sushi and would rather have pizza. I figure they aren't going to starve. You can get pizza anywhere. 

Just for the record, if people want pizza, then pizza it is, no ifs, ands, or buts. Love that pizza. I would never suggest in a million years that they shouldn't want that pizza and want sushi instead. Also, and just as important, artists want people to eat up what ever they are making whether it is pizza or sushi. They want people to eat it up, love it, rub their tummies and beg for more and tell their friends! Of course this is true! Never believe otherwise.

There are other questions of course. Like the questions of the day. What's in the air. What's on our plates. But in the end we do what we do. Morandi painted jars through two world wars and I think there was a shift in hue. James Joyce's wife asked him why he didn't write books people wanted to read. Well, the answer is simple. He had bigger fish to fry. He was writing for literature and for history(if you look back you'll see that a lot of that kind had to self-publish to get their work in print) , and that is a whole other blog.

Original Sin

As an artist your best friend is self-awareness. You need to know your weaknesses as much and as well as your strengths just the same way that an athlete must. How else can you grow and get any better?

What am I talking about? Every field has some version of this idea that we are imperfect, and that only by paying attention to this imperfection can we not only function, but thrive. Catholics have original sin, the Greeks had the Achilles Heel, psychologists have normal neurosis, basketball has the weak side, the military has the weak flank, literature has Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and environmentalists have the carbon footprint. Everybody has a carbon footprint; it is just a question of how bad it is. Everybody is neurotic, it is just a question of how neurotic. And here is the kicker; everybody has an asshole! 

The point about Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is that the more you fake it, the more you pretend that that asshole isn't you, the worse it gets. You will be an even bigger asshole!

Artists, unfortunately, are treated like children a lot of times. Creative creatures who know not what they do. Not only does this not have to be, it isn't in the artist's best interest.  I have a hard time believing that artists are better artists because they are more self-delusional. The notion that if an artist knew better they wouldn't either be an artist in the first place, or they would somehow be a lesser artist, is absurd.

The other day I had someone praising me for the good things I had done for them. It was a scary and sobering moment, for them and me, when I just told them I was just trying to follow the Golden Rule: treating other people they way I would like to be treated. By saying this two things happened. First I came down off some pedestal that this person was trying to put me on, and second, by coming off that pedestal and being just like them, I raised a second question, which was why weren't they thinking and doing the same thing. It was an icy moment. I knew it and they knew it, although I had never intended it, and they never acknowledged it. I didn't realize the implications of what I was saying until I said it. In an instant I made them look bad. In the process of being real and not letting them put me 0n a pedestal (a way of  distancing me and my good deed), I made them look worse. I was doing right by them, and the question then became, then hung in the air like a bad smell, were they doing right by me, and if not, why not?

This was an incredible revelation for me. It explains a lot. Like why no good deed goes unpunished and why half the time the first thing that happens is that the person pisses on you for doing right by them. I couldn't figure this out for the longest time. These things are connected. Do you see the connection? 

Running out the clock is not an option. If you do that in the Hindu world you reincarnate as a lower form of being. You go backwards. Denial makes that happen. Faking it makes that happen. Feeling sorry for yourself: being the victim when you're really the bad guy, makes that happen. Dressing things up instead of undressing them makes that happen. Undress them and you know what you've got, you know where you stand.

I have to say that some of my favorite people have been assholes. The kind that don't hide it. I felt I could generally expect better things from them. I could hear the truth from them. I could know where I stood. I think people in general like these people for this reason. Even Marilyn Monroe, who was so beautiful to so many, really got to people because she exposed her vulnerability. She was amazing, but she wasn't perfect, she showed us her weakness. 

The wheels are coming off the wagon these days, and maybe they will all come off. All of these "perfect" people have been or are being exposed. Regular people feel better for it. The genius Madoff is really a crook. Martha Stewart is a phony and a bitch. Oprah Winfrey has food issues. Barry Bonds took performance enhancing drugs. America has been exposed to the world. We're a mess. If we keep faking it or even worse, fake it more, we'll be an even bigger mess. We're becoming Dr Jykell and Mr Hyde.  Our cover-ups and double standards have not just widened the schism,  they have enlarged our collective asshole. Instead of the Golden Rule, we apparently live by something more like: what's in it for me.  When Jimmy Carter challenged us to be more self-aware as a country, we threw him out and hired an actor to take his place. It is clear this president intends to challenge us as well. 

Self-flagellation and regrets aren't the answer. Feeling bummed out about our weaknesses and mistakes just reinforces them. As artists we have to see what we do in the clear morning light. We have to think harder about the quality of the meal we are making, not just how it tastes, and how it makes us feel, but what it does to make us better. Tolstoy laid it out there: art is food for the soul. Yes, we are all sinners, we all have Achilles's Heels, we are all neurotic, we all have carbon footprints, we all have assholes. What are we going to do with that? Dress it up, fake it, or look hard at what we are doing as artists and do the right thing, what ever that may be.

So what are we doing as artists? Are we trying to be successful? Are we trying to be famous? Are we trying to carve out a piece of turf for ourselves and then hold on with all our might? Are we lashing out at an unfair and uncaring world? Are we goofing off? Are we waiting for the bell to ring/running out the clock? Are we sugar coating a dog turd? Are we wacking off? Are we moralizing/preaching to the choir? Are we keeping to what we already know? Are we trying to shock? Are we pandering? Are we hiding out? Are we sulking? Are we sheep, or worse, lemmings? Are we taking stuff for granted? Are we stubborn instead of determined? Are we in it for ourselves? Are we poison instead of elixir? Are we problem instead of solution? Just how much of an asshole are we? Are we wasting our time? Are we sharing? Are we using our gift for giving or are we just blowing our own horn? Are we making really good soul food? Are we?

To Thine Own Thing Be True

Do your own thing. The Sixties catch-phrase divided people back then, but it had its legions of disciples and champions(I actually saw the original Off-Broadway production because a friend of mine had one of the leads). Now it seems positively distasteful and even un-patriotic to mouth the words, and I'm afraid we may be going from the frying pan into the fire. How could it get worse? Well...

Do your own thing. Absolutely essential to the artist, but I would like to include everyone else. Why? The four words say it. Do: action. Your: we're not talking about your parents, your teachers, your boss, your friends, your partner, your commander-in-chief.  Own: your baby, your dream, your precious, your song, your heart, your dance, your thing. Thing: passion, pursuit, challenge, kick, itch, vision, mission, yaya, what makes you tick, what gets you up in the morning, what matters, what you care about. Despite that or because we live in this world of oppression, repression, obligation, prescription, redundancy, duplication, imitation, and restriction, doing your own thing is not only necessary, it is vital. We are nothing short of cattle being lead to the slaughter from cradle to grave. 

I know a lot of people who don't do their own thing. Their lives conspired to deny them this freedom, this power, this voice, this destiny. They couldn't and wouldn't know where to begin to find this in themselves now. Which means, of course, more beer for everyone else.

The cool thing about being an artist is that in that little time and space that is your studio, you have the promise, power, and permission to do your own thing.  No one likes you for it. It's costing them beer. In your studio you can do what you want, when you want, how you want, why you want, etc.  It is a powerful thing. Writers can do it too, of course. The blank pages of a book can become anything. Funnily enough, besides artists in their studios and writers in their books, only dictators and warlords have this kind of power. No wonder some world leaders get rid of artists first. No wonder that other world leaders have so much admiration for artists. This also explains why being an artist has such a high price. No one likes you for it, and no one wants you to get paid for it. Makes sense. Artists cost people beer, after all.

Do your own thing! And make it a good thing! Make it a makes the world a better place own thing! Right on!

Have You Seen Jack?

I was reminded again what a funny business painting can be, like so many of the things we do, personal, creative, or business. When you start out it is all talk, all go, all yes! You might be listening to something else, some muse, some inspiration, some subject, some emotion, some idea, but it is the blank canvas that is doing all the listening at this point.  Then along the way things start to change, and the talking has to give way to listening as the painting takes on a life of its own, and by the end it is all listening, all contemplative, all analytical. All over. When I start a painting you can't shut me up, but by the end I barely have anything to say, and for better or worse the painting is doing all the talking. 

I try to change this a little. Slow down the inevitable. Maybe less talk at the beginning will lead to a more consistent give and take, talking and listening, throughout the process. More conversational. My friend, Julie Glass, cracked up about something I think she said Fran Lebowitz wrote, that people aren't conversational, that they don't listen, that they just wait their turn; that there is even no such thing as listening, but just waiting your turn.  But if you're an artist, you have to learn to listen, don't you? How can you hear your own work? How can you answer if you haven't listened. Really listened.

It may be my nature, or it may be the nature of all the things we do. I don't know. My father detailed the cycle of any business enterprise in a book on management consultancy. It seemed pretty much the same. Enthusiasm marks the beginning of any creative undertaking. By the time the cycle completes itself, from conception to infancy to adolescence to maturity to old age,  we find ourselves at the end, at the death of the thing. This is why I suppose the French think of the orgasm as a death; it is the end of love-making. So like the French to be so brilliant and yet so wrong. I'm not talking about Jerry Lewis either. I'm talking about love-making, and the thing that happens: conception. The beginning.  Another Fran Lebowitz bugaboo: children who speak fluent French.

Speaking of getting it wrong. So many people don't get the dialogue thing. The conversation thing. The give and take. The talking and listening. Isn't this it? Everything we learn and love and live. Man vs. Society. Man vs. Nature. Man vs. Himself. Man vs. God. Isn't life just a dialogue. Isn't life just sharing? Aren't all those things just conversations? Society, Nature, God, the Self, the Other? Aren't we just sharing a conversation? Sure, sometimes it seems like we're the only one talking, and then sometimes it feels like we only get to listen, but isn't this it? Isn't it all about this connecting? Not so much connection, but connecting. Don't we just connect and then we die? Life of the bee, or something like that.

Oddly enough, I know very few artists who are good listeners, especially when it comes to other people's work. If you're talking about their work, that's different; they could leave something on the stove and let their house burn down, that's understood. But other people's work? No. I made a living listening to other people's work as an art critic/writer/reviewer, and artists always thought it was amazing that I could understand what they were up to. I just looked and listened. I didn't have some special gift.  Just looking and listening. That was all that was required. 

When I was a teacher RISD, my last act before I retired about twelve years ago, was to make sure that my students could listen by the end of term. They had no idea what I was up to. They didn't have the first clue how to listen, and they could not have cared less. I wanted to give them listening, knowing that that is what they really needed. To just pay attention. Don't take anything for granted and you'll be fine. Listen. I shouldn't have been disappointed that they just wanted their 'A' and they wanted it to be theirs alone; it wasn't enough to just get an 'A,' everyone else had to fail. Wasn't this the way I was? We all were?

But I did it. By the last class, outside on the grass on the RISD farm, I actually got them to be able to listen. I got them to be able to listen and like it. I got them to be able to listen to each other's work and talk about what they were hearing. Looking and listening are pretty much the same for me. Just goes in a different way. But they were listening and then talking up a storm. It was great. They got it, and they found it really exciting. No more sitting alone in the little cubicle of their own work, they got to be out there in the great give and take. It was pretty great! Then it was over and I haven't taught since.

But this is what it is about. Conversation. Not waiting your turn, not waiting for your chance to jump in and take over, not trying to hold the floor and not be interrupted, but give and take, the great flow of give and take. The two-way street.

I'll tell you what it isn't about, either: the one-way street. You hear this garbage all the time from the mitre-boxers, the ones who can only measure their way through life inch by inch. It isn't all about being the master. Being accomplished. Being the one holding the floor, doing all the talking. Being on top. This is so crazy. I remember when I was teaching and it was pretty much agreed by all my students (stupids) that you only wanted to be on top. Yes, again, it was a relationship thing. I could not believe my ears, but I was alone. Everyone agreed that no matter what, they would be on top and never be on the bottom. Losers were on the bottom. 

At the time I was painting horizontal paintings with my eyes closed so that I could remove as much verticality and control from my paintings as possible. Having my eyes shut helped me to listen. Not just to the painting, or myself, but to everything. I had to keep this to myself of course because I was already alien. But these stupids of mine couldn't have cared less that being on top meant someone else had to be on the bottom, someone else had to lose, someone else had to fail, and presumably that someone on the bottom was their brother or sister in life. Just as long as it wasn't them. This is what they learned at home and in school.

Wouldn't you know that it was about the same time that Bush Senior said we should be a kinder, gentler nation and I knew then and there as the words came out of his mouth that we were in trouble: rich people need definition, they need poor people to make them rich, not just to work for them, but to make them rich by way of comparison, the haves and have-nots, through power, appearance, property, you name it. Well, my students didn't clue in that someone else had to lose so that they could win. Just as long as they got to be on top, got their 'A,' got their turn, got to talk, nothing else much mattered. No sharing, no connecting, no mutual respect, no mutual anything. A world of one-way streets. A world of one-way streets that don't connect. Artists have to listen to what they are doing and what they have done, and then listen some more. They have to listen to each other. If they are mitre-boxing instead, just checking out each other's joints, well then, they aren't listening. These former stupids of mine are now the artists, and teachers, and bosses, and parents, and politicians of the world. They're my neighbors. They're your neighbors! And we're all listening! We hope they are too!

I've got a painting on the line right now. It's hanging on the wall over there. It's talking to me. I'm listening hard. I'm happy to listen hard. I'm connecting/connected. I'm almost there, yes, I think I've got something to say. Yes. It is about that blue. That soaring blue. It wants to be like lightning in a night sky. It wants to spread its wings and lift the viewer high into the air, so that they feel the rush, feel the flood of ions, the electricity, the connection, the life! Now what have I got to say to that? Well, let's see!

Aziz, Light!

We're brought up to analyze, criticize, and complain; and we feel entitled; we feel empowered!  BUT, life comes "as is."

We think we are in control, but we aren't. What we do have control over is ourselves. That is scary, right? Because most people realize on some level, that in fact, they don't seem to have the slightest idea how to control themselves. One remembered dream tells us that. Most of us would like to control the things we can't, and turn our backs on what we can. 

BUT, life comes as is! The weather, people, movies, and yes, art! Arguing with any of it is like shooting yourself in the foot: a waste of your valuable time and energy! 

As an artist you have control over the time and energy you put into your work. Everything outside of that is out of your control. Pretty much everything, anyway. You can count on it. What you can control is the question; and here is the hard part. If you don't like something: don't do it, don't eat it, don't look at it, don't take it, just walk away. Just do something else. Arguing with life is a waste of time, and... it is negative!

I lot of people thought I was some kind of rebel when I was a kid. When you're a rebel, you are locked in conflict with something else. I wasn't. If something wasn't working out, or to my liking, I just did something else. I just had something better to do. For example, when I was a pre-teen, I didn't do school; I didn't like school, but I didn't sit around whining about it; I did something else instead. I didn't give school another thought. I put my energy into painting because at the age of ten I was lucky enough to have a studio the likes of which I will never have again. OK, it was on Via Margutta in Rome, giant windows, tall, beamed ceilings, and outside was the Pincio, the western edge of the gardens of the Villa Borghese. It had been at one time Raphael's studio, and all the artists called me Il Piccolo Raffaello. Ok, so I definitely had something better to do!

But as an artist we can't get caught up it the way things are supposed to be. It is a delusion we will never escape. Things are as they are. I also learned that in Italy. You do what you can do. Things are as they are. Que sera, sera. You do what you can do. Smile and wave, Boys, smile and wave!

Now have I been blindsided by this stuff? I stand here guilty as charged. I once tried to hold on to a relationship that was over, because I thought it was "supposed to be." Really thought it was supposed to be. Almost killed me. It was a hard lesson. Crazy the way we think we can want what we want. Do I have other examples? Plenty. How long have you got?

In the end all I could do was pick myself up and clean up my own house. Open some windows. Get the pizza boxes off the sofa. Clean up the shit on the floors! I had absolutely no control over anything else. If someone loves me, they love me, and if they don't; they don't. That's amore!

So if some gallery wants to show your work, they will. If they don't want to, they won't. Maybe you can win them over, maybe you can't. BUT: THEY ARE IN CHARGE! I can't tell you how many times I have seen artists try to take charge in a gallery situation. SURE AND SUDDEN DEATH! Always. It's THEIR gallery. THE GALLERY IS IN CHARGE. THE GALLERY IS IN CHARGE. THE GALLERY IS IN CHARGE. Never forget this and you will be fine. 

I see people trying to take charge all the time in situations where they are not in charge, and anything but in charge. These people keep bumping their heads up against this wall and never get it. If you are not in charge, don't argue, don't pick, don't do anything but say yes; or go elsewhere. It is comical really, but a little sad. 

Life is delicate. Life is complicated. Life is chemical. Forget "supposed to be." There is a show up right now a bunch of people think is important. The artist is supposed to be famous. He deserves to be famous and successful and everyone should buy his paintings. Sounds stupid, but this happens all the time. People really fall into this trap-- all the time! Smart people. Really. Maybe it will happen, and maybe it won't. Que sera, sera! Aziz, Light!