Art Thoughts From the Studio of an Amateur

Here’s the basis for my thoughts:

Opera Gallery
“The only valid thing in art is that which cannot be explained.”
--Georges Braque

This is ridiculous:

Exhibit #1

I don’t mean to pick on NARA Yoshitomo in any way, but what in the world is the world thinking?  Yoshimoto is listed in the Masters section of this website.  You can see the rest of the gallery here:  Nara Yoshimoto.

Now I won’t claim to be anywhere near a master, based on my concept of “master artists.” I’m not qualified for a lot of reasons.  I’m not particularly innovative, I’m not prolific, I’m not well known, I’m not DEAD, I don’t have much consistency and all sorts of other stuff.  BUT, look at my art attempts and contrast them to this artist and what do I look like?  Holy cow I’m an institution unto myself. 

And Yoshimoto isn’t the only one.  There’s some really bizarre stuff out there that just defies reason.

I don’t understand what is going on with this world and its art.  I grew up with the Baroque Period in a huge compendium form in my closet, and I used to sit there and scrutinize the work there.  I hope Mom and Dad still have that book, because I’d really like to get my hands on it again.  It was filled with beautiful work. 

I’m a huge fan of Michael Whelan as well.  He’s all the things of art that I am not (we have two things in common:  we like his art and we’re not dead).  I love the story he told of a print he’d left on a table and a woman who came up and actually touched it to find out if the textures he’d painted were real.  Whelan can do magic with his brush.  I only wish I could do that.

Which of these two images would you attribute to a master? 

This isn’t really a good comparison, for one of them looks identical to the work of a 6 year old. 

It appears, based on the quote at the start, here, that we’re interested more in the inexplicable, irrational and mindless than we are in the reality of this pretty vibrant, often meaningful world of ours.  People have meaning, but they’re losing it.  Things have meaning, but that meaning seems to be fading fast.

Where has our judgment gone?  Why has the world as a whole become so retarded (and I mean it) that we revel in backwards, dysfunctional garbage?  What happened to our obsession with perfection and beauty?  Why isn’t the historical master’s spirit inspiring the artists of the world. Check this out.

One last, before I continue on the tirade: Expose’, the annual from Ballistic publishing, which represents the cutting edge of digital art, makes a bold and vicious statement against the bunko that passes for fine art these days.  It seems the despised geeks and techies have reached the heights that “real” artists can no longer seem to match.  Nearly every image in this incredible portfolio is a work that shows talent, creativity, massive inspiration and… get this… WORK!  Yes, it took work, thousands of hours in the case of some of the 3D imagery, to put these pieces together.  Even the bizarre and wacko stuff that defies explanation demonstrate skill and labor in their creation.  Contrast to Yoshimoto and what do you get?

How does a 10-minute doodle, no talent apparent, on lined notebook paper become a masterpiece in three countries’ exhibits?  I’m disappointed.  Not only that, but look at all else we create.  Our kids are into cartoons that, 15 years ago would have caused apoplexy in most homes.  Poorly crafted, doodled, sloppy work that has no value is drummed into our kids’ heads from the start.  Sponge Bob is a cultural icon, and the felt-board computerized gook of South Park, with all its insanity and inanity tells me we’re getting stupider and more mindless by the day.  Here’s Sponge Bob’s Site.  No joke, South Park is lauded with Emmy Awards and is declared to be Adult Oriented, yet kids watch the stuff. 

Robert Heinlein had a good grasp on stupidity (Note, I don’t agree with all RAH’s thoughts, but he did well with what he had). 

“Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”

This applies to me, too, for I am regularly stupid about a great many things.  But I believe that we are coming closer and closer, yearly even, to a point where whole societies or cultures are going to be incredibly stupid (see California, maybe?  Or at least a portion of it, including the courts.).  With the rapid looming Globalization of Everything, we’ll see retarded stuff happen more and more, even in our own back yards. 

Music?  I won’t even go there other than to say that the end of harmonious, rhythmic beauty is on its way, to be replaced by arrhythmic sewage that I’m convinced invokes false and deceptive emotional reactions which legitimately should be attributed to the fact that the music (and often lyrics) absolutely fail to attain any worth whatsoever.  Instead the “music” trend in some courts seems to evoke insane modes of response such as ridiculous expression in mosh pits and bizarre, should-be-embarrasing dance (?) that makes the Music Video Industry all sorts of money.  The more radical or shocking it is, especially as unintelligibility becomes more common, the more money and popularity is achieved.

Video games?  I laugh.  We obsess with shoot-em-ups like Grand Theft Auto and any number of other titles whose sole purpose (in game) is to achieve the most success in pursuit of all the things for which, in the real world, one would be jailed, executed or even (more often) shot on site by whatever law-enforcement or military entity could get there first.  Why in the WORLD do our kids get exposed to this stuff?  Why in the WORLD would adults like us, with a good grasp of legal and moral ideas, immerse ourselves in the irresponsible, the destructive, the absolutely anarchistic, illicit-natured garbage of a lot of the video games out there, not just for entertainment of a few spare moments, but for hours or DAYS!

We’re dying in our own poisons.

I didn’t entirely mean to fall into a rant here, but the sight of Exhibit #1 blew my mind and I had to let the words fly. 

I humbly submit that I’m capable of stupid thoughts and actions.  I am obsessive in many ways, retarded in many, and just plain incompetent as well.

But I affirm with a LOUD VOICE that the insanity in which our culture seems to be submersing itself is far beyond the simple-minded nutcase behind this blog.  I am appalled at what comes out of our collective mouth and desire nothing more than to escape it entirely.  I hate the exposure to it, I hate the fact that my family is exposed to it.  I despise our media and our culture of shock and debasement.  I dream of the day in which freedom is made available.  Not too long ago, Gurp would have commented, “We’re being overrun by NPCs!  Flee, you fools, Flee!” and I think I still would, only this time it’s serious.

Spider Robinson has a running commentary on The Crazy Years which was inspired by Heinlein’s predictions that can mostly be found in his Future History books.

If I could manage it, I’d be in my Desert right now, making do with peace and a little bubble of my own constructed reality that didn’t contain this scary vitriol-spewing culture that I am increasingly ashamed to call American and My Own.  I’m beginning to think…

This Place Sucks.

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