State of the Art

There used to be a funky “grebo” band from England called Pop Will Eat Itself. They were OK for about five minutes, but their name sums up what I feel had happened to art by the end of the 20th century.

After many movements such as Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop, Op and a bunch of other isms too boring to list, artistic expression hit the wall with Minimalism. What else was left? It was the big black period at the end of a long, convoluted sentence about visual expression. Time to pack it all in and go home.

That’s pretty much how I saw the world a few years ago when I was painting night and day trying to get into some uppity gallery in Atlanta. I had started my own movement, Failure-ism. I was the crown prince of not getting noticed. Eventually, like all art movements, it came to an end. I put down my brushes and picked up a pen. The rest is history.

As for art history, things just got more diffused. Canvases became conglomerates of realism and abstraction, beautiful mistakes and dropped cans of paint. Old Nerdrum painted like Rembrandt on acid. Howard Finster spearheaded the ever-growing Outsider Art movement. That’s when I gave up.

Here I was trying to put something together that was new, yet schooled. I studied art for years to be outdone by some old guy with too much time on his hands. I was furious!

The latest edition of Art in America came in the mail the other day and I just had to shake my head. Minimalism has once again reared its non-existent head. Dan Flavin’s fluorescent tubes of colored light are all the rage. I don’t get it. This is the kind of stuff my dad would look at and say, “I could do that.”

I used to reply, “Yeah, but you didn’t.” Now I’m glad that he didn’t.

I’m not a big fan of installation art anyway. I look at these tubes mounted cleverly on white walls and I can’t help but think I saw the same thing in a bar downtown. Maybe I was drunk.

I used to visit galleries with piles of rocks on the floor and plastic curtains hanging from the ceiling “just so” only to peer closer and find a little white card which read something like “Conundrum Number 30.” With my best snooty voice I would quip, “Exactly.” On the other hand I was sure a janitor would be coming over any minute to clean up this mess.

Nowadays, Thomas Kinkade is considered a great artist. His Technicolor canvases elicit nothing more than a “yeah, that’s pretty” response from me. I keep looking for little Munchkins in the bushes. I sort of see him as Maxfield Parish after a lobotomy. He’s Norman Rockwell without a story to tell.

To me, the only exciting art is coming from the West coast; much of it featured in a radically gorgeous little magazine called Juxtapoz. Its editor, Robert Williams, mad painter extraordinaire, has been busy championing the “Lowbrow” movement for the past 10 years or more. Technically gifted talents such as Tim Biskop, Eric White, Todd Schoor, Mark Ryden, Takashi Murakami, Chris Mars, Joe Coleman, and many more too numerous to list are painting their hearts out, creating works that are both awesome and disturbing. This is not the sort of thing you will find in American Artist, but it is more American than the meticulous landscapes and portraiture that stare back at you like so much bad wallpaper.

The culture that baby boomers grew up with has been absorbed and resurfaced as a fever dream on canvas. Cartoons, faded images from Polaroids, the famous and the notorious have all been melted together, ripped apart and reconstructed into statements of confrontation. Maybe you wouldn’t want to hang it over your couch, especially if it’s one of those Colonial jobs with the big wooden wings on it and the pattern of pheasants and pears running every which way. Personally, I would just get a new couch.

These are works of art that make me say, “I wish I had painted that.” In this day and age when people like Paul McCartney are showing their paintings in galleries and shows in New York are featuring art that looks like giant paint chips from Home Depot, it’s difficult to know what art is these days.

One of my favorite artists of the 20th century was Jean-Michele Basquiat. His canvases were big, bold and raw with emotion. They hit you like a Mack truck blasting the Sex Pistols from the tape deck. He self-destructed before he could even realize his own power as a great painter. His paintings sell for ungodly amounts now.

That was always my biggest problem with the art world. People are always trying to talk you down to $50 for something you put your most inner self into. In the end, I just couldn’t part with my canvases. They were too personal, too precious. I figured they could have them when I’m dead. Until then, I will paint for myself. That’s whom I was always painting for anyway. I never liked doing commissions. You may as well tie my hands behind my back and put the brush between my teeth. That would give me more creative control.

Painting is a great, relaxing hobby. There are only as many rules as you wish to impose. You don’t have to sell your soul to express yourself. Art is its own reward. It’s fun to do. It’s fun to share and it pulls something intangible from inside for the entire world to see.

Pick up a brush, dab it in some paint, touch it to a snow-white canvas and watch it slowly come to life.

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