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Back in January, I posted a piece about artists living a cursed life. In short, most artists get insufficient respect during their lifetimes and an insane amount of attention after they die, which often enough turns into crazy appraisals of artworks without the stories behind the works and, in the case of someone like painter Bob Ross, questionable merchandising.
I recently watched part of a PBS (TV) special featuring various “artists” who were making an effort to share their artwork with the world. Let’s just leave that as the simple summary of the program. Now, I watched three segments before I lost my cool.
The first featured a white-haired man with an accent I couldn’t quite identify. Apparently, though I’ve never heard of him or seen any of his (exceptionally large) work, he has filled some rather spacious plots of land and museums with spectacles worthy of Willy Wonka. One of his creations involves a set of conveyor belts transporting bricks of soft, melting wax to a big pile/mess of the stuff. [That’s art, ay?] Another–I presume in the same building–involves a corridor flooded with the same reddish wax. He was also featured with what looked like a giant apple-shaped building and the metallic bean which I have actually stood beside in Chicago, Illinois. [Is that his work? I guess I didn’t pay close enough attention; I was too bewildered by the sheer amount of space and liberty this guy has to create and feature his work. Also, he apparently has a small army of “oompa loompas” to craft things somewhat toxic for him. Is that an artist at work or the architect of the pyramids?]
There was something oddly unsettling about this segment. The guy kept featuring pieces with a distinct vertical crack, a reddish gash with a dark mysterious void at its center, a shape that sure seemed to resemble a certain part of the female anatomy. This prompted memories of a horrid art-school tour I took in my crucial teens, when I was looking for direction with my own artistic talents. The place was littered with obscene works. And, my own portfolio, a sampling of my yet limited life’s work, was carelessly brushed aside by the guide. [If there was ever a moment to turn Hitler, that was it. You can thank your lucky stars I didn’t start the next Holocaust, sending unworthy artists and careless consumers of art to the gas chambers.]
The second segment featured a (brown-skinned) African gentleman** whose “portfolio” was far smaller and less jaw-dropping than that of the previous man. This more modest and humble artist had what seemed like a fraction of the time and space to discuss matters of social justice, primarily pollution of a particular environment where “minorities” reside. His gallery space included a number of movie/flat-TV screens no bigger than a home-movie screen. His entire presentation was like a whisper in a crowd. It was small and not the least bit awe-inspiring.
**I feel a strange need to be specific, considering people no longer meet a single description for any nationality.
The third segment, the one that really popped the cork on my infuriation, was about an older woman who likes to collect pieces of debris from demolition and disaster scenes and turn them into simplistic pieces of what she calls art. Essentially, she’s putting a hunk of cement, pipes and wiring (the size of a T-Rex) on a few supportive pegs, splashing it with paint and other questionable decorations and sticking this enormous piece in a spacious museum chamber. What a wonderful use of museum space; filling an entire gallery with one hunk of some other building that no longer exists which no longer looks as it originally did, which might be considered historical preservation of a relic. She’s not contributing to one of those museums you find in Europe, housing fragments of ancient Greece. No. She’s splashing colors on hunks of unnamed structural damage and taking up space which could be used to house countless other sculptures, paintings, etc.
I take you back to the story I have heard about the famous Pablo Picasso. The guy supposedly filled houses with artworks and relocated when one was full. He didn’t create things that took over buildings or portions of cities and/or parks. He created works you could put on walls and sit in a small room where you might read a book and enjoy the colorful company. But, if he filled houses with his work…does that mean he wasn’t spreading the love of art? Was he just hoarding it all because he didn’t think anyone was worthy of looking after it until he just could no longer protect everything like a pharaoh in his tomb?
Now, there is no way I’d ever want to do what the third featured person did. I see no logical or creative reason to “recycle” a hunk of demolition/destruction without breaking it down into simpler elements and crafting something you could fit through the average household door…not require a crane and probably a construction crew to transport to some spacious warehouse/museum facility.
And, I don’t see myself ever doing what the second person did. As much as I might inject matters of social justice into my own work, I wouldn’t just make a simple video documentary and fill a dark room with screens. I’d use metaphors and a pinch of creativity/humor here and there…something you might see from an author like Roald Dahl, the BFG. I’d craft an experience with impact yet without overwhelming dread and/or despair. No one needs to go through the bleak experiences of another to understand what happened; I don’t need to simulate losing an ear to imagine how dreadful Van Gogh’s life must have been.
But, a small part of me cannot help envying the first guy. How does any artist achieve such status? How does he acquire an army of crafters to fashion what he imagines, risking their lives, not his (as I watched some work with gas masks while he stood elsewhere just talking at length about his “genius” like a pompous windbag. [I seriously think the guy was a bit perverse with an ego overly inflated by some underhanded dark influence.]
How does this stuff happen? How does the world get so twisted (yeah, upside-down, even) that you might think suicide is a wise decision? How does anyone get the permission to amass an army of laborers to craft questionable, useless objects which are probably visible from outer space?…while other artists are left to rub coins together, cut off body parts and live miserable, otherwise unproductive lives in solitude?
It boggles the mind. And then, it blows what’s left out every portal of the human anatomy.
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