As we find our way this new year, this new season of hope, I have begun by finishing old things. I have repaired old paintings and tackled completing some that were left leaning against studio walls. I'd been waiting for the insight and/or courage to resolve the annoying issues that force me to leave a painting undone (an irritation that grows as time passes)-the difference between the painting's visceral reality and the image in mind and senses.
I ask you:Which is the true painting?
The painting itself answers. As one sees it on the wall, it grabs our attention or allows us to pass by with only a glance. That is answer enough.
But does it matter? Does Art matter? These are tough times; I've been hearing that on the radio and television, seeing it in the newspaper headlines. And even in this new season of hope, our elected officials have again allowed Art to be relegated to the fringes. Our Senators have voted to allow an amendment to pass which will deny any funds from the multi-billion dollar stimulus package to be directed to the Arts-museums, galleries, education, even disallowing designing landscaping around roads built with stimulus money!
Clearly, then, we see: Art does matter! It matters enough that it has its own amendment. What other field of human endeavor has its own (exclusionary) amendment?
This is amongst the most depressing and bewildering situations of our time. Businesses find enough money to develop video games and new uses for expensive electronic toys, the government finds enough money to listen to our conversations, engage in wars all over the planet, yet we can't seem to find the funds to support our children, aged, sick, indigent, artists, or factory workers. What then have we said about ourselves? What do we value? We value celebrity, grown ups' toys, wealth, politics, armaments, research and development, the spy class, the technology class...What do we devalue? People, regular old people. And the things that enhance the lives of regular old people.
Hell, as Zen Master Seung Sahn described it, is a place where people sitting at a dining table heaped with food are starving. Because these people's arms don't bend at the elbows, although food is abundant and within reach, they can't get the food into their own mouths. Heaven, as the good Zen Master described it, is the same table. The same people. Whose forks and spoons pick up food and feed it into their table-mates' mouths. All stomachs are happy.
Unless we die a calamitous unexpected death, each of us will one day need help getting food to our own mouth, getting to the doctor or bathroom. Each of us will, at some time, have in our family an artist, a homosexual, a black sheep, a high school dropout, a rebel, a member with chronic, congenital, or mental illness. Any of us could lose our money, our home, our insurance, our invulnerability.
Now is a good time to question our values, to examine the path we've traveled to the present. Do we like what we find? If so, continue onward. If not, find another way. I would prefer my world to include more heaven than hell. I would prefer a grassy, wild flower berm to a cinder block divider on the highway I travel. I would like a painting on my wall. I would like access to medicine. I would prefer children in schools to young adults in prison. I would prefer more people in one home to investors with three. Wouldn't you?
This artist's blog appears with NO ART. Our Senators support an amendment that takes art out of the mainstream, declares art frivolous, and sets artists aside as people who perform no useful function and deserve no support. SO close the Smithsonian! Drape black fabric atop the paintings on the walls and sculptures in the hallways! Take the crayons away from the children! Mow the landscape free of flowers and plantings! Put down that novel! Shut off that IPod! Close the theaters! Put those violins away!
In this new season of hope, we've voted for a world without art. Does it matter?
