After an extensive discussion with one carl annarummo, i've decided to take initative and try to create something. i'm currently working on a series of miniature paintings on old pieces of driftwood/plywood.
An attempt to create something based on the good parts of my childhood down by the boardwalk, full of arcade games, rides from the 30s-50s, and garish art like pulp covers. for some reason, i equate with the loss of these things to more prefab rides with the loss of my childhood and the year immediately following high school. maybe this'll help me deal with some issues of loss. and maybe they might not come out half badly.
clichéd, yes, but i have to start somewhere. i don't believe my creativity will just march right back into my head, so i think i really need to let go of wanting everything to be brilliant. because it's not going to happen no matter how much i think about it.
jim once told me that if i talk about something too much, that in my head i've already done it, and therefore there's no point in actually doing it, especially for someone like me who gets bored easily.
i want to blame this on alll the "art instructors" i've had in the past, the ones who did nothing but praise me for every little piece of crap i've churned out, and never given me constructive criticism. when it came to critiques in college, i'd be the first to tear myself a new one, until i gave up even trying. very lame.
so if you're out there, and reading this, please give me your honest critisism. i'm quite lost at this point.
Monday, July 04, 2005
the backstory: circa 5/19/05
This morning, as I took a shower in the filthy hellhole we share with three other guys, I thought about a day almost 4 years ago, in another, equally filthy bathroom.
I sat on the toilet looking up at the nicotine soaked ceiling of my apartment in the giant pink monastery. My roommate, rae, was prone to sitting in the bathroom for hours at a time with the shower running while she sat near the window and chain smoked. This was her daily ritual in the endless cycle of insanity and self-pity that was rae.
So I sat, staring at the dark brown drops of gunk, that appeared to be pointing at me accusingly, thinking to myself that I’m just like every other art school cliché name dropping piece of shit that I hate. I talk a great deal, sure I come up with millions of ideas in a week, and sometimes I’ll pull something halfway decent out of my ass. Let’s face it, though, never enough to make is solely as an artist. I have zero motivation. I then decided I was going to write it all down in a cathartic rant, and I prove my point exactly, it took FOUR FUCKING YEARS. My severe lack of a concept of time is kind of staggering to me.
I used to think it was a matter of place. “oh if only I was in a real city, I’d have the motivation”, I’d lie to myself. In this day of a completely integrated society connected to everything by the internet and various “lifestyle and culture” magazines, though I don’t think it’s that simple. I need to live in a whole different TIME, which is another story, and an even more evidence of my extreme lack of motivation.
Sure, anyone could do any random piece of conceptual art in the 30s-70s and have it accepted as genius, but if I could go back in time and work I would STILL be riding on the backs and talents of those who came before me, whether they’d been born at the time I chose to inhabit or not.
Compounded by this dilemma is that almost everything that is considered “cool” now is just rehashing of the seventies and art deco motifs, which is fine. I like to do things in that style as well, but I am so sick of everyone considering it innovative. Maybe 35 years ago, but do we as a society really have that short of an attention span? With the mass groups of people I see dressing like it’s 1986 again, I’d say the answer is yes. Not to say that there’s anything wrong with that. Maybe culture goes in cycles and each time a cycle repeats it becomes a little better, like the flaws are bred out of it. I’d like to think that’s what happens.
It’s easiest to notice with clothing. I guess because wearable status symbols are more condusive to showing how cool you are, and less expensive than drivable ones. I distinctly recall a nostalgia for the 50’s in the mid 80s. Chalk this us to a republican president, post war society, grease and happy days, whatever, it was there. However, the bowling shirts took on gargantuan proportions and even more garish colors and patterns. A “bigger is better” kinda thing. Neon diner print, black and white checkered shirts with pink and teal chevys all over the place. Bouffants as just plain big jersey hair… it was like a las vegas version of the fifties in our midst, but everything was brand new and you’d never think of actually wearing something from that decade…because ew…it was what your grandmother wore.
Today’s fifties nostalgia is all about authenticity, real actual preserved icons of our innocent past, perhaps for the same reasons that the 80s was about garish falsification. But you get the point. It seems like the art world operates in the same cycles. A decade and a half of being garish, plastic, modern; and then returning to old aesthetics and old techniques. Sure it’s a little more heavy on the visual interest and less on the concept with the new kids. But it’s still just a rehashing of old ideas, with a few exceptions. So maybe the truth in art is to just prey on the current cultures state of nostalgia, and throw it back at them on canvas or film or whatever. Maybe that IS the current conceptual aesthetic in art. Duping your public.
Or maybe it operates in the same cyclical fashion, but when the cycle comes around new things from the 20 or so years before the last time that have accumulates on the periphery also find their way in as well. like adding fabric softener. or a kid falling off a merry-go-round. Maybe with the passing of each decade the cycle just spins faster and soon we'll be rehashing the aesthetics of whole centuries in a matter of months. maybe it's already happened. Maybe it's all just a refinment cycle for the perfect handful of pieces of art that could be made if the people of earth could just stop thinking about being famous and making money for a second and just create.
These things are hard for me to explain because I rationalize in circles and, like the point I’m trying to make, with each cycle something is lost or gained. Whether it’s an imperfection or bits of actual truth remains to be seen. My ideas take this same path in my head until i actually sit down and implement them, or they're beat into a pulp against other thoughts and just fall apart.
Or I could just be really, really bitter.
I sat on the toilet looking up at the nicotine soaked ceiling of my apartment in the giant pink monastery. My roommate, rae, was prone to sitting in the bathroom for hours at a time with the shower running while she sat near the window and chain smoked. This was her daily ritual in the endless cycle of insanity and self-pity that was rae.
So I sat, staring at the dark brown drops of gunk, that appeared to be pointing at me accusingly, thinking to myself that I’m just like every other art school cliché name dropping piece of shit that I hate. I talk a great deal, sure I come up with millions of ideas in a week, and sometimes I’ll pull something halfway decent out of my ass. Let’s face it, though, never enough to make is solely as an artist. I have zero motivation. I then decided I was going to write it all down in a cathartic rant, and I prove my point exactly, it took FOUR FUCKING YEARS. My severe lack of a concept of time is kind of staggering to me.
I used to think it was a matter of place. “oh if only I was in a real city, I’d have the motivation”, I’d lie to myself. In this day of a completely integrated society connected to everything by the internet and various “lifestyle and culture” magazines, though I don’t think it’s that simple. I need to live in a whole different TIME, which is another story, and an even more evidence of my extreme lack of motivation.
Sure, anyone could do any random piece of conceptual art in the 30s-70s and have it accepted as genius, but if I could go back in time and work I would STILL be riding on the backs and talents of those who came before me, whether they’d been born at the time I chose to inhabit or not.
Compounded by this dilemma is that almost everything that is considered “cool” now is just rehashing of the seventies and art deco motifs, which is fine. I like to do things in that style as well, but I am so sick of everyone considering it innovative. Maybe 35 years ago, but do we as a society really have that short of an attention span? With the mass groups of people I see dressing like it’s 1986 again, I’d say the answer is yes. Not to say that there’s anything wrong with that. Maybe culture goes in cycles and each time a cycle repeats it becomes a little better, like the flaws are bred out of it. I’d like to think that’s what happens.
It’s easiest to notice with clothing. I guess because wearable status symbols are more condusive to showing how cool you are, and less expensive than drivable ones. I distinctly recall a nostalgia for the 50’s in the mid 80s. Chalk this us to a republican president, post war society, grease and happy days, whatever, it was there. However, the bowling shirts took on gargantuan proportions and even more garish colors and patterns. A “bigger is better” kinda thing. Neon diner print, black and white checkered shirts with pink and teal chevys all over the place. Bouffants as just plain big jersey hair… it was like a las vegas version of the fifties in our midst, but everything was brand new and you’d never think of actually wearing something from that decade…because ew…it was what your grandmother wore.
Today’s fifties nostalgia is all about authenticity, real actual preserved icons of our innocent past, perhaps for the same reasons that the 80s was about garish falsification. But you get the point. It seems like the art world operates in the same cycles. A decade and a half of being garish, plastic, modern; and then returning to old aesthetics and old techniques. Sure it’s a little more heavy on the visual interest and less on the concept with the new kids. But it’s still just a rehashing of old ideas, with a few exceptions. So maybe the truth in art is to just prey on the current cultures state of nostalgia, and throw it back at them on canvas or film or whatever. Maybe that IS the current conceptual aesthetic in art. Duping your public.
Or maybe it operates in the same cyclical fashion, but when the cycle comes around new things from the 20 or so years before the last time that have accumulates on the periphery also find their way in as well. like adding fabric softener. or a kid falling off a merry-go-round. Maybe with the passing of each decade the cycle just spins faster and soon we'll be rehashing the aesthetics of whole centuries in a matter of months. maybe it's already happened. Maybe it's all just a refinment cycle for the perfect handful of pieces of art that could be made if the people of earth could just stop thinking about being famous and making money for a second and just create.
These things are hard for me to explain because I rationalize in circles and, like the point I’m trying to make, with each cycle something is lost or gained. Whether it’s an imperfection or bits of actual truth remains to be seen. My ideas take this same path in my head until i actually sit down and implement them, or they're beat into a pulp against other thoughts and just fall apart.
Or I could just be really, really bitter.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
