[New-Poetry] FYRP: Stimulus & response

Fri Jun 9 10:27:03 EDT 2006

Note: The stimulus is found via the link in the first paragraph.
To wit:  http://www.trailofdead.com/

HJ

====

ESSAY: And You Will Know Them By the Trail

of the Dumb: a Defense of Abstract Art

.
by Josh Ronsen

A member of the Austin rock band And You Will Know Us by the Trail of  
Dead has written an essay attacking abstract and modern art. You may  
find the essay here. Scroll down to the May 7, 2003 entry to find it.  
The author of the article is not listed, but maybe it is Conrad  
Keely. For the sake of this article I refer to the actual author as  
Dead.

Dead’s essay reads like it has been cribbed from every remedial  
attack on Modern Art since the 1913 Armory Show. Again we read the  
same tired accusations of “anyone can do it,” and suffer charges of  
elitism since the common man doesn’t appreciate it. To prove his  
point, Dead shows a number of abstract paintings and old-time  
classics to a four-year old girl. The results are astonishing: the  
girl does not like the modern art, but rather likes the “pretty”  
pictures. Thus it is case closed for the product of an Evergreen  
State College education (I’m a University of Chicago man myself; just  
paid off my student loans). Let’s tear down the Rothko Chapel and put  
up some pony paintings (c.f. http://www.njeaa.com/snowhoroilpa.html).

Now a person of sharper intelligence--and I will suffer the charge of  
elitism by saying there aren’t many smart people out there--may  
question the idea of a four year old girl deciding anything about  
anything. Her primary concern at this point in life is when she can  
start wearing makeup (perhaps the most degenerate form of painting in  
Western culture). If we conduct Dead’s “experiment” with the culinary  
arts, we may find that the four year old girl greatly prefers  
Twinkies and Lucky Charms to vegetables and multi-grain bread. If  
left unchecked, this girl would eat nothing but sweets until all her  
teeth become rotted and her brain infected with trillions of  
streptococcus mutans bacteria producing destructive behavioral  
patterns such as listening to the new Liz Phair record.

The same thing happens with art. If left unchecked, this girl will  
probably spend her entire life gazing at pretty pictures and not  
having to think about them. “This picture is pretty, it is a classic,  
can I buy it on a tote bag?” she may find herself asking one day at  
the poster/frame shop in the mall. I want a better future for our kids.

In his 1957 essay “the Creative Act,” Marcel Duchamp, perhaps the  
greatest modern artist, or at least one of the most original and  
daring, describes art as a three part process involving the artist,  
the work of art itself and thirdly, and perhaps most important, the  
viewer, who must engage the art work to complete it. In earlier times  
(in Western Civilization), art was a way of reinforcing rigid social  
and religious structures. In the Renaissance, the average person had  
no access to art unless seen in church: there were no museums, no  
public libraries. Art was a tool of the wealthy as another way to  
display their obscene wealth and social standing. This is the “very  
specific function” that Dead is looking for in art. This art, mostly  
pretty pictures, does not directly engage the viewer intellectually.  
Duchamp called this art--which is so prevalent in society that only  
it is defined as Art--retinal art; art that plays with the eye but  
goes little deeper. Duchamp devoted his life to fighting the pull and  
attraction of this powerful force, and strove to create that which  
would instead play on the mind. When writing “visual art is about  
ways of seeing,” Dead shows his allegiance to this simpler, easier  
way of life.

The pile of coal which fuels Dead’s essay perfectly encapsulates his  
anti-intellectual bias. Dead only sees a pile of coal and passes on  
to us a simple surface description. By not providing the title of the  
piece or the artist, we cannot enter into a discussion about its  
merits. Perhaps it was a terrible piece, a cheap Richard Long knock  
off. Perhaps Dead stumbled upon the loading dock and found an actual  
pile of coal awaiting transfer to the furnace (much like the old joke  
about the uncovered electrical wall socket in the art gallery: it  
provokes vigorous debate until the janitor arrives and re-attaches  
the cover). Perhaps it was a masterpiece by Robert Smithon. Dead  
effectively shuts down dialogue and debate before it can begin. Who  
can argue with “a pile of coal?” Who could argue if I reduce the Mona  
Lisa to “colored pigments on wood” or a piece of music to “patterns  
of air pressure?” Dead sees, but he does not think.

Dead’s historical argument doesn’t hold any water, which is no  
surprise. The art survey course I assume he took at Evergreen State  
College (“studying art on a theoretical level?”) didn’t and couldn’t  
expose him to the true basis of representational painting. Dead  
claims “even the first paintings done on caves were not abstract or  
exercises in self-indulgence, but beautifully, sometimes sublimely  
realistic representations.” This smacks of an art survey course at  
someplace like Evergreen State College where teachers drunk on  
Enlightenment fallacies like Rousseau's "all men are born free" argue  
the grace and purity of primitive man. Their basic argument is that  
the cave painters, being so in tune with nature and free from Evil  
Society, create paintings so “beautiful” that they still speak to us  
thousands of years later. Lucy Lippard, in her book “Overlay:  
Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory,” writes of those “who  
glorify nature and the distant past, using them as reactionary  
propaganda to send people back to their proper places, their proper  
classes, their proper gender roles.” [pg.9] These art survey  
teachers, and I assume Dead as well, are angry that their pretty pony  
paintings lost out to an abstract concept piece at the Evergreen  
State College Art Fair. Lippard later describes certain ancient wall  
carvings as “randomly patterned with [concentric circles, seemingly  
very abstract], some with comet-like trails. Such marks are  
particularly mysterious since they are found all over the world.”  
This shows that primitive artists did make abstract, random works and  
were not totally involved with representational art.

Dead doesn’t understand the cave painters (or, for that matter,  
caves: one paints IN caves, ON cave walls; one does not paint “on  
caves.”). What are the cave paintings really about? I will tell you.  
Lacking silverware, because they didn’t have society to tell them to  
use a fork, primitive man ripped apart their prey with their hands.  
Their hands became bloody and, not being complete savages, they had a  
desire to wipe off the blood. Where did they do this? On the walls of  
their caves. That is right, these first paintings, so described in  
public by Dead as “beautiful” and “sublimely realistic” were nothing  
but bloody hand turkeys, the same hand turkeys that are used even  
today to indoctrinate small children (like Dead’s young friend) into  
representational painting and the allure of “pretty” pictures. All of  
what Dead considers to be Art can be traced back to this most simple  
and insidious form of art, the hand turkey.

The line is clear. Art and Life offer a wide range of experiences,  
ideas and beauties, some not obvious, taking time and effort to  
discover. To devalue something because it is not easily swallowed by  
the “uneducated” (Dead’s word) masses is stupidity piled upon  
ignorance. Ask the average Texas country bumpkin what he thinks about  
Indian cuisine or music. He’s not going to sit for a minute of sitar  
playing. That doesn’t make it any less worthwhile. The same goes for  
abstract art. Abstract art is needed, desperately needed because it  
can force the mind to think, to experience something new, to find the  
poetry within life. As Rabbi Abraham Itshaq Kook wrote: “May  
misfortune fall on he who wants to remove the poetic aspect of life,  
he loses the very savor of this life and all its truth.”

 >>Josh Ronsen is publisher of Monk Mink Pink Punk. He is a multi- 
instrumentalist (guitar, clarinet, electronics, computer, piano,  
cello) in Austin, Texas and his sound work appears on over two dozen  
records. He also publishes the Austinnitus electronic newsletter.>>

at http://home.grandecom.net/~jronsen/mmpp11/abstract.html

"There is poetry in everything. That
  is the biggest argument against poetry."
  		   --Miroslav Holub

Halvard Johnson
================
halvard at gmail.com
halvard at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
http://www.hamiltonstone.org

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