Avant Gart
First, no, I did not misspell the title of this post.
In my quest to become ever more influential and subversive in society, I have chosen to dive into realms of expression that I have absolutely no talent in. I’ve written about 30 songs in the last few months and created the two pieces of computer art below.
Someday I intend on painting these visions rather than overpaying for modern crap, the point of which, as Stanley Fish recently opined in the New York Times, is to have no point at all. I agree with him when he admitted struggling with respecting art that found its most profound point in giving up on explaining the human condition, conceding it instead as too complex and too liquid to be explained and so artists near my generation should not even attempt to explain even a sliver of who we are. This is generally my entire problem with Brian as a person and his musical/artistic tastes (hahahaha, kind of kidding you there Brian…kind of.):
The idea is to find bits and pieces of detritus and put them together in surprising and sometimes shocking ways. There’s a picture of Mel Gibson suspended from a long pole attached to a bicycle…What it embraces — the ephemeral and the insubstantial — I shun, and what I embrace — work that aspires to permanence — it pokes fun at.
During my last visit to the Chicago Art Institute I quickly walked through their featured exhibit by an artist who in every one of his paintings pressed his hand on the canvas with a particular color of paint and then proceeded to mislabel the color. It wasn’t beautiful, it wasn’t interesting. All of the paintings looked this way. I was horrified.
I prefer meaning and grand Achillean (I just made this word up, don’t go look it up in shame) attempts at human historical permanence. The first picture below I call “Epic Precipice” and the second I call “Brimming Spark.” I realize they probably suck, but I can prove they have meaning if I talk about them long enough. I will divulge my intent if anyone out there cares, until that is proven to me, I am curious if anyone has a guess as to my meaning…consider them puzzles.
Comment by tet on 11 January 2008 at 8:54 pm:
Dude, that first one is Skateboarding into the Singularity. You stole it from my chapter title. :)
Actually, they’re both kinda neat.
Tom Trumpinski
Comment by Brian on 11 January 2008 at 11:08 pm:
Billy,
First: I agree that both of those images are kinda neat, particularly the second one, which I think would make a cool album cover.
Second: I do not at all know enough about art to interpret what any of it means, and therefore don’t know whether it is accurate to say that the art you’re criticizing “embraces the ephemeral and insubstantial” and “pokes fun at work that aspires to permanence.” That said, I actually do tend to agree with your basic sentiment, at least insofar as I’m resistant to things that poke fun at work that aspires to permanence. I don’t think it’s impossible for art to embrace the ephemeral and insubstantial while at the same time aspiring to permanence, but that’s my only quibble as far as that goes.
My bigger quibble, obviously, comes from your implication that the stuff I like comes from artists who have “given up on explaining the human condition” and don’t “even attempt to explain even a sliver of who we are.” The art I like tends to fall into one of two categories: art that is meaningful and art that is fun. I concede that some of the music I like, for example, isn’t intended to be anything but something to dance to or tap your foot to. Other music communicates in a way that is meaningful to me. By the same token, I like movies such as The Big Lebowski, which as far as I can tell doesn’t have any profound message to it but is immensely entertaining, at the same time that I like movies such as No Country for Old Men, which has layers of meaning in it. But in neither category can you place the sort of art you criticize in your post.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 12 January 2008 at 2:11 pm:
Brian…I realize that my jab at you was unfair…I mostly just wanted to provoke you into responding…
<3