Reckon Without
Has Photoshop become the image-makers Auto-Tune? Unspoken art school rule, non-objective art is recession proof. Avoid green and red when possible. The skinnier the jeans, the better the abstraction? Go easy on the irony. Don’t insist on short-circuiting interior architecture? Elegantly proportioned grounds of black, silver and white. Chroma-phobia always wins. Docile art harmonizes with interior design. Tap into early 20th century avant-garde veins for gravitas. Forget DADA happened. Less Led Zeppelin, more Magnetic Fields. Become a machine. Your fifteen minutes have become seven seconds. Three hour meandering, amorphous avant-garde videos without beanbags are inhumane. Will the mini-series be the death of movies?
For decades “they“ complained photography was not considered a fine art; then setup photograph reached critical mass, imploded. Is it just a still from a film that doesn’t exist? Is it easier to imply a narrative then to actually construct one? Didn’t the camera kill allegorical painting? Then comes the democratization of technology. Cameras with cellphones attached. Everyone is a street photographer. A culture of over-sharing, and caring less. Sontag reminds us that the individual who seeks to record cannot intervene.
Meaning or narratives complicate things. Cease to compete with cinema or advertising. Obscure your cameras, fashion photograms; paint with light, darkroom chance is your narrative… Don’t share your art on Instagram. Keep flirting, paly hard to get. No outgoing calls, only incoming. Keep the woodshed full, so sounded Faulkner. Stravinsky deemed experimentation to be infinite within a set structure. Don’t be an easy lay.
Are YouTube videos with 25 views or less the new underground?
Mr. Heidegger said “ In it’s Augustian, Pascalian, and above all, Kierkegaardian sense, Angst is that which makes problematic, which makes worthy of questioning, our being-in–the-world. “ Privileged angst makes for a successful HBO series. Some painters’ dream of their style becoming a Photoshop filter. When making dry conceptual art, don’t forget to sprinkle a little stupid on it. If you’re out of good ideas, process can be your friend.
Loose yourself in hours of mindless repetitive actions with your hands. Stop thinking.
Beware of the mendacity of modest, unmonumental materials. Heed the prejudice of crumbling symbols and broken icons. Recognize that eighty percent of everything is mediocre. Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
Nietzsche noted that the advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time; but Marie Antoinette reminds us that there is nothing new except what has been forgotten. Great artist only steal what has been forgotten.
Luis Gispert, november 2014