As our country prepares to send troops back to Iraq I am plagued with thoughts and concerns for the human species. Are we going into another war because this Islamic organization called ISIS beheaded a journalist, or because they have no regard for American authority and threaten to sell oil not to us and not in US dollars? How much is our military used as world cops and how much does our government emphasize this angle, and our duty, in order to use the weapons they make, make more money, and control the international market? Clearly there are some bad guys involved in ISIS, but our own government's inability to look in the mirror makes me suspicious about who might be the bad guys in a larger sense.
Surprisingly I bring this up to talk of art. The art game is a silly one. I feel well established as an artist. I have high standards and feel content with the products I am creating. And people tend to agree. But selling these works of art is a whole different ball game. People like the idea of art, the like to see it, see me painting in their city. But spending money on it is a entirely different issue. People have other concerns. They have to pay their rent and bills, and then they want to go out and have a nice dinner, drink fancy beverages. Enjoy their life. Who wants a picture on their wall, it doesn't even have sentimental value, yet.
People only buy art when they already value art. Most people don't. At least not the way I do, doesn't see paintings as windows into other worlds constructed in color. I have a new bent. I need to help people realize the value of art. It is more then a picture on a wall, a large shape in a park. The true importance of art is in the mind. Art changes the way we view things. A life of study has given me more reverence for the world than my pacifist minister father ever did. That is to say art has taught me love, and wonder.
When we get caught up in material things, our own survival and comfort we can forget about our internal world. I was leaving a ministry distributing food boxes on Hawthorne a cop had polled up and was patting down a shirtless homebum. I crossed the street and a guy pushing a shopping cart approaches me. "'probly a fight. Every time they put a cake out or something there is a fight over it." I thanked what ever deity does or not exist. I thanked her for my mind. That I was not hopelessly dependent on alcohol or drugs. That I dod not have pent up anger or abuse issues. That I did not have a desire to fight anyone over a cake. That my spiritual connection to this wondrous planet truly excites me.
Art has changed all of us. We forget and take it for granted. Just imagine a world without music, you have never heard music. Architecture is not one of my preferred arts, mainly because buildings are designed with a prison format. Meaning the spaces we live in are intended to be as many comfortable cages stacked on top of each other as possible. My grandfather would take me to Frank Lloyd Wright buildings as a kid. I remember Falling Water. That house with a tree growing through the center of it. It was peaceful. The idea of incorporating the serenity of the forrest into the design of a structure, that is architecture. Art elevates us.
A hundred years ago the world was just getting into World War one. Cars and planes were both rather new inventions. Our lives, and our world looked a whole lot different. And so were our minds. There are some things that never change. Our desire for love and a sense of belonging will be eternal. But in other ways our brains are literally wired differently. And how much have these creative endeavors helped to develop that. Clearly technological innovations have played the largest role, factories, machines, computers. Nineteen fourteen was a simpler time. But not a simpler world necessarily. We were not one world, we were many, many worlds. Those places are for the most part gone. Now we must wrestle with a larger sense of the whole. Now art is more important then ever. Why? It is our only salvation.
I could go on about the higher ideals of art, striving to achieve a out of reach elegance, wrestling with creation and destruction. But I also know that art is based in ego and self affirmation as much as it is in a quest for a higher state. And this makes it even more essential. Creation of art allows us to be absorbed in our own thoughts and self while still searching and questing for something beyond us.
To most people art is a product of a wealthy culture.
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