Artéwõrldé

Damian Sarno
www.damiansarno.com

My Dear Damian,

Please forgive my delay in responding to your critique of my artistic approach to my work, an approach similar to that enjoyed by many frustrated artists - art for the sake of Art. I have given a great deal of thought to your comments, hence this letter may be somewhat prolix. In the process I shall hopefully clarify my views for your edification, since I fear you may have misunderstood me.

In my last letter I expressed my admiration for the skill exhibited in your painted faces, and suggested that you desist from making faces for awhile and make ass instead. And I cited the poem by my father, lauding Jennifer's perfect ass, a perfection agreed upon by all who had the pleasure of taking a position behind her in Luigi's Manhattan jazz dance class.

You greeted me in gentlemanly fashion when I arrived at your studio shortly after you received my letter. Your intellectual skills were immediately apparent although wrapped in humility. You mentioned that you were once given to sharp criticism yourself; that being unprofitable, you took up modesty instead.  Even so, I detected the glint of a blade beneath your amiable demeanor. And I, to suit the occasion, assumed the role of humble student to exalted master; feigning Socratic ignorance, I posed a few questions on matters of great artistic import, which you in turn generously answered.

We discussed the Shackian method of art-colony management, which I described as imperialistic but too loosely departmentalized to be a genuinely fascistic or organic corporate structure, the likes to which certain Romantically inclined German poets were once exceedingly disposed. Like much popular contemporary art today, Art Center/South Florida's colonial departments are disconcertingly disconnected but for the ideology that each artist must remain consistent within his confined department; that is, given the middling palate of the masses, he must consistently produce a certain contemporary class of things that might sell, a class once exhibited in the main gallery under the rubric, objects of virtue. That phrase has been variously defined over the years; for example:

1749 Fielding: "They... may be called men of wisdom and vertú (take heed you do not read virtue)."

1871 Smiles: "The virtues or valour of the ancient Romans has characteristically degenerated into virtu, or a taste for knickknacks."

1830 Cunningham: "This country at that period... exported swarms of men with the malady of virtu upon them."

1825 T. Hook: "Soon they were doomed to withdraw their eyes from the innumerable bits of virtú which surrounded them."

1815 Scott: "The manufacture of some decoration, some piece of virtú, some elegant trifle."

1858 D. Costello: "Pictures, crockery, gimcracks of all kinds - what is generally known as virtú.

2004 Shack Gallery, Art Center/South Florida: "Historically, objects of virtue have been defined as finely crafted items for which utility and artistry are equally important. In this exhibition featuring works by artcenter's artists-in-residence, the objects reveal a virtue of vision, as individual as the artists' themselves." (sic)

By the way, Damian, I visited every exhibit at Art Center/South Florida's Shack Gallery over a period of one year, and I must say that I really enjoyed The Twenty-Third Annual Museum Education Program's Student Art Exhibition. Although the children had heard from their teachers that "there is nothing right or wrong about art", they did the right thing, and were true to their hearts to the best of their ability, hearts not yet ruined by commercial contemporary art education. How refreshing that rejuvenation was! 

I had already noticed on my first visit, in the autumn of 2004, that the Art Center/South Florida colony had a face department or two, an abstract field department, a spiral department, and so on. Obviously it is the concept that counts, no matter how incoherent it might be or impertinent to content - to which the concept often has no correspondence besides the hablahblah-publicity. Indeed,  Herculean efforts have been made by contemporary artists to sever substance from form (figure) - one Art Center/South Florida artist swears she has rid shape of line! 

Whatever the conceptual device might be, deviations and experiments  within the departments are naturally frowned upon when monetary success is at hand. That is not to say that the standard face and spiral fare might not be cautiously changed to some other standard. Successful spirals, for instance, might be replaced by drips. But if the drips are deemed too risky, the dripper might be dropped.

Such an approach to art consumption accords with the old dictum of the restaurant business: "Inconsistency is the cardinal sin of the restaurant business." That is, if the food is good. If people like a dish, why change it? Why fix something unbroken? But when sales lag, the owner might replace the peanuts on the bar with cheap beer-wholesaler snacks, redecorate the place, try another menu, change chefs, and proclaim that the flagging business is under new management, often to no avail.

Of course the modern art business differs from the restaurant business. Few chefs, no matter how fine their art cooking might be, proposed to take up restaurant politics and radically reform or overthrow the restaurant establishment. But early modern art reflected and sometimes led radical political reform. The reform went too far, leading to the rise of anarchic anti-art fiends and the destruction of principles both good and bad. The white squares and the like resulted not in the  freedom intended once the slate was cleared, but in "democratic" tyranny. 

Today, someone who professes historical principles, someone who dares to criticize "contemporary" art for whatever reason, and who would  advocate a renascence, are, ironically and hypocritically, called censors and fascists, and are shouted down by soi disant "contemporary" artists who want to be the only contemporary artists on the face of the earth. Of course the newly rich and bulging-belly bourgeois amass profits all the while by stooping to the masses accordingly; that is only to be expected, for it is the nature of the beast - there are several ways to fleece sheep.

Early modern artists, albeit impoverished, were often given precedence over poets and were admired as the true intellectuals and prophets of their time. Indeed, when poor artists entered the bohemian cafe, writers and musicians stood up and bowed in sincere obeisance. Early modern art was more or less an aristocratic protest which retained some of the traditional concern with skill and sublimity and disdain for popular opinion - the opinion of a few peers sufficed.

Alas, however, the artists soon cut of their noses to spite their faces. Post-modern popular art, or 'Contemporary Art' (as if current artistic production is monolithic) boils art down to I don't know what. Not that I object to the process nor to the objects of virtue which I get a kick out of. After all, if anything goes, the field is wide open for the resurrection of fine art by creative souls - if only they were not shouted down by their fellow artists! Of course we do see some  evidence of a continuous renascence in the form of a few fine pieces  framed by clutter. So rather than despise and protest the contemporary clutter as "anti-art" or against Art, perhaps we should simply call it Fred instead of Art. 

Mind you, Damian, that I do not deny that a great deal of money is to be had by virtue of "Contemporary Art" nor do I say there is anything inherently wrong with awarding some poor slob who has no drawing skills or sense of beauty with fame and fortune, thus converting him from slob to snob. In fact, I suggest that the imperial approach at Art Center/South Florida is extremely unwise in the contemporary art business sense, for the present cannot be canned and sold except by souless, apolitical machines - apolitical because they have no control over the distribution of power. After all, popular post-modernism rendered the classic concept of consistency, still obediently practiced by many of our peers, obsolete. Again, big gains may be had from the confusion of creative-destruction's perpetual innovation and corresponding advertising designed to cultivate insatiable desire and wean people from one dish to another, which becomes ever more easy to do when their palate has been desensitized, when the plethora of choices  debases their taste, as it were, and they no longer have the slightest idea of what they really want and will eat anything for momentary energy.

Although you seem to disagree, it appears to me that the Shackian colonial methodology  shackles the artists at the colony; although they  are no longer allowed to actually sleep in their studios, they are shackled to the virtual bedposts of their respective stalls in a virtual fast-art court, thus arresting their creativity and stiffling their modern revolutionary role, as if they were the emperor's cooks instead of free artists.

What's more, the colony lacks a communal spirit, as each member is induced to forswear politics and to look out for number one, who is not really the individual artist, but is rather the political dictator at the top of the mini-empire, someone who insists that politics and honest criticism should stay out of his business. Wherefore I have heard the very antithesis to creative art professed by artists at Art Center/South Florida: "Artists should stay out of politics."

Wherefore I, in my capacity as an absolutely painterly painter, a masterly painter without a painting, wrote a few provocative letters to artists whose work I appreciate the most, in hopes that kicking a few of them in the shin might provoke them to resurrect themselves from the commercial grave they are digging for themselves at Lincoln Road's fast-art court. It was not my distaste for the vulgar commercial form of contemporary art that moved me to provocation: it was the love for art and the repressed artists at Art Center/South Florida that moved me to provoke a few of my favorite artists. For instance, yourself, to make ass instead of making faces; the abstract field painter, to paint Irigary's labia or two lips meeting intead of a black cracks on indigo; the spiral painter, to paint the death spiral of young Kennedy's last flight.

And you differed with my assessment when I visited your studio. Of course you might smile smugly and shake your head over the bad accidents that might pass for art in the contemporary art business, yet you believe concessions must be made for the sake of business, and you think the right concessions are being made at Art Center/South Florida. 

Wherefore you keep your most personally rewarding creations - your truths - in the back, and display what sells best out front, mostly faces. During my visit I noticed something different for a change, something most remarkable, a biblical figure out front. I did not recognize the subject of that awesome painting by name. You said you had learned to keep his name to yourself due to the religious prejudices of the audience. I was reminded of the old saw, that one should not bring up politics and religion in polite conversation; that is, if one wants to win friends and influence people.

As for my approach to writing, you remarked that you were hesitant to tell someone like me that he would not make it (thus making that very implication), because some fools occasionally make it. Well, I said, just be honest. All right, you said, I am just an insulting little man, a nobody, therefore nobody will care what I say, particularly my provocative assertions. First of all, one must conform and become somebody, then he can do what he wants to do.

But I must tell the truth, I responded, the way I see it, if I am to be true to my art, and if the truth is somehow insulting, then so be it. As for being a nobody, it was Nobody who drove the stake into the Cyclopean eye and freed the fictitious sheep. Further, I pointed out that I had not negatively criticized any particular production or artist at Art Center/South Florida, for, according to my red herring critical methodology, I consider other works as points of departure for the display of my own wares. Indeed, I had some difficulty understanding why I had been told that I should leave the premises whenever the director or the owner were about, as I in all my vanity figured they should be grateful for my presence, or at least consider me a member of the public who are invited, one who is genuinely interested in Art Center/South Florida.

Notice that the revolt I recommended in my provocative letters is within the revolution. Variety is not only the spice but is the essence of life as well; without it, the artist stagnates: his face becomes a death mask; his artistic spirit is demented; he loses his facility for creative living. Thus we have grotesqueries instead of galleries.

I have carefully considered your criticism and the advice coupled thereto - one must buckle under to succeed. Much of morality rests on a few platitudes variously adorned to appear original - the sin is in appearing to be just another cattle. I have given the very same advice to several artists over the years. For instance, I encountered one of the finest jazz singers in America, yet unknown. She had been a teenage prostitute and had managed to work her way through school and into a music college. She was a guitar-playing poet with the voice of an angel and a classically trained ear. She insisted on singing what I called long-haired or intellectual jazz, many of them her own compositions. I told her I could get her a recording contract if only she would sing popular music.

"Once you become somebody by singing what people like to hear, you can do your jazz."

"I am somebody already," she demurred, "and I will make them like my music."

Still, I almost got her a deal - she would have had it if she had not disappeared for so long between India and Thailand. She was true to herself. She wound up living in a remote village in Alaska - she is part Native American. She has no regrets. I don't blame her.

And I have no regrets for not following what may be good advice for you but rather bad advice for me, given my eccentric view of success. Life is not what you have but what you make of it. Although I have no painting because I am an absolutely painterly painter, I have my artistic integrity.

As far as I am concerned, the consummate art is the composition of a spiritual flight, one that would rather not land on a compromise, say, in the form of a business transaction with an audience, or a partnership with society - as you suggested to me. I do not despise those who make such deals if they are so disposed by destiny or providence, fortune or fate; nor do I believe their settlement is better than my avoidance of settling down. It is just that my role is to rebel, if you will, hopefully in good humour, against imperialism, including economic imperialism; that is, the absolute economic determination and utter socialization of the individual.

I do not mean to say that I hate business. I am a good businessman when I apply myself to business ends. But there is a certain meanness and viciousness in much of business  which I cannot tolerate. A help wanted ad appeared last Sunday: the employer is retarded or is foolish: he openly seeks someone who is suicidal by implication; that is, someone, as he puts it, "who is willing to work long hours in a high stress multitasking environment."

Now, then, you can see from my complaints that I have my sympathies with the "contemporary" or anarchic anti-art movement not to mention the Jewish and other revolts. I am careful not to make "anti-art" my enemy lest it make me. But canning and selling it is not my business. 

My business is the mental business guided by the artistic spirit that revolts from production; the creative mind must have leisure to develop special interests, innate interests that do in fact coincide with the natural progress of humankind, a progress far beyond what any civilization may offer. Antagonism between the intellectual artist and the secular powers keeps the social order from stagnating and has been a key factor in every radical renascence of great note. Radical: a return to the very root of being original that the soul may be revived. It is not an anarchic, anti-historical return: it is a classic return to the ultimate authority, and in its freedom it is shaped by natural law. 

And yes, Damian, the renascence needs funding. Anti-intellectual merchants who mistakenly believe that history is dead, that anything goes, that nothing is right or wrong with art, that the future is in their hands, might ponder on something Mo Ti once said about the ruling classes of Chi and Chu who "lost their empire and their lives because they would not employ their scholars."

If only more contemporary artists today would think more and at length on the history of life, from the first touch of the music of the spheres felt by the stardust infant in the darkness of the womb. My musically inclined poet will tell you that she would rather lose her sight than her hearing. The ear is nobler than the eye, for the eye must conform to its objects no matter how abstract they might be, in order to see them, otherwise nothingness; while the ear can listen to the voice of silence that causes the heart to leap for joy in the invisible light. Of only we were not so hard of hearing, we would see better and think as well.

Finally, I must say that I still believe that it would behoove you to make ass for awhile instead of faces. That is, I believe it would be good for all us if you would bring the stuff you've hidden in the back out front so we can see how you really feel. Now I recall that you said there is no ideal ass. I disagree. You might prefer the burnished buns of Brasil or a drooping derriere, yet the archetypical ass remains. I would entitle it the Golden Ass and present it as the Moon.

Best Regards,

David Arthur Walters

cc: file

The Merchant by Geoffrey Chaucer

There was a merchant with forked beard, and girt
In motley gown, and high on horse he sat,
Upon his head a Flemish beaver hat;
His boots were fastened rather elegantly.
He spoke his notions out right pompously,
Stressing the time when he had won, not lost.
He would the sea were held at any cost
Across from Middelburgh to Orwell town.
At money-changing he could make a crown.
This worthy man kept all his wits well set;
There was no one could say he was in debt,
So well he governed all his trade affairs
With bargains and with borrowings and with shares.
Indeed, he was a worthy man withal,
But, sooth to say, his name I can't recall.