The Pathetic State of the Arts in America V

Over and over again you see movies and programs that show totally false representations of what the world is about and what things look like.

Only this morning, on PBS no less, there was a thing about the French revolution showing IN DETAIL a house that was so American in design and construction that it was singing the star spangled banner in brick with double hung windows. Anyone with half a brain who bothered to do simple research even without going to France should know that…. where do you think the term “French windows” came from and why?

This is simply another example of our society’s carelessness, irresponsibility, it’s arrogance in thinking they can do anything, say anything and no one is the wiser.

They’re partly right in that sense, the public continues to buy whatever you feed them, look at current politics, the press and the media are not only electing a president, they are actually allowing their sexism to overshadow their racism.

And if the public says nothing in an area where they know better, how can they be expected to speak out in areas where they are ignorant like seeing?

They don’t question seeing what is obviously American scenery and architecture in paintings titled as being Italy or France, so that makes it OUR responsibility as artists to be accurate and represent what we paint and photograph with a minimum of accuracy if not artistry.

Remember that this is probably the only country in the world where the worst of artists, the worst of photographers can be the most successful and the most admired, if you want examples, email me, I’ll tell you whom and why they’re so bad.

Why they’re so successful is beyond me other than that the public does just what I’ve been saying it does, listens to idiot marketers and buys whatever they’re told.

Then again, this is the only country in the world where quality is measured in monetary success, we’re the only country where success is equated with quality. Films are measured every week-end by how much revenue they generated at the box office.

Back to the subject of accuracy, we’ll take a break from artistry for a moment, and let’s talk about books and the current crop of novelists.

It has become obvious that much of the fiction presented to us these days, including all the so called “best sellers” are really written in the hope of being picked up for a movie or television scripts, they’re even written using Hollywood terms as done in movie scripts.

Do you all know what “beat” means in real life?

They have Hollywood themes, there are no more good and interesting stories, only “shoot em ups” with blood, gore, graphic descriptions of violence.

Does that make you want to pick up a brush and paint these scenes?

I have no problem with graphic descriptions of sex, although I question their necessity, but I also have no problem with painting or photographing them and making them beautiful, and I’ve done so for both artistic and commercial reasons, not porn but major American magazines and even the AMA.

But I cannot make a knife sticking in a man’s chest look beautiful.

And I’ve been told that I can EVEN make shit look good.

More than ever it seems, writers fall in love with the characters they’ve created and keep bringing them back over and over regardless of their lack of human interest.

The effect is that the characters are shallow, have no substance and can have no real relationships and have a life that never ends, stories that never end or resolve beyond the typical Hollywood action movie genre which is even more boring in writing.

These characters cannot really fall in love, they can’t marry or have kids because that would remove the titillation of the “romantic interest” in the next installment when they reappear in some other caper.

‘Cause remember, that every story, every book, every movie MUST have a love scene!

Unless the writer is inclined to go against current phony morality and allow his hero to have an affair.

Essentially, the stories are all the same, it reminds me of a joke I used to make about Haydn when I was a kid (remember Haydn?), he wrote 100 symphonies most of whom sound so much alike that I used to say that he wrote only just one and cut it into 100 pieces.

That was childish and possibly grossly unfair, but I was 11 at the time, sadly it does seem to apply to current novelists though.

Another annoyance is that many authors are writing books as the opposite sex, they have forgotten or never knew the old adage that is still “de rigueur” and that is “Write about what you know”. Men cannot write as women nor can women write as men, they think differently, they feel differently, the most obvious examples are the love scenes, I’ve read books that do a passable job of impersonating the other sex until it comes to the obligatory sex scenes, and that’s where you can usually tell, assuming the writer is honest, the point of view of the lover or “lovee” as it were.

And why bother, there are plenty of men and plenty of women writers, that’s one of the few fields where there seems to be less sexism… I suppose that the powers that be feel that writing is a suitable occupation for women?

The importance of all this is that the worse the books become, the less we read them, we as a nation do not read anyway, and this type of material does not help.

Reading along with music is probably the most important teacher of what the world is about, I have taken photographs of places and things I’ve read about in books where the writer made them so enticing they could not be ignored, I have painted oils and watercolor as a result of similar influences, a good writer makes you see things that you want to live and experience but the sad truth is that writers, like other artists these days are only interested in money and fame and write what they think the public wants.

One of the few times I felt like getting violent is when an acquaintance of mine who calls himself a photographer, a “fine art photographer” had the balls to say “give ‘em what they want” when I questioned him on a particularly commercial photo he had just sold.

An artist, whatever his/her medium does not create to entertain the public, he creates to fill a need within himself to express something in some medium, preferably in several mediums.

And then he “hopes” the public likes it and buys it so he can buy more paint and eat and make more pictures to PLEASE HIMSELF.

A “real” artist is multi dimensional, a real artist does not just paint, he/she writes, draws, sculpts, makes music, etc., all of which are inter-influential and eventually when the artist matures and no longer copies, it gives him something to say and better yet, allows him to say it properly and maybe even say it well.

While on the subject of influences, let’s not forget a less abstract influence on visual art, DANCING and an art form in itself that is being subverted.

Dancing is also multi dimensional, on a casual basis, it has been called “a prelude to sex”, there are few things as pleasant as holding your partner close and moving in rhythm to a beautiful piece of music, but that’s something the current generations will never benefit from.

Dancing is a visual art, a performing art, a musical art.

The form that I’m most concerned with at this moment is the interpretation of music through dance, music is the purest art form because it is totally abstract, music can bring tears to your eyes on a beautiful sunny day, it can make you laugh during the darkest hours just before a storm.

Music can bring every vision known to man and even beyond to your mind, there is music that even impersonates outer space and some of it works.

As I said earlier, even amateur dancers holding each other or doing the jitterbug were interpreting music, each one has his/her style.

Ballet, whether classical or Jazz took dancing to another dimension, who has not cried at the end of Giselle or Romeo and Juliet?

Anyone?

But dancing has now become calisthenics, even skating and ballet have forgotten why they exist, not just to tell a story set to music, but to exhibit grace and beauty in time to that music.

Even ballroom dancing has taken a blow, what with the exaggerated motions and expressions that remind me of the clowning that my sister (a great dancer) and I used to do when kids to satirize that artform.

The new addiction of marrying the wrong music to a dance is another example of just plain bad taste and sabotage, doing the Viennese waltz to hip hop “music?” appeals only to the deaf and blind…. and maybe even not.

Skating is in there somewhere, one of the facets of dancing on ice is the ease that it gives to making dance even more graceful, flowing, etc., so what do we see?

More calisthenics, skating is now measured by how many spins the girl can make, how much she is willing to stake her life on impressing the gymnasts watching.

Not grace, not beauty, but athletics.

Note that not all people are completely stupid, the popularity of a fairly new addition to that world is Ice Dancing which has become far more interesting to watch than couples now.

I’d really like to see Giselle on ice.

Now I know that Americans have a penchant for breaking rules regardless of the result, but this has become criminal.

Like with wine, while you can drink red wine with dessert, white wine with a heavy stew, they will taste like crap.

And there is no wine that tastes good with soup or chocolate.

And you grow up with ugly surroundings, ugly music (noise) and bad literature, any wonder that art in our country sucks?

Next week some attempts at reversing this that went sour, maybe you can tell me why.

Later