There’s a long history of art being used as a form of protest and I’m not going to go into it because I’m laughing at the pothole bugs a woman in Lincolnshire, England, painted. Karan Holland lost a tire—or “tyre” as they spell it on their side of the pond—to a pothole and decided to protest the local government’s delay in fixing it by spray painting a bug around it.
Source: Lincolnshire Live
Normally when I see graffiti—or even a commissioned mural, or advertisement, on a wall or even on a road, it’s because it’s an empty space that someone decided to fill with something. Nature may not really abhor a vacuum but people like to fill space with stuff, although most of the time when someone decorates an empty space the plan is that whatever they’ve made will last. Holland’s drawing attention to the potholes hoping they’ll be filled. The local authorities claim she’s delaying the pothole repair because now they also have to clean the paint off the road, but I have a hard time believing that. Leaving the paint there wouldn’t hurt anything, unlike the potholes that have already been there a long time.
The real irony here, though, is that usually protest art criticizes something the government is doing, but she’s calling out the government for what it’s not doing.
She’s also painted the occasional penis around a pothole and something something filling a hole.
The first art history course I took in high school started with Impressionism. That was a weird place to start since most starter art history courses are the general type and start with cave paintings, but the teacher decided she wanted a more narrow focus and also the set of videotapes she had for us to watch started with Impressionism. I had heard of various art -isms before that but I’d never really thought about what that suffix meant before. I’d never thought about how it meant a group of artists who, although different in their own ways, formed groups. After the old patronage system broke down and artists were pretty much on their own many still got together around a shared idea. This held well into the 20th century, even as there was greater emphasis on individuality. There were a few one-person -isms but there were dozens more that formed large, even international, groups, even if the rules about what made anybody part of a group were pretty relaxed. Seriously, you’d never guess just by looking at their paintings that Paul Klee and Franz Marc were members of Der Blaue Reiter. They were very different individuals too, but there was still something that brought them together.
What I’m getting at is that even though most of the time making art, especially painting or writing, is a solitary process artists are people and, with some exceptions, we like to be around other people. Most of us put our work out into the world because we want to share it with others and get feedback, or at least just interact with others. And, as almost any creative person knows, feedback can make your work better. It can also be inspiring. Unless you’re just making art solely for yourself and hiding it in a drawer or a basement sharing it with other people can prompt new ideas and, heck, even Emily Dickinson came down from the attic once in a while.
What I’m also getting at is I know there’s something going on with the commenting system on this blog. I don’t know why some comments get through while others get hung up in the spam filter while others just get zapped. I’ve tried experimenting with the settings, although I don’t have a lot of technical know-how so I’m afraid I might hit the wrong button and destroy everything, and also I’ve found that certain settings just mean I get hit with even more spam and legitimate comments that real people put a lot of thought into still get zapped.
I really do appreciate comments, and I’m sorry if yours are not getting through, whatever the reason. I may be slow to respond but I read most of them as soon as they appear, and, time-consuming as it is, I go through whatever gets automatically flagged as spam very carefully because I don’t want to miss anything. As other bloggers have shown spam itself can also be inspiring, but that’s another story.
Thank you for visiting. And thank you for commenting, or even trying to comment, even if you’re only dropping by to tell me I suck because, hey, at least I know I did something worthy of a response, and maybe that’s some legitimate feedback that will prompt me to try and suck less. Or more. Whatever works.
The interpretation of any work of art depends on context. This may seem obvious but it wasn’t that long ago that works of art were assumed to have only a single, fixed interpretation, and it was easy to think that when the production of art was limited to specific cultures and within those cultures was limited to specific purposes, but as works were shared across cultures and barriers broke down the original meanings were often lost or simply replaced by new interpretations. Take, for instance, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. On second thought don’t take it. It’s part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art which I’m pretty sure has some pretty tight security and if you were to take it that would probably set off a lot of alarms, and if you can manage to get around all that you’re probably already wanted by Interpol, but that’s another story.
Picasso’s painting was influenced in part by African masks which he at first dismissed and really didn’t like, but the more he looked at them the more interesting he found them, although his use of the masks for women in a brothel is very different from the cultural meanings that the makers African masks intended. And at first even some of his friends and supporters were shocked by his painting but he couldn’t call Interpol on them for that so he kept it in his studio but didn’t show it publicly for over a decade, but now it’s regarded as a major work of the Cubist movement.
Anyway that brings me around to the paintings I found on the back of a stop sign a few months ago, and at the time I really liked them but I didn’t know what to say about them. Usually it’s the opposite. Most of the time I don’t have that much to say about things I don’t like but things I do like I can’t shut up about. What I do is art criticism but “criticism” doesn’t always have to mean being negative. If you were to say to me “If you can’t say something nice don’t say anything” I’d say, “Well, that’s easy for you to say, and I’m glad you said it, and, by the way, that reminds me of a joke…”
And then I went back and looked at those paintings just a few days ago and started thinking about the transition from the old year to the new, which is usually symbolized by an old man and a baby, which is pretty depressing when you think about it. We come into the world bald, toothless, and screaming, and if we’re lucky we go out the same way, and, holy shit, doesn’t life go by fast enough without compressing the whole shebang into a single year?
Source: Attic Paper
To get back to the point I was trying to get to I think must better symbols of the transition from the old year to the new are the woman looking down with a touch of sadness and a rat looking up expectantly. That’s probably not the meaning that artist intended but, hey, what are they gonna do? Call Interpol on me?
As the year starts drawing to a close, winding down, running out, circling the drain, grasping at its last straw, giving up its ghost, preparing for a parting of the ways, pulling into a u-turn, announcing the intent to adjourn, and shelling its last clam, it’s time to reflect.
There’s a tradition in my family of eating black eyed peas on New Year’s Day for peace and prosperity–mostly prosperity, and there are a lot of New Year’s traditions that are supposed to ensure wealth in the new year–although I spend most of the year thinking how money can solve problems but inevitably brings a lot of new problems, which is why I don’t want money, just the stuff it can buy, but that’s another story. Other traditions include being the “first-footer”, the first person to set foot over the threshold on the new day, which could cause a really big crush at the door if you live in an apartment building or with a lot of roommates, and I wonder if you have to sleep outside for that tradition to work, and if that’s the case maybe we should move somewhere warm.
The calendar rolling over is, of course, a purely symbolic marker. The solstice, when the days stop getting shorter and start getting longer, came and went on December 21st, and this year perihelion–the point when the Earth is closest to the Sun–fell on January 2nd at the beginning of 2019 and will be on January 5th in 2020, although your apogee may vary in Uranus.
Anyway it’s a time to reflect, to look forward, to look backward. People first started making marks, using dyes and inks, on rocks, on trees, on leaves, inside caves, on the sides of cliffs, to preserve memories but also to carry us forward, by acting as repositories for more than any single person could remember, to prevent the memories of a single person, or a collective, from being lost.
There’s something to think about every day of the year as our little planet spins around its star near the edge of one galaxy in a very big universe.
When I watched The Charlie Brown Christmas Special as a kid I was confused by Linus’s complaint about Christmas getting “too commercial”. I knew what commercials were—they were those interruptions to whatever I was watching that gave me a chance to get something to eat and maybe run to the bathroom too because we couldn’t pause live TV in those days and the special was only on once a year, and, as Christmas got closer, there seemed to be more and more commercials, so I thought maybe that’s what he meant.
What I did understand, though, was Charlie Brown picking that sad little Christmas tree—the one that really looked like a branch fell off a bigger tree and somebody just nailed a couple of pieces of wood to it. To me taking in a scrawny, unwanted tree and turning it into something beautiful spoke more profoundly about the spirit of the season than even Linus quoting Luke 2:8–14—which is a lovely moment, but the transformation of the tree doesn’t say what Christmas is about; it shows us a spirit of generosity and renewal that isn’t just limited to Christmas.
That’s why it annoys me so much that someone had to go and make a “real” version of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree and it now retails for about thirty bucks—and that’s the real meaning of “Christmas getting too commercial”, Charlie Brown.
This is my really roundabout way of getting to the tree in the middle of a roundabout that some really nice people decided to decorate. It may not be a small, scrawny tree and was probably only planted there as an organic way to draw attention to the concrete circle in the middle of the roundabout so cars don’t just drive over it. The decorations were a little worse for the weather when I stopped to take a picture, but it’s the fact that some people cared enough to share a little holiday spirit with the tree—and the rest of us—that matters.
Normally when I see something that I know isn’t going to last it makes me sad. It’s a fact of life that time moves on and that things have to change, and part of the nature of change is that some things have to go. And that’s okay, especially when something that’s here temporarily brings a little happiness. That’s what I thought about a year ago when I took this picture.
The building is, or rather was, at the corner of 18th Avenue and Church Street, and was, for a while, the home of Chappy’s On Church, a Cajun restaurant owned and run by chef John “Chappy” Chapman, who came to Nashville after his New Orleans restaurant was destroyed by hurricane Katrina. Although it did fairly well for a while Chappy’s had a disastrous appearance on Kitchen Nightmaresand Chapman claims Gordon Ramsay “wrecked” his business. Chapman’s complaints that Nashvillian’s didn’t “understand” Cajun food and his failure to pay taxes may have had a little something to do with that too. I did go there once, on my birthday, and while it was good it wasn’t good enough for me to want to go back, especially at the prices they were charging, and I wasn’t thrilled that Chappy seemed to spend most of the night wandering the dining room in a toque and pajama pants instead of cooking, but that’s another story.
Five years after Chappy’s closed the building was demolished but, to go back to that picture I took in December 2018, you’ll notice that there’s “Merry Christmas” written in a window and pictures of snowflake and a snowman. Those were drawn by the demolition crew as they were clearing the inside of the building. They drew the pictures purely for themselves, as a way, I think, to bring a little holiday spirit to the job they were doing. And the passing nature of what they’d done seemed especially fitting. Christmas falls at the end of the year, around the solstice, when the days that have been getting shorter start getting longer again. It’s a time of old things passing but also renewal. When snow melts it gives life to what’s underneath.
Here’s the same spot exactly one year later.
It doesn’t bother me that it’s been an empty space for so long, a blank slate still waiting to be filled. I’m just glad there was something there that made people happy, and I believe whatever comes in next will also be something that makes people happy.
Part of the fun of a period show like Mrs. Maisel is, of course, spotting the real people—Lenny Bruce is the only major recurring character based on a real person, although a few of the other comedians Midge meets are real people. Midge herself seems to be at least partly based on Joan Rivers, although with a different background. Sophie Lennon seems to have been inspired at least in part by Gertrude Berg, although Berg herself wasn’t shy about dropping her on-screen persona Molly Goldberg; she never wore a fat suit either, and showed off her nicely decorated home in interviews. So in this episode Midge goes to an art gallery, and then meets the famous, and famously difficult and reclusive, artist Declan Howell. And Howell, like other characters, never existed.
Who was the inspiration for Declan Howell, then? It’s hard to say, although others have speculated. Some artists of the time were relatively reclusive and even unwilling to sell their work. Before Warhol many artists considered it gauche to talk about money even as modern art prices were rising and many collectors, like Midge’s beau Benjamin, were at least as interested in investing as they were in aesthetics. Or more interested. Benjamin doesn’t really collect art; he collects names, and he’s more pleased to have gotten a painting before another collector could than he is with anything he sees. There’s a brief cameo by Yoko Ono, and her one line, “Nice ladder,” may be a joke about conceptual art, but it also shows she’s more tuned in than Benjamin.
Source: Vulture.com
As a side note the stand-up comedy boom that started in the ‘50’s would be echoed in the ‘80’s profusion of comedy clubs and cable specials and comedian-based sitcoms. So too the modern art craze that started at the same time as stand-up would return with a vengeance in the ‘80’s. And it’s not hard to imagine a show about woman artist in the ‘50’s struggling for recognition and who paints as well as, or better than, her male counterparts. It probably wouldn’t be as funny as Mrs. Maisel but I’d still watch the hell out of it. In fact there are even glimmers of such a story when Midge’s mother takes art classes and talks to a group of young women who, sadly, don’t see themselves as “real” artists. I even had hopes that Midge would meet at least one real woman artist in this episode–Dorothea Tanning, maybe, who could have been in New York at the time–but the woman, Agnes Reynolds, who sells her a painting, and a hat, doesn’t even seem to be based on a real person.
Getting back to the subject of who Declan Howell was, well, other bloggers have delved into that, but something I haven’t seen anyone pick up on is the resemblance to Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard. Specifically there’s the fact that both Howell and Vonnegut’s protagonist, Rabo Karabekian, are part of the Abstract Expressionist movement and both have a secret chamber where they’ve hidden one staggering painting.
Although while Howell is reluctant to let go of even the paintings he lets people see Karabekian is happy to sell his work. And that’s part of the joke. Vonnegut dismisses Abstract Expressionism as meaningless, even worthless, with a single damning moment. Because of “unforeseen chemical reactions” Karabekian’s paintings are self-destructive.
I mean — people who had paid fifteen- or twenty- or even thirty thousand dollars for a picture of mine found themselves gazing at a blank canvas, all ready for a new picture, and ringlets of colored tapes and what looked like moldy Rice Krispies on the floor.
Really, though, it’s a cheap shot at modern art, especially abstraction, which Vonnegut seems to have regarded as meaningless, even soulless. Karabekian’s final hidden painting, revealed at the end of the novel, is figurative, and Declan Howell’s painting, which we never never actually see, seems to be figurative too. It’s a bit of a letdown, really–not that the painting is figurative, but that the show didn’t take the risk of letting us see it, even if what really matters is Midge’s response to it. In fact what really matters is what causes Howell to invite her to his studio in the first place. He’s intrigued that she bought a painting from an unknown woman in a back room of the gallery, and the only reason she bought it is because she liked it, and because she saw herself in it.
I thought, ‘I know her. She has a secret. She knows a joke that I don’t. Maybe if I take her home, she’ll tell me the joke.’
Why else would you buy a painting? Kristine over at Adulting In Progress has a great post about a painting that, in a different way, spoke to her; like Midge Maisel she wanted it because of what it meant, and not as an investment.
I mentioned The Crown and Bojack Horseman at the beginning and the way those shows treat art fits with their outlook–as history or a punchline, but Mrs. Maisel treats art as act of passion, as something people are driven to do, something that requires sacrifice. What it ultimately tells us is that Midge’s pursuit of a career in comedy is no joke.
There’s a lot I could say about the transformation of a public utilitarian object into something better, into a unique work of art that should prompt joy in people if they notice it. Sure, there’s a risk that someone won’t like it, but that’s a risk every artist takes in making something. And it’s impossible to please everyone. Is there any work of art that everyone universally agrees is great? If there were there probably wouldn’t be that much to say about it because, well, if everyone agreed it was great there wouldn’t be that much to say about it. No one would feel a need to explain why it was great. And I don’t know about anyone else but that would really annoy me and the more I looked at it the more I’d hate it because of that.
Anyway there’s also a lot I could say about the simplicity of a line, the reduction of form and how a work of art can be so minimal and yet still recognizable. I could trace the history of it from cave paintings, which seem simple, all the way through the ancient Greeks’ understanding of geometry and perspective, the flattening of painting during the Middle Ages and the return of perspective in the Renaissance, the rise of trompe l’oeill painting, and the technological and social shifts that led to Impressionism and a million other -isms through the 20th century and the return to abstraction, all of which has been called by art historians “the story of art” even though it’s really only a very tiny sliver of the whole of human art history.
I could also say a lot about symbolism, slipping into signs and signifiers and semiotics and some high-falutin’ stuff about deconstruction and post-modernism and “reification” which, as I once pointed out to my literature criticism professor, is just a fancy way of saying “making a thing”, but that’s another story.
And if I knew the artist maybe I could say a lot about the inspiration behind the work, the motivation, the influences, and that could even lead me into a lengthy digression about how originality is an illusion and how every work is created in a context, but that every work is still also an individual’s vision.
Yeah, I could say all that, and it might prompt a lot of response. It might turn off a lot of people, or maybe make a lot of people happy. It’s hard to say. So I’m just going to skip all of that and jump right in.
Several years ago I was at a science fiction convention and wandered into a room where an author I wanted to meet was supposed to speak, except he didn’t show up, so they had an alternate speaker who I thought was even better. It was the cartoonist and author Gahan Wilson.
I was already familiar with Wilson’s work because my parents occasionally had issues of The New Yorker lying around the house and I didn’t read the articles but I did look at the pictures, and my father also had a collection of Playboy issues and I didn’t read the articles there either but I did look at the pictures—and by “pictures” of course I mean Gahan Wilson’s cartoons.
Wilson started with a story about the origin of one of his most famous cartoons. National Lampoon was looking for cartoons with the caption, “Is nothing sacred?”
He didn’t have a copy of the cartoon he drew. He just described it to us. At first there were a few chuckles through the audience, then more of us started giggling, and by the time he got to the punchline the whole room was laughing.
Source: The Best Of Gahan Wilson, 2005
And the coup de grâce was when he said, “National Lampoon thought it was too weird so Playboy bought it instead.”
National Lampoon would publish his long-running series Nuts, a sort of response to Peanuts, which Wilson didn’t think represented childhood accurately enough.
Source: Comics Bulletin
His cartoons were wonderfully morbid—like Charles Addams or Gary Larson, but even more out there, and even more obsessed with death and disease. Several are set in doctor’s offices. It’s fitting that there’s a 2013 documentary about him called Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird. Sometimes his cartoons even contained a touch of social commentary.
Source: Barnes & Noble
It’s hard to know what to say when someone with such a dark sense of humor as Wilson’s passes on because it’s like he beat us all to the punch. He knew all along that life has only one inevitable conclusion, and he was dying to make a joke about it.
It’s been less than a year since JJ’s Market closed and I still miss that funky little shop where you could get coffee drinks named for James Brown or Schopenhauer, or any one of more than a dozen craft or imported beers—including Dirty Dick’s Ale—as well as candy from Japan and local handmade mugs.
I’ve avoided walking down that way for months so I missed that the block where JJ’s stood has been completely razed to the ground. It wasn’t just JJ’s but also the former Noshville Delicatessen, where you went if you were in the mood for chopped liver.
The destruction must have happened in less time than it takes an espresso to get cold. Pokeweed and sweetgum bushes have grown large in the cleared earth, and been left long enough to spread seeds which, hopefully, will find another place to grow.
I’ve seen the neighborhood change significantly. Single-level restaurants have closed, been knocked down, and replaced with high-rise apartments. Something I never thought about until I went for a walk one afternoon was that, on a particular stretch of sidewalk, the sun didn’t warm my face like it used to, because now there are buildings in the way. They’re not tall enough to be skyscrapers, but they are tall enough to be skyblockers.
One block over from JJ’s and Noshville there was a barbecue place. Every Sunday the owner would serve a free meal in the parking lot. He did it to help the homeless people in the area, but anyone who wanted to was welcome to come and eat. Then the restaurant closed and the whole building was knocked down. It’s all a parking lot now.
I know change is inevitable, and I take some hope in seeing that the neighborhood hasn’t completely lost its sense of humor.
