I am thinking tonight about Charles Bukowski, Janice Joplin, freedom. Freedom to write, to sing, to walk away. Bukowski said, “An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way. An artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.” A friend said recently that art exists on three levels. The first is when you’re learning your media, your techniques, your tools. The second is when you have bonded with your media and are focused on design, composition, etc. Most art is at these two levels. But basically, these levels are like dead bodies. You can dissect them, examine and classify them, use them as examples. You can even rearrange the parts to create something new because it doesn’t matter. They’re dead.
The third level is when the work comes alive. It breathes. Then none of it matters. It could be severely disabled, or radically beautiful, or unbelievably intelligent and its all the same. It is what it is. It is alive. At this stage, technique, composition, everything goes out the window because, finally, all these things are irrelevant.
This is a great way to look at it– a complicated thing said in a simple way. Either its dead or its breathing. Which of course throws a great deal of my ranting out the window. Dead or alive. Pretty simple.
But here’s the thing. In this world of sterile, condescending museums, decorators and fabric swatches, the inevitable exclamation of “Oh, these are beautiful. I love these. They’re my colors exactly,” and intellectuals who wouldn’t know a new idea if it smacked them across the nose, does it matter? My kids love Zombies. Even the thought of them gives me nightmares. Don’t you have to be alive to recognize life?
Years ago, some friends and I would wander up Canyon Road in Santa Fe. We would get to the top and drink several margaritas so we could be sober enough to walk back down. We talked about creating Baa (Bad Art Association). We would have little stickers of black sheep and every time we saw a work that was terrible, or an environment that killed good art, we would tag it. No explanation. No justification. Just Baa. Like sheep. But then, finally, we didn’t have the guts. We decided it wouldn’t be fair to all the artists who were trying their best. We wouldn’t want to undermine their creativity.
Then, Friday this week, at an opening of particularly good work, I talked with a gallery owner/artist about the show, the business, about work that breathes. We talked about the economy and its affect on the business, and how all the hangers on (artists and galleries), all the ones who jumped on the band wagon, are going to fall by the wayside and only what is good will survive. He talked about February this year and how he never wants to get that close to the edge again. Said where he came from (Cuba, I think) every day was February, 2009 and if you weren’t good, “I mean really good,” you didn’t make it.
OK. Bukowski. Bobby McGee. Breathe.