VALUBL OBJX: Afterword [CODA]

By Paul McLean

INTRODUCTION

In VALUBL OBJX: Afterword [CODA], I explored the phenomenon of Post-Show Mode (PSM), a condition, I stipulate, that affects artists when their exhibit closes. In CODA, I will talk about the phase shift that follows PSM, which I will refer to as Post-Post-Show Mode (PPSM). PPSM typically involves the reformulation of the artist’s project, is future-oriented, is informed by the recent artist’s experience in and after the art “happening,” and other factors, some internal, within the artist, and others, external to art.

The metaphor of a flowering plant blooming, and the subsequent “death” and decay of the blossom, as part of a growth cycle is apropos. In nature, a regeneration cycle may peak with a beauty event, the objective of which fundamentally is creative exchange for life sustenance. Is art a cultural correlation? Does the metaphor still apply in the post-contemporary period? If so, how? If not, what has changed? Looking at PSM and PPSM from another angle, do we notice any evidence of art’s neutrality, perhaps a clue as to the quality or qualities of art in itself, which is to say, on its objective basis? We wonder if art has any real autonomy, from the artist, first, then from context and contingency, with respect to history, thought, time and place, etc. Is art itself an event form, and is such an object logical or evem reasonable?

PPSM foments this type of rumination. I would contend that the artist discourse, the oral tradition for art conducted by and through its producers and practitioners, accompanied by critics and the public, is exactly the proper format for the prospective narratives and dialogue that emerge from the exhibition format. The temporary versus permanent display of art emphasizes the shape of the word-based exchange that situates art at its center, and around which the talk and text circulate. I am thinking of Donald Judd and Jean Baudrillard here, the latter framing the matter in terms of appearance and disappearance. The making sense of art, over time and in time, its meaning, arises in the art object’s creation by the artist, dispersing as social, communal and public subject through our sharing it and sharing about it, a happening that is followed by a collective conversation - optimally, a diverse and educated one, although those conditions should never be mandatory. The formality of art is rooted in our event(-ually) observing and talking about it (art and everything else that “art touches”).

For an advanced treatment, the subject (art discourse) deserves a thorough dimensional analysis, which is beyond the scope of this project and accompanying text. In broad strokes, the infrastructure for examining the impact of art shows and their effects hardly exists in the post-contemporary. I superficially introduced the notion of artists being an endangered species in VALUBL OBJX: Afterword, as a prompt, but left it at that. In order to comprehend the displacement of fine art from its central position in Western cultural discourse, we would have to explore developments like: the emergence of industrialized commercial portable “art” over the last century; consolidation of media; the globally networked art market, concentrating on art fairs, a couple of dozen major galleries, the annualized expos, a few auction houses, linked museums, public and private collections, foundations and institutions, associated academic programs, high profile competitions and so on; the ubiquitous virtualization of all images and consequent channeling of attention on the Internet, especially in social media.

For a narrow study, the scope must be minimized, with a focus on the particular symptoms. To wit, an individual (living) artist and solo art show is nowadays usually about as visible as a sailor afloat at sea on a raft. Unless one happens to be one of the few hundred or thousand art stars who enjoy luxurious coverage in exclusive mediated territories, akin to gated communities, for and of the top-tier art world and its prime players. We talk about “albums” or “movies” the way major paintings and sculptures were discussed for a few centuries prior to the preeminence of electronic devices for content promotion and dispersion. Currently, cultural celebrity occupies the pinnacle of the attention hierarchy. It exists (celebrity, as such) in a constant state of disruption, almost entirely outside the traditional bounds of defined art, its purpose, meaning and applications. Famous artists are only identified as such for their viability in the creative industrial complex, in conformity with acceptable narratives, as determined by - whom? Celebrity is meretricious. It is not achieved through any referendum or consensus aligned with democratic ideals, ethics or logic. Free speech and art, for instance, are obliquely and incidentally related, and now bracketed in tandem with money and property. Unsurprisingly, very few people are passionate about discussing art price tags, and an artist’s net worth.

So where does one go to talk about your show, after the art is de-installed and returns to the studio, if it remains unsold or is not traveling to another destination? Over the course of my career I have had the good fortune to participate in vigorous, active art communities. I found one in Santa Fe in the late 80s and early 90s. In Nashville, on both sides of Y2K, we established a high-performing multi-disciplinary creative collective, which effectively gelled at a critical moment in a fertile environment. In Austin in the mid-2000s. At Occupy Wall Street. I have been aware of others, located both online and IRW. Art history is rich with examples, over the past several centuries. In the post-contemporary era, the concept of the artist community is as indefinite as art itself.

Why is this a problem? Because effectual comparison among the disparate art modalities is presently impossible - by design. Is Meow Wolf an art community or a corporatized simulation? Do Zoom calls suffice as a form of artist assembly? Responses to the Pandemic need to be critiqued, because they affected art discourse in very specific, if not unique, ways. Conversely, the forces that bear against the formation of strong community - economic, political and social - also oppress the mechanisms by which communal culture is fomented. To be precise, we must address the systematic techniques, ideologies and enforcement tools by which the individual is dislocated from community. We must also recognize who in particular benefits from that dislocation, and why they would pursue that outcome. Art is weirdly situated, so that it can be linked to most anything and everything, but has little or no capacity to alter Civilization’s course and contours.

Or at least, that is just the sort of presumption an artist’s mind projects on the thinker-artist who’s in the latter stages of PSM, that is, in the grip of the maudlin variant of PPSM. One might better be served by walking through a field of wild flowers on a sunny late summer, early fall day, thinking about nothing at all, rather than entertaining grim assumptions about the state of the art and one’s place in it, while navigating the psychic trough that PSM/PPSM can be.

ABOUT THE ART

The title of the animation from which these frames are grabbed is “I don’t understand it,” which is what my son Lachlan sincerely deadpanned, after viewing the movie. I thought his reaction was the proper one. It encapsulates the general feeling of the moment. Most of us really don’t get what’s going on. Things don’t add up to form a convincing narrative. In times like these, which I identify as the post-contemporary period, certainty and purpose are rare sensations, and usually worthy of skepticism. One is more inclined to raise one’s hands in exasperation at the lack of meaningful cohesion. Like “Steve” in the concluding frame. The figure in that sketch was inspired by a well-liked lifeguard at the Astoria (Oregon) Aquatic Center, who perished in an auto crash on the nearby bridge, which spans the might Columbia River. I heard rumors suggesting he was driving impaired. Unfortunately, a common response to the malaise.

The technique I used to assemble the images in “I don’t understand it” is fairly simple, done in Photoshop. The source material includes art that was presented in my exhibit “VALUBL OBJX” at Made in Astoria gallery in late summer 2023. Mostly these are small works on paper done in ink, watercolor and Flashe Vinyl paint. I also sampled larger paintings from the “EVENT” series. Pictorial texture was created with samples of pigment-splattered or colored paper and ink washes on polyester. I added layers of historical maps of the Pacific Northwest, where I live. I added prospective assemblages of an imaginary art exhibit space created as visualization aids, published in Art for Humans online platforms over the past couple of years. The animation audio was composed and performed by Adam Cotton for an exhibit sound environment. I added some effects to the original to complete the soundtrack.

I wanted the animation and accompanying soundscape to ostensibly underwhelm the art viewer for “VALUBL OBJX,” establishing an ambient baseline for interactions. A nod toward Joseph Nechvatal’s investigations of Noise and Immersion. The preferable viewing experience, in my mind, should emphasize the actual, more or less physically autonomous art that was on display in the front and rear MiA galleries, adding a dimension for reverberation in that specific space, its architecture, its accesses, and so on. This curatorial decision conforms with the subtext of the “VyNIL Cycle.” “VALUBL OBJX” is the first public show of these works. They have been my artistic focus, since 2017-8. In “VyNIL” series, on a theoretical level, I am suggesting a mode for representing data flow. On a visceral level, I push color, unusual surfaces, vaguely familiar shapes for open association.

Which brings us to the tricky thing about “I don’t understand it.” The paintings on view in “VALUBL OBJX” are formal but non-figurative. The content in the animation is decidedly figurative. I invite the viewer to contemplate the relationship between the two show elements, seeking a connection between the two “stations,” or image-sets, neither of which comes with an attached visual directive in narration. One would need to refer to the published and printed texts that produced for the exhibit to find a “story” for the show, or anything resembling a unifying, productive or reductive principle, fiction or non-fiction functioning as the art’s conceptual determinant or encapsulation. In hindsight I realized this quasi-curatorial move was a clever inversion of aesthetic norms in the post-contemporary period. The art objects do not operate as propaganda, and are not foisted on the viewing public as presumptive mirrors. The movie, on the other hand, is dreamy, without defining the dream beyond the parameters of the exposition itself.

THE IMPORTANCE OF REVIEWS

I feel that I must write a paragraph like the preceding one, due to an absence in the exhibit scenario of qualified critical review. For most of my career, the field of art criticism has been shrinking. My poke about artist extinction extends to the art critic. This is a long-tailed trend. Searching “art critic extinction,” I came across a blog entry in Wired magazine by one of my EGS instructors, the inimitable tech futurist and cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling, entitled “As art critics face sudden planetary extinction.” Bruce opens the notice for a panel “Critics Floating in a Virtual Sphere / Will Art Criticism Survive the Digital Age” with a pithy notation: “*Even Stalin couldn't nail all of 'em, but the Web might just do it – it was possible, after all, to hide from Stalin.” The event was held in November of 2009 at De Balie in Amsterdam. One question put forth in the blurb Stirling reposted: “Is there a future for serious, in-depth criticism in an internet-dominated society?” A summary response might be, “Yes, but quality art critiques will be lost like a sailor floating on a raft, in a sea of everything-criticism, his once-mighty vessel swamped by a critical wave of previously unimaginable proportions.”

More recent samples along these alarmist lines of thought can be found. Why is this phenomenon relevant to a discussion about PSM? After a show launches, a thorough, mindful, informed critic’s review offers the reader, the viewer, the artist, collector and dealer valuable perspective on the exhibition content. Whether positive or negative, a good review contextualizes art and artist dimensionally, framing the exhibit appropriately as an event occurring in a layered reality that intersects history, society and its discourses, technical art craft and so on. A good critic can summarize the moment in which the show occurs, the displayed art’s relevance, and explain why a particular show is relevant or isn’t. A qualified critic will also possess up-to-date knowledge of what else is happening in art, so apt comparisons and references can be made. Absent the critic, an art display exists to a degree in a contextual vacuum. In such a case, which is most common in the post-contemporary period, the art domain is diminished. Also, artist circles have one less thing, pertinent to their enterprise, to talk about. Meanwhile, it is absurdly easy to find a chat about last weekend’s pro ball game, or Trump’s latest public ejaculation.

There are more consequences. A critical void encourages discursive authoritarianism at every level of the aesthetic topology. I presented a text during the show run of “VALUBL OBJX, entitled, “Art is more than what you can say about it.” One of the attendees was the local art talk gatekeeper, the host of long-running radio interview program. As far as I know, after living in Astoria for half a decade, theirs is the only platform for regular public art critique and conversation. The print publications focus almost entirely on previews. They (the radio host) are the local version of NYC’s Jerry (Saltz) and Roberta (Smith) act. The VIP pantomime began as soon as they (the radio host) entered the gallery. They parked immediately outside the gallery and took a chair next to the door. The complaints started immediately. The gallery was stuffy, so the door should be open, we were informed, in spite of the street noise. They fidgeted continuously through my reading of the prepared text, which lasted about twenty-five minutes total, with a brief intermission. During the break, they chirped that the event was supposed to be an “art talk” and not a lecture or reading. They had not and did not look at the art on show. Their car alarm went off twice, during the reading. Twice! They skipped out on the Q&A, without asking a question or making a comment on the content of the talk, exhibit, art on view, technical artist process or underpinning theory. If I hadn’t seen this type of behavior or encountered such a person many times in the course of my career, and if I hadn’t already had several exchanges with this particular character prior, I might have been offended. Instead, I chalked it up as one more example of an unpleasant and awkward provincial Whos-it doing what a person of this type does and is. The urbane versions are much worse, and more sophisticated in their performances.

When a single person, or a few, or an entity, or media vehicle monopolizes discourse by occupying its choke point, in the process of dissemination, free speech exchange is thwarted or inhibited, and no longer free. Which is why ogreish people, whether superficially somewhat charming or not so much, gravitate to those essential critical nodes and seek dominance of them. The material compensation may be incidental or non-existent, but the immaterial rewards can be significant: A Pulitzer Prize; invitations to chic parties; access to elite society, public recognition — in short, soft power. Over time the critic-authoritarian may accumulate substantial cultural capital, a multitude of affectionate and protective followers, attractive professional opportunities, etc. At the top of the hierarchy, one might even be recognized by bigwigs in the other sectors as the go-to person, on aesthetic matters. The award-winning, widely recognized expert in the field. I have now and again had direct experience with such figures. During these exchanges it behooves one to recall that the critic-authoritarian is a symptom of a systemic problem.

POST-POST-SHOW-MODE IN THE POST-CONTEMPORARY PERIOD

After I submitted an unsuccessful application to the Oxford Ruskin School of Art Ph.D/Fine Art program in 2018, a friend consoled me by saying, “You don’t need validation anymore, Paul.” At the time I accepted his encouraging sentiments, but something about that idea didn’t strike me as correct. Upon considerable reflection, I concluded that validation is imperative and fundamental for artists, and the creative enterprise. Confirmations, verifications, a positive feedback loop, reciprocity — however you choose to phrase or frame it — artist rely on responses from peers, viewers, and others in their communal circle to stimulate consequent action. Positive or negative, cultural reaction at every step is critical to the evolution of the artistic vision, in its technicality and contingent ideology.

To deny this is to reinforce the movement to de-link art and society. Art disconnected from the 99% of its “stakeholders” is the post-contemporary status quo. The de-linking program is effected one artist, one exhibit, one conversation, at a time. A tiny fraction of the viewing public benefits from the constriction of art into an exclusive scheme, fortified by awesome wealth and power. Existing almost entirely outside the lens of mass media, the self-validating cabal of elite art aficionados and their assiduously vetted and selected art stars operate more or less with impunity. Art as such is dictatorial. It is reflexively rejected by most people as absurd, incomprehensible, decadent and so on, because it tends to be just that, by design and with that intent. Institutional practice, supported almost entirely by those nominally fractional elites, mostly reinforces the closed system format. Utilizing opaque rubrics of de-definition for traditional art, promoting ideologies that repel common folk, deploying an array of strategies to subvert democratic logic for art, the academy serves the masters whose names adorn their museums, kunsthalles, project spaces, offices, gardens, coatrooms and so on. Essentially, the architecture by which art is validated is co-opted by the donor elite, not as a sign of giving, but as a sign of ownership. The re-situating of public art in the spheres of the privileged minority is anything but subtle.

Over the past decade or two, as the world’s civilizations and empires drift toward another global conflagration, signs of tyranny abound, it is important to track the fortunes of the arts in relation to the Big Picture that is product of fortunes and exists for the fortunate. Art is the canary in the coal mine. We succumbed to this anti-democratic poison first. The precursors were complacency, neglect, ambition, resentment and hubris. Into the breach comes the opportunistic class, strategically distributing largesse, like tossing bread crumbs to pigeons. In short order the arts industrial complex was converted into quasi-cultural real estates. The objective was overarching compliance in the spheres of imagination and communication, and the program was successful by every pertinent metric. Art was made to run more like a business, with all that entails. The prime consequence is banality. The signifiers are technocracy, privatization and financialization of commonwealth, message control, making precarious of labor, oversupply of content and its consequent dilution of meaning, monopolization, conversion of fair or regulated exchanges to rigged currency, capture of leadership, and so on.

The 21st Century supremacy campaign is a signature methodology in the post-contemporary period. It has been applied to every sector of society: education; medicine; the military; government; journalism; manufacturing/industry. It consumes sex and religious practice equally. The program and its actors are hated and revered simultaneously. Those we had once relied on to protect our shared interests have been co-opted and valorized in their new roles as servants of the elite and their (elites’) mad, bizarre and repulsive interests: police; soldiers; elected representatives and career government officials; ministers; doctors; spokespeople and experts of every stripe; etc. Woe to anyone who ventures dissent. The mechanisms of oppression have advanced at a mind-boggling pace. The capacity of art, its dream and vision, to be a keen witness and inspiration for beauty in human experience, an expression of our collective soul or aspirational spirit, is nearly everywhere in tatters. The words “art” and “life” here are practically interchangeable. The ultimate question is, What is one to do about it? Or, interchangeably, What can we do about it?

∞

Having passed through many PSM/PPSM phases over the decades, I have accumulated a skill set for not just getting through them (PSM/PPSM phases) psychically and artistically intact, but for using them as the springboard for creative renewal. The post-contemporary period comes with its unique challenges, but it too offers opportunity for one to shift perspective, and then direction. To this end, during PSM/PPSM, I tend towards productive reflection, and deep dives into the archives are the expression of that tendency. In the 2023 iteration, I can cite a couple of references to illustrate the supportive practice.

Before doing so, I would note the bi-polar factors that characterize the post-contemporary moment: Chance; and Chaos. To specify incidents within the historical moment provides a context for how these change agents manifest across societal sectors. The first notation is the unprecedented ouster of US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy by radical rogue elements of the Republican Party. The second is the courtship of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. She is a phenomenally successful pop musician. He is an American football star. These citations do not illustrate Chance or Chaos. They illustrate how impulsive behavior in the elite political and cultural arenas is translated via media into antique subtextual notions of Fortune and Fate or Destiny. In the first notation, the drive is power. In the second, the urge is Romantic, bending toward Novelty, which can also be associated to material and immaterial reproduction. Chaos asserts itself in the aftermath of McCarthy’s ouster. In the emergence of the hook up of the two celebrities, we witness the pairing of the dual industries to which they owe their fame, Music and Sports. This was, as far as we know, not an arranged wedding. However, one can discern how the situation has sparked a flurry of activity commensurate with its popular reach. The first notation echoes Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the second Romeo and Juliet. In the post-contemporary, however, the Echo myth merges with the Carnival aesthetic, evocative of the fun-house mirror room, and the distorting, melding and blurring effects visible in Dali-esque Surrealism.

In a counterbalance to the PCP externalities, I will cite two Germaine re-discoveries that came to my attention in my current encounter with PSM/PPSM. The first is Kubrick’s monumental cinematic masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey. I offer this citation to the reader on two counts, also referential. The first has to do with the movie’s content, which combines angsty AI narratives, space alien encounters, alternate history with speculative science visualized through brilliant special effects and innovative technical movie-making. Plus the soundtrack. Not to mention the literary source and minimal script. And scene design. The second count really is a reinforcement of Martin Scorcese’s recent comments on the threats to cinema arising from technology and industrial over-reliance on superhero movie franchises. My second citation centers on the dead crypto-currency Libra, renamed during its limbo phase as Diem. I would refer the reader first to a New Models Podcast Volume 1, Episode 16: “E Pluribus Zuck” for background. This failed project arguably indicates the incredible ambition of the elites to establish a techno-global wealth system whose levers they command, beyond the sovereignty of nations, individual privacy as an expression of citizen autonomy, and fading prohibitions against surveillance as a means of social control. From the crypto-boom-and-bust, through the ongoing trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, the PCP echoes the bridge-selling snake-oil salesman of yore and lore, but on a more serious level, the terrible danger attending fraud, and generally, the lack civic accountability as a means to counteract it. The roots of this Thing can be elliptically traced to the massively complicated and consequential historical convolution democratic law and anarcho-techno-libertarian-Capitalism at the last millennial turn. I am alluding to and inferring linkages to self-serving and -defeating nihilism and fanatical fascist religiosity or unprincipled righteousness to the unresolved catastrophes of the War on Terror, the Iraq War, the Great Recession… Covid. The J6 Insurrection… Homelessness in the USA. Deaths of Despair. Fetanyl… Out of control immigration… And on and on.

The wrong question, in one man’s opinion, is What have we done? The right question, in both PSM/PPSM and PCP, is Who is We?

SOLUTIONS

Concisely put: anything and everything, one and all. The prospect is naturally as confusing at the outset as the confusion with which one is confronted in all directions at once. The principle dynamic of the age is mass predation benefitting a few of us. Who are They? We can look to the information gleaned from the disclosures provided by whistleblowers and relentless muckrakers for initial answers. Many of the agents and agencies of malevolence have been identified, or conduct their malevolence in the open. When threatened, they respond with inordinate force, manipulating the law and violating the norms of civil society with aplomb. Which is why we must stridently defend persons like Ed Snowden and Julian Assange, and entities like Wikileaks and condemn usurpers like Donald Trump, all he is by a long shot not the worst actor. We must read the Panama Papers and Capital in the 21st Century. A decade ago, during Occupy Wall Street, the stage was set for the wholesale overthrow of the anti-democratic power scheme. In the intervening years since that peaceful, flawed uprising was forcibly collapsed, the situation predictably and dynamically, even catastrophically worsened. Bernie’s political efforts were thwarted by corruption and subterfuge at the highest levels. Wild card Trump was elected, and in measures despotic and desperate, he gave the elites and reactionary fanatics whatever they wanted, and eventually attempted insurrection to hold onto power.

American democracy is truly at a crossroads. …An artistic solution can be framed as speculative fiction, a prospective narrative. I defer to Milo Santini: “For a dimensional problem on this scale, art provisions a catalyst for cascading change. In the proposed imaginary, the legions of self-identifying artists are organized and mobilized to address inordinate oligarchical influence in the domain of cultural production. In an extreme scenario, the money and dominance of the ultra-rich is completely deleted from the field of the arts. No artist would sell to anyone with a net worth over a few hundred million dollars, or whatever figure is determined to be reasonable, or to any corporation in the Fortune 500 or 100. No oligarch would be permitted to hold a trustee position is an art foundation, institution or not-for-profit. None of their philanthropic donations of any kind would be accepted. None of their names would adorn art buildings. Oligarchs would be persona-non-grata at all art functions and events. All oligarchical business entities would be boycotted by all artists, art-related workers. Anyone sympathetic to the mission of democratic arts reform would be encouraged to divest, boycott and sanction both individuals and enterprises identified as belonging to the superrich. All commerce with these people and companies would cease. Etc.”

This is the broad sketch of an essential first step, which can be expanded, specified and replicated by other social demographics, and directed at the same target. The effects are conjectural, but one could imagine the ruckus a collective direct action like the one Milo outlined above would create. One can also imagine the push-back.

Would this sort of intervention qualify as an artists’ project? As such it should have a name, such as “Herd of Cats.” It would be absurd to presume that a million-and-a-half or so artists could share anything resembling the single-mindedness necessary to formulate and execute a program like the one outlined above, on a common basis of politics, economics, ideology. Even so, the logistical obstacles would be formidable. Recent developments point to legal and legislative machinations that could be brought to bear, e.g., the use of RICO prosecution of activists opposing Atlanta’s “Cop City,” or the anti-BDS campaign executed by allies of Israeli Zionists, or the various corporate anti-labor efforts brought to bear against union organizers (see Starbucks, et al.), or the vigorous attacks on the protesters at Standing Rock, formulated through the consolidated interests of investors in and owners of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Raw, unadulterated force was brought down on Occupy, with the sanction of authorities at the highest levels of government, and executed by “Bloomberg’s Army,” the NYPD and many other agencies and agents. The Pinkertons and many other such outfits exist to quell threats to the status quo. Could an artists’ movement withstand the pressures that would undoubtedly be turned upon them, if they amassed to overturn the establishment?

Perhaps we might consider the proposition in another light. Why, one might ask, has there been no national commonwealth movement in the 21st Century to address the most difficult challenges of our times? Why are the masses resigned to their pervasive state of repression? Like everyone, I have ideas about power and powerlessness. Like many other people, I wish to belong to a just, equitable and peaceful society. In such a society I envision a place for my art, my family and myself. At this very moment in my PPSM rumination, a bit of news appears in my feed scans to provide a bit of hope. Dr. Cornel West has declared he will run as an Independent candidate for the US Presidency, abandoning the Green Party, which has little traction among the electorate. Cornel has a slim chance to obtain the highest office in the land, but his political and activist bona fides are real. He was a staunch supporter of Bernie Sanders’ doomed bids in 2016 and -20, although in this cycle that support was not reciprocated by Bernie, who fears a split Democratic base enabling the disastrous re-election of Trump. I wonder if I can drop West an email, outlining plans for a US Commonwealth Party, energized by American artists fed up with the two-party system. I would commit to small donations of the kind that fueled Bernie’s campaigns, to fund the pursuit of that third-party goal. In my mind I acknowledge the odds of a viable Cornel West Presidential campaign winning the 2024 election are minuscule. My heart could get behind this, though. I would volunteer.

But in the darker corners of my political consciousness, I am haunted by the poignant humor of long-gone pundits like Will Rogers and my distant ancestor Mark Twain. Then, in the heavyweight class of black political humors, there is Hunter S. Thompson, one of my literary heroes of the past three-quarters of a century. A few years ago (2018), Dick Polman penned a what-if article about Thompson for The Atlantic. I quote:

He was, in a sense, America’s first blogger, and his tone seems eerily contemporary. Even a letter he wrote to a friend in 1965 sounds like a common lament in 2018: “I think there is a terrible angst on the land, a sense that something ugly is about to happen, an hour-to-hour feeling of nervous anticipation.”

The Divine broke the mold when that bastard Hunter Thompson hatched, and both angels and demons recoiled and sighed in relief at his End. “Fear and Loathing” is a profound assessment of the American Project these days. But Hunter may as well have been describing my state of mind during this 2023 episode of PSM/PPSM. The optimism inherent in solution-finding is in short supply. I’m not alone in this sentiment, clearly. Not that that realization ought to give solace to any distressed citizen, either. Loneliness and Isolation are poisonous, too. They are ubiquitous in the PCP.

CONCLUSIONS

Optimally, one emerges from PSM/PPSM renewed. Creatively vision clarified, the artist is able to chart a course forward, an eye toward progress. Approached correctly, PSM/PPSM yields a fresh sense of purpose. If the process has been constructive, the artist has assessed where in practical and technical areas one has room to grow and improve. The response among viewers, peers and critics (if there are any) have been measured and accounted for. If the show was mounted in a venue with which the artist has an ongoing relationship, discussions have been conducted on the success of the production, highlights from the show run, potential opportunities arising from the exhibit, what comes next. Most importantly, the artist will be coming away from the experience, and the vital period of reflection immediately following the event, with realizations about art, being an artist, and what art is for.

Stepping out of the shadow phase of VALUBL OBJX, I can speak to the last point. This has been an especially strong PSM/PPSM for me, artistically, and on other levels, too. The main contributing factors may be my age + experience, and the longer-than-usual period separating this exhibit and the previous one (“CODE DUELLO: Old Hick and a Big Bang,” Nashville 2014) not self-resourced. Also, since the show closed, I am going to apply for a couple of fellowships, a task that requires the applicant to think holistically about one’s work and communicate ideas that inform it. Because I have been through PSM/PPSM many times, I was actually looking forward to this one, instead of dreading it. Even through the most intense moments, I found the psychological stamina to weather the bitter storms of doubt and despair. I intentionally maintained perceptual openness to new perspectives on my art. In the final stages of PPSM, those arrived, without fanfare, in the fading summer/early fall PNW evenings, on the back porch.

My first realization is really a speculative fiction. It is connected to the “Dim Tim: Fallacies of Hope” PSM/PPSM. Back then in the contiguous development of Dim Tim — a name shortening “Dimensional Time” — I wondered about the character’s mind. I decided it would be fundamentally alien to a human mind, in that it would operate as a hybrid machine-person. After some poetic experimentation, expressed through text, song and scripts, I set aside the project and transitioned into a different creative direction. I shifted toward rendering tools for fooling facial recognition software. I mourned the death of a brilliant young mind who succumbed to addiction by overdose. My thinking became for a while more reactive. Civil unrest in the post-Occupy era nudged me into conceptual concerns that manifested as graphic patterns with unique color profiles, achieved through mixing of inks and acrylic polymers and mediums. My focus is dimensional — aesthetic, theoretical, technical, historical. I am, however, like most everyone, I suppose, affected by the circumstantial. The circumstances that precipitated our relocation from Bushwick/Brooklyn/NYC to Astoria, Oregon are not the subject of my paintings. They are the contextual aspect out of which art appears. Art, for me, exists as a parallel phenomenon to the realities I share with you all, a liminal thing that serves as a conduit for bundled relations, an objective site of exchange, the Thing among things. Art can help you through the toughest times, but not necessarily by subjectivizing objective reality to generate content.

In the 2023 PSM/PPSM it occurred to me that the VyNIL Cycle might be an attempt to represent the mind of Dim Tim. Maybe this is how his thoughts would appear, rendered in paint. This narrative in my analysis is congruent as data visualization, and it (the narrative)coheres with what I understand about evolution of creative ideas within fictional applications. I don’t suppose it works as a recursive answer to the question, “What are these paintings ‘about’?” I have other pre-conditions for the VyNIL sequence beyond a story about an entity of mysterious origins whose existence is anomalous. Those are mapped in the texts I published in conjunction with VALUBL OBJX. …I will say, without elaborating, the Dim Tim-mind explanation does deeply satisfy me as a provision of creative processing.

The second realization is more practical in nature. One should always be curious about the “How” facet of making things, beyond material methodology and logistics. In this regard, I came to accept that all the extensions of my studio painting — forays into other disciplines (i.e., philosophy, advocacy and activism, other branches of the arts, academics and education, etc.) — were all undertaken in order to improve my main artistic interest. None of them gives what painting does, to and for me. No matter how proficient I might become in any of them, they were and are not my vocational means to an end. They inform my true work. They are sidelines in a complex woven form that is my central practice. Bunched together, they form the fourth dimensional aspect of my painting. I wrote a 700+ page dissertation on the way to this realization, through which I arrived at a definition of 4D that applies to my art, and rationalizes my research, writing, philosophical and art historical studies, my adoption and immersion into digital processes and tools, my interests in the various sciences, including the “soft” ones, forays into the art press, into art-related politics and economics and more. The only facets of my life that exist on an equal footing with art are sobriety, family and spiritual matters. This is in no way a full disclosure. I do believe some of what we learn about ourselves is private, and should remain secret, or rather, not-public information. I treasure democratic protections as much as the spiritualism of anonymity. They hide to protect what is most precious, from bad actors who crave what is precious, but whose possession of preciousness is cruel and destructive.

I don’t know that any further commentary on the second revelation is necessary or helpful, beyond what I have already written. So I will end the essay here.

On the first day of this latest “war” between Israel and Hamas, et al.

Sunday, October 8, 2023, 12:22 AM

Astoria, OR