This vlog explores a work in progress, showing the various layers, such as the drawing layer over the color layers. I also discuss a claim mace by the editor of Hyperallergic (a very popular online art magazine) that art is not transcendent and never has been. Apparently art is about resisting power on your own terms. I think this guy missed the point of art entirely, while overseeing an art magazine, but fully appreciates radical political ideology. The two can and do overlap, but let’s not cut out all other art, and decapitate arts ability to transcend the mundane, which means peoples’ ability to do so.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZC7V_-HfTE]
This vlog explores a work in progress, showing the various layers, such as the drawing layer over the color layers. I also discuss a claim mace by the editor of Hyperallergic (a very popular online art magazine) that art is not transcendent and never has been. Apparently art is about resisting power on your own terms. I think this guy missed the point of art entirely, while overseeing an art magazine, but fully appreciates radical political ideology. The two can and do overlap, but let's not cut out all other art, and decapitate arts ability to transcend the mundane, which means peoples' ability to do so.
Art & Crit by Eric Wayne 
Eric,
Love the new piece as well. Green and purple are a great combo.
It’s too bad a guy who supposedly knows about art doesn’t understand art at all. The greatest art of all time takes you away from yourself and after a while you come back and go wow! I’ve just been standing here for 10 minutes and didn’t realize it. It’s kind of the same experience you get when listening to great music. If you’ve never felt it I guess you don’t know. It’s like trying to explain color to a blind person. Social realism doesn’t touch you the same way. If social realism was the best art this guy or anyone for that matter would have heard of people like William Gropper or Phillip Evergood and others like them. But no one has. I’d like to comment more but I’m running late this morning. Keep up the great art and criticism!
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Hi Matt. Thanks for watching the vlog. I should get better at them. I think video has a much bigger audience than blog posts, but, that’s only once people know it’s you’re out there.
Actually the editor banned me from the comments section on Hyperallergic, and is a real bully of a moderator. Essentially, we disagreed about something, but I was perfectly civil. I think it was my defense of Cindy Sherman against attacks of her being the creator of a deplorable racist production that finally got me banned.
Anyway, I know how this guy thinks because I had the same sort of art education, or rather the same social justice, marginalization theory, feminist, Marxist, Postmodern inundation in grad school. I did more reading and writing about all that theoretical crap than art in grad school, and after my first term, no paintings.
So, I can tell you basically what he thinks. First off, those social realists are only as good as they are “important” and that is only in regards to their social message in relation to social movements. Most likely they are seen as modernists, colonialists, patriarchs, and if they didn’t happen to be gay, the heteronorm.
When approaching art, the first and most important thing we need to do is look at the artists birth certificate to find out what kind of person they are biologically. The biology of the artist is absolutely the most important criteria. Looking at the art is the least important.
You are right, precisely. Getting lost or absorbed by music, literature, film, art, architecture is transcendent, and adds mystery and structure to life. Appropriationists give us none of that, incidentally.
There are many kinds of art and many reasons to make art, all good. But for me, it is often that transcendent quality that makes is worthwhile. There’s a sort of spiritual search, a search of the imagination to see something new (and beautiful). It’s almost like going fishing in the sea of the imagination, and trying to bring back some treasure. I’ll end on that analogy, because, people catching fish is a great subject for some art.
Thanks for watching the vlog! I should have a new on today that includes a 5 minute sketch, live, and me talking about the piece I just finished, which I have some things to say about.
Cheers.
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So wait, Dali and Man Ray and the other Surrealists weren’t transcendant, according to that editor, and just political puppets? /facepalm
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I think it’s worse than that Khurtack. Man Ray, Dali, Max Ernst, Matta, Yves Tanguy, you name it, are all part of “the patriarchy” and “colonialism” and “white supremacy”. They are also “modernists” and represent the pernicious modernist agenda. Further, they are “dead white males”. Contemporary, Postmodern, social theory criticism might begrudgingly admit some innovations to them, and perhaps give them credit for challenging sexual norms or something like that, but, in general, will only look at them through a political lens. Well, there’s the additional view that one “ism” led to another, and if your “ism” happens to align with what is considered important today, you can retroactively be given relevance. But, Dali, he’s definitely out. We should only look at Dorathea Tanning, and other female Surrealists. Perhaps Frida Kahlo is the best Surrealist because not only is she a woman, but a woman “of color”. That is how people actually think about art and art history. They completely miss the point.
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Ok, good news and bad news. Good news, It sounds like my art isn’t the problem so I can fell free to keep going the way I’m going with that. Bad news is I’m going to need to convince my wife I need a sex change and that we should be a lesbian couple. That might be a tough sell, I’ll wait to tell her about the change of skin color until after the sex change. I’d hate to put too much on her all at once. Seriously though, I have to believe time is the real test for art and the best art will pass the test of time. That’s not to say a lot of great artists don’t get missed, especially in today’s art market. The best are very likely to get overlooked. It’s probably of no consolation to guys like Van Gogh, Cezanne or El Greco that people like them now, but time did win in the end.
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Ha, ha, ha. Only, uh, if you are a painter, and I strongly believe you are, well, you art is also the problem, unless, of course you are making paintings in order to “deconstruct” and “undermine” the white, patriarchal, colonial tradition of painting. You are not allowed to try to make good paintings. That’s definitely taboo. It’s like trying to write a great rock song for anti-music sound sculpture. Just doesn’t fit, man!
Will the best art survive the test of time? Dunno. There’s more competition now than ever, and more ideologies that take precedence over actually enjoying art, and even over art itself.
I’m just hoping that, er, in my case, I can continue making art, have some sort of audience, and maybe even make enough money to live on a McDonald’s salary. I have a long, long, long way to go.
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