‘It is my bad luck that this happened to me.’ No, you should rather say: ‘It is my good luck that, although this has happened to me, I can bear it without pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearful of the future.’ ~ Marcus Aurelius, before AD 180. [Note: I made the imagery for…
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More thoughts after days of ruminating on this topic, and various challenges to my arguments on my blog and elsewhere. Note that if you disagree with me, or have in the past, that’s perfectly fine. I’m more interested in understanding reality than I am in being right. If I were to suddenly switch my pro-free…
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“I want to be a machine.” ~ Andy Warhol [Repost: updated with edits. The topic of free will has come up a lot lately, and my pro-free-will stance and my belief in anthropogenic global warming are the topics where I get the most devil’s advocates and friendly challenges. This article is one of my classics,…
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We humans are really flubbing this new decade. It’s moving a little beyond just being insulting and enervating. Now it’s starting to hurt. Above you can see the prognosis for the next 5 days in terms of pollution where I live, juxtaposed with a close-up of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the COVID-19 disease. The…
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It is precisely the things that science cannot prove about us, and which allow autonomy, independent thought and action, which define our true nature. There are two things that are objectively impossible, but subjectively undeniable. One is consciousness, and the other is free will. Science, as hard as it has tried, and is trying, can’t…
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What is postmodernism, what are its shortcomings, and how has it negatively impacted the art world and contemporary culture? [repost with updates] Every student of art needs to grapple with Postmodernism at some point, either climb aboard, reject it, or integrate it. In order to come to terms with it, one needs to be able…
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[I wote this yesterday morning when the power was out. My info on the Wuhan-flu is thus a little behind in numbers, but otherwise still relevant.] Within a minute of waking up this morning the power went out. Turns out something happened to a power cable by the superstore around the corner. That might have…
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I used to work in the marketing department of a computer memory company. One day on the sales floor a giant banner appeared that read, “HAVE THE KILLER INSTINCT!” I had an idea what that meant, and it had something to do with knowing when to close a deal. But the metaphor was horrible. I…
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Apparently I’m the first person to ask this question, or type it up and publish it online. At least a Google search turns up nothing. What everyone asks is, and I’m pretty sure you’ve heard it, “Can you like the art without liking the artist”? And by “without liking” they mean hating, or shunning, or…
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More moral quandaries Recently I wrote an article which was critical of the Baltimore Museum’s plan to only buy and primarily exhibit women’s art in 20/20. I objected on moral grounds, because while it is ostensibly rectifying past ostensible sexual discrimination, it is undeniably applying absolute sexual discrimination in the very present. Two wrongs don’t…
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I watched a mini-documentary “Beauty: Explained” on Netflix, and a few pieces fell into place regarding how art is considered today. Before I connect the dots and introduce what the new science suggests, I will need to review what the dots are, and what they signify. If you already know your contemporary art history, you…
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[This is another of my “runaway rants”, but I couldn’t squeeze that in the headline and keep it punchy. When I call something a “rant” I just mean it’s more or less stream of consciousness, as opposed to me sitting down and making a structured outline. I’m just getting some thoughts out there that I’ve…
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I get these personal attacks all the time, and fear not, I’ll share some juicy examples. In philosophy, or debate, it’s known as the ad-hominem fallacy. You may have heard of it, and it’s very simple and easy to avoid in your own discussions and debates. It just means to attack the person rather than…
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I just wanted to get out one thought here, folks, which is percolating in my mind over my morning coffee. In general, morality is defined by others, and art makes its own definitions, hence they work at cross purposes. How much are we, as individuals, self-defined, and how much defined by everything outside of ourselves?…
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Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. … Excerpt…
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The question has come up a lot recently about whether or not we can separate the artist from the art, and it’s usually in the bad sense. The conclusion comes first, and it’s that a bad person can’t be a good artist. We then work on our arguments, which have to be correct, because we’ve…
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I wrote this days ago, and then just sat on it, because, an opinion piece about why opinion is inherently an insufficient projection upon reality is self-cancelling. On second thought, that was the point. Reality is boundless and unfathomable, hence any opinions, beliefs, and conclusions about it are mere projections upon it, something to tether…
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What makes my runaway rants rants is that I write them in one go, initially without editing. I will go back and fix my more egregious typos, misspellings, and so on, but not change the flow. The ideas come one after the other, without an outline. It’s a way to keep it simple, but also…
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My last article was an attempt (I like to think a successful one) at disentangling the verbose “theory” of Roland Barthes that “The Author is Dead”. I shared my article in a couple Reddit forums, one being “philosophy” and the other “art theory”. There were a lot of responses, most the initial ones fairly reasonable,…
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The belief that “the author is dead” is one of the unquestioned bad ideas that has become gospel in the art world. It’s usually just asserted — along with its companion notions that originality is impossible, and the artist’s intent is irrelevant — as if to deny it is as hopelessly naive as denying evolution.…
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[One way to interpret the image above is that the mechanical yellow creature is seeking truth, clamors around a blind corner, and discovers a mysterious mask, snake, worms… The extended mouth is the hunger for knowledge and discovery, but the creature seems frightened by what he found. Note that I find interpretations a useful tool,…
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I like to stick to talking mostly about matters of art, but politics has so infiltrated the art world that you can’t be an artist without being clobbered over the head with certain ideas; and your work and career are evaluated, bolstered, or derailed in accordance with them. One of the biggest, most contentious and…
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I’m doing these rants – and by rant I mean getting down my thoughts in one go without much editing – because I will have ideas I’m mulling over and want to share, but don’t have time to do one of my more thorough blog posts. Social engineering is huge these days, especially once you…
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You are not a thing. You are a phenomenon. And here are several things I’m mulling over because even if we have firm conclusions about anything, how much those conclusions resonate, and how we relate to them is in perpetual flux. This is why I find myself reexamining the same questions on an almost daily…
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When I started chipping away at this topic I didn’t realize how enormous it was. I’ve written about censorship and highly political cases made against certain artists, but those issues are mere TIE fighters – morality is the Star Destroyer. You can vote in the poll before I have a chance to influence you one…
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I’ve been blogging for over 5 years, have more than 500 posts, and more than 500,000 views (on average a post gets 1,000 views over time). Most my views come from Google searches, and some of my articles are in constant circulation. There was much on my site now that there was no efficient way…
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A long meditation on a very difficult period in my life, which ain’t over yet. It will be divided into 7 parts. 1) Bad Luck 2) Bad Actors and Unimaginative Drones 3) The Bitter Pill 4) My Original Sin 5) When I Decided I Needed to Make Art 6) How to Survive 7) A…
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Recently I did a post about bad luck. Things can always get worse. Today I was on one of my long early morning walks and a car pulled up along side me. The driver yelled something. I wondered what the hell he could be upset about. I’m just some guy walking and most the people…
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