E S S A Y 1: Line in Muck.
Y’tulip, y’tulip, y’pea brained earwig
Y’punk, y’silver tongued snake
I’d rather make furniture than g o to midnight mass
– Wire, from the Snakedrill EP
*
The characteristics of good Art and bad Art are apparent to each of us when we are
alone and don’t gain anything by our judgements. Good Art has something to do with
truth and earnestness and satisfaction, and so bad Art that has something to do with the
opposite of those things; to be disingenuous, to be callow, to submit to being unsatisfied.
Surely there is enough of this floating around under the sun for everyone to have their fill and
take leftovers to work tomorrow. What then is to account for all this bad Art? The qualities of
Art, the focus of this essay and the four to follow, is a wild geometry. Readable in an instant,
as fast as looking.
**
Good Art doesn’t make it rain more in dry weather. Bad Art doesn’t run over my foot or
overcook my egg. A weak piece does not diminish a regionalism, or stunt a movement, or
muddy the entire project of Art. So why all the hay-making about good-Art-bad-Art ? For the
vast majority of Art’s adherents and practitioners, Art does not keep the lights on at home or
pay the studio rent. This is beside the point though; Art is what makes the lights worth turning
on, makes the rent worth paying.
***
Here is an image of Art; here is a busy bay on a warm holiday weekend. I have been at
the bay all morning long, just dog paddling, and I hope to stay until after the sun goes down. I
feel a blissful and deliberate joy in negotiating the water as it moves around me. I am wary of
the fanciest strokes and the shiniest innertubes as they cut through the chop or float above it.
Ease and habit sometimes share an inflatable raft shaped like an ear of corn. There is a
quagmire down below — as wide and deep as consciousness, as dense as thought, and
woven through with currents of judgement and veins of taste. The act of making Art is to
plumb the muck of the quagmire, to locate a resonance, to pursue it, and to return with some
piece of what is there. Whatever else we have in our pockets when we come back is
probably just pocket lint.
****
Art looms large in my life and stands close to me, and I cannot see its edges on some
days. However I am not a zealot or a Pollyanna about the importance of Art, and I do not
maintain a standardless appreciation of it. Rather, I am proprietary of Art and offended to see
it dealt with callously. Here, it’s like this: some Art is better than other Art, and most Art is not
very good. So much of it is truly and deeply lazy in its execution and cynical in its conception.
So much of it doesn’t attempt anything. So much of it is devised as social capital, or it is
overly burdened with the prescriptions of the day, or else the relationship between artist and
material is conservative and transactional where it ought to be curious and slutty, or else
there is too much shame given and received in retreading old ground in the pursuit of finding
new territory, or else the work takes itself too seriously, or else it is an execution of fashion
without regard for the flow of time, or the work is too greedy for attention and space, or the
work is only descriptive where it ought to be transformative, or it is a branding exercise, or it
is too much given over to commerce, or it is too timid, or it is too blustery, or it is fetishized
beyond vitality, or it is happy without being introspective, or it is joyless without being
redemptive, or it condescends, or there is all this damned context, or the work conflates
shiftlessness with pursuit, or it is just a game of inside baseball, or it is just a game of
throwing pocket knives, or it is too much the opposite of any of these, or else it has been
tailored to be the size and shape and weight and aura of Art which is called Fine.
*****
Back in the bay, left hand right hand, a note about discussing Art before I go. Art calls
for acts of intellectual and emotional exploration where literal and functional considerations
are jettisoned in favor of timelessness and play and evasion. Discussion calls for a common,
descriptive, restless tongue–a dumb muscle. This being the case, discussions of Art are
slippery and too often reliant on the dry ground of precedent and terminology for footing.
Precedent is difficult; to describe one thing by describing another is to sometimes describe
neither. Terminology is difficult; to describe a thing with a five dollar word when
plainspokenness would do is wasteful at least, cowardly maybe, and alienating. It is good to
have standards, and to speak to them. It is good to be available to Art, to be available to
each other to discuss Art, to give no cover to Art that is bad, and to recognize the qualities of
Art that is good. Whatever else we have in our throats when we talk about Art is probably just
pocket lint.
******
Next time: Who Should Play the Flute.