A good friend of mine sent me this quote, and it seems particularly appropriate today, to the art world as a whole, and even the world at large. My husband, a classical realist painter, (who is also responsible for the beautiful photograph at left), wondered aloud yesterday evening if his latest paintings might be rejected for their somewhat morbid oddity. They are a series of beautifully rendered fowl, and parts of fowl. They are exquisite, though some are a bit eerie to behold, with their bodiless heads and wings, now resting flightless and soundless on fragile bones spread before you. They are birds whose heads and wings I see only briefly in life, before they are severed and tossed away, and I have never looked closely at them until Richard requested I buy our hens and pheasants intact at the market.
Sometimes he paints the entire body, as with our latest faison, but usually he paints only the head, wings, and feet, the body already having been made into dinner. Experiencing this act of looking closely at our food, a teaching of Michael Pollan among others, is important to us. If we can't look at the animals we consume, inspect every part, understand the value of the life they lived, how and what they ate, then see and consider them in death - how the feathers feel, how the neck becomes flaccid and almost pathetic in the hand - if we can't do that, well, then, what business do we have eating them? Thus, it is important to look, and therefore that eerie quality in Richard's paintings is there for a reason. It reminds us. It connects us to our food, and we can't look away from that. So I say to him, yes they are odd, but they are beautiful too. And the oddness has become familiar to me, because I see it, and I understand. This is part of what makes them great art.
What is crazy, and what always seemed to be so to me, is the blindness and complacency of man. People who accept whatever comes their way, be it a vacuum packed bird which led a life of imprisonment in a tiny cage wallowing in and eating its own merde, a dangerous vaccine, bad design, filthy sidewalks, propaganda to make them buy anything and everything, (you too can have fake eyelashes!) and of course, ridiculous, unskilled, very bad "art". An example which always comes to mind is Jeff Koons (who has never even held a paintbrush). So, hey, even though the world has given us masters like Degas and Rembrandt, who spent a lifetime learning the skills which made them great, why don't we just include in that category we call Art a large, inflatable pink rabbit? It doesn't matter that he didn't make it himself, or that it's absurd and insults your intelligence; it's art now! And you should pay a million dollars for it! Sadly, people do. They do pay, and they accept the crazy as the norm, because we have allowed a few marketing gurus and businessmen to tell us how to think. Now that's crazy. The truth is, Jeff Koons seemed crazy in the 70's and he seems crazy now.
What's even crazier is that this is all a part of how we are deceived. If we could really see, awaken each day with fresh minds free of the burden of constant advertising, maybe we would look at an inflatable Koons toy and say, you're calling yourself an artist? Are you crazy?! Maybe we would be able to see the labor and skill that goes into art. Maybe we would always look at our food and think, is this good for me to eat? Is it right or wrong to eat this and why? From where did this animal come and how was it slaughtered? Is this chair I'm sitting in made well, and with skill? Do I value it? Or did I just accept it because it's the latest style? But I don't think most of the world can ask those questions anymore. Maybe it's what they've put in our water and all those packaged bags of salad and single slices of cheese. If we're too tired to slice our own cheese, well....all in all, a clever way to get us to quietly hand over our paychecks.
There was a time, I think, when people looked at the world around them; at the earth and the bounty it provides, at the meaning of learning a skill, of thinking for one's self. My grandmother knew how to raise and kill her own chickens. Most people now can't even butcher one. They think "chicken" is something they are entitled to, and comes in tidy plastic wrapped packages. The chair I'm sitting in needs to be re-stuffed and reupholstered, but only a cluster of fine upholsterers are left in the western world. That's because when we were all watching television, a large company decided to make cheaper chairs, fill them with Styrofoam and tell us cheaper is better. And everybody went for it. The companies profited, but did we? I think I'd rather learn how to build a chair myself to tell you the truth, or pay someone who still knows how to use his hands and make something solid.
As I sit down to dinner tonight at a table made by a person, not a machine, and I eat the flesh of a bird who was sold to me at a fair price from a farmer I trust, I would like to offer up a toast. Here's to those of you who value quality and beauty. To those who know how to draw an accurate figure, who know the skills of painting, who know how to sew, how to grow vegetables without chemicals, raise animals humanely, build a table, make a fire that doesn't have an electric switch. Here's to the people who make wine with terroir, write literature and music, hunt, forage, bake their own bread. To those who still value knowledge over reality tv, and therefore know how to spot the odd from the perpetually crazy. Here's to the ones who truly see, and know the parts equal a greater whole.
