Bar-rio Window
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Art and Me
two arts are the subject of this post. One art is the kind i do not understand nor have much appreciation for. when i was in New York City four years ago, i paid 15.00 bucks to enter the Museum of Contemporary Art, or was it the Guggenheim? Anyway, the point is that I wanted my money back at the end of my visit.
Every gallery was incredibly boring to me and Im glad i did not pay the extra fifteen bucks for the audio tour. there were some folks who did pay for the headphones and cassette player, and they would stop in front of an art piece and listen to god knows what, as they were convinced that a red circle on canvass, for instance, is art. I saw a red circle, and they saw much, much more. the red circle, for all i know, might very well not be a red circle but a visual representation of something complex and which is elusive to most people. It might illustrate the inner soul, or a mad mind--something that only astute, artistic minds can grasp.
Only a handful of art connoiseurs have privy knowledge of what a red circle might mean. the japanese have it on their flag, but it's the sun!..all i know is that i left the place thinking: red circle? deep meaning? red circle? deep meaning?
The other art is a ghost of a figure that posts on the website--Laeastside.com--and he and I have had our differences for two or three days over, you guessed it--art. he seems to appreciate wall paintings in the general area of east los angeles, created by chumps that buy expensive paint and paint, well, just about anything. art seems the familiar type, and i feel like i know him, even though we've never met, but i've met many "arts" like him; the young and angry types, who rage against the establishment and who are quick to challenge the status quo, and who will not submit to the "white man"...they are creative and "artsy" while they label the rest of us as boring and old world. they have a worldview that can never fully be understood by the rest of us (so he thinks).
enough already. I can appreciate the latter art, though. I am willing to try and learn from his ways of thinking, whereas the art involving paint and brushes, i cannot give a hoot about.
well, then again, if the wall paintings in east los angeles were as good as the graffiti above (from ireland), i just might change course...
8 Comments:
http://tinyurl.com/26oeeq
art,
tinyurl's are not my thang!
art,
no,no,no,no....
Rosie, thanks for the mention. I am actually not the person posting the previous stuff. maybe I jumped down your throat quickly, and I apologize for that. You actually pegged me totally wrong. I am a 29 year old dad and urban planner. My wife is an 8th grade teacher and we run an organization that actually combats graffiti www.elacamp.org
Anyways, I am not raging against any machine, I am an urban planner who actually works for the machine, the state that is. But as a planner I cannot understand the delusional notion that in places like Boyle Heights beige walls are a better alternative to local artists using the paint and time to makes something more visually stimulating (and aesthetically thought out) than WFx3 or KAM. Honestly, idealism is great, but in these areas graffiti murals have a precedence of being the best abatement tool to keep walls untagged.
Belive it or not, graffiti used to be (and still is) a medium that keeps many barrio kids out of trouble. I feel very strongly about the positives of it, as I was able to use my initial tagging in the LA River to a full fledged art career. I am by no means some artsy pothead MECHA headscalper. The use of graf as a means to improve the self esteem of barrio kids gets a lot of flack, and the one place it is accepted, Eastlos, is where I dont expect locals to give it flack. I actually have weened hundreds of kids off the spraycans into brush work trying to get them to complete the transition from vandal to productive member fo society. I cannot understand why anyone would hate on that, thus the anger. Considering the amount of anger most folks have towards taking proactive steps to abate graffiti, I am very emotional on the issue. I am sick and tired of ignorant folks from priveleged existences dismissing something that holds so much positive (not a stab at you but the Westlos crowd). the art world is very insular and self congratulatory, while brown kids with an equal amount of talent collect felonies. Personally, I cant stand taggers, but I think trying to push them into formal productive art careers is much better than processing them through jail so they come out hardened criminals. I hope I helped show you the positive aspect of this issue, and I do think we are more similar than different.
ROSIE, I SAY U FORGIVE "ART":)
anonymous,
first you insult jews, like marshall around here, and then, well, you kinda sorta have it in for me as well, that would make two jews because ive always felt i was jewish, thought it cool to be jewish, but anyway, to get back on track here...anonymous, go back to laeastside and hang out there for a while....thanks....
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I don't 'get' a lot of 'contemporary art.' I call it art for people with MFAs. Or a piece of something made into something because of a paragraph next to it that you need a PhD to understand.
That said I don't hate it nor avoid it. I try to understand it. I sometimes make myself laugh by coming up with ideas on what made someone make that happen. Someone put thought and heart into it, so it is something. Maybe I don't get it, that is on me.
Graffitti? yeah I hate it too. Taggers should have their tags on their forehead when they get busted.
Murals and wall art, that is cool. I prefer that over some fool's name scribbled on a wall. Beige is boring and bland.
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