I’ve had friends who collected Star Wars toys and kept them in the original packaging to protect their value. This certainly protects the monetary value, but doesn’t it deprive you of getting everything out of that toy it was created for? If you want to spark your imagination, have a fun afternoon, and play with your friends, you need to rip open that package and start shooting storm troopers and levitating x-wings. It’s almost impossible to experience all the joy, fun, creativity and bonding with friends those toy-makers intended if you leave the toys in their package.

For much of the art in the world, you can look at it or listen to it and get everything the artist intended. It doesn’t matter if most paintings are behind glass, you can still see it just fine and get the full effect. Like a baseball card collector who keeps his cards in plastic sleeves, you can still see the cards just fine and enjoy them to their full effect. Their monetary value is still protected too.

But more and more contemporary art is created by artists who intend you to play with it. The full meaning and experience of the work requires you to interact, contributing your ideas and sometimes even physically building what the work becomes. This work needs to be touched for it to have any significant form, emotion and meaning.

Most museums and galleries are the stewards of the art in their collections. All objects are treated as historic artifacts, and must be maintained, restored, protected and studied. Museums must also protect all the money they’ve invested in building and maintaining the collection. Insurers, donors and the community, also understandably want to protect their own investments. Insurance rates may go up if art isn’t thoroughly protected from accidents, wear and theft. Many museums and galleries sometimes borrow work from other organizations. Obviously they want to return any work leant to them in the same condition it arrived, and want the same for their own work that’s been let out into the world.

Unfortunately, for that growing collection of contemporary artwork that gets its primary meaning, emotion and significance from interacting with it, keeping it locked behind glass isn’t good enough. Most museums and galleries have not caught up to this idea, even though this type of work has existed for almost a hundred years. All objects, regardless of the artist’s intent, are treated the same.

I first noticed this when I attended a Yoko Ono retrospective in the ’90s. In most of her work, Yoko gives direct instructions to be completed, sometimes completely in the reader’s imagination, other times interacting with objects she’s made. In this exhibition, though, there were guards and watchers in each room who would stop anyone from touching anything, even when Yoko’s instructions told you to. One example is Play It By Trust, a long table with 10 completely white chessboards. In Montreal, 2009, it happened as it should:

Yoko Ono’s idea of license, the setting up of a situation where others could complete a work of art instead of the artist, was a radical departure from the existing concept of the role of the artist. – Jon Hendricks

Yoko Ono’s work continues to cause interaction problems for museums. In August of this year, the Seattle Art Museum fired a security guard who interacted with Painting to Hammer a Nail In, a piece which asks you to hammer a nail into the painting. On the wall next to the painting was this text placed by the museum, along with a box of nails:

Museum visitors are invited to pound a nail into this painting. Like so
much of the work in this exhibition, while the idea might at first seem a
destructive, physically aggressive act against the accepted traditions of
painting and museums in general, in the end the concept opens up new
potentials for painting, and for bringing others besides the artist into
the creative act.

Yoko Ono herself poetically states her intentions.

What I’m trying to do is make something happen by throwing a pebble into the water and creating ripples…I don’t want to control the ripples. – Yoko Ono

In 1957, Paris, a group of “reactionary nihilist intellectuals” stormed a Dada exhibition and grabbed Man Ray’s piece titled Object to Destroy. They threw it on the ground and shot it with a pistol before police arrived and arrested them for doing just as the title commanded. Time Magazine wrote about the incident at the time in The Theater: Battle of the Nihilists.

How do we know what’s allowed and what isn’t? Should we do what the artist tells us or follow the rules of a museum? Who gets to decide? A simple, direct solution is presented by The Onion in Struggling Museum Now Allowing Patrons To Touch Paintings:

“Though it contains more than two million pieces and represents a profound legacy of artistic achievement, most people remain completely indifferent to our museum,” Met director Thomas P. Campbell said. “So we decided to try something a little different and give visitors a chance to experience our timeless works of art up close and personal.”

“You can’t grasp the brilliance of a great painting just by looking at it,” said Phil Brehm, 32, who acknowledged that he hadn’t set foot inside a museum since a mandatory field trip in high school. “To truly appreciate fine art, you need to be able to run your fingers over its surface and explore its range of textures.”

“Or just rub your face all over it, like I do,” Brehm added.

Of course, In the real world, I hope for a middle ground. Museums need to determine which pieces derive a large part of their meaning and significance from interaction. For these pieces, the museum’s primary purpose should no longer be to simply protect their objects. They must protect the full artistic experience, so that people can feel for themselves the art’s purpose and meaning.

One museum that gets this is the Tate Modern. I visited several years ago and found the five-story swirly-slide by artist Carsten Höller. Laughter echoed around the large room as people slid down the tubes.

In 1971, the Tate exhibited a very interactive artwork, Bodyspacemotionthings, by artist Robert Morris. After only four days, and many splinters and bruises, the artwork was broken by all the interaction and then closed. Last May, a new version of the work was exhibited, and this is what it looked like:

Even knowing the potential for destruction, possibly higher insurance rates and injured patrons, Tate did it anyway.

So what’s the answer? And why should we care?

I forgot to mention that I had lots of Star Wars toys when I was growing up. I played with them all the time. They ended up with broken arms, unrecognizable dog-chewed heads, peeling paint and caked-in mud. Every dent and scrape added more to their made-up history in my imagination, making them even more fun and interesting. Today, I no longer have them. If I did, I certainly couldn’t sell them for any money. No one would want them.

I don’t want irreplaceable, important parts of our history destroyed. But in the museum’s Star Wars collector zeal, preserving every piece of art behind plastic and glass, we lose the art’s spirit, we lose it’s importance, the very reason it’s worth collecting to begin with. And the people visiting this work are disconnected from it. They don’t get it, shrug and move on. This is the very work that has the most potential to deeply connect with people in our modern world.

I think there must be a middle way.
Maybe museums can have artists build two copies of each work. One to protect for value and history, the other to take out of the box, to get dirty and broken. That’s what the most passionate toy collectors do.

Read more:

• Time Magazine, The Theater: Battle of the Nihilists, April 1957
• Yoko Ono’s Official Site
• More about Man Ray
• What is Conceptual Art?
• The Seattle Art Museum
• The Stranger Slog, Dear Yoko: This is an Intervention
• Tate Modern, Bodyspacemotionthings
• BBC, What Closed Tate’s 1971 Art Show?
• Artists Robert Morris and Carsten Höller

Buy stuff:

• Yoko Ono
• Man Ray
• Dadaism and Dada
• Carsten Höller
• the Tate Modern
• Star Wars toys

Related posts:

1. Zoom Into Every Brush Stroke of Art History’s Masterpieces
2. Artist Astronauts, Artist Cosmonauts, Artists in Space
3. Every Art Museum Needs a Five Story Swirly-Slide

Most people have no idea what it takes to make good art, whether it’s music, film, painting or anything else. They don’t know how much training and study has gone into building the artist’s skills, and how much practice of that skill it took to allow them to make something, especially if it’s great. A lot of people take it for granted.

Most artists have other jobs that sustains their artistic habit. But time is a finite resource. The more time you spend at another job, the less time you have for practicing, studying, marketing and, most importantly, Making your work. The less time you have to make work, the less income you could possibly make from it. The less you make from it, the more likely you’ll continue to work in another job, keeping you further from practicing, studying and making. Over the course of 10 years, working another job that keeps you from practicing your art will keep you from becoming great at it. (This doesn’t even take into account when you reach a time in your life where you might want to have kids.)

This is a vicious cycle, a catch-22.
This is why I believe many successful artists got in most of their 10,000 hours of training before they left home and had to start paying rent.

This misunderstanding about the time and skills required to make art makes the audience less likely to pay for it. (So does how relevant they think it is to their own lives, but that’s a whole other story.)

As new technology has taken hold, many of the middle-men who used to be the ones asking for the audience’s money (publishers, record labels, magazines, promoters, distributors, stores, studios) are disappearing. The artist is the one who’s now asking for money to live from, and some of the audience isn’t used to it, and doesn’t like it. It doesn’t help that as distribution becomes cheaper and cheaper, internet culture at large wants everything for free.

Amanda Palmer, artist best known as the lead of The Dresden Dolls, says:

artists need to make money to eat and to continue to make art.
artists used to rely on middlemen to collect their money on their behalf, thereby rendering themselves innocent of cash-handling in the public eye.
artists will now be coming straight to you (yes YOU, you who want their music, their films, their books) for their paychecks…
dead serious: this is the way shit is going to work from now on and it will work best if we all embrace it and don’t fight it…

it’s also not a matter of whether an artist is starving or cruising on a yacht.
i would hate to see my fans turn on me once i actually have money in the bank with a “well, i would support you if you were starving, but now that you’re eating, no way.”
fuck that…
feel ok about giving your money directly to paul mccartney. he may be rich, but he still rocks. show you care.
feel ok about giving it to fucking lady gaga if you’ve been guiltily downloading her dance tracks for free.
rejoice in the fact that you are directly responsible for several threads in her new spandex spacesuit.
it shouldn’t matter.
it’s about empowerment and it’s about SIMPLICITY: fan loves art, artist needs money, fan gives artist money, artist says thank you.

She is experimenting with ways to make a living, from paid live video to auctioning her artwork. What are other new ways artists are making a living from their work?
Do you feel ok helping to pay their rent?

Read the entire post from Amanda Palmer – Why I Am Not Afraid To Take Your Money

Get the work of Amanda Palmer.

Everybody’s Gotta Live, from Who Killed Amanda Palmer

Related posts:

1. Thank you Richard Florida for giving The Bohemians so much power. Now please tell us – when will we ever benefit from it?

Seed Magazine investigates the blind spots of science’s latest frontiers, and how the limits of scientific method and unbiased observation are holding us back.

…before we can unravel these mysteries, our sciences must get past their present limitations. How can we make this happen? My answer is simple: Science needs the arts. We need to find a place for the artist within the experimental process, to rediscover what Bohr observed when he looked at those cubist paintings. The current constraints of science make it clear that the breach between our two cultures is not merely an academic problem that stifles conversation at cocktail parties. Rather, it is a practical problem, and it holds back science’s theories. If we want answers to our most essential questions, then we will need to bridge our cultural divide. By heeding the wisdom of the arts, science can gain the kinds of new insights and perspectives that are the seeds of scientific progress.

Read more in Seed Magazine: To Answer Our Most Fundamental Questions, Science Needs to Find a Place for the Arts

Richard Florida’s latest book, Who’s Your City?, has a lot of interesting ideas. It is a continuation of his work which started with the often quoted, celebrated and vilified Rise of the Creative Class.

In essence, the original book argues that economic greatness in any given place depends on the place’s ability to attract creative people. Creative people like openness, night life, authentic culture and great aesthetics (interesting architecture and grand natural beauty). At the time the original book came out, cities were not focused on these things. Instead they were erecting bigger shopping malls.

To Richard Florida’s credit, ever since the release of Rise of the Creative Class, there has been a big discussion about the quality of life in the places we live, and that this quality does not come from shopping and big business. I think this is true for whatever your passion is, and whatever you do for a living. This is a good discussion to have.

But I have always felt some nagging problem with his approach that I couldn’t quite pull into focus. There seems to be some things that are missing in his big equations. After reading Who’s Your City?, I finally started seeing what they were.

Who’s Your City? shows, through extensive research, that despite first impressions of the global economy, where you live is very important to your happiness and well being. This is a simple idea that seems like common sense. The details springing from this premise are more surprising.

The world has spiky places which are, like ever-growing magnets, attracting more and more creative, innovative people and capital into themselves. This means places like New York City, London, Tokyo and Paris will continue to suck in innovation and capital exponentially, and thus have larger engines to create even more innovation and capital. This also leads to most places outside of these spiky regions to specialize in various industries. Basic examples that you may be familiar with – if you want to be an actor, your chances for making a living at it are very slim unless you are in New York or Los Angeles. If you’re a technology innovator or developer, your greatest success would be found in the San Francisco or Boston areas. There is a lot of interesting detail in this, and if you want to learn more about it I recommend you read the book.

Now for a short break to watch Richard Florida’s appearance on The Colbert Report, because Stephen Colbert sums it up best.

The Gay-Bohemian Index mentioned by Mr. Colbert (“Which may sound like another name for the San Francisco phone book”), which supports some of Florida’s work, sounds like a great endowment of power handed down to anyone who is bohemian, artistic or gay. But in fact, this power to indicate or create new magnetic, economic engines usually benefits people besides the creators, and besides the businesses and families that long lived in the neighborhood before them. Who’s Your City? says

Albert Ratner, cochairman of the board at Forest City Enterprises, one of the biggest real estate companies in the world, likes to remind me that he alone has promoted The Rise of the Creative Class enough to secure its spot on the bestseller list. Another real estate investor once said of my work, “You have provided a map of where to invest.”

Anyone who has lived in a medium sized or larger city for any period of time recognizes a familiar pattern.

A neighborhood is a thriving community. Some type of economic hardship or shift happens in the city, and many neighborhood residents move away quickly. This leaves less sense of community and neighborhood, and as eyes on the street dwindle, crime can rise. At some point, the neighborhood is a shadow of itself, rents are cheap, but the authentic architecture and feeling of community still resonates. So artists and other creative people, who don’t have much money but have a need for space to create in, move to the neighborhood. This creates energy, public artwork (sanctioned or not), new venues to show or perform, and basic renovations. This energy, creativity and center of cultural amenities attracts more people from outside the area to visit and eventually move to. As more people move in, natural supply and demand occurs, causing rent and purchase prices to rise. Larger investors and realtors take note, seeing an opportunity to begin at the ground level, building new condos and luxury apartments. At some point, housing prices become out of reach for the families and businesses that have long been in the neighborhood, and for the artists and bohemians that sparked the neighborhood’s revitalization. They move on to the next neighborhood, or the next city, where the cycle starts again.

King of the Hill covered this in an entire episode, Lady and Gentrification.

Though Richard Florida now speaks to this issue – that a spiky region’s great success often leaves behind a large swath of the population – he doesn’t give it the gravity it deserves. Economic disparities can affect anyone in a region, but the irony is that the families, businesses, non-profits, artists and others who lead the front line of a neighborhood’s revitalization are often the first people to be kicked out by exorbitant housing prices when the fruit of their creative efforts finally appear. The very people that Florida claims are so important to an area’s success often have to move out of the area once that success arrives.

This also applies to businesses that help define an area, and more importantly non-profits. Non-profits find cheap commercial space to grow in, and help a community become a better place. But right when that better arrives, real estate investors buy up the historic building the non-profit lived in, raises their rent by 300%, and off they go to find a new home or shut down completely. This happens time and time again.

So Mr. Florida, how can the people who create so much value, so much aesthetic, creative energy and economic growth benefit from their investments of creativity, and stay where they live to continue helping their neighborhoods and cities grow? Or is it ok that this investment of time, effort, love and creativity in the end only benefits real estate developers and chain restaurants?

Who’s Your City? comes close to diving into this issue. When I read this part of the book, I was on the edge of my seat.

Escalating real estate prices can inhibit innovation. Many forms of innovative and creative activity – whether they are new high-tech businesses, art galleries, or musical groups – require the same thing: cheap space. That’s what Jane Jacobs was getting at when she famously wrote: “New ideas require old buildings.” These spaces, formerly abundant in places like Silicon Valley, San Diego, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and downtown New York City, are where everyone from Steve Jobs to Bob Dylan got their start. Cheap space in these towns is now hard to come by. Several Silicon Valley garages that witnesses high-tech start-ups in the 1990s have been turned into museums. When housing prices rise and buildings are converted into expensive condos or high-end retail shops, venues for fostering creativity disappear…

…They’re forced to move from apartment to apartment as their rentals turn into condos. When creative, productive regions become the province of affluent people who have already made their money (usually elsewhere), the cycle of local wealth building falls apart. At that point, Jacobs once presciently told me, “When a place gets boring, even the rich people leave.”

I have read this section to many friends because it strikes a chord with what we are living with every day. Condos are springing up like ivy, and fewer and fewer people can afford to live here anymore. Or they feel the place is losing it’s vitality and authenticity, as art cars become scarce and BMW’s are more prominent.

Even BMW knows its place in this equation. In this campaign, they appeal to the Creative Class (by name). The thing is most of this class could never afford a BMW, nor could the many other people in the city who help make it tick. This campaign is really aimed at the 2nd wave, wishing to benefit from what the others built.

In the end, what’s left out of these theories, for individuals and communities, is all the stuff that isn’t about money. Regional economic growth and might are the big measurements of success in the creative class model. But how does the majority of the population benefit? Are their lives better? Are they happier and more fulfilled? In many studies, Denmark is often cited as the happiest place on Earth. They are certainly not the biggest economic engine.

And what of human zugunruhe, the desire to move on, and experience something new? What explains some people’s strong desire to quit well paying jobs, giving up money and comfort, to take up teaching, social work or long term travel? It’s definitely not Economics.

This strong human drive for betterment, growth, new experience and beauty is the thing left out of these extensive studies, which ironically focus on the very people who revere these aspects of life most. The reason bohemians mostly do not profit from their action is that profit is not the point. It is instead small accumulating betterment of their own lives and the community around them. This is no different than other people who live in and care about a place. It’s only when other people arrive to try and transform that creativity into profit, causing displacement for the people who were there all along, that an Economic Flag shows up in the study, noting a success, a spiky place.

Why should the benefit and success be measured only when money is made?

Ultimately, it’s much less important what we measure than what we do. Maybe the earlier question should not be directed at Richard Florida at all.

So- bohemians, artists, gays, how can you, who create so much value, so much aesthetic, creative energy and economic growth, benefit from your own investments of creativity, and stay where you live to continue helping your neighborhoods and cities grow? Or is it ok that your investment of time, effort, love and creativity in the end only benefits real estate developers and chain restaurants?

buy the books of Richard Florida

read Richard Florida’s Blog.

Related posts:

1. I Want to be Richard Dedomenici
2. Across the Universe, The Power of Myth, 1967
3. Tekkon Kinkreet – Universally, Land Developers are Seen as Villains

I have all kinds of crazy dreams. I’ve had one of them for a long time, and I’ve never told anyone about it until now. Even for me it’s a nutty one. My secret dream was to be the first artist in space.

I had such a strong desire for this, I think, because all of our missions to space are so technical or militaristic. Yet if you’ve ever known anyone working in space travel (like NASA), you know how poetic they can be. My dream to be an artist in space is nowhere near as crazy as actually trying to get anyone into space at all. There is a certain long term humanity, a looking back on ourselves as a whole, a historic something that runs through these spaceborne intentions — from astronauts and engineers alike. Somehow though, that all gets lost. This is exactly the kind of thing artists explore. For much the same reasons artists are sent into combat, they should be sent into space. (And if you’re asking why do we go at all, isn’t there something better to spend money on? the answer in the short term is always yes. But long term, our planet’s species, including our own, have a much higher chance of surviving if we become interplanetary. This is covered in The Drake Equation.)

My heart skipped a beat when first hearing Laurie Anderson had been chosen as the first artist in residence for NASA. She’s the perfect candidate for this. Unfortunately when she asked “Do I get to go up?!” the answer was “No.” Sadly, she was the first and last NASA artist in residence. Representative Chris Chocola introduced and passed a bill specifically prohibiting NASA from having an artist in residence.

Little did I know that the first artists in space had already travelled long ago. The first was Russian cosmonaut Alexey Leonov in 1965 and the second was United States astronaut Alan Bean in 1969. Up until writing this post, I didn’t know that a small tile artwork titled The Moon Museum by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Claus Oldenberg and John Chamerlain was left on the moon by the crew of Apollo 12. There have been many other artist cosmonauts since then, of many nationalities, and many pieces of art flown into space.

This is in fact such a frequently pondered idea that there are several non-profits in existence solely to get artists into space programs throughout the world and get artists creating work for the context of space travel.

And Tate Modern, one of the top museums in the world, has plans in motion to create it’s next museum location in Earth orbit.

Organizations exploring art and artists in space: The MIR Network, The OURS Foundation at Ars Astronautica, and Tate Modern Space.

A great list of artwork taken to or created in space.

Artist-Astronaut: What the Future Told Us, a project by artist Debra Solomon.

Two blogs by on duty combat artists: Fire and Ice and Sketchpad Warrior.

In the Press: The Globe and Mail – Greetings, art lovers. We come in peace and The Times UK – Blast off: artistic adventures in time and space.

Buy related work: In the Stream of Stars: The Soviet-American Space Art Book (by Alexey Leonov and others), Apollo : An Eyewitness Account By Astronaut/Explorer Artist/Moonwalker by Alan Bean, Baghdad Journal: An Artist in Occupied Iraq, by combat artist Steve Mumford, They Drew Fire – a documentary about combat artists in World War II; and work by Laurie Anderson.

Travel to space on Virgin Galactic or Space Adventures.

Related posts:

1. Update on Art and Artists in Space
2. City Hostel, Seattle – Every Room by a Different Artist
3. OnTheBoards.tv – Performance Art On-Demand

There are only certain places that blossom in that certain way that creates Bohemia. Crumbling and eroding but more glistening and alive than filmed dreams. Some generations there isn’t one, they grow slowly until them bloom, only one exists in the world every 30-50 years. New York in 1974 was the last one. Though I am far away, I know today it is Berlin. I have written about my own Berlin desires before.

But fame and notoriety are knocking which is the Nero of Bohemia. When I read things like

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2185464,00.html
and
http://imomus.livejournal.com/320945.html
and
even back in 2002 http://nymag.com/nymetro/travel/features/winter2002/n_7902/

you know it will only be so much longer before transmuting into Aspen.

Culture is quicker now. Perhaps the blogosphere is like Miracle Grow to those special creative epicenters, growing new ones quick and large, but add too much and the roots are burned. Maybe as soon as Brad Pitt starts a new global film festival there and the pedals begin to soften and sag, the next Bohemia will have started to bud.

I hope it is in my lifetime. Or maybe the Warhol moment has passed.

There seems to be more related at http://cultures.gadling.com/2007/08/14/bohemian-berlin-nearly-dead/ and http://www.gadling.com/2007/08/14/across-northern-europe-why-bother-going-to-berlin/

Related posts:

1. Constanza Macras, Dorky Park – Back to the Present

I’ve just finished reading an illustrated autobiography that I’ll write more about later.

But it has me thinking. There are many people and places I’d like to know more about. Many times this kind of cultural learning and exchange happens through art. But where is the exchange when people aren’t allowed to express their true thoughts, feelings or nature through artwork and writing? How do we understand them, if we have no direct connection to who they are or what they think? We may be lucky enough to know someone personally who has lived there, but most of the time this is unlikely.

I finished reading thinking

The promise of an abstract “freedom”
is weak
against a real imminent threat
of death or violence.

There are many artists in history who have continued to create in the face of censorship and threats to their lives. My life has been very priviledged compared to theirs. I am inspired by their persistence and bravery.

Related posts:

1. Thank you Richard Florida for giving The Bohemians so much power. Now please tell us – when will we ever benefit from it?

After yesterday’s post (Getting the right tools vs. actually doing something) I read this story in Wired. Instead of waiting on a $4,500 paraglider that he could likely never afford, he built one out of plastic bags. He could have died using it, but instead he became a world renowned paraglider, one of a few from South Africa.

A brand-new glider and harness can easily cost upwards of $4,500. In short, these aren’t the sort of machines amateurs are supposed to build, especially not 12-year-old boys with little formal schooling… Cyril started small, using plastic bread bags for the wing, with lines made from orange-bag strings… Cyril stitched together the fertilizer bags to make his wing, using the wire for a needle and the rope as thread. He also built himself a harness, and even added basic safety features… “We used to see paragliders all the time, (and I realized), ‘Oh, there is an airbag to stop somebody from hurting his back if he crashed,’” he remembers, “so we used to put wine bags, inflated ones, in (our) harness.”

Read the whole story at Wired – Freedom Flight: Kid’s Homemade Paraglider Leads to Fame

Related posts:

1. Plastic Records, Italy
2. Making Art Without Unmaking the Environment
3. How Long Does a Bohemian Flower Bloom?

I read a New Yorker story recently about the cult of Leica cameras. Some of the most famous photographs in history have been taken with Leica’s, and photographers love them. But at $4,000+ a pop, you’d better really love it, and you’d hope it takes a great photo.

…as the camera has evolved over eight decades, generations of users have turned to it in their hour of need, or their millisecond of inspiration. Aleksandr Rodchenko, André Kertész, Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Robert Frank, William Klein, Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, and Sebastião Salgado: these are some of the major-league names that are associated with the Leica… Even if you don’t follow photography, your mind’s eye will still be full of Leica photographs. The famous head shot of Che Guevara, reproduced on millions of rebellious T-shirts and student walls: that was taken on a Leica with a portrait lens—a short telephoto of 90 mm.—by Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez, better known as Korda, in 1960.

Years ago I read that George Lucas stopped making Star Wars films after Return of the Jedi because he didn’t want to have to build the special effects industry at the same time he was filming. Before he continued, he wanted the effects tools and infrastructure to be at his disposal, not having to invent them along the way. A lot of people think the later movies weren’t as good as the first set (if they liked them at all), even with modern effects and landscapes of a thousand robots. Was the wait worth it?

Many great novels in the last hundred years weren’t made into films until recently because they technically weren’t feasible. The tools that existed just couldn’t tell the story in film form, at least not with a reasonable amount of time and money. At least that’s what they’ve told us about Lord of the Rings and Narnia. But didn’t they make the Ten Commandments, Cleopatra and Ben Hur with casts of thousands before computer animation existed? Lord of the Rings and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe were even made first as animated movies.

It took me a long time to find the right balance of art supply lust and actually getting things done. I’d think: If only I had a guitar, if only I had tungsten filters, a new watercolor brush, better paper, Maya 3D, an HD video camera, or a digital mixer… In the meantime, I wasn’t making much actual art, especially as the tools I thought I needed were so expensive it was a long shot I’d ever afford them.

Obviously I’m a great procrastinator, but the bigger question is still worth asking. When do you wait for the best tools or best circumstances, and when do you just go for it? When is quality important, and when does it just get in the way of doing something?

The first South Park was made with construction paper and magic markers.

Buy a Leica
or
construction paper and magic markers.

Related posts:

1. The Sci-Fi Corridors of Alien, 2001, Dune, Flash and More
2. Getting a $4500 Paraglider vs. Making One Out of Plastic Bags

Inside Japan (a bit like Berlin), there aren’t really serious art collectors. Inside Japan, people like Murakami and Nara make their money by doing corporate identity (Vuitton, Roppongi Hills) or mass-producing souvenirs… Art is collapsed into the mass market. Galleries are often in department stores, and often show what we’d think of as commercial work; record sleeves, airline advertising. But also there’s the wider perspective that Japan doesn’t really have a tradition of high art separated from design, crafts, practical things, commerce… And there’s no point in accusing Japanese artists of “selling out”. When Nara makes a puppy-shaped alarm clock, he’s distributing his work through the radically flat social structure of Japan much the way Warhol said he’d like to.

A great piece from Momus. Read the whole post on his blog.

Related posts:

1. A New Wave for Japanese Art

On large farms, sometimes only one crop is grown. Many times these crops are corn or soy beans. These crops are more lucrative because they are used in many processed foods and may be subsidized.

Small farms, on the other hand, often have many crops that rotate and change over the course of a growing season. Smaller farms may have smaller quantities of a larger variety of food and other goods. This may be less lucrative but is more environmentally sustainable, for the farm and the planet.

One solution to help small farms run in a more sustainable way, at the same time providing food that is seasonal and locally grown, is Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA). Usually in a CSA, people subscribe to a farm or group of farms. Subscribers are often given a choice of receiving a small, medium or large box, and might be able to choose how often they receive a box (twice a week, once a week or once every two weeks). Each box contains a small portion of all the things the farm has harvested at that time. What you get in the box is a surprise. Most of what’s in the box are common ingredients, like tomatoes, garlic, herbs, onions, peppers, and similar food (this varies depending on your location, since the farm is local). Some amount of the food is always unusual, and may have you looking up recipes, wondering things like “Hmm, what can I make with three rutabagas?” It’s up to the CSA to get the mix of common and unusual foods right, so that people look forward to what might be in the next box, but still have plenty to use in common dishes. If people aren’t happy with the mix, obviously they will stop subscribing.

Some CSAs have delivery vans that drop off boxes to people’s doors. Others have drop off locations, where all the boxes are stacked. Subscribers know where their drop off location is and pick up their box on their scheduled day.

The subscription model lets farms support the ongoing growing season with less risk. This way they don’t have to worry about selling an entire harvest based solely on demand and weather. They also don’t have to worry about putting so much money into the start of a season since some of that money starts coming back in with new subscribers.

So what does this have to do with art?

Why couldn’t a group of artists form a Community Supported Art program? They could get subscriptions to their work, and deliver a box of artwork from the artists every few weeks. They could offer different sized boxes, maybe different quality levels (some work is quicker or cheaper to make than others), and possible different types. (Music or Dance? Traditional or Modern? Paintings or Sculptures? The grand mix of everything? The adventurous subscribers could choose to get all types. Who knows what art would be in their box? Can you imagine opening a box of original art delivered to your door, having no idea what was inside until you opened it? It would be lots of fun.) The actual artwork included at any time would depend on what the artists had made, what was completed at the time, with a mix of smaller, easier to make objects with bigger, more complex pieces. It would be up to the CSA to make sure the prices of the boxes and mix of art seemed of value to the subscribers and sustainable for the artists.

This way, the artists involved would have a steady stream of at least some income, and a way to have guaranteed distribution and sale of their work before the work was even created. It would also allow the benefits and value of known artists to assist up and coming artists to become better known. Subscribers would have the thrill of getting a box of art of their own, from a range of known and unknown artists, without even having to leave their house.

I know various artists over time have sent out periodic small works to friends and patrons. But I don’t know of any effort like this, on a paid subscription basis that gathers and distributes art from a pool of artists.

If you know of something like this, post in the comments! If there isn’t something like this, and this inspires you to start one, please let me know and if you don’t mind, mention us so we get some love

I want this to happen!

I went to an afternoon of flat track roller derby, and even though it’s a sport, I could care less who won or lost. A lot of us were there to be entertained. Roller derby is dramatic and theatrical. Lots of players and whole teams have strong characters (whether real or mythical), and the opening and half time shows are fun and over the top. You could see a lot of artistic types in the audience who don’t go to many other games. There’s something creative and entertaining drawing them in.

But when the main purpose behind a performance is to get points and be the winner, is it art?

Figure skating, ballroom dancing and DanceSport, color guard and some forms of gymnastics are all artistic performances where the main goal is to get points and win. In most cases, performers are required to play certain types of music, wear certain clothes, and use certain prescribed moves.

Most of the performers are clearly exceptional athletes, are very dedicated, and have great artistic skill. But many people, especially the “real artists,” look down on all this. For me the problem has always been the limits put on the work — why would you limit yourself to only certain moves or, for instance, being required to twirl a fake wooden rifle?

A lot of people have trouble with the motivation. If you’re there to get points, based on how well you perform predefined and accepted moves, where is your artistic voice, your unique viewpoint of the world? Another motivation is money. Money motivation also brings the artistic merits of TV shows, films and albums into question, even beyond TV art sports like American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, and On the Lot. Artistic authenticity and innovation are often the measures of success for modern artwork. Motivations for money, points and winning are contrary to real art.

You might say authenticity and innovation are the point system for modern art. But who are the hidden judges? What are the secret rules?

When artists apply for grants, panelists often look for predefined forms that, to them, define great art. When ballet dancers come on stage, the audience looks for a limited set of predefined moves that add up to what they think of as ballet. When donors give money to a theatre or opera, they vote with dollars for work that most fits what they think art should be. Curators, promoters, producers, executives, politicians, grantors, donors, boards of directors, ticket buyers, book and music lovers and others are all doling out points. Many artists don’t like to admit we’re influenced by these points. We are trying to win money or notoriety.

The perfect modern artist is someone whose work pops out like flower buds, for no other reason and purpose than the artist wants it to. Money or status have no influence whatsoever. These are people like Henry Darger, who painted in secret his whole life. He was pure, untainted by desire for money or fame.

But if you are authentic, and you aren’t influenced by your audience or worldly temptations, how do you know your art is doing what you intended? Are puppies and shaving creme really disturbing and life changing, or only to you? Do dinosaurs make everyone think of birds, or just paleontologists? Maybe your art is just boring, confused and badly made. How will you know if you don’t listen? How will you make better work if you aren’t willing to change and learn?

In modern art, forming a fake rock band or standing on a street corner and shouting curse words at drivers can both be art. Dressing like your grandmother while impersonating Nixon might be your authentic voice. Maybe in this confusing open ended anything-goes arena, the points we get are the only barometer we have for whether our work is to other people what it is to us. Once we get those points, we can decide to change, to work for more points at the possible smogging of our clear intents. Or we can decide to remain steadfast, and risk pulling a Van Gogh – dying penniless with no recognition. It seems Van Gogh was right. I think the key is that, after collecting the points, Success or Winning is just ultimately affecting the world as you wanted to, regardless of what other rewards that might come your way.

Maybe the art athletes have it all figured out. Get the rules in writing. By the end of the night, be called the winner in front of a cheering crowd, and get paid decently for all your skill and effort.

Get In the Realms of the Unreal, the fascinating documentary about Henry Darger; or From Ballroom To Dancesport: Aesthetics, Athletics, And Body Culture

Related posts:

1. No Art, Only Entertainment
2. 5 Points, Queens NYC
3. The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein

Art has two constant, two unending concerns: It always meditates on death and thus always creates life. All great, genuine art resembles and continues the Revelation of St. John.
- Boris Pasternak, Russian author and Nobel Prize winner

A post I ran across on the blog Offscreen Space.

A common view of people involved in meditation of any kind is that they’re wimpy. They live in the clouds and forests among birds and silence, stay in big quiet stone buildings and don’t do much that actually affects the world. They’re just not realistic. “That’s nice and everything, you’re not hurting anyone, but get back to me when you have something I can use in the real world.”

The work of David Lynch is not tranquil, peaceful, naive, calming or any of those things you associate with meditation. It is often disturbing, blurring the lines between dream and reality, creepy and tense. So a few years ago when I saw him speak, after he surprisingly started a non-profit foundation dedicated to teaching meditation to the world’s children, I was perplexed. His appearance was open ended. He would answer any question people posed, about his work, the film industry, or anything else. But just by calling the event “David Lynch Speaks about Transcendental Meditation,” the questions organically centered around the topic.

The man is strange, but wholly captivating. It’s not a put-on strangeness. As he spoke, I theorized that his art and life were so strange because his entire inate metaphor system didn’t match anyone else in the room.

While answering a question about the stresses of shooting film, he said something like, “The stresses of the day, all of this anxiety you put on, it wears you down, stress, what I say is stress is like going through the whole day, wearing a big… white… rubber… clown suit.”
It was such a strange thing to say. And thank god I wasn’t in line of site, and I was far enough away he couldn’t hear me or the people around me. I held it in and buckled over with silent laughter, squinting my eyes and crying it was so funny. People around me were struggling hard to hold it in too.

I had never heard anyone describe anything as a rubber clown suit. The metaphor was completely outside the way I think (and all the people around me). I believe this is the secret element in all his work, and what makes it so unique and riveting.

Late last year, David Lynch released the book Catching the Big Fish, a book offering what he’s learned about art and meditation in his life. It’s kind of like an Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten for freaky artists. Some of it’s schmaltzy, but much of it offers great insight into David Lynch’s creative process, how he comes up with ideas and puts them on film, and on several occassions offers great insight directly for people who want to live their lives as artists. It’s in big print with lots of blank facing pages, so it’s a quick read whatever you think of it.

The span of the book is in these two quotes.
“I don’t necessarily love rotting bodies, but there’s a texture to a rotting body that is unbelievable.”
and
“Softer than a flower where kindness is concerned, Stronger than the thunder where principles are at stake. – Vedic definition of the enlightened”

Get Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch, or the work of David Lynch.

Related posts:

1. David Byrne – How to be a Musician in a Digital World
2. David Hockney’s Advice for iPhone Painting
3. Learning to Love You More – Miranda July, Harrell Fletcher and The Oliver Family

There is so much writing in the world, so much crap to slog through in an already hectic life. For a long time I thought adding another blog to the world would just add more noise.

But I’m an artist and I love art. For a long time, through various incarnations – dreams of radio and TV, print and online – I’ve wanted to share all the great work I see and hear. And I wanted to investigate why it’s important.

The same question about any new blog is the same as for any new piece of art. For the person looking on, Why is it here? Why should I care?

In a busy world with so much to do – laundry, dishes, picking up kids, working, on and on – how could you have time, why should you make time, to go watch a night of new modern dance? to see a play? to visit a gallery? to hear a band? Why should you read any blog?