New Website.

The picture is of my new website: www.allalonetogether.com  New blog posts will be at the new site.

The basic idea for this site is “community blog”. Plan was to set up a place where a smallish group of similarishly styled artists could share their works with each other, as well as, pool our efforts to create a site that offered a steady stream of new stuffs to see.

The idea began forming last year, beginning of the fall I think. I started taking a serious look at the “online art market”, talking to a lot of other artists already well involved online and realized the potential. I’ve had a website since about 2002/03, I’ve tried etsy now and then, blogged now and then, but never put a real concerted effort into it. Seems obvious now, but, just putting a website up and hoping someone wanders by is not an effective plan.

What I noticed while talking to other artists online and checking their “online presence” is that everyone has a blog, and a website, and an etsy, and and and whatever else. These are all fine, but either isolated on a lonely island, or buried in a massive un-filtered crowd. The personal blog/website is too small, the facebook/etsy is too big, either way you get lost, either searching or trying to be found.

The internet in many ways is like a perpetual flood. There is more then you could ever possibly look at every second. Could you imagine the internet without search engines? The most valuable service on the internet is some kind of filter, a filter you like somehow. I visit many mp3 blogs, if they cover a particular genre of music I like and I know they are going to add new content regularly, I will bookmark it and quite possibly continue to visit for years to come.

I haven’t been able to find art blogs that I liked in the same way I’ve been able to find mp3 blogs. So I thought I’d make one myself. The group is already made up of a variety of different artists working in various mediums, but I hope there is a cohesive thread between the work displayed and that visitors will find they enjoy not just one contributor but hopefully all.

The scale of the group is designed to give the members a sense of connection that a billion random twitter followers can’t give. It’s also there to provide viewers with plenty of cool stuffs to look at, without having to sift through a massive pile of whatever like some kind of landfill.

I don’t believe that my filter is better then anyone elses, but it is a quality check, a purposeful collection and just the right size, and if other people dig it, all the merrier.

And finally a big thanks to Lauren of thehauntedhollowtree.com she listened to me go on about the idea for months and helped get it up and running.

Top 10 Albums 2011

In no particular order some great stuff I’ve found this year, check them out!

Russian Circles – Empros  darker and heavier and even more impressive then ever. 

Cicada – Pieces (2011)
Genre: Modern Classical / Post-Rock / Cello
Country: Taiwan

The Dangerous Summer – War Paint   great songs, great lyrics, listened to this a million times already

Capsule – No Ghost  probably my favorite find this year, very interesting style in the over-populated “post-hardcore” world

Wolves_Like_Us_-_ Late Love  groovy post-rock or something like that, it’s very good whatever you call it

Darkest Hour – The Human Romance   best metal band, still. 

Wye Oak_-_Civilian 2011  very mysterious laid back rock stuff from maryland

defeater-empty_days_and_sleepless_nights  hardcore but there are some acoustic tracks at the end that are incredible.

Daybreak-Self_Titled-2011  aussie punk

Of Mice & Men – The Flood [2011]   heavy duty hardcore

The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe

I feel like I understand the “art world” after reading this book. At least some more of it anyways. Wolfe takes satirical, humorous, and critical aim at “modern art” and gives a quick and enjoyable re-telling of the history of 20th century art. Originally published in 1975 Wolfe’s re-telling ends just before I was born. I’d love to know what Tom sees in the art world of 2011, but for accurate historical perspective, we might have to wait another 30 years to find out what’s happening right now.

What is so valuable about Wolfe’s view on art is that he lampoons the ever so serious world of art, artists, dealers, magazine covers, and all the rest of it, and he does so with knowledge. I could tell that he really enjoys art, and this wasn’t just a target for his humor. He explains the early decades of 20th century art as simply edging towards “flatness”. From abstract expressionism to action painting, to pop art and op art and then finally pure conceptual-ism, each stage moved further away from the roots of realism and illusion and depth in painting towards the “holy grail” of a perfectly flat art, the kind that could exist on a piece of paper, like a typed word… a painted word.

The “joke”, that “thing” that the in crowd “got” about modern art, had nothing to do with how it looked, it was completely the theory behind it. Wolfe makes the point that if MOMA were to do a retrospective on 20th century art that it would just be massive reproductions of the articles written about the paintings, with, maybe, a small thumbnail of the paintings, just to show that the theories were real, as in they did produce more then the flat words on paper part.

The pattern is that each new “wave” trashes the last wave, everyone involved working so hard to figure out the next “big thing”, who can come up with the most complex non-understandable, “thing” that nobody else can “get” so we can all feel special in that nobody gets what we’re doing because we tried so hard to make it impossible and impenetrable. It’s sad to think that so much of art can be explained by such a childish race towards expendable fashion trends.

I’m sure many of the writers of the theories and the artists of the art were genuinely engaged and cared about what they were doing… but was Pollack really that great? was there no one else? right time, right place, right stuff? Someone like Norman Rockwell, whose painting is on the cover of the book, or Andrew Wyeth, ignored by “the art world”, were they really that bad? or just not following the trends. Nothing agitates the cool kids more then someone that doesn’t care to be a part of their clique.

Towards the end of the book Wolfe makes the point that this move towards “flatness” and pure theory was also a move away from the personal, and the evocative, pop art being the most obvious example of “art” that had nothing to say about the maker or to the viewer. And I wonder… where did this terrible fear of personalized art come from? why is it so taboo to be evocative in your art? how did any level of realism become the worst mistake. Even when realism does come back, it comes back as photo-realism, bland scenes of nothing in particular created in a purely technical fashion.

Is painting a pretty vase of flowers the most radical thing possible these days? …only if you could also write several hundred books about how amazing it all was.

Art and Fear – book review

Art and Fear is, I think, one of the more popular and well-known art advice books, and for good reason, it is good, and it’s short. Even so I only just recently finished reading it, after having it for about 8 years. This book was recommended to me by the first art teacher I had during my undergrad experience. She was a 1 class, 1 semester, adjunct that only had a BFA herself, but because she knew the head of the sculpture dept….quite well… I liked her anyways, enjoyed the class, she gave me her number on the last day of class. I remember I asked something about her poems… and she showed up with dozens of them, that she had handwritten, just for me to keep… she also brought over a few movies, and we watched Harold and Maude… I was about 22 and didn’t “get” any of it. doh!

But anyways, I have read the book now, and I get it. Art and fear is mostly about the personal struggle you have with yourself when making art and pursuing a career in the arts. Much of this could be applied to any challenging endeavor but I do think that art making forces you to deal with yourself in a specific and personal way, a challenge that I suspect surprises and trips up many. Fact is there are not many supports for artists, it’s hard to find any one or anything that can genuinely make you feel confident that what you’re doing is worthwhile. Art in general may be one of the most extreme ways of asking for acceptance from strangers possible.

Does anyone care if you make art again? even if they do, should they? why? Does anyone really need another pretty still life? does anyone really need another avant-garde installation? These are all good questions, and they are all debilitating as well. When I first started making paintings I was terrible, and continued to be terrible for years, but at that point I really didn’t know enough to have many fears and so I just kept on keeping on and made it through those early stages, and even had a pretty good time. And right there I think is the answer to art and fear, I started because I wanted to, continued because I enjoyed it, and wasn’t worried about the outside world and it’s opinions. It could be called self-obsessed or naive, and at some point you do need to take heed of the art world, but I think that clueless beginner point of view still has the answer to the fears and still holds the power to get stuff done in the face of all the reasons not to make anything.

Museum of Bad Art

Lucy in the sky with flowers, Unknown 24" x 30", Oil on Canvas Acquired from trash in Boston

Yesterday I saw an article on the BBC about MOBA, the Museum of Bad Art. I’d never heard of such a thing and at first I thought it sounded kind of mean to find “bad” art and put it on display for laughs. However, I had to take a closer look, just because the images are quite striking. What’s interesting to me about these paintings is that they’re not horrible, there is evidence of some ability, and some care, yet, somehow always poorly planned and doomed to be a twisted “what the hell is that?”. If the paintings at MOBA were simply beginner works, or very badly done, it wouldn’t work, it wouldn’t be entertaining; to really be bad, it has to meet some minimum level of “good”, so that it’s open to assault.

It seems from the MOBA website that most of these paintings were found in the trash or by “anonymous”, the creators or the recipients had already decided it was “bad” and so it seem harmless to poke a little fun. I have to wonder who is in charge of deciding what is “bad enough” at the museum, and then if their personal bias and taste factors into the final decision. Is it bad enough? is it too good? is it so bad that it’s not funny?

If you spend any time around Painting I type classes you will see plenty of very odd paintings, half baked ideas executed with a little bit of ability here and a total lack of knowledge there. It sometimes amazes me how I can find paintings in a gallery that show great skill and yet completely fall down in other, perhaps, obvious ways. But this is part of the development process, and as someone who has made hundreds of paintings, and half started poorly thought out ideas hundreds of times as well, I’m sure I have some candidates for the Museum.

The best part of these images for me is that they are unique, and they throw your expectations for a loop. Like you can almost make out what the intent was… but not quite, almost makes sense but it’s still a mystery, it makes you think, and for me at least, it makes you look and those are real achievements no matter what the original intent. It’s even got me wondering if it’s possible to make bad art on purpose… something I might just have to try.

:)