Who gatekeeps the gatekeepers?
Black paintings, graffiti towers, telephone poems, and house painter gods
The new normal means corporate loyalty is more likely to be rewarded with a layoff than career advancement. Institutional recognition is often out of touch. And it’s all against a backdrop of algorithmic wasteland where no one understands how ideas and art and cultural trends spread. So why should we care about what anyone has to say about the things we make?
Lats month downtown LA’s $1 billion stalled Oceanside Plaza real estate development got a massive graffiti facelift — 25+ floors worth. That’s a lotta Krylon. Now obviously vandalism is illegal in the great state of California, and some folks still want to make the argument graffiti isn’t “real art.” But it’s tough to argue there isn’t something compelling about seeing that much of it in an uncommon, public space.
Francisco Goya’s famous painting “Saturn Devouring His Son” was named after Goya’s death, when it was found in his home. It was one of his late works painted directly on the walls of his suburban dining room sometime between 1820 and 1823.
Apparently no one told Goya that paintings belong on gallery walls, not apartment plaster. Now it hangs close by in the Museo del Prado, but I can’t help wondering what it was like to stare into a mad Titan’s eyes mid-bite every morning while you enjoyed your omelet and coffee. Maybe we should all paint more things on our bare walls? Maybe Goya was on to something?
150 years later the New York City poet and performance artist John Giorno started a novel little service called Dial-A-Poem. You’d call (641) 793-8122 and get to listen to a prerecorded random poem. Poetry, like all liberal arts, is for everyone. Giorno made it a public service.
On the subject of gatekeepers, after launching in 1968, Dial-A-Poem was briefly shut down in 1970 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. My friend Duane reminded me it still works today, thanks to the help of many arts organizations.
The artist Mark Rothko was, by most early accounts, an unremarkable figurative painter who eventually found his freedom and success in abstraction. Despite the attention, many critics dismissed his work — “a work of a house painter, not an artist” — which is funny considering seeing Rothkos in person can make someone “[feel] in the presence of a god that [they] do not believe in.”
Critics don’t always get it right. INXS was famously offered $1 million ($2.6M adjusted for today) by their record label to “go back to Australia and make another album” instead of releasing the one they’d just finished. The executives feared the band’s audience would reject INXS’s genre-blending new sound that didn’t fit cleanly into radio’s black/white lines. After the band went around the executives, secretly meeting with the label’s own radio promotion division and getting songs into the “college radio” rotation, their 1987 album Kick produced four Top 10 singles and and went six times platinum. Oops. The gatekeepers don’t always know what’s best.
I’m currently deep in research and early execution for the most Liberal Arts project I’ve ever tried — combining drawing, storytelling, graphic design, poetry, and my love for folklore and niche history into something (hopefully) compelling. It is stretching me, and often feels like my vision is outpacing my ability to execute. But that’s where the wonder is. The resistance means you’re alive. If something is going to stop me, I’d rather it be me, not some disembodied voice telling me what will and won’t work.
There are enough barriers to making art solely in the execution of it. Starting things. Finishing things — 80% done, 80% to go! Life is complex and demanding. It’s amazing that any of us make anything. But the last barrier we should ever worry about is gatekeepers, real or perceived.
Happy Friday. Be encouraged! Make what thou wilt. Just remember, “~*✧ Do what you love ✧*~ is great until it’s tax time and you have 5 LLCs”