We apologize for taking so long to find you, our unmarked van was stuck in traffic. The guys in white have your favorite fitted jacket, you know the one with the nice long wraparound straps that you liked so well. Your room has been fixed up just how you like it too!  We have even added new softer padding in the walls. If you can just hang on a few more minutes we will be there and get you all fixed up. We know you can't wait for the new version of Thorazine we have created just for you, its a wonderful ride into the land of Nod.
Oh, and here we are... just a tiny stick, Ahhh there now, isn't that just so much better... Yes, we knew that you would be oh so very happy. Now lets just slip your arms into your jacket... there that's a good little sheep... yes, yes, easy now... watch your little head on the door. That's a good sheep. Easy now, we just have to fasten this cool new Goth seat belt, yes it's a chain but, its a very cool chain, all shiny, kinda Punk, Emo, Goth, with a little Hells Angels styling sprinkled on top, it's the latest fashion, your so hip. Yes, now isn't that better.
Now don't you worry, we have a surprise for you!.. Yes we do. We are going to pick up a couple of your friends along the way to keep you company. Yes that's their chains rattling in the back, they are going to get nice jackets too!  Isn't that wonderful? Now you just lay your head back and relax... Everything is gonna be just fine, you will never have to worry about another thing, ever again.  We are going to take care of you, no more bills, no more annoying phone calls, no more work, you never have to do another thing. Oh, and all of those people that got on your nerves, you don't ever have to worry about them again either. Yes, we have trains loaded with them going Far, Far away so you they won't ever bother you again. Isn't that wonderful? Yes, yes now, you are very sleepy, your eyes are tired, your head is heavy, so sleepy... sleep... sleep... "Damn finally! Turn here Joe, yes dangit! Right here. The sheeps best friend lives just around the corner, there, that one with the kid in the driveway." Floyd Alsbach

The Crisis of Photography gave us countless innovations within the visual arts; some might argue that Modern painting is the oft-forgotten twin born from the pressures created by photography.  There was a time, way back in the 1970’s & 80’s when photography was a hard won skill. It took a great deal of time, effort and practice to learn the craft.  Now cameras are everywhere and in everything, photography is literally child’s play.  A child can take a pic, and a grandparent can order an oil painting online made from it, take a series of photographs and get a 3-D ‘sculpture’ in the mail.  Heck, buy the hardware and sculpture is as easy as the click of a button.  Being a painter or sculptor will soon be as minor an accomplishment as being a photographer has become, unless we as artists act now to change it.

 I am not advocating the outlaw of technology. And for clarity I am no more impressed by Neo-Neo-Neo-Classicism as I am by Neo-Neo-Neo-Dada. What I am proposing is something far more radical, something that is anathema to most of art history for the last 50 years.  I propose that we embrace a term that’s been avoided among fine artists for decades (though still embraced by some illustrators and the Neo-Neo-Impressionist “en Plein Air” painters).  That term, the anathema, and dare I say it, oh yes I think I do, that term, that mindset, that paradigm, is skill.  Yes!  I said it, oh horror of thrilling horrors! I said the dread word, skill! Skill, Skill!!!  YeeHA!!! No not the superficial skill of faithful rendering, of slick photorealism (with the aid of technology photorealism is advanced paint by numbers for grownups).  The skill to condense, to interpret, to sift, to refine, to directly speak with the tools of the arts is what is required. The celebration of the tracks left by the individual artists hand as it works are what makes an artists work unique and lastingly powerful.

We as artists must raise our expectations of each other, of art criticism, and of art historians.  Over the last 40 years or so we have allowed the adolescent delight for sticking a thumb in the public's eye to become an aesthetic.  The mantra of the recognizable brand-like style writ as large as humanly possible is the mark of the Art World Serf, the captured, the co-opted, it has become a constant cliché. We as artists have collectively sacrificed the creative craft of making, cut it's throat at the Altar of Novelty in the church of Fame, let it bleed out into the media’s Rhyton, watch as the gallery Shamans mix in the wine, then happily or unhappily we all drink the blood.  Then we wait and hope, or pay for the High Priest-Critic’s blessing.  Once is kinda’ funny under the right circumstances (DADA), twice can be humorous (POP), the third time is just plain stupid.

Contemporary Art, the YBA's, their country cousins here in the US, Serrano, Koons et. al. have been reading from the DADA/POP script trying to give it a new edge.  They revel in their shallowness, their lack of talent, their lack of imagination, their lack of skill.  They pose as chess players when everyone with any actual depth of experience and intellect sees the truth, for them a decent game of checkers would be a challenge.

The re-modernist chord struck by the Stuckists is a good start.  If the Fine Arts are to survive we need more artists who actually have some talent and a compelling need to make.  We need artists who have persevered in the effort to refine their ability and vision despite a lack of recognition, or fiscal success.  We need gray headed true believers, not comedians who claim that sarcasm is the equivalent of irony.  We need artists who have some level of real intellectual ability, who actually continue to study, to read, to think into their middle and later years.  Those who have proven they are willing to walk without a path, alone, rather than to compromise. The constant crop of young MFA’s in their tens of thousands all striving to make their mark is just one beginning of a harsh, decades long winnowing process, not the end.  We need artists who aren't afraid to visually think out loud, with skill and thoughtfulness, not artists who have just thought of a ‘new’ way to scream.  If the visual arts are to survive this century we need artists who are willing to fail, who even when they fail, the failure is not a grandiose gesture, a spectacle, but rather a humble attempt to try, to learn, to keep at it despite all evidence to the contrary.  We need painters who can actually paint, sculptors who can actually sculpt.  Without Artist/Alchemists who use the incredible array of new tools given us by the innovations of the last 150 years, who blend those tools into the mix with the left us by the Old Masters, and then learn to play their own riffs with the result, we are doomed.  We have been given a fabulous array of instruments; the time for smashing them into smithereens or making the instrument itself the message is over.  The time for actually being able to play the darn thing has begun.

Floyd Alsbach

The Alien Jane Goodall and The Artists Creed: 

#1

The Fundamental elements of art are perennial.

     Imagine yourself an Alien Jane Goodall, sent from Alpha Centauri.  You came in order to study human beings, and have made yourself invisible to us in order to avoid changing our behavior as you observe. (The law of Cause and effect still applies, so you would want to minimize your effect upon us and visa versa.)  The development of your species and civilization would be very different from ours.  This vast difference would in fact be so great that it would afford you certain objectivity from which to observe us, that we could not achieve observing ourselves.  

     One of the human habits you might find most interesting is our insistence upon making things, not just functional things but special, what we would call beautiful in fact.  You might watch us repeatedly remake even the most functional tools, hypothesizing that this is done in order to improve their visual and functional appeal.  You would observe that we place great value upon certain objects.  Some ancient, some brand new.  We build large expensive structures, wherein we maintain and care for these objects at great expense, time and effort.  You would observe us often making pilgrimages to view these objects, taking our children to see them repeatedly.   You notice that among adults it becomes ever less common to make these pilgrimages.  You might hypothesize that it is some sort of right of passage to go to these places and that once the process is complete, it is no longer necessary to attend.  Perhaps you think these places as a sort of indoctrination center, where we are introduced into the special rights of each civilization.  The buildings and objects may have a kind of spiritual or religious function.  Several of these buildings are in every major city and many smaller towns, all housing ‘special’ objects from various places and peoples on the planet.  Yet, there seems to be some basic characteristics in common among all of these objects that our observer would see as fundamental.

     The first great invention of humanity may actually have been adopted from our lost brethren the Neanderthals.  This invention, far more significant than any other, is the simple, humble, ubiquitous line.  In every time and in every place where there have been modern humans there has been the line.  It has existed in many of the current manifestations for as long as there has been the written word, approximately 5200 years.  Long before that, we drew lines making crude maps of the paths of Mammoths in the snow while planning our attacks.  We drew lines upon our faces, and on the outside of our dwellings.  We made lines when we fashioned ever more straight spears and arrows.  We made lines when we fashioned their points fine, strong and sharp.  We marked out our territory by imagining lines that connected distant hills and a meadow edge.  Lines are our first and greatest invention, though taken for granted by us, to you our Alien observer this simple tool might be quite remarkable, after all a completely alien being could have developed completely different adaptations.

     You as our observer would note that given the significance of the line (from your point of view) human visual arts have not really changed significantly over the last 35,000 years.  (Upon his visit to see the caves at Lascaux in 1940 Picasso said; “We have invented nothing.”) Civilizations have grown up and fallen, been reduced to rubble and used as the foundation of the next.  This cycle has occurred many times. On the continent of Africa, the birthplace of modern humans, we still do not know the exact number of civilizations that have risen and fallen since we first ventured north. The difference between the painting on the walls of Roman homes 2,000 years ago and the painting of other eras is only slight from her point of view.  A variation of emphasis within the elements marks the great superficial differences we see.  The changes in the technology of paint and support, in the manufacture of brushes, canvas, panel or wall also show in the finished product.  When we walk through a museum, we might see very different paintings in each room, yet the fundamental elements are all there.

     If we were to observe a painter beginning work on a fresco in ancient Rome, and another starting a painting in the middle ages, we would find the beginning remarkably similar to those used by most painters today.  Due to modern technology, paint is a great deal less expensive than it was then, so today a painter can choose to skip the preliminary drawing phase if they like.  In all three works, line, shape, value, texture & color begin the process of making a visual image. When finished all human beings will comprehend on some level, the three images though the context is completely different.  In this way the visual arts, like music, is a form of communication independent of verbal language, ethnicity, custom, age, race, and nationality.  It reaches beyond our momentary place in human time, and the boundaries we make for ourselves called civilization. 

There may be nothing new under the sun, but the novelty of a new individuals experience of life from their own personal ordinary life, can be extraordinary in its ability to remind us of our deepest selves, to touch that secret part of us that is ‘me’ and ‘you.’ Work that can recall in us what actually is and is not significant in life, setting that most ancient and most common key into the lock and opening us to the timeless language within The Arts.

NOTES:

-The elements of visual art and design are; Line, value, shape, texture, color, rhythm, harmony, variety, balance, contrast, movement, proportion, and form. 

-Perennial as in continuing without interruption and/or constantly reoccurring.

It is my view that purists on both sides are peering into the shallow end of the pool while certain that they are seeing into the deep.

Here is the thing: If there is a God, the Creator of the Universe, then He created time and space when He said; “Let there be light.” Therefore He is unbounded by even the most advanced physics as we understand it today, or He doesn't exist at all. Evolution is His Creative process unfolding before us, or as little as we are capable of comprehending. Why does He use a process? Because He is God and that’s how He chose to do it (as best we can tell at this time.) However, given that He is outside of TIME & SPACE, odds are things aren’t linear at all, we just prefer to imagine it that way because we are too stupid to imagine the level of complexity actually involved.

-Atheist underestimate HUMANITY in general and vastly overestimate themselves.  Existentialists are the masters of this version of underestimation, the captains of the ships upon which fools sail.

-CREATIONAL PURISTS (the world is only 6.5 thousand years old) underestimate GOD and the depth of The Word He gave us.  Wich is a terrible sin, possibly the worst sin, which makes them captains in another fleet heading off of the same cliff.

EXAMPLE:

How would you explain advanced physics, the flexibilty of time and space, and the fact of BILLIONS of years to illiterate sheep herders SEVERAL thousand years ago? Looks to me like Genesis does a pretty darn good job under the circumstances.  BTW don't think that story telling them was similar in any way to what it is today.  Stories that were passed down through the generations were memorized from early childhood. The penalty for adding to or taking away was a rather severe form of death.

Atheists and many religious ignore a fundamental tenant of Advanced Science and Theology, the law of cause and effect; “Everything has a cause, therefore everything has an affect.” It’s really a quite simple either/or if you think about it.

NOTE: 

1.  "And Eli said: I did not call you, go back to sleep."

When Keynes wrote economies were far less complex.  Money was simple (either precious metals or paper money representing precious metals) and the world was far less interwoven. For his time some of Keynes ideas made perfect sense, and SOME of them did work.

Now; with ever more dense layers of complexity, an interdependent global economy, complex i.e., more or less symbolic money and the lack of depth in inventory of all kinds (except those dollar coins at the treasury) the ideas of Keynes are quaint. Sort of like science before Einstein (or Newton) and science after Einstein. This is what even some prominent economists, even the Nobel economist Paul Krugman doesn't comprehend.  Applying Keynes theory to our present day economy is like trying to retain the paradigm of Copernicus (a circular solar system) while attempting space travel. It just ain't-a-gonna work son!

  As an artist observer, the events of the last four years have become a sad exercise in surrealist theatre retro-redux.

What is truly radical today? 

In order to answer this question we might first consider what is conventional? 

In 21st Century visual arts any work directly related to DaDa is something of a hollow imitation, often no more important or valuable than plastic flowers.   The genius of the DaDa master Duchamp's most emblematic works lies in their intentionality as a one shot deal, impossible to imitate without making the imitator the butt of the joke.  Directly or obviously imitating these works is no different from imitating the inimitable works of Jackson Pollock, Claude Monet, Picasso, etc.  Both Duchamp and Pollock intentionally closed the door behind them, and locked it tight.  Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, of the 2nd DaDa movement POP, saw this and avoided the trap by adding lessons from the abstract expressionists Dekooning, Pollock, et.al.,  as well as Duchamp & Co.  Blending it all into an interesting soup all their own.  Fortunately they also learned from Dekooning and left their doors open for others to follow.  Warhol fell into Duchamp's trap, and found himself like a Bubble Gum Rock Star, stuck on an ever diminishing stage playing his very few adolescent hits.

Trust your inward human nature, and the initial response of ordinary people, the art lite considered sophisticated and above the understanding of mere ordinary 'uninformed' people by Late Post-Modernists is every bit as insipid, as vacuous, as shallow as it appears at first glance.  There is no hidden depth, no mystery, no aesthetic emotion... Nothing to 'understand or 'get' in that work. The work of Serranno, Emin, Hirst, Ofili, McArthey, Koons et. al. is every bit the hackneyed con it first appears to those who have not lost their common sense.  When in doubt, ask the secretary down the street,  a receptionist, janitor, or heck just ask the trashmen, they can separate the garbage from valuables at a glance.

Ordinary people, working class people expressing sincere emotions and real experiences with honesty is more valuable than anything made by these candy colored charlatans. 

A 21st Century Artists' Creed:
(also known as the X-Post Creed.)

1. The fundamental elements of art are perennial.

2. Precedence, fame, and influence are irrelevant to aesthetics.

3. Gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, origin, spirituality, temperament et al, are incidental to the merits of the work itself.

4. The concepts, idea, explanation, rational or intent are subservient to the potency of the work.

5. The artists’ hand is vital.

6. Work that intentionally harms, encourages the harm, or celebrates the harm of a sentient being is not Fine Art.  (Even when floating in formaldehyde.)

7. Place, time, and experience transmuted through a rich interior life are the heart of the Arts.

8. Media, technology, technique and process are means, not the end.

9. Politics are transient… Art remains.

10. Integrity, humility, curiosity, and honest effort are the artists’ best route to acquiring the necessary knowledge, skills & understanding.

11. The Arts’ ancient resonance speaks from our most inward, unique, yet universal living language (our prime language) whose foundations we each build upon our earliest and inmost experiences.

12.  Aesthetic beauty lies in the skillful construction of harmonic balance... wherein is allowed to creep the craven trespass of ecstatic passion.  In a masterpiece this tincture is then held in an ever so tenuous, yet lasting pause.

F.A. Alsbach

(Originally part of an art history lecture given at Missouri Valley College, Spring 2010, which cost me the emenity of the Art Dept Chair and eventually my job.  Ah well...)

Hypothesis:  The Arts as prime container & expresser of compressed tacit knowledge.

The Arts (in their largest sense) embody the ageless & universal living language of the human mind, the deep prime language of thought and of dreams.  Since we began the Arts have been humankinds method of containing & transmitting compressed tacit knowledge.  Thus my view that Helen Dissanyake’s term Homo-Aestheticus is more accurate than the conventional term Homo-Sapien-Sapien for modern humans, us.

 [NOTE: There have nearly always been everyday functionalities layered within the Arts; generally, the crafts have maintained their everyday functions.  All of the arts have retained a degree of functionality even in this era of faceted & tenuous social & aesthetic structure, even when the function is ephemeral, vague or intentionally not apparent.]

The Artist, by developing a refined ability to tap into the prime & primal language of the mind and encapsulate elements of tacit knowledge, learns to make hyper-containers of understanding, a coherent whole, uniquely crafted in their details by each individual, universal within the spiraling latticework of the fundamental structure of human interior knowledge.

This language, the core of self-consciousness and the central manifestation of the subconscious, is born as the mind forms in the womb.  The foundations are finished sometime in early childhood (where common primal experiences are the first building blocks of understanding).  These sensory blocks of experience become multi-media hieroglyphs carved on the cave walls of self.   The artist speaks to us first and best by tapping in to the flow of this language and communicating directly from one to another self.  This then is the source of Arts power and the reason for the influence it wields in a diluted state as mass marketing, pop music, paperback romances, and so on.  It is also the reason societies spend a great deal of time, talent, & treasure making, enjoying and caring for these hyper-containers of the deep interior well of emotional texture within every human life.

F. A. Alsbach (all copy and reproduction rights reserved)

1. The air is clean, no city grime.

2. Most of the people are honest to a fault most of the time.

3. No distant Sirens, if you hear a siren someone you know needs help.

4. Very few strangers.

5.  People are friendly and helpful.

6.  The people know and respect work.

7.  It's reasonably inexpensive.

8. Lots of places to fish and hunt... oh the horror!!!

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