Artchatpodcast 085

Recorded: June 3, 2013 Participants: Steve Harlow, Jim "Jimmy The Peach" Aaron, Ruth Parson, Allan Ludwig, Emory Holmes II, Ferrie Differentieel, David King, Steve suggests that the recording for the podcast switch to Google Plus Hangouts next week. A discussion about the difficulty of remembering passwords led to Steve recommending Last Pass. Emory wanted to know why we stopped using Hangouts last time, Steve said it was because the weaker computers on the call didn't handle Hangouts as well as they did Skype. It may be different now, Hangouts have been optimized more since the last try. Ferrie introduces the rousing music he produced for Jim's humorous mix of clips he found in Episode 84. Ferrie said he had to fire the first choir for singing false notes. The second choir he "rented" sang true. Steve proposed a 24 hour Hangout in September to celebrate the 100th ACP episode. He thinks the regulars can take shifts in the hangout and people referenced in the first 99 episodes be encouraged to join, if not live, then represented in the hangout recording, readings, or reports. Mary Fuller sent Emory a exhibition catalogue for a NYC show this summer, featuring paintings by her late husband, Robert McChesney. Cameron Gray has a show this summer in NYC, also. Steve says so far, Art Chat Podcast has been a Social Media failure because no conversation has been developed between it and the listeners and readers. Emory says he thinks the listeners and readers find the statements made and opinions expressed in the Art Chat are so authoritative the listeners and readers are afraid to interact. Steve thinks many in the audience have opinions or information on issues discussed in the Art Chat. Jim remembers the student protest in Canada and notes the recent world wide Monsanto protest was started with a Facebook page. Allan says he started reading, "The World According to Monsanto" - all the dubious things they've been involved in over the years, including Agent Orange in the American-Vietnam war. Allan got a terrible stomach ache and stopped reading it. Ferrie reports Monsanto is retreating from Europe because of public protest. Steve hopes Americans can get rid of them, too. David says Monsanto has contracted with Blackwater to monitor the activism. Ferrie says watch what happens in Turkey. Jim saw Kanye West on Saturday Night Live. He liked the graphics behind the band and thought the production was beyond SNL. Jim was able to forget what he knew about Kanye's overactive ego and enjoy the music. Jim says if a camera followed him around, he would not appear smart, either. Jim said Dick Whyte from New Zealand had posted the Kanye SNL performance with a review that analyzed the politics of it in detail - Jim felt was over thinking the music. Jim asks, have you ever thought all art was political? Do you now? Allan says he's never thought art was or should be political. Overtly political art he's seen has been esthetically mediocre. The only art that came out of Communism was film by Eisenstein, but when they began to understand what he was doing, they tried to shut him down. In this country, Ben Shahn Allan finds mediocre. What about Goya? Emory asks. Allan says Goya transcends politics, he was making personal statements, reactions to war and brutality he saw around him. Emory thinks Goya was profoundly political in all his aspects. Even his work as a court painter, making portraits of royal family, he was so honest, he depicted them as buffoons. They were so egotistical, they saw them selves being flattered by Goya who was smacking them in the face. Any artist is conveying something about the human condition in every work, Beethoven's symphony, Eroica(?), where he starts out with what is basically a love poem to Napoleon, then he finds out Napoleon's an asshole, he changes the title but not the music. "Even though I'm not a political person," Emory continues, "I couldn't get away from politics while writing my latest project (fiction novel, 'Yip's Last Case'), there was politics at every turn, I had to think about the politics of every interaction, I had to struggle with that, I had confront that this is a political situation whether I wanted it to be or not." Steve says it's hard to separate politics from culture. Politics is there. Emory says Steve's series on the workplace ("Work Ethic") is a delineation of the settings working people are in everyday and that's political, whether or not that's Steve's intent. Steve agrees. Jim asks David what part did politics play in his creation of the many plays he's written. David says one of his plays, "Backyard Beguine," written about America's involvement in Central America during the Reagan era, turned out to be one of the funniest plays he's written. Sometimes political art can be effective by moving it beyond politics into absurdity. He thinks absurdity is the most cogent method to address political issues. He prefers to deal with politics obliquely. Emory says that idea has merit. In the play, "Red," Rothko explains that he accepted the commission to make paintings for Four Seasons Restaurant in the just built Seagram Building because he wanted his work to cause the rich people to get sick and not be able to eat their meals. The paintings don't look "political," out of their intended context, but the artist had made a calculation that the paintings' spiritual high-mindedness would choke the low-minded, money grubbing rich who ate there. Steve thinks Rothko was overestimating the power of his work. Jim says Allan doesn't see politics in art, but he's photographing graffiti - what could be more political? Allan answers that while he sees deep political overtones in graffiti and street art, it doesn't represent an organized political ideology, each piece represents an artist's individual feeling. He thinks of political art as only art inspired by an existing ideology. Like Ben Shahn. Jim suggest Diego Rivera. "Political" has many levels of meaning, Allan says, he has spoken about this with many graffiti writers and street artists - it's rebellious, of course, it's illegal, but, each artist's work is rebellious in individual ways. That differentiates it from the kind of ideology found in the Tea Party, for example. Emory says Baudelaire made a more indirect political attack. He had mastered the techniques of classical poetry so that his poems were elegant and authoritative, but he poured into them vulgar and reprehensible ideas. His title, "Fleurs du mal" indicates they are an attack on the bourgeois notions of love and beauty. The poems do not motivate readers to a take a particular political action, but the readers feel an attack on comfortable middle class standards. Allan said when he mentioned political art, he meant art that was ideologically driven, a polemic, and art that may also be subsidized by various groups. That is not what Baudelaire did, or Goya, and it's not what graffitist are doing. They are expressing their feelings as individuals. Feelings are not the same as ideologies. Ruth wonders about political posters. Did Obama win because of that Shepard Fairey "Hope" poster? She thinks he did. She's looking now at the anti-Monsanto poster art - powerful stuff, she says. "If we're not making political art, we should think about it," How about Tea Party art, Allan asks? David says all they did was put a Hitler mustache on a picture of Obama. Ferrie suggest looking at this subject from a different direction. When you make a piece of art, it is stamp in time. The influence can be very large. Like the song, "Ohio" by CSN&Y. David suggest that (American anti-Vietnam war protest) revolution had a playlist which was effective at rallying people. Steve suggests that Arabic Hip Hop is currently rallying people to action in Arab countries. Ferrie thinks similar political music in Africa is having an effect. Emory thinks politics boiled down to it's essence is one person relating to another. That's the content of most artistic expression. This is why he thinks all art is political. When Van Gogh painted a view of his humble bedroom it's political. Steve says when he was an art student and trying to reconcile his painting and his political activism, he tried getting guidance by reading Marcuse, whose writings on politics and art was recommended to him by the most politically active people he knew. He gave up reading it, because he felt Marcuse and the activists didn't understand what art was. They seemed to equate the subject represented in the art with the meaning of the art. He thought that view was ignorant. Allan tells a funny story about politicians and art: when Calvin Coolidge was the US President, he was asked by a consortium of European leaders to help organize American visual artists for a big international exhibition. Coolidge said, "I'd like to do that, but we don't have any of those over here." Nixon promoted the National Endowment for the Arts because, "all the Jews and Left-Wingers like that stuff" and he wanted to shut them up for a while. The NEA collapsed upon itself, so now, it only gives to institutions and basket weavers in old age home drooling. Emory suggests they may need the baskets to catch the drool.

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