What might help you get beyond February with your new year’s
resolutions is to create a list with priorities labeled A to D, where C and D
represent nothing to sweat over if you don’t get them done. According to
Anthony Robbins, if you do three things every day on any of your lists,
including C and D, you will eventually reach your goals and be a happy person.
That is, of course, if there is no economic meltdown.
For added help, try
a little new age motivational thinking by attaching images of your dream home, camp,
car, boat, jewelry, spouse, body, friends, children, pets, etc. from the
Internet or magazines to your A and B list priorities. Paste these images to a board
and place the board on the fridge door or above the dresser. One day, these
dreams will magically come true.
However wary you
might be of vision boards, wish fulfillment and mystic relationships between
imagery and reality, you are no doubt already performing what artists have been
hired to do since the stone age; mimesis and generating feelings of plenty.
When photography
was invented and the digital revolution added to the ease at which ordinary
citizens could obtain imagery, artists were left lurching. It’s no surprise
that in order for artists to survive they often became quasi-philosophers and
gurus producing pseudo-art, each declaring that their art was superior to the
last batch of artists in order to attract wealthy patrons, their lifeblood.
This created a phenomenal number of art movements in a short period of time in
the 19th and 20th Centuries. For every art movement
you’ve heard of there were a hundred others that never made it to the history
books.
Today, modern art
movements fall under the banner of “Contemporary.” This is a scheme to ensure
that contemporary artists are no longer constantly trumping each other with
their own brand, essentially invalidating and killing off other movements. When
Pablo Picasso died in 1971, there was a collective sigh of relief amongst
artists. He alone symbolized the entire modern movement, magnetically sucking
art history to his chest. When he entered Intellectual Byzantium, otherwise
known as the history books, which is essentially heaven for artists, it was
then possible for someone else to be the next great guru. But no one wants to be
left out of heaven, so an unconscious collective agreement grew under the
banner of “Post-Modernism” and then Contemporary art, to be more egalitarian
and inclusive. No one person, or one group, was allowed to be the one great
thing. Every artist got the chance to be a somebody if they showed in a gallery
and then catalogued.
Unfortunately,
this has lead to a permanent stasis, which critics call “Presentism.”
Contemporary artists have created a new problem for themselves: desperately
trying to be relevant without being too original or so new that you upset other
artists and critics whose lifeblood depends upon control. No one movement and
certainly no one artist dare take the reigns of art history.
Mind you, I’m
talking about the world of big galleries and art magazines. It really doesn’t
have to concern you at all, until you get an ugly contemporary art sculpture
dropped in your local park. Or a really ugly building dropped in a downtown
core. Well, maybe it does concern you.
In any case, in
your own home and life, you have become the artist. You won’t be shamed by
anyone these days for not owning an original work of art. Even by artists. They
understand. Framing is expensive. Original art is expensive. There are more
important things you can spend your money on, like the latest flat screen TV
and speaker system.
Every time you download a picture, make a
video, take a photograph, print a photo and hang pictures on your walls you are
being the visual creator. You create your own footprint with the visual imagery
you choose.
This includes all
those pictures you have of your friends and family, some that you share on
Facebook. It’s the posters of places you’ve travelled, the photos of past loved
ones, the pictures you have of your kids and pets and previous homes. It’s the
pictures of people who inspire you. It’s the teenager’s bedroom with the
spaceships and cars and hockey players and sexy girls and/or sexy boys and rock
bands and country music stars and… on and on. All of this is mimesis, images
reproduced and generated to give you feelings of pleasure and that act as a
statement of who you are and what you love.
Repeating images
generates feelings of plenty. Multiple images can reinforce the idea that
you’re active and alive. Repetition creates a sense of movement. This is why
you have more than one photo of a loved one in your home. It explains why we
take thousands of unnecessary photographs. It makes you feel comfortable, which
explains some people’s strange desire to collect things, including hoarders.
You generally feel better when the fridge is full. It keeps death at bay. You
certainly feel better if you hang pictures of your family and friends and of
places you’ve been and things you’ve done. You can look at your walls and see
how full your life has been. It makes death easier to take. Blank walls are too
empty and austere.
You are
satisfying basic needs once performed by visual artists.
But it’s still nice
if you do support local artists. If you want to stand out as someone of taste
and status, buying art is the way to go. What artists can do for you is enhance
the imagery that you have in your home by making it one of a kind, either as a
piece that is characteristic of the artist’s style or a work that you
commission where you instruct the artist what to paint or photograph or sculpt.
You can better create your own original personal history that speaks more to
your character, and adds to the visual world that you see on a daily basis. Photographers
can get a better shot than you and visual artists can apply metaphor and
allegory and fantasy to anything you like, making what you own truly original.
If the life you
lead is as good as it gets and you are happily settled, maybe you don’t need
that vision board. Maybe you just need a little enhancement. That’s where the
art world can help you out.
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