Art and the Homeless

Charles Addams was born January 7, 1912, making him about the same age as Jackson Pollock and Woody Guthrie. Social and political events would have formed the artistic sensibilities of all three. The cartoons of Charles Addams first appeared in The New Yorker Magazine in 1932. His cartoons appeared regularly, and, by 1935, had evolved into his generally recognized style. His darkly humorous visions of deviance, dereliction, death and weirdness, in general, appeared (posthumously) in the publication until 1989.  Charles Addams believed that if the cartoon needed a caption he had failed in some way, even if the caption was clever. When I was a kid I scrutinized such caption-less cartoons by Addams at length, uncomprehending, while waiting for the dentist. Mother noticed my interest and purchased several of Addams's bound editions. One was titled Homebodies . How bizarre! Mother despised comic books -action heroes, and the like; she would not allow me to obtain or read them -and I obe...

Begging is also work. Before you scoff, admit dumpster diving might be harder than it looks! The news media puts out stories, anyway, about some nameless vagrant finding money and other valuables mistakenly thrown away. Humor is an effective, if short duration, cure for social illness. Narcotics addiction is more common as alcoholism -if less visible. Drug lords may rake-in cash, but most junkies deal in nickel bags. Just one $5.00 donation can give a junkie the fix he needs. A beggar holds his donation cup between his feet, doubtless in fear of it being stolen, while he nods-off. He has had trouble even finding one in the past. Any money goes to dope -not coffee. His solicitation would get better results, however, if he were to push the cup further away. Many passersby who might otherwise give may be intimidated by getting too close. Nodding-off is a sure sign of a junkie. The donation cup is for a fix. A person desperate for spare change stands and actively solicits contribution. Hit...

The subject of my painting and graphic art is not homelessness as such, or, condescendingly, "The Homeless," but the sociology of people who live in the streets. I wonder, what personal misfortune led to the displaced person living in the street? This is not a hypothetical question. It is a personal expression of my own feelings, stated in a rhetorical form acceptable to civil discourse. It is self-expression, or, as I prefer to argue, freedom of expression. That's not the aim of Sociology. What Sociology lends to the argument is empirical data. As an artist, my work is squarely situated in the Realist camp. I'm not a fiction writer, even if my sources include the extensive fictional literature concerning the vagabond.  I should quickly add that the larger portion of the data I use as subject matter is fictional. The science of Sociology emerged from the dark ages of speculation, much as chemistry emerged from Medieval alchemy. The 1923 copyright-free University of Ch...

In his book Bound for Glory , Woody Guthrie muses on a calling as artist, as a painter. He doesn't take that route in life, of course, but the idea was not unreasonable. The many drawings made by Guthrie illustrating his own story testify to his natural talent for art. But for a lack of encouragement to get the training necessary for an art career, he might have been a great artist. Woody Guthrie was born in 1912...the same year as Jackson Pollock. A coincidence, perhaps, but consider the many similarities in their backgrounds. Without the early encouragement Jackson Pollock received, he might be remembered today as a drinker, a drifter, and as a singer worse than Guthrie.      For the next few months I took a spell of spending all of the money I could rake and scrape for brushes, hunks of canvas, and all kinds of oil paints. Whole days would go by and I wouldn't know where they went. I put my whole mind and every single thought to the business of painting pictures, mostl...

There is a certain type of vagabond-age which may be included in the term Bohemian. It is a euphemism, to be sure, but like the derelict's descent from prescription pain killers to Heroin, it is the path of a lifestyle commitment having taken a wrong turn. Vagabondage differs in spirit from the loft-living, Bohemian, adventurer. Artists are willing to sacrifice comforts for art. What holds them back from the downward spiral of homelessness is the physical demands of art. Think of the artist in his studio. A cliché, it is true, and tediously so, because it is reality, not a product of the creative imagination. Before skid row loft living defined "artist's studio," the artist in his garret defined Bohemian . Improved circumstances allowed Bohemians to move up to more respectable residence. This usually marked the start of the decline of a great artist's creativity. The very thought of de Kooning occupying the imitative Eames House-inspired post-industrial claptrap ...

More people are addicted to opioids than cigarettes. According to the national prescription audit in 2012, Connecticut had 72 pain prescriptions for every hundred people, the equivalent of 72% of the population. In Alabama there were 143 pain prescriptions for every hundred people, in other words, more prescriptions than people in the State. Something's wrong with these data, captain. These totals have declined because of increasing awareness of the problem. Alarmingly, however, the rate of death by overdose is increasing. There is no vaccine on the horizon for this virus. A 2017 study in the weekly report on morbidity and mortality prepared by the Centers for Disease Control finds that addiction happens in the first 5 days to one month after start of opioid treatment. While empathy is optional for those not directly affected, it is physicians who must play the role of psychologist and decide if the long-term suffering isn't worse than the pain. Therapy is only a support when i...

Empathy is the ability to see life through another's eyes. The question to ask of the homeless is not why . The question is how they became homeless. Blame drugs or any other incidental cause you may prefer. Why, then, did the derelict take the drug to begin with? There is a monotonously same answer to that question, only differing in the personalities of different individuals. All of them say that Opioids, both pharmaceutical and illicit, made them feel like nothing they have ever known, starting with de Quincy, who said it filled a hole in his life he never knew was there. The feeling given by Opioids seems to fill such a hole in all junkies' lives. Opioids relieve not just their physical pain but a hidden emotional pain. It's not a kick. Why else would otherwise normal people, from secure, supportive backgrounds, take to the streets? What began as a cure for the pain resulting from an accident becomes a sickness when the prescription runs out, the prescribing physician ...

From The Sign of the Four , by Arthur Conan Doyle: It was a September evening, and not yet seven o’clock, but the day had been a dreary one, and a dense, drizzly, fog lay low upon the great city. Mud-coloured clouds drooped sadly over the muddy streets. Down the Strand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light which threw a feeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement. The yellow glare from the shop-windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air, and threw a murky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare. There was, to my mind, something eerie and ghost-like in the endless procession of faces which flitted across these narrow bars of light,—sad faces and glad, haggard and merry. Like all human kind, they flitted from the gloom into the light, and so back into the gloom once more. Vignettes, such as this, are my reason for reading Gothic novels. It is an illustration in words. It is the writer's brush were he a painter.  Out of veneration for the writer a...

It was by a lucky chance that I discovered Killing Season (2021), by Peter Canning, in the new books stack at the Public Library. I had been on the lookout for reference material dealing with the subject of my art (homelessness), its causes, and circumstances. Peter Canning is a career Paramedic. Nearing retirement age, he still works as a Paramedic, because it is his passion -and his experience is profound.  His other passion is writing and speaking about his first passion. Passion is not an exaggeration. He can't help himself, he cares deeply about the emergency victims he rescues. He knew some of them way back when. They are people in his own community who slipped through the cracks. I have to quote the following dialog. It reveals the human being that non-emergency persons never meet: "Besides substance abuse," I ask, "do you have any other medical problems?" "I broke my back cheerleading," she says. I remember her now in her red uniform, the scar...

A dictionary defines an egotist as someone with a personal agenda, as distinct from an egoist , who is simply selfish. If the disclosure of interest in his topic is confession by the journalist of motive, the implication is, that interest in one's self is the lesser sin. Whenever anyone expresses an opinion on anything it interested in something. Whence the sudden remorse? Unless, that is, it is denial of self-interest. The irony of denial is, it can't be both ways. Don't try to deny it! I declare in all honest I am not a critic. I am an artist. Speaking, again, but unavoidably, from my own experience, the burden of concealing the fact that I once wrote critically, as a sideline, about other artists, became unbearable. It has been said of such devious egotists, such as I, that, in effect, for an artist to even look at the work of another artist is as immoral as it is for a married man to look at another man's wife. That's two broken Commandments right there by the...

Drawing with compressed charcoal sticks always interested me for their very black quality. The problem with char- coal  was fixing the finished drawing. It cannot be made completely permanent using spray fixatives. This can create a curatorial handling problem. Un-fixed residual carbon dust will smudge glass, if framed. Luckily, it came to my attention that rolled acetate sheeting accepted acrylic paint (unlike paper), and that .003 mil sheets of acetate accepted white acrylic paint as ground for drawing with compressed charcoal sticks, and finally, given a clear acrylic varnish. It was a lucky discovery, because acetate is not a typical fine art material. It tends to be used in graphic design, which may conceivably categorize these images. The clear acrylic varnish coating seals the compressed charcoal drawing completely. The sheet is perfectly smudge less . The gritty, artistic effect then led to this series of homeless, and other, street people. Related, a quote from Dickens:...

 As representative of all that is democratic, the base exhibits complete freedom from both conventionality, and un conventionality. It is the other, a deep, human love for all, faith in rationality, courage, candor, energy, and the instinct for unity. He is no artist who plays-down the disturbing reality, in order to flatter respectability. And it is a proof of his realism, of his candor, that for the most part those for whom he cares, care little for him. Conventionality rules every class in the community. No one is too base, too degraded, to be a subject of art. This is no mere sentiment. Many works of art tell of tenderness and charity towards the “dregs of humanity.”  That a man is a human being is enough to be honored. However low he may have fallen, yet, something of ourselves can be seen in him. I am no moralist. It is the hypocrite which always finds something in life to criticize in art. The graphic art of Brian Higgins can be viewed at: https://fineartamerica.com/pro...

The Killing Season: A Paramedic's Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Opioid Epidemic , a book by Peter Canning, a 25-year ambulance paramedic, pulsates with the reality of the living street. It is a unique perspective for an artist lingering on the difficult subject of dereliction and art. of As self-disclosure, let me reveal that I have a Will, and it includes a Do Not Revive (DNR) request. Allow me to explain mention of this co-morbid, self-interest, for a moment. Narcotics addiction, too common for mention among street people, I find abhorrent. To be clear: It is a problem in need of compassion, not blame, but Heroin is not a temptation for me. Consider this dilemma, quoted from the book's jacket, faced by those who, like Peter Canning, seek to save the over-dosed and dying: "I set my cardiac monitor down by the young man's head. He is lifeless, his face white with a blue tinge. I apply the defibrillator pads to his hairless chest...a week from today, after the ...

Haunted relentlessly by the search for self, constantly searching for a knowable other defining personal identity, the city erases identity by imprinting its banality upon the individual. As the city is the lure to realize the self's highest potential, so too does it lure to the lowest depth. The city is a labyrinth. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde calls it "a labyrinth of grimy streets and black, grass-less squares." The graphic art of Brian Higgins can be viewed at https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/8-brian-higgins

For meaningful art two essentials are required: beauty and sincerity. The tendency of the art of our era has been a relentless pursuit of the first, but to regard the second condescendingly. An disproportionate effort by artists has been concentrated upon style -too often satisfied with a merely technical excellence. It is an engaging game--striving to be the best--but an art without sincerity is like passion without love.  A portfolio of my artwork can be viewed at my Fine Art America listing: https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/8-brian-higgins

The subject of my work is Homelessness. It is an ideal subject for art, because homelessness is a state, and a state is a condition of repose, therefore, the ideal state of a work of art. Jesus said, “The poor you will always have...” The poor come and go and live and die while the state of poverty remains. Poverty never goes away. Homelessness, therefore, is a human condition, one which exists “always.” The challenge, as an observer of the subject, is to exclude the non-states, those which are incidental to the subject. Harassment of the homeless is one such incidental. I am neither an advocate, nor a defender, of the homeless. There are valid arguments for "what to do" on every side of the problem. Neither is my work about beggars. Begging is a problem of such urgency as to be beyond representing instances of the problem. Begging is the opposite of repose; it demands a response, not the mean. Before continuing, I must disclose that I am not entirely disinterested, financial...

Graphic art: https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/8-brian-higgins One-of-a-kind art work:  https://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/1840403

Well, it's good to be back after so many years. I have tried a number of blog templates and Blogger is my favorite. My goals change and this new direction suits me as well.