Art and the Homeless

Roaming is in the genes of the human race. First emerging in Africa, Man subsequently migrated throughout the Seven Continents. Whence "Out of Africa" —the epithet for everything new, strange and curious. My own ancestors demonstrably settled in the Caucasus region of Asia, eventually finding their way to Europe, the British Isles and, finally, America. I have relocated several times in my lifetime. In a few of years I will have lived in a different city than the one in which I was born as long as the one in which I was born. Migration runs in the blood of Homo sapiens. When I was a minor, hitchhiking by middle class youth was less a concern than a sympathy, one which was not, however with the hitchhiker, but with liberal ideals. It was seen as a form of civil disobedience, manifestation in a small way of the mass demonstrations at the time, a protest. It was a statement, a stand, amusing to Walden Pond intellectuals and Woody Guthrie folk, leaders in the fight against The E...

It seems unavoidable to consider Whitman in the artistic treatment of the subject of the vagabond, the Beat poet, the Hobo, homelessness in general, vagrancy, the itinerant, and others like it. The artistic exposition of the subject deserves critical exegesis of unwritten texts, of myths, folklore, and legends passed-down by word of mouth.  Why Whitman? He set the standard for the sagacious, American itinerant, analogous to what Sartre called the aristocracy of the spirit. It is a type of vagabondage which is covered by the term "Bohemian." What it lacks of the rough virility of the Hobo life, the Bohemian of the finer order is largely an attitude of rejoicing in the company of a few kindred souls, while being out of touch with the majority of men and women.  The insatiable thirst for adventure separates the Bohemian from the fugitive. The fugitive flees by necessity. This is why the literary vagabond is excellent company. Having strayed from the beaten path, he has much to ...

Charles Dickens, in his Italy travel memoir, confronts artists of the classic epochs of painting for the sin of putting Church prelates' heads on heroes' bodies in the paintings he viewed. The implication that the commission process was corrupt comes as no surprise. It was as banal then as now. He smells a rat. Blaming The Church was not on Dickens's itinerary. Dickens arrived in Italy as a keen observer of humanity. It must have come as a delightful surprise to the worldly Dickens, who had seen pretty much every scam London had to offer—plus a few of his own imagining.  It was in the matter of taste in art which, to Dickens, was fair game. He leveled at connoisseurship because it is cosmopolitan, snooty, deserves satire, and Dickens felt morally justified as just the one to call it out as such. As he declares early in the memoir, he knows nothing of art-hates it-to be honest. Art is for aristocrats, while Dickens is a man of the people, but it was a golden opportunity for ...

It is my personal and professional aspiration that my artwork be worthy of the The Academy in Art. What that means is that eligibility for that distinction is not my call. Academic realism is neutral. I paint what I see. What I, as an artist look at, is my prerogative. My subject (what I look at) is common street people, clochards, if you will excuse my school book French. Given the choice, I'd rather be known for subject, than for an innovative, but idiosyncratic, style. Painting, for me, is a medium—not an end in itself. Having disclosed my professional bias, I will also disclose that I am an admirer of Philip Guston's work. He is a titan of American art—despite his last work and, possibly, because of it. His artwork has relevance to me in that my subject invites comparison to that of Guston's last painting style—the crudely painted, pneumatically-inflated figure paintings of the 70s and 80s. Not the gangs of hooligans in Ku Klux Klan hoods driving a car and looking for ...

I remember every act of cruelty towards animals as a child and still suffer for it as an adult. As I peruse my high school graduating class's website I note with grim satisfaction the passing of certain individuals with whom I failed to come to an understanding. All's forgiven now. Then I see (also deceased) schoolmates who were victims of general teasing, and whose side I failed to take then—as I would have done as an adult. One more life's opportunity missed... It is a painful fact of life that without misdeeds there would be no regrets, no conscience—no adults. This is outrage about acts of cruelty as an adult, not crime, but private acts of cruelty that can't be so easily dismissed as the misdeeds of childhood and adolescence. Pride tells me I didn't do that, no one knows, and yet, somehow, I'm unwilling to deny it for what looks like a dubious trade. My soul for a badge of honor? No deal. Is it cruelty to make homelessness the subject of art? Everyone, both...

As tribute to the Hegelian school of thought, and Schopenhauer, I present a parable of our humble origins in Africa:  I had not been to the Lincoln Park Zoo, in Chicago, since I was a child. At the time, I was planning to leave town for a change, and, while awaiting my departure date, made of it an opportunity to re-visit the zoo. By luck, I was present at feeding time for the big cats. At the approach of feeding time the lions growl, but I noticed that it's not a roar, or even threatening-sounding. It's a soft sound, akin to a cat's purr. What I cannot help but project of my own self into the  sound is an attitude of insouciance, even yawning, bored as they must be with the effortlessness of filling their bellies. It's too easy.  To me, however, it is terrifying. My throat constricts, as when one deliberately chokes back tears, but this throttling of emotion is involuntarily. I think of the Christians who were sacrificed to the lions in the Roman coliseum. The fear of ...

Criticism is not my job. I am not a critic, much less a writer. I write for epistemological reasons. I write in order to aggregate related data gathered from various authors and sources in one place. I perceive, or think I perceive, in the set of items a pattern. That pattern I then attempt to summarize, condense, into a meaningful statement of my own. Like Diogenes, seeking amid the many ( hoi polloi ) the "true" man (archetype), the meaning of allegory, as such, is, for me, the object of my search. It was satisfying to read the comments of Northrop Frye, in his Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays . He comes well-recommended as a critic of criticism. It is a work of meta-criticism, or, philosophy of criticism, and, I believe, relevant criticism of my subject. Briefly, for me, how to think about The Homeless comes down to humor. In the first paragraph of "First Essay," Frye comes straight to the point:   "In the second paragraph of the Poetics Aristotle speaks o...

One of the legacies of the Industrial Revolution is the neurotic strain it put on everyone. The stress upon the nervous system in the resulting era of commercialism has produced a feverish unrest which, while affecting society generally, has visited its misery upon a few souls with special intensity. I remember when a transient pushing a shopping cart down the street was ironic, and an almost ludicrous, sight. Today, it is so common as to be disturbing.  Shopping cart men have need of few personal items. Home is where the cart is. It's more baggage than a vagabond needs. He wants nothing that doesn't fit into a backpack. He's got no ticket, no money, not even ID. He's not sure who he is, himself. The road is his home. Perhaps he's a fugitive. Perhaps he failed to enter a shelter before it closed for the night. He may yet reach his destination. But it's the shopping cart men with a lot of baggage that make my heart ache. They look determined. A brute concrete aes...

A new series of artwork on the subject of homelessness is up, now, on my Saatchi Art listing page. A standard description for each item in the series is worded thus: "The acrylic sketch for a painting is on 3 mil acetate. It is delivered mounted using archival spray adhesive on a 3/16 inch foam board. It is ready to be framed, or the acetate separated from the foam board for alternate display, as, for example prints and drawings, under glass. It is signed by the artist in the lower corner with the artist's mark, a painted letter H. Homeless men, such as the one in the painting, and other street people who fall under that general definition, are the subject of my work. I discuss the subject, and my art, at my blog page: derelictiondomain.blogspot.com." This is a physical description of the item offered for view, and for purchase and delivery, according to the listing provider's terms (Saatchi Art). The small window of text provided by the web site for the artist's ...

While pondering what is to be done, the note of aloofness, of personal detachment in homeless men, their shyness and reserve, does not go unnoticed. Observe this tendency more closely, and it clearly exhibits a distinct emotional coldness towards Man, in general, a go-it-alone egotism. Homeless people of every description don't look helpless. They make one feel helpless.  "Home-less" is, after all, a definition of what is by what it isn't. It is an existence defined by, what might be charitably defined as an opposition to the routines and conventions of ordinary life. They are, each and every one, adversarial, rebels without a cause. They are not helpless. They are defiant. They own the streets.    It is an existence which may be compared to the ghetto (in the broad sense of an alternative society), but one with its own social contract, festering, like a ulcer, within the confines of the dominant society. If the homeless population is not a symbol of civic pride, neit...

I pity the sufferer, not for the sufferer's sake (What good does it do?), but for pity's sake. Pity is, or should be, a human reflex. It is an ethical determination—not a judgment. That is to say, it is not judging the sufferer, or rather, evaluating his condition based on appearances, but examining one's own willingness to dismiss the pitiful as pitiful—because feeling powerless to “do something.” It is judgmental-ism without being a judgment on the pitiable one in the sense of condemnation, but (as another idiom goes), like "throwing him under the bus." I couldn't look at myself. Of course, it is not in your power to help, but if it were, you would, wouldn't you? Why, yes. Why, then, suppose it is a failing? Nobody looks for misfortune, neither one's own, nor that of others. It happens. What I ask myself in this situation is how do I feel—what does it mean to me? And I never solicit concern, nor am I, (again) as the popular idiom has it, a “concern t...