Art and the Homeless

“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” This comment by Robert Frost first came to my attention as an art student. I immediately made it my rule, more by instinct, than by reason. Liberal arts college art departments host a steady stream of visiting, post-graduate artists, all professionals of one kind or another, and each on the cutting edge. While all are engaging to hear lecture, a few push the limits of being challenging, going out of their way to be provocative. “Shock the bourgeoisie” was the battle cry of artists for so long that I expected no less when I matriculated. To be honest, I looked forward to it. In reality it was surprising how much had changed from what was contemporary when I was in school, and what had been asserted in preceding epochs, material by then familiar to all students of art. The new narrative was unexpected.  Thanks to sage advice, like the comment by Robert Frost, it began to make s...

Homelessness is an imposition upon the good nature of everyone who is not homeless. I have strong feelings about it and, as an artist, concern for the feelings of everyone about homelessness. I must admit I am helpless to do anything about the homeless. Homelessness is, or should be, a civil matter. Independent giving may feel good–but it is not legitimate. One doesn't have to be a meddler to be concerned, or to become an activist, of sorts. What is to be done? Make propaganda! My artwork is my propaganda. It is a message. It is also, incidentally, aesthetic. I understand that the era of great art is over. This is not to eulogize over the glories of the past. It is a program for the present. Today, all art is either propaganda, or it is decorative. This is not to compare one to the other, but to contrast both to fine art, which, as said, is no longer an option. A word, in passing, about fine art. Masterpiece art was an achievement, culturally and personally, for the patron and the...

Even the planet Saturn has been implicated in the plight of the homeless. This is not a scientific assertion, but when science declines its opinion, it is not a scientific matter by default. We must, then, consider the alternatives, or look away. As homelessness is a problem in itself, and as it is disturbing to the rest of us, that makes it another problem altogether. It brings emotional disturbance causing the suffering of others.  When material progress is impeded, mythology speaks to the soul. It is of artistic interest in that some of the mythology attributed to Saturn derives from its appearance. It looks like nothing else in the night sky. Its color is a distinctive yellow, an unhealthy hue, which I would characterize as pekid (< pique, peak-ed), being pale, wan, emaciated, sickly in color. Saturn's jaundice color, and its slow, but relentless motion make it a matter of foreboding, symptomatic of disease. To say it is unlucky is an understatement. It is believed to be at...

New paintings in oil of homeless men—street people—uploaded, after almost a year of studies limited to dry media on paper, and in acrylic paint on acetate. This subject and oil painting were made for each other. Poster paint, which is what acrylic paint is made for, does not lend itself well to expressionistic painting; unlike oil paints, which enable a virtually infinite range of gradations of blended color, hues, and tonal values, acrylic paint (as all water-based paint). Acrylic dries almost instantly, giving a distinct brush stroke, less effective than oils in making atmosphere palpable, depth being the difference between the flatness of poster art and easel painting. It makes for good camera-ready art, that is, art for print. Oil paint is notoriously unsuited for photo-reproduction, its inherent glossiness (for one thing) makes glare-free photography frustrating for the cameraman. Poster art is printed, therefore a process, unlike easel painting, which is as individual as the pain...

Sigmund Freud wrote about Michelangelo's Moses in a study unpublished by him, probably because it neglects the artist, dwelling, instead, on the subject of his work of art: Moses. From what we know of Michelangelo any insight into how his personality affected his production as an artist would have been welcome. We must be happy with what we have. Freud begins with this disclaimer: "I'll start by saying that I'm not an art connoisseur, but a layman. I have often noticed that the content of a work of art attracts me more than its formal and technical qualities, which are what the artist attaches most importance to. I really don't have the right understanding for many of the means and effects of art. I must say this to ensure a lenient judgment of my attempt." Freud makes it clear he's looking for meaning in art, not aesthetic pleasure, which he assumes is the artist's motive. Had he lived to see the total elimination of subject from art, as with Abstract...

"This is what went down," as we say today because, when it went down, it would have been anachronistic to put it that way. It was a school day in 1970. I was on the Freshman swimming team. After-school practice had just ended, and I was returning to my school locker to get my books, when the clock struck bad luck.  At that time I regularly carried a gym bag for wet swim trunks and a personal towel needed for use after swim team practice. After I got my coat and finished arranging things in my school things locker, I closed and locked it. Attached to the draw string of the gym bag I carried was a separate combination lock used for my gymnasium locker. Books under one arm, gym bag in the other hand, I turned to leave for home.   I was in a hurry. It was late, I knew mom was waiting for me in the car to take me home, and as I walked brusquely through a set of school hallway glass doors the gym bag lock at the end of the string swung wild and hit one of the doors. The safety glas...

Jean Paul Sartre's writing is a paragon of writing for peer review. It is declarative, spare, lucid, adaptable to any subject. Copied at random, a few examples from Sartre's dissertation, Being and Nothingness :  “The appearances which manifest the existent are neither interior nor exterior; they are all, they all refer to other appearances, and none of them is privileged.” “The self is individual; it is the individual completion of the self which haunts the for-itself.” “The multiplicity of consciousnesses appears to us as a synthesis and not as a collection, but it is a synthesis whose totality is inconceivable.” “The sacred object is an object which is in the world and which points to a transcendence beyond the world.” “The Future is the continual possibilization of possibles—as the meaning of the present For-itself in so far as this meaning is problematic and as such radically escapes the present For-itself.” These sentences, as everything in Being and Nothingness , are no...