i want a chuck grimes deep thought 22k post on art and politics and the web. seriously, i don't have a klew about art--theory-wise.
but, as you know chuck, art and working class.... well art isn't practical, right? and not only that, Art, Literature, Poetry, Cinema --it's for the elite, not for us.
so, what would be considered 'banal'?
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Not for us? The whole trip of visual art is exactly for us, as is any public art. Who was Rembrandt drawing, Caravaggio painting, Durer etching, Donatello carving--the freaking people on the street--the people they could hire cheap to sit still. And so we have them and can look at them. And they look back. This business of who art is for is truly some kind of American class hang-up.
What's banal?
>From my perspective the entire visual world we live in, with the
exception of those few people who can make me see. In this particular
case, Louise Dahl-Wolfe made me see Carson McCullers.
Here's the story. I did a quick search for photographs to use as examples. I was looking for Avedon or Lang, or Cunningham. I found this site and buzzed through it and then stopped on this photo. I thought wow, as hard edged and sexy as they get. Who the hell is this? I had to look up who Carson McCullers was--I was floored. Yes, exactly. Just fucking killer. After you read this post, do a web search on 'mccullers' and you'll see right away.
Louise D-W was a high end fashion photographer (and designer?) from the forties/fifties. Richard Avedon is/was the top fashion photographer of all time. Both transformed the cultural iconography of mass culture into art. The basic portrait, as banal a subject as you can get, and in their hands, it just knocks you out.
The visual world is crafted and creates the way we see. The way to understand how it is crafted, is to learn something about the craft. Theory doesn't help, because theory isn't practice, and in this realm, practice is everything. So, the quickest way to learn the structure of the page is to work with typography and layout. It teaches you composition. The point? Composition controls the general parameters of any selected visual media, controls the virtual world that you enter whenever you look at anything whether it is a printed page, a painting, pop cult icon, a photograph, a film, a landscape, or a human face.
And the point? Once you learn something about the craft and controlling its parameters, then you are in a stronger position to mount a critique of communication and construct a meaningful cultural theory. Yes, meaningful, as in an insight filled and thoughtful analysis--as in not a spin-off of somebody else's work.
Now, I don't want hear any complaints about not having the time.
If I tell you something point blank, you will not believe it, or you will quibble pointlessly over some detail that annoys you. Just, spend the time.
For example the whole thread 'Of gods and vampires' is already encapsulated in the photo of Carson--the complex psychological realm of Freud, sexuality, gender, pain, and the struggle to surmount or transform these daemons into art--these are some of the narratives of cinema noir. I mean, you can see it in the portrait. Once you realize who she was, your jaw drops--or at least mine did.
Chuck Grimes