NY Art Commentary

Express Yourself - It's Later Than You Think

Brad Holland

The Left Brain Doesn't Know What the Right Brain is Doing": It's my guess that those cutting-edge artists who attack tradition secretly believe tradition will survive to enshrine them as the wild and crazy geniuses who destroyed it.

"Sometimes you Gotta Break the Rules": One of the things not enough people appreciate about Modern Art is that it's philosophy can be summed up as a Burger King commercial.

Brad Holland © 1996

Why artists behave like crocodiles.

Craftsmanship: In traditional art, craftsmen worked within certain conventions. Occasionally those conventions would be redefined by acts of genius. In modern art, everybody has to redefine art all the time. This might have made our era another Renaissance, if suddenly there had been an explosion of geniuses in the world. But since ego is more common that genius, Postmodern art is destined to be narcissistic.

Art Theory:
The typical Modern artist produces a small body of work wrapped in theory. Some even dispense with the work itself and exhibit only their theories, typed up on paper. To me, this seems a sensible economy of style. If the purpose of art is to redefine art, then words should do the trick. There's no use cluttering up the world with redundant examples.

Self-Expression:
The crowbar used by artists to pry open the Pandora's Box of self-indulgence for everybody else in society. Fifty years ago, it was the dream of every bohemian artist to be seen getting out of a limousine wearing blue jeans and sneakers. Today, it's the dream of probably half the people in the country.

Emotion: Modern artists paint their feelings for the same reasons Fra Angelico painted Virgins. Retailing your emotions is the holy sacrament of psychotherapy, which is the twentieth century's version of revealed religion.

"Raw Energy": The heroic artist tried to master his craft. But for the self-expressionist, mastery is a form of denial. Self-expression is only authentic when it's raw. This means that a self-expressionist is at his peak when he's least handicapped by experience. In fact, self-expressionists who learn how to draw usually become mediocre.

Instinct: Back in the prehistoric jungle, all the animals who trusted other animals got eaten. The only ones who survived to reproduce were the ones who instinctively feared everybody and bit their heads off. This explains why so many people, like artists, who trust their instincts, behave like crocodiles.

Brad Holland © 1996

Brad Holland © 1996

Tatoos Improve Some People

"The Medium is the Message": This is an overall rule of thumb for baby boomers. Boomers also tend to confuse emotions for thoughts, sentimentality for sensitivity and public relations for public policy.

Political Art: Political art expresses the cliches you agree with, unlike propaganda, which expresses the cliches you don't.

Painter/Activist: I distrust anyone with a slash in their job description. I've met too many actor/waiters and too many rock musician/electricians.

Brad Holland © 1996

Mixed-up Media: In Modernism, reality used to validate media. In Postmodernism, the media validate reality. If you don't believe this, just think how many times you've described some real event as being "just like a movie."

Deconstructionism: Many people have observed that truth is stranger than fiction. This has led some intellectuals to conclude that it's stranger than non-fiction as well.

Forever Jung:  Postmodernists believe that truth is myth, and myth, truth. This equation has its roots in pop psychology. The same people also believe that emotions are a form of reality. There used to be another name for this state of mind. It used to be called psychosis.

Life Imitates Art:
Not true. Art imitates life. Life imitates high school.

The Counter Culture: Twenty-five years ago, I was part of the hippie press. Like a lot of kids back then, I believed that everything personal was political. In one way, my generation succeeded. We married art to politics. At first this was good. It brought the compassion of art to public debate. But increasingly, as artists exploit political themes to call attention to their superior morality, I've concluded that we misjudged the long-term risks. Namely, that we might produce a community of artists with no more integrity than politicians.

Brad Holland © 1996

Art & Democracy: Many of the contradictions in Postmodern art come from the fact that we're trying to be artists in a democratic society. This is because in a democracy, the ideal is compromise. In art, it isn't.

"A herd of independent minds":
A lot of artists say they'd be happy in a classless society. But artists are often the first to deceive themselves. Put them in the kind of utopia they sentimentalize, and in no time, they would be binding their feet, lengthening their necks or flattening their heads, just to be different. Artists will never be satisfied, and anyone who tries to satisfy them is a fool

Art & Technology: In the nineteenth century the camera made a realist of the man on the street. Now the computer can make anybody a desktop Cubist. Technology may or may not be destiny, but I doubt that machines will replace art any more than wheels have replaced feet. .