A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words (a song has a bunch of 'em in it)

"Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered."
-- Albert Camus

I tend to agree with 'ol Al there. Dali makes me want to puke in my mouth. Picasso seems obnoxious to me, and not in a "it stirs my unconscious so deeeeply" kinda way. But sometimes I get confused. Hey: I like what I like....


I've struggled my entire adult life to understand almost all visual art. I've been told what I should see in specific pieces, asked what I think of others, and been given primers and maps to categorize the rest. If I didn't get it (read: didn't like it, wasn't moved by it), then why would I care after I've read about it or been told about it's place in our fictional collective history? Is anything worth, well, anything, if it has to be defined in relation to something else? If it can't stand alone then should it have to be bolstered by things like it's time in history, it's place in a movement, or by the works of others?

Now don't get me wrong, I may not have graduated from high school and may have gotten a strange BA from a now defunct school, but I'm not a luddite entirely. Mama didn't raise no fool. I love photographs and have been moved by many of them (though I can't seem to create any worth the price of processing myself). When I see Goya's human violence and obsession it is never lost on me. Neither are Bosch's landscapes of cruelty and horror painted against fever dream visions of a fluid paradise. Occasionally even something more modern makes it's way into my memory. Lucian Freud's "Double Portrait" and "Girl With a White Dog" are sinister and alluring, full of both beauty and pathos. It doesn't hurt that he is Sigmund's nephew, either, or that, as the Screamin' Jay Hawkins of the art world, is rumored to have sired over 40 illegitimate children.

My cousin, the immensely talented artist Charlie Buckley, once posited to me that, "Beauty is truth and truth is beauty". As much as I trust and adore my dear cousin, I only find the second half of that statement palatable. Incidentally I've asked him to write a post here to expound on the idea more fully (and in relation to music) because I could be misunderstanding his meaning (after all, he holds the MFA...). But still, "Beauty is truth" sounds too much to me like Plato's assertion from The Symposium: "The true .... is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two ... until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is". Plato's belief that there is such a thing as absolute beauty (God's objective beauty) is ridiculous.

Unless you are certain there is a God - and if you are, might I meet 'em? - then what might a human illuminate about a God he claims to know but who's mailing address they keep misplacing (much less a reliable cell phone number, which would certainly begin with 662 or 601). Even for those of us who try to believe in something, we can't be sure. We can definitely never be sure of God's intent, lest we paint ourselves in God's image. I'll stop now before I'm pegged as an inquisitor or an all-knowing being. But you get the idea (of my idea, anyway) right? "Perfect" has no reference point in this world and neither does God, whether God exists or not. If this is true (and it is), then no work of art (be it visual or musical or a signed urinal) can do anything more than illuminate the human heart and the condition of man (and ladies, don't forget the ladies). Anything that strives to or claims to approximate divine vision (except for William Blake and a handful of others) is necessarily vacant. As Andre Malraux said of Goya, "He revealed his genius from the moment he had the courage to stop trying to please. His loneliness cuts right across the chatter of his epoch.".

So, if beauty has no mooring in this world then beauty really is "in the eye of the beholder". Of course, the beholder and their eye may both be ugly. They could even have an eyepatch and a crazy cane. Or a glass eye they can magically see through. Your decision. Mine too, please don't leave me out..... The battlegrounds of "taste" are too wrought with fun and awesomenesss to be passed over. Maybe our judgments of the hard rawk loving meathead aren't founded in anything outside of "taste", but that's enough to make for a damn good time!

As if I hadn't said too much, rambled on for too long, and not mentioned Dylan even once(!), I am continuing. Not by writing more useless shite, but by pairing paintings and songs. Just three. You'll make it. Welcome to "Rock and Roll Art History 666", students. Take a seat and get out your #2 pencil and college ruled notebook, please.....

NUMBER 1:

Hieronymous Bosch

Ship of Fools

and

Aretha Franklin

Chain of Fools

NUMBER 2:

Francisco de Goya

Third of May

and

The Rolling Stones

Street Fighting Man

NUMBER 3:

Rene Magritte

(see, there are exceptions!)

#21 Golconda

and

The Afghan Whigs

Gentlemen

--John Murry