I was in the art supply shop recently and the man there, with whom I have an on-off relationship owing to the fact that he once refused to accept a card payment for £7.99 as his 'minimum' was £10, told me that there is a global shortage of POSCA pens and canvases of all kinds. I realised I had seen no canvases in The Works or his shop and the POSCA pen stand in Cairo's famed Samir and Aly art shop had been half empty. The world it seems, has gone art mad. And by art I mean the real world meaning of the word: the production of art objects. If something is treated as an art object then we should call it art. It doesn't have to be sold- it can be given away as much art is (and this is the reason I hold art to be higher than literature in the global halls of peace and understanding- so much of it is given away and gratefully received unlike that darn poetry reading you attended under duress...) I digress, but then digression is the one thing a blog absolutely needs in order to thrive. all attempts at narrowing a blog down stifle the desire to produce- I and my faithful readers know of some of my attempts to 'specialise'. This is doomed to failure- as are all 'company blogs' which no one in their right mind would ever read. The blog, in order to achieve, value must be an endless sea on which one sets sail hoping for land but not necessarily expecting to arrive...
Anyway, art, it is growing in popularity for two reasons- obvioulsy covid inspired indoors living has a part to play- but even before this pandemic I felt the air was changing. Words have become too polluted. They have been politicised beyond utility. The left brain plummeting of the world needs a natural balance and that is to be found in doing art and music. Words have a part to play, but on their own, they gang up against us with their current demands for ideological purity. When the words of past writers are deemed offensive rather than merely interesting examples of deformed or aberrant thinking then we are heading to a world in which words can only be used sparingly.
Where does that leave the blog? in which length and prolixity over time are its strong suit? As a form of documentation of the times? I see the blog form, with its odd 'foghorn' to the world ambitions as carrying on as an exercise in duration. Yet to avoid emptiness in must continue to address the issues that interest the blogger.
I end on the inspiration for this post: what is art? I now love it when people ask this question (used to find it jejeune) as my own views change all the time. Currently I believe that producing art objects (paintings, drawings, scupltures, exhibtions, installations) is what makes something art. Whether that art honours truth and beauty mainly or celebrates the death instinct is a place where even the same artist can be divided. But even the most death-driven work has to honour some aesthetic principles which are derived from truth and beauty, herein lies the ruggedness and resilience of artistic practice.