Three pieces deliberately using historical stained glass forms

“Immigration Policy”, 26” x 20”, 2017

“Meadow”, 20” x 24”, 2018

“Demonology”, 23” x 27”, 2018

Click to enlarge!  I command thee!

 At some point, I think in 2017, I decided to do a few painted rondels.  Why?  Because they are fun, fast and easy!  Or at least sort of. (More on rondels here) The medium on all three is vitreous paint.  Vitreous paint is the term in the stained glass bizz for glass paint which fires on at about 1225F and comes in about ten drab versions of grey, black, brown and blah.  While a lot of technical hooha is enabled by the whole subject of the how to use vitreous paint, the fact is you can be very, very low tech with it as well.  Mix with water to your desired consistency, somehow put it on the glass (brushes, perhaps, but hey, you can finger paint, spray it, dab it on with a paper towel, whatever, with it if you want.)  Then you stick it in a kiln and bring it up to temp.  Then cool it down.  It’s not tricky.

You can add stuff to it, like gum Arabic, which helps it stick to the glass or you can skip that. You can mix it with various oils instead of water, or vinegar or turps.  Whatever—do your own experiments!  As your glass instructor I can guarantee one thing with certainty: something will happen.

Exciting glass shop talk: vitreous paint is not the same thing as enamels, which are colored and fire on at a different temp.  I don’t use them, so I have nothing to offer here.  (99% of the color in my work is generated by engraving flash glass.)

As for painting method, the rondels have sandblasted areas.  The “Immigration” one is all sandblasted, “Meadow” just certain flowers and the figure and “Demon” just the character.  I paint in stages, here is a link that will explain it. 

In addition, these rondels incorporate silverstain.  Silverstain info here:

General tips  

Ken Leap wrote a book which explains everything in great detail

And he has a pdf here

As for the rest of the three windows, the painting technique is the same.

So that’s the shop talk section of today’s lesson except one last very important thing: I am working with a part time assistant, the lovely and wonderful Karisa Gregorio, who gets credit for much of the cutting of the glass.
Now for some thoughts on the pieces in general.

Having made the rondels, I stored them away until such a time as a resolution for how to use them was revealed to me.  It is exceedingly rare that I have a complete plan for what I am doing at the outset.  Au contraire!  I usually am feeling my way through the process and I don’t wish to force conclusions on these budding, gestation “idea things” before they are ready.  Instead of imposing some idea or plan on them, I prefer to wait and let them tell me what they want.  Sometimes that can take years!!  (I keep lots of parts in progress in Tupperware containers.)

Now, someone near and dear to my heart likes to tease me about my use of copperfoil instead of the traditional method of assembling with lead.  As it happens, I was trained in art school to use lead.  My teacher, Ursula Huth, was in line with many stained-glass makers in her philosophy that lead is beautiful, historical and full of artistic integrity while copper foil is for amateurs and charlatans.  So, I certainly got the message about what she thought was the ONLY way to go about assembling.  I have heard it many times since.  (I stick with copperfoiling for a few reasons: 1. It is more suited to my technique of layering. 2. It is super strong, despite what some people say –read more here: https://jancikarts.com/the-copper-foil-vs-leaded-technique-myth/

3. It can look very beautiful if you do it well.)

Anyhoo, I decided, owing to the teasing and all, that I would show him!  I decided to make “Immigration Policy “and subsequently “Meadow” and “Demonology”, with traditional leading to prove that not only could I do it, but I can do a decent job of it.  Leading is unforgiving and difficult.

A note about the design of all three windows:  being teased about leading is only the tip of the iceberg.  For some reason, there are a lot of people in the field of stained glass who do not consider me to be part of their profession.  Now I suppose I could say “well who cares what they think!!!” however, I feel it is important to my work that it be understood in the context of stained glass history.  Without getting too deep into it, one of the main inspirations for my work is the history of the medium.  I am constantly looking at historical work.  Both the medium and the message of stained glass is at the very core of every piece I do even if what a layperson sees is mostly the subject matter of the picture.  So, it bugs me to be excluded.  I gather my work seems a bit to radical, both in terms of technique and subject for hard-line traditionalist to stomach.

These three rondel windows, therefore were conceived to be very, very closely allied with the Baroque secular windows which incorporate black, white and silverstained rondels into a matrix of quarries (diamond shapes with weird little pictures on them) or, in the case of “Demonology” bullions (round shapes.)  In “Demonology the idea for the colored bits in between the bullions comes from this window:

Medieval window with quarry design

Add caption

My design.  Cut by the fabulous Karisa Gregorio.

More thoughts on the pieces individually.  And please note that if I share my interpretation of the so-called meaning with you, it should not preclude you from coming up with your own, which   might be very different from mine.  I strive to be open ended in my imagery for this very reason.

"Immigration Policy"

“Immigration Policy”

Although the title refers to Trump’s policies, which disgust me, the piece is possibly about something else.  I make these images in some kind of verbal-free fugue state.  That’s my new word for “intuitively” which I understand is off limits in artist’s statements owing to its vagueness and overuse.  I hope “verbal-free fugue state” will explain itself.  Suffice it to say, I am not sweating over messages, meanings, or interpretations.  I am actively trying to go back to an age when I was able to make pictures without all kinds of layers of analysis.  My feeling is I will analyze it LATER…like at the opening! 

I was called to task by a good friend and wonderful glass  artist, Sasha Zhitneva, on this one, who is a dog lover.  She was pretty much horrified at the tragic scene, as would any normal. compassionate human, I would think--so what does that say  about me?  And had it been anyone other than a friend I might not have taken the time to think about what an image like this means…I mean, I am a HUGE animal lover…what on earth could drive me to create such a thing?  1.  The need to express my horror at how humans treat animals 2. The need to express my horror at how humans treat animals and 3. The need to express my horror at how humans treat animals.  I hope you understand now.

I also believe: the dog will never drown as this is a 2-d image and not reality.  Neither will the dog be saved. It is stuck right where it is in perpetuity.
I do not care about the people on that ship.  It’s all about how, in their vanity, they have harmed an innocent animal.  The piece could also be about habitat destruction, global warming…etc.

Partly inspired by this image from this book

Quarries.  No GMOs!

"The Meadow"

“The Meadow” 
The title was supplied by Astrid Bowlby!

This piece was one in a series in which I strive to create a human figure but simultaneously avoid doing the thighs.  Thighs are not only a problem section of any actual body, they are also boring as all get-out to render. So by planting her in a meadow, I could cover them with stuff.

I was trying to suggest either a child at peace resting in a lovely overgrown meadow or a dead body.  Your pick.

Meadow rondel detail

My feelings after Nov 9, 2016 (prior to silverstaining)

“Demonology”
…originally called “Trump Election Commemoration Plate Design” when it was just a rondel as a joke.  First of all, shout to Rick Moody whose bookprovided the title “Demonology”.  (He is a friend, I asked his for his blessing on stealing his title.)

"Demonology"

Well, does this really require any explanation?  Who among you hasn’t felt this way at times??

There are three chickens in this piece.  Why chickens?  You got me...

Thingummibob

One of the things inspiring this was my long abiding admiration for artists of the northern Renaissance like Bosch, Breughel and DavidRyckaert.  But of course, also the marginalia in Medieval manuscripts which is very imaginative and not bible-related, creating moments of hilarious juxtaposition, considering that it IS a bible that well-endowed, misbehaving in the naughtiest way pagan thing is appearing in (which some scholar could probably put forth as an obvious precursor to Bosch and the like.  He’s so often presented as coming out of nowhere….)

Just where in the bible does it mention Mr. Testicle Monster?

MANY artists have tackled the theme of “The Temptation ofSt. Anthony”.  Why?  I know why!  Because it’s an excuse to do all sort of fun stuff with impunity.  It’s the fantasy sci-fi occult art before modern times.  Anyway, “Demonology” is my contribution to that tradition.

-->

all photos of my work by Dominic Episcopo

Busy l'il hive o' activity

"Wild Life"  44" x 40"

 I finished this piece, which took over 6 months and then I thought...NOW WHAT?!?!?!?!? 
I decided to do some rondels...because they are fun...low pressure (or so I imagine at the outset)

 

 And then I finished this one into a full piece:

“Immigration Policy” 26" x 20"

 So then, NOW WHAT?!?!?!?!?    I hate starting pieces...so I decided to start a whole bunch on the theory that they would cancel out each other's scariness.

"Luster" 12" x 13"

The above small piece was a study...but I never investigated finishing it as a larger work.  So I started that and voila! She turned into a cow.  (Last summer I read "Prometheus Bound". )

 Here's the glass pieces for the character to be turned into a window at some point.

  Then there was the election...so I did this rondel:

And then after that, I began this one:

 This one was more of an experiment.  An experiment I call "How can I avoid painting the boring parts of the human body? (I.e. everything below the neck)."

 Here's the sketch.

 

And then there was THIS....sitting around in my pile of stuff, unresolved:




This blue thing is how she began life.  So I chopped out the head and gave her a new body which you see above.  But I didn't like it either.  So she sat around in a tray.  So recently, I re-thought it and remade it and she looked like this:


 

Again, I liked it better, but yet again, the proportions seemed wrong.  So YET AGAIN, I re-thought it and remade it and she looked like this: (and finally I can sleep at night.)

 I also had this experimental figure lying around awaiting attention:

 

Again the proportions seemed wrong to me.  So here is how she turned out after I rethought her:

there will be a table or something she is leaning on  someday....

 This sketch was in my pile o' stuff:

So I made this figure in glass and here she is:

 I was very pleased with this one on the first try. 

Here are two head kissing on my light table.

I also made this.  She supposed to be holding a snake.  Someday.

And then there is THIS!  You know what an emblem is?  Look it up.  "Semper Idem" means "Always the Same" and this is my favorite emblem and I have wanted to interpret it for a while now.

 

 

 

 

 

The glass

The sketch

 And...then there is this sketch:

Five drawings

Here are five drawings for new pieces.  Actually, they are officially cartoons, meaning they show how I am planning on cutting the glass.

I often start with a gawdawful collage of images of body parts, some drawn by me and some culled from the interwebs. 

Example:

Her head and bust are existing glass I have already made.
That sketch is enough to get going in glass, but I am procrastinating.  So I decided to draw them nicely.  I thouhgt it might be a good idea to be influence by the drawing style of John Flaxman--an engraver with a particularly clear and coherent way of drawing.

This one is based on an emblem I particularly love.  "Semper Idem" means "always the same", fyi.

I am really very upset by the election, and this doesn't begin to address what I think is needed in these times, but I had a few thoughts on the role of art.

Prediction:

The issue the arts will grapple with in upcoming weird times will be empathy.  I thought this before the election, and I thought of it independently, but then I started hearing he word crop up in conversations about often enough that it could not be a random thing.  And then the election happened…and suddenly, empathy is a DefCon Five thing, in the arts, and in everything.

In 1993 Dave Hickey said beauty would be the big issue of art in the 1990’s.  It kind of fizzled, if you ask me, but at least it became a topic one could actually reasonably discuss.  Before that, to mention beauty in a conversation about art was to sound hopelessly retrograde and right wing.  Beauty was Miss America in all its oppressive obnoxiousness. I bring beauty up in a conversation about empathy, not just apropos predictions but because of the relationship between them.  I will get to that presently, but here’s the spoiler, as phrased by Rodgers and Hammerstein, if you can’t wait: “Do I love you because you're beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?”

What the world needs now is empathy, sweet empathy…that aspect of loving your neighbor that requires that you imagine yourself in their shoes.  And by neighbor, I include your enemy, first and foremost.  Because empathy untested by that level of discomfort is mere words.

Before the election, I had luxury problems and one of my favorites was to fret over the role of IMAGINATION in the arts.  Now I know.  Without imagination, you are merely staring at your neighbor’s shoes, with no avenue for inhabiting them; such is the tyranny of separate consciousnesses.  Imagination is no luxury; it is the main gateway to empathy.  So this is a call for artists to insist on the value of their imaginations.  Show me what’s in your brain, so I can better be at one with you!  Show me how I can use my imagination so you can inhabit mine!

The second thing about empathy is near and dear to my heart and yet another thing that seems like a luxury problem.  Why is handwork important? I am sick to death of the post-Industrial Revolution notions of handiwork being good for the soul, that handcrafts are virtuous.  Sometimes they are just indulgent and escapist and sometimes craftspersons are creeps.  Why should handwork matter in our age?

Because it engenders empathy.  Here’s how.  Look at a manufactured item and look at a hand made one.  The manufactured one has no trace of handwork, but obviously the handmade one will.  Now, I hate to bring up Mirror Neurons because a philosopher friend of mine once made a terribly cogent argument to me that Mirror Neurons merely locate something miraculous that we have known for eons and that is that we have the potential for compassion and empathy.  Who cares that a scientist discovered where and how and named them?  The fact was always there.  OK, whatever.

When looking at a handmade object mirror neurons go into action and do their funky thing.  Even without a maker present making the object, one is virtually forced to imagine the act, thereby inhabiting the reality of another person’s human consciousness if only by proxy and only for a second. And that is damn well better than nothing.  Better, even than the idea that by being craftsy it will keep you from stealing cars or whatever weird virtue you ascribe to crafts.  (But that’s good too.)

Finally, empathy and love are obviously related…and they relate to the notion of beauty in the arts.  Beauty, as I always like to remind people, is not the same as prettiness.  Prettiness is pleasant and pleasing as well as measurable (Think golden rectangles, and Fibonacci sequences).  Hickey, in “The Invisible Dragon” where he attempts to resuscitate beauty, mistakenly defines beauty as “the agency that caused visual pleasure in the beholder”. But beauty, of course can only cause pleasure insomuch as it can cause pain…JUST LIKE LOVE DOES.)  Beauty, like love, truth, the divine and other grand abstractions must exist at the nexus of mind and body, they must be yin/yangs that give rise to their own opposite, in order that it be a full spectrum authentic experience.  In order to understand each other we must understand and love them as flawed, unresolved, contradictory and difficult.  And we must understand this in own selves as well.  When you love someone, this must happen and when you love an artwork it is the same. Artworks are, after all, human souls encoded into non-human form, so that we may have a chance to echolocate off them and discover our own consciousness in some "cosmic" context.  Beauty (I repeat: not prettiness) is the visual equivalent of love.  It is an experience without which we suffer as individuals and as a human race and often that suffering, that depreivation leads to extinction.  Because if who cares…then who cares?

So I will say it again, in these coming weird and possibly terrible and frightening times, the issue in the arts will be empathy. Long live love!

Art, literacy and images and politics, religion and science, oh my!

Seeing is believing!

 “Eros the Bittersweet” by Anne Carson, “Does Writing Erase Art”, Chapter 7, in Ellen Dissanayake’s “Homo Aestheticus", “The Spell of the Sensuous” by David Abram and an article by Marshall McLuhan and R.K. Logan called  “Alphabet,Mother of Invention” from 1977, all discuss literacy and make points of great interest to anyone working in the mode of visual images. 

The main point they all make is that literacy changes how we think and how we perceive—for better and for worse. Now, before you go on a rampage, know that none of these authors is suggesting we go back to pre-literate society (and they are all writers, after all!), but they are pointing out that literacy has a cost.  It may sound elitist, or even racist, as though saying pre-literate culture is somehow primitive, or predisposes one to supernatural thinking.  On the contrary!  This is not about making a judgment.  Literacy, as does any concentrated learning will, re-wire the brain.  And there are consequences to that both for better and for worse.

Literacy changes images from embodiments to representations.

-->

An ameliorative opinion is proffered here:

“In Louder than Words, cognitive scientist Benjamin Bergen draws together a decade’s worth of research in psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience to offer a new theory of how our minds make meaning. When we hear words and sentences, Bergen contends, we engage the parts of our brain that we use for perception and action, repurposing these evolutionarily older networks to create simulations in our minds. These embodied simulations, as they're called, are what makes it possible for us to become better baseball players by merely visualizing a well-executed swing; what allows us to remember which cupboard the diapers are in without looking, and what makes it so hard to talk on a cell phone while we’re driving on the highway. Meaning is more than just knowing definitions of words, as others have previously argued. In understanding language, our brains engage in a creative process of constructing rich mental worlds in which we see, hear, feel, and act.”

Regardless, it is incredibly foolish, as a purveyor of visual images, to assume that this remedies the situation.  To me, it just means, the news isn’t all bad. And even though I am more than willing to pay the cost (I love being literate!) I find all of this to be of crucial importance as it might have an influence on how I make images. 

Other points in four sources mention at the top:

·      Alphabets create separation—specifically, they create separation between our heads and our senses (thereby further enabling the Cartesian mind/body split). 

·      Writing allows for knowledge to be encoded outside our bodies and our experiences, into abstract marks on a page, which fundamentally changes how we understand reality and our knowledge thereof. 

·      Literacy changes how we understand abstract symbolic representations.  This change is evident when comparing oral cultures to literate ones.  In short, once something is written down, it has a more fixed meaning based on the unit of “The Word”.  Categories of abstractions are enabled like “the truth” or “goodness”, or, as I will point out “Art”.  These things now exist outside ourselves as cardinal fixed points of reference but have no specific referent.

The sorting out and pigeonholing starts before words are even formed. Alphabets separate each phoneme and designates it a sign. Reading and writing are processes of exclusion. Something must happen in the brain like this when reading: “chair” as the brain decides the word is “not a bed”, “not a table” and so forth. One of the books above (I forget which) talks about how reading is best done in a quiet area—without too much sensory stimulus beyond the text, while spoken words involve experiencing the breath (and sometime saliva) of the speaker.  Breath=inspiration, metaphorically speaking, a speaker is very much alive.  Written words, not so much.
In order to read, we  (westerners) are taught to interpret marks seen on a surface as corresponding to sounds.  This involves using our eyes, obviously and therefore the part of our brains given over to visual processing.  It has been pointed out again and again that although we are “hard wired” for spoken language, literacy is not an innate human inevitability.  Alphabets had to be invented. Abstract marks on a page…is that not drawing? But of course it is.  I wonder, does drawing lead to phonetic alphabets?  It certainly leads to pictograms, hieroglyphics and the like. 

  This accounts for the shift from “seeing is believing” to “seeing is interpreting”, and therefore more opportunity to interpret incorrectly.  We begin to shift from relying on dictionaries, not our senses.  I am not sure if I read this in one of these books or if this is my idea, but surely this repurposes our image-interpreting abilities.

In oral culture, things don’t always have a one to one correspondence to single words, but to phrases, which are sensory experiences with many nuances. We don’t speak by pausing to mark the end of each word, what we hear is an issuance of integrated sounds.  To wit: when you hear the Beatles' song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”  you are free to hear “the girl with kaleidoscope eyes” or “the girl with colitis goes by”.  The context determines the meaning, (not the symbol with its dictionary definition).

A girl with colitis goes by

In literate cultures one can have single abstract words, like “truth”, which are connected to concepts and are ratified by dictionaries which makes them less mutable.  In oral cultures, one can have examples and embodiments of “a truth”, demonstrations of “ a good thing” etc, but an overarching, separate, non-referential abstract category is not so easy to comprehend without being able to single out the word and hold it above other things as an entity unto itself.  Because it is not a singular identifiable entity as anyone trying to define “truth” or “goodness” can tell you.  It’s not a tree!  And if it were, you might have to explain why each tree is different from the next.

As anyone who has written an artist statement, mission statement or any kind of manifesto or declaration can tell you, its very uncomfortable deciding what words to use when writing something down.  Its such a commitment! Writing has the potential to survive, possibly forever, quite apart from any human body, in a way spoken language cannot.  Writing creates laws, contracts and other codifications with dire consequences in a way speaking does not.  What good is law if you can’t write it down?  Without writing you just have “he said/she said” chaos and laws that change based on the power and will of the biggest bully in the room.

In literate cultures an image is understood as a symbol, not analogous to the “real” thing but a representation, inherently an unreality.  Literacy precipitates a much stronger “fourth wall” as it were.  Literacy makes false idols possible. 

To oral cultures, images are “presentations” not “re-presentations”; they are embodiments and instances, a real thing, an exemplar, a truth unto itself.

In oral culture, seeing is believing and in literate culture, we are taught, “don’t believe everything you read”.  Needless to say, seeing becomes suspect!  How could it not when we are seeing sounds! Don’t believe your eyes!  A whole cascade of events occurs which make images more superficial and suspicious.

One could go so far as to claim that images are only sacred when they are embodiments.  They are profane when they are representations. There was a time when it was believed that holy icons were embodiments, not illustrations.  The icons were deployed as actual shields during invasion in the belief that whatever saint depicted would protect them.  It’s possible that it even worked if the invaders were reluctant to spear a holy image. 

Seeing is believing!

 And we all get to have these experiences first hand, for as children we are pre-literate for a while and we all create images that are nothing short of magic, with the power to evoke that which we wish to call into reality.  The idea of an image as a re-presentation comes when we learn to read; I’m guessing that’s when we become interested in “realism” and documentation.  But as most artists believe, images without spirit are bereft, boring and disappointing.  This is why so much art suffers.

Art in oral culture is tied very closely to ritual and religion, and possibly politics and has no separate category to identify it as anything other than “the stuff you need for rituals and ceremonies”.  In a literate culture, “Art” is a word, like “truth”, without a solid referent. “Art” became a category until the Renaissance, and its no coincidence that this is the time “Fine Art” became a Liberal Art and became “teachable”, in theory.

As an image-maker, I would think, it is important for an artist to be keenly aware of all this.  One might attempt to reclaim their visual cortex for a more pure vision, or at least encourage it to multitask.  At the very least, artists should be aware that they can’t see like they used to before first grade (or whenever reading and writing is taught nowadays).  In deploying narrative or even “subject matter”, one should have a sense of how this will be “read” rather than seen. 

As for artists using text in their work, it is not enough to use a lovely, poetic turn of a phrase or a profound passage of prose in conjunction with appropriate accompanying visuals.  There’s something about text art that reminds me of the child who was using a machine gun for target practice.  The text outguns the image.  They can look pretty together, they convey a veneer of profundity, but that’s about the extent of it and the words largely render the image subordinate, if not irrelevant.  

A second thing is the McLuhan article has the following passage: “The very word idea is indicative of the revolution in thinking that took place with literacy.  This word, which is not to be found in Homeric Greek, derived from the word eidos indicating ‘visual image.’”

Well now, how very fascinating!  Because I can tell you, I find the word “idea” as it is used in relation to art to be very, very tricky indeed, especially in my own practice.  The word “idea” is tossed around carelessly, with the presumption we all know what we are talking about.  But do we? How many people think in images?  I think its almost zero.  Even amongst visual artists, wherein on would hope to find a larger instance, I think its close to none.  I don’t know of any tests, but I would love to hear about them if you know.

At this point in our art culture ideas are fetishized to the point of nauseating, authoritarian doctrine.  Ideas are Important! Very, very Important, of great Importance, in fact! Being “thought provoking” is the entire enterprise of art! 

No young artist is granted a diploma until they memorize the following bit of dogma and are able to repeat it ad nauseum, ad infinitum in the manner of a spy being interrogated who repeats only his name and rank with glazed eyes and the fixed puils of a zombie: “I choose my materials to fit the idea.  Not vice-versa.”

Baloney.

I have ideas for artworks all the time.  They are all words—shopping lists for the most part.  And even when I am able to sketch something that has to do  with those “ideas”, the correspondence between the sketch and the thought is flimsy and insubstantial.  If I were to “make my ideas” I would be making garbage for the most part. It becomes further corrupt when I am in the phase of actual making.  I don’t conceive in glass and turning a sketch into glass is a matter of reinventing everything from the ground up.  By the time I am finished, whatever passed for the original “idea” has dramatically changed.  I am willing to say that there is no such thing as “ideas” in visual art.  There is only materials, process and design. Ideas are what happen at the opening.

To be as reductive as possible, there’s only one subject in art: “The Truth” (this is why we crave authenticity and sincerity, for what is the truth without it?).  That can be expressed as three arty topics: political truth, scientific truth or spiritual truth.

But, what is “truth”?  Is truth something to do with “goodness”?  Or is it something to do with “reality”?  Is it something observable or something deeper and invisible?

Is the essence of a thing what is “true” or is its appearance?  Is reality something perceived by our senses or does our thinking create it? Second of all we understand “truth” to be “good”.  But is truth good as in “accurate” or good as in “virtuous (moral, educational, etc)”?  How can truth be these mutually exclusive things at once?

Observable reality, it ain't pretty.

And this is why beauty is always at the crux of art, whether in disrepute or dogma. Because beauty suffers from the same problem.  Is beauty a synonym for the truth as Keats once said?  Or is it a method of concealing reality?  Is beauty perceived or constructed?  If beauty is the truth, then it must be good!  But is it good as in “sensual pleasure”?  Or is it good as in “good for you”?

If  “truth” is “observable reality” then art is either stuck being a falsehood, an artifice, removed from reality, at best mimicking it as a kind of lie.  Or it can do what it seems to be doing now and ally itself with the “truth” that is our current version of “reality”, science.  Hence we have a lot of science-y looking art these days. 

My point is that subjects for art tend to exist at the intersection of “beauty” and “truth”, and beauty and truth niggle around like agitated atoms at the intersection of body and soul.  Are we talking physical truth and reality here or mental?  They never seem to be able to take a fixed position (at least not for long). However, when they approach balance between the two, perhaps that’s the definition of great art right there.

There was a time when truth was clearer and it was defined by religion and for the most part, cultures were segregated enough to more or less agree locally. The truth was not even slightly in the eye of the beholder.  It was the exclusive property of God.  Art, in this case allies itself with religion.

Now, things are a lot more diverse.  God apparently died during the Modernist period and we are busy eradicating nature for financial greed.  Perhaps science will save us?  Empirical thinking seems true enough.  It ensures repeatable, peer reviewed results.  It is based on observation!  So now we see art making an alliance with science.  Hey, that rhymes!  It must be true…

As for politics, in this case, we see artists who strive to convey a moral truth.  One that is corrective and good for us.  One that makes up for what we lack, perhaps.

Political art is usually anti-aesthetic, probably because it wishes to impress upon us the harms of social wrongs.  When political art stands opposed to a cause it is usually ugly, as its “truth” is an ugly one.  When it is for a cause, it is seductive and attractive, as it is necessary to persuade nonbelievers in their “truth” (which they find lovely, presumably).

The problem with all these as subject for art is how to remain an embodiment and avoid being an illustration.  How to be an instance, a primary experience of this truth, and not propaganda, or a reflection of it, or merely a symbol of it.

To create things that exist at the very nexus of spirit and matter, to traverse, redress, and redeem the mind/body gap is at the very essence of what it means to be an artist. 

To favor ideas, to fetishize them, is to miss the point entirely.