"They have forgotten that they were once children and think they were never mad - certainly never become mad. It would be absurd to believe that there is anything mad or infantile about their normal adult lives. For them child and madman are amusing anomalies that belong on the outside. A little bit of anomaly is the spice of life, but for them, happily, not of everyday life."
I wholeheartedly agree with what he is saying here, but at times he seems to delve too deep into the negative aspects of our society. At least in this book, he seems to be bitter about technology and the entertainment industry in general, perhaps because postartists have brought the sacred art of our forefathers down to the world of the mundane, where commercial entertainment also resides. He believes that even when the post modern artists attempts to rival modern entertainment in a David vs Goliath act, the postartist is simply consumed by the very force he is trying to rise against. He then effectively joins the quagmire of banal worthless mediocrity, the commercial entertainment where he seems to be approving, promoting it, rather than elevating the viewer as the art of the past once did. Kuspit concludes:"However much God is on their side, the postart Davids are no match for the philistine forces of entertainment, seasoned and sophisticated enough to beat back any threat to their dominance. especially by co-opting it."
I was raised on Saturday morning cartoons, comic book super-heroes, Star Wars among others, and for that I may have a fresher outlook on the new and unique lore that post-modern era has bestowed upon those of my generation. I feel that there are a handful of individuals today who could tackle this Goliath. I ,for one, believe neither that High Art should be desecrated into banality by toppling it down from its pedestal to the level of the masses, nor that it should be kept high in its mountain peak, away from the reach of the average human being.
I've been talking about this in length with Lisa, and one day she brought to mind the example of Bruce Springsteen. He sings about the every-day individuals of this country, the "working class heroes" as John Lennon would have called them, yet he romanticises the subjects of his songs, effectively elevating the average person to a higher plane, much closer to that Olympian mountain peak where High Art resides. Lisa said as if to paraphrase the meaning of all his music "I'll meet you at your level then take my hand and come with me on a trip, just for a little while."
I had thought of another example then, from the realm of entrainment. Society has a very short attention span, and a bad case of Alzheimer's disease. The hot summer movies coming out of Hollywood are packaged as the ultimate entertainment for you and your family. It comes out in the movie theater near you, everyone talks about it, and even if the movie is exceptional good by entertainment standards, how much of it do we collectively remember next summer? How much of it do we retain two, three, ten, twenty years down the road? Time then becomes the best movie critic, doesn't it? Only the best that entertainment film-making as to offer becomes what we call "household names" We see this when we use lines from films in our everyday lives, such as "Run, Forest, run!" and isn't Forest Gump deserving of such admission into our collective cultural memory? After all, its a retelling of our human story in the mid to late 20th century America from the perspective of one extraordinary individual? An individual who would be considered an "anomaly" in society. So here is what I would call a film that meets us in the disguise of entertainment, meeting us at eye level, and elevates us a little closer to High Art's pedestal.
I believe that it is my responsibly in life to connect with humanity around me through recognizable iconography of my work, then elevate them to the higher path above the mundane, even if only temporarily. I want my viewers to join me in my journey to the top of the "Dark Tower" and experience the visions of 'other worlds than this' along with me, and hopefully see the visions, may be glimpses into a reality far more concrete than our mundane, 9 to 5 existence. I paint these worlds in the most archival material I can afford, so that posterity may also 'see the turtle and follow the path of the beam'
It may be that I'm not disagreeing with Kuspit at all, since what I'm doing is not Postart at all, its a return to narrative painting as practiced since the early Renaissance, using shared myths and symbolism of our time. As in my current Dead series, I'm using the unique modern phenomenon of zombie apocalypse to tell a heroic survival story from the perspective of average citizens, thus elevating them from the banality of their lives prior to a crisis. I took the opportunity to unleash my own personal anger against the commercial and political establishment that allowed for an immoral war for private profiteering and the collapse of our economy.
So what am I? A figurative narrative painter, I could belong to any time period from the Renaissance to Post-Modernity. I paint eternity through the human story, independent of time, though using my time period to connect with my audience and place my perspective in the context of History. Am I the David who will conquer the philistines? Not so much conquer as convert, perhaps, but I have confidence in my role in this life, and when I reach the Tower, I'll stand true.
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