ARS GRATIA ARTIS
In the elder days of art
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part
For the Gods are everywhere
H.W. Longfellow
How ironic that the greatest clarion-call to a nation of Philistines was made currency by a former immigrant from a Cossack ridden Ukrainian village whose main stock in trade was the promulgation, dissemination and manipulation of the public trust? Louie B. Mayer’s MGM was the last place you’d ever expect to find art as many a bloodhound and spaniel panting, exhausted could testify their vaunted noses not withstanding, yet these 3 Latin words art for art’s sake are exactly what this country needs to save it from its own self destruction.
As a capitalist nation we are being buried under a cascade of useless gewgaw, perpetrated by the availability of easy credit, forged by a system whose illusion of freedom is its bread and butter and predicates its success on molding any theoretical foundation into a malleable product to be bought and sold. This is what modern life has come down to: we are a country of consumed consumers consumed by consummate needs. God Bless America Tea cozies only $1.99! Capitalism is the ultimate illusionist that can transubstantiate at a drop of a hat and re-appear as something we cannot possibly do without.
Advertising in its nefarious stylings creates needs where none has gone before. Miraculously we are willing to pay 4-dollars for a cup of coffee and take pills because we find out our penises might be too small and subjugate our own identities by morphing into a bunch of tertiary stage, syphilitic sycophants wiling away the hours wondering what my life would be like if I had a sex tape, too. We are transfixed by celebrities gloating ad nauseum about their amazing cribs and wonder why I can’t have a crib like that too. I would like a Lamborghini and a Hummer shining in the Southern California sun. You can, bitch! In 50,000 easy monthly payments.
The Capitalist system offers little in a way of spiritual nourishment. Modern life has created a nation of wage slaves working just to go on a two week vacation, then spending the next year paying for that two week vacation until its time to do it again. Rinse and repeat. The essence of Capitalism is the capitulation of the status quo. The system creates the need and its citizens refuse to do without mortgaging its future by the willingness to make minimum payments in perpetuity. Unfortunately this pursuit of material goods is akin to buying the worst product ever made with complete dissatisfaction and no money back. Are we really satisfied to chase the virtual carrot and in turn sealing our own inevitable doom in the process? We have managed to bury the most important thing about being alive, the actual living of life. If existence in the United States is all about the Benjamins, where does that leave real art?
Art has been relegated to the remainder bin of American endeavors. Opera Houses and symphonies struggle to remain vital as their worth in the eyes of an indifferent society weakens. Funding routinely gets slashed from the National Endowment for the Arts. School curriculums are continually gutted of writing and art programs. How can a society survive when beauty and human dimension is shunted in favor of saving a buck? How does everything except the humanities get mandated as laudable for teaching to our children? Is this why our greatest masterpieces have less distinction than Kim Kardashian's? Art is the unguent that savage men must have. At its highest levels it quells the murderous drive that is fomented by the repressed knowledge that one day we will be no more. Artists create art on the hope of attaining an apotheosis that great art engenders.
It is this apotheosis that can bring people of all nations together. Art is the ultimate language that binds us all in the pursuit of some cosmic connection. Great art prompts the calling to life and is as close to the Godhead as we’ll ever get. That is why artists do it. No artist can explain the unexplainable, but it is the highest calling to try.
If mankind would only put down the remote and try to find a way to express itself, and realize that the diminishment one feels for not having the latest this or au courant that is really a call to arms. Instead of allowing a bankrupt system to whittle away what it is to be human, if we would only write a poem, sculpt, dance, or make music instead of picking up a gun, art can be used to push forward and embrace that mystery and make “art for arts sake” the mantra of a new age.
This is what I hope this site is all about, an ars gratia artis, autotelic eruption. I have no illusions that I will become famous through my photographs. My goals are much more modest than that, like being recognized on sight in my own family. Yet I will continue to go out with my light tight box, lens on one end, film on the other and attempt to solve the mystery of existence through the interplay of shadow and light.
As a capitalist nation we are being buried under a cascade of useless gewgaw, perpetrated by the availability of easy credit, forged by a system whose illusion of freedom is its bread and butter and predicates its success on molding any theoretical foundation into a malleable product to be bought and sold. This is what modern life has come down to: we are a country of consumed consumers consumed by consummate needs. God Bless America Tea cozies only $1.99! Capitalism is the ultimate illusionist that can transubstantiate at a drop of a hat and re-appear as something we cannot possibly do without.
Advertising in its nefarious stylings creates needs where none has gone before. Miraculously we are willing to pay 4-dollars for a cup of coffee and take pills because we find out our penises might be too small and subjugate our own identities by morphing into a bunch of tertiary stage, syphilitic sycophants wiling away the hours wondering what my life would be like if I had a sex tape, too. We are transfixed by celebrities gloating ad nauseum about their amazing cribs and wonder why I can’t have a crib like that too. I would like a Lamborghini and a Hummer shining in the Southern California sun. You can, bitch! In 50,000 easy monthly payments.
The Capitalist system offers little in a way of spiritual nourishment. Modern life has created a nation of wage slaves working just to go on a two week vacation, then spending the next year paying for that two week vacation until its time to do it again. Rinse and repeat. The essence of Capitalism is the capitulation of the status quo. The system creates the need and its citizens refuse to do without mortgaging its future by the willingness to make minimum payments in perpetuity. Unfortunately this pursuit of material goods is akin to buying the worst product ever made with complete dissatisfaction and no money back. Are we really satisfied to chase the virtual carrot and in turn sealing our own inevitable doom in the process? We have managed to bury the most important thing about being alive, the actual living of life. If existence in the United States is all about the Benjamins, where does that leave real art?
Art has been relegated to the remainder bin of American endeavors. Opera Houses and symphonies struggle to remain vital as their worth in the eyes of an indifferent society weakens. Funding routinely gets slashed from the National Endowment for the Arts. School curriculums are continually gutted of writing and art programs. How can a society survive when beauty and human dimension is shunted in favor of saving a buck? How does everything except the humanities get mandated as laudable for teaching to our children? Is this why our greatest masterpieces have less distinction than Kim Kardashian's? Art is the unguent that savage men must have. At its highest levels it quells the murderous drive that is fomented by the repressed knowledge that one day we will be no more. Artists create art on the hope of attaining an apotheosis that great art engenders.
It is this apotheosis that can bring people of all nations together. Art is the ultimate language that binds us all in the pursuit of some cosmic connection. Great art prompts the calling to life and is as close to the Godhead as we’ll ever get. That is why artists do it. No artist can explain the unexplainable, but it is the highest calling to try.
If mankind would only put down the remote and try to find a way to express itself, and realize that the diminishment one feels for not having the latest this or au courant that is really a call to arms. Instead of allowing a bankrupt system to whittle away what it is to be human, if we would only write a poem, sculpt, dance, or make music instead of picking up a gun, art can be used to push forward and embrace that mystery and make “art for arts sake” the mantra of a new age.
This is what I hope this site is all about, an ars gratia artis, autotelic eruption. I have no illusions that I will become famous through my photographs. My goals are much more modest than that, like being recognized on sight in my own family. Yet I will continue to go out with my light tight box, lens on one end, film on the other and attempt to solve the mystery of existence through the interplay of shadow and light.